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America's Best Eye Doctors 2023 - Optometrists - Newsweek

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It also bears noting that the survey only included optometrists from the 20 most populous states which I would imagine excludes alot of pretty darn good eye doctors in the other 30 states.
 
Mike Ware OD said:
It also bears noting that the survey only included optometrists from the 20 most populous states which I would imagine excludes alot of pretty darn good eye doctors in the other 30 states.
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I personally know probably 20 of those doctors and a few of them are real dodos, so I don't know what the criteria was.
 
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one of them I spoke to recently....

yea, I guess its what criteria they are using ;)
 
Wow - My class has 4 people on that list. Congratulations to Shannon, Rebecca, Yin and Jason!!!!

Edit: gosh darn it, why am I always #201 on these lists?
 
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I honestly thought of this when I saw this thread:

IMG_2531.jpeg
 
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Wait... This isn't a list of doctors working at America's Best?
 
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Joe DiGiorgio O.D. said:
I think I would have avoided that name.

Is this sort of like the Who's Who of optometry?
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It’s honestly a circuit like lecturing. If you’re in the “nominated/nominating” crowd, you end up on these lists. That’s why you see the same names over and over. Are they just doing “amazing care” so above and beyond their colleagues? Of course not, but they volunteer in the right places and have been appointed to the right stuff by virtue of timing and the people they know.

It’s kind of meaningless, but neat to put on your wall.
 
Steven E. Nelson said:
It’s honestly a circuit like lecturing. If you’re in the “nominated/nominating” crowd, you end up on these lists. That’s why you see the same names over and over. Are they just doing “amazing care” so above and beyond their colleagues? Of course not, but they volunteer in the right places and have been appointed to the right stuff by virtue of timing and the people they know.

It’s kind of meaningless, but neat to put on your wall.
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And again, if you are from the 30 least populated states you can’t be on there. It is in the print at the bottom of the list.

Kind of like voting for the NFL MVP but not allowing it to go to players from the AFC. Tough luck Mahomes.
 
Steven E. Nelson said:
It’s honestly a circuit like lecturing. If you’re in the “nominated/nominating” crowd, you end up on these lists. That’s why you see the same names over and over. Are they just doing “amazing care” so above and beyond their colleagues? Of course not, but they volunteer in the right places and have been appointed to the right stuff by virtue of timing and the people they know.

It’s kind of meaningless, but neat to put on your wall.
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Your points are valid.

How would you select the "best" ODs for the year. Best for who? Research?...Patients?... Profession?...Impoverished?... Under developed countries?...Media darling?

Maybe most posts on ODwire.org! ;)
 
Paul Farkas said:
Your points are valid.

How would you select the "best" ODs for the year. Best for who? Research?...Patients?... Profession?...Impoverished?... Under developed countries?...Media darling?

Maybe most posts on ODwire.org! ;)
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Until I get my previous post count added to my current, I’m not going with “most posts.”

Honestly, it’s really complicated because I’m an excellent practitioner, but garbage researcher, so where does that put me? Was I a “better OD” when I was active in the association and local legislative coordinator? The valedictorian of our class after graduation had to ask Dr Sandy at Costco how to fit toric contacts, so is he smart or not? There are some very politically active ODs that are absolute dumb dumbs clinically, so they’re not great DOCTORS, but vital to optometry.

I don’t like lists like this at all because of that. Too many variables to actually have it as a meaningful metric and it implies that there’s some database of “points” for all optometrists and these guys came out on top.
 
I have to wonder if an optometry insider helped they create the list? Some of the people do not even seem to be practicing optometry, but they make occasional cocktail parties for the young recent grads.

Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.
 
Enough -- I have deleted a bunch of messages this morning after several member complaints.

After reading them myself, I find them highly offensive and totally misguided.

To be clear, with zero evidence or understanding of how the Newsweek list is actually chosen, the poster was constructing a theory that the editors of Newsweek were conspiring to promote a minority group over all others. His evidence was a cherry-picked list of several names, many of whom were not even in the minority group he said was being favored!

Tropes like this have been used for centuries against Jews and other minority groups -- that there is some sort of outside influence happening 'behind the scenes', but with no actual evidence of it being a real thing (and this sort of conspiracy theory has been used historically as the basis for stripping many groups of their rights.) I will pull a bunch of op-eds and political cartoons from German newspapers in 1938 if you'd like to see some. Same shit, different century.

