PhD by publication unfair slippery slope? - (Aug/04/2014 )

science noob on Tue Aug 5 06:10:43 2014 said:

That's exactly my point. Before the introduction of "PhD by publication", students have been compiling their thought process in the form of a thesis.  And now, they can just jumble up bits and pieces of their contribution (e.g. a particular technique/expertise) in another person's work to get their PhD "by publication".  

 

Hence leading to the 'slippery slope' of supervisors including everyone in the lab on their papers without substantial work, new generation students thinking it's easier to obtain a PhD and the publish/perish cycle.  This would inevitably lead to more fraudulent data, retractions and deviations from doing 'good' science.  

 

And the key is that different institutions would have slacker rules than others, hence producing "low quality" graduates.  

Some institutions require >3 first author papers which makes up the three chapters (similar to that in a traditional thesis) but others require 1 first author and a "few more" 2nd author ones.  

 

This leads me to my next discussion regarding PhD quality.  How would a PI select which PhD they would employ for a post-doc position? What makes PhD #1 stand out from PhD #2? Number of papers? Lab techniques? Expertise?

Well many of them just look at the number of papers and thats it!

Its even or scholarships like that: they just count the number of publications and often thats it...

But in general: the value of a PhD is not so big anymore.. there are too many people getting one.. and many of them without added value. A PhD (in my opinion) is for when you want to do research. 

Now people get a PhD just to teach, to get certain positions (that often do not even require a PhD). I see people graduating with a PhD that know pretty much nothing..

I know PhD students here that teach their master students crappy stuff... Its often horrible. Many of them are not even willing to listen to advice or looking stuff up, they just hear something, think its always correct or look it up (badly) and never check it... stuff like that.

I know PhD students that are not even able to make dilutions and stuff like that.

Yes, and they keep walking across my (and mdfenko's) lawn.

;-)