1. It shows a degree of determination that I admire.
2. It shows a certain ability to "get it all together" and bring a project to a successful conclusion. There are a lot of EBD's (everything but dissertation) out there, who are intelligent and knowlegable, but who, for various reasons, can't quite finish.
3. This goes back to #2 - there's a large degree of luck that often separates the PhD's and EBD's. There are a lot of cases where persons deserve the degree but can't get it, e.g., funding runs out, their advisors are unreasonable, their project gets scooped by someone else and they can't produce "original" work, they make a poor choice of topic that turns out to be either impossible to complete or too trivial for a dissertation (Here, the advisor is generally at fault.), etc.
4. PhD's do not necessarily possess superior knowledge or judgment outside the scope of their dissertations.
The bottom line - In general I see no reason to give greater credibility to a PhD in any area other than his particular research topic.
The opinions expressed are strictly mine.
It's not about dose, it's about trust.
Curies forever.
Bill Lipton
liptonw@dteenergy.com
RuthWeiner@AOL.COM wrote:
In a message dated 11/11/02 11:51:06 PM Mountain Standard Time, lists@richardhess.com writes:
Do people still respect Ph.D.s?No. And that "no" apparently includes a number of National Laboratory managers, DOE Senior Executive Service and political appointees, and NRC and EPA managers. Moreover, we now have degraded the degree and have doctorates given in subjects like "Environmental Health Education" (as Dave Barry says, I am not making this up. This is a program at the University of New Mexico. Surprise? This is New Mexico, after all). The only people who still have any respect for a doctorate in a basic subject are the Ph.Ds themselves and Ph.D. candidates.
For a moment FORGET your industry and the jobs/benefits/etc., but ratherNow, why should I put my livelihood in jeopardy because a lot of "lay" people are too gullible to look into things for themselves? People usually exercise common sense about things that actually affect them, or that they think actually affect them. I will speak out and put my job in jeopardy, and believe me I have done so, for a lot of things, like attacking the LNT, but not because some people are scared of shadows. "Forget your ... jobs/benefits..." is easy to tell someone else to do and, trust me, not easy to do.
think of the ANGST that this causes lay people.
Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.
ruthweiner@aol.com