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sbrothy
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Orodruin said:There are plenty of LHC students who can easily up that …[...]
Oh, I don't doubt that. Not trying to belittle anyone's profession. That was just an example I personally knew of.
Orodruin said:There are plenty of LHC students who can easily up that …[...]
Orodruin said:So what? That will test understanding of things that are known, not the ability to do research to produce new knowledge. The latter may benefit from the former, but is in no way a guarantee.
A small nitpick: The long paper produced in connection with earning a PhD is usually called a "dissertation", while the term "thesis" is more often used to refer to the long paper produced as a capstone requirement for a Master's Degree (although not all master's degrees require a thesis), at least in academia in the U.S.ergospherical said:I will play devil's advocate to some extent. I'm looking from the outside in and won't have the same insight as some of you PhDs...
If a research paper is around 20-30 pages tops, what's the point of spending all that time to write up a 100, 200, 500-page PhD thesis? I get the impression from that the actual new content could be presented on a tenth of the paper, if you cut out all of the exposition.
There's probably a historical element. Do you think the format is out-dated?
Remarkably?ergospherical said:But Landau's school produced remarkably successful research.
Why is that non-standard? It is always the case that to get the gig you need to convince the commitee to choose you.ergospherical said:It’s not a competition…!
The Landau institute was a relatively small outfit and did a lot of influential work. What’s interesting about it is the non-standard admissions procedure. You only had to convince Landau that you could pass the Theoretical Minimum - he didn’t care about your research credentials.
As others have said that's a really unfair comparison. Not every excellent physicists came from this kind of selection. In the Soviet Union it was probably was good way to find students but that means that it was extremely selective for those students that were not good at this kind of examinations. I do not think Landau allowed for taking the exams twice. Also many fields of physics were not invented yet and many people did not carry university students at the time.ergospherical said:It’s not a competition…!
The Landau institute was a relatively small outfit and did a lot of influential work. What’s interesting about it is the non-standard admissions procedure. You only had to convince Landau that you could pass the Theoretical Minimum - he didn’t care about your research credentials.
That's not how it was at the time of Landau. There were many, the majority, that did not work with him.pines-demon said:In the end it depends on what route we want to take. Do we want to have only Nobel Prize material and the rest should quit? Let us do that sooner, let us rise the difficulty even more starting in high-school. Let every student know that physics is hyper-competitive from the start and only let the Landau-level students go for it. That way there is funding and permanent positions for everybody.
You mean in Kharkiv on in the rest of the Soviet Union? anyway that is far from the point.martinbn said:That's not how it was at the time of Landau. There were many, the majority, that did not work with him.
May i missed it, what was your point?pines-demon said:You mean in Kharkiv on in the rest of the Soviet Union? anyway that is far from the point.
In that paragraph I was suggesting a hypothetical. That if we only want the best and the field is going to be hard on resources and difficulty, ONE of the options is that we can start the filters sooner in the physics students lives.martinbn said:May i missed it, what was your point?
Good point. Imposing a higher standard of rigor in a thesis really serves two purposes (which make it longer than a research paper on the same topic):FactChecker said:I can only refer to my own experience in pure mathematics. My thesis skipped no steps in the proofs, some of which were tedious (but IMO, not very routine). That was the only way that my adviser and the professors could really be sure that my proofs were valid and that I knew what I was talking about. All the necessary definitions and references were given (possibly to prove that I had done the necessary research).
When the same proofs were written for publication, much of the detail was omitted. It was assumed that if readers really wanted to verify the results they would put in the time and effort to go through the details on their own. It was also assumed that a reader was already reasonably familiar with all the background material and references. Experts in the field do not want to read my summary of the basics. All that reduced the page count considerably.
