PhD-itis

If you have never heard of this disease, I'm not surprised. PhD-itis is also known as Doctor's Disease. Simply put, it's the delusion that many graduates of doctoral programs catch once they become a noted expert in their chosen field that they are then experts at every field they choose to undertake. Expert surgeons with no business training try to run corporations. Internists undertake real estate ventures. Neurosurgeons believe they can be President.

More than anything else, it is a disease of arrogance and hubris. Arrogance in their belief that they are brilliant at everything. Hubris in their feelings of superiority.

Career politicians have a specialized form of this disease. They equate their mastery of one particular speciality, election campaigns, as mastery of all details of life. You see this today, November 2015, after the Paris attacks, as a host of Federal Congressmen and State Governors, issue calls for the halt of the Syrian Refugee resettlement program. They take one isolated piece of data, the fact that a stolen passport was found at the site of one of the Paris attacks, an ISIS propaganda video claiming that ISIS would sneak attackers in with refugees, and a complete lack of any knowledge about the existing Syrian Refugee vetting process, and issue proclamations about the Syrian Refugees harboring ISIS spies. It is way too early to know if finding a stolen Syrian passport is really indicative of an ISIS spy having been smuggled in with the refugees. It is also way to early to determine if ISIS really has the capability to smuggle attackers in with the refugees. And how can Congress people, much less than state governors, really determine that the vetting process is not adequate? Have any of them even looked at the process?

I am so sick and tired of politicians who can't think past their ideologies. I'm tired of a person like Paul Ryan, an expert at Tax Policy, suddenly deciding he's now not only a foreign policy expert but also an expert at vetting refugees for national security risk. A great example of PhD-itis!

This syndrome allows individuals to practice their xenophobias and hate and religious and social dogmas under the guise of knowledge and expertise that they just don't have.

Why in the world should politicians be able to set the medical standards for a medical procedure? Why should a physician tell the business world how to run a medical insurance company?

We have had a few renaissance men and women, but are they the rule or the exception?