[wsxcde]

Not too long ago, my official title was postdoctoral scholar and I was at UC Berkeley. A little while before that, I was a PhD student working with a couple of "postdocs" whose title was postdoctoral research associate. I submit that I do exist as did my co-authors (who have since stopped being postdocs, but continue to exist as researchers.)

This was at another well-known US school. Perhaps thing are different in Britain, but I am not aware of any R1 university in the US where postdocs "do not exist."

[ppod]

I don't know about those places in particular, but it's quite common (especially in Europe) to see people described as "postdoctoral researcher" or "postdoc research associate" on their staff pages, website, email sig etc, while in the official HR scheme and on payroll those titles only exist without the word "postdoctoral".