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Comment by _moof | Hacker News Reader

Not taking a position one way or the other here, but I'll point out that he has published three papers as primary author and coauthored five others.

And from the article: "Barnes said he already had published papers in renowned journals by the time he submitted his dissertation - one of the reasons why he earned a PhD."

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In that case it is truely astonishing, however I cant see why he wouldn't benefit from working as a phd under the best professors in his field, continuing his work.

Depending on his circumstance why would he stop working with professors or as a PhD in the research community? It feels like others on this comment thread are making an assumption he enrolled as an ordinary student and 'skipped' to PhD, and now is about to jettison from academia entirely. The article sounds like he has been working in his scientific field for some time and is just as likely that the master's program was sponsored by his work at that site in his field. If you had someone who was working FT and stopping/starting through a master's program and at the end was more a junior research peer with clear expertise than just someone who 'finished a program' and the work had enough merit why wouldn't you upgrade it?

Again, from the article (it's not a long one):

> Barnes, a meteorologist at the SA Weather Service in Cape Town, graduated in September.

> [...]

> "Work is good here in Cape Town. I wasn't expecting a doctorate. So at this point, I am not about what lies ahead in my career. I will look into opportunities should they present themselves in the future."

Sounds to me like he's not especially interested in academia.

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