This sort of post is not welcomed on the site. I issued a warning after the first one, asking the poster to stop. He persisted, and posted a follow-up, bringing up another minority group! I issued a second warning. Three warnings and the system will automatically prevent the user from posting.

I hope this helps explain my moderation this morning.
 
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AdminWolf said:
Enough -- I have deleted a bunch of messages this morning after several member complaints.

After reading them myself, I find them highly offensive and totally misguided.

To be clear, with zero evidence or understanding of how the Newsweek list is actually chosen, the poster was constructing a theory that the editors of Newsweek were conspiring to promote a minority group over all others. His evidence was a cherry-picked list of several names, many of whom were not even in the minority group he said was being favored!

This sort of post is not welcomed on the site. I issued a warning after the first one, asking the poster to stop. He persisted, and posted a follow-up, bringing up another minority group! I issued a second warning. Three warnings and the system will automatically prevent the user from posting.

I hope this helps explain my moderation this morning.
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The names were not cherry picked, they were the TOP FIRST 11. I just pointed out perceived similarities and pondered how that could possibly be legit considering the demographic makeup of the profession. If posting those 11 names IN ORDER is offensive than the entire Newsweek article is offensive.
 
Stephen McDaniel said:
The names were not cherry picked, they were the TOP FIRST 11. I just pointed out perceived similarities and pondered how that could possibly be legit considering the demographic makeup of the profession. If posting those 11 names IN ORDER is offensive than the entire Newsweek article is offensive.
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I should not have to explain this to you, but I will again --

You picked out the Top 11 because they - to you - had "jewish names". Note that in reality, hey are not all even Jewish (Hardeep? Ajamian? Moy? Amadian? Many if not most of the people on your list aren't what you think they are.)

You are making assumptions that are themselves anti-semitic (ie, based on someone's name that they are certain religion. Which is not accurate.) This line of thinking is flawed, but was the literal first place you went to in order to make sense of how Newsweek developed their list. In the absence of any real evidence. I do not -- and will not have -- conspiracy theories on this site. Am I clear?

I know many of the top ODs on this list personally, and have listened to literally hundreds of hours of their lectures, on ODwire and CEwire, and I can tell you: whether they are "top 5", "top 10" or "top 100", the order doesn't matter -- they are all at the top of the profession, and you could learn a lot by listening to any one of them. Their religion, home state, gender, or anything else is entirely beside the point.
 
AdminWolf said:
I should not have to explain this to you, but I will again --

You picked out the Top 11 because they - to you - had "jewish names". Note that in reality, hey are not all even Jewish (Hardeep? Ajamian? Moy? Amadian? Many if not most of the people on your list aren't what you think they are.)

You are making assumptions that are themselves anti-semitic (ie, based on someone's name that they are certain religion. Which is not accurate.) This line of thinking is flawed, but was the literal first place you went to in order to make sense of how Newsweek developed their list. In the absence of any real evidence. I do not -- and will not have -- conspiracy theories on this site. Am I clear?

I know many of the top ODs on this list personally, and have listened to literally hundreds of hours of their lectures, on ODwire and CEwire, and I can tell you: whether they are "top 5", "top 10" or "top 100", the order doesn't matter -- they are all at the top of the profession, and you could learn a lot by listening to any one of them. Their religion, home state, gender, or anything else is entirely beside the point.
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Ok I disagree with you but you can have the final word after this. Be careful insinuating anti-Semitism. I am VERY PRO semite and consider myself a strong ally of the Jews especially Israel. That doesn't mean I won't call out BS if i see it even if it hurts feelings. Happy Mother's Day!
 
The list is stupid. Who cares? It's a pay-to-play deal.

I know a few of the ODs and they're worthy of some degree of recognition, mostly because they're speakers and I've heard them.

I did look at the ophthalmology list, and my area is strangely over-represented. Let me just say I can judge quality of work, and who's really who.

I'm not impressed by the list.

But then again I'm not impressed by Newsweek or any of the journo rags. In fact, they're completely irrelevant. Completely.
 
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Jeffrey Kiener said:
The list is stupid. Who cares? It's a pay-to-play deal.

I know a few of the ODs and they're worthy of some degree of recognition, mostly because they're speakers and I've heard them.

I did look at the ophthalmology list, and my area is strangely over-represented. Let me just say I can judge quality of work, and who's really who.

I'm not impressed by the list.

