My dissertation work is damaging my brain. I thought I read before work this AM a thread begun about Rich's dissertation, wrongly thought so, that is, and unkind remarks about it on AED . I get back from work and find the thread is not actually there. I'm taking a couple of days off from study
Here are what I believe are the facts in this comedy of errors. 1. When one finishes Ph.D. work at Union Institute, one submits both the dissertation, and a program summary, the latter being a compilation of all the documents accumulated during the program--letters, memoes, whatever. 2. In Rich Douglas' case, his program summary was hundreds of pages long, including lots of stuff that was never intended for the public. 3. Union made the incredibly stupid blunder of supplying University Microfilms with his program summary, not his dissertation. 4. A regular contributor to this news forum purchased what he believed was going to be the dissertation, but in reality was the program summary. 5. This person, presumably unfamiliar with Union procedures, may not have realized that he had the wrong thing. In any event, he apparently shared it with another forum regular. 6. It seems that when one buys a dissertation online from UMI, the link is available for three days. And there seems to be no restriction on how many times it can be downloaded during those three days. 7. The two people who post here seem to have made that information available on alt.education.distance and perhaps elsewhere, and 64 people proceeded to download Rich's program summary, all of them presumably thinking it was a very peculiar dissertation. 8. The person who originally bought Rich's work and supplied it to the second person, seems to have been in major violation of both copyright and terms of service. 9. Since that person was the only one who actually paid UMI for Rich's work, UMI knew who it was, and told Rich, and Rich of course recognized the name as a regular here, a person who seems to have been a generally reasonable explainer of his unaccredited doctorate. 10. Rich posted this information here, and named both names. 11. Moderator Bruce responded promptly by unilaterally removing posting privileges from both the buyer and disseminator of Rich's work. 12. Several others chimed in to say positive things about Bruce's action. 13. And then, later the same day, the entire thread was removed, with no explanation of why or by whom, either on the board or to Rich personally. Can you find 173 mistakes in this picture? Of course Union shouldn't have... Of course UMI shouldn't have... Of course the buyer and disseminator of the work shouldn't have... Maybe Rich acted immoderately in his response. Maybe the moderator who removed it all should have said something. I gather people on a.e.d., and apparently on a website associated with the unaccredited school in question, are having a field day making fun of Rich's work, either believing or pretending to believe that the very small pilot study that he did ten years ago actually is his doctoral research. Since this genie won't go back in the bottle, at least it should be acknowledged.
Submitted for your approval, the case of one Dr. Dr. Dr. Peter French, whose “handle” (screen name) on this forum is, inexplicably, Suhar.
This Twilight Zone episode was explained on the "Banning" thread (in Distance Learning forum). They were apparently unbanned and the profiles got messed up in the unbanning.
