How come whenever documents are altered to make them dishonest or incomplete, they are said to be “doctored”? Last I checked, most doctors are honest and helpful, and they try to save people. (Okay, admittedly not Dr. Doom, Dr. Evil, or Dr. Satan, but I don’t think they’re actually board certified physicians.)
Shouldn’t this process of maliciously/dishonestly altering documents be called “lawyering”, or maybe “politicianing” or “punditing”? After all, lawyers and politicians and pundits are well-known liars and con artists, as it’s their job to misdirect people. So then shouldn’t we give credit where credit is due, and stop bashing the doctors? I mean, they justly get bashed in horror and science fiction for their attempts to create races of atomic supermen and their continual efforts to conquer the world, so aren’t they disparaged enough for their actual crimes to be immune from being associated with other crimes they’re innocent of?
But seriously, doesn’t a doctored document sound like one that was missing something vital that got transplanted back in so it was complete, or a document that was somehow corrupted that was cured of this corruption? So this whole idea of doctoring seems counter-intuitive to me to refer to something designed to mislead. Unless they want to specify plastic surgery: then it would be absolutely appropriate! (<Like to say a document got a facelift, a factual liposuction, or a PR boob job.)
