Ph.D. Fraud Supporting Information

(updated 16th Oct 2001 to reflect only website directory changes)
(last significant modification 8/27/99)
(updates after getting Dr. John Bears new book)

It's very important to note that everything stated here has been verified by multiple people and can be verified by you. This web site has been reviewed by Derek's lawyer and I "fixed" all specific disagreements that he had with the page. Of course, he claims my conclusion that Derek's a PhD fraud is incorrect, but, I haven't changed that. (He seemed fond of believing fraud had only a legal definition and liked to ignore the other definitions in the dictionary.) If you think that there is any misstatement of fact in this or even possibly misleading information, I would be very interested in finding out about it. I commonly make corrections and changes as new information is made available and potentially misleading or unclear areas are discovered. You may email me and/or post to c.s.i.p.g.s-s. My email address is on the bottom of this web page. If you think it might be important, please email me to make sure I see it. (Except Dan Brooks, who has pledged to never bother me via email again. He tried to justify his email threats to me by pointing to this statement and saying that I had given him permission to email me with his obnoxious threats.) Most of this information has been posted to the c.s.i.p.g.s. news group and scrutinized by Derek, his supporters, his lawyer, and "detractors".

The quickest way to use www.deja.com is to use their "Power Search" page. If you know the exact date, put that in. If you know the news group, put that in. If you have an exact quote then, put it within double quotes in the search box. When searching for an exact quote, sometimes you get a false negative. It most often seems to be due to a non-alphabetic character. Just grab a different quote or just search for a few unique words. By default all the words must be found in the post for a match (i.e., "and" is the default). You can put an "or" between words and also put words in parantheses to group the "and"/"or". In the author box the default is "or" so, you may want to add an "and". If you are using your search to count posts then, WARNING: the total posts figure given is only a very rough estimate until the very last summary page. Don't be a "Dan Brooks" and look like a fool by posting false information in the news groups.

This web site is divided into two parts. The parts are two pages each. The first part is the main presentation and the second part is background supporting information. The first page is the main presentation of the PhD fraud argument. The second page contains the presentation of Fact 2 through Fact 8. The last two pages contain background supporting information. There are links from the first two pages into specific sections of this page and page four. The links out of this web site are mostly to an archive of Usenet posts. The most important ones being the lawyer emails and the PhD Fraud Anthology discussed in the previous two paragraphs.

If you're interested in more material on accreditation or diploma mills, I highly recommend Dr. John Bear's book. I have a link to his web site at the end of this page so you can get more information on his book or buy his book. His book is a paper back and is very reasonably priced.

BACKGROUND SUPPORT - ACCREDITED VERSUS UNACCREDITED SCHOOL

In every country in the world except the USA, school accreditation is a function performed by the national government. Dr. John B. Bear's book states that "accreditation" in the United Kingdom means the school must "operate under a Royal Charter or an Act of Parliament (the two ways schools become legitmately recognized in Britain)." Diploma mills may operate legally in the UK as long as it's stated in their literature that the institution is not operating under a Royal Charter or an Act of Parliament and that the worthless diploma is never sold to a UK address. So, they can defraud people and assist others in defrauding people as long as they don't claim to grant UK degrees and they keep their defrauding outside the borders of the UK. Derek has stated he got his diploma from England.

There are three extremely strong reasons for believing that Derek's diploma granting body is unaccredited.

One, FACT 1 presented previously, Mr. Smart's dissertation is not listed anywhere. If it was an accredited college then, his dissertation would be listed.

Two, FACT 3 presented previously, that Mr. Smart's lawyer practically admitted the school was not accredited.

Three, FACT 8 presented previously, that there is no accredited school in England with the initials LIT.

Therefore, if Mr. Smart has a diploma he did NOT get it at an accredited college like he claims. This means Mr. Smart is a PhD fraud.

BACKGROUND SUPPORT - DIPLOMA MILL VERSES UNACCREDITED SCHOOL

The previous section shows that Mr. Smart did NOT get a diploma from an accredited college like he claims. But, there's still the question, if he does really have a diploma did he get it from a diploma-mill or an unaccredited school?

I believe there's enough evidence to say that it's extremely unlikely Derek went to an unaccredited college. Even in that unlikely case, Derek is still a PhD fraud because he claims his school is accredited. An unaccredited school seems very unlikely for two reasons.

