I’ll have what she’s having: hottie research envy

Do you ever suffer topic envy? I did – I still do.

From designers, writers,  animators and dancers to computer geeks, nano particle engineers and bio-scientists: there’s an incredible spread of research here at RMIT. I am forever hearing about amazing PhDs and sometimes thinking “I wish I could do THAT one!”.

So it was when I got talking to Evelyn Tsitas at a work function last year. Evelyn used to be a journalist and works at the RMIT Gallery. At the same time she is completing her PhD in Creative Writing in the Media and Communications school here at RMIT. When Evelyn told me about her topic I was so jealous I asked her if she would write a post. She wrote this wonderful piece about the perils – and pleasures – of having a ‘hot’ research topic. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

I thought I had the hottie research topic until I heard of the woman who was reading Vogue for her PhD.

Damn. Suddenly werewolves felt so – pedestrian. I need not have worried, however, judging from the response I got when I showcased my research at two  Animal Studies conferences last year.

As I got in the lift to head down to another room for a session after my own presentation, a senior academic got in with me. Her paper had inspired awe in me and I hung around her during the break, stuffing myself with vegan cake while listening to her views on human animal representation in literature.

“I enjoyed your paper,” she said to me, graciously. “Especially the images on your powerpoint of the hunks with their shirts off from Twilight, loved it!”

Yeah! Go werewolves!

However, not everyone thinks the human animal character in science fiction is worthy of research at the doctoral level – for instance, the woman in whom I induced research envy early on in my PhD. I was at a parent’s school dinner and the other mums wondered why I had been absent from the social calendar for the past year.

“I’ve started my PhD – and still working as well, so there’s not much time for anything else,” I mumbled, in between hurried bites of my curry. I was aware I had a deadline for my supervisor to meet, and a book extract to analyse, and the tad worrying prospect of having to return very useful but sadly unread books to the library as the overdue fines meant no extensions were possible.

“I am doing my doctorate too!” said the woman opposite me, whose daughter had just joined my son’s class that year. I was in the company of a fellow traveller.

“What’s your research topic?”  I asked, politely. She seemed so confident, and I a newbie, on shaky ground. I had only tentatively started to announce my own research and it hardly felt legitimate.

“Quantitative analysis of educational research papers from – “ she rattled off a long and impressive title. It sounded, however, like a worthy but alas dull, topic. She had made no attempt to “sex it up a bit” for the average punter in her conversation with the rest of us. She looked at me smugly and took a sip of wine.

“And what’s your research about?” she asked me. There was a glint of a challenge in her eyes. I gulped.

“Oh, werewolves,” I said. “Mutants, post humans, hybrids…”

At this point, the entire table turned, riveted, to me. “Oooh really?’ Werewolves!” or “I prefer vampires!” and “I love Twilight!” and “That’s so cool!”

The woman glared at me. I had trumped her with a hottie research topic. It was like the showdown between a commercial fiction writer and a revered literary author. One gets fans and book sales; the other is invited to literary festivals and is bestowed with awards.

My supervisor tells me that I am “tabloid to my blood”, a reference to the decade I spent at the Herald Sun newspaper as a journalist. But the thing is, I didn’t go into the PhD thinking “I need a hottie research topic”.

It was actually an organic progression from my MA exploring organ donation and reincarnation in my creative writing, and an exegesis looking at the lifecycle of the scientifically created human character in science fiction. It was an intense time with two young children, and as all postgraduate parents will know, your research filters to them on many levels.

At the time my youngest son went to a Cubs Halloween party dressed as Frankenstein’s Creature and announced that, as the Creature had been created and then rejected by another and had no society of his own, his search for identity was bound to turn violent. The other seven year olds looked at him in bewilderment and then ran around with their arms stretched out in front groaning “I am a monster…oooh…”

I was an enthusiastic conference participant and often the lone writer at many bioethics conferences. It was perhaps inevitable that I would hear a paper about xeno transplantation and start a five year love affair with the idea of animal parts in humans and the speculation about how that may change what it means to be human. So, no – my hottie research didn’t come from reading Twilight and wanting to jump on that band wagon.

That didn’t stop a rather vile shade of green spreading over the woman’s face as she sat opposite me at the school dinner. As the rest of the guests pumped me for more detailed analysis of the role of science fiction in bioethical debates – and werewolves – she finally blurted out “don’t you realize that werewolves aren’t real!!!!!”

“What do you mean?” I asked. It seemed pretty real to me as a topic; I’d just done my confirmation.

