This is interesting, I didn't realize the disciplinary approach was out of the public eye. The medical community seems to keep disciplinary actions very quiet.
If a P.Eng screws up, his disciplinary notice is made public, even if the consequence is just (re)training. It also seems that we also have less focus on the expression of personal opinions and other aspects of personal behaviour than the medical community.
Having had a less than stellar specialist for many years, I have to wonder if this quiet approach is actually in the public interest. It's treating the public in a very paternalistic manner.
Another example of this is that back in the beginning of the pandemic, didn't the medical community in the US tell the public that masks were ineffective? And not because masks were ineffective, but because there was a mask shortage and they didn't want to interfere with their availability for health care staff. For example:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-cdc-says-americans-dont-have-to-wear-facemasks-because-of-coronavirus-2020-01-30
They definitely had a point about availability. But should they have been lying to the public?
To be fair, as someone trained in universal precautions and masking, a lot of us medical professionals had no idea masking would be as effective as it was. We were more trained on contact transmission, handwashing, etc. I was as surprised as everyone to find out that hand washing turned out to be largely irrelevant and masking was highly effective.
I was one of those medical professionals who advocated against public masking because in my mind, that had people putting their hands on their faces constantly. For contact transmission, having people put on and take off masks improperly is a TERRIBLE idea.
This particular virus turned out to be more of a droplet spreader than a contact spreader. This is why suddenly our "universal precautions" that we had used for decades weren't good enough and we had to upgrade our PPE dramatically. The vast majority of us just weren't trained for this.
So as much as it looks like we medical professionals were part of some conspiracy to keep masks for ourselves, it's more nuanced than that. It's that most of us thought that the masks would be wasted on the general public who were likely putting themselves at contact transmission risk by even using them.
As it became clear that masks were super effective and contact transmission just wasn't as big a deal as we were trained to worry about, the sentiment changed.
Things are rarely as malicious as they seem, and usually the product of ignorance. I, along with so many of my colleagues, was ignorant about how incredibly effective amateur masking would be.
Live and learn.
ETA as for the privacy in dealing with the medical world. Yes, this is a valid point to be debated with valid arguments on both sides. But essentially, the system runs on a benefit of the doubt assumption and that all doctors want to do good and that often they just need a bit of support to get back on track.
Not everything is quiet, much of the disciplinary process is published and members often have to write published apology letters addressed to all of their colleagues for failing to follow the rules.
But my point is that the colleges don't jump to crucifying people. They give them chances to prove themselves first.
The medical colleges are very paternalistic. They're fundamentally structured that way. There are pros and cons to this for sure. But that's an enormous topic that I don't want to delve further into.
My points all along have not been to defend the rules of Peterson's college, but to point out that he is only being subjected to the rules that he was very aware of agreeing to in the first place.
My whole point is that nothing he is experiencing is exceptional to his case. It's all actually pretty pedestrian, normal college behaviour and doesn't look like a witch hunt by any stretch of the imagination to anyone who belongs to one of these colleges.
