What is a PhD dissertation and what is ProQuest UMI?

Not only this humble blogger with 2 Doctorates and 3 Masters,
why researchers such as investigative journalists also rely
on PMI Proquest. Following is the words of the researcher
from the story about Hien Tran, the California Air Resources
Board (CARB) scientist, the lead author of CARB regulation

'ProQuest UMI Dissertation Publishing has been publishing
dissertations and theses since 1938 and has published over
2 million graduate works from graduate schools around the
world'

Air board investigating whether lead scientist on diesel
regs lied about his Ph.D.
http://www.utsandiego.com/weblogs/americas-finest/2008/dec/18/breaking-news-air-board-investigating-whether-lead/


In addition to those diploma-mill paper buyers like (fake?)
Dr.Tran, if readers may remember for this blogger discussed
in his earlier posts, there are fakers who chose not to buy
a paper from a cerificate but fake the diploma of those big
named universities. In other words, if you dare to break the
criminal laws, you can buy a Harvard PhD certificate from a
forger via online. Even if you are seeing the diploma paper,
the diploma on a person's wall, it still can be a Photoshop
manipulated, a doctored image printed in colour and framed.

For reasons above, to verify whether someone has earned a PhD,
one has no choice but to look for a doctorate (that means PhD)
thesis which is supposed to be written by the suspected holder.


There is another trick in a faker's portfolio of faking tools,
that is to write something crappy, make it about 100 pages.
A doctoral thesis is the condensed compilation of 4 years work
after a 4 or 5 years first degree. That is why it is called a
thesis, a thesis of life-time pursuit for a scholar which is
supposed to widen the field of practice, the body of knowledge.

So now the question is what a real PhD thesis should look alike.
The lecturer from UCL explains what a thesis is, what it must
contain, and what it is not, what it should not contain, etc..

PhD Thesis Structure and Content
A [perfect] PhD thesis for London University/Computer Science UCL.

http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/c.clack/phd.html