“I can’t believe you are doing a PhD in something that doesn’t even exist!” she yelled.

I wasn’t brave enough or confident enough to say what I would now. Which is – what’s real, anyway? Folklore, legend, myth and story are the basis of the world’s cultures and part of what makes us human. I am researching the stories about our nightmares, our hopes, fears and desires. The things that we dare not say and how we use animals to stand in for the things that cannot be said. We create myths of werewolves rather than talk about the person who abducts a child from the village and rapes and kills her. We say a vampire rose from the dead and slept with his wife and left her with child rather than say a widow found a lover.

But I was too new at the game, and she was too angry. What can I say? Research envy – it’s a bitch.

Do you ever suffer from research envy  – or suffered fallout from it? Tell us in the comments!

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How do I start my discussion chapter?

On Twitter this week two people asked me for advice for starting the discussion chapter of their thesis / dissertation (I’m going to use the word thesis from now on because I am Australian). I didn’t feel up to answering in 140 characters or less, so I promised a post on it today.

If you are feeling anxious about the discussion section rest assured you are not alone. It’s an issue that comes up time and time again in my workshops. There’s no one answer that can help everyone because every project is original, so I thought I would offer a few thoughts on it by way of starting a conversation.

Evans, Gruba and Zobel, in their book “How to Write a Better Thesis”, describe the discussion chapter as the place where you:

“… critically examine your findings in the light of the previous state of the subject as outlined in the background, and make judgments as to what has been learnt in your work”

Essentially the discussion chapter tells your reader what your findings might mean, how valuable they are and why. I remember struggling with this section myself and, looking back, I believe there were two sources of anxiety.

The first is scholarly confidence. At the University of Melbourne we used to talk about how a good thesis has a ‘Ph Factor’. The Ph factor is somewhat elusive and hard to describe, but basically it means you have to make some knowledge claims. You need to have the confidence to say something is ‘true’ (at least, without getting too post modern about it, true within the confines of your thesis). This can feel risky because, if you have been approaching the thesis in the right spirit, you are likely to be experiencing Doubt.

The second source of anxiety is the need to think creatively. Most of the rest of the thesis asks us to think analytically; or, if you are in a practice based discipline, to make stuff; or perhaps, if you are an ethnographer, to observe the world in some way. Creative thinking involves your imagination, which means you have to switch gears mentally.

So the problem of the discussion chapter is a problem of creative thinking and confidence, but there are some stylistic conventions and knowledge issues that complicate the task. Every thesis needs to have discussion like elements, but they may do it in different ways.

In a conventional thesis, what we call the IMRAD type (introduction, methods, results, discussion and conclusion) the discussion chapter appears a discrete chapter. Before you worry about the discussion chapter too much, consider whether you need to treat the discussion as a separate section at all. You need to keep in mind that the IMRAD structure is best used to write up empirical research work (the type where you collect data of some kind).

In the past I have referred to the IMRAD formula as the ‘dead hand of the thesis genre’; a phrase I picked up from my colleague Dr Robyn Barnacle. It’s a dead hand because of the role it plays in the imagination of the research community throughout the world. The IMRAD formula is the most widely understood format because it is the type most widely described in the ‘how to’ genre and has a close and abiding relationship to the scientific method. Many students try to make their research fit into the IMRAD format, when it is not appropriate to do so.

I can be easy to feel ‘blocked’ if you are a non scientist trying to separate out the discussion from the rest of what you are writing. Remember there are many ways to skin the discussion cat. For example, an artist may discuss each project and what it means separately. An ethnographer might devote a chapter to each theory they have built from observation. Likewise a historian may break the thesis up into time periods and do critique and evaluation throughout the whole.

So I have diagnosed some of the problems, are there any easy solutions? Well, the best way to start in my view is just to write, but perhaps start to write without the specific purpose of the discussion chapter in mind. Write to try and work out what you think and then re-write it later.

You can use a couple of basic techniques to help you with this process:

•  Try the old ‘compare and contrast’ technique. Draw up a table describing where your work is similar to others and where it differs. Use each of these points as a prompt to write a short paragraph on why.
• Use the “The big machine” trick as suggested by Howard Becker in his book ‘tricks of the trade’ (now only $3.99 on Kindle? Bargain!). Pretend your results are produced by a machine then describe the machine. How would the machine work? What would it look like? What parts would it need? What might make the machine break?
• Another useful suggestion from Howard Becker is the null hypothesis technique; write down why the results mean nothing. Sometimes forcing yourself to argue the reverse position can highlight the relationships or ideas worth exploring.
• Sometimes having an audience can help. Explain the results to a friend and record yourself, or use voice recognition software to tell your computer some of your preliminary thoughts. Many people find talking an easier way to get ideas out. Alternatively write them in an email to someone.
• Explain the limitations of the work: what is left out or yet to do? Sometimes, like the null hypothesis, talking about the limitations can help you better define the contribution your study has made.

