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Is the doctoral thesis obsolete?

timeshighereducation.co.uk

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Re: Is the doctoral thesis obsolete?

#31

Post by danieltillett »

raverbashing wrote: post #4

Reasons for thesis taking too long (and approximate time dealing with them): - Writer's block: couple of weeks - Dealing with braindead typeset standards, even with things like LateX libraries/helpers (some people still do it in Word): A couple of weeks to months - Dealing with all the citations (because whatever you write, barring the most obvious, has to be quoted): one-two months - Nitpicking by advisor: some week…

In the experimental sciences there is also the minor problem of getting the experiments to work. Until you have the data you can't write anything.

Re: Is the doctoral thesis obsolete?

#32

Post by danieltillett »

_delirium wrote: post #23
jessriedel wrote: post #3

> He would much prefer to see theses’ introductory sections “written along the lines of a good review article, where the student does a critical appraisal of the state of the field”. Yes! A well-written thesis continues to be a very valuable contribution to the literature, but it is the parts that are not original work that are most useful. The reason is that older researchers in a field have almost no incentives to…

Yes, if anything we need better documentation of methods. This is something often overlooked with the open-scientific-data movement also: data on its own is not very useful (in the sense of being insufficient to draw valid conclusions) if you don't have good documentation of how precisely it was collected, which is critical to interpreting it correctly... otherwise you just have some numbers in a CSV file. Traditiona…

There is no need these days for brevity with methods since everything is online. Put it all into the SI and be done with it.

One problem with many methods is the lack of description of the pitfalls and critical steps. When you go to repeat an experiment you often don't have exactly the same equipment or reagents as the original paper. Most of the time this does not matter, but in an annoying number of cases some particular step needs to be performed using a precise piece of equipment or brand of reagent. It is only when you can't get the experiment to work and you contact the person on the bench who did the research that you learn "yeh we tried all the other reagents and only brand x works". If there is something critical put it in the method that it is critical!

Re: Is the doctoral thesis obsolete?

#33

Post by sillypog »

danieltillett wrote: post #30
robotresearcher wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was not my experience. My UK Computer Science peer group was expected to publish their thesis work in a good journal, with some conference papers along the way. The thesis was the definitive long-form version, but a key question at the defence was "so where was this work published?". "It wasn't" would not have been a good answer. Expectations may vary by school.

They vary by area because of the nature of research. It is much harder in the experimental sciences to "schedule" results. My PhD has both experimental (lab work) and computing aspects and all the computing research took within the expect time (+- 20%). The lab aspects were much more variable. I had one experiment which I expected would take 3 months to finalise that worked first time and I was finished by the aftern…

Yes, my experience was in the biological sciences, where bench work can have a very long amount of time between iterations. I'm always amazed that anyone working with mammals (eg evaluating transgenic mice) ever finishes their work.

The issue is really the hard cut off that was mentioned above. Had I stayed on longer at that lab, I may have been able to get my results published, but there are many incentives to move on.

Re: Is the doctoral thesis obsolete?

#34

Post by asabjorn »

probdist wrote: post #2

The doctoral thesis already is already essentially universally several papers stapled together in experimental science and engineering. The shortest compelling way to explain your results is a paper. Furthermore, the notion that your work over 3-8 years is one cohesive story has been violated by every graduate student I've ever met.

What constitutes a staple-thesis varies a bit though. My advisor required 3 top-tier papers in a well-defined topic. Papers in other topics or workshop papers does not count.

Re: Is the doctoral thesis obsolete?

#35

Post by seanmcdirmid »

shasta wrote: post #22
tormeh wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Ahh yes, just what we need. Thesis-by-tweet... Look, a lot of things don't need 100 pages of text. Of course, as a researcher, what you don't want to do is to make your research easy to read, because people may then assume that it was easy to do and therefore not impressive.

If you're simple, clear and first, you're going to get plenty of citations, though.

For CS? Not in your thesis, but maybe in a paper based on the thesis.

Re: Is the doctoral thesis obsolete?

#36

Post by analog31 »

_delirium wrote: post #23
jessriedel wrote: post #3

> He would much prefer to see theses’ introductory sections “written along the lines of a good review article, where the student does a critical appraisal of the state of the field”. Yes! A well-written thesis continues to be a very valuable contribution to the literature, but it is the parts that are not original work that are most useful. The reason is that older researchers in a field have almost no incentives to…

Yes, if anything we need better documentation of methods. This is something often overlooked with the open-scientific-data movement also: data on its own is not very useful (in the sense of being insufficient to draw valid conclusions) if you don't have good documentation of how precisely it was collected, which is critical to interpreting it correctly... otherwise you just have some numbers in a CSV file. Traditiona…

My thesis was very much a recipe for how to make my experiment work. We frequently used the dissertations from former students as reference manuals for their methods. I cranked mine out in 3 months.

Amusing anecdote: This was 20+ years ago, when technical word processing was still a work in progress. Many of my peers struggled endlessly with formatting. My plan was to create a mechanically rough manuscript, get through the defense, then worry about formatting afterwards. It worked, with a hitch: I never got page numbering to work, and ended up pasting the page numbers in by hand. Also, many of the figures are obviously pencil drawings that were photocopied.

Re: Is the doctoral thesis obsolete?

#37

Post by sampo »

This is only a critique of the monograph-type PhD thesis, which I agree that should become obsolete.

Where I come from, a thesis is 3-6 published papers and a 20-60 pages introduction/summary that explains the background a bit more than is traditional in a paper, and summarizes the results.

Yes, the student spends 1-3 months writing the summary part, but most of their time is spent on research and writing the actual papers.

Re: Is the doctoral thesis obsolete?

#38

Post by sampo »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #35
shasta wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're simple, clear and first, you're going to get plenty of citations, though.

For CS? Not in your thesis, but maybe in a paper based on the thesis.

In natural sciences, thesis is based on papers. In CS, paper is based on thesis.

Re: Is the doctoral thesis obsolete?

#39

Post by robotresearcher »

anonymousDan wrote: post #28
paulpauper wrote: post #18

Although my opinion is unsubstantiated, the biggest problem is the barrier of knowledge : it takes longer and longer to familiarize yourself with an increasingly growing body of literature. Second, the low-hanging fruit tends to be picked, leaving researchers fighting for the few undiscovered scraps the remain. Third, papers are getting longer and more technical, with more data and co-authors. Forth, much longer appr…

I think there is always low hanging fruit, you just have to know where to find it. Agreed that publishing papers, especially in top conferences, takes more of a team effort now.

I hope we don't train our young scientists to go after low hanging fruit _exclusively_.

Re: Is the doctoral thesis obsolete?

#40

Post by [deleted] »

danieltillett wrote: post #30
robotresearcher wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was not my experience. My UK Computer Science peer group was expected to publish their thesis work in a good journal, with some conference papers along the way. The thesis was the definitive long-form version, but a key question at the defence was "so where was this work published?". "It wasn't" would not have been a good answer. Expectations may vary by school.

They vary by area because of the nature of research. It is much harder in the experimental sciences to "schedule" results. My PhD has both experimental (lab work) and computing aspects and all the computing research took within the expect time (+- 20%). The lab aspects were much more variable. I had one experiment which I expected would take 3 months to finalise that worked first time and I was finished by the aftern…

[deleted]
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