New docs, old tricks

Medical faculties in Italy held their admission exams today, to decide the fortunate few thousand who'll be working in the country's hospitals and surgeries five, ten, fifteen years from now, depending on how long it takes them to butter their way to the top. It's been a fraught few years for would-be doctors, with scandals popping up like mushrooms after rain. Bought exams, entire faculties involved in wholesale corruption, you name it, someone's done it, in Bari and elsewhere. So the mood this year has been one of general alert. And a good thing too, particularly at the Cattolica university in Rome. This private university happened to notice that an awful lot of candidates, in the words of the Medicine Dean, Paolo Magistrelli, "had applied to do the admission test along with their parents or other members of their family, hoping in this way that their relatives (doctors) would be able to help them answer the questions correctly."

The number of relatives (doctors): 140. These shining examples of Italy's professional class were siphoned off to do the entrance test in a separate room. Leaving their unfortunate children to do the test alone.