PhD Progression and Personal Conduct
Science & Engineering
Professor Mike Watkinson
Deputy Dean Research (Postgraduate)
October 2013
Session Structure
1. The Faculty
2. The Doctoral College
3. Progression through the Degree
4. Advice to new PhD students
5. Ethics
Session Structure
1. The Faculty
2. The Doctoral College
3. Progression through the Degree
4. Advice to new PhD students
5. Ethics
Vision
Our vision for the Faculty is that it should:
• Be recognised as one of the leading science and engineering
faculties in the UK, contributing in full to Queen Mary’s ambition
to be ranked in the top 10 universities in the UK
• Have an international reputation as a centre of cutting edge
research and education, which attracts the best staff and
students, and gives them the freedom to excel
• Offer students an education responsive to their personal
aspirations and career ambitions, and prepares them for leading
roles in society in the future
• Have a culture of flexibility and innovation, which embraces
diversity, which empowers academic leadership and where
excellence is rewarded.
The Faculty’s Schools
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Biological & Chemical Sciences
Electronic Engineering & Computer Science
Engineering and Materials Science
Mathematical Sciences
Physics & Astronomy
Key Facts: S&E
• ca. 4,000 students (inc. 655 postgraduates)
• 260 academic staff
• £75 million annual turnover
• Annual research grant income of over £20 million
• We have three National Teaching Fellows amongst
other awards for innovation in Teaching & Learning
Excellent People
• Professor Ursula Martin - elected as a Fellow of the
Institute of Mathematics awarded a CBE
• Professor Yang Hao - awarded a £5m EPSRC platform
grant
• Professor Peter Kalmus - made an Honorary Fellow of
the Institute of Physics
• Professor Peter McOwan - awarded the 2011 IET
Mountbatten Medal (promoting Computer Science to
diverse audiences)
• Dr Matt Parker - winner of 2011 Joshua Phillips
Award for Innovation in Science Engagement
• Dr Akram Alomainy - winner of British Science
Association Award Lecture
Research Centres within S&E
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Centre for Life Sciences
Theoretical Computer Science
Antennas & Electromagnetics Group
Qmedia
Multimedia & Vision Group
Centre for Digital Music
Nanovision Centre
Materials Research Institute
Institute of Bioengineering
Centre for Discrete Mathematics
Centre for Research in String Theory
Particle Physics Research Centre
Astronomy Unit
Centre for Condensed Matter & Materials Physics
River Communities Group
Centre for Aquatic & Terrestrial Environments
Maths Research Centre
Centre for Intelligent Sensing
Session Structure
1. The Faculty
2. The Doctoral College
3. Progression through the Degree
4. Advice to new PhD students
5. Ethics
Academic Structure
Professor Bill Spence
Director and Vice Principal for Research
Professor Joy Hinson
Deputy Director
SMD
Professor Jon May
HSS
Directors of Graduate Studies
PhD Supervisors
Professor Mike Watkinson
S&E
Support Structure
Dr Jo Cordy
Centre for Academic and Professional
Development
Dr Ian Forristal
Centre for Academic and Professional
Development
Dr Tracy Bussoli
QMUL Careers
Research Student and Postdoc
- Networking • We want to encourage networking
within and across department
boundaries.
• School research open days, poster
competitions, internal student
organised conferences…..
• Annual Doctoral College Debate
• Cohort days
• Three minute thesis…….
Session Structure
1. The Faculty
2. The Doctoral College
3. Progression through the Degree
4. Advice to new PhD students
5. Ethics
PhD Thesis
• The thesis must form a distinct contribution to knowledge of
the subject and afford evidence of originality, shown by the
discovery of new facts or by the exercise of independent
critical power.
• Be of a standard to merit publication in whole or in part or in
a revised form (for example, as a monograph or as a number
of articles in learned journals).
• Be the work of the candidate
Submitting on time
Possible Problems
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Slow start
Never satisfied
Distracted from main line of research
Getting a job before thesis complete
Monitoring Progression
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4 Month light touch review
9 month review
24 month review
36 months submit thesis
• QM target is for 85% submission within
4 years
Case study
Maria started her PhD three months ago. It hasn’t turned out
quite as she expected. Maria’s supervisor is very busy travelling
to conferences and she rarely sees him. Although they had a
meeting when Maria started and she thought she understood
what she was meant to do, she hasn’t had a formal meeting since
then and she feels completely lost. Nothing that she tries seems
to work out and she feels that she is pursuing dead ends. Her
project seems hopeless. She is dreading writing the 9 month
report.
What should Maria do?
