PhD support group?

pboae

studentphil wrote:

An interesting point I would like to ask is, do you all see your research as part of our grand final science or do you see science as something that is relative to society and when science changes most of the current science we have now will be swept away?

I don't know about it being related to society, but I don't see my research as 'truth' in any sense. In fact, I am pretty sure it will be proved wrong at some point. It's a fast moving area and who knows what technology will appear in the next few years and throw it all into disarray? My work was just a best guess with what information was available at the time. I ruled a couple of things out, and brought a couple of possibilities into the frame. Hardly earth shattering I suppose, but chipping away and hoping that somewhere down the line it might play a part in someone else's breakthrough.

melancholly

misskool wrote:

OH...where is it going? Exciting...

hasn't been submitted yet, but aiming high to start (don't want to jinx it and say where - but something with a reasonable impact factor anyway.... and i kinda like anonymity on here!) - the worst they can do is say no.....!

Joe_Bloggs

I don't have a PhD and I get offers via spam email everyday to buy one. How long are you each prepared to keep adding comments to a long list ? The longer the list the less likely someone will read it through. It could be turned into a PhD project !
Does anyone have idea as to current PhD submission rates. I have heard that some are lower than 50% in some institutions.

Good luck to all those writing up. At least there is nothing worth watching on TV.
J_B.

ffeindadifyr

Depends... I know in Physics in general it is quite high as depertments are penalised by the funding council if students funded by those councils don't submit within 4yrs. In our dept every person who has got past the 2nd year have submitted and only one person who got past the 1st year didn't submit - but he/she (anon) was a lazy git and did nothing but play computer games all day (well at leas the was in the office from 9-5!!!)

CrazyChemist_2

misskool wrote:

It's the best any wo(man) can get.

End of third (turd) year, trying desperately to motivate self to finish by end of term 1 of 4th year.
:eek:

Any motivational words? Or words of wisdom?

Hmmm, let's see, for a "biochemist" like yourself? Do you really need motivation - I'd think you could do a genetics/immunology project with your eyes closed!

Joke! Well, advice, let's see... well I had some late nights during mine and once I got locked in the downstairs library which was, well, interesting, though it did pay off (the late nights, not getting locked in!) as I finished it in 2 years and 10 months (it's just under 3 years!!) but just keep positive and see what's at the end, if you know what you want to do (do you?). I had the NHS Chemical Pathology labs in sight and that's all I thought about (aren't I a sad person?). That's what I did to keep myself positive. If you have a special someone, ask for extra cuddles... they really do help

ffeindadifyr

My advice... have a few late nights (long days) just typing away - don't worry too much about format or style - just write bullet points or short unsensical sentences to begin with - Print out your WHOLE thesis to date including these pages and put it on the table and admire how thick the pile of paper really is!

Take a few days off the writing (to do some more experiments if you need) and come back to those rough pages and edit them - you'll find that much easier than trying to get it all done in one go!

If you're not in the mood for writing up your own work - sort out the first few pages i.e. decleration and so on or the appendices - these take a lot more time than you might think.

Or you could do what one of my fellow PhD students did (his English wasn't too good) and get some other people in the lab (myself and other Postdocs) to take it from the notes stage to sensible sentences stage!

Joe_Bloggs

Departments may be penalised but students are poached/ led astray by the demands of the real world. It is a pity that most PhD Theses do not make it to the worldwide web. Often there is only one copy in a departmental library that is due to be closed and centralised.
The information in most scientific papers falls short of providing enough practical details to re-create the original experiment. Obfuscation seems to win over clarity as the harder the task appears, the more credit is granted to the author.
J_B.

melancholly

Joe_Bloggs wrote:

Departments may be penalised but students are poached/ led astray by the demands of the real world. It is a pity that most PhD Theses do not make it to the worldwide web. Often there is only one copy in a departmental library that is due to be closed and centralised.
The information in most scientific papers falls short of providing enough practical details to re-create the original experiment. Obfuscation seems to win over clarity as the harder the task appears, the more credit is granted to the author.
J_B.

there is actually a major shift in science based phds to get people to submit their thesis in the form of a series of papers. it still requires an introduction and conclusion, but should allow students to get published more easily (and if anything can be accepted before the viva it means that the proof of publishable standard work is already provided). phds in science are generally written in a format that can make it difficult to extract the details of a single experiment easily. they are written to a different audience than an academic paper.

i would be very nervous about supplying all the details of my experiments in a paper - having spent months/years getting stimuli and making an experiment, if someone wants to replicate it they can contact the author and as long the original work is referenced properly, people are happy to collaboratively hand over the details. and argueably the peer review process should mean that methods sections, when read by people who do research in that area, are made clear to the reader.

and i like this long list of comments from people feeling the same pain as me!! if only 10 of us read it daily then it's still a support group of 10!

ffeindadifyr

Joe: I'm not too sure there... I don't think a thesis is intended to be a paint by numbers guide to your experiments - it's meant to be a "good" (or at least do-able) read. If you want to re-create the experiment then you would need the lab-books of the researcher.

One can always ask the author for a pdf copy of their thesis and I would expect if there was any need to fully recreate the experimental conditions the researcher wouldn't refuse to release photocopies of their lab-book - unless there were some financial o'r intellectual rights issues.

ffeindadifyr

It's a very continental approach to include papers as part of your thesis. Something that I personally would hate to see become too common.

I've seen the quality of papers in many good journals decrease over the period of my PhD due to over-saturation of Journals.