How the fuck do we still have quacks that are allowed to be called Dr. in this day and age?
Well the answer to that is rather multifaceted, but a few significant patterns seem to emerge:
- Ambiguous use of “Doctor” as an academic title in general and “Doctor” for the title “Medicinae Doctor” specifically. This just confuses a lot of people.
- “Paper mill” universities, selling “degrees” for money basically.
- Adjacent to that, recognition of foreign degrees. It is worth noting here that this is largely a legitimate process which is just occasionally abused, specifically by paper mills.
- Semi-adjacent to that, variance in title laws by jurisdiction. What education is allowing whom to bear which protected title under which circumstances is very different from country to country.
- Regulatory capture, aka “I will create my own degree, with Blackjack and Hookers”. Several branches of medicine considered by many to be pseudo-scientific have managed to get themselves actual academic degrees recognised in several jurisdictions. For example the “Doctor of Chiropractic”, or D.C. for short, is a recognised and protected academic title in many countries.
Is there a solution to all this? Not really. I guess educating the general public on the significance of academic titles could help, better global alignment in title laws as well. Preventing pseudo-sciences, or whatever someone considers as such, from establishing their own branches of science and academic titles seem highly dangerous though. Just think what this would imply for gender studies in the current political climate for example. Pseudo-science is just the price science has to pay for freedom of research, and when it bore theology being a branch since its inception than it will survive the D.C. as well.
To those who missed the small disclaimer in the post, 1.0 is not properly released yet. RC4 is out, actual 1.0 release should be “sometime [this] week” (barring new bugs and regressions). See: https://blog.freecad.org/2024/11/14/freecad-1-0-release-candidate-4-is-out/
Edit: Release is out now: https://blog.freecad.org/2024/11/19/freecad-version-1-0-released/