SO YOU SAY YOU’RE A DOCTOR?

How can you verify someone’s credentials when they claim they are a Ph.D.? One way of doing this is to make a personal visit to the University library of the school that granted the degree. Another way, which is much easier to try, is to attempt to verify the existence of the individuals doctoral dissertation on-line. The web site, Dissertation Abstracts, is a free and easy to use service. www.UMI.com. When you open to their home page, look at the right hand side and choose “Dissertation Express”. Then select “Individual Searcher”.Scroll through, read the agreement pages and follow the instructions. You will only need to pay a $30 fee if you wish to actually purchase a copy of the dissertation. You select the category to “Pay By Credit Card”; DON’T WORRY – you won’t actually have to pay anything to conduct the search, only if you eventually want to purchase the actual paper. By typing in the subjects last name and first initial you will be able to scroll through the choices. You will be given the persons full name, school for which it was written, and the year it was published. The database dates back to the 1860’s, so it should be there. However, like anything else on-line, it is not a fail safe method; not being listed does not necessarily mean that person is not a Ph.D. Listing is not mandatory. The only true fail safe method is to actually visit the school library to hand search their records.