As years go by the PhD thesis in science and engineering is less and less of a ``thesis'' and more just a box to tick. There was a time when the thesis was largely the work of the student and tackled one serious problem. Decades ago at the University of Chicago, students were meant to write a single author paper that was based on their thesis.
At some universities, including my own, students can now staple several papers together, write an introductory chapter, and submit that as a thesis. One obvious problem with that system is the question of how large was the contribution of the student multi-author papers, both in terms of the writing and doing the experiments or calculations.
Previously I have argued that A PhD is more than a thesis, a PhD should involve scholarship, and a thesis should suggest future directions and be self-critical. In some sense these posts were negative, focusing on what may be missing. Here I just want to highlight several positive things I recently saw in a thesis.
A coherent story
The thesis should be largely about one thing looked at from several angles. It should not be ``several random topics that my advisor got excited about in the past 3 years.''
Meticulous detail
This should cover existing literature. More importantly, there should be enough detail that the next student can use the thesis as a reference to learn all the background to take the topic further.
Significant contributions from the student
A colleague once said that a student is ready to submit the thesis when they know more about the thesis topic than their advisor.
The situation in the humanities is quite different. Students largely work on their own and write a thesis that they hope will eventually become a book.
I think the decline of the thesis reflects a significant shift in the values of the university as a result of neoliberalism. The purpose of PhDs is no longer the education of the student, but rather to have low-paid research assistants for faculty to produce papers in luxury journals that will attract research income and boost university rankings.
What do you think are the marks of an excellent PhD thesis?
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Another thought-provoking post...thanks Ross.
ReplyDeleteI was recently sent a thesis from an Australian university as an examiner. I was impressed by the detailed section that described who did what in the multi-author papers upon which the thesis was largely based. This strikes me as a good general practice.
In the US where students are funded via grants to their advisors it is common that a student will work on more than one topic during their PhD. This makes me more tolerant of theses that contain contributions on more than one topic.
David, Thanks for the comment.
DeleteI agree that this the way the USA system works. But, I would argue that this is one of its weaknesses, particularly when given the pressure now for faculty to produce stuff fast.
"The purpose of PhDs is no longer the education of the student, but rather to have low-paid research assistants for faculty to produce papers in luxury journals that will attract research income and boost university rankings"
ReplyDeleteHere in Brazil is even worse. The PhD scholarship is just a way of the student not die of starving, a provisore remunaration without any future perspective. Get a job in the academic area is more and more hard and the market do not absorve the PHDs. A army of unployed PHDs.
Here's a question, how many highly cited or impactful authors had "high" quality theses? How do those numbers compare to Nobel Laureates, or historical physicists?
ReplyDeleteCould you please clarify the question?
DeleteI can read it several different ways.
Is there any correlation (let alone causality) between the following three things: producing a high quality thesis, becoming a highly cited author, and winning a Nobel Prize?
One data point is Andre Geim. He talks about how is PhD thesis had no impact/citations.
Good article
ReplyDeleteThe importance of stupidity in scientific research.
https://jcs.biologists.org/content/joces/121/11/1771.full.pdf
I’d like to suggest that our Ph.D. programs often do students a disservice in two ways. First, I don’t think students are made to understand how hard it is to do research. And how very, very hard it is to do important research. It’s a lot harder than taking even very demanding courses. What makes it difficult is that research is immersion in the unknown. We just don’t know what we’re doing.We can’t be sure whether we’re asking the right question or doing the right experiment until we get the answer or the result.Admittedly, science is made harder by competition for grants and space in top journals. But apart from all of that, doing significant research is intrinsically hard and changing departmental, institutional or national policies will not succeed in lessening its intrinsic difficulty.
The second , read in the pdf.
I agree on all counts.
DeleteThe emphasis on ``low lying fruit" 🍌 that is ripe for picking means slipping on some of the rotten fruit on the ground.
An intuitive quote.
ReplyDeleteThe Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: Nor all thy Piety nor Wit, Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
Omar Khayyam
Australian should restart the single author for a PhD student. One single author paper in the first year of PhD.
ReplyDeleteI do not see what this "decline of the thesis" is all about. What makes a "research assistant" less capable of writing a detailed coherent body of original work than a "PhD student"?
ReplyDeleteI do not see the problem with PhD candidates being classified as "research assistants". Isn't that what the job is? An apprenticeship of sorts? Yes, PhD students are there to learn, but isn't their main goal to produce research outputs? Doesn't making "significant contributions" to this research go beyond simply receiving an education?
It's edging on the precipice of a slippery slope to proclaim that _the_ purpose of a PhD is the education of the student. Taken to an extreme, this could be used by university bureaucrats to determine that it is not necessary to pay PhD students anything, and in fact, they should pay tuition. Performing research, writing papers, and teaching are all "for the education of the student" and therefore not labor, so PhD students do not need to be paid for providing these services. Indeed, if a student wishes to receive this training, they should _pay_ for it. This then leaves the PhD student not providing low-cost labor, but free labor, or even labor they have to pay to provide.
PhD students at many universities, particularly in the US, are actually facing some of these issues. The US has recently declared that PhD students involved in research and teaching are not legally employees:
https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2019/09/grad-student-unions-dealt-blow-proposed-new-rule-says-students-aren-t-employees
In other words, graduate students are forced to work, but are not protected by any labor laws.
