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Comment by bigbillheck | Hacker News Reader

OK now do doctors.

Any university can hand out an honorary doctorate. You can also call yourself Dr. Whatever with zero credentials without getting into legal trouble. You will not have the license to practice medicine in the state, but that's not really what the word "doctor" means anyways.

I’m guessing you’re referring to the Latin doctore, which means teacher, and how it’s different from medicus, which means medical doctor or at least something much like it. The only place I’ve seen doctor used in English to mean doctore is in Catholic contexts.

But in English using the title Doctor is assumed to mean medical specialist in general circumstances. Any Ed.D that stands up when the flight attendant asks, “Is there a doctor on the plane?” deserves a scolding at the very least.

Interestingly every single American with any kind of a technical Ph.D that I’ve ever met goes by first name and doesn’t balk at being called mister in all but the most formal circumstances (Germans are an entirely different matter). It’s the ones with Ph.Ds in things like English that get demanding about being called doctor in everyday life.

> doesn’t balk at being called mister

Many doctors these days are women.

> But in English using the title Doctor is assumed to mean medical specialist in general circumstances. Any Ed.D that stands up when the flight attendant asks, “Is there a doctor on the plane?” deserves a scolding at the very least.

I dunno... Jill Biden made an ad in which she called herself by her title 'Doctor' (which is proper, since she has an EdD) and then gave advice on COVID, and we were told that this was sexist because she's really a doctor by many mainstream news outlets.

A doctorate is specifically an academic credential. A closer analogy would be "healer". Or if he claimed to be a doctor of engineering.

I think he's referring to medical doctors, who are licensed in a way similar to engineers and lawyers, not PhDs.

And also the SEC. It is absolutely terrible that private sector cartels like FINRA are allowed to exist.

That is a product of tax money. FINRA is allowed to exist because the SEC is limited in total security examiners by budget limitations.

Please do.

As someone that spent hundreds of thousands to get answers, and majority of my answers came from other people going through same nonsense.

For anything complicated you have to become your own doctor. Medical community is broken on all but straightforward cases.

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