PhD in Progress

from the start of this degree, i wished that i had been able to read someone's honest account of their time in this process (also i wish my department had explained the process like 80% more clearly than they did but whatever can't fix that yet) i aim to provide that account and also some sweet bullet journal inspo

[phd-in-prog]

About Me:

i realized i don't have a pinned post or anything like that telling people what i'm about. so here we are!

my name is ellie

i'm in my fifth year of my phd program (wrapping this shit up!)

i'm 27, happily married, and have a dog

i study systems engineering and would like to do data analytics after my program

i try to write about lots of things, including:

honest takes on being in a phd program

quotes from embarrassing meetings with my advisor

advice on keeping your head above water during what can be a truly difficult period of your life

[rlyehtaxidermist]

one of the best academic paper titles

[rlyehtaxidermist]

for those who don't speak academia: "according to our MRI machine, dead fish can recognise human emotions. this suggests we probably should look at the results of our MRI machine a bit more carefully"

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I hope everyone realises how incredibly important this dead fish study is. This was SO fucking important.

[imightbeobsessedwithsocks]

I still don’t understand

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

So basically, in the psych and social science fields, researchers would (I don't know if they still do this, I've been out of science for awhile) sling around MRIs like microbiolosts sling around metagenomic analyses. MRIs can measure a lot but people would use them to measure 'activity' in the brain which is like... it's basically the machine doing a fuckload of statistics on brain images of your blood vessels while you do or think about stuff. So you throw a dude in the machine and take a scan, then give him a piece of chocolate cake and throw him back in and the pleasure centres light up. Bam! Eating chocolate makes you happy, proven with MRI! Simple!

These tests get used for all kinds of stuff, and they get used by a lot of people who don't actually know what they're doing, how to interpret the data, or whether there's any real link between what they're measuring and what they're claiming. It's why you see shit going around like "men think of women as objects because when they look at a woman, the same part of their brain is active as when they look at a tool!" and "if you play Mozart for your baby for twenty minutes then their imagination improves, we imaged the brain to prove it!" and "we found where God is in the brain! Christians have more brain activity in this region than atheists!"

There are numerous problems with this kind of science, but the most pressing issue is the validity of the scans themselves. As I said, there's a fair bit of stats to turn an MRI image into 'brain activity', and then you do even more stats on that to get your results. Bennett et. al.'s work ran one of these sorts of experiments, with one difference -- they used a dead salmon instead of living human subjects. And they got positive results. The same sort of experiment, the same methodology, the same results that people were bandying about as positive results. According to the methodology in common use, dead salmon can distinguish human facial expressions. Meaning one of two things:

Dead salmon can recognise human facial expressions. OR

Everyone else's results are garbage also, none of you have data for any of this junk.

I cannot overstate just how many papers were completely fucking destroyed by this experiment. Entire careers of particularly lazy scientists were built on these sorts of experiments. A decent chunk of modern experimental neuropsychology was resting on it. Which shows that science is like everything else -- the best advances are motivated by spite.

[neat-deadandlive-things]

Me: I'm not a superstitious person. I'm a scientist who believes in logic and reason.

Also me: Does my stats in R while sitting on the floor listening to Cats in the Cradle on repeat because that's the way it ran last time and I'm not about to upset R by making any changes.

[academicssay]

[ducksarebloodthirstylittlebeasts]

" ~X~ is beyond the scope of this paper" is academic speak for "can't be bothered rn but you get the gist"

[castlescrumblingdown]

#either that or 'i figured out this was a whole rabbit hole for a different paper while I was researching this one'

Alternatively "this is an old argument and the battlefield in which scholars have waged this war is covered in the blood of people who have been doing this for many more decades than me, so PLEASE don't drag me into it and just let me touch on it without doing a full dissertation where I try to avoid saying anything that could get me clocked at a conference"

[phd-in-prog]

"Quick question while we begin - has anyone heard the saying 'bringing a knife to a gun fight'? This would be a very accurate description of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022."

some of my students doing their final presentation

[permanenthistorydamage]

sorry I couldn't finish the paper, my shirt had the wrong texture and I couldn't focus

[absentmoon]

wjen i graduate and they strip me of my free database access im literally going to walk into the ocean

[jstor]

Psssst: You can access up to 100 free articles per month using your personal email!

Here's more info.

[phd-in-prog]

got a revise and resubmit!!

[academicssay]

[academicssay]

[phd-in-prog]

hell yeah psychonomics

[phd-in-prog]

"Why does this question matter? Well, that is actually a long story. Here is why!"

notes from my dissertation proposal draft

[phd-in-prog]

I've been trying to reach one professor by email for two (2) weeks and finally found him eating free food at an event

I HOVERED behind that man while he grabbed mac and cheese with tongs so that I wouldn't miss the opportunity to ask him my question

I truly have a committee of all time

[i-will-write]

[phd-in-prog]

me quitting nanowrimo to focus on academic work

[thatfrenchacademic]

My villain origin story truly is Universities pretending they are improving the situation of their PhDs /Postgraduate workers with "free mindfulness class!" or "PhD support group" or "time management workshop!"

Like, cool, but could I get minimal wage to pay rent and food. My landlord still does not accept "self-kindness" as payment.

[ante--meridiem]

'for technical reasons' in a maths proof has the same vibe as 'for personal reasons' in a tumblr post.

[ante--meridiem]

for personal reasons I will be integrating by parts.