One, an unaccredited school is much less likely than a diploma mill scam because, in England the legitimate schools are accredited by the government before they are allowed to operate. So, there are very few unaccredited schools, less than 10. (source Dr. John Bear's book, 13th edition) There's lots of diploma mill scams in England. I say less than 10 unaccredited schools because there are only 10 schools with an English address in the chapter on unaccredited schools in Dr. John Bear's book. Of these 10 schools, two of them have aliases that account for six of the 10 schools named. They all have a description that seems derogatory in a manner similar to a description in the diploma-mill chapter. (e.g., founded by same fellow, so-and-so, that started up diploma-mill such-and-such)

Two, Derek said he went to LIT. There is no LIT listed in Dr. John Bear's book. Dr. John Bear's book is primarily intended to be used as a resource for people shopping for schools for "distance learning". As such, it concentrates on both accredited and unaccredited schools that provide distance learning programs. If such a school was available in 1995, I would be very suprised if it didn't show up in Dr. John Bear's latest book. There is no LIT in Dr. John Bear's book. On the other hand, due to the transitory nature of diploma mills, it's practically impossible to provide a complete list of diploma mills. So, since LIT doesn't show up in Dr. John Bear's latest book, I'd say it is a reasonable indication that LIT is/was likely a diploma mill.

The reason the British government allows the diploma-mills to operate is that they aren't allowed to do business in Great Britain. The government philosophy is why should we care they're defrauding people, as long as they're not defrauding any British. A "school" that won't accept students from the local area is one of Dr. John Bear's signals that it could be a diploma mill. All ten of the "unaccredited schools" discussed above fit in this category. Another sign of a diploma mill is if the school has multiple completely different names. Six of the "schools" discussed above fit in this category. Another sign of a diploma mill is if the school has a working address that's different from it's mailing address. That means that all ten of the "schools" satisfy at least one indicator of a potential diploma mill. Seven of them satisfy at least two indicators of a potential diploma mill.

In the USA, schools are started up and must be in operation before they can apply for accreditation. So, there are many more unaccredited bona fide schools in the USA than in England. In England, they're seemingly non-existant.

It is totally false, misleading and devious to claim that accreditation is a "tangential issue" when validating a diploma, especially when the subject is claiming the school is accredited. In the book "Get the Facts on Anyone" (see reference details below), Dennis King went on for three pages (pg. 176-178) about how and why you should always validate the school as well as to validate that the subject did in fact graduate from the school. He says that Dr. John Bear's book "lists over 100 diploma mills that sell degrees (including medical and law degrees) through the mail with virtually no work required". pg. 178

A diploma from a bogus diploma mill is NOT the same thing as a bona fide PhD earned at an accredited school. A diploma from a diploma mill is no more valuable than if the person printed it himself.

To earn a PhD at an accredited school it will typically take 6 or 7 years of postgraduate work. It will generally take anywhere from 3 to 10 years to earn a real PhD. This is full time residency work. If the student works on it only part time for a certain portion then, you'd expect the time to be extended. Note: these are meant to just be general "rules of thumb" to try to give the reader an idea of how much work is required to earn a real PhD. Contrary to Derek Smart's claims, real schools do not award full PhDs solely for life experiences. (Life experiences means already completed work, like Derek's computer game.) (source is Dr. Bear's book)

Diploma mills will sell a PhD diploma through the mail. It is not a full time activity and the diploma will be "bestowed" anywhere from a few days up to a couple of years. Mr. Smart has stated that he got his diploma through the mail working part time and in less than 2 years.

For more information on diploma mills see:

The web pages that I've seen for diploma mills can be very enlightening. However, I have not posted any of these because I do not want to encourage PhD fraud. If you would like to see one, you may email me and I'll send you an example. If you have found an example, please let me know. If it is in England, it would be especially interesting.

One thing that Mr. Smart sometimes likes to claim is that I've changed my position on his PhD fraud. He claims that I use to say that it was a total fraud and that now I say that he got a diploma from a diploma-mill scam in England. The truth of the matter is that very early in the PhD flame war I said on-line that I thought Mr. Smart probably got a fake diploma from a diploma-mill. Mr. Smart's argument is just another indication to me that he is possibly unfamiliar with any real academic environment and has just gotten tangled in his own lies. He seems to forget that this issue should be totally irrelevant to HIS story since, he claims his school is accredited. It really makes little difference whether Mr. Smart printed the diploma himself or used someone else's diploma-mill. I think it would show greater intelligence and understanding to print your own rather than to give money to a con-artist. However, there's now evidence that Mr. Smart took the less intelligent path because Mr. Smart's lawyer said he was trying to get some kind of information from the "institution" that he apparently was never able to get. To give Mr. Smart the benefit of the doubt here, another reasonable possibility is that he took the more intelligent path but, then chose to use a con-artist later in an attempt to give his lawyer something to check on.

