Confederacy of a Dunce - science

dunce, PhD

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:58:34 GMT

Well, it's finally finished. I am now officially dunce, PhD.

By "finished", I mean that today I submitted the final, approved copy of my PhD thesis (in the UK, "dissertation" usually refers to undergraduate projects, and "thesis" to PhDs. Makes things confusing since "dissertation" is reserved for PhDs in the US), and my degree has been officially registered as complete by my institution.

It was interesting to see how things are done here, vs. some of my peers who completed and defended elsewhere. In particular, the PhD examination is very different. Most of the people I know defended their PhD before a panel of 4-6 experts. In some cases there is also a formal presentation before a public audience (typically a formality as the real deal is already done behind closed doors). Here, the defense (or as they call it here, viva voce, customarily abbreviated to "viva" except in formal documents) is conducted by only two people: an internal examiner (someone from my institution), and an external examiner. The viva is held behind closed doors and no one else is permitted to be present.

As the day of my viva approached I became more and more worried about it, despite the fact that I was very well prepared for it. After all, I have been working on this stuff for years and years (vs the typical UK 3-year PhD), have presented a lot of it at conferences, and written up parts of it for various papers. So I'm used to defending it as part of the review process, and have also become used to thinking about the research in terms of narrative (how best to tell the story of how it all fits together). I am also quite familiar with the research topics of my two examiners, and tried to anticipate the critical angles they might take (one of my examiners is an expert in bilingualism and cognition; the other in language development and cognitive neuroscience). Nonetheless I worked myself into quite a state - by the day of the viva I was a very pale and nervous imitation of myself.

But actually, the viva was a very pleasant process. My internal examiner started by telling me that they found my thesis very interesting and of high quality, and that I should expect all sorts of difficult and probing questions, but this is the way a viva is meant to be. He then explained the exact sequence of events. First, how I came to the research questions included in the thesis. Second, the most important aspects of the thesis, in my eyes, and the most important aims. Third, walking through the thesis in detail, chapter by chapter, addressing specific concerns. And last, broader issues, problems, and the general question of where we go from here. I should try and elaborate rather than answering briefly (um, perhaps they should not have made this suggestion). So I just started going from the beginning.

The story of how the thesis came to be is a rather convoluted one, as (like a lot of PhD research) it started with an entirely different purpose and gradually morphed into a very different animal. So it took me a while to tell that particular tale, mentioning some of the further tangents along the way. I was more concise when it came to explaining the main aims and questions of the thesis, and then we turned to the examiners' specific questions. After the first three or four (maybe a dozen pages into the introduction), they suggested that I not elaborate on every single question, or we'd never finish the viva. So instead of answering each question, and then justifying my answers, I just answered the questions. It was not hardball at all, mainly clarifications and the like. By the time we got to the end, the "big questions" were a bit of an anticlimax. I felt like I stumbled on a couple of them (at least as I started to answer), but they didn't notice. All in all, this took about three hours. At the end, they decided that my thesis was accepted without changes.

Actually there were a few little bits of touch-up I had to do, mainly dropping in a couple of footnotes to address minor theoretical points, and providing more statistical details in some cases where I'd glossed over them. This latter part actually turned out to be a lot more work than I wanted to do at this stage, but I managed to get it done just in time for verification and approval (it is the internal examiner's responsiblity to ensure that the final version is, indeed, acceptable).

Once this was done, I had to get the thesis printed and bound according to university regulations. After quite a lot of fiddling about (font selection, working to make sure the layout and design of my figures and tables were acceptable, double-checking and triple-checking), I created the final PDF and emailed it off to our local binder (Collis, Bird & Withey, N5. I was very happy with their service & would enthusiastically recommend it to others). And today I went to hand it in. Many of my colleagues remember this step fondly; many institutions have a "Thesis Person" (usually Thesis Lady) who checks the printed thesis with an extremely close eye for details (caliper measurements of margins, page overlay templates, measuring individual characters, and so on), and who is very likely to reject it on the basis of some tiny detail. Here, instead, there appears to be no such person. UCL does have a funny kind of format (European style: text running up the spine, so the spine lettering is upside down compared to my other [English] books on the shelf when the thesis is right side up) but a fairly limited set of requirements. So then it was just a matter of collecting the bound copies when they were ready, filling out a few forms, and delivering the thesis (plus a PDF on CD-ROM in an envelope pasted in the back cover) to Student Records.

