XF Meta: Scully's Medical Training Timeline
At the request of @randomfoggytiger, I wanted to do my damnedest to make Scully's education and training timeline make even a little sense. I'm a physician (specifically a specialist in adult infectious diseases), and it's fairly clear to me that CC and Co probably didn't actually talk to any doctors about how medical training works. Love my girl - I'm a Scully Effect kid, I don't think I'd be a doctor at all if it weren't for the inspiration of Dana Scully. But her timeline is...iffy at best.
Disclaimer: My medical school and post-med school training occurred from 2009-2018, Scully's occurred in the 1980's-90's. From what I can tell, the durations of many residencies and fellowships don't seem to have changed much, but I can't say that for certainty for all programs at all institutions. I am also from the US, so I cannot speak to medical training in other countries.
Our girl was born in 1964, and so unless she skipped a grade (which some schools would do if students were classified as "gifted" or otherwise exceptional, she would have graduated from high school at age 18 in 1982 and went straight to college. Let's assume she didn't skip a grade, for the sake of argument.
You have to have a Bachelor's degree to apply to medical school. These degrees typically take 4 years, though if someone arrives at college with credits from dual-enrollment high school classes or AP exam credits OR if they take summer classes some people can complete them in 3 years. I don't know what the availability of dual enrollment or AP classes was like in the early 80's (and like CC, I'm too lazy to do the research to find out), so we can assume that Scully graduated from college in 1986.
Medical school is 4 years long - no shortening this at that point in time, and even now in almost all cases. So that puts medical school graduation in 1990 IF she's following a traditional timeline and went straight from college to medical school.
Now, if someone is going to go into practice they have to do a residency in at least one of a variety of specialties (Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Surgery, etc.) in order to be board certified and practice independently. There are very, very few job options in clinical medicine if you DON'T do a residency, so if you want to practice, you have to do it. Residencies can be anywhere from 3-5 years, depending on the specialty. You can also further subspecialize after a residency by doing one or more fellowships (typically 1-3 years depending on the fellowship) before sitting for your board certification exams and starting independent practice. For example - after medical school I did a 3-year residency in adult internal medicine, then a 2 year fellowship in adult infectious diseases to be eligible to sit for the boards and enter my specialty, so 5 years further training after medical school before I could get a job, get board certified, and practice.
Scully is a forensic pathologist. She would have had to do a 3 or 4 year pathology residency (both were options at the time) followed by a 1 year forensic pathology fellowship. You CANNOT perform autopsies right out of medical school, if you are going to be a forensic pathologist you HAVE to do this training. So, following a traditional timeline this puts her as having completed forensic pathology training in 1994 or 1995. Pilot starts March 7th, 1992, so this is loooooong after she's canonically already an FBI agent and teaching at the academy.
But our girl's a smart cookie, so let's take a little leeway with her timeline. Let's say she skipped a grade some time in K-12. This puts high school graduation in 1981. Let's say she ALSO graduates with a bunch of AP credit and does summer semesters and finishes her undergraduate degree in Physics in 3 years. This puts her as starting medical school in 1984, with graduation in 1988. She'd still need to do that pathology residency and forensic pathology fellowship - let's assume a 3 year residency, then 1 year fellowship, so she'd finish training in 1992.
Still doesn't fit.
Let's go totally off the rails here - we know Scully was recruited out of medical school to the FBI, so she didn't do a traditional residency at all - UNLESS the FBI has an internal forensic pathology residency. It would HAVE to be accelerated in some way - some programs combine residency and fellowship by giving less elective time and more focus to the fellowship content. It's not common but they exist. Let's say in theory the FBI has an accelerated forensic pathology residency that takes 3 years, in addition to the 20 weeks of the FBI academy training. This has her finishing residency AND FBI academy training some time in 1991.
This is the ONLY way she could have finished forensic pathology training AND the FBI academy with enough time to be a fully certified forensic pathologist and FBI agent with some time left to teach at the FBI academy before being assigned to the X-Files on March 7th, 1992.
