I’ve heard and knew at least someone who failed their defense. One of the advisors to that person was in my committee, and considering my relationship with my major advisor, I was afraid I’d fail too.
I was not directly in the biological sciences (but still related), but many of my friends who were wanted to finish before that. IIRC, some universities have a rule that if X time passes between your starting the PhD and present time, you’d have to repeat some of the courses. The target for most PhDs in my area and from my friends was between 4-5 years. I knew a friend who took 7 years, she started 2 years before I did and finished the same time I did (5 years after I started).
But it all comes down to how well your experiments work, how much support you have, and how difficult is your thesis. A “hard” proposal with well funded support and experiments that create no major issues can be done faster than a simpler proposal that keeps having problems with experiments (optimizing, redoing, working, analyzing, etc.), or that is not well funded and supported (no technical staff to help, no reagents to do certain parts, etc.).
The last data that I can find dates back to 2003. And in the life sciences, the total time to degree was 8.3 years, with the registered time to degree at 6.9 years. I guess some people take time off during that period? I never knew anyone whose total time to degree differed substantially from their registered time to degree, but I guess my anecdote is not data! These numbers were trending down somewhat from a peak of 9.2 years in 1995.
The thing that sucks is that individual schools don’t seem to keep data, or at least don’t share that data. My school touted a five year time to degree. Around year five, we all looked around and asked how that was possible considering not a single person had gotten their PhD yet.
Add to this the fact that the postdoc went from an optional two year thing to get additional experience into a required 8 year thing just to spin your wheels until some professor finally retires somewhere, and you’d have to be out of your goddamn mind to want to be a scientist. And I say this as someone who has gotten extremely lucky and made a very good career out of it, so it’s not from sour grapes!
(Apologies to the OP for the tangent!)
My opinion on honorifics is that, in general, they are silly. I don’t use them for myself, and frankly I roll my eyes at anyone in any profession who insists upon them for themselves in either social or professional situations. I felt it profoundly when discussing my kid’s allergies with his physician where I’m calling him “Dr”, and he’s calling me by my first name. But, the immune system is what I do and I know it a hell of a lot more intimately than he does. I don’t give a shit if anyone calls me by my first name, but I think professional courtesy would have been for him to request the same once I explained my background.
Personally, I’d prefer “First name, lastname” then say “whos specialty is XXX”
My qualifications are what they are. My doctorate means crap-all, my specialty is what matters. Requiring to have my doctorate expressly pointed out to the audience is… not my style.
I’d default to the professional title, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask. “I was planning on introducing you as ‘Dr. Firstname Lastname,’ unless you’d prefer something different?”
Of the two, I’d prefer the latter. I earned my doctorate in marine biology, but I do not consider that my current area of expertise. My current area of expertise would presumably be why you’ve invited me to speak, not the fact that I’ve simply got a doctorate.
I’m not bothered by the Dr. title in this context. I would like to think that students would address their Ph.D or Ed.D-possessing instructor with the title, so I don’t see why they wouldn’t give a visiting lecturer the same respect.
It is contextual. If I’m speaking about my area, in particular speaking to students about planning to study in my area in college, then Dr. it is. It helps make it clear that I should know what I’m talking about. If I’m talking outside my area, especially an informal one, then no title at all.
Hence, “Dr.” Laura irks me. Sure she has a PhD, but her talk show isn’t about Physiology. Dr. Phil is okay (title-wise).
At conferences you submit a bio to the session chair which covers this, so people with relatively new PhDs give it and the date and where they work. Mine was 35 years ago so I go with various professional honors and positions instead.
Anyway audiences are far more impressed that I was on Jeopardy than that I have a PhD - PhDs at conferences are a dime a dozen.
Possibly. However, one of the things we had to routinely do in grad school was to “cover” for the MDs who were coming through to do 3 months of research. Teaching them how to use the equipment was easy, but not one of them had the slightest idea how to think scientifically and we’d end up designing all of their experiments while they got paid 10x what we did. There are a lot of studies showing that MDs in general don’t understand diagnostic thinking or statistics, which is kind of disturbing.
Hey! I’m an MD who was trained as a medical scientist, did lots of independent research in the lab as an undergrad, in med school, afterwards, helped teach MDs to do research, did peer review and quality improvement on their projects, and all I can say is that I resemble that remark!!
Seriously, a lot of MDs are ignorant about science and the scientific method. I have a fair understanding of science and medical statistics. And I’d say that the majority of MDs have decent enough working knowledge of science, but not much of a majority. Modern medical practice in the US does not encourage or reward such skills, unfortunately.
I invoke it when actually relevant or when wanting/needing authority (first day of class, e-mail signature in Real Important Stuff, dealings with sexist dinosaurs), or when asked “Miss or Missus?” (withering glare, “Doctor, motherfucker.”) The department I work in has a lot of MFA faculty so I’m not snotty about it with the students unless they start “Mrs Capybaraing” me, because that sounds like high school. Actually the ones who do that can’t remember my name anyway so they just go with “MISSUS! MISSUS!” which sounds like Sunday school and then I disintegrate them with laser eyes.
On a check or something? Totally irrelevant.
Doc? I only get that one from faculty MFA’d pal who thinks it’s amusing that I’m PhD’d, so he calls me ‘doc’ or "yi-sheng’ and I call him ‘laoshi’ and it’s all good.
I have a PhD in one of the biological sciences and work at a university (non-teaching, fixed-term research job). I really don’t like to be called Dr. ____, makes me feel old.
That having been said, I tend refer to the faculty here as “Dr. ____”, as a gesture of deference, I feel uncomfortable using first names of professional superiors unless I’m very familiar with them. I refer to my own boss by his first name, now, but I started by calling him “Dr.” when I first arrived.
PhD here. I never use the term doctor. If I want to assert personal authority, I say Prof. Seldon. If I want to pull out all the stops, I will sign something (say a recommendation) XYZ professor emeritus of pure mathematics. I would certainly never use it on a check. I try to discourage the office staff from addressing me as Prof. Seldon, but it never works.
I was once a member of a school board as a parent representative (voice, but no vote). I represented elementary school parents and there was a rep for HS parents. He insisted on being addresses as Dr. X, while I chose Mr. I once asked him why. "Well, I worked damned hard on my PhD and I want it recognized. I didn’t tell him that I spent my grad student days mostly playing bridge and go.
Shortly after my degree my mother introduced me to someone as Dr. Seldon and I got angry at her after. She couldn’t understand why. But if I called myself doctor, I would expect someone might ask me to fix his hangnail.
Possibly, OTOH, some pure science PhD do lack some of the other practical aspects of medicine (or well, applications to their research). Also, MDs may know more of science in general than some PhDs, which have a more defined knowledge about a particular topic, but may not know as much about other areas of science.
But in terms of “skills”, they are different sets, and reducing an MD to plumber would also mean reducing much of the PhD to, at least in my case “chef” or “gardener” (developing new protocols that look like recipes and caring and keeping cell lines). There is still thinking (well supposed to be), but the skill sets are different and reducing to technical parts is too simplistic.