I hope some of these suggestions help to get you started. Do you have any more? Are there ‘tricks’ you have used to help you get your creative juices flowing?

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Slow Academia

It’s winter here in Melbourne; the kind of weather that calls for soup. My favourite soup is the sort which simmers all day on the stove. You know, where you fill a pot with a pile of vegetables and cook the crap out of it over a long, cold afternoon.  I’ve got a pot like this on at the moment and the smells are permeating the house. You never know how good this kind of soup is going to be until you taste it of course, but you know that slow cooking intensifies flavour and transforms humble ingredients into something special.

For some time now the ‘slow food’ movement has questioned the value of ‘fast food’ and called for a return to more authentic modes of cooking and eating. Like any catchy name will, the concept of Slow has been applied to other activities: Slow travel, Slow gardening, Slow fashion, Slow parenting. What these manifestations of the Slow Movement  share in common is an appreciation for the value of taking more time and care to make something – a dish, a dress, a garden on the assumption that it will be better than something put together in a hurry.

As regular readers will know, I am almost obsessed with Fast. I’m constantly after the next technique or process which will increase my output. This is because, much of the time, Fast is Good. One of the traps which thesis writers fall into is over thinking everything, which can be solved by Fast. But recently I’ve started to think about Slow and how it might apply to academic work, because there are aspects of it which just can’t be rushed.

If you think about it, a thesis or dissertation is the epitome of Slow. Even if you finish in speedy fashion you are unlikely to turn one out in less than three years. Over those years you have to do a lot of different things: talk to people, collect data, record observations or make stuff. At the same time you must absorb information and engage with other people’s ideas. In a way, doing a thesis is like a long, slow conversation with these ideas and things, during which you try to tease out what ‘knowledge claims’ you can make. The outcome of this ‘conversation’ is recorded in writing – a thesis or dissertation text, which is examined by others who decide if the quality of the conversation is good enough for you to take on the title of Doctor.

You are but one ‘speaker’ in this Slow Conversation which means, as Liz Thackray points out in her recent blog post, your control over it can be, well – tenuous. After making changes to her thesis outline, Liz tells us how she reread an early abstract, which had served to focus her thinking at the time. Now she realised that it didn’t ‘match’ her thesis anymore:

“… ideas which were central to the abstract a few months ago, are no longer there, but other ideas which either were not present, or were peripheral are taking centre stage. I am seriously beginning to wonder if rather than me owning my thesis, whether it actually has somehow acquired a life of its own.”

There’s an interesting similarity between this statement by Liz and those made by fiction authors who begin to ‘inhabit’ their characters. These writers report a similar sense of separation and otherness, along with a profound kind of connection. As Ann Marie Priest writes:

“I began to feel my character’s feelings. I began to feel myself responding to what the others were saying as though I actually was the person I was pretending to be … I knew, without even thinking about it, what my character was going to do next … when I came to write a monologue for her, it was virtually effortless. She wrote it herself.”

I don’t know about you, but I often feel like my fingers are moving across the keyboard while I take dictation from someone else inside my head. When I read my papers back I they seem to be written by this strange other self and not ‘me’. At least I feel like this other self is a much better writer than I am. Perhaps this ‘multiplicity’ – of selves and of things, is why so many people make the analogy between finishing a thesis or novel and giving birth. A thesis is of you, but it has many other parents: scholars, research participants, archives test tubes to name a few. Consciously thinking about this sense of writing ‘taking control’ of you can be helpful. Consider this quote from Bruno Latour:

“A paper that does not have references is like a child without an escort walking in the night in a big city it does not know: isolated, lost, anything may happen to it”

Latour alerts us to the fact that our thesis has to have relationships with other literature, past and present. If your thesis is a ‘paper child’ you are responsible for its welfare. To return to my theme of Slow, would you let your child wander around the city with any old person you met on the street? No – you would want to take time to get to know this escort before you trusted them.

