We’re all familiar with sneer-quoting, surrounding a claim or term we find dubious with quotation marks. To wit: Homeopathic “Medicine”; New Age “Music”; the “Democratic” “People’s” “Republic” of Korea. Very often, sneer-quoting is a snarky way of casting aspersions on a person or idea without making an actual argument. It’s a way of translating sarcasm from verbal into written form. But I propose that we can make good and rigorous use of sneer-quotes in at least one way: distinguishing between meaningful terminal degrees and terminal degrees that are either acquired for vanity, or confer no advantage in a given context. People who hold the former should be referred to as doctors, while those who hold the latter deserve no better than “doctor.”
It’s easy to get riled at people whose degrees aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. (A 2005 piece in Reason gives a tragicomic example in the federal government’s Labor Department.). More insidious are degrees that come from an accredited institution but are irrelevant to one’s vocation. “Dr.” Laura Schlessinger – the angry lady who doles out moral advice on AM radio – does indeed hold an Ivy League PhD . . . in physiology. So why do we have to call her doctor when she’s haranguing incestuous deadbeats?
A few months back I happened upon the Deion Sanders of “doctors” while screening a DVD from a religious organization. The format of the series is a mock classroom, in which the main narrator, to whom we shall pseudonymously refer as Dr. Hack Olson*, addresses a group of students on philosophy, science, economics, ethics, etc. Dr. Olson is a talented speaker with a marvelous voice. But as the lecture wore on, I noticed something about his style: he didn’t make a single serious argument. There was no rigor, no attempt at complexity. There was nothing to persuade the skeptic, only reassuring clichés for the converted. And that’s when it hit me: this man is no doctor; he is, at best, a “doctor.”
Five minutes’ research on Google confirmed my suspicions. Hack Olson’s bio reveals that his title is derived from holding a DM (a degree with which I was unfamiliar), from a university you’ve never heard of. It turns out that the DM is a Doctor of (Business) Management, and of the 96 hours of study required for the degree, 36 are in classes titled Research & Writing. In fairness, “Dr.” Olson did have to take a five-hour class in Science, Values & Ethics, which I suspect was less invigorating than the one in “Futuring and Innovation.” Other than those five hours, what in this program of study entitles Hack Olson to the title of doctor when he waxes philosophic on absolute truth, proper interpretation of the Bible, or the existence of God?
The answer, of course, is nothing. “Dr.” Olson’s title comes from a spare-time degree earned from a little known university in a field that has nothing to do with what he gets paid to talk about. His degree is actually a double-dipping “doctorate”: it is a vanity degree of dubious worth and is irrelevant to his vocation.
At this point you are probably wondering why I’m debunking people’s credentials when this is supposed to be a blog on MBM, so I’ll come to the point. The real tragedy about “doctors” is not that a few wags get to live off the fat of the land on useless credentials. The tragedy is the fact that the rest of us hear the word “doctor” and assign instant credibility to their words. But knowledge in one realm does not necessarily translate to knowledge in another. I happen to hold a PhD in economics, so if I say something about supply and demand or marginal cost, you might want to take note. But if I’m consulting for your business to cut waste or improve productivity, you’d be well advised to challenge me on my assertions, because there are a million details about your business that I know nothing about, any one of which might render my advice useless or even counterproductive.
This is why a rigorous challenge process is essential in any organization, and is a key component of MBM. Employees should never have to cave to “doctors,” “managers,” or even “CEOs.” Titles don’t prove that ideas are good; strong arguments do.
* To anybody out there actually named Hack Olson, my apologies for any hassles this post might cause you. And my condolences on your name. What were your parents thinking?
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