That makes it all the more fascinating.
I’ve seen that multiple times over the past few days as well.
After looking over amazon.com, it seems that Karen Horney also uses the ‘M.D.’ after her name on (at least some of) her books.
To differentiate herself from the porn star with same name.
So most people who dismiss Freud as a lunatic or just plain weird are actually missing out on a lot, because he wasn’t completely wrong.
They’re missing a great deal. Freud changed how we see the brain.
1). Is there a porn star named M. Scott Peck?
2). Why does it seem every person who participates in an adult film automatically becomes a ‘star’?
(M)aster of (T)heological (S)tudies
Thanks. 
I knew it was master of something.
Wombat’s missive about use of titles reminds me of a story. When I was working at a computer magazine we called for open submissions from anyone and everyone. One of our submitters was a dentist and insisted on having DDS after his name on his byline. Of course his being a dentist had nothing to do with the article. I forget how it was resolved, but almost everyone at the magazine thought the dentist to be a bit off to become so upset over this.
For Dr. Peck, it seems to me a business decision, nothing more, nothing less. He sells more books with MD. I think most publishers would put just about any text on the cover of a mass market book, as long it translates into more sales and was anywhere near the realm of truth. To call it dishonest seems rather harsh, but maybe in academic circles it is seen in very poor taste.
- Bill
Jerry, again I think you’ve missed the point. People invoke academic qualifications why? Because they carry with them a sort of guarantee of authority. My point about the convention was that, far from carrying any such guarantee, they are quite misleading.
The fact that a book fails to list the authors credentials doesn’t guarantee that peer review has taken place. All it gurantees is that the author hasn’t violated a convention designed to weed out dishonest self promoters.
I posted my last very late last night and I wondered when I woke up if in fact I had been overly harsh. Perhaps even top scientists violate the convention and I simply haven’t noticed. A quick check revealed that this simply isn’t so. Here’s a brief list, drawn from the shelves around me at home, of writers on science, history and anthropology who don’t violate the convention: Richard Feynman, Richard Dawkins, David Suzuki, Dan Dennett, Michael Dummett, Ernst Mayr, Eric Hobsbawm, Umberto Eco, Luigi Luca Cavelli-Sforza, Claude Levi-Strauss, Edward Said and countless others.
Amongst the many books by less illustrious scholars on my shelves, some of whom have shudder no qualifiactions at all, there are many very good books as well a many less good books.
Since a failure to blazon qualifications is no guarantee of peer review, I think your comments about mind police are directed towards the wrong crowd. The practice I’m complaining about is akin to the fallacy of illicit appeal to authority. Those who are content to observe the convention of letting their book speak for itself, and those who defend the convention, can hardly be accused of being mind police. I never said you have to be qualified to write books of popular scholarship and I own and read many books that aren’t. All the convention requires is that autobiographical notes about qualifications be placed in the places reserved for those notes and, on a paperback, that includes the back cover.
Just as a matter of interest, why do you think the people on my list, and countless other top ranking scholars, observe the convention, along with countless people who have no qualifiactions to flaunt?
Wombat, I think perhaps you’re making too big of a deal out of two letters beside of somebody’s name.
When I’m falsely accused of being a member of the mind police I think I have a right to defend myself.
Perhaps I’m not explaining very well why this stuff does matter but anyone who writes educational books knows that and why it does.
Excuse me for breathing the wrong way. I won’t do it again!
Careful Cran. I’d spank you with my doctorate if I’d ever bothered to take it out. 
Wombat, I’ve looked through some of the books in this household and here’s what I found …
Among the truly academic books, which in this household are mostly orthodox medical texts, the authors’ credentials are not always given on the cover, but they often are. It’s common to see M.D., Ph.D. or D.O. on the cover (again, these are the standard, most respected texts from which doctors practice medicine), but it’s just as common to see only the author’s name(s) without the credentials.
Among popular books, which would not be subject to any sort of peer review beyond the editorial processes of the publisher, it’s almost universal that the author’s M.D. or Ph.D. credentials are on the cover. If you want to attack the way publishers present their authors’ credentials, you’re welcome to do so, but I don’t think it has anything to do with the honesty or dishonesty of the author in question.
You mention the unwary punter who needs to be protected by the peer review system. If the punter is so unwary that he can’t sort out what is real from what is bogus, I can’t imagine he would be sophisticated enough to appreciate the significance of whether a piece of writing was peer reviewed or how that piece of writing fits in proportion to everything else that’s been written on the subject.
