You have to write a big paper for your PhD. Then experts in the field at your university try to pick it apart and find any errors with it. Did you consider this? Did you consider that? Did you replicate these results? Stuff like that. When you defend your PhD, you go into a room and they ask you all those questions and see if you have a good answer to them all. Or something like that idk
To be fair, usually PhDs finish a paper prior to getting their degree and thus have already gone through peer review at some point. Peer review is anonymous for the most part, and thus can be extremely blunt and painful for people to read. It's much harder than the formality of defending ones thesis.
I’ve actually known a few people who got their PhD after their first publish. There’s a handful of requirements to get a PhD and getting a published work out is one of the harder prerequisites.
Depends on the field and how focused their research is. People can have anywhere from one (eg. a book in the humanities) to twenty publications (more common in the sciences, tho more than ten is lot) by the time they defend.
Nah nah get out of here with that. The most clever of word play also considers all the most feasible options and still arrives at a satisfiable conclusion. This is just someone making a word play on “defense/defend” without considering the rest of the plot. Might as well have made the same joke about sports teams or something. Nothing special here
That doesn't make sense. Sports chants include both defense and offense, not just defense like with academics.
It's not a particularly good joke. It's okay. But still a joke.
But it was just explained how that would be PhD hopefuls not PhDs which makes it semantically incoherent. It’s not word play if it doesn’t fit within both norms.
A PhD doesn’t defend their thesis, a PhD hopeful does.
Offense has nothing to do with it since the “joke” was subverting the expectation of defense, or rather that the best offense is a good defense. So someone actually on offense doesn’t factor into that.
It's informal speech. The complete term would be a PhD hopeful or a PhD student. But the person shortened it to PhD because jokes are supposed to be informal. It's incorrect grammar but that's how informal speech works.
Or are you so stupid you didn't even know that?
Seriously, sometimes the dumbest people are the ones with the most confidence to argue.
No, it works. Colloquially, if you’re a PhD hopeful (or a doctoral candidate in official terms), you’re a PhD student, or PhD for short (at least within the lab, this is how you differentiate between the PhD students and masters students). Once you defended, just skip the PhD, just call them doctor. You ever seen a university professor specify the PhD verbally?
not quite, the joke here works at all becouse "PhD defence" is a commonly used term, while "PhD attack" is not. In sports offence and defence are both commonly talked about
Well, I think we know someone who hasn't defended a PhD.
As someone who's spent their life in academia, 'the defence' is a very common colloquial term associated with doing PhD work. I think the joke is pretty clever because it's a play on that.
You're the one being an unnecessary pedant.
Couldn't you make the argument that it is indeed PhDs who are attacking, in this case attacking the hopefuls? The professors asking the questions (attacking) usually have PhDs.
Jokes on you, I threw the pointer at someone. I threw the computer at someone. I threw the lectern at someone. No one got a question in without having to dodge something themselves.
Not necessarily, PhD’s typically conduct more research even after the degree is conferred. That’s the peer review process experts have to go through literally every time they want to publish research.
This the main reason “peer reviewed” is pretty much a requirement to know FOR SURE that information is accurate. Without that step someone could just write down whatever they wanted and then say it’s true cuz it’s written down.
Defending as a doctoral candidate is so stressful that my alcohol use got pretty problematic leading up to it. The stress starts way back at the IRB process several semesters earlier and continues to get worse. Really glad I don’t have to repeat it. What was my doctoral research about? Identifying symptoms of Alcohol Withdrawal.
PhD research topics are so often personal. Sciences or humanities.
Though did you hear about the autistic girl who was applying to a program researching reasonable adjustments for autistic people? She asked for reasonable adjustments for her interview and they were declined and just cut her off.
I instituted formal training in a hospital setting to properly use the CIWA scale, as this is very poorly applied by nurses. Before training scores varied wildly and after they were more uniform. I basically showed that nurses should receive formal training on use of CIWA much like they do with use of the NIH stroke scale.
