How to write and publish a scientific paper - Barbara Gastel, Robert A. Day 2022

Purpose of the thesis
How to write a thesis
Other topics in scientific communication

The average PhD thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one graveyard to another.

—J. Frank Dobie

Purpose of the thesis

A PhD thesis in the sciences presents the candidate’s original research. Its purpose is to prove that the candidate can do and communicate such research. Therefore, a thesis should exhibit the same type of disciplined writing that is required in a journal publication. Unlike a scientific paper, a thesis may address more than one topic, and it may present more than one approach to some topics. The thesis may present all or most of the data obtained in the student’s thesis-related research. Therefore, the thesis usually is longer and more involved than a scientific paper. But the concept that a thesis must be a bulky, 200-page tome is wrong—dead wrong. Many 200-page theses contain only 50 pages of good science. The other 150 pages comprise turgid descriptions of insignificant details.

We have seen many PhD theses, and we have assisted with the writing and organization of a good number of them. On the basis of this experience, we have concluded that there are almost no generally accepted rules for thesis preparation. Most types of scientific writing are highly structured. Thesis writing is not. The “right” way to write a thesis varies widely from institution to institution, and even from professor to professor within the same department.

Reid (1978) is one of many over the years who have suggested that the traditional thesis no longer serves a purpose. In Reid’s words, “Requirements that a candidate must produce an expansive traditional-style dissertation for a Ph.D. degree in the sciences must be abandoned.… The expansive traditional dissertation fosters the false impression that a typed record must be preserved of every table, graph, and successful or unsuccessful experimental procedure.” Indeed, in many settings, the core of a thesis now normally consists of scientific papers that the student has published.

(“Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham. www.phdcomics.com)

If a thesis serves any real purpose, that purpose might be to determine literacy. Perhaps universities have always worried about what would happen to their image if a PhD degree turned out to have been awarded to an illiterate. Hence, the thesis requirement. Stated more positively, the candidate has been through a process of maturation, discipline, and scholarship. The “ticket out” is a satisfactory thesis.

It may be useful to mention that theses at European universities have tended to be taken much more seriously. They are designed to show that the candidate has reached maturity and can both do science and write about science. Such theses may be submitted after some years of work and a number of primary publications, with the thesis itself being a “review paper” that brings it all together.

By the way, sometimes the word dissertation is used instead of thesis. For example, at some U.S. universities, one speaks of a master’s thesis, but a doctoral dissertation. Whatever term one uses, the principles are much the same for preparing the less extensive master’s-level document and the more extensive doctoral one.