Timeout, Time Lords: ICANN says there is only one kind of doctor Domain-name overseer ICANN has decided that only one kind of doctor may be allowed online – and that is a medical doctor. In a decision made late last month but challenged on Friday by one of the companies vying for the rights to run the internet registry .doctor, ICANN will insist that all dot-doctor domains be verified as …
But what about legitimate supervillians (many of whom hold advanced degrees) ?
The super-villain problem is easily solved. They don't want the .doctor name anyway, since Dr is usually the first part of their name. What they need is the new gTLD .evil...
There admittedly might be a touch of confusion between the two domains: DrNo.evil and DoNo.evil (as owned by Google), but I'm sure it would all come out in the wash...
The next question is a domain for superheroes. I was thinking .man. Hence you'd have super.man, ice.man, spider.man, bat.man. And robin too...
Also mannersmaketh.man and the less pleasant superhero herpes.man.
The problems with this "cash for names" orgy, is that the public gets the impression it actually provides some sort of "expectation of competence".
Clinicians (those that see patients) are of a very wide disposition and competence (as with all disciplines).
I would bet that the ones that can afford .doctor will be the ones with the highest income...
Oh and here in the US, will that include the chiropractors being "upgraded"?
Sufficiently frightening group I would not want anywhere near "real" medicine...
P.
Clinicians (those that see patients) are of a very wide disposition and competence (as with all disciplines).
And they're rarely researchers (since most people don't have time for both serious research and significant clinical practice). Since the word "doctor" etymologically and traditionally means "scholar", many clinicians - fine body-mechanics though they may be - have less claim to it than the holders of Ph.D.'s do.
After all, that's why we have organizations like Cochrane that coordinate panels of reviewers who sift through reams of medical research to distill out recommendations for evidence-based medical practice. Clinicians typically don't even have time to follow more than a tiny portion of research, unless they operate in a very narrow specialty.
Medical "doctors" only have that title because a bunch of sawbones in the UK wanted to dress up their rather disreputable profession, back in the days before antisepsis and anesthesia and the germ theory of disease.
The domain will almost certainly become debased, as charlatans of every ilk sneak past the implementation. As soon as the chiropractors weasel past (and they will) the domain will become a cesspit, as all the other pile in. It would be better to leave it totally open from the outset, and even encourage the crystal twirlers and purveyors of quack cancer cures to infest the domain. This would achieve the desired effect much better. Anyone registered with a .doctor URL would be thus instantly known as a fraud.
Those with the need to be seen as a "doctor" are exactly those that are not.
(I have a PhD - thus I have a doctorate, can be addressed as "doctor", but I am emphatically not a Doctor.)
Chiropractors don't have an M.D, they are "D.C." Limiting it to those who hold an M.D. should be pretty simple, the only hole for the charlatans to sneak past will be offshore diploma mills that will grant you an M.D. without courses that are worthy of the title (or even for payment of a fee and no coursework at all)
If the domain was limited to a single country you'd deal with that the same way you deal with someone practicing medicine without a license. But just because the US and UK may have high standards for an M.D., doesn't mean all countries in the world will, so guys like 30 Rock's Dr. Spaceman will be able to get spaceman.doctor I guess!
My wife is a medical doctor with ten years of medical training and three degrees, including a first-class honors BSc in genetics she achieved in just 12 months. But she has no MD... because she's in the UK which does not award MDs except to people who have finished a doctorate in medicine: i.e. an extra 3 years on top of what you need to become a mere "doctor". In the UK MDs are the kind of people that hold professorial chairs in medicine - maybe 1% of the medical doctors?
So straight away using MD as a criterion falls away. Which rather destroys any distinctive criteria at all?
"Chiropractors don't have an M.D, they are "D.C."
Maybe where you live (the US?), but perhaps not true everywhere. If they apply the rule has "having an MD awarded anywhere in the world", it will be just a matter of time (if not the case already) that you can buy a "MD certificate" on-line from a dodgy jurisdiction.
The quacks might even justify this to themselves as a noble work around of rules set up by the evil Big Pharma establishment to keep them out.
In which case you limit it to people with an M.D. from an accredited school. At that point it's pretty much following the same rules everything else will
edit: Although admittedly this runs afoul of the issue someone else raised, that not all doctors (including medical ones) have an M.D.
Well they're going to come across the same problem with dot.bank.
As I understand it, one of the potential registrars is going to set up some sort of system where you have to be registered as a bank with a national regulartory authority. And I guess a similar system can be built up for dot.doctor.
However, once you do that, you're basically no longer dealing with a global system. So in this particular case, it might then be better off to go through the national TLDs. A dot.doctor.uk would make a lot more sense - as it can then be managed within the country's laws, and governments could even make it an offence to register a domain on there without the appropriate qualifications. Instead of, or as well as, administering the local register, by whatever local rules apply.
At least most of the useless gTLD aren't actively going to do any harm. Bank, Doctor etc., could end up going horribly wrong.
I'm just off to pay my $10 to register icann.sucks, or failing that my $150,000 to be registrar of .fuckingupthenamespace...
This really makes no sense. At least in the UK most medical doctors don't actually hold a doctorate and so anyone with a PhD is more entitled to call themselves doctor (as I, with a PhD, constantly remind my wife who is a medical doctor but only has a Bachelor of Surgery and Medicine). Also most surgeons drop the Dr title and use Mr and Mrs etc.
I'd say that if ICANN want to enforce a rule then it should be that if societal norms give you the right to use the title doctor then you should be able to register a .doctor domain.
In the UK anyone with a PhD is not a real doctor, and only wishes to be called a doctor out of envy. Or (traditionally) so that they can feel justified squeezing into parking spaces that say "Doctors only".