Ahh that's awesome. I'm only working on my thesis now so I don't have too much knowledge of how things differ with dissertations but it's always cool to see practical application of the work done. It can be difficult to find something useful like what you did.
Extremely difficult. Everyone is looking for an angle to bring something new but also don’t want to get stuck in IRB hell or a project that could take years and years to complete.
> The stress starts way back at the IRB process
That may be when your stress starts, but the drinking starts when you get acculturated into the program of people who are already dealing with their stress by drinking.
I only had one person who seemed determined to make the whole process miserable. Luckily it wasn’t my chair or anyone on my committee. Just a random professor in the department that took joy in gatekeeping the professional against the unwashed. I’m sure she’s spends her leisure time running her neighborhood HOA or pulling the legs off of spiders. Everyone else asked valid questions and made keen observations. I had sent my dissertation and PowerPoint to anyone I thought my come to my defense so no surprises if they cared to read it. It is a really good feeling when you finish and they confer and your chair says, “congratulations Dr. u/starwestsky.”
Yep that’s pretty much it. I’ve only defended a Master’s but I imagine it’s (largely) the same for a PhD. A lengthy presentation followed by lots of questions from experts and non experts. Concepts, experiments that you did, experiments that you didn’t do, what do you think would happen if you tested ___? And so on
You fail to get a phD
Keep going. Fix what you can't defend, till you no longer have to defend. Then, you finally get phD and can go on the offense against others trying to defend their research.
Usually you work closely with your professor already before and he knows your progress. He will tell you usually already before if he will let you pass or not. If not then you continue writing.
This is correct, but it also speaks to the scientific method as a whole. When publishing you never say "we found x result to be true", instead it's "we did not disprove y". Science is fundamentally about defending your results, not saying what is true.
Yes, and you could have done your study/homework properly and while they attack, you defend and counterattack quoting their stuff, eh? Eh? 3h? What ‘bout dat pedro?
When you go for your PHD you spend the whole process working on a long paper, called your thesis, and then you have to go in front of professors and defend your thesis. It's a recurring part of successfully achieving a PHD
In the US a thesis is usually technically for baccalaureate or Masters, while dissertation is for Doctorate.
People in the process still tend to use them interchangeably so just being pedantic.
My bachelor’s program required a thesis, my 3 roommates’ majors didn’t. They had a much quieter final term than I did. It’s very school and major dependent.
Have a BS and an MS. Never wrote a thesis paper as a specific condition of graduating. Had to write plenty of research papers and do large projects for individual classes though.
It's interesting that different countries have different requirements. In the UK pretty much every bachelors degree requires a dissertation (thesis) of about 10,000 words, and you often have to present it to a group of professors who then ask questions. I had to do a presentation, but friends on other courses didn't. Masters degrees also generally require a longer dissertation (mine was 20,000 words).
Maybe not for a Bachelelor but for a Bachelor you might ;)
Jokes aside, it seems to depend on country and / or university. I did my B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. in Germany. I wrote a thesis for all of them and always needed to defend it.
My surgeon accidentally amputated my left leg while trying to treat an MCL injury. He was really beating himself up about it, so I told him, hey, it's called medical practice, not medical perfect. We laughed and laughed. Then he went for the other leg.
Sometimes. I know of a friend that had some advanced project (don't remember topic, something about energy gathering) that he executed so good, professors didn't even ask a single question.
Or at least so he says
I forget who, but a philosopher proved life had value, not by trying to defend the claim but by absolutely demolishing every counterpoint he could think of.
A lot of people forget about [the snake fight portion of your thesis defense](https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-the-snake-fight-portion-of-your-thesis-defense).
The culminating part of getting your PhD is defending your dissertation (aka thesis paper the size of a novel).
That’s it. If we want to make it deeper (which it probably isn’t)…
Defending your thesis basically means answering a bunch of questions posed by a committee. Instead of defending your position, you start attacking them. This, of course, is modern debate (especially in politics).
It’s really strange to see a tweet from Viechtbauer here.
