Re: Ok, how about we start here...

> But how about as situation where a person has a PhD in Metaphysics. TO me,
> that just sounds shady. I personally have never heard of getting a PhD in
> something like Metaphysics. Is that real and is such a thing offered by
> real, accredited universities?

Heehee! Yes, that one's fishy. The odds of this one being a fraud are high.

Googling for 'degree' and 'metaphysics' shows that almost all the universites offering this are dot-com universites... therefore not accredited. Basically a degree mill or an organization that makes up its own rules about what a PhD is (someone who pays money. It's basically meaningless.)

Narrowly defining the search (metaphysics course within the .edu domain) shows that metaphysics is taught under philosophy at a number of universities and occasionally in the religion department.

On this page (http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~phildept/) there's a couple of PhD's who have degrees in philosophy/religion combinations that include metaphysics (Philosophy of Religion, Ethics, Metaphysics.) So it's not impossible, but you'd expect to see it tied with a department. (And because I'm an easily distracted scholar, I looked up one of the sites to see what someone with a PhD that includes intensive interest in metaphysics sounds like: http://myweb.facstaff.wwu.edu/nmarkos/Papers/Papers.htm )

So... ask: is the degree possible, is the language plausible, do they seem to know a bit about the complex issues and current issues (a scholar whose work is 30 years out of date, who never bothers to read any more on their topic, is not going to be much use in addressing details of modern problems.) The lazy geek's way of finding that out is to head to scholar.google.com and type in the subject (metaphysics, marketing, etc) and just read titles and kind of note dates. That gives you a real fast idea of where current research is headed and what topics are being explored.)

That's on the PhD level. On the Masters' level, there should be some sophistication in the ideas (for instance, a Masters' in marketing would probably be aware of the effect of the "digital divide" on the market sector. a goober who's faking it usually hasn't a clue about this. In some areas a Masters' degree usually requires some knowledge of mathematical modeling (I have an interdisciplinary Masters that had some hours in marketing and I had to suffer through calculus and do minimax and other kinds of calculations.)

In all fairness, there will be some who don't fit the parameters I'm describing. They may be genuine, but you have every right to be suspicious if they're an outlying datapoint.