The PhD Contrarian Indicator

From BusinessWeek:

I talked on Friday to Jim Barnett, former ceo of Altavista and, later, a top exec at Overture. He's planning to launch a next-gen advertising network called Turn Inc. in the next several months. He has $10 million in venture funding, and some 16 PhDs in-house. The idea is that advanced search will target advertisements to users with a precision we've not yet seen. All that can be said at this point: We'll see.

Are we the only ones who raise an eyebrow when a company starts talking about all their PhDs?  Don't the various online dating services like to advertise that their personality tests were designed by PhDs?  No disrespect to anyone with this august degree, several friends and relatives of mine have them, but having one does not confer some sort of status as an oracle, or prophet, though it does normally signal intelligence, which sometimes, we suppose, can help out in business.

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Comments

[Josh]

That approach worked so well for LTCM...