Peer review, as I understand it, is part of the process of advancing scientific and other systematic knowledge in such a way that those with expertise in the relevant field can efficiently gauge its credibility and significance. I don’t see how the peer review process relates to popular books, whether written by people with credentials or people with no credentials, other than possibly as a way to evaluate the background material from which the author may have worked.
If the author has published in peer reviewed journals, I would consider that useful information, but not decisive. I would not consider the fact that the author had published in peer reviewed journals to be more significant that the fact that an author had practiced his/her specialty in a professional setting. I have seen a terrific amount of accumulated knowledge on the part of experienced clinicians that may never find its way into the hallowed pages of peer review. To dismiss such experience as invalid is nothing less than arrogant on the part of those who lack such experience themselves (and this is something I see a lot).
On the other hand, I do think the credentials of an author are a useful way to at least give a sense of whether the writer has more than a cursory background that might provide some basis to work from. Granted, there are authors floating bogus credentials, but I don’t think the public is so unsophisticated as to be entirely taken in by them. Ultimately, the writing will stand or fall on its own merit. If people find the writing credible, they’ll take it seriously; if they don’t find it credible, they’ll dismiss it, regardless of whether there’s an M.D. or Ph.D. on the cover. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
I am rather cynical about the whole matter of “evidence based” practice and the primacy of published, peer reviewed articles for several reasons. In fact, I would say that there’s something close to a tyranny of thought control that is enforced using “evidence based” and “peer reviewed” as handcuffs.
The most misleading statement I ever hear in medical discussions (which is what I am most familiar with) is, “there’s no evidence that … (fill in the blank).”
The problem here is, if you have a modality (let’s say, for example, the effectiveness of intravenous magnesium for a variety of conditions, including spasmatic bronchial asthma, severe back pain with spasm, cardiac arrhthmia, etc.) that can’t be patented, there will NEVER be much published, peer reviewed evidence for its effectiveness because no one will ever pay for the studies. It would be a disaster for the drug companies to discover that something cheap and simple like magnesium or hydrocortisone or thyroid hormone or, God forbid, natural progesterone, could provide as effective or more effective results than the patented drugs costing patients hundreds of times as much and bringing in billions and billions of dollars for the companies.
Nonetheless, it’s EXTREMELY common for those who consider themselves to be authorities to dismiss modalities with which they have no experience by saying “there’s no evidence.” And of course, for them to make such a statement presumes that they are familiar with every study that’s ever been published, which is a practical impossibility.
Furthermore, there are so many peer reviewed studies, it’s simple to mislead our unwary punter by selectively presenting those articles that appear to support our point of view and pretending that no articles to the contrary exist. Again, the peer reviewed material is most useful for those who have sufficient depth and are in a position to put any one piece of peer reviewed work in the context of the entire body of relevant peer reviewed material. Such a person is not our unwary punter.
There’s also the matter of fashion. There are countless examples of directions of inquiry that have never been systematically investigated simply because they’re unfashionable. Two examples I can think of are the use of hydrocortisone for mild adrenal insufficiency or low adrenal reserves (hydrocortisone is out of patent, and few practitioners have bothered to consider whether there actually might be something like mild adrenal insufficiency), and the investigation of the electrical mechanisms of growth and healing (this may have gotten more attention in recent years; I haven’t kept up on it). I’m sure there are hundreds of others. So what gets investigated and published is very much predetermined by what the “authorities” think is important and is extremely biased.
I could probably go on, but I’ll stop here. It’s almost one in the morning, and I need to rest.
Best wishes,
Jerry
Sweet dreams.
Thanks, Pal.
Best wishes,
Jerry
You’re more than welcome.
sings lullabies in a lair eng itus voice
I just looked at some of my favorite books, including the updated and expanded 10th anniversary edtion of A Brief History of Time. The front cover says “Stephen Hawking.” A little note in the back of the book has a tiny paragraph about the author. It tells when he was born and says that Hawking holds Isaac Newton’s chair as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. That’s it. No other credetials offered. And why would they be needed. I find that among my books, it’s mostly the religious related, and some medical, that have the never ending line of letters behind the name. hmmmm.
Well, M. Scott Peck writes on the subjects of and to audiences obviously concerned with medical and religious matters, so that makes sense.