I can suspend my disbelief enough to be on board with this. You'd have to be pretty damned special, which we know she is, to get recruited out of medical school by the FBI. Maybe they even developed the accelerated combined residency/fellowship just for her! She's Dana Katherine Motherf***ing Scully, people!
Now, IWTB is where things get REALLY unbelievable. (Disclaimer: I have not watched IWTB since seeing it in theaters in 2008. I'll get around to rewatching it someday soon. Probably with a bottle of wine. Not a glass. A bottle.)
Mulder and Scully go on the run in 2002. We don't know how long they were in the wind, but by 2008, she's been allowed to resume a career and is practicing at Our Lady of Sorrows. Clearly in pediatrics - but general pediatricians sure as hell don't do stem cell transplants, so she'd almost certainly have to be a pediatric oncologist. We aren't told what her specialty is specifically, but that's what she'd have to be to do a stem cell transplant.
(That scene in the OR isn't even what stem cell transplants LOOK LIKE but that's a rant for another day, back to my point.)
MEDICAL BOARDS DON'T JUST LET YOU CHANGE YOUR SPECIALTY FOR FUNSIES.
(Deep breaths. Serenity now. Ok, let's do this.)
Scully would have had to do an ENTIRELY NEW residency AND fellowship in order to practice as a pediatric oncologist. Pediatrics residency is 3 years long. Pediatric Hematology/Oncology fellowship is 3 years long. In order for this to be even remotely possible, she would have had to START residency in 2002 to finish fellowship by 2008 and start her job at Our Lady of Sorrows.
And she's a former FBI agent harboring a known felon, on the run from government officials and alien hybrids who want her and Mulder dead.
There is absolutely no way even the smallest, most hard-up pediatric residency program is going to accept her with that hanging over her head. I'm not going to get into all the details of how rigorous and stressful the post-medical school residency application and match process is, but even if she didn't apply until she KNEW it was safe to come out from underground, she'd still have to explain a multi-year gap in her resume/CV to the program directors. Multi-year gaps in career and training without a reasonable explanation like a medical issue, time off to care for an ailing family member, time off for research, time away in a different, legitimate career are NOT looked on kindly when applying for residency positions. She would have a HELL of a time getting into a totally different residency.
It could happen - if anyone could do it, she could. But there's absolutely no way there's enough time for her to complete that training by 2008.
"But sagan-starstuff, it's CC, it's X-Files, we know there was no show bible and no one but the fans gave a shit about continuity or things making sense, there's no logic just vibes"
I KNOW, OK. I KNOW. And I love this insane, beautiful masterpiece anyway. I love exploring the possibilities of how and when it all could have happened with my fellow insane Philes who work so hard to glean meaning and order from this perfect mess of a show.
But couldn't CC have talked to one (1) doctor about what medical training is like at some point between 1993 and 2018? Just one?
Anyway. Yeah. That's my meta. Scully's training timeline makes no goddamned sense. Compels me, though.
@randomfoggytiger, this is for you. Honorable mention to @precedex-files who I ranted about this with in messages a while back.
Thank you @sagan-starstuff for this in depth review of the ridiculous medical training of Special Agent Medical Doctor Dana Scully! I concur with it all, unless Scully was a child progidy there is no way the timing works out for her medical training. Even that would’ve only helped her prior to any medical training (skipping grades perhaps or breezing through college in fewer years). At best med school could get shortened by one year - but not typically the case for people pursuing non-primary care specialties. There’s no way any of the post-graduate medical training would have been shortened. I’m an anesthesiologist of the same medical training era of @sagan-starstuff so a bit more contemporary than Scully’s time, but medical training changes at glacial speeds, so even a modern analysis is very applicable.
I could write tomes longer than Harrison’s, Miller, and Barash put together outlining the many, many medical inaccuracies in the show. I’m sure a medical advisor could have easily fixed many of them. But the X-Files is a show I forgive for all that. Maybe it’s because I fell in love with the show well before I ever went into medicine. But really it’s because the show is so much more than that. Its merits are in storytelling, character building, and, at the heart of it all, relationships.
Happy 31st Anniversary my dear show!