He also does regular “teaching R” streams on twitch.
So if you want to learn R (mostly the statistics) give him a follow!
I just imagine gangs of post grad students roaming the halls demanding people read their latest work. If the work is found to be acceptable they take the rank of PHD by force, relegating the formerly tenured professor to the student body once more to continue the bloody cycle all over again.
It’s been answered but I took this a different way, a common insult I’ve heard from people towards the educated is “Oh, little snowflake over here has a PhD? How’d that do against my shotgun” so this one meaning like “Let’s finally stop playing nice and play by the other side’s rules too” kind of a thing
All right. There is a lot of misinformation in the comment section. PhD hopefuls defend their “dissertation” in front of a panel of professors. During my dissertation defense, I had a panel of five professors but they invited four other professors and all doctorate grad students to sit in. Needless to say, I had to answer a barrage of questions. And yes, I got my degree.
I think its saying how a lot of misinformation being fought by people who are experts in their field but as a reactionary defense. So i think its implying experts should be more aggressive at propagating good information.
That's a nice idea but unfortunately completely wrong. It's not that complicated. If you want to get a PhD, you have to make a Thesis and defend it in front of experts. That's the joke. Instead of "defending" your thesis the tweet writer suggests to attack instead. (Because attack is the best defense. Ha ha)
You have to write a big paper for your PhD. Then experts in the field at your university try to pick it apart and find any errors with it. Did you consider this? Did you consider that? Did you replicate these results? Stuff like that. When you defend your PhD, you go into a room and they ask you all those questions and see if you have a good answer to them all. Or something like that idk
I agree with your interpretation, but this means the tweeter is incorrect. PhDs aren't the ones defending, PhD hopefuls are.
This is the correct answer.
To be fair, if PhDs stay in academia they continue to “defend” their findings - but it’s typically called “peer review “ by then
To be fair, usually PhDs finish a paper prior to getting their degree and thus have already gone through peer review at some point. Peer review is anonymous for the most part, and thus can be extremely blunt and painful for people to read. It's much harder than the formality of defending ones thesis.
I’ve actually known a few people who got their PhD after their first publish. There’s a handful of requirements to get a PhD and getting a published work out is one of the harder prerequisites.
Depends on the field and how focused their research is. People can have anywhere from one (eg. a book in the humanities) to twenty publications (more common in the sciences, tho more than ten is lot) by the time they defend.
I had a good dozen pubs before defending my PhD.
PhDs publish, defend, and serve as reviewers without any Academia association.
I would like to point out that the peers are also PhDs, and therefore there are PhDs attacking.
Right, but they’re typically called “PhD candidates.”
It's a joke, it's not supposed to be correct, lol. This is basically just wordplay.
Nah nah get out of here with that. The most clever of word play also considers all the most feasible options and still arrives at a satisfiable conclusion. This is just someone making a word play on “defense/defend” without considering the rest of the plot. Might as well have made the same joke about sports teams or something. Nothing special here
That doesn't make sense. Sports chants include both defense and offense, not just defense like with academics. It's not a particularly good joke. It's okay. But still a joke.
But it was just explained how that would be PhD hopefuls not PhDs which makes it semantically incoherent. It’s not word play if it doesn’t fit within both norms. A PhD doesn’t defend their thesis, a PhD hopeful does. Offense has nothing to do with it since the “joke” was subverting the expectation of defense, or rather that the best offense is a good defense. So someone actually on offense doesn’t factor into that.
It's informal speech. The complete term would be a PhD hopeful or a PhD student. But the person shortened it to PhD because jokes are supposed to be informal. It's incorrect grammar but that's how informal speech works. Or are you so stupid you didn't even know that? Seriously, sometimes the dumbest people are the ones with the most confidence to argue.
Oh turning to insults now? Cool have a good one
It's not an insult if it's true. In this case it's just an adjective.
Way to “ackshually” , bud!
You can replace the PHDs with grad students or PhD candidates, and it doesn't impact the punchline or wordplay at all.
