Should Only Medical And Scientific Persons Be Referred To As Doctors

[barney15c]

Jill Biden has been criticized for using her Doctorate title, which she earned in the field of education. Some have said that this should only be applied to those in the Medical and Scientific professions. The BBC's own style guide uses the title Dr to refer to doctors of medicine, scientific doctors and church ministers who hold doctorates, when relevant. What is the history of doctorates in other disciplines? Do you agree that those who have a Doctorate in say Education, Economics, Theology etc should call themselves Dr. I have no personal opinion either way.

[brainiac]

theprof - am I right in thinking that all those with doctorates (ie not medical doctors) have had to 'defend' their theses in an oral examination in front of a panel of academics? Have you served on such a panel, and, if so, does anyone fail?

[jim360]

Not theprof, but -- it varies between Universities, but the "panel" is always at least two. In some places you have to defend by giving essentially a lecture to both the academics and a more general audience, and answer questions. In others it's a quieter affair, in still other places it's somewhere in between I guess.

In all cases, I think the aim is the same: the purpose of the defence is to prove that you understand what you wrote in your thesis: both what it says and what it doesn't say. Almost by definition, if you've made it as far as the defence (or the "viva voce"), then the thesis should have the required content, subject to some level of corrections, to be awarded a pass. In particular this should be true because the candidate's supervisor should be competent enough, and engaged enough, to have ensured that the thesis was good enough to meet requirements.

There are always exceptions, but in general the candidates who are going to fail their defence either never made it that far to start with, because they dropped out, or turn out to have plagiarised their work. Everybody else should pass "with minor corrections", which usually means typos or minor clarifications; or, very occasionally, with "major corrections", which means that maybe the student will need to perform and discuss new experiments or write a new chapter on some theoretical point.

[woofgang]

Khandro, it actually is an issue for people who move in medical circles. I used to know of quite a few people who preferred not to see professionally the medics who they knew socially.

[brainiac]

Thanks for your reply, jim, I thought it was something along those lines. At what stage in the proceedings do you learn if you've passed or not - at the end of the viva voce or do you have to wait for a letter, or, even worse (as I remember from my degree), have to go and look for your name on a noticeboard...

[jim360]

I learned I'd passed a few minutes after the viva, although I "knew" that I had passed more or less as soon as I'd walked in and been told that it was a "good" thesis. I don't think there's anything unique about this experience, it probably depends a bit on who the examiner is and the tone they want to set; maybe some examiners are keener on making the candidate "sweat" than others. This is where theprof's insight, or somebody from the other end's, would be handy. But my impression was that the decision to pass was made in two stages: first on reading the thesis, and secondly on being satisfied that I wrote it.

[brainiac]

Thanks for that, jim. I find this fascinating: did you do your doctorate under the aegis of the same college as your first degree, or did you apply elsewhere? If so, what made you choose that uni?

[jim360]

Changed universities, for two reasons. The new place gave me an offer very quickly so it made sense to take it rapidly (later, I also received a formal rejection from my first Uni, so that forced my hand rather!). I think I chose it because I was interested in what stuff was going on there, what topics they were actively researching, and the like. In retrospect perhaps I should have given more consideration to my choice -- not because I didn't end up enjoying, more or less, what I was researching, but certainly it took a while to settle and I think I'd have benefitted from a gap year.