And that's what I did today. No eagle-eyed Thesis Person inspecting the margins and other details, just a quick check that all the forms were completed, and now I have a form confirming that I have submitted the final copies of my thesis. I suppose there may be a Thesis Person behind the scenes who will complain about my font selection, and make me do the whole thing over again from scratch. But I like to think there is not. I have been told I will receive a confirmation letter in the next week or two.

And then all that is left is the graduation in September; apparently I am now a graduand (a term that is new to me. OED: "One about to be graduated or to receive a university degree".). A handy term to fill in the gap between completion and the official ceremony, but it leaves me wondering when exactly I actually earn the right to call myself PhD. Upon confirmation that I am on the "pass list"? Or does the actual moment only occur at that moment I go through graduation? Surely not the latter - attending graduation ceremony is optional. In which case there is little use for the term "graduand" save in referring to anticipation of the Graduation Ceremony Experience itself.

Speaking of which, I can hardly finish without referring to the graduation costume. Here are the details of the regulations concerning my graduation outfit (I will save photos for Saptember):

Hood: Of the slim shape (no, I don't know what this means) in silver grey cloth fully lined with red silk.

Gown: Of the same shape as that worn by Cambridge Doctors (I assume this means that we are the same shapes underneath as well!) in silver grey cloth with facings of red and sleeve linings of grey, a red cord and button on sleeves.

Cap: A round cap of black velvet with silver grey cord and tassels.

Doesn't that sound pretty?

Milestone!

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:28:29 GMT

It's been very quiet here, because I've actually been working. And today....

I submitted my PhD thesis!!!!

Now it will sit around for a while before going to my examiners.
Then at some future date (probably a couple or few months) I'll have my viva (oral exam).
After that I will (presumably) have to make some revisions and then submit the final version for approval.

But for now I am done working on it!
Done!

now everything else can resume.
Anyone for tennis?

one step closer

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:33:59 GMT

The Dunce is now one small step closer to getting that long-awaited PhD.

Those who have been asking me questions related to the topic should be quite pleased, perhaps others are surprised that I don't already have one. After all, I've gone about things all backwards, getting a couple of postdocs and a fistful of publications first, and only slowly and gradually getting the PhD itself. Today I completed the "upgrade", a brief (15min) research presentation and interview about it, which is this institution's requirement for admission to PhD candidacy (or whatever they call it here). I was horrendously stressed about this upgrade interview. This stress was quite irrational, because I was incredibly well prepared for it (after all, I've been defending various aspects of this work for quite a few years now), and I was very aware there was no need for stress (my supervisors and all of my colleagues reassured me of that). And indeed, it went quite fine; the only critical comments were as minor as minor can be.

This means I can now write up my thesis and submit it at some future date. Or that's what it would mean, were I following the procedure correctly. But in fact I have already written it. One of my supervisors has already read through an entire first draft, and I've revised it based on her comments. So really what I need to do is lean on my other supervisor for comments, then revise and submit it as soon as possible. How soon is that? Well, once news of my successful upgrade percolates through my institution, and my status is officially updated (we're probably talking January/February given the glacial pace of this sort of thing combined with the holiday season), it will be necessary to submit a letter requesting a waiver of the standard minimum registration period before thesis submission is permitted. This is because I've been registered as a part-time student only for two years now (although I've been a full-time researcher here for 7 years), and such students are meant to submit after a minimum three years. My supervisor has already spoken to the relevant person, and it appears that my situation may permit this period to be waived.

If a waiver is granted, we will petition for me to submit (literally) as soon as possible from that moment (by which time I should have the next revision completed). The exact submission date is unclear, but the gap between submission and defense is something like four months. That all is to say that if all goes well, it looks like I'll finish before the end of 2008.

If a waiver is not granted, I will have to wait to submit until January 2009, defending etc. as soon as possible thereafter. But this looks unlikely.

Recall and concentration

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 16:26:14 GMT

The following email was forwarded to me (and many of my colleagues), concerning a potential partnership between academia and big business. Somehow I don't see it happening, for any number of reasons. (The name of the well-known company and its main product have been obscured in the vain hope that hired goons won't show up at my door).

"In 2002 a research paper was released which indicated that [a junk food product] may help improve recall and concentration and [LargeCompany] are interested in revisiting this research to see if it's true.

