Honori­fi­ca­bil­i­tu­dini­tat­i­bus lit­er­ally means “loaded with hon­ors”.  Its mod­ern ety­mol­ogy and usage comes from William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost by Costard in Act V, Scene I.

Hon­ori­fi­ca­bil­i­tu­dini­tat­i­bus or faux scientist

In foren­sic sci­ence as prac­ticed in the United States, there are few legit­i­mate Hon­ori­fi­ca­bil­i­tu­dini­tat­i­bus and many faux scientists.

faux sci­en­tists abound in foren­sic science

One of the scams that will help you tell between the few legit­i­mate Hon­ori­fi­ca­bil­i­tu­dini­tat­i­bus and many faux sci­en­tists is in person’s cre­den­tials (The Impor­tance of Proper Cre­den­tials in Foren­sic Sci­ence and Pseu­do­sci­en­tists and snake oil sales­men in mod­ern foren­sic sci­ence).

But today’s post I want to focus on “seminars”.

A lot of wasted ink is devoted in a faux scientist’s resume to “sem­i­nars”.  Almost all of these “sem­i­nars” do not have a func­tion to test under­stand­ing, reten­tion or pro­fi­ciency in the con­cepts pre­sented.  Most are, at best, atten­dance based.  Some folks hon­estly read the news­pa­per dur­ing the sem­i­nar.  Still oth­ers Face­Book as the lec­tur­ers present.  Some even sleep.  Some have their agency pay for it and don’t even show up at all.

For any sci­en­tist, a resume full of “sem­i­nars” that are attendance-based and has a lack of proficiency-based train­ing with tests is a red flag to me.  It should be to you too.