5 Ways to Spot a Fake Ph.D.

I was sharing the Toastmaster’s International regional podium with an excellent and enthusiastic speaker.

He was funny, his stories were sharp, and the audience loved him.

So when one of my clients asked me if I knew of a speaker they could hire for an annual sales meeting in Palm Springs, I mentioned this guy. But when I did, I felt a bit uneasy about recommending him, so I decided to do some due diligence by researching his credentials.

What really caught my attention was the fact that he called himself “Doctor”. In itself, this is not a big deal, as my business name is Dr. Gary S. Goodman, so who am I to disagree with this?

If you have a Ph.D. or MD or other “doctoral” credentials, you’ve earned the right to use them, especially in professional settings. Dr. Robert Schuller, for example, got his degree in ministerial studies, so he has a right to use it, and of course he does.

But I felt like the speaker I was recommending was not the real deal. So, I called him up and asked him where and when and in what area he got his Ph.D., and he mentioned a place he had never heard of before.

I contacted the research librarian at USC, where I got my Ph.D. from the Annenberg School for Communication, and asked him to look into this obscure school. After a few hours, he called back and said flatly, “It’s a grade mill!”

In effect, you buy your degree for so many thousands of dollars, possibly attend a class for a few days here and there, and then write a thesis or dissertation that is sealed and filed, or conveniently misfiled, as the case may be. .

So this speaker was fake, at least from an educational point of view. But what were the clues that made me suspect this? There were at least five:

(1) He rarely quoted respected authorities in his “field.” If you’ve studied through a rigorous academic program, you’re steeped in tradition and “standing on the shoulders” of others who came before you. I refer, for example, to Peter F. Drucker on many occasions in speeches and in print because I studied directly with the management guru for two and a half years, coming away with an MBA for my efforts. In addition, I was his informal driver on Saturdays when I took him from class to his house, a mile from the campus of Claremont University, which he named his business school in his honor.

(2) When he mentioned the research, he was careless and overgeneralized the scope of his findings. He gives a fake Ph.D. a hammer and he’ll treat anything he sees like a nail. Trained minds don’t do this.

(3) His grammar and syntax were far from perfect. Clear expression is one of the marks of a scholar, and someone who makes obvious grammatical errors, which the trained academic ear will detect, will be corrected, or will never achieve doctoral status.

(4) His biography should have shown about three years spent in a Ph.D. program, but did not say where and how long he studied. Most doctors are proud of the institutions that spawned them. Remember, I had to ask her where she went.

(5) If someone’s ideas seem totally unoriginal, reflecting mere borrowing from others, this person has probably never been asked to think deeply for himself and create new insights and techniques. The mark of a true Ph.D. is originality in thought. He is someone who was forced under intense academic scrutiny to come up with something new, fresh, and significant, and then to defend the importance of that contribution.

So what did I do?

I contacted my client, who had reviewed the speaker’s audio demo and wanted to hire him. I said, “This guy is a good presenter, but he’s not what most people would consider a genuine Ph.D. Does this bother you?”

“No, I agree with that,” replied the sales manager.

The meeting went smoothly, the speaker was a success, and everyone was happy.

I suggested to this guy that he remove his doctoral references, which would one day probably embarrass him and his career didn’t require them.

Shortly after that, he stopped using “Doctor”.

And then he went on to become a best-selling author and celebrity, proving that he really didn’t need this extra credential.