Reference: Joy Hinson, 2011
Session Structure
1. The Faculty
2. The Doctoral College
3. Progression through the Degree
4. Advice to new PhD students
5. Ethics
Supervisor - Student - Relationship
Supervisor’s Responsibilities?
Interacting with your Supervisor
“One of the hallmarks of outstanding
supervisors appeared .... to be that their
students felt driven very hard to impress
them.”
Supervisor - Student - Relationship
Student’s Responsibilities?
• Talk to your supervisor and get them to give an
account what they believe to be your thesis
'challenge‘. Repeat it back to them in your own
words. Continue this process until you arrive at
an agreed formulation that they accept and you
understand. Test out your ability to articulate it
on as many people as you can.
• Find some of your supervisor's former students.
Ask them about how to get the best value from
your supervisor. Get the low down on likes and
dislikes. Get any hints on how to 'manage' your
supervisor.
• Ask your supervisor for the best thesis that
they have supervised. Read it and discuss with
your supervisor why it is good.
• Make friends with the other students in the lab or
office. Find out what their skills and backgrounds are.
Work out what you can bring to the mix.
• Ask your supervisor and other key academics in your
area to identify the twenty or so 'classic' papers in your
area. Read them before you start in on your specialist
topic.
• Look through the recent journals issues and conference
proceedings in your area. Do not necessarily read them
but rather get a sense of the trends. What is being
published, what seems to be missing?
Taken from Anthony Finklestein’s blog:
http://blog.prof.so/2012/09/how-to-start-phd.html#!/2012/09/howto-start-phd.html
Do, or do not, there is no try.
Meetings with your supervisor
• Meeting schedules
– Fixed
– Student to take initiative
• Note taking (agreed!)
• Written material before hand
• Own your problem. Make it yours. Keep it at the front of your mind, always.
• Print the cover of your thesis and place it in a binder. You have started.
• Let go of the handrail, swim away from the side. Research requires risks.
• The big danger is not that somebody will steal your ideas but that nobody
will take any interest.
• Remember if you leave it more than a fortnight your supervisor may well
have forgotten what you discussed.
• Three years seems like a lot of time. It is not, the second year will disappear
really quickly.
• Be ready to abandon ideas if they do not work but do not kill them before
they have had a chance to fly.
• Follow courses, it is an easy way to learn.
• Keep accurate bibliographic records. That paper may not seem relevant now
but could prove so later.
• Never stare at a blank piece of paper.
• Play with ideas, problems and techniques.
• Ask a question if you do not understand. Never feel afraid of looking foolish.
• If somebody does not understand your work it is usually because of your
failure to explain it clearly.
• High quality critical analysis is like gold dust. Seek it out. Welcome it.
However painful.
• Work a regular day, work regular hours, take weekends off. Research is a
marathon not a sprint.
• Back up. Back up. Back up
• And, oh yes, back up.
More advice to students at:
http://blog.prof.so/2012/01/advice-to-student.html#!/2012/01/advice-tostudent.html
The Overall Pattern of Work - 1
• Keeping records
– Day book
– Filing system
• Recording achievements
• Papers and references
– Recording your view of a paper
– Data base?
• Planning ahead
– “Research can be planned but not
blueprinted”
– Timetables
– Setting personal targets
The Overall Pattern of Work -2
• Managing yourself and your time
– “1% Inspiration 99% Perspiration”
– Office hours vs psychological moment
• Research groups
• Cooperating with others for mutual
help and support
– Within groups
– Across groups
– Other universities
Knowing what has been done before
• Not re-inventing the wheel
• Information searching skills
• Conference attendance
– Don’t just focus on your own very
specialised area
• Specialist journals
– Know what’s going on in the wider
field surrounding your PhD
Presentations
- a valuable source for progress • Group seminars
• Conference presentations
– Forces you to structure and evaluate your
research
– Enables you to spot and hence remedy flaws
in arguments/knowledge
• Feedback
– Helps identify new ways forward
What your School Expects from You
• Courteous and professional conduct
towards all Staff and Students
• To be ambassadors for the School
• To contribute to the research standing of
the School
• To complete your PhD in the agreed time
period
What to Expect from your School
• We want you to succeed hence the
monitoring process
• A pleasant and stimulating environment
• To encourage transferable skills
– to aid your employability
Transferable Skills from the PhD
• Technical research skills
• Information searching skills
• Turning your hand to a range of
technical and data analysis challenges
• Project management skills
• Presentation skills
• Networking skills
• Teaching/instruction of others
• Working to schedules
• Your career management
I can't believe it! Reading and writing actually paid off!