No, it works. Colloquially, if you’re a PhD hopeful (or a doctoral candidate in official terms), you’re a PhD student, or PhD for short (at least within the lab, this is how you differentiate between the PhD students and masters students). Once you defended, just skip the PhD, just call them doctor. You ever seen a university professor specify the PhD verbally?
not quite, the joke here works at all becouse "PhD defence" is a commonly used term, while "PhD attack" is not. In sports offence and defence are both commonly talked about
Well, I think we know someone who hasn't defended a PhD. As someone who's spent their life in academia, 'the defence' is a very common colloquial term associated with doing PhD work. I think the joke is pretty clever because it's a play on that. You're the one being an unnecessary pedant.
What do you mean it's not supposed to be correct? Are you laughing at incorrect jokes?
Couldn't you make the argument that it is indeed PhDs who are attacking, in this case attacking the hopefuls? The professors asking the questions (attacking) usually have PhDs.
Are you prepared to defend that position?
In fact, it’s the PHDs who are attacking the hopefuls.
Well if someone is a PhD it means that he had successfully defended.
Seems he hadn’t considered that.
Yep, the term is Ph.D. candidates.
In fact, the board of people opposite the PhD candidate who is doing the defending are in fact PhD holders who are in fact doing the attacking.
Exactly, PhD holders ARE attacking potential PhD candidates.
So OP was wrong, PhDs are already on the attack, it's wannabee PhDs who defend.
So the PhDs are actually the ones attacking.
Jokes on you, I threw the pointer at someone. I threw the computer at someone. I threw the lectern at someone. No one got a question in without having to dodge something themselves.
Not necessarily, PhD’s typically conduct more research even after the degree is conferred. That’s the peer review process experts have to go through literally every time they want to publish research. This the main reason “peer reviewed” is pretty much a requirement to know FOR SURE that information is accurate. Without that step someone could just write down whatever they wanted and then say it’s true cuz it’s written down.
The PrehD’s
Defending as a doctoral candidate is so stressful that my alcohol use got pretty problematic leading up to it. The stress starts way back at the IRB process several semesters earlier and continues to get worse. Really glad I don’t have to repeat it. What was my doctoral research about? Identifying symptoms of Alcohol Withdrawal.
PhD research topics are so often personal. Sciences or humanities. Though did you hear about the autistic girl who was applying to a program researching reasonable adjustments for autistic people? She asked for reasonable adjustments for her interview and they were declined and just cut her off.
Sometimes the jokes write themselves
I thought alcohol withdrawal has been thoroughly researched already. What did you add to it?
I instituted formal training in a hospital setting to properly use the CIWA scale, as this is very poorly applied by nurses. Before training scores varied wildly and after they were more uniform. I basically showed that nurses should receive formal training on use of CIWA much like they do with use of the NIH stroke scale.
Ahh that's awesome. I'm only working on my thesis now so I don't have too much knowledge of how things differ with dissertations but it's always cool to see practical application of the work done. It can be difficult to find something useful like what you did.
Extremely difficult. Everyone is looking for an angle to bring something new but also don’t want to get stuck in IRB hell or a project that could take years and years to complete.
> The stress starts way back at the IRB process That may be when your stress starts, but the drinking starts when you get acculturated into the program of people who are already dealing with their stress by drinking.
I suppose that’s true. At least in my case it is.
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I only had one person who seemed determined to make the whole process miserable. Luckily it wasn’t my chair or anyone on my committee. Just a random professor in the department that took joy in gatekeeping the professional against the unwashed. I’m sure she’s spends her leisure time running her neighborhood HOA or pulling the legs off of spiders. Everyone else asked valid questions and made keen observations. I had sent my dissertation and PowerPoint to anyone I thought my come to my defense so no surprises if they cared to read it. It is a really good feeling when you finish and they confer and your chair says, “congratulations Dr. u/starwestsky.”
[Relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/1403/)
Yep that’s pretty much it. I’ve only defended a Master’s but I imagine it’s (largely) the same for a PhD. A lengthy presentation followed by lots of questions from experts and non experts. Concepts, experiments that you did, experiments that you didn’t do, what do you think would happen if you tested ___? And so on
What happens if you fail to defend it? Do you loose your degree and get discredited?
You fail to get a phD Keep going. Fix what you can't defend, till you no longer have to defend. Then, you finally get phD and can go on the offense against others trying to defend their research.
Pretty sure this rarely happens. Almost everyone gets revisions to make. My guess is unless you are criminally bad, there would be a path forward
But what if you have to defend it and realise your paper is full of flaws? Do you just revisions and change it?
Usually you work closely with your professor already before and he knows your progress. He will tell you usually already before if he will let you pass or not. If not then you continue writing.
This is correct, but it also speaks to the scientific method as a whole. When publishing you never say "we found x result to be true", instead it's "we did not disprove y". Science is fundamentally about defending your results, not saying what is true.
Or in my husband’s case they sleep through most part of it (well, one did)
[Here](https://youtu.be/Lrlro3YJ15o?si=JKxeikC3ScGkwGEy) is a 100% accurate summary of the PhD defense process.
Yes, and you could have done your study/homework properly and while they attack, you defend and counterattack quoting their stuff, eh? Eh? 3h? What ‘bout dat pedro?
We certainly do attack: https://xkcd.com/1403/
I used this slide in my defense. The board laughed.
Best joke for after aknowledgements
I wish I understood any xkcd comic ever
[Boy do I have a website for you](https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page)
Crazy how essential this is
Omg thanks
"Listen here you pompous frauds, if I'm going down, I'm taking all of you with me!" (Futurama)
Thanks. Came to post this xkcd as well xD
…and that’s why Finland gives candidates swords _after_ they successfully defend their dissertation.
When you go for your PHD you spend the whole process working on a long paper, called your thesis, and then you have to go in front of professors and defend your thesis. It's a recurring part of successfully achieving a PHD
Dissertation, not thesis.
Thesis is usually the term used in the UK, at least.
In the US a thesis is usually technically for baccalaureate or Masters, while dissertation is for Doctorate. People in the process still tend to use them interchangeably so just being pedantic.
Interesting, in the UK it's usually the other way round.
Idk where you’re from but that’s not true in the south
I should know this, seeing I resided in the UK for a while. 🤦♂️
Also called a PhD thesis in Oz
This is dependent on the country. I just defended my PhD a few days ago and all the paperwork definitely said thesis. Edit: in Canada fyi
It's called a thesis in many places.
Successfully achieving any degree
Or, you could say achieving a degree of success. Badump- ta!
No this isn't true
Well, you gotta present a thesis for your Bachelor, don't you?
Nope, sometimes BA degrees require a thesis but not always. I don't think BS degrees ever do.
Depends on the University.
You don't have to defend it like a PHD thesis.
Had to defend my bachelor's and master's thesis. Def school/country dependent.
My bachelor’s program required a thesis, my 3 roommates’ majors didn’t. They had a much quieter final term than I did. It’s very school and major dependent.
Have a BS and an MS. Never wrote a thesis paper as a specific condition of graduating. Had to write plenty of research papers and do large projects for individual classes though.
I had Bachelor and I had to write a thesis and present it as final stage to graduate
It's interesting that different countries have different requirements. In the UK pretty much every bachelors degree requires a dissertation (thesis) of about 10,000 words, and you often have to present it to a group of professors who then ask questions. I had to do a presentation, but friends on other courses didn't. Masters degrees also generally require a longer dissertation (mine was 20,000 words).
I don't recall needing to defend a thesis against a board of interlocutors to get my Bachelelor of Science degree.
Maybe not for a Bachelelor but for a Bachelor you might ;) Jokes aside, it seems to depend on country and / or university. I did my B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. in Germany. I wrote a thesis for all of them and always needed to defend it.
