My three-year-old nephew has been saying for several months that when he grows up, he wants to be "a pilot AND a doctor." Perhaps this was always William Hamman's dream as well, because until recently, everyone thought he was both. Hamman evidently did not lie about being a pilot, but fabricated a "medical residency, fellowship, doctoral degree, [and] 15 years of clinical experience" as a cardiologist in order to falsely acquire grants, university positions, and lecture tours. As a result of this deception, Hamman has lost his jobs as both fake cardiologist and real pilot. Although no evidence is available to show that he actually performed operations, he has (as seen above) supervised them.
It seems as though more impostors pretend to be doctors than they do almost any other profession, and I don't think it has much to do with a doctor's salary. Pretending to be a lawyer or a businessman or even a psychologist would risk fewer (or no) lives and probably take less training, so there must be another reason for medical imposters to choose this particular fraud. Additionally, Hamman chose to be an expert on the heart, not a general practitioner or a podiatrist or some other, less dangerous, type of doctor. Hamman wants to be in control of people's lives. He wants to decide whether they live or die, just like he does when he flies those enormous aircraft. Hamman has taken daredevilry large-scale, to include hundreds of unwitting people.
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