{"id":4156,"date":"2013-04-27T13:38:04","date_gmt":"2013-04-27T18:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=4156"},"modified":"2013-04-27T13:38:04","modified_gmt":"2013-04-27T18:38:04","slug":"doctor-but-not-a-real-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=4156","title":{"rendered":"Doctor, but not a real one"},"content":{"rendered":"

A quick lesson on equivocation and how not to charge that it’s occurring.\u00c2\u00a0 Charles Cooke has a piece over at NRO<\/a> about how Jill Biden, who has a Ed.D., has been tweeting under the handle ‘DrBiden’.\u00c2\u00a0 The tweets have been about educational issues in the US and updates about her recent work promoting educational initiatives.\u00c2\u00a0 Cooke objects to her use of ‘Dr’ as part of her title.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s primarily that those who have doctorates aren’t real doctors.<\/p>\n

Wherever she goes and whatever she does, Dr. Biden is always<\/em> referred to as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dr. Biden.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Is Joe Biden married to a physician?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d wondered the Los Angeles Times<\/em> in January. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You might have gotten that impression while watching television coverage of the inauguration.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Yes, you might have indeed. Dr. Biden isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a physician, of course. She has a doctorate <\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u201c in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153educational leadership,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d whatever the hell that is….<\/p>\n

One can only wonder what Dr. Biden\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s response would be to the urgent question \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Is there a doctor in the house?!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Perhaps \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes! Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t worry, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m here! I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not too sure how to do a tracheotomy, though\u00c2\u00a0.\u00c2\u00a0.\u00c2\u00a0.\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

OK.\u00c2\u00a0 So Cooke’s objection is that ‘Dr’ carries with it a lot of weight in this culture, and it comes from the status that Medical<\/em> Doctors have.\u00c2\u00a0 Then there’s a quick lesson about why folks with still get called ‘doctor’.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s somewhat by chance that the recipients of Ph.D.s may even presume to call themselves \u00e2\u20ac\u0153doctors,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the unfortunate product of a thousand-year-old liberal-arts tradition …. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ph.D.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d stands for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Philosophiae Doctor,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a Latin term that (rather obviously) means \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Doctor of Philosophy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in English. The \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Philosophy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d bit was intended loosely, in the classical sense of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153love of learning\u00e2\u20ac\u009d; the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Doctor\u00e2\u20ac\u009d bit derives from \u00e2\u20ac\u0153docere,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which simply means \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to teach.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Erm.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s all totally backwards.\u00c2\u00a0 So it’s not really by chance<\/em> that Ph.D.’s are called ‘doctor.’\u00c2\u00a0 That’s, like, what the degree means — the one who teaches others about the area, the one who is nobody’s student. It’s actually by chance that medical<\/em> doctors are the ones who get all the cred for the title.\u00c2\u00a0 Cooke’s got the implications of his own evidence entirely backwards.<\/p>\n

But now Cooke pauses to concede that sometimes it’s appropriate to use the title ‘doctor’ for someone with a doctorate:<\/p>\n

American etiquette books tend to mark this dichotomy, holding that it is acceptable for Ph.D.s to use \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dr.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d within the context of their business but inappropriate everywhere else.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oy.\u00c2\u00a0 And what was Jill Biden tweeting about?\u00c2\u00a0 Matters regarding education.\u00c2\u00a0 Precisely what her doctorate is in.\u00c2\u00a0 KA-BOOM.\u00c2\u00a0 And now Cooke has provided all the evidence to show that he has absolutely no point at all, other than to complain that someone he doesn’t like uses a term of intellectual distinction.\u00c2\u00a0 Good things conservatives don’t do anything like that. (Oh, yes<\/a> they<\/a> do<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A quick lesson on equivocation and how not to charge that it’s occurring.\u00c2\u00a0 Charles Cooke has a piece over at NRO about how Jill Biden, who has a Ed.D., has been tweeting under the handle ‘DrBiden’.\u00c2\u00a0 The tweets have been about educational issues in the US and updates about her recent work promoting educational initiatives.\u00c2\u00a0 … Continue reading Doctor, but not a real one<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1963],"class_list":["post-4156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-equivocation","tag-equivocation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4156"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4157,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4156\/revisions\/4157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}