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I have found that it is common in Poland to do multiple PhDs:

and, these people are very successful.

There are lots of posts in Academia.SE describing the negative aspects of doing multiple PhDs.

As far as I realize, most of the answerers are US-based.

What are the negative aspects of multiple PhDs outside of North America?

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    If you read the answers to the questions you linked, you will find that they do not generally say that multiple PhD's are bad for your career in the sense that a guy with two PhD's will have a harder time finding a job than a guy with one PhD. So it doesn't make much sense to ask whether it is "applicable only to North America", because no-one said it was applicable to North America in the first place. Rather, most of the answers to the questions you linked are along the lines that generally when people consider doing two PhD's it's based on a misunderstanding of what the point of a PhD is.
    – Adam Přenosil
    Commented Apr 21, 2023 at 20:11
  • I think this is really a duplicate, but hesitate for the moment to vote it so as my vote would be decisive.
    – Buffy
    Commented Apr 21, 2023 at 21:00
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    Does this answer your question? Is doing two PhDs a good path?
    – cconsta1
    Commented Apr 21, 2023 at 21:09
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    It's possible there's some interesting question buried in here, as both of the people you reference have substantial overlap in the time frame for their degrees. This suggests a different model for assigning degrees than the ones I am more familiar with that might apply to Poland or these specific institutions - it doesn't seem they did "2 PhDs" but rather got 2 degrees over their time studying. I don't think the right question to raise from it is the one asked here, though. Also, please consider using titles that actually represent the question asked, not just keywords.
    – Bryan Krause ♦
    Commented Apr 21, 2023 at 21:16
  • I don't know anything about PhDs in Poland, and you didn't ask a question about PhDs in Poland, I'm just looking at the information in the links in your question.
    – Bryan Krause ♦
    Commented Apr 21, 2023 at 21:54

2 Answers 2

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Short answer: there are no negative aspects except for the waste of time.

You will not impress any academics by having two PhDs, in North America or anywhere else in the world. It shows either lack of focus, or that you switched fields. In the later case, the only PhD that counts is the one in the subject you are trying to get a job. A friend of mine had a tenure track position in one field, but wanted to work in another field. He did a second PhD and is now tenured at another department.

Non-academics might be impressed, but it seems to be a long route to gather extra attention at the cocktail party. Will it impress people in industry? I'd guess that the farther away they are from academia, the more impressed. But at the end it's about your skills.

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  • This doesn't answer the question.
    – user366312
    Commented Apr 22, 2023 at 14:08
  • This answer would be strengthened if it referenced your experience or knowledge of academia outside of North America. If you are only speaking generally, your answer would better fit one of the more general questions that OP linked to.
    – cag51 ♦
    Commented Apr 22, 2023 at 16:14
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As @BryanKrause mentions, if you go through the acknowledgments of one of the people's mentioned Ph.D. thesis, you will read right away that they solved one problem that led to two theses, one in physics and one in computer science. The problem is related to information theory which has applications in both statistical mechanics and computer science, so it makes sense that they got 2 PhDs out of it.

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