Session Structure
1. The Faculty
2. The Doctoral College
3. Progression through the Degree
4. Advice to new PhD students
5. Ethics
Research Ethics – many topics
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Scientific integrity
Human subjects
Privacy – lots of different types
Data protection
Professional ethics
Intellectual property
Scientific misconduct
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Building Blocks of Science
• Honesty - Scientists depend upon the truthfulness of their
colleagues; each of us builds our discoveries on the work of
others; if that work is false, our constructions fall like a house of
cards and we must start all over again. The great success of
science in our time is based on honesty.
• Community - scientists do virtually nothing alone; we exchange
ideas in frenzies of excitement; we design and perform
experiment together; we rely upon one another day in and day
out; we take pleasure in discoveries, no matter who has made
them; we give credit where it is due.
• Commitment - We love the purposes of science, we love the
practice of science, we love to teach the lore of science. These
passions give us gratification. And they inspire us to do our best sometimes even to exceed ourselves.
• Courage - Most of the great discoveries in science come from
bold acts of the imagination, intellectual daring of the highest
order.
Excerpted from Ahearne (1999)
Integrity of Science
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Each of us is responsible for our own actions.
Choices about technical matter may have moral
implications.
Studies link moral reasoning to moral behavior.
Formal education promotes ethical reasoning.
Scientists are likely to encounter new moral problems that
have not been analysed and resolved, so practice in moral
reasoning will allow scientists to develop strategies for
recognizing, approaching and resolving ethical problems.
Learning about research ethics serves a function for those
scientists who already wish to be ethical researchers; it
does not teach a scientist why (s)he should be moral.
Some professions (e.g., IT, Engineering, Medicine) have
explicit codes of conduct; scientists tend to refer to sets
of values, traditions and standards.
Reference: Bebau et al (1995)
Integrity of Science
As a Scientist you:
• usually know what you ought to do when a moral
question arises in research;
• probably don’t as a rule reflect on why a
particular action is good or bad;
• realise that ignorance of an existing rule or law
does not exempt you from the consequences if
you break it;
• may face moral problems not anticipated by
your discipline’s existing values, traditions and
standards;
Integrity of Research - QM
3. Integrity
3.1 Academic staff, research staff, visiting academics
and research students should be honest in respect
of their own actions in research and in their
responses to the actions of other researchers. This
applies to all research work, including experimental
design, generating and analysing data, applying for
funding, publishing results, recognising any real or
potential conflicts of interest and acknowledging
the direct and indirect contribution of colleagues,
collaborators and any others involved in the
research.
Reference: Queen Mary Guidelines on Good Practice in
Research (2003).
Plagiarism
Presenting someone else’s work as one’s own
irrespective of intention. Extensive
quotations; close paraphrasing; copying from
the work of another person, including another
student or using the ideas of another person,
without proper acknowledgement, also
constitute plagiarism.
Reference: QM Academic Regulations 2009/10, Part
2 – General Regulation, §2.79.
Avoid plagiarism – use referencing
• A reference is used whenever your work contains someone else’s
words or ideas. A reference will ensure that the reader of the
assignment can identify and locate the source of the
information.
• If you quote directly from another person’s work you must use
quotation marks around the entire quote and reference the quote.
• If you paraphrase – put another person’s work into different
words but with the same meaning – you must reference the work.
• If you use another person’s ideas, findings or research (i.e. facts
they have established) in your work you must reference the work.
Reference: QM Academic Registry and Council Secretariat:
Plagiarism – ten key points
Scientific Misconduct
Case study
In 2006 Professor Dalibor Sames retracted seven papers
from American Chemical Society journals published with his
PhD student Bengu Sezen. For six of these papers, Sames
and Sezen were the only authors. Sames had already
sacked five people from his group for not being able to
reproduce Sezen’s work, but had secured tenure based on
his published record. The University of Columbia
subsequently retracted the PhD degree awarded to Sezen.
She is now a PhD student in Heidelberg in molecular
biology.
What questions does this case raise?
Reference:
http://yclept.ucdavis.edu/course/280/SamesSezenCase.pdf
QM’s definition of Scientific Misconduct
Piracy - the deliberate exploitation of ideas from
others without proper acknowledgement;
Plagiarism - the copying or misappropriation of ideas
(or their expression), text, software or data (or
some combination thereof) without permission and/or
due acknowledgement;
Mis-representation - deliberate attempt to
represent falsely or unfairly the ideas or work of
others, whether or not for personal gain or
enhancement;
Fraud - deliberate deception (which may or may not
include the invention or fabrication of data).
Reference: QM Guidelines on Good Practice in Research
(2003).
Must you report scientific misconduct?
If you think you have seen a case of
suspected research misconduct at
QM, must you report it?
