“You’re not a ‘medical’ doctor, sir?” asked Morse [of the suspect].
“No. I just wrote a Ph.D. thesis –you know how these things are.”
“On?”
“Promise not to laugh?”
“Try me.”
“‘The comparative body-weight of the great tit within the variable habitats of its North European distribution.'”
Morse didn’t laugh.
“Original research, was that?”
“No other kind, as far as I know.”
“And you were examined in this?”
“You don’t get a doctorate otherwise.”
“But the person who examined you — well, he couldn’t know as much as you, could he? By definition, surely?”
“She, actually. It’s the — well, they say it is — the way you go about it — your research.”
Colin Dexter, The Way Through the Woods: An Inspector Morse Mystery, 1992, pp. 173 – 174
Out of Babel 
Been hitting the Christmas cheer a little heavy have you?
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*smiles*
There has been a big hoo-ha in the media recently over whether a Ph.D. can call themselves Doctor if they are not an MD.
As someone who once spent time in academic circles, I think this is normal.
Others disagree.
If you have been unaware of this controversy … Lucky you!
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When Swiss theologian Karl Barth received an honorary doctorate his small son asked if now he could make sick people well. Monty Ledford
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So I guess this confusion goes back a ways.
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Further on doctorates–
I at one time was adjunct professor at a theological school in Salt Lake City. Remember the wide-spread interest in The Passion of the Christ film? Our school sponsored several public lectures about the film at a venue at Westminster College in Salt Lake. I had one of the lectures, and the moderator mistakenly introduced me as “Dr. Ledford”. The easiest degree I ever attained!
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Did you correct the record?
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