This part of the post gives 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 riddle exposes that bias. The Kirwan Institute at Ohio State 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 around us. You are here, so the riddle did
“I shall begin at the beginning,” said the D.H.C. and the more zealous students recorded his intention in their notebooks: Begin at the beginning. “These,” he waved his hand, “are the incubators.” And opening an insulated door he showed them racks upon racks of numbered test-tubes. “The week’s supply of ova. Kept,” he explained, “at blood heat; whereas the male gametes,” and here he opened another door, “they have to be kept at thirty- five instead of thirty-seven. Full blood heat sterilizes.” Rams wrapped in theremogene beget no lambs. Still leaning against the incubators he gave them, while the pencils scurried illegibly across the pages, a brief description of the modern fertilizing process; spoke first, of course, of its surgical introduction- “the operation undergone voluntarily for the good of Society, not to mention the fact that it carries a bonus amounting to six months’ salary” ; continued with some account of the technique for preserving the excised ovary alive and acti