That's certainly unusual in Australia. It's more common in some other places (such as the UK), but to call a BDSc 'doctor' would be out of the norm here.
Why 'naturally'? This notion of calling dentists and vets Dr seems to have slowly crept in over recent years. It was never the case back in the day.
Is there some sort of formal, recognised, independent decision that has been made (outside of the dentists' and vets' associations [aka 'trade unions']) that gives true and valid credence to this? Or has it arisen simply because they mess around with live things?
I didn't know that. I've been calling dentists "Dr" since I was a munchkin, so that was my understanding. I didn't know that was unusual.
I didn't even consider veterinarians.
The use of the title "Dr" by dentists is an honorary title in much the same way as medical practitioners. It would be
very unusual for a dentist to
not use the title Dr today, unless they were an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, then they would use the title Mr, as they are, well, surgeons!
I haven't been around long enough to know when this convention came into being, but an old timer dentist (working for well over 50 years, put it that way) told me that before he first started working, some dentists used the title Dr and some did not - those that did mainly having trained in the US or done further studies there. Eventually it became universal that dentists used the title Dr, and are indeed registered by our national board under that title. Don't know how much truth there is to that, and as far as anyone else I've spoken to is concerned, the honorary title of Dr has always been used by dentists.
I'm trying to look at the AQF semantics and so on and it's doing my head in. So the change by University of Sydney (as well as a slew of others, as I've quickly read up) doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Not 100% sure on the details of what is going on at the University of Sydney and too lazy to look it up to be honest, but similar name changes have occurred at the University of Melbourne. These changes are associated with a change from the traditional UK-style system of a 6 year MBBS, 3 year LLB or 5 year BDSc degree straight out of secondary school to a US-style system of a 3 year undergraduate degree followed by a 4 year MD, 3 year JD or 4 year DDS degree, which despite being called Medicinae Doctor, Juris Doctor and Doctor of Dental Surgery, are actually AQF Level 9 Masters' degrees. These graduates will not be any more or less qualified than their MBBS/LLB/BDSc predecessors and will be registered the same way with their professional registration bodies and use the same titles. I think the universities think the new titles sound cooler and make it easier to sell another few years of education!
On the 'real doctor' debate, doctor means teacher in Latin, so we should in theory be calling our teachers doctor, and medical professionals, PhDs etc should only use the title when teaching. So neither group are the real doctors!
