Why are clinical practitioners and healthcare policy-makers expected to understand research and evidence-based practice?

The only answer that has a tiny grain of truth is b. Clinical practitioners DON'T do research. Research and clinical medicine are entirely different skills and most docs have neither the training nor the talent to do research. b is a problem too because the so-called "experts" that develop practice guidelines are almost always also paid handsomely by the industries producing medical products involved in implementing their recommendations.

B. These days, a substantial majority of studies are spun to appear as if the result is what the authors (or their sponsors) would like for the result to be, no matter the evidence in the data. To practice properly, one has not only to read the literature, but actually re-analyze what's in it to ensure it actually says what it purports to say. You have to know your way around the scientific method, and I daresay most of us wish we'd taken more courses in statistics when in school.

I think the answer is d.