I work for [LargeCompany] and we're in the process of organising a project and wondered if your department might like to be involved. The concept is a consumer-friendly short campaign that is built around 'Boosting Britain's Brain Power'. To underpin the campaign we'd like a refresh of the initial research which indicated that [aforementioned junk food] might help improve recall and concentration - is this something your department might be interested in getting involved with? We'd also be looking for someone to act as a professional spokesperson for a few media interviews to discuss the research which would help further raise the profile of your department.

Spinning out from this research, we will then look to further prove the findings by approaching failing pub quiz teams across the UK and equipping them with [junk food product] over a period of time to explore if it improves their performance. We're hoping for some guidance on a simple test that could be performed before testing begins and then after testing is completed.

The key though is a refresh of the initial research. I'd be happy to discuss this further with you, and would value an indication of your interest as soon as possible. We're hoping to go live with this campaign by the end of August so we need to move relatively quickly."

Stirring the brain

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 13:33:13 GMT

It's been a very busy week; I'm in the midst of preparing an extensive application to obtain ethical approval for several years' future experiments in language processing and cognitive neuroscience. I don't write much at all about specific things I'm doing at work, mainly because my work-related writing is channeled toward more practical ends like publications, applications and a minor project known colloquially as a Ph.D. thesis.

But when it comes to messing around with people's brains, how could I not write about it? I'm talking, of course, about Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS). TMS is a way of directly affecting the brain by using directed magnetic devices on the surface of the head, in order to induce electrical currents in fairly precisely-identified areas of the brain (at least on areas near the surface). The main concern is safety: the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology reports safety considerations (most importantly, avoiding TMS if you have metal in your head, sensitive implanted electronic devices, epilepsy, heart disease, etc.). Anyway, TMS has generally been used for two main purposes. First, as a treatment for depression (see this psycom.net link for more details), essentially as a safer, less invasive and generally nicer version of electroconvulsive therapy. I know little about this research, but there is a lot of interest in this application, although to date the US FDA has not approved TMS devices for use in therapeutic settings (some have been approved by similar bodies in Canada and Israel).

The area I'm involved in, instead, focuses on trying to gain a better understanding of brain function by assessing the effects of TMS upon a specific part of the brain. The logic here is fairly simple: if a particular part of the brain is involved in processing information of a certain kind, TMS to that area will affect tasks that involve that kind of information. For example (a fake example using entirely invented areas and ideas, but which is very much an analog to the real studies we are considering), suppose that we are testing a hypothesis that the Ultramarine area of the brain is responsible for performing mathematical operations of addition and subtraction. A TMS experiment might then test participants' ability to add and subtract under different stimulation conditions: No stimulation at all (to get an idea of each participant's different abilities), stimulation to the Ultramarine area, and stimulation to the Periwinkle area (which is not believed to be involved in adding and subtracting). If the Ultramarine area is indeed involved in adding and subtracting, we would expect to see differences when comparing performance between the Ultramarine and Periwinkle stimulation conditions. Such differences are not enough to allow conclusions that indeed, the Ultramarine area is involved in addition and subtraction (for example, it could be involved in all mathematical operations, or in combinatorial processes of all sorts, or in visual recognition processes, or "cognition", or numerous other things the brain can do). In order to make conclusions like that, it's also necessary to conduct similar experiments using different tasks (for example, multiplication and division, for which differences would not be observed if the Ultramarine area is only doing addition and subtraction). This is especially important (and difficult) since many areas of the brain seem to subserve multiple functions, and it's extremely hard to isolate specific functions. Think of everything that is involved in doing a simple addition problem like 2+2. Seeing the image of "2+2", distinguishing the individual numbers and symbols as distinct entities, identifying the referent of each (i.e. "+" means to add), retrieving or calculating the answer (however that is done!), and all the steps involved in producing the answer (let me assure you, there are many). In short, it's a hard problem that requires many, many steps.

Yesterday for the first time, I participated in a TMS experiment. Unfortunately, it didn't go so well, despite all my knowledge about the relative safety of TMS, and also my knowledge that the particular area being stimulated (visual area V1) is not typically a painful or unpleasant site (other sites can have uncomfortable consequences, such as an icky twitch of the facial muscles each time a magnetic pulse occurs). I blame it on the fact that I am a delicate flower of a man. It was a rather strange sensation, somewhat like someone tapping on the back of my head. But I managed to work myself into a sort of state (quite similar to my reaction to blood tests or other medical situations): by about trial number 10 (of 150+) I was shaking, sweating profusely, light-headed and nauseated, and I had to call a stop to it. I'm afraid I'll have to wear my tinfoil hat into the TMS lab in the future.