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‘There is no evidence that implementing woke medicine improves health outcomes,’ researcher says
A new analysis of the digital database that houses millions of academic articles in the biomedical and life sciences fields reveals a love affair with “woke terminology” from about 2020 through 2025 that dumbs down science and harms policy and practice, according to a researcher.
The analysis covers the use of words such as indigenous knowledge, microaggression, justice, safe space, and health equity in medical journals.
Published recently by James Nuzzo, an exercise scientist and men’s health researcher, it documents “woke medical terminology” found on the PubMed database.
For example, the phrase “lived experience” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 10,631 articles indexed in PubMed, and “transgender” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 15,741 articles.
George Floyd’s death “markedly increased discussions on race in academia, including in health and medical journals,” it states. “In fact, George Floyd’s name appeared in the titles or abstracts of 269 articles indexed in PubMed between 2020 and 2025.”
Nuzzo said the trend is alarming.
“There is no evidence that implementing woke medicine improves health outcomes,” Nuzzo told The College Fix in an email interview. “In fact, the shift away from the individual patient to the patient’s group identity is presumably harmful to the patient.”
He said that “because standards for rigorous scholarship have been lowered in recent years, an inordinate number of woke papers now fill medical research databases with biased studies.”
“Each hour that [medical] students were forced to learn about woke medical concepts was an hour taken away from their learning about biology, diseases, and diagnostic tools,” he said.
Ultimately, this works “to change educational practice, clinical practice, and public policy,” Nuzzo said.
Not all of the research on PubMed is medical, he said, noting some is public health research, meaning that “critical theory is being used to advocate for change in medical practice and public health policies.”
This impacts how doctors classify causes of health problems, he said.
They “believe that health outcomes in individuals of certain demographic groups are largely, if not exclusively, socially or environmentally determined or constructed,” Nuzzo said.
Jay Greene, director of research at Do No Harm, agreed that part of the motivation in using such language is to manipulate policy.
He told The College Fix that “the increasing use of certain terms in medical education and research is a proxy for a changing set of priorities.”
“The implication is that medicine is becoming more influenced by political agendas at the expense of scientific rigor, and this results in significantly worse medical care for patients,” Greene said.
“We see that medical students are having a harder time passing their basic medical tests, which means they are less well-prepared to help patients,” Greene told The Fix.
“We also see political agendas distorting medical care in a variety of ways that harm patients,” Greene said, citing the treatment of gender dysphoria among teenagers with puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries.
When asked what can be done to ensure healthcare and medical research can be free from political ideology and driven by science, Green said that “we need to regain control over medical training and practice by displacing the politicized groups that have hijacked med schools and medical associations.”
“We can do this through legislation requiring rigorous medical training and prohibiting dangerous interventions for minors with gender dysphoria,” Greene said, “as well as by mobilizing rank-and-file doctors against those who have hijacked their profession.”
The College Fix reached out to We Got Us, a grassroots coalition to combat racism through equitable healthcare, for comment twice, but received no response.
The Association of American Medical Colleges also did not respond to The College Fix’s requests for comment.
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