When the College of Medicine was established at Alfaisal University the founding faculty were in agreement with Robert Maynard Hutchins, educational philosopher who was Dean of the Yale Law School and Chancellor of the University of Chicago who wrote “The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.”
Master Textbook Error Detector Hussam Mohammed Izzat Abou Al-Shar, a second year medical student has again demonstrated the capacity for self-learning we nurture in our students. He has found more multiple errors in a number of widely-used textbooks including Drake’s “Grays Anatomy”, Snell’s “Clinical Neuroanatomy”, Abbas, Lichtman and Pober’s “Cellular and Molecular Immunology” and Hall and Guyton’s “Medical Physiology”. All the authors were appreciative of his notification and errors will be corrected. As an Example, Dr. John E. Hall, current author of the textbook “Medical Physiology” wrote: “Thank you for your kind remarks and for taking time to provide feedback on errors in the Textbook of Medical Physiology. You are correct on all three points. I will ask to publisher to make corrections in the next printing of the book. I greatly appreciate your suggestions which will help me to improve the book and make it as accurate as possible.”
Socrates stated: “I cannot teach anyone anything, I can only make them think”. Hussam is an excellent example of how our students are thinking rather than rote learning.
