EDITORIAL | Ph.D. holders have earned the title 'Dr.'

Second, this is a college town, and we have more than our fair share of Ph.D. holders.

Third, we try to avoid anything that might confuse readers. We’ll only use “Dr.” if it’s relevant to the story. And if the person holds a different type of doctorate and that’s relevant to a story, we’ll say what type of degree the person has.

And fourth, in news writing we try to be as concise as possible. That means that while we want to explain as much as necessary for clarity, we also want to cut anything that’s not needed. Since we feel it’s important to say what a person’s degree is in, using “Dr.” would be redundant.

All that said, we very much respect people who hold doctorates of any sort, and in general we respect their rights to be called by their earned titles.

Recently the Wall Street Journal published a piece by a guy named Joseph Epstein, who condescendingly writes that the future first lady, Jill Biden, who holds a doctorate in education, should drop “Dr.”

The writer could have used his column inches to make a philosophical argument. Instead, he betrays his true feelings, calling her by the infantilizing “kiddo” and saying her use of the honorrific is “a touch comic.”

Excuse us? Kiddo? Here’s a good rule of thumb: don’t call women “kiddo.” It’s misogynistic and likely to make anything you say afterward seem sexist, whether it is or not.

Mr. Epstein — he apparently holds an honorary doctorate but makes a case that such degrees are worthless these days — spends most of the piece talking about how he was for many years a lecturer at Northwestern and didn’t have a Ph.D., but people would often mistakenly refer to him as “Dr.”

Good for him, but it doesn’t apply here. In fact, it really supports the other side.

Dr. Biden and other professional women tend to experience exactly the opposite situation. Even when they have earned their degrees, their colleagues and students are less likely to refer to them by their titles.

That’s a problem that even medical doctors experience. Female doctors report that coworkers introduce them by their first names more often than they do male doctors. That can cause confusion for patients, who may assume the woman is a nurse or other type of employee.

Similarly, the issue disproportionately affects people of color. As one opinion writer pointed out, people might find it more important to use their earned titles if they have previously been mistaken for a janitor.

Mr. Epstein also makes the argument that education doctorates are somehow not as academically rigorous as they once were. In that case, his beef is with universities and academia as a whole, not with one woman who wants to acknowledge the degree she holds.

As we see it, people who hold Ph.D.s and other doctorates aren’t trying to pretend they’re something they’re not. They deserve to use the title for which they’ve worked so hard.