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I researched an acquaintance's PhD dissertation and I saw that it doesn't qualify even as a master's degree. She sells herself as accomplished for finishing PhD in 3 years but the data is not there in the thesis, the thesis is very badly written and the whole introduction misses the references.

I confronted her directly and I really want her PhD revoked. In addition, she is a co-author of a publication as an equal but in the contributions she is everything but equal. With this and that she does postdocs here and there, and claims that I only say that because I am jealous that she has a career and me not (sorry academics, my academic journey is over I had enough and as long as I see these kinds of things I don't want to re-enter).

GoodDeeds
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oknow
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    My neighbor drives a nice car, and I don't. My dumb colleague has more students than I do. My university/organization is led by a person with no PhD. It goes on and on. It is all in your head. Do nothing. Be more productive with your time and take care of your mental health! – Prof. Santa Claus Sep 08 '21 at 21:48
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    Unless she has committed provable misconduct (data falsification or plagiarism), I think it is exclusively the doctoral panel that decides whether a thesis is PhD-worthy. Assuming your negative opinion is correct, it may shed bad light on her "alma mater" or better "alma nihili" and her panel, but in absence of misconduct, I do not think that you are in a position to strip her (or cause her to be stripped) of her doctoral degree. There are very mediocre dissertations, if people across would be able culling non-worthy degree holders, it will be a bloodletting indeed. Assuming you're right. – Captain Emacs Sep 08 '21 at 21:53
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    "These grapes are too sour," said the fox. – henning Sep 09 '21 at 06:42
  • VitaminE you imply that I am jealous. Both henning! No I am not! I am very proud of what I did in fundamental research and I can assure you that I had a partner with much more high impact papers than me.This is not the point. My point is that academia is full of incompetent people that use tactics and politics to "try to convince" and I am really sick of that. Don't try to state that i say these grapes are too sour. hahaha! – oknow Sep 09 '21 at 14:04
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    Related, possible duplicate: What are the criteria for degree revocation? – cag51 Sep 09 '21 at 15:40

5 Answers5

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What should one do if they find that someone else has a different opinion than you about something? Usually nothing. A university decided that your acquaintance’s work merits a PhD. That’s their opinion, and their decision to make. The decision is normally irrevocable unless the work the PhD was given for involved actual fraud or serious misconduct. If it is merely mediocre, there isn’t anything anyone can or should do other than silently disapprove.

Of course, another school of thought says that when someone disagrees with you, the right thing to do is to obsess about it and devote your life to convincing them that they’re wrong and you’re right. Given that this approach is advocated in a satirical xkcd comic, I’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions about whether that’s an approach you want to adopt.

Dan Romik
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What you should do is, precisely, nothing. A university grants a degree and an individual isn't going to be successful contesting it. Unless you can prove actual academic misconduct and are willing to stand in public and demonstrate it, the only harm will be to yourself.

It isn't worth making a lifelong bitter enemy of the "acquaintance" and a bunch of people at the university.

It is possible, of course, that the university or some people within it have very low standards, but a complaint, which at base may be just an opinion of the value of it, isn't going to change that.

I'm sorry if this isn't what you want to hear, but your anger isn't likely to be requited.

Buffy
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Unless you're on someone's committee, it's really none of your business why a fully accredited school might decide to award a PhD. All you need to know is that it happened. It was their decision to make and that's what they decided. So, I think it was inappropriate to confront your acquaintance the way you did.

The only case I can think of where it might matter whether you think someone's dissertation was all that impressive is if you're making a hiring decision. But even then, a PhD is still a PhD even if you personally don't think their work deserved it.

Nicole Hamilton
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Unless there is concrete evidence of actual malfeasance (plagiarism, fraud, data fabrication or falsification, violation of research ethics standards, etc.) you are out of luck. They managed to convince a doctoral committee to award the degree, that's the end of the story.

Ben Bolker
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This happens a lot and it is partially the fault of the PI and the student's committee. This does undermine PhDs for everyone, but I am sure she didn't feel great trying to get through a PhD with what she had. What you are doing is a bit petty, however. Until you have researched a wide pool of dissertations and compared them in quality...you may find many dissertations do not meet your standards and you cannot simply 'revoke them all'.