Doctors aren't smarter than vets

People claim that doctors are cleverer than vets. There are several issues at play: specialisation vs generalisation; the source of the misconception; and anthropocentric biases.

Specialisation vs Generalisation

The key concept is the specialisation-generalisation divide.

      Doctors only have one species to worry about: humans. Consequently, doctors have a singularly specialised knowledge.

      Vets, on the other paw, have to know about every other animal species. This is an inordinant amount of variation. Vets thus have a generalised breadth of information.

      People (incorrectly) think specialism requires more intelligence than generalism. So naturally people (incorrectly) think doctors are smarter than vets.

Specialising in knowledge gives you more depth and understanding of that one thing. 

      As such, a deeper understanding usually does indicate a higher intelligence. But that's only applicable when two people are being compared on the same subject. 

      If they're compared on different subjects, such an evaluation cannot be useful. If the 'tests' are different, how can any results be analogous? 

      Thus a comparison between doctors and vets is likewise not useful in terms of their intelligence.

Generalising in knowledge gives you more breadth and transferability across multiple topics. 

      It too can suggest smartness. (Just think of amazing quiz geniuses.) Consider this: if someone understands the rules of all sports, they could easily be considered smarter than someone who only understands the rules of rugby. 

      So generalising can be used to indicate intelligence. (Thus removing the automatic assumption that vets as generalists aren't smarter than doctors.)

Source of Misconception

More research is done about humans than any other animal.* 

      It means doctors have far more info backing their knowledge than vets do. More research means more understanding, hence more accurate, effective treatments can be offered. 

      So yes, doctors may seem like they know what's going on better than vets. But that's only because other people (i.e. researchers) have done lots of work on their behalf.

*(Sure, most research has animal test subjects. 

      However, this research has often been anthropocentric: done to understand human health conditions, not animal conditions. Or it's been generic research, like work done on flat worms/fruit flies to understand the basics of genetics. 

      In these situations, the research isn't done to understand animal health specifically. As such, this doesn't count as 'animal research' in this context of doctors vs vets.) 

Anthrocentric Biases

Also, people (incorrectly) think humans are better, more complicated and more advanced/evolved than other lifeforms. 

      So as doctors deal with humans, people view doctors are dealing with something more complicated than non-human animals. Like vets do. 

      Understanding something complicated does indicates higher inteligence. Therefore, people conclude that doctors must be more intelligent than vets. 

      Basically, people's anthrocentric biases make them believe assumptions over facts.

Conclusion

Between more subjects to research and less research done per subject, this makes being a vet harder than being a doctor. The fact that vets still perform well despite this knowledge gap is admirable. 

Thus justifying 'doctors are smarter than vets' using this knowledge gap, using the fact that vets are generalists and not specialists, isn't rational. 

Surely doing more with less cannot prove a lack of intelligence? 

So no: doctors are not smarter than vets.