Some context to this is recently the big "step 1" board exam that covered the basic science portion of medicine went from being graded to being pass/fail. Since then, all the medical students where I work have started trying to get any kind of research on their CV to stand out during their residency application. New 120 participant "conferences" where med students can present posters are popping up, more med students trying to get into the labs for rotations than ever before. A lot of it is really low quality, but for them, if they don't have any research, and someone else does, they will be ranked lower and get worse jobs. Weird effect of whatever happened to make Step 1 pass/fail