They look out to see the beginnings of a big storm.
Before they’re able to pay and leave, the storm is in full motion.
They decide to brave the weather and try to get home.
The storm is blinding. It’s difficult to see anything past the torrential downpour.
They decide its best to pull over. Just before they’re able to, they crash.
Both of them are in terrible condition. Due to the weather, hospitals in the area are overwhelmed by incoming patients. Upon finding the pair, paramedics decide that the father will be taken to a closer hospital, as his injuries are much more severe, and the son will be transported to another hospital with resources.
That hospital is twenty miles away. The son is prepped for emergency surgery when he is brought to the hospital. The doctor slated to perform the surgery lays eyes on the young man and says, “I can’t operate on him. He is my son.” Who is the doctor? Whoever communicates the riddle makes it known that there’s no trick at play here. The answer is simple. They also freely provide any asked for background information. In the case of this riddle, there’s no unique upbringing or family secrets. There’s nothing shocking.
The answer really is straightforward. Try answering the riddle before reading on,
because the rest of this post will give the answer away. The proposed reason for the common difficulty in solving this riddle is implicit bias. Essentially, through social conditioning, our minds have created a certain default image of what constitutes a doctor.
This particular exercise exposes that bias. The Kirwan Institute at Ohio State
The university defines implicit bias as “the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. These biases, which
encompass both favorable and unfavorable assessments, are activated involuntarily and
without an individual’s awareness
or intentional control.” While the presence of biases is quite normal, these unconscious calculations can cause us to make faulty evaluations. Since these biases exist outside of our conscious awareness, they’re often challenging to address. Left unchecked, however,
they can perpetuate certain toxic, stereotypical attitudes about the world. When I first heard the riddle, I racked my brain for the answer only to come up with the most unlikely identities for the doctor. Even though I received all the answers to the follow-up questions
I asked,
I still couldn’t solve it. What probably stung me the most is that, as a feminist, the answer to this should have been a no-brainer. I suppose the riddle did its job. It exposed my own internal bias. Did you figure it out yet? The doctor is his mother.