Reporting Scientific Misconduct
One of the most difficult situations that a
researcher can encounter is to see or suspect that a
colleague has violated the ethical standards of the
research community. It is easy to find excuses to do
nothing, but someone who has witnessed misconduct
has an unmistakable obligation to act.
Reporting suspected research misconduct is a shared
and serious responsibility of all members of the
academic community. Any person who suspects a
scientific misconduct has an obligation to report the
allegation to a dean of the unit in which the
suspected misconduct occurred or to another senior
University administrator.
Reference: Gunsalus (1998)
Perspectives on Reporting Scientific Misconduct
Misconduct can:
• Seriously impact research - yours, a colleague’s, your group’s
• Injure reputations of scientists and their institutions
• Shake public confidence in the integrity of science
• Result in imposition of institutional/governmental counterproductive regulations
Reporting misconduct is:
• An ethical obligation
• Not easy
• If mishandled, can damage stakeholders
Note:
• There may be different explanations to what you perceive
• Reprisals sometimes occur
• If your allegation is judged malicious or reckless you may be
charged with scientific misconduct.
Reference: QM Procedure for Investigating Allegations of Misconduct in
Academic Research (2000), Gunsalus, C.K. (1998)
Food for Thought
“In the cases of scientific fraud that I
have looked at, three motives, or risk
factors have always been present. In all
cases, the perpetrators:
1. were under career pressure;
2. knew, or thought they knew what the
answer would turn out to be if they went
to all the trouble of doing the work
properly, and
3. were working in a field where individual
experiments are not expected to be
precisely reproducible.”
Reference: Goodstein, David (1996)
You couldn’t make it up!
Hyung-In Moon, a South Korean plant compound
researcher made up email addresses so he could do his
own peer review.
35 papers now retracted as a result.
7 previous papers retracted several years ago for
unspecified errors, some of which the notices called
“major”.
http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2012/09/17/re
traction-count-for-scientist-who-faked-emails-to-dohis-own-peer-review-grows-to-35/
If things go wrong
• Talk with supervisor, or
– School PhD tutor
or
– School Director of Graduate Studies,
or
– School Research Administrator
or
– Me!
• Don’t do NOTHING!
…and finally
Studying for a PhD is a really exciting
period in your life – ENJOY!
References - 1
• Ahearne, John F, 1999. The Responsible Researcher: Paths and Pitfalls. North
Carolina: Sigma Xi, online at
http://www.sigmaxi.org/programs/ethics/publications.shtml, accessed
20.09.2011.
• Bebau M., Pimple K., Muskavitch K., Borden S. & Smith D. (eds.), 1995. Moral
Reasoning in Scientific Research: Cases for Teaching and Assessment, online at
http://poynter.indiana.edu/mr/mr.pdf, accessed 20.09.2011.
• RCUK 2011. Policy and Code of Conduct on the Governance of Good Research
Conduct, online at
http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/funding/managing/Pages/goodpractice.aspx, accessed
20.09.2011.
• Goodstein, David, 1996. Conduct and Misconduct in Science in The Flight from
Science and Reason, Paul R. Gross, et al., New York Academy of Sciences,
reprinted in Ahearne, John F. ,1999. The Responsible Researcher: Paths and
Pitfalls, Sigma Xi.
• National Academies, 2009. On Being A Scientist: A Guide to Responsible
Conduct in Research, (3rd. Edition), Washington DC: National Academy Press,
online at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12192.html/
References - 2
• QM Academic Regulations 2009/10, online at
http://www.arcs.qmul.ac.uk/policy_zone/academic/academic_regulations_20
09_10.pdf, accessed 27.09.2011.
• QM Guidelines on Good Practice in Research (2003) online at
http://www.qmul.ac.uk/qmul/research/policies/docs/g-gpr.pdf, accessed
20.09.2011.
• QM Code of Practice for Research Degree Programmes (2011), online at
http://www.arcs.qmul.ac.uk/policy_zone/academic/Code_of_Practice_for%2
0Research_Degree_Programmes_2011-12.pdf, accessed 27.09.2011.
• QM Procedure for Investigating Allegations of Research Misconduct (2009)
online at http://www.qmul.ac.uk/qmul/research/policies/docs/pmisconduct.pdf, accessed 20.09.2011.
• QM Research Ethics Committee, 2011, online at
http://connect.qmul.ac.uk/research/ethicscommittee/index.html, accessed
20.09.2011.
• Roig, Michael, 2006. Avoiding plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and other
questionable writing practices: A guide to ethical writing, online at
http://facpub.stjohns.edu/~roigm/plagiarism/, accessed 27.09.2011.
• Sezen Found Guilty of Fraud, Cand Eng News, 2010, 88(49), December 6,
2010.
• Retraction Watch: http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/, accessed
9.10.12