I am a little surprised that our politicians do not initiate a special protective legislation: maybe it should be forbidden to publish a dissertational thesis written by a civil office holder.
🙂 Or maybe they should at least be pixilated on publication.
I can think of quite a few reasons in favour of this procedure:
Data Protection
(in order not to motivate the political competition to use your own knowledge for their political goals) and
Privacy Protection
(of the politician who in such a dissertational thesis certainly gives access to a lot of intimate details, which will allow the reader to draw conclusions about his personality).
Moreover, the “elaborated code” mostly used in dissertational theses in the political and social sciences might well be misunderstood by the simple citizen who is more used to the “restricted code” as seen in “Bildzeitung”. This might easily cause said citizen to vote in the wrong way and thus the voter’s wishes will be totally jumbled up.
What is worse: the former trust of the citizens in their political leadership might die if, for example, a dissertational thesis in physics or economical science written by an important administration official contains nothing new or perhaps even something downright wrong.
But my opinion is still a little more complex:
The problem is not just a problem of politics!
Politics is only the sector where we notice it best. In my opinion, we have a general inflation of dissertational theses. I would really like to know the numbers.
It is particularly awful with those dissertational theses written late in life. There is a true inflation of those. And I can only guess at how much influence obligingness or commercial interests have in each individual case.
Incidentally, my book shelve also contains quite a few dissertational theses written by persons who discovered their talent late the scientific value of which I really cannot make out at all. All I can see is masses of words on many pages, randomly put together, inflated and totally dispensable. Most of them were written in the fields of sociology, political or economical sciences and the humanities. But I also have a dissertational thesis in psychology on my computer which I consider totally ridiculous. All it might do is satisfy a tendency towards sexual-sadistic voyeurism.
But nobody is interested in those “works”, because the authors are persons “of no consequence” who do not stand in the public limelight. If you look at it like this, the problem is not at all one of politicians. Instead, it is a problem of the universities and the way how doctorial titles are often generated today. The politicians are more like the stupid victims, because they get caught while others are allowed to keep their doctorial titles.
If you generate doctorial titles like this, you cannot avoid copying material in order to come up with the final conglomerate of textual elements. As often as not, one reason is also that the doctors in spe are in the middle of their professional careers and also have many other interests. So where should they find the time to write their own dissertational thesis (except if they delegate the work)? Copying things is the natural “self defence” and thus becomes a peccadillo.
Well, here is the situation: you want the title, you also have comrades in arms at university who are prepared to assist, but you have no time (and mostly also no qualification).
Obviously, the entire procedure is not something that greatly improves the general esteem of the doctorial title. How often have I heard the question: How much did he pay (or donate) in order to get his doctorial title?
Maybe we will soon have “Australian” circumstances. When I entered Australia with my friend (who is a highly-qualified scientist), he was told by the immigration officer – who had his sleeves up but was extremely friendly – that the doctorial title written in his passport was worth nothing. In modern Australia, so the officer, they abolished this deplorable custom a long time ago.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
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