If they actually thought the PhD meant anything, they would be calling themself "John Smith, PhD", instead of trying to pretend that the traditional English qualifier for a medical doctor applied.
@david 12 - you might want to look into the history of the term "Doctor", as it is from the Latin "to teach", in relation to teaching in a university. It had no relation to medicine at all.
The use of "Doctor" for medical professionals is closer to a colloquialism than any other definition, as medical doctors already have possible titles available, per their profession: Physician and Surgeon.
>The use of "Doctor" for medical professionals is closer to a colloquialism than any other definition,
Accepting your colloguial use of "colloquialism", and your point is? You think medical doctors aren't "real" doctors because of a semantic point?
I take the opposite point of view. Medical Doctors are Real Doctors because they are real doctors. PhDs aren't real doctors because all they have is title pinched from the historical past when the language of instruction wasn't even English.
You are trying to create a distinction as to what a "real doctor" is. I am trying to point out that your grounds for doing so are flawed - the term Doctor pre-dates its use in the medical profession.
If you wish to diminish the use of the term Doctor for PhDs, then you should more rightly do so for its use in the medical profession, based on its historic use. Before medical doctors were referred to as doctors, they were referred to as physicians. It is MD's who have appropriated the term.
However, both ways of using the term are used consistently world wide. A doctor can be an MD or a PhD. So, the idea that one or the other is a "real" doctor is nonsensical to say the least.
Also, my use of colloquialism wasn't itself colloquial. You seem to be struggling with the English language a bit.
"In the UK anyone with a PhD is not a real doctor, and only wishes to be called a doctor out of envy. Or (traditionally) so that they can feel justified squeezing into parking spaces that say "Doctors only"."
Let's see: I spent four years getting an undergraduate degree, and four years doing advanced research. Technically I have a DPhil rather than a PhD but it's the same thing.
I'm guessing from this bollocks that you aren't a worthwhile person and only wish to pretend to be a worthwhile person out of envy.
In an English hospital a highly skilled medical Consultant is a "Mr" - not a "Dr". So by ICANN's reckoning .consultant should also be restricted.
IIRC the term "architect" is theoretically reserved for members of the appropriate design qualification for physical structures. Some countries also protect "engineer" to a certain professional qualification.
Yeah it's here if you want to see it again. Off topic, but a good theme for El Reg is their radio skit on Identity Theft
Who made ICANN the definer of the English Language?
So what about UK surgeons who call themselves Mr?
It is like in the UK where an Asian is someone from India or Pakistan, or the USA where an Asian is someone from China.
It's a kind of imperialism and overarching sense of entitlement.
In Canada and the USA, dentists, surgeons, chiropractors, veterinarians are common and generally call themselves doctors in the medical environment. (Homeopaths and naturopaths are rare.)
And Phds in other fields call themselves Dr in academic environments.
ICANN has decided foreign locums should have the same status as locally licensed physicians and surgeons.
So ICANN has decided to give the impression that any medical school graduate is qualified to practice medicine anywhere in the world?
US doctors are not going to be happy that "poorly trained" people from third world countries can present themselves as fully qualified US doctors.
http://www.findaprofessionaldoctorate.com/advice/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctorate#Professional_doctorate
http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20130704133923315
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctorate#History
History
The term "doctorate" derives from the Latin docere meaning "to teach". The doctorate (Latin: doctor, "teacher," from doctum, "[that which is] taught," past participle of (docere), "to teach") appeared in medieval Europe as a license to teach Latin: (licentia docendi) at a medieval university.[1] Its roots can be traced to the early church when the term "doctor" referred to the Apostles, church fathers, and other Christian authorities who taught and interpreted the Bible.[1]
The right to grant a (licentia docendi) was originally reserved to the Catholic church, which required the applicant to pass a test, to take an oath of allegiance and pay a fee. The Third Council of the Lateran of 1179 guaranteed the access—at that time largely free of charge—of all able applicants. Applicants were tested for aptitude.[2] This right remained a bone of contention between the church authorities and universities that were slowly distancing themselves from the Church. The right was granted by the pope to the University of Paris in 1213 where it became a universal license to teach (licentia ubiquie docendi).[2] However, while the licentia continued to hold a higher prestige than the bachelor's degree (Baccalaureus), it was ultimately reduced to an intermediate step to the Magister and doctorate, both of which now became the exclusive teaching qualification.[2]
University doctoral training was a form of apprenticeship to a guild. The traditional term of study before new teachers were admitted to the guild of "Masters of Arts" was seven years, matching the apprenticeship term for other occupations. Originally the terms "master" and "doctor" were synonymous, but over time the doctorate came to be regarded as a higher qualification than the master's degree. Makdisi's revised hypothesis that the doctorate originated in the Islamic (Ijazah), a reversal of his earlier view that saw both systems as of "the most fundamental difference",[3] was rejected by Huff as unsubstantiated.[4]
well.....historically a british doctor was awarded a double degree as a first degree......MB.ChB (or MB.ChiB)
I can't remember the exact latin it represents......but we (then) schoolkids took it to mean "Master of Butchery, Choppery and Blood"
The double degree was due to the surgeons trade stemming from two sources: the medieval monastic learned tradition, and the on-the-job training tradition of the surgeon-barber. Two different skill sets, so two different degrees, awarded together.
I play complex old-school war games for fun and insist on strict adherence to the rules as written. This prompts younger, ADD-riddled gamers with sub-par reading skills to label me a "rules-lawyer", something I turn back on them by wearing the badge proudly.
Where do I get my dot-lawyer domain?
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