Here's the first post by the "famous" Princeton professor that Mr. Smart likes to reference as support for his contention that he does have a PhD. Here JMarti concludes "Mr. Smart does NOT have a Ph.D., under any stretch of imagination." After this post there was a flurry of emails between JMarti and Derek. JMarti never took back his conclusion but seemed to feel sorry for Derek and said that he would hire Derek and that he is just a game developer so it's not really important whether or not he completed his PhD. Derek has been crowing about this "victory" ever since and pointing to this as somehow being evidence that he actually has a PhD. --------------------------------------- From: martiney@picower.edu (JMarti) Subject: Re: Question for Derek Smart (BC3K) Date: 12 Oct 1997 00:00:00 GMT Message-ID: <3440fc14.11274512@news.interport.net> References: <61m3pj$o3q@news.Hawaii.Edu> Organization: Interport Communications Corp. Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic On 10 Oct 1997 20:39:15 GMT, jimmy@Hawaii.Edu (Jimmy Chan) wrote: As a (real) holder of a Ph.D., and Assistant Professor at a PhD-granting Institute, I will try to lay to rest, once and for all, the Derek-PhD saga: >Ken Fishkin (fishkin@acm.org) wrote: >:#> In article <61b1d2$8gr@bgtnsc03.worldnet.att.net>, >:#> dsmart@pobox.com wrote: >:#> > nor was my thesis up for >:#> > sale to the highest bidder. 1. Only academic (or non-profit Institutes in rare cases) can grant Ph.D. degress upon completion of a Ph.D. program. The author has a partial copyright (that is, will receive some royalties if the thesis is re-printed or published) but DOES NOT OWN ANYTHING REGARDING THE RESARCH DONE TO FULLFILL THE PHD. This is true in the fields of biology/chemistry/physics (mine is in a biomedical research field), and I assume in the engineering fields. i.e. you cannot "sell your thesis to the highest bidder", even if you wanted to. The University "owns" the intellectual property of your thesis. >Since my work allowed me to put it to practice, the >:#> > decision to suppress it's publication due to copyright issues was my decision >:#> > and mine alone. 2. He could actually be right here; he may have realized that completion of the thesis (and granting of the Ph.D. degree) would result in the loss of all intellectual property to the PhD granting University. If money is to be made, he would have to share with the University (and it will NOT be 50-50). Therefore, my "Derekology (sp?)" hypothesis is that Mr. Smart did not finish his dissertion to avoid sharing potential revenues with the granting Institute/University. Therefore, he does NOT have a Ph.D. > >:#PhD theses are (at least in the US) the property of the granting >:#university. As part of my work, I often obtain copies >:#of PhD theses, and no author's permission is required. 3. True. But only for research/academic purposes. If I obtain a copy of a thesis to use in my own academic (read= not-for-profit) research, I do not need the author's permission, nor do I need to pay anyone. Of course, I would properly cite the thesis in any of my publications. On the other hand, if I am Texaco/Exxon, I need both the author's permission AND to pay a fee to copy a thesis (or any research publications for that matter). All ABSTRACTS are available, irrespective of who wants to read them. Copies of the thesis are also given to the student's Department, thesis advisor, and members of the thesis committee, and sometimes to the University's library and Graduate School. >DS's creditability goes down another notch. Guess he'll claim he didn't go >to a US university. Opps, too personal. 4. To the best of my knowledge, other countries follow the same model. Heck, even mail-order schools follow the same rules. 5. The title of PhD dissertations are NEVER short, little things like the "art of IA" or whatever. The titles are a precise description of the work done. My thesis title is NOT "Immune responses in the brain, art thereof" but "Pathophysiologic effects of IL-1b on the blood-brain barrier". You are supposed to be an "expert" in one little corner of the your SPECIFIC field (a SPECIFIC field is NOT "AI or computer engineering"; that is a GENERAL field). The title of his thesis should be something like "The specifics use of XYZ on the ABC method of parallel processing" or such other obtuse title. >Whether my university was accredited or not > and hence my reluctance to divulge it, is irrelevant. I only say this due to > other posts I've seen here where people have questioned this also. 6. Is absolutely relevant. Only, and ONLY accredited (accredited by the educational dept. of the US State at which the institute is located) institutions can grant Ph.D. degrees. Ditto for Europe, Asia and Latin America. You CANNOT get a real, 100%-pure "Doctor of Philosophy, Ph.D." degree from ANYWHERE else. Period. >Anyone > requesting personal info should first set the trend by posting personal info > about themself. 7. Since 99.99% of all Ph.D. degrees are funded, directly or indirectly, from Government monies (NIH, NSF in the USA; MRC and others in Europe, so on) THEY ARE PUBLIC INFORMATION. Not personal, not confidential, not NOTHING. You cannot hide the information, once released to the public domain. Since the information was never released, YOU HAVE NO PHD DEGREE. > >decision to suppress it's publication due to copyright issues was my > >decision > >and mine alone. 8. As in "quitting". The only ways a Graduate-student can unilaterally "suppress publication" of his/her thesis is to FAIL TO COMPLETE ONE (in which case the person is terminated from the program) or to QUIT THE PROGRAM. An obvious one which some of you may be thinking, is that the thesis is so bad that it is "rejected" or "failed". Actually, that is practically unheard of, as "bad students/thesis projects" are taken out of the system before they submit the thesis. An interesting point is that, if a Graduate Student (working towards the PhD) decides to quit the program for whatever reason (personal, professional, whatever; just not due to bad performance), the student will get a Masters Degree (MS) if he/she succesfully completed the course requirements and the qualifying exam. Maybe some full-time Derekologist can track down if Mr. Smart has a MS degree.... In any case, once a thesis is COMPLETED and submitted to the thesis committee, it CANNOT BE WITHDRAWN!!! It cannot be suppressed. CONCLUSION: Based on my scientific expertize, I would like to respectfully submit to the newsgroup the following hypothesis: 1. Mr. Smart was, at some point, enrolled in a PhD program. 2a. Mr. Smart did not finish his degree because he wanted his work to remain his intellectual property. He should then have a MS degree (if he completed the coursework and passed the quals). He may, or may not have a complete dissertation. 2b. Mr. Smart quit his program or was terminated due to performance issues. He may, or may not have a MS degree. He does not have a written dissertation. 3. Mr. Smart does NOT have a Ph.D., under any stretch of imagination. JAM Assistant Professor BA, Princeton U. PhD Albert Einstein College of Medicine PS Do I get, O mighty Billhuff/fhth, an honorary degree in Derekology? PSS I have no clue as to whether the game is good or not; I am not into space sims. If the final (!!??) version kicks ass, maybe I will try it.