Likewise, developing your relationship with the literatures who accompany your thesis takes time. While I can and do encourage you to ‘read like a mongrel’ (fast and furious), Fast reading is really a way of finding out which pieces and authors are worth investing time in. Deep understanding of literature needs repeated reading and thinking. as well as writing. In other words, a Slow conversation with the ideas. This process can be frustrating because, just like soup, you can never be completely sure the thesis you make from these Slow conversations will turn out as good as it can be. However, if applied correctly, a bit of Slow will ensure that your thesis has more flavour than most.

Speaking of soup, mine is just about ready, so I might leave you with this thought: What if losing control is an essential part of writing a thesis? Realising you have lost control forces you to slow down. When you stop talking so much, you can listen better. Maybe then your thesis will tell you what it needs. What do you think?

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Developing your inner Yoda, er – scholar

If you read the documents from your university that describe what a thesis is you will probably find phrases like this:

“The originality and significance of the contribution to the field, and the rigour of the independent, critical thought should be high enough to suggest that the candidate can initiate and conduct independent research leading to publication in a scholarly journal or equivalent.” (from the ‘guidelines to examiners of research theses‘ at RMIT)

In non bureaucratic language this means that you should be a ‘grown up’ scholar by the time you finish; able to judge the quality of your own work without needing someone to check it all the time.

While developing the scholar within is the aim of a research degree, I find this expectation is rarely talked about with students. Towards the end of your degree your supervisor should really be making suggestions, not commands, although some supervisors will keep ‘correcting’ work until it is finished. Of course, with masters degree students this is entirely appropriate, but as a PhD student, especially at the end of candidature, it’s vital to weigh up the advice you are given and make a conscious decision whether or not it is worth following. This is where you need a well developed inner scholar who can guide you.

It’s difficult to learn to trust your inner scholar because (and stay with me here) your inner scholar is a bit like Yoda. For those of you who have been living in a cave for the last 35 years, Yoda is the little green sage who helps Luke Skywalker discover and use the force in the ‘Star Wars’ movies. (I’m talking about the original Yoda from ‘Return of the Jedi’ here – I don’t really buy the ass kicking 21st century version!).

Here’s why I think so:

You’ve just crash landed on a foggy planet…

Luke sets off to find the legendary Yoda in order to become a Jedi. But the first thing that happens is he loses control of his ship and crash lands on the foggy planet of Dagobah. Then his ship sinks in a swamp, leaving Luke with only a few power bars and R2D2 for company.

Starting a research degree can be a bit like crash landing your ship and losing it in a swamp. You are probably used to having a successful professional career, or the comforting certainty of under graduate study where there are clear expectations and milestones. This does not put you in a position to immediately start trusting your judgment. It takes awhile to adjust to the research degree jungle where there are very few manicured lawns and neat hedges.

Yoda is an alien.

When Luke first meets Yoda he doesn’t recognise him for what he is. That’s because young Skywalker has an image of Yoda in his mind as an ass kicking warrior who lives in a castle somewhere with a whole load of sidekicks. Of course, when he meets the tiny green guy, Luke jumps to all the wrong conclusions and treats him with barely concealed contempt.

At first your inner scholar is an alien. A sign of its presence can be discomfort – you may be reading something and find yourself disagreeing, but not able to put your finger on why. At other times it might feel almost like a rush of excitement, where an idea or concept suddenly makes sense or comes into focus. These feelings may only add to your initial confusion.

Yoda has grammar bad.

One of my favourite Yoda quotes is: “Do, or do not. There is no ‘try’.” Yoda is telling Luke wise and sensible things, but the delivery makes it hard to understand what he is on about.

When your inner scholar starts to come out it usually happens in your writing. Phrases like “According to Miller et al…” and “Mewburn (2010) states that…” appear. The purpose of this language is to shift you into an analytical mode, but that may not be a way that you are accustomed to writing. It can feel like you are just faking it at first, but it’s important not to worry about these feelings too much. Eventually it will feel natural… then you have to unlearn it!

Yoda makes you do weird things.

Luke finds Yoda’s training regime frustrating. Yoda makes him run for long distances and do menial work – not the kind of high brow philosophical stuff which Luke thought he had signed up for. Most of Yoda’s training is aimed at breaking down Luke’s habitual ways of thinking and doing - unlearning him if you like. Luke, being a hot tempered lad, resents this and spends a lot of energy resisting – mostly because he’s in a hurry to save the universe and stuff.

Likewise with research you may find yourself doing strange things which appear to have no purpose or value. For instance, early in my degree I discovered a method I could potentially use, but every time I applied it to a bit of data I got no insights at all. A friend suggested I just needed to keep doing it, mechanically on the whole data set, without trying to guess where it would lead all the time. This turned out to be the best advice anyone gave me – eventually I started to see shapes in the data darkness.  Suspending expectations of what the process would lead to made me relax enough to see them.