Along with this, could those lawyers and doctors stop practicing and get to actually performing?
My surgeon accidentally amputated my left leg while trying to treat an MCL injury. He was really beating himself up about it, so I told him, hey, it's called medical practice, not medical perfect. We laughed and laughed. Then he went for the other leg.
Underrated comment.
To get PhD you need to *defend* your thesis. In front of a bunch of professors.
I wonder if sometimes there's a thesis so good that you don't even need to defend it
Supposedly, when Paul Samuelson defended his thesis, Prof. Schumpeter turned to Professor Leontiff and said “Well, Wassily, did we pass?”.
Sometimes. I know of a friend that had some advanced project (don't remember topic, something about energy gathering) that he executed so good, professors didn't even ask a single question. Or at least so he says
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Yes, the subreddit you are currently on is meant to explain jokes or provide context to whatever it is they need help with.
Because it's Physical Defense, you can attack when you get PhA's, Physical Attacks.
Why is the real answer so far down?
When you finishing your PhD you write a paper and then you need to "defend" your work actually got your PhD
It took me about five seconds then I laughed, although it doesn't really work internally. It's the PhD candidates who defend.
I forget who, but a philosopher proved life had value, not by trying to defend the claim but by absolutely demolishing every counterpoint he could think of.
Just run, they’re way out of shape putting together their theses.
A lot of people forget about [the snake fight portion of your thesis defense](https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-the-snake-fight-portion-of-your-thesis-defense).
I love the Studio C sketch about this, on thesis defence
Based on the general consensus, I was way off base. I thought this had to do with video/board games using PhD as a shorthand for "Physical Defense".
Oh you're in for a treat. Once you've read the explanations posted in the comments, check out this xkcd comic. https://xkcd.com/1403/
Often a good PhD defense is an attack on some establishment position.
The culminating part of getting your PhD is defending your dissertation (aka thesis paper the size of a novel). That’s it. If we want to make it deeper (which it probably isn’t)… Defending your thesis basically means answering a bunch of questions posed by a committee. Instead of defending your position, you start attacking them. This, of course, is modern debate (especially in politics).
It’s really strange to see a tweet from Viechtbauer here. He also does regular “teaching R” streams on twitch. So if you want to learn R (mostly the statistics) give him a follow!
Exactly 🤔
It’s a ballroom blitz!
Don't you attack any time you propose a thesis... Or write pretty much any essay?... Isn't that the basics of writing?
Wtf why so many upvotes
PhD stands for Physical Defense
Thats why we give them the sword *after* they become doctors.
I just imagine gangs of post grad students roaming the halls demanding people read their latest work. If the work is found to be acceptable they take the rank of PHD by force, relegating the formerly tenured professor to the student body once more to continue the bloody cycle all over again.
PhD also stands for (Ph)ysical (D)efence
I believe that was the Manhattan Project
It’s been answered but I took this a different way, a common insult I’ve heard from people towards the educated is “Oh, little snowflake over here has a PhD? How’d that do against my shotgun” so this one meaning like “Let’s finally stop playing nice and play by the other side’s rules too” kind of a thing
Then who is going to validate all of those hours they wasted, I meant spent, becoming a Post hole Digger?
What?
All right. There is a lot of misinformation in the comment section. PhD hopefuls defend their “dissertation” in front of a panel of professors. During my dissertation defense, I had a panel of five professors but they invited four other professors and all doctorate grad students to sit in. Needless to say, I had to answer a barrage of questions. And yes, I got my degree.
Everything changed when the PhD students fought back.
Attack with what? Your soy latte and 3 hole punch?
I think its saying how a lot of misinformation being fought by people who are experts in their field but as a reactionary defense. So i think its implying experts should be more aggressive at propagating good information.
That's a nice idea but unfortunately completely wrong. It's not that complicated. If you want to get a PhD, you have to make a Thesis and defend it in front of experts. That's the joke. Instead of "defending" your thesis the tweet writer suggests to attack instead. (Because attack is the best defense. Ha ha)