Is the doctoral thesis obsolete?

Post by robotresearcher » Fri, May 22, 2015, 6:28 PM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #48

sillypog wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is true. The problem is that when you go looking for a post doc if you don't have any publications then you are thought to be incompetent.

If you were hiring a post doc for a two-year position, would you choose the person who had managed to convert research into a published paper in 3-4 years, or the other guy?

Post by mto » Sun, May 24, 2015, 1:57 PM UTC

fdej wrote: post #14

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.

My thesis (in math / CS) was essentially several papers stapled together, except that I made the papers into chapters, expanded/rewrote bits and pieces, and added narrative to glue the chapters together. This took about six months. In retrospect, I think this time was well spent. I developed my understanding of the material quite substantially by reworking it. But doing so was certainly not nearly as fun as writing n…

Same here except that for me it feels like wasting a lot of time, unlearning all my other skills and not staying up to date with current trends.

Having to rewrite polished and reviewed papers is aweful and not publishing stuff (except in a thesis) is unacceptable for many institutions, so I think making papers to chapters is the way to go as long as there isn't something completely different (e.g. no prose but making all data, hardware, software, documentation etc open source)

Re: Is the doctoral thesis obsolete?

Re: Is the doctoral thesis obsolete?