Yoda is usually right, but it can be hard to do what he tells you.

Once Luke is open to the Force he starts to be able lift rocks and other cool stuff, but his powers lead to a disturbing premonition. Believing his friends are in mortal danger, Luke rushes off to rescue them – against Yoda’s sage advice. As a consequence he falls into a trap laid for him by Darth Vader and gets his hand chopped off.

Occasionally your inner scholar will suggest a course of action, but you will ignore it, maybe because it seems like too much work. Usually this leads to a month or so of wasted effort and frustration. Inefficiency is built into the research process, so there’s not much you can do about it. But make a note not to fall into the trap next time!

So that’s my idea of the inner scholar… If your inner scholar was a film character, who would it be?

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A Thesis Without Words, or “where is my mug?”

This is the first guest post by my sister, Anitra Nottingham, who is the online director of graphic design at the Art Academy in San Francisco (and a thesis whisperer!).

Looking for advice on doing an art or design thesis by practice can sometimes you make you feel a little bit like the kid called, Jupiter (or Gertrude) looking at racks of mugs with names like Jack (or Madison) printed on them. There’s stuff about doing a thesis, but little already written about you and your sort of thesis.

In effect there’s no mug for you.

If you are doing a “normal” thesis there are certain agreed upon ways of producing it. The building blocks of the finished product are known—words, numbers, data, pictures. Pages in other words. (Probably in Times New Roman, double line spaced, shudder).

But what does “a thesis in art or design” look like when you hold the final thing in your hand? How is it made? Not many people have written about the challenge of defining and making that sort of thesis, at least as far as I can tell. So doing an art or design degree by practice can be a lonely experience — or so my students tell me. So that’s why I’m here.

I’ll start right at the beginning, with what my twin sister, @thesiswhisperer, calls “Identity Work”. This concept applies to you, and your poor, misunderstood thesis.  Both of you lie down on the couch, there, that’s good. Now. Let’s begin…

Yes you can do your thesis in that.

Probably the first thing you encounter from people when you tell them you are doing a thesis in fine art or design by practice, is a snort, and a comment along the lines of “how can you do a thesis in THAT?”.  Sadly this is often from your own kind: art and design colleagues. Here’s the subtext of that statement: “if you’re master at it, why don’t you go do it and get paid for it?”.

If you are a competent professional, this is your first bit of identity work. Doing your art or design thesis by practice doesn’t mean you can’t do what you do - and do it well.  There’s nothing wrong with your thesis either. It is “normal”. But you’ll have to get used to explaining why.

Here’s how you can do that.

First, understand the reaction. People are used to thinking about knowledge in terms of words. Words, and the writing of them have currency in academia. A thesis is meant to be ‘new knowledge’. This produces confusion: if you can’t write it—how is it knowledge and how can it be a thesis?

Sure people have written about art and design for their thesis projects, that’s fine. But when your knowledge is best expressed by practice, by making things, it makes sense that a thesis takes the form of your knowledge – art or design products.

As anyone who does a thesis will tell you, the words are a big deal but it’s the work behind them that counts. If the point of a thesis is to display the the knowledge you possess, the only real way to show mastery is to be really, really good at your practice: art, painting, sculpture, web design or whatever and presenting in such a way that it can be experienced as more than just words. It has to be seen. It has to be made. By you. Experts should be able to see the thing you made (i.e. your thesis) and say, “Wow, you really know your stuff!”

Put it this way, you can look at the Sistine chapel and write about it, but that doesn’t make you the master of painting. The guy who lay on his back and painted the thing for 8 years is the master. That guy is a genius, but would he be handed a graduate degree for that work? Now, happily, yes (or I hope so—that whole misunderstood-artist-while-you-are-alive thing sucks.) If the Sistine Chapel was a thesis by practice or project, people would now call that guy Dr Michaelangelo and turn up to hear his papers. But should he even be writing papers? Wouldn’t it be better to stand and watch him paint and learn from that? See? A thesis by practice just makes sense!

When the examiners “read” your finished thesis they won’t consume words alone, they will essentially “unpack it” (as my sister always says). So your thesis should enable them see your skill—mastery— of your particular flavor of art or design. In a well-written thesis the words become ‘transparent’; the examiner can experience the skill of the writer in the subject, not in the mastery of words. So too with your creative works – they should ‘speak’ of your mastery of your subject.

You can do this because you already are (or are becoming) a master.

