Friday, September 16, 2011

BWAAHAHA! You Better Address Me as 'Dr. if I Have my Ph.D.!



















One of the most peculiar letters to the Editor (of Physics Today) I've ever beheld, appeared in the September issue (p. 8, 'All due respect to scientists and Ph.D.s'). The writer, a Robert Cassola, basically whined about Ph.D. scientists (who he obviously believed to be the only "true" ones), deserving "more respect from the media in terms of how they were addressed".

Cassola claims neither the print or broadcast media addresses scientists in correct fashion and that's why he was motivated to write the letter. He began by using the example of a "K-9 police officer" and his human attendant who appeared on a local TV show and noted the K-9 was always addressed as "Officer Fido" and the human attendant as "Officer Jones". But when a Ph.D. physicist appeared, he was addressed as "Jim" or "Jim Smith" but never Dr. Smith or "physicist Jim Smith".

Give me an effing break! Are you kidding me?

He then proceeded to give another example, this time of a panel in which several were astronauts (with Ph.D.s) and one was an M.D. He then complained that only the last was addressed as Dr. and the others merely by first names.

Evidently, he then became exercised after reading an article about "the magnificent work of a Ph.D scientist who had been awarded the Nobel Prize" and complained that never once was he addressed as Dr. or with the initials Ph.D. after his name. When he pressed the editors to explain, they informed him that the use of 'Dr.' was reserved for medical doctors, not scientists.

He then complained to the Physics Today editor that "such treatment by the media send a clear message that scientists who have earned the highest degree in their profession are less worthy of respect than soldiers, coaches, police officers, members of the clergy, and cooks"

He also concludes:

"It also conveys the message that science is somehow a less worthy endeavor than other professions".

But maybe scientists did this to themselves, so it's a tad late now to be bitching after the livestock escaped because the barn doors were left open!

First, no serious astronomers I know get off on credentialism, and they're confident enough in their work, name and renown that they don't have to flaunt pretty initials after their name (apart from the fact, as I noted in a prior blog, the Ph.D. is now so commonplace that much of its gravitas has gone the way of the dodo)

In any case, most of the serious scientists I've come to know were never credentials fetishists and didn't make a big deal out of it. I still recall, by way of example, my first introduction to the revered Prof. Martin Schwarzschild (author of the classic, 'Stellar Evolution') at an American Astronomical Society meeting in Baltimore in 1984. We sat down with two others for breakfast and when I proceeded to address him as 'Dr' he immediately waved his hand in negation, saying with a smiling face: "No, I'm not big on the 'doctor' thing! Just call me Martin!"

Second, not all Ph.D. scientists are luminaries, nor are non-Ph.D. scientists chopped liver! Take the example of a Jason Lisle, who many of his groupies yap endlessly on having a "Ph.D." and being a real scientist ("astophysicist", no less) yet supporting Young Earth and Young Sun creationism. But I already showed in two previous blogs how this removes him from the company of real scientists, hence his initials don't mean squat:



http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/07/jason-lisle-astrophysicist-dont-make-me.html




http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/07/jason-lisle-faux-astrophysicist.html




Then, apart from peddling bunkum and pseudo-science, there was the report appearing in the most recent issue of The Economist ('An Array of Errors', Sept. 10, p. 91) detailing how a group of Ph.D. scientists at Duke garnered worldwide attention for breaking research in 2006 (on the activity of expression arrays of lung cancer genes), which have been found subsequently not to be replicable. This is in addition to assorted gross errors in the work discovered by a group of bio-statisticians at the M.D. Anderson Center and published in Nature Medicine.


All of which evokes the kerfuffle that surrounded the "discovery" of "cold fusion" by Drs. Pons and Fleischmann more than a decade ago, but which no investigators were ever able to replicate. It was later ascertained that they lacked the controls in the experiment to even demonstrate that their results exceeded the threshold level of systematic errors!



By the same token, there have been Masters degree physicists who've done yeoman work, including Prof. Daniel Swift at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks and Geophysical Institute, in modeling the aurora using novel plasma numerical simulations, as well as Peter Gibbs, an electronics and solar energy specialist, now Chairman of the Physics Dept. at my old alma mater, The University of the West Indies.



Thus, it is very clear that demanding the sort of rigid credentialism that Cassola does (e.g. "scientists must require the media introduce them properly as 'Physicist John Jones" and Ph.D. scientists should require they be addressed as 'Ph.D. or Dr. Stephens" etc.) would by a dispositive collateral action, diminish the import of all M.Sc. or M.Phil. physicists. Also, it would make such scientists the laughing stocks of the media, and doubtless, they'd receive even less attention (for interviews) than they do now.



The worst error made by Cassola is asserting "In our society titles are used as a sign of respect and credibility". Well, maybe in his society! In mine, a title doesn't mean dogshit unless you've actually demonstrated you merit it. Thus, I've seen "Presidents" that should more plausibly have been dog catchers (and addressed with no more deference than that) and Ph.D. "scientists" who clearly gave up callings as clowns, bull-shit artists or snake oil salesmen. Even today, a certain segment of "Ph.D." scientists have emulated old-fashioned whores, allowing their services to be purchased by the highest bidders of the fossil fuel industry to churn out crap research to attempt to undermine the anthropogenic global warming consensus. These dilweeds merit no more respect than a guy like Jason Lisle who parlayed his Ph.D. to become a top spokesperson for creationist hogswill.




Here's a clue to Cassola and any like-minded, hyper-anal Ph.D. obsessives: If you need to broadcast your degree and initials every time you're on air or in the papers, then you have a serious problem with low self-esteem. Maybe your best option here is not to try and dictate title terms to the media, but get yourself a good therp. Oh, and maybe make sure he or she has a Ph.D.! You wouldn't want to be psycho-analyzed by someone with zero creds!

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