Additional issues are reported here:
https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2019/08/hefty-university-fees-are-sending-some-grad-students-food-banks
As a current PhD student in year 6, I agree with your overall point of view, though I think a PhD thesis can have a coherent story without being limited to a single topic. A motivating vision is the thread that can weave together several separate topics. Typical funding cycles in the US are three years long, while a PhD is often six. All of my colleagues and I have worked on two to three different topics throughout our degrees. In my case, I can write a compelling story that unifies these topics together, and then dedicate a chapter to exploring them each in great depth.
ReplyDeleteThis could be of help for future aspiring students. There are some good ones. Some are not found.
ReplyDeleteExample of Prize winning undergraduate, masters , PhD thesis. One from physics is below.
University: California Institute of Technology
Faculty: Physics
Author: Michael P. Mendenhall
Award: 2015 Dissertation Award in Nuclear Physics
Title: Measurement of the neutron beta decay asymmetry using ultra cold neutrons
This the web site below for the thesis.
https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/examples/
A kinder research culture is possible
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02951-4
The blog post of Wellcome director says the following , as referenced in the above article
"The emphasis on excellence in the research system is stifling diverse thinking and positive behaviours. As a community we can rethink our approach to research culture to achieve excellence in all we do"
and then the Director continues in his blog post
" As I speak to people at every stage of a scientific career, although I hear stories of wonderful support and mentorship, I’m also hearing more and more about the troubling impact of prevailing culture.
People tell me about instances of destructive hyper-competition, toxic power dynamics and poor leadership behaviour – leading to a corresponding deterioration in researchers’ wellbeing. We need to cultivate, reward, and encourage the best while challenging what is wrong"
Then the same about hyper competition in an journal.
Competitiveness may be a source of energy, but it also has been described as self-destructive and hostile (Davis et al., 2008Davis, M. S., K. L. Webster, and B. King. 2008. Narcissism, entitlement, and questionable practices of research.
R Hoffmans article is good one . He advocates a middle path.
2). The dual roles of tension in research are discussed by Roald Hoffmann in this very issue of Accountability in Research (Hoffmann, 2015 Hoffmann, R. 2015. Tension in chemistry and its contents. Accountability Research 22: 330–345.
[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]
).
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08989621.2015.1047707
ReplyDeleteCompetitiveness may be a source of energy, but it also has been described as self-destructive and hostile.
These lines are in this article by JI Seeman and MJ House.
Authorship Issues and Conflict in the U.S. Academic Chemical Community
Interesting topic. I often wonder how others do this.
ReplyDeleteI was trained and then train students with the view that a good PhD thesis should contain 3 substantial projects, where each project is worthy of a rigorous peer-review journal.
In the 1st project, the advisor has a lot of handholding to do, from problem selection, approach, to writing it up. The student does most of the implementation , and data and results generation. The paper student writes the method and experimental/results section. The advisor writes the rest of the paper and might need to rewrite the method and experimental/results section.
In the 2nd project, the student should start coming up with his/her own approach, though the advisor may still provide the problem and direction of approach. The student should start writing the entire draft for the paper. The method and experimental/results section should be written by the student, the advisor will only need to do minor revisions of these two sections, though the advisor might still need to do major revisions for the rest of the sections.
In the 3rd project, the student should start developing the problem statement and approach on their own (though perhaps still with some, albeit reduced, direction and guidance from the advisor) and be able to write the entire paper on his/her own. The advisor might do minor revision here and there.
I don't think it is right to demand first year PhD student to be an independent researcher of his/her own (i.e., demanding a single author paper from a 1st year PhD student). If the student is already capable of doing this, why bother becoming a PhD *student*? Just for a piece of paper?
hannak
I like this 3-stage clear progression very much, Hanna.
DeleteHanna,
DeleteThanks for the helpful map. This is a good model and shows a commitment to training/education.
I would add three minor comments.
First, I think it can sometimes be good for the student to try and write the introduction for the first paper. They will struggle and will probably be completely rewritten or binned by the advisor. But it is a good training exercise.
Second, unfortunately, I fear that there are many PhD students in Australia, who cannot progress through these stages. Should they get a Ph.D?
Third, I should clarify the idea of single author paper, a la U. Chicago, is for the end of 5-7 year PhD, not the first year. Parenthetically, I published two single author papers, from my honours thesis. However, I still needed a PhD education.
Thanks for the post Ross! The first thing I thought after reading this was, what are the marks of an excellent Bachelor's/Honours thesis in terms of the three criteria you presented? What are the marks of an excellent MS thesis? Considering these, what then should set the PhD, MS, Honours, and Bachelor's theses (countries like the Philippines require theses at the Bachelor's level) apart? Along these lines, I think an excellent PhD thesis in Science must have a solid new technique/methodology/approach, as opposed to being centered on results from existing methods.
ReplyDelete12 most famous PhD thesis
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mrgeek.me/lists/12-most-famous-phd-theses-in-history/
Three out of 12
Marie Curie
Recherches sur les substances radioactives (1903) for which she won her the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1911.
John Nash , 1950 Cooperative games , 28 page thesis , 2 references
link below.
http://www.openculture.com/2018/07/john-nashs-super-short-phd-thesis-26-pages-2-citations.html
De Broglie
Recherches sur la théorie des quanta (1924), 70 pages. This led to his Nobel 1929.
Thanks for posting this fascinating list.
DeleteMost of them are from a different era.
The only recent one is Drexler, who I would say indulges in more science fiction, than hard science.
I would be interesting to see one for physics theses from 1970 onwards. In mathematics there will be a lot, e.g. Simon Donaldson.