My experience from watching graphic design thesis students is that understanding the type of knowledge work you are doing makes doing a thesis easier. So work on understanding why your thesis is made the way it is, and who you must ‘be’ to do it. And when your colleagues scoff tell them you can show your mastery without words. There is, indeed, a mug for you.

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The researcher’s hunch

I’ve been talking to @tassie_gal on twitter about the relationship between confidence and doubt while doing a PhD. But my thoughts didn’t coalesce until last week, when a scientist told me a story about plants.

A friend of this scientist did his PhD on the use of hormones to promote plant growth. The first part of the study was to grow a series of plants using a method published in an earlier paper. The method was meant to yield 15 new plants per round, but the plant researcher only got 8. Perplexed, he threw out his materials and tried again, only to get the same result. This time he assumed the temperature was wrong, threw out his materials and tried again. Once more: nothing. For a year he fiddled around, trying to get the expected 15 plants, but he never did.

Later the plant researcher happened to go to a conference and met the person who did the original study. He took the opportunity to  describe his  failures in exhausting detail and ask for help. The person who did the original study merely blinked and said “oh yes, that experiment didn’t work particularly well”. As it turned out, the original person never did get fifteen plants using that method.

In other words, the original researcher lied.

It’s tempting to view the PhD researcher in this story as a bit of an idiot for assuming he was doing something wrong, but this would overlook the fact that the written word can have immense persuasive power. And it’s not just what is written on a page which can lead us researchers astray – it’s the ideas which get stuck in our heads.

For example, it is not uncommon for PhD students to turn up to our statistical consulting service asking the mathematicians to ‘fix’ their results, when the results are, in fact, correct. You would expect the students to be relieved to find out they did their analysis right, but apparently many will still insist the numbers must be wrong because they didn’t ‘fit’ the hypothesis which was being tested.

We need preconceptions – let’s call them hunches – to get going in the first place, but problems can develop when we hold on to them too tightly. I was reminded of this recently, while working on my current research project about PhD students and progress reports.

Twice a year we ask our PhD students to fill in a progress report accounting for how they spent their time and what they will do next (you may have a similar system at your university). Administrators and supervisors complain that progress reporting is a meaningless ‘rubber stamp’ exercise which should be changed, or even abandoned, so we decided to study it and see what could be done.

Our focus groups confirmed that students felt the same way as the administrators and supervisors: the progress reporting procedure was largely meaningless. However we were wrong in our assumption that students would want to change the system too. Many LIKED that it was a rubber stamp exercise and that the plans they wrote didn’t actually translate to reality. It seems the mere act of writing a plan can be psychologically reassuring and the administrative meaninglessness of the reports meant that no one would attack them when the plans didn’t translate to reality.

I puzzled over how to understand this until I realised that all our stakeholders were being pragmatic, but pragmatic meant something different to students. In retrospect this explanation was blindingly obvious, but it took an embarrassingly long time to come to me because I was thinking with my hunch, rather than looking at the data. Actually – I was thinking like an administrator not a researcher (oh the shame!). Once I had become aware of this tendency the rest of the analysis came easily. I just assumed that my first thought would be wrong and looked for other explanations.

We don’t often think about how useful these kinds of errors can be – if they are taken seriously. In his new book ‘Where good ideas come from’ , Stephen Johnson makes some interesting observations on the nature of error and creativity, citing research on how people free associate from trigger words. 40% of people presented with the word ‘green’ will say ‘grass’; 80% when shown the colour blue will suggest another colour, or say the word ‘sky’. Only a few people will volunteer words like ‘Ireland’, ‘leaves’ or ‘jeans’.

It would be easy to assume that the outliers are naturally more ‘creative’, but it seems that those of us who would choose ‘sky’ are not so pedestrian after all. In another experiment people were exposed to the colour blue while sitting in front of a screen with a group of actors. The actors insisted that the colour was red, which made people doubt that their initial perception of blue was correct. When these people were later asked to free associate they produced more ‘outlier’ responses. While Johnson out that too much error can be fatal, a little ‘noise’ in the system can be good.

In other words, assuming you are wrong can make you more creative.

There’s certainly comfort in conforming with existing theories and ideas, rather than challenging them. It takes confidence to take ‘wrong’ results seriously because you have to examine your own biases.  If our hapless plant researcher had more confidence in his own ability he wouldn’t have wasted a whole year. But I think his story shows us that confidence can sometimes be in short supply when you are doing your PhD.

