Were the other four too lazy/orthodox to read the papers you're referencing? Or they read the papers and still thought it wasn't a good idea? I'm going to presume that the former is the case, unfortunately.
The way we think about it is a doctor has what, 15 minutes (if that) to spare thinking about our daughter languishing in the NICU. My wife spent literally all day, all night, ruminating and worrying about her. I had just started a new job, (I was unemployed when she was born!) and honestly poured myself into that position, maybe as a way to avoid living at the hospital (I’m not proud of it but that’s what happened). But it is weird we had to get the pulmonologist to prescribe a medication that’s something the neurologist should probably be prescribing.
I have personal experience with this as a patient and a family member of physicians. I wish I didn't know what docs say and think about their patients. It's a really unfortunate characteristic of the US medical system.
There could be any number of reasons; without more details, I think it's quite a leap to immediately assume they're "lazy/orthodox to read the papers".
I think you’re absolutely correct about having dozens of other patients. My wife wrote a long email, that was forwarded to the doctors, citing various articles with links to the medical journals and the doctors couldn’t thank her enough for it. It wasn’t until that happened that someone prescribed the medication for her.
I get why it happens: they have to deal directly with patients who 99% of the time are not research capable and if they claim to be research capable what they really mean is that they've been sharing conspiracy theories on facebook. Doctors build defense mechanisms against the nonsense (authoritative tone, dismissive attitude) that grate on academic sensibilities. They can be slow to come around but eventually they usually do.
As the doctors cycled out though it sort of reverted to the mean, back to the authoritarian stance you expect from doctors, since NICU doctors were constantly rotating out.
For instance, I have a background in biochemical engineering, my fiancée is a cancer surgeon, 4 cousins are doctors, and another 3 cousins married doctors. Yet the entire family collectively believes in homeopathy, unani medicine (Greek medicine) and other hogwash like cupping therapy, save for a select few. The last time I visited one of my relatives, they were ingesting some ayurvedic (Indian medicine) concoction that was later found to contain arsenic. One of my friends is daughter to two doctors, yet her Dad (a former Indian Army doctor, so not the run-of-the-mill kind) still spouted nonsense on Facebook like "burning Turmeric powder and inhaling it would prevent COVID".
It's easy to understand, after all this, why doctors tend to be generally skeptical of laymen bringing them some new "breakthrough". Not much to do with personality than with what they see as a daily occurrence. Of course, one way to sift the chaff away from the grain would be to demand that patients bring in scientifically published papers, at which point most patients would scoff at you for not supporting their viewpoint.
This kind of bullshit is too prevalent around here, sadly. And telling that ayurveda is pseudoscience instantly makes you "anti-national" and what not.