>> “It felt as if I was telling him he didn’t respect me, and he essentially
said, you’re right,” he recalled.
I'm a PhD research student on my second year.
It's unfortunate to frame this in terms of respect for the student's person,
rather than his work, which is most likely what has lost the advisor's respect.
I've come to my PhD after six years in the industry. Because of this I see my
research as a work assignment: my advisor has handed me a project that I need
to see through. The success of the project is not guaranteed and it's up to me
to achieve it. As in the industry, where I earned the respect of my colleagues
by getting things done, so in academia, I can only earn the respect of my
advisor and other academics by delivering strong results and publishing in a
reputable venue. If I can do that, then noone will have any reason to not
respect "me" (actually, my work).
The important thing to understand is that your advisor's enthusiasm and
interst in your work cannot be taken for granted. And so is the enthusiasm and
interest of other researchers in your field. Unless you are delivering
genuinely interesting and exciting work, you cannot expect sustained
enthusiasm and support to continue that work.
Another thing to keep in mind about academics is that they are always on a
tight budget: of funding, attention, time, energy. If you take a piece out of
that budget you have to put something back in, or you will inevitably cause
doubt and disapointment.
It's a professional relation, studying for a PhD: you give something to be
given something, do something so that others might do something for you.
I’ve seen your posts before so I am pretty sure you’re a CS PhD student. It is important to remember that getting a PhD in CS is unusually good. There’s a lot of money, limited need for expensive equipment, good job prospects in academia, and little stigma about going into industry.
Also, it seems to me that a culture of abusive behavior and hazing has not yet set in.
None of this is true in the natural sciences, and advisors often do not treat students with even the basic dignity due to any human. This kind of thing is rare in computer science.
Also, there's enough demand in CS and engineering, that being a professor isn't necessarily seen as the top of the heap, and profs tend to be a bit more humble. A prof knows that they could walk out the door tomorrow and have a good career, and knows that the students could too.
There's also something to be said for working in a field where you can take the weekend off, and your project doesn't start to decompose.
I appreciate that there's a difference between different fields. I'm also aware that the article above is about research students in the US- I'm in a UK university.
So the natural sciences aren't universally bad. My PhD advisor in relativity was a terrific guy to work with and I saw him as a friend and mentor. The problem is that the supply of people seeking PhDs, post-docs, and tenure track jobs in the natural sciences so far outstrips the available jobs (often a hundred to one) that there is little natural pressure to suppress bad behavior. In fact, the assholes tend to thrive because it turns out that taking advantage of others can get you ahead.
The thing is...you shouldn't be able to guarantee that, and the idea that you can is the root of a lot of academia's problems.
The results of your experiment should be determined by the nature of whatever you're studying, nothing more. Sometimes, they'll be very clean with obvious, high-impact applications. Sometimes they'll be muddled with unforeseeable complications. Obviously, skill can help you turn the latter into the former, but there's a huge amount of luck involved there too.
It would be far, far better if people were judged on their ability to find and rigorously test interesting questions, rather than whatever crapshoot nature spits out.
>> It would be far, far better if people were judged on their ability to find and rigorously test interesting questions, rather than whatever crapshoot nature spits out.
"Strong results" does not mean "positive results".
For example, two seminal works in ILP are the doctoral theses of Ehud Shapiro and Gordon Plotkin, both of which found strong negative results regarding the learning of first-order logic theories from examples. I would also point out the work of Mark. E. Gold and others on inductive inference that was mostly negative regarding the ability to learn anything above finite automata from examples.
It is true that in machine learning it is considered mandatory to show, experimentally, significant improvements in performance- personally I think that's a big mistake and a severe impediment to actual progress. In any case, in my field, you need theoretical results (theorems and proofs) for your work to pass muster.
This. What kind of prospectus defense or oral exam did he have if he didn’t come up with the question? Why even have a different committee or a prospectus at all if the advisor just hands you the question?
I'm a PhD research student on my second year.
It's unfortunate to frame this in terms of respect for the student's person, rather than his work, which is most likely what has lost the advisor's respect.
I've come to my PhD after six years in the industry. Because of this I see my research as a work assignment: my advisor has handed me a project that I need to see through. The success of the project is not guaranteed and it's up to me to achieve it. As in the industry, where I earned the respect of my colleagues by getting things done, so in academia, I can only earn the respect of my advisor and other academics by delivering strong results and publishing in a reputable venue. If I can do that, then noone will have any reason to not respect "me" (actually, my work).
The important thing to understand is that your advisor's enthusiasm and interst in your work cannot be taken for granted. And so is the enthusiasm and interest of other researchers in your field. Unless you are delivering genuinely interesting and exciting work, you cannot expect sustained enthusiasm and support to continue that work.
Another thing to keep in mind about academics is that they are always on a tight budget: of funding, attention, time, energy. If you take a piece out of that budget you have to put something back in, or you will inevitably cause doubt and disapointment.
It's a professional relation, studying for a PhD: you give something to be given something, do something so that others might do something for you.