Which leaves me with a final thought: does a lack of confidence stem, at least in part, from a fear of being examined? Perhaps in our heart of hearts we still view this last step of the PhD as a ‘test’ through which we have to pass, rather than a review process which ensures our work is the best that it can be? I’m not sure, in lieu of an answer I can only say: try to have confidence in your doubt – and doubt in your confidence!

 

The dead hand of the thesis genre?

Last week @TheMarquise showed me through a her research notebook, which was full of intriguing bits of writing and diagrams. If I was to take the notebook as a guide, @TheMarquise was having a lot of good research ideas and starting to connect them together in interesting ways. In fact she seemed to be doing the kind of expansive thinking that I would expect of someone at the beginning of their candidature, especially in the humanities and the creative arts.

However, it is not my lot to be talking to PhD students when everything is peachy keen. Indeed @TheMarquise had come to see me because she was having trouble writing her confirmation report; the document we ask students to produce at the end of a year’s study to demonstrate that they have a feasible program of research planned. When asked to adopt a ‘thesis style’ her writing had become stilted - and the ideas, so lively in the notebook, now seemed laboured and obscure.

@TheMarquise knew she had to somehow translate the thinking happening in the notebook into her confirmation report, but she was struggling. It’s important to note that @TheMarquise did not lack the skills or knowledge to write this document; she had written a successful masters thesis in the conventional way before. As we talked it became clear that @TheMarquise was facing variation of a common research student dilemma. In our office we call it writing under the influence of ‘the dead hand of the thesis genre’.

There are two dead hands actually: conventional thesis structure, known as the ‘IMRAD’ formula (introduction – methods – results – discussion), and a certain kind of ‘scholarly language’ which is mannered, distancing, defensive and lacking the personal pronoun (‘I’).

Maybe it is unfair for us to call it the dead hand of the thesis genre, because there are certainly a few disciplines where the IMRAD structure and scholarly language of the distancing variety are a pair of warm and lively hands which help you to get the job done. This is because there is a deep and abiding connection between this conventional way of doing a thesis and the scientific method.

The IMRAD formula follows the experimental method cycles and the language is designed to present the results as facts which exist apart from the researcher. In the scientific method the questions are raised before the experiments which are designed to answer them. Sure fresh questions will be probably be raised as the work progresses, but always to drive a new cycle of research.

But in other disciplines, this is not the case. Research questions may not be known in advance or may change substantially during the research – they may even only emerge clearly at the very end. There will not necessarily be experiments to generate data, but observations, interviews, painting, the making of car engines and so on.

There are many different ways of making knowledge where ideas, data and arguments are unlikely to fit easily into the conventional thesis ‘formula’ – yet some students feel compelled to torture them until they do. Or, like @TheMarquise, you may not set out to replicate this type of conventional thesis, yet still find that the dead hand is resting upon you because you freeze up when you try to write something ‘real’ – not jottings in a notebook.

At RMIT we tend to get three other kinds of thesis which do not follow the IMRAD formula: the ‘big book thesis’ (common to history and social sciences), the ‘bunch of papers’ (a collection of published articles,becoming popular in the sciences) and the creative exegesis (text accompanying art and design projects). When there is this variety, why has the IMRAD formula, so necessary in the sciences, come to haunt the rest of us?

There’s a good discussion of this in an article @julierudner sent me awhile back called “Thesis and dissertation writing: an examination of published advice and actual practice” by Brian Paltridge. Paltridge examined some 30 finished PhDs to see how closely they aligned with the type of advice given in the ‘how to do a PhD’ books. The findings were preliminary as the sample set was small, but I think the observations made in it were interesting.

Paltridge starts by analysing a range of texts available on the subject of thesis and dissertation writing. He includes some classics, such as Phillips & Pugh’s “How to get a PhD”, through to the eternally useful “How to write a thesis” by Evans and Gruba as well as some less useful ones. Paltridge found these books vary as to the amount of advice that they give on the overall organisation of a thesis, but all are light on when it comes to suggestions about structure. Some of the less useful ones devote as little as 3 pages to the issue!

Paltridge claims that most authors, when they do discuss structure, tend to outline the ‘IMRAD’ formula in simple or more complex forms. Virtually none of the ‘how to’ books provided advice on other ways of structuring a thesis, most likely because the author is trying to address multiple disciplines. The ‘how to’ genre needs to be read with this issue front of mind – more specific advice will often needed.

