On fiction: this bushel of PhDs non-sense must stop. Now.
I'll freely admit that, when writing biographical details for the characters in my Prometheus fanfic, my approach is "if it's consistent with the movie, then it works (without needing the Alternate Universe warning)". For the most part, the details I invent would easily not need mentioning in the film, and are rarely that pivotal to events, so I think I can get away with this. Besides, I'm not sure which biography is canon after all.
I sure hope though, it's not the one on the Alien vs Predator wiki. There we read that Elizabeth Shaw, a woman who doesn't look past thirty, has PhDs in paleontology, archaeology, comparative mythology and memetics. Oooh dear.
Suppose you want to write a character that's smart, creative and driven. But also, you lack the competence to tackle such a character. What to do? Well, you can give them a flock of PhDs and trust that the reader/viewer/spectator will be cowed into admiration. If somebody has a pack of PhDs, they must be a super genius, right?
Well, no. In real life, if someone has a school of PhDs, it just means they're good at getting PhDs. Which only requires a lack of scruples and an abundance of money to pay a diploma mill to print them. So keep your PhD pride in your closet, I'm not impressed.
And, really, paleontology AND archaeology? Those disciplines look like they'd require a lot of field work in order to get an honest PhD, and field work means you need to worry about expedition logistics. Begging for grants to have the money is just a small thing of the whole process. You also need to assemble a team of competent people you can rely on to be ready whenever you need them to. Then, you need to book some time to go wherever you need to. Maybe you need to smooth talk your way into a country, but even studying something in a cave or archaeological site in the country you're a citizen of is fraught with red paper. If it's scientifically interesting, you can bet it will be locked down tight so that amateurs don't destroy it. Further, once a site is under access control, do you think it will be easy to convince its guardians that it's -YOU- and -your- team who should have a go at studying something there, rather than all the other gazillion scientists, all as wide-eyed and as desperate to make a name for themselves as you are? Maybe you don't organize the expedition, and choose to work under another coordinator, but that merely shifts the problem. Now you need to find someone going on expeditions that are relevant to the topic of your PhD, and convince them to take -you- there, and share credit for whatever may be found with you. Whichever way you choose, it's not a walk in the park.
To say nothing of the fact that field work is slow. Sloow. Slooooow. One could spend weeks in an archaeological expedition, brushing dirt eight hours a day before finding one loose piece of pottery that maybe is one tiny piece of the puzzle you're solving about the ceramics in Neolithic Cucuteni culture.
So no, I'd rather Elizabeth Shaw not be the kind of tosser who uses a deck of PhDs to compensate for something, and I'm consciously ignoring that bit of her bio, if it is even canon at all. My Elizabeth Shaw has one PhD, tops, in Applied BAMFery.
To be clear, I'm not saying people cannot be competent in many fields. Yours truly has presumptions of being 'competent' in quite a few. But there's a world of difference between 'competent enough to teach X at some level of education' vs. 'competent enough to produce work that other experts in the field find useful'.
And even if one is 'competent', in the second sense, in several fields, that doesn't mean one also has the physical time and energy to complete the process of getting an honest PhD, several times. Unless one pursues an academic career for a long, long time. Well into and past middle age long.
I'm sure there are many people with a gaggle of PhDs, but the ones I heard of tended to be of the 6000 Years Young, Evolution denial variety. And if somewhere out there there's a not-yet 30-something with PhDs in paleontology and archaeology that are the product of actual research, well, that's one lucky individual. Life is allowed to be stranger than fiction, because life just is. As a writer of fiction though, one should not be lazy.
So if you want to write about smart characters, make them smart. Mentioning their litter of degrees is only staining your credibility.
Unless you're Dr. Mc.Ninja. Dr. Mc.Ninja is awesome.
I sure hope though, it's not the one on the Alien vs Predator wiki. There we read that Elizabeth Shaw, a woman who doesn't look past thirty, has PhDs in paleontology, archaeology, comparative mythology and memetics. Oooh dear.
Suppose you want to write a character that's smart, creative and driven. But also, you lack the competence to tackle such a character. What to do? Well, you can give them a flock of PhDs and trust that the reader/viewer/spectator will be cowed into admiration. If somebody has a pack of PhDs, they must be a super genius, right?
Well, no. In real life, if someone has a school of PhDs, it just means they're good at getting PhDs. Which only requires a lack of scruples and an abundance of money to pay a diploma mill to print them. So keep your PhD pride in your closet, I'm not impressed.
And, really, paleontology AND archaeology? Those disciplines look like they'd require a lot of field work in order to get an honest PhD, and field work means you need to worry about expedition logistics. Begging for grants to have the money is just a small thing of the whole process. You also need to assemble a team of competent people you can rely on to be ready whenever you need them to. Then, you need to book some time to go wherever you need to. Maybe you need to smooth talk your way into a country, but even studying something in a cave or archaeological site in the country you're a citizen of is fraught with red paper. If it's scientifically interesting, you can bet it will be locked down tight so that amateurs don't destroy it. Further, once a site is under access control, do you think it will be easy to convince its guardians that it's -YOU- and -your- team who should have a go at studying something there, rather than all the other gazillion scientists, all as wide-eyed and as desperate to make a name for themselves as you are? Maybe you don't organize the expedition, and choose to work under another coordinator, but that merely shifts the problem. Now you need to find someone going on expeditions that are relevant to the topic of your PhD, and convince them to take -you- there, and share credit for whatever may be found with you. Whichever way you choose, it's not a walk in the park.
To say nothing of the fact that field work is slow. Sloow. Slooooow. One could spend weeks in an archaeological expedition, brushing dirt eight hours a day before finding one loose piece of pottery that maybe is one tiny piece of the puzzle you're solving about the ceramics in Neolithic Cucuteni culture.
So no, I'd rather Elizabeth Shaw not be the kind of tosser who uses a deck of PhDs to compensate for something, and I'm consciously ignoring that bit of her bio, if it is even canon at all. My Elizabeth Shaw has one PhD, tops, in Applied BAMFery.
To be clear, I'm not saying people cannot be competent in many fields. Yours truly has presumptions of being 'competent' in quite a few. But there's a world of difference between 'competent enough to teach X at some level of education' vs. 'competent enough to produce work that other experts in the field find useful'.
And even if one is 'competent', in the second sense, in several fields, that doesn't mean one also has the physical time and energy to complete the process of getting an honest PhD, several times. Unless one pursues an academic career for a long, long time. Well into and past middle age long.
I'm sure there are many people with a gaggle of PhDs, but the ones I heard of tended to be of the 6000 Years Young, Evolution denial variety. And if somewhere out there there's a not-yet 30-something with PhDs in paleontology and archaeology that are the product of actual research, well, that's one lucky individual. Life is allowed to be stranger than fiction, because life just is. As a writer of fiction though, one should not be lazy.
So if you want to write about smart characters, make them smart. Mentioning their litter of degrees is only staining your credibility.
Unless you're Dr. Mc.Ninja. Dr. Mc.Ninja is awesome.
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