The following three diploma mill descriptions were copied from Dr. John Bear's wonderful book, 13th edition. (see http://www.degree.net) They are the names that begin with the initials "LI".

London Institute for Applied Research England. All right, he did it (as he's been saying in his book for 20 years now). In 1972, while living in England, John was involved in fund-raising for a legitimate school. He figured that since major universities were "selling" honorary degrees for millions, why not use this approach on a small scale? He and his associates created L.I.A.R. and ran ads in the U.S. reading "Phony honorary doctorates for sale, $25." Several hundred were sold, but it seemed to have upset half the world's educational establishment (the rest thought it was a good gag.) So L.I.A.R. was retired. Then an offer came from a Dutchman who lived in Ethiopia (you must believe us on this--who would make up such a story?) who wanted to trade 100 pounds of Ethiopian earpickers and Coptic crosses for the remaining L.I.A.R. certificates. Now he's selling them from Holland without the humorous disclaimer, and has added a bunch more fake school names. And if anyone would like some Ethiopian trinkets, have we got a deal for you! (Honestly!)

London International College Had offered degrees in cooperation with the unaccredited Andrew Jackson University College of Louisiana and, later, Maryland. Apparently out of business.

London Institute of Technology and Research In 1995, this school at least proposed a relationship with Kensington University of California. There were, and as far as we know, still are several odd things about them, such as that London directory assistance has no listing for the school, and that their promotional materials list a Lord Bottemley as a member of the advisory board. Burke's Peerage, however, lists only a Lord Bottomly and we thought it strange to misspell the name of such a prestigious associate. There is also, apparently, some association with the International University based in Missouri. But we don't know anything more at this time.

In a post, Dr. John Bear stated that LIAR was no longer in business in 1995. My best guess is that LIT stands for London Institute of Technology. It is reasonably possible that LITR used LIT very early in their existance. The earliest post I've found where Derek claims a PhD is December 1995. This would seem to match the early startup of LITR.

The next section debunks Dan and Derek's silly claims that LIT meant Lost In Time.

To show how silly Derek's lie was when he said LIT means lost in time, I used Yahoo to search the world wide web for lists of acronyms. I found 453 using the search key "BTW+LOL+RTFM". I looked in many and not a single one listed LIT. (As you can see from list below, most were lists defining acronyms used in Usenet posts.) I then searched for LIT and Yahoo found 178. Not a single one was using LIT as Lost In Time. As another example (just to rub it in how stupid Dan and Derek are), a search for "BTW+LOL+RTFM+LIT" found only 34 sites and not one of those used LIT as any acronym, let alone as Lost In Time. Here's some of the lists of Usenet acronym definitions I specifically looked up.

http://www.the-awa.u-net.com/ircabrev.html
http://www.marabout.com/anglais-fr1.htm
http://www.utopiasw.demon.co.uk/acronyms.htm
http://www.aion.demon.co.uk/abbrev.htm
http://www.netlingo.com/emailsh.cfm
http://www.forsmark.uu.se/~eg97alsu/shorts.html
http://www.zephryus.demon.co.uk/education/links/acro.html
http://www.driving.co.uk/textcode.htm
http://www.mythirdage.com/features/tech/netglos/index.html
http://kb.indiana.edu/data/adkc.html
http://www.brake.north.de/~harry/index2.htm
http://www.goerres.de/projekte/Internet-ABC/feel.htm
http://www.mush.net/newbie.htm
http://www.terra.net.au/~jade/netguid/start/symbols.html
http://www.lehtikanta.fi/pvuorenm/Internet/lyhenteet.html
http://www.powerup.com.au/htmlxp/help/acronyms.htm
http://www.snof.org/accueil/acronymes.html
http://www.decorativepainting.com/acronyms.htm
http://www.albion.com/bookNetiquette/0963702513p60.html
http://www.ssc.net.au/help/sfla.htm
http://www.newbie-u.com/peg/terms/lists/acronyms.html
http://epubl.luth.se/1402-1552/1998/02/HTML/app4.html
http://personal.pitnet.net/cooler/ircdict.htm
http://virc.melnibone.org/virc/help/abguide.html
http://www.lakeonline.com/internut/acro.htm

I also searched DejaNews and neither Derek nor Dan have ever used LIT to mean Lost In Time until after I posted the proof that there was no LIT college. It just goes to show how stupid and gullible Dan Brooks truly is. He believes every single lie that his master tells him, no matter how absurd. Just like a trained dog. Derek yells "sig'em" and lap dog Brooks starts yapping his fool head off.