Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Our family is beyond proud of her!

She is the first doctor in our family so I will brag about it!

I did heed your advice and will NOT say she’s a scientist.

Social scientist maybe or educational researcher

Oh dear. Here we go again. She is also not a doctor
Please try not to appear so desperate

Fascinating thread - I am Clinical Psych PhD

I have conducted RCTs to treat addiction and held several positions with ‘scientist’ in the title.

But I am thankful that DCUM has clarified that I am not a scientist.....y’all are hilarious

Anonymous wrote:Um, she’s not a scientist. Researchers aren’t all scientists. She’s badass, sure—just not a scientist.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Our family is beyond proud of her!

She is the first doctor in our family so I will brag about it!

I did heed your advice and will NOT say she’s a scientist.

Social scientist maybe or educational researcher

Oh dear. Here we go again. She is also not a doctor
Please try not to appear so desperate

She IS a doctor. Her title earned is Dr. /will sign her name :
Dr. Jane Smith, PhD

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a PhD in computer science.

Education as a discipline is not science. And a PhD doesn’t change that.

You can say she’s a researcher, but then you might still get those reactions because most people would naturally assume science.

I’d probably say that she works in education. Or at best you could say she’s a social scientist.

+1. This.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a PhD in a social science (economics). I would never call myself a scientist. I think it is pretty clear what people mean by the term scientist. Computer science might be as far as I would go.

First, OP should call her sister a social scientist. Her achievement is commendable and respectable, but mislabeling doesn't help her receive that respect. Modern colloquial use of "science" and "scientist" without an adjective is synonymous with "hard science" or "hard scientist". The common understanding is this includes subjects like Physics, Biology, Chemistry, etc. These are typically subjects in which the rules/laws of the subject are bound and constrained. Researchers here discover the way the natural laws of these subjects behave and govern the topic.

The social sciences are no less respectable, but it is important to classify so that people understand where her achievements lie. No one would call an economist, a statistician, a psychologist, a linguist, or many other graduates in the social sciences, a scientist, so neither would you call a specialist in education. However, calling her a social scientist then categorizes her into the realm of subjects where people create paradigms or ways to process information differently. There are no hard laws in the social sciences. The subject matter is more nebulous and subject to change, but it is still important to study and create rules to analyze and achieve. The closest that a social science comes to a hard science is in science fiction. In Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, in the future, a man named Hari Seldon, uses macro social sciences to create psychohistory and uses a combination of history, statistics, and sociology to predict the behavior or large masses of people, basically quantifying human behavior of large groups. He uses it to predict key historic events with an unbelievable accuracy until the development of an anomaly that did not fit the large scale social models.

As for the PP above, I personally would not categorize Computer Science as a science. Computer science is a lot closer to an Engineering subject than a Science subject. There are a few at the forefront of computer science who are doing research into developing new technology, but the vast majority of computer science is applied science which is usually categorized as Engineering rather than Science. And I say this as a person with a Computer Engineering degree (earned before my college had a Computer Science department/degree).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you made this up OP. A doctorate in education is not a PhD. It's an ED.D

I've heard lots of stupid people refer to Ed.D and PsychD and all the other bullshit doctorates as PhDs. Makes me cringe

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you made this up OP. A doctorate in education is not a PhD. It's an ED.D

I've heard lots of stupid people refer to Ed.D and PsychD and all the other bullshit doctorates as PhDs. Makes me cringe

Anonymous wrote:I think you made this up OP. A doctorate in education is not a PhD. It's an ED.D

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Our family is beyond proud of her!

She is the first doctor in our family so I will brag about it!

I did heed your advice and will NOT say she’s a scientist.

Social scientist maybe or educational researcher

Oh dear. Here we go again. She is also not a doctor
Please try not to appear so desperate

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Our family is beyond proud of her!

She is the first doctor in our family so I will brag about it!

I did heed your advice and will NOT say she’s a scientist.

Social scientist maybe or educational researcher

Oh dear. Here we go again. She is also not a doctor
Please try not to appear so desperate

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Our family is beyond proud of her!

She is the first doctor in our family so I will brag about it!

I did heed your advice and will NOT say she’s a scientist.

Social scientist maybe or educational researcher

Anonymous wrote:I think you made this up OP. A doctorate in education is not a PhD. It's an ED.D

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How often is this really going to come up in conversation? Do you really need to be discussing your sisters degree with strangers?

I am proud of her so yes.

This is where you are making a mistake.
Also agree with pp, this feels odd, immature and insecure. I have four sisters with various advanced degrees and can’t imagine a conversation like the one OP describes.