AIBU - use of ‘Dr’ title - is this normal?!

[Cheesecake45]

Just not sure if I need to get with the times or not - is it normal to go by the title ‘Dr’ simply for having a PhD, if you aren’t in the medical profession? I’m talking one of the easiest PhDs to get (comparatively speaking), nothing vaguely linked to medicine.

AIBU??
YES = this is totally normal get over yourself
NO = wouldn’t be caught dead calling myself a doctor unless I could be assistance in a medical emergency!

I know several people with PHD's a few of them do use Dr. The really confusing ones are the ones who are nurses. I would t use it in that case.

I started a PhD, got 18 months into it, then sadly had to abandon it due to serious illness. I had no intention of using 'Dr' outside of work.

In Germany people refer to themselves by all of their titles- as children we were impressed by Prof Dr. Dr Clever and his wife Dr.Dr. Clever who were our landlords.

What an ignorant bunch there is on here tonight.

Literally.

I’m not sure you can very well refuse to call someone by their preferred title. These days you can’t even argue with chosen pronouns so you sure as hell can’t refuse them a title conferred by a university.

It’s a an accredited university that gets to decide if someone is entitled to the title … not pensione.

Why can you not, as an educated person, give a rational opinion why your achievement warrants a change in your public title and other achievements do not. And why that change in title is so important to some that they use it when outside their professional context.
Nobody has said you have not met the criteria to do it or entitled to do it. That's not the question.

I’m sure it’s already been said on the thread but a person with a PhD is entitled to be called a doctor - people with a medical degree are only allowed to use the title out of courtesy.

Doctors are people who practice medicine! No 2 ways about it and the only time someone called me a Dr was corrected and told not to do it again .

If someone look at me, an ethnic minority woman, (usually men) will try to assume that I’m stupid or can’t even speak English. But I hold a PhD in a men dominated engineering area. You bet I would use my doctorate title even in a bicycle shop!

They’re not really doctors though. No one thinks of PHD holders as doctors.

Well this makes you sound a bit silly 😆 Of course anyone with a PhD can use the title Dr. There are other professions out there that require a PhD other than medical ones. All those with a doctorate in my husband's line of work use the title as it's a prerequisite of having the job.

If I meet someone that uses Dr I don't assume they work in a medical field. Aside from those that are medics, I have three friends who use the title which work in fields unrelated to medicine.

What a bizarre thread!

Yep !! This 100%

They are "really doctors" though, and anyone who thinks they aren't is just showing how unintelligent they are.

What a bizarre thread filled with petty jealousy and reeking of "we're sick of experts" mentality.

Threads like this really show how chippy people feel about education and class.

Dr is simply a title that refers to two things. They are different things. That is fine.

A bank can mean the side of a river or it can mean a place where people keep their money. Two things. Same word. All fine.

If you work in healthcare, the fact that you have a medical degree is important and it defines your title. Most people use this in everyday life too, as it is - well, it’s their title. It’s arguably more central to all aspects of their life than whether they’re married or not, which if you think about it is a pretty ridiculous criterion for what title you should have.

If you work in academia, the fact that you have a PhD is important and it defines your title. Most people use this in everyday life too, as it is - well, it’s their title. It’s arguably more central to all aspects of their life than whether they’re married or not, which if you think about it is a pretty ridiculous criterion for what title you should have.

If you have an issue with either medical doctors or academics using their career titles as their ‘life admin’ titles, but you don’t even question when some random uses ‘Mrs’ rather than Ms and ask yourself ‘why do you think we care about whether you’re married or not?’ - isn’t that a bit odd?

My point is, still not answered, is why should this achievement result in an entitlement to change your title so everyone knows you have achieved a PhD

This point has literally been answered numerous times. If you have a problem with it (which you obviously do) then take it up with the people who award the qualifications rather than those who have achieved them and are simply doing what they are entitled to.

And why is a thread full of PhD achievement posters so lacking in reasoned and rational debate.

What is there to debate? Obtaining a PhD gives you the right to use the title Dr.
It's really as simple as that.

Agree with @DangerDangerHighMoisture - especially re ClareBlue's comments.
Why does anyone have to explain why they choose to use their title or defend it because 'other achievements' don't get to do so?

😂 this is so irrelevant! Surgeons don’t use the title so that’s why you don’t use it.

This is the first thing I thought of 🤣

My friend uses Dr (PhD) as she says companies take her more seriously than if she just uses Mrs. (And I use Mrs as I've been married and prefer it to Miss or Ms.)

It’s just not the social norm.

Hi OP

Two years ago we got a wedding invite. FYI I'm of asain background and its tradition to send wedding cards and mention family/individuals names.
On the wedding card they has a Dr ?????. I thought, we all thought, we never knew he was a doctor as I and most people see a doc as a medical doctor.

We all lol - even other people at the weeding party mentioned it a serious lol. The guy had a PhD is some type of engineering I thing and worked in construction

What's an "online PhD"? To pass a PhD exam (in the UK at least) you have to write a thesis that meets the requirements set by your institution, and have a viva voce exam, which means two other scholars in the same field with expertise agree that it meets those requirements (which are usually that it's original, substantial, shows high level knowledge of and contributes to your PhD). So you can be supervised and even examined online (I've examined students via videocall), but that's no detraction from the qualification.

I use "Dr" when people/companies ask me for my title because that's my title. It's not pretentious, it's just correct. It's also quite useful because it solves the whole "am I Mrs or not" question because I don't have my husband's surname. If someone calls me "Ms" or "Mrs," I don't correct them unless its a student emailing me, because one day they'll do that to someone who'll be genuinely pissed off.

What examples do you have.
All I've got from a thread full of highly educated people is they have earned the right to use Dr because of their hard work.
It's a perfectly reasonable question to ask an educated cohort why they think their achievement warrants a change in public title when other achievements don't.
And why they use the title outside the context of their professional activities. To which the answer seems to be because I worked hard to achieve it and am entitled to.

Completely agree.

Nobody kicks up this much fuss when a woman changes her name and uses the title Mrs when they get married.

said comparatively easy, no PhD is easy and I didn’t mean to offend, but obviously there’s a difference between a PhD from Cambridge in astrophysics and an online PhD in another subject. Since a PhD is a research degree, its difficulty will depend on the actual topic, not the broad subject topic ("Astrophysics") and arguably on the supervisor - and it is not true to say all Oxbridge academic staff are better than all staff from other universities. So the difference is possibly ot as obvious as you think.

There's arguably a difference between "applied" PhDs, where established techniques are used on a new problem, and theoretical PhDs which present new techniques or theorems.