Not a "Doctor" in Germany

Here's an entertaining story from the Washington Post. Actually people here at the Institute are paying close attention, since no one wants some malcontent to get sued for using the title "Dr." Additionally, for legal "doctors", the title becomes an official part of the name, which has all sorts of connotations.

------------------
Non-European PhDs In Germany Find Use Of 'Doktor' Verboten
By Craig Whitlock and Shannon Smiley

BERLIN, March 13 --
At least seven U.S. citizens working as researchers in Germany have faced criminal probes in recent months for using the title "Dr." on their business cards, Web sites and resumes. They all hold doctoral degrees from elite universities back home.

Under a little-known Nazi-era law, only people who earn PhDs or medical degrees in Germany are allowed to use "Dr." as a courtesy title. The law was modified in 2001 to extend the privilege to degree-holders from any country in the European Union. But docs from the United States and anywhere else outside Europe are still forbidden to use the honorific. Violators can face a year behind bars.

Ian Thomas Baldwin, a Cornell-educated researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, has stopped calling himself "Dr." ever since he was summoned for interrogation by police two months ago on suspicion of "title abuse."

No one has questioned the legitimacy of his degree or whether he has the right to conduct research here. But going by "Dr." is verboten. If he wants to refer to his doctorate, German law dictates that he identify himself as "Prof. Ian Thomas Baldwin, PhD, Cornell University."

In his defense, he noted that the Max Planck Institute has always addressed him as "Prof. Dr. Baldwin" since it offered him a job a decade ago, and nobody warned him he might be in legal peril if he did likewise. The German doctor rule has been in effect since the 1930s, but it has been only sporadically enforced in recent years.

That changed last fall, when an anonymous tipster filed a complaint with federal prosecutors against seven Americans at the prestigious Max Planck Society, which operates 80 scientific research institutes across Germany. Federal authorities forwarded the complaint to prosecutors and police in at least three states, who decided to take action.

Another American investigated by police is an astrophysicist with a doctorate from Caltech and membership in the German Academy of Sciences. The criminal investigations have alarmed higher education officials in Germany, where U.S. researchers are in high demand and treated as blue-chip recruits. Last week, state education ministers met in Berlin and recommended that the law be modified so anyone holding a doctorate or medical degree from America could be addressed as "Dr." without running afoul of the police. Even if the proposal is adopted, however, it would extend the privilege only
to people with degrees from about 200 U.S. universities accredited by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Anyone with a PhD from Canada, Japan or the rest of the non-European world would still be excluded.