PhD support group?

Joe_Bloggs

My area is in undergraduate study. Hence my minor criticisms of what details are left in and glossed over regarding recreation of certain experiments. There is also a PhD overlap. Old and informative PhD theses can form the basis of undergraduate projects. I'm sure that most theses would be of little use to the authors in recreating their experiments after twenty years. It is a chance to show off how clever you are rather than how well you can communicate.
J_B. (Lab-books rule.)

ffeindadifyr

It does depend what you mean. In our lab this year there have been 2 different types of theses.

(1) Complete instrumental and experiment development - this thesis you probably would have liked as it was fairly introductory - but somebody who has been in the field for a while would only find 2 chapters of any interest.

(2) Numerous experimental tehniques on a variety of samples/paramaters and a correlation being sought after. If one was to try and fully explain each technique used to undergraduate or layman terms then we would have a thesis consisting of well over 2000 pages - I'm pretty sure no one would then read it!

Also, remember that at the time the "old" theses were written a lot of the things you think are bog standard techniques and procedures were brand new to them and even revolutionary - and so these guys were also writing in a similar style to PhD students of today. I can easily see somebody reading my thesis in 5 yrs time saying something like "well that's obvious"!

talksalot81

Joe_Bloggs wrote:

I'm sure that most theses would be of little use to the authors in recreating their experiments after twenty years. It is a chance to show off how clever you are rather than how well you can communicate.
J_B. (Lab-books rule.)

Well we are taught to write a thesis so that the work can be reproduced. So if the text does not allow recreation of the experiment, it isn't done as I think it should be!

I also think you are wrong about the purpose. A thesis is a record of your time as a PhD and is as much (at least in my field) used as reference material for those following... by the time most people get to writing, they are not concerned with showing how clever they are because they dont need to.

DrFluffy

talksalot81 wrote:

Well we are taught to write a thesis so that the work can be reproduced. So if the text does not allow recreation of the experiment, it isn't done as I think it should be!

I also think you are wrong about the purpose. A thesis is a record of your time as a PhD and is as much (at least in my field) used as reference material for those following... by the time most people get to writing, they are not concerned with showing how clever they are because they dont need to.

Ditto - a scientific thesis should provide enough information for someone in a far off land to receive a copy and be able to replicate all your work. It is all about communication. Anything less would have been failed.

And as already mentioned - by the time you get to writing, you really have no need to act the peacock. Your publication record is your chance to show off, not your thesis. See how far you get in science with a thesis and no papers... It's very difficult. I honestly beleive that anyone with half an ounce of common sense can do a PhD (may be it's only the stupid of us that stick with it and write up!!!).

DrFluffy

ffeindadifyr wrote:

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

I thought that was mostly due to the old boys network

But true, some complete !!!!e makes in to print these days - especially medic driven research. There does not seem to be the same scrutiny that is applied to basic medical sciences papers…

I went to a seminar a last year given by a qualified medic in the last year of her PhD (her pre-viva seminar – viva was a few weeks off). Was cancer/molecular biology stuff. She had done all her experiments without synchronizing her cells, so she could not say if what she was seeing was a true effect or a cell cycle effect. I asked why she hadn’t synchronized her cells (some cells just don’t like it). She asked what I meant, so I explained, and she said that is wasn’t possible to do for human cells. Scary, very, very scary. I let it go, as I didn’t want to seem the !!!!!!, and I felt it wasn’t my place, but everyone in the room was licking her !!!!!! after with praise after. One consultant came up to me and said he was thinking the same things I had raised, and he was very worried about the quality of ‘young scientists’. He looked a little confused when I told him I was then a first year medic (so I had to fess up)…

CrazyChemist_2

DrFluffy wrote:

I thought that was mostly due to the old boys network

But true, some complete !!!!e makes in to print these days - especially medic driven research. There does not seem to be the same scrutiny that is applied to basic medical sciences papers…

