The dissertation: I

Over the next several posts, I’ll put forward some of my ideas about what a successful science thesis should encompass. First some general comments:

The dissertation or thesis is of course the culmination of a graduate students work towards the Ph.D. degree. For the sciences, in general we are looking for original and potentially publishable work. That the work could be published (and usually will be) implies that it advances scientific knowledge in the disciplinary area of the dissertation.

Typically, the research leading up to the thesis takes on the order of 2-3 years and represents a coherent body of experiments, which taken together, form the basis of the thesis chapters. A thesis also typically includes a comprehensive literature review and a somewhat speculative discussion chapter (often the last time a scientist gets to be reasonably speculative in print until they reach the rank of full professor).

There is some debate as to whether the middle chapters of a thesis should be essentially separable as distinct publishable papers (the staple 4 papers together concept) or whether it’s better to have an integrated tome. I have my opinion on this which I’ll reserve for one of the next posts.

Of course a thesis must be defended–usually including a public seminar given by the degree candidate, and an examination session with the thesis committee where, in some European universities, any question at all is fair game–even if not related to the thesis. In the US the defense is often somewhat pro forma–we basically don’t allow someone to defend if it’s likely that they will fail.

Jim