For medical students who want to pursue research, completing an internal medicine residency provides an understanding of the clinical context for research.

“if you are in medical school and you're gonna finish and you know you want to do research is there a benefit to doing a residency now I generally tell people and I if you disagree with me I hope you say so very loudly I generally say if you're in college but undecided about medical school or not I would say don't do it pursue the PhD if you are in medical school and presumably at least somewhat interested in medicine still do an internal medicine residency because there is no substitute for doing that type of research and at least having the ability to understand clinically why you're doing it”