I went to a seminar a last year given by a qualified medic in the last year of her PhD (her pre-viva seminar – viva was a few weeks off). Was cancer/molecular biology stuff. She had done all her experiments without synchronizing her cells, so she could not say if what she was seeing was a true effect or a cell cycle effect. I asked why she hadn’t synchronized her cells (some cells just don’t like it). She asked what I meant, so I explained, and she said that is wasn’t possible to do for human cells. Scary, very, very scary. I let it go, as I didn’t want to seem the !!!!!!, and I felt it wasn’t my place, but everyone in the room was licking her !!!!!! after with praise after. One consultant came up to me and said he was thinking the same things I had raised, and he was very worried about the quality of ‘young scientists’. He looked a little confused when I told him I was then a first year medic (so I had to fess up)…

I didn't realise that Medics did such detailed Molecular Biology. Surely your course is supposed to be skewed towards the clinical side of things, not research, especially if you're a first year undergrad??

ffeindadifyr

talksalot81 wrote:

Well we are taught to write a thesis so that the work can be reproduced. So if the text does not allow recreation of the experiment, it isn't done as I think it should be!

Yes, but your thesis shouldn't be a step-by-step guide to doing the experiment. You should provide enough information so that somebody who is familiar with the field could replicate the experiment.

i.e. Myself being a physicist... I wouldn't be able to pick up your thesis and replicate your experiments without background reading of the basics and some basic techniques that might be, by now, taken for granted in your field.

For examle I work with Ultra High Vacuum (UHV) - If I went into detail (so that an undergrad could replicate my work) I would have needed 2 theses just to introduce the techniques and concepts of UHV before moving on. This one of the reasons why you have references in your thesis.

talksalot81

ffeindadifyr wrote:

Yes, but your thesis shouldn't be a step-by-step guide to doing the experiment. You should provide enough information so that somebody who is familiar with the field could replicate the experiment.

i.e. Myself being a physicist... I wouldn't be able to pick up your thesis and replicate your experiments without background reading of the basics and some basic techniques that might be, by now, taken for granted in your field.

For examle I work with Ultra High Vacuum (UHV) - If I went into detail (so that an undergrad could replicate my work) I would have needed 2 theses just to introduce the techniques and concepts of UHV before moving on. This one of the reasons why you have references in your thesis.

I was going to disagree until i got to the last paragraph. You then reminded me how easy it is to assume. UHV is something we would see as trivial so I would just assume anyone wanting to replicate would know things like that!

misskool

melancholly wrote:

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.....!

I understand, good luck with it! I'm bored in the office at the moment. Collating data and trying to make sense of it is very boring compared to doing the actual work sometimes....

DrFluffy wrote:

There does not seem to be the same scrutiny that is applied to basic medical sciences papers…

This is actually scarily true, I worked in molecular pathology for a while and some of the medics were impressed if you used basic molecular biology techniques and patting themselves on their backs if they knew about pcr and cloning techniques. My supervisor (a medic turned scientist but still practising) couldn't troubleshoot most of the molecular biology problems i had, was very scary since she was considered one of the 'greats' in molecular pathology.

ffeindadifyr wrote:

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.

It's not a continental approach at all, students now realise that if they want to compete for the best jobs and grants they need to be published. The crazy old adage of "publish or perish"

joe_bloggs wrote:

Hence my minor criticisms of what details are left in and glossed over regarding recreation of certain experiments.

In a thesis, most protocols and procedures should be reproducible within the lab it is written in. It is used as a reference work within the lab and when you bring it to your next lab, it's the way for you to reproduce your work.
In published papers however, if you work in a competitive and new field (as we sometimes do!) you try to make it as clear as mud. It's a shame and I find it really irritating when you try to confirm or refute someone else's work!

ffeindadifyr

misskool wrote:

It's not a continental approach at all, students now realise that if they want to compete for the best jobs and grants they need to be published. The crazy old adage of "publish or perish"

You can still write up a thesis in the "old style" and publish papers - I had a list of publications (10 in all - although only 3 as first author) in the front of my thesis and the thesis included research from most of them but repackaged into results chapters.

My thesis was on "Organic Semiconductor Interlayers and their Role in GaAs Diode Modification" - used UHV techniques such as XPS, NEXAFS, AFM and the synchrotron at Daresbury (a lot!) as well as some device measurements (current-voltage measurements) to characterise devices and materials that I had prepared.