Talk: Doctor of Philosophy

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Never seen another PhD on screen?[]

The article stated Dehner was the only PhD seen. But doctors such as Leah Brahms and Kila Marr, an engineer and biologist, respectively, almost certainly had PhDs (unless between now and the 24th century academic degrees held by Humans in such traditional fields change. And there is no canon evidence supporting that they did, so it's highly likely that we did encounter PhDs.).

So I added in further background material indicating this.

Please feel free to revert or change my edits as you see fit, of course!

--Cepstrum ^(talk) 14:45, October 25, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Sulfur, for making those swift and helpful changes. I made a few more subsequent changes, but if you believe they are not good, go ahead and change (but don't revert, for I did fix some grammar bugs. I won't make anymore edits for awhile and instead await to initiate a dialogue with you if you find my edits to unwarranted. I certainly don't mean to get into an inadvertent "edit war/conflict" with you: experience has taught me you really do a terrific job carefully modifying/fixing my (sadly, too oft) ill-advised edits! :)

--Cepstrum ^(talk) 15:38, October 25, 2010 (UTC)

Why just "23rd century"?[]

Is there a good reason why it's stated this degree was awarded (just) in the 23rd century? Is it because the only canon evidence refers to someone with a PhD then? I'd really like to remove that phrase. I know we can't replace it with the non-canon fact that it's been awarded for a very long time, but could we at least leave it vague? As it is, it makes it seem as though the only time it was ever awarded was in that century. We saw Einstein and Hawking, who have/had PhDs, even though it wasn't explicitly mentioned. I'm not saying we should state anything else, just remove that phrase. Thoughts? --Cepstrum ^(talk) 16:01, October 25, 2010 (UTC)

That's the only canon evidence we have of this degree. So, that date tells us that we know it existed until at least then. We don't know any further than that. Any time we have "hard dates", we use them. -- sulfur 17:15, October 25, 2010 (UTC)

Sulfur:

I see your point, understand, and agree with the policy of using any/all canon dates, especially because of their rarity. Would it be possible, however, to rework the prose such it does seem to imply PhDs were a phenomenon unique to the 23rd century?

I'm thinking of something such as

The....PhD....was an advanced (usually terminal) academic degree awarded by universities and research insitutions [possibly mention Daystrom Institute?].

And (mostly) preserve the original:

Elizebeth Dehner was awarded a PhD sometime prior to 2265, indicating such degrees were awarded at least as late as the 23rd century [or just plain "awarded in the 23rd century."]

That way we don't have a phrase that suggests the PhD was unique to the 23rd century while at the same time preserving all the hard, canon dates. The phrase

....was an advanced academic degree awarded in the 23rd century.

really bothers me. There are more examples of 20th century characters (such as professor Jeff) and 24th century characters (such as the "renowned" professor Galen) who almost assuredly had PhDs.

I'm not saying we should add an in-universe, "canon" cite to such folks as PhDs, for you're right: there was no explicit mention of them having PhDs. But it's very reasonable to assume they did (which is why it's in the background section).

I understand that we can't (unfortunately) incorporate "real-world" facts too much into articles – we must rely on canon facts supplied to us from Trek (even when they contradict real facts!). :)

So, would you agree to allow me to make the changes above, keeping the canon dates but making it slightly more ambiguous about whether the PhD degree was a 23rd-century only thing?

Best regards, --Cepstrum ^(talk) 14:19, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

Removed a few things[]

Started by wanting to remove an off topic sentence, ended up gutting the article. For reference, here's the most notable removed stuff:

(or occasionally "DPhil")
- this term was never used in canon.
...awarded by universities and scientific institutions, including the Romulan Astrophysical Academy and the Daystrom Institute of Technology.
- as noted on this very page, this sentence is based solely on the assumption that two people who were refered to as doctors therefore must have a phd, and furthermore that this phd was awarded by the one institution we are told they were associated with. One of these is a Romulan who given the time frame probably hasn't had contact with Human culture once in his life. We shoudn't make assumptions, that's why these people are listed on doctor, but not here.
The Daystrom Institute itself was named for Dr. Richard Daystrom, the inventor of duotronics and multitronics. (TOS: "The Ultimate Computer"; TNG: "The Measure Of A Man")
- utterly irrelevant.
(from the see also:) Research stations - Research and scientific educational institutions - Research administrations
- not the worst see also offenders on the wiki, but I fail to see how these are particularly relevant to this specific subject (as opposed to science and scientists in general)

Ironically, after all that, I've also added a new bg note, which might be uncomfortably close to a nit. -- Capricorn 18:34, August 10, 2011 (UTC)