"Not a real PhD"

[kutastha]

Just to give my two cents....

I completed my PhD prior to entering medical school. During my graduate work, I interacted with many MD/PhD students during their graduate work. Perhaps I was just exposed to a proportion of students like this, but for the most part, they were students that undertook projects near completion, or ones that required a short-term period of work, i.e. a majority of work had been done by others prior to their joining the lab.

Additionally, some MD/PhD students I've known have had much help in their projects in order to get them out of the lab in a few years (perhaps to decrease costs, I don't know).

Do these observations make their projects any less impressive? Who knows. Either way, they graduate with a PhD.

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[RxnMan]

...Additionally, some MD/PhD students I've known have had much help in their projects in order to get them out of the lab in a few years (perhaps to decrease costs, I don't know)...

This is a tragedy of the PhD sysytem, not something to brag about. I 'only' earned my master's degree, and once I got my research done, it was like pulling teeth to get help on the writing of my thesis and finishing my degree. Why? Because my advisor got what he wanted out of me - data. Once he had that, he didn't care if I fell off the planet.

The most important choice a grad student can make, in terms of research, future connections/career, and ease of getting their degree, is their choice of advisor. Students who's advisor is supportive and attentive to getting them out - those students are happier, more productive, and form life-long connections with their advisors. I think it's great that mudphuds get support so that they can get on to the next step. It should happen for ALL grad students. I for one will never do a mentored research project again unless it's in an environment like what I've described.

The mistreatment of grad students is a product of the perception of grad students being cheap slave labor, and it only continues in post-docs. Abuse and negligence on the advisor's part should not be a point of pride - it's a problem.

 

[Vader]

This is a tragedy of the PhD sysytem, not something to brag about. I 'only' earned my master's degree, and once I got my research done, it was like pulling teeth to get help on the writing of my thesis and finishing my degree. Why? Because my advisor got what he wanted out of me - data. Once he had that, he didn't care if I fell off the planet.

The most important choice a grad student can make, in terms of research, future connections/career, and ease of getting their degree, is their choice of advisor. Students who's advisor is supportive and attentive to getting them out - those students are happier, more productive, and form life-long connections with their advisors. I think it's great that mudphuds get support so that they can get on to the next step. It should happen for ALL grad students. I for one will never do a mentored research project again unless it's in an environment like what I've described.

The mistreatment of grad students is a product of the perception of grad students being cheap slave labor, and it only continues in post-docs. Abuse and negligence on the advisor's part should not be a point of pride - it's a problem.

AMEN to this!

 

[QofQuimica]

This is a tragedy of the PhD sysytem, not something to brag about. I 'only' earned my master's degree, and once I got my research done, it was like pulling teeth to get help on the writing of my thesis and finishing my degree. Why? Because my advisor got what he wanted out of me - data. Once he had that, he didn't care if I fell off the planet.

The most important choice a grad student can make, in terms of research, future connections/career, and ease of getting their degree, is their choice of advisor. Students who's advisor is supportive and attentive to getting them out - those students are happier, more productive, and form life-long connections with their advisors. I think it's great that mudphuds get support so that they can get on to the next step. It should happen for ALL grad students. I for one will never do a mentored research project again unless it's in an environment like what I've described.

The mistreatment of grad students is a product of the perception of grad students being cheap slave labor, and it only continues in post-docs. Abuse and negligence on the advisor's part should not be a point of pride - it's a problem.

I agree with this too. Most people don't keep doing their PhD work after graduating and going on to a post doc anyway, and there is no guarantee that most projects worth doing will ultimately succeed, so it's foolish to select a lab based on the project you'd be assigned. I think that this issue is so important that I always advised the new grad students to pick the best PERSON to work for, and not to be seduced by fantasies about getting the hottest project. (I'm assuming the person has money to support you, of course. ) Basically, if you don't complete the program and your mentor abandons you or even turns on you, no project is going to save your a** and get you your degree. I was very fortunate to wind up with a PhD mentor who is STILL helping me in various ways even now that I've graduated and gone on to med school. I will probably never do the kind of lab work I was doing during grad school again, but like RxnMan said, the relationship continues beyond my graduation.

 

[Circumflex]

When I was shopping for a PhD advisor (in my 2nd year of med school), I had a couple of people tell me that they would guarantee that I would be done and back to med school in 2 years. I wondered how that was possible, but as has been stated, they aleady had projects off the ground and just needed someone to collect data. Screw them. I wanted to learn how to do research, real research. The advisor I ended up choosing had told me that I would be done when I was done - it all depended on me.

I ended up taking 4 years, but I started my own project, which was a new direction for the lab. Going through the heartache and frustration of not having experiments work and having to troubleshoot myself provided me with the most valuable education possible. After a year of no useful data, I realized the importance of having a smaller "safe" project that would generate solid data in addition to working on the "cool" project.

For me, a "real PhD" meant dreaming up my own project/experiments and making them work, giving lectures, giving seminars, going to meetings, and learning how to write grants. There was no way I could do this in 2-3 years. But, everyone has their own definition of "real."

 

[Oromia]

1. I think the significance of PhD to make one a competitive candidate for Residency is inflated. Not many programs prefer MD/PhDs over MD. In fact, some programs, or rather individuals in a griven residencey program, are biased against MD/PhDs and they prefer straight MDs.

2. The PhD earned through MSTP programs can be qualitatively different from a sraight PhD in most of the cases. The expectation for MD/PhD students to finish their PhD in much shorter time is justified in many respects: they have spent two years in Medical school which makes them more mature in scientific thinking than PhDs who are straight from college; after completing their PhD, MSTP students have more years as a student which can give them sufficient time to consolidate their scientific thinking (if they haven't done so while in graduate school); because fo the above reasons, MD/PhD students get special consideration while in graduate school in terms of working on a safe-project (not necessarily mean that it's not a cool project) and most PI's do not exploit their MDPhD students for exploring their wild theories, rather they consider them as assets to have an input towards their wild theories at intellectual level. I know some people may not agree with my last statement, but I think it's true in most of the cases.

Peace,

Oromia

 

[Scottish Chap]

1. I think the significance of PhD to make one a competitive candidate for Residency is inflated. Not many programs prefer MD/PhDs over MD. In fact, some programs, or rather individuals in a griven residencey program, are biased against MD/PhDs and they prefer straight MDs.

For the top programs in research-heavy medical centers, that's not true at all. Those programs are dedicated to training clinicians in an academic environment and, ceteris paribus (board scores etc.), the MD/PhD will get that spot before the MD. For community-based residency programs (which have a different mission) I agree with you 100%

 

[strangeglove]

In my mind, the primary basis for comparing an MD-PhD - PhD to a regular PhD - PhD is the number of publications that result from the dissertation project. This is what the people who hire us will look at. Everything else is academic, so to speak.

 

[kassie]

This person wasting their time and mental energy attacking you is why it took so long for them to finish their PhD

Tell them to get over themselves and don't waste your time.

 

[QofQuimica]

This person wasting their time and mental energy attacking you is why it took so long for them to finish their PhD

Tell them to get over themselves and don't waste your time.

The way this thread keeps going, the OP will be done with his PhD by the time we finish excoriating his labmate up one side and down the other.