But then again I'm not impressed by Newsweek or any of the journo rags. In fact, they're completely irrelevant. Completely.
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The people who compile these lists don’t know anything about optometry or optometrists. My GUESS is that they reach out to the AOA for a list and they pick their teacher’s pets. I know several on there are ”big” association people.
 
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There was a professor at the Indianapolis clinic at IU that I hated so much when I found out we could take personal days, I took them all so I could miss as many clinic days under her supervision as possible. I don’t recall her ever teaching me anything useful, always pointing out some (in my opinion) irrelevant thing I should “fold into” my exam like dynamic retinoscopy.

She really annoyed me. Anyway, the year after I graduated she won Optometrist of the year in Indiana.
 
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It should actually be called "40% of America's Best Optometrists".

And I am not necessarily saying any of the doctors on the list didn't deserve it but there were a shitload of docs excluded for no other reason than the population of their state.
 
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I’ve got what I feel like is an accurate comparison from my military experience.

Anyone who’s ever served will back me up in saying that a lot of your choices are made thinking of bumping your evals. Every military officer has a record on which promotions are based that is essentially a compilation of periodic evals.

In those evals are what are called “bullets” which is a bullet point list of your performance and extra jobs you take on for the command called “ancillary duties.” The more bullets, the more you seem like a hard charger.

Optometry in the navy isn’t part of the medical corps, but rather the medical service corps (MSC). The MSC also includes medical clinic/hospital administrators who basically do nothing but paperwork all day, so adding ancillary duties is really easy because it doesn’t take you out of your real job like it does clinicians where if you’re doing ancillary duties, there a direct impact on your performance metrics. Promotions are within corps and are limited to certain numbers by a program called DOPMA, so you’re competing with those folks and the people making the decisions only have that record and evals to go by.

In my command, there was an administrator who was the public affairs officer. That was his billet and his official job…except our hospital didn’t actually HAVE a public affairs office, so he didn’t really have any job at ALL so he took on a crazy number of ancillary duties and his record looked AMAZING. You’d look at it as someone who has no idea that he doesn’t actually have an actual job and think “damn! THIS guy is a real go-getter!l. He did his normal job AND all of this stuff??” He made rank a full year earlier than he normally would have because of that.

This is 100% how I see these lists. People who don’t know anything about optometry or optometrists telling OTHER people who don’t know anything who the best of us are.
 
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I guess mine got deleted.

I'm sure a lot of people reading the posts from us questioning this list think we're all just jealous. There's some pretty talented ODs commenting, and I doubt any of us are jealous.

I just want to know how such a list is compiled. I'm sure they're all great docs, but what truly separates one OD from another?
 
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Steve Howard said:
I guess mine got deleted.

I'm sure a lot of people reading the posts from us questioning this list think we're all just jealous. There's some pretty talented ODs commenting, and I doubt any of us are jealous.

I just want to know how such a list is compiled. I'm sure they're all great docs, but what truly separates one OD from another?
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Hell I probably am not even the best OD in my own town so jealousy is not a consideration for me. What is a big deal to me is the fact that they call it "America's Best" then exclude doctors in 30 states. I imagine there are some docs in places like Alabama, Iowa, and Oregon that might be as good if not better than alot of ODs on the list.
 
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I think one of the most irritating aspects of lists like this is one of the things about Paul that has irritated me for two decades. I don't need someone else telling me who I'm supposed to respect or how important someone is. I got more than enough of that in the military where I HAD to show deference to some of the f'ing dumbest people I've ever met.

I can't tell you how many times I've been publicly chided after a suspension for "disrespecting such an important member of our community" because there are DEFINITELY favorites that are "important and respected" and everyone else is supposed to navigate their importance no matter HOW bad or wrong they are. Time has proven me right several times on here, so I'll just trust my instincts.

I hear about how "respected and important" they are and my brain immediately asks "to WHO?? They're neither respected by more or important TO me and what they're saying is pure swill." Besides, what does their being the "best" have to do with me or my practice? Who cares
 
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Steve Howard said:
I guess mine got deleted.

I'm sure a lot of people reading the posts from us questioning this list think we're all just jealous. There's some pretty talented ODs commenting, and I doubt any of us are jealous.

I just want to know how such a list is compiled. I'm sure they're all great docs, but what truly separates one OD from another?
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I'm not jealous in the least. If I was on that list it would be an even bigger joke than it currently is if that's even possible.
 
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