While there are some books which offer this (one of my favourites is  ‘Authoring a PhD’ by Patrick Dunleavy who writes advice specifically for the ‘big book’ thesis writers) they are few and far between – perhaps because publishers worry they wont sell enough. The fall back advice is to look to examples of passed theses for models for your thesis. While this can be useful, I would add the caveat that these thesis documents would often be revised by the authors given half the chance – I know I would!

So if you find yourself being pressed under the dead hand of the thesis genre remember that the summary judgment of your thesis by the examiner will be made on how well your thesis ‘sings the song’ of the content within it. Your job is to make that song lively – not a funeral dirge!

Where do good ideas come from?

A PhD thesis or dissertation is supposed to make a “significant and original contribution to knowledge”. This can create a lot of angst amongst research students, partly because originality is often defined, but rarely talked about in actionable ways.

In “How to get a PhD”, Phillips and Pugh set out 16 ways to be original (page 62 of the current edition if you are interested), but don’t say anything at all about how to come up with the original ideas in the first place.

Similarly “Doctorates Downunder” has chapters full of useful suggestions for managing your time and enriching your study experience which may increase your chances of finishing your doctorate, they do not really help you become original.

Don’t get me wrong – it is good to know what originality means in relation to doing a PhD, but it’s far better to know what you have to do to produce enough original and novel ideas to fill a thesis.

The reason why so many books avoid this topic, perhaps rightly so, is that creativity is assumed to be a disciplinary issue or an individual matter. Either you know enough about your subject to see the way to produce novel ideas, or you are naturally a creative person who will come up with them anyway.

But is this really the case? Are there actions you can take that can help you come up with more ideas and solutions to research problems – regardless of discipline?

You may have figured out by now that I have a fascination with the issue of creativity in research – how it happens, how to promote it and how to think about it. This is why I enjoyed reading a paper which attempts to measure social interconnectedness and the relationship with ideas generation called “Social origins of good ideas” by Ronald Burt (2003) – recommended on the twitterverse by @hrheingold.

Burt explored the production and uptake of good ideas in a supply chain logistics company by exploring the nature of discussion networks amongst managers. He found that the network in the company was characterised by a ‘bridge and cluster’ formation. Most people discussed ideas with their immediate work colleagues (within clusters) but relatively few people would act as ‘bridgers’ and talk to colleagues across clusters.

Managers who had a diverse social network, ie: those who ‘bridged’ between clusters of smaller discussion networks, were “at risk of having more good ideas”. He supports this argument by a whole bunch of numbers which seem pretty convincing to me.

Now I could probably drive a truck through this method on the grounds that he doesn’t really into account the influence of materiality, such as physical objects and locations, and how they give shape to relations between people. You might question how generalisable this knowledge is, given that a logistics company is bound to have some unique constraints. But I think the findings are interesting none the less.

The hypothesis which lies behind this work is that, within a discussion cluster, information, beliefs and behaviours tend to become more homogenous over time. This is certainly a phenomena one sees if they work for any period of time in the same office or live in a family group!

Burt’s key argument is that ‘bridgers’ discuss ideas with a wide range of people, not just the ones closest to hand. As a consequence they are more likely to be exposed to contradictory ideas and alternative practices. If these bridgers are astute and thoughtful, they can see ways to transfer or combine ideas and approaches from elsewhere to their own problems.

In effect, Burt claims, “Creativity is an import export business”. A mundane idea in one area can be a spectacular one in another because the value of the idea is determined by the recipient of the idea – not the originator. Burt argues that: “the certain path to being creative is to find a  constituency more ignorant than yourself” (pg 5) and notes that this is a common tactic in academia (!)

Here’s where it gets interesting for people doing a PhD. Think about it for a moment: what do you spend most of your time on while doing your PhD? Probably doing experiments, making stuff  (or whatever it is you do) and/or reading the work of others. Hopefully you will also be hanging out with your peers and talking to your supervisors.

These are good ways of generating ideas – but is it all you could be doing? One thing administrators and academics in my university constantly complain about is that it’s hard to convince PhD students to attend lunchtime seminars put on by other researchers.

When I was doing my PhD it always seemed like a waste of time to break my flow and attend such events unless I knew the person who was presenting, or the topic of the seminar seemed especially relevant. I always assumed that the discussion was unlikely to have any direct relevance  – but what about indirect relevance? Might I have missed out on many opportunities to cross breed exciting new idea hybrids?

So I will finish with some questions for us to ponder. How can you create an ideas ‘import export’ business? How much time do you spend in discussion about ideas with others? Who are they? Do you need to find more people who will expose you to different ways of thinking and doing? Since no one likes a free loader, what might people in these other areas learn from you?