We didn't have graduate students at my undergraduate school. And when I got my own master's degree, I opted for a cumulative test rather than a thesis. As such, I've never seen an actual thesis defense. Until today.
A former student, with whom I've stayed in contact, invited me to attend his thesis defense on Zoom, and as my schedule allowed it, I did so. It wasn't adversarial at all, which is different from what I had always imagined about these activities. And it was quite interesting.
I admit that I had a little bit of an insider track on this one. A week or so ago, this student shared some of his work with me and we discussed the statistics in it. It's been a long time since I've taken even an advanced class in stats, but his work was good and I was able to make one suggestion about a test he could perform.
My enlightening experience with Thesis defense was during my master’s program. Each week, the professor had a student present a summary of a paper he assigned us to read. I had the ‘honor’ of going first and had to read and summarize a semi-famous Swedish researcher’s doctoral thesis paper. I did my best thinking if this was assigned for us to read, it must be a leading paper in our field (survey research). The more I got into it, the more I thought this research was bull hockey as COL Potter used to say on M.A.S.H. It was interesting, but the assumptions the research was conducted under could never exist in the real world. I was thinking what good is research if what is shows has zero practical application?
ReplyDeleteSo, I did my summary in class as directed at the start of class. At the end, my professor asked me what I thought of the paper. I had a split-second argument in my head whether I say glowing things which I thought my professor wanted to hear, or what I really thought. My ‘harder right’ training kicked in and I stated that I thought the paper was worthless since what it revealed had no practical use in the real world. He looked at me and for a moment I thought I just tubed this class. Then he stated that in Europe, you don’t just defend your thesis against those above you (who probably guided your research and have a vested interest in the researcher’s success). They invite an outside person which no investment in the research to argue against the thesis. The person serves as a prosecutor whose purpose is to find reasons the PhD should NOT be awarded based on the work. Turns out my professor was this person on this thesis defense. He stated he argued strenuously that this was not PhD work since it had no practical use and showed no way to further the research into something useful.
He finished up by saying that he was very disappointed that the applicant was awarded his PhD. To this day does not believe individual has done anything deserving of a PhD. Finally, he ended his critique of my summary by saying that he assigned this reading to show that some papers in peer-reviewed journals can be hogwash and that as young researchers new to the field we need to be not just able, but willing to step forward and call it out as hogwash.
Ended up getting an A in the class.
Bet you were turning coal into diamonds for a moment there.
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