Unfortunately, one cannot take that for granted with someone who has earned a PhD either ... I know of a number of instances just from the case studies in a research ethics module given to PhD students in the program I direct.ohwilleke said:unlike someone who has earned a PhD (and generally been hired as a professor or research fellow), one can't take for granted that a graduate student "filled in the gaps"
Yes. But I did my thesis in the old days when a person who lied on a published paper was thrown into the T-rex cage to be eaten. ;-)Orodruin said:Unfortunately, one cannot take that for granted with someone who has earned a PhD either ... I know of a number of instances just from the case studies in a research ethics module given to PhD students in the program I direct.
Just make fun of their short arms. That makes them sad, and you can run away while they are temporarily blinded by their tears.FactChecker said:when a person who lied on a published paper was thrown into the T-rex cage to be eaten. ;-)
There actually is a modern alternative. I was interested in getting a PhD at work and the notion of a 60+ year-old taking the GRE and getting competitive scores with younger folks fresh out of undergrad school is nigh impossible. Thats what my university set as the stipulation for using the educational credit benefit. I spoke with others at work and they said they ran into the same roadblock. Finally, I tried the route of taking single courses but again you had to get into the program via the GRE route+recommendations... in order to get the graduate credit.ergospherical said:I guess that is the reason. If the field is so specialized that you can't reasonably set a standardized exam in it (for 1 student), then a long exposition is some measure of understanding.
The Dyson video is interesting. From my perspective of not having done / not intending to do a PhD, I think I'd agree with what he's trying to say. 4/5 years is a long time to devote to a particular problem.
It seems like a shame that there's no "modern" alternative for one or more short-term research projects beyond something like a 1-year Masters. There's opportunities for things like this in industry & internships, though - but it's slightly different context.
Vanadium 50 said:Before we go too far down this path, have you ever actually read a thesis? Or is the criticism based on what you think you would find if you did read one?
Good to remember. But also unlikely to recur.bhobba said:A good thesis to read IMHO; relates to mathematical issues of Quantum Mechanics. I sometimes link to it when Rigged Hilbert Spaces are relevant to a discussion; Quantum Mechanics in Rigged Hilbert Space Language by Rafael de la Madrid Modino:
http://galaxy.cs.lamar.edu/~rafaelm/webdis.pdf
The purpose of a PhD program extends beyond producing a dissertation (thesis). It's a transformative journey that equips you with the skills and mindset of a researcher, fostering personal growth and intellectual curiosity.
Some think it is a necessity to become a researcher. It isn't. My Operations Research lecturer famously did not have a PhD, but rather a DSc, which you get by submitting work you already have published. He was grabbed by IBM before doing his PhD. Dyson famously worked with Bethe and Feynman (and was a good friend of Feynman) to produce his groundbreaking work linking the approaches of Schwinger, Feynman, and Tomonaga. That alone was worthy of a DSc (and a Nobel Prize, but they already had the max of three in Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga), but he just couldn't be bothered; in fact, he was not even a fan of the system. It is rumoured Feynman was secretly jealous because he wanted to say - hey buddy even I know that, and I do not have a PhD. When Dyson was lecturing on his work, Feynman knew all about it. He sat at the back of the lecture and kept all those nearby in stitches with jokes. In the end, he said - you're in Doc - meaning, of course, for him, a PhD was irrelevant. A dissertation is important as it is an actual published work that must be formally defended, but the real value of a PhD is the mentoring you get on doing research. This can be got in many ways, as my Operations Research professor and Dyson can attest to.
Thanks
Bill
ohwilleke said:At the time, high school graduates were as rare as college graduates today, college graduates were as rare as people with graduate degrees are today, and people with graduate degrees were proportionately more rare.
Who gets Nobel has always been a highly political decision. Many people only got the prize after the fall of the iron wall, like Ginzburg and Abrikovov. For scientists in the SU, it was usually not possible to publish in western journals.Vanadium 50 said:Remarkably?
The Soviet Union produced perhaps a half-dozen Nobel prizes then and after. The US alone produced around 100 in that period. The entire USSR was comparable to maybe Canada.