Source: WeChat public account "Science Network"
Organized: Zhao Guangli
University of Electronic Science and Technology A doctor was unable to obtain a doctorate degree due to external review of thesis, and Ma Yi, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, was angry.
Ma Yi is the tutor (external supervisor) of this doctoral student during his visit to study in the United States. He believes that the student "is excellent in scientific research" and "is the first author of our recent CTRL papers", and his external review issues are "completely misunderstandings and formats"; while University of Electronic Science and Technology "missed the on-campus degree review time for reasons such as external review, and notified that he could no longer get his doctorate degree."
In negotiations with the school, he accused the school, graduate school and college of "shirking responsibility" in the incident.
From June 29 to July 8, Ma Yi spoke out on Weibo on this matter, which attracted heated discussion. In a Weibo on July 8, he revealed that the student has now received the doctoral admission notice from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and will enter the school in September, and will be guided by him and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology professor Shen Xiangyang .
The school is too rigid or is it rejected when it goes to the back door?
Some netizens did not buy Ma Yi’s claims on Weibo.
Ma Yi said on his Weibo on June 29 that the student "prepared to graduate in September this year and submitted his doctoral thesis early in April."
According to a doctor who graduated from the University of Electronic Science and Technology, the doctoral student at the University of Electronic Science and Technology did not say that he graduated in September and reviewed the graduation qualifications of doctoral students twice in June and December each year. Therefore, if the student wants to graduate in June, "submit the paper in April is not what Teacher Ma said, 'submit the paper early'."
verified by reporters that the above time nodes are indeed specific in "Implementation Rules for the Award of Postgraduate Degrees of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China" released by the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China.
The detailed rules also stipulate that if experts report that there are many low-level errors in the dissertation, the defense application procedure shall be suspended for 3 months; if there is one copy of "revised after modification" or "disagree to the defense", the defense application procedure shall be suspended for at least 3 months.
In addition, according to the "Measures for Handling Quality Issues of Graduate Degree Dissertations of University of Electronic Science and Technology of China" , if there is a quality problem when applying for a defense of a dissertation, the application procedure for graduate defense of a graduate student defense will be suspended for at least 3 months.
. Comprehensive information shows that the doctoral student has reached the maximum study period of 6 years. After the paper submitted in April was sent for review, the feedback received was not ideal. According to regulations, if the defense application process is initiated after "at least 3 months", the student will exceed his study period. Even if the paper has no problems, the school will not be able to award him a degree.
In addition, some netizens pointed out that the paper mentioned by Ma Yi, which was the first author, was finally published in the open source journal Entropy, which has "the impact factor is only 2 points". It only takes about one month from submission to recruitment of the journal.
Given that the paper "has been done well from an academic perspective" and the journal published is mediocre, the netizen speculated that "maybe it was to catch up with the classmate's graduation thesis for review."
It can be seen from this that the student may have problems with the time management of the dissertation.
Therefore, many netizens believe that although the student may have indeed reached the doctoral level, the school regulations are there. The University of Electronic Science and Technology can only do things according to the rules, and cannot just open the door because of Ma Yi's "struggle" and break the rules.
The "selfless" of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China is obviously unacceptable to Ma Yi. He said on Weibo that even though he "has been a part-time professor at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China", because of this matter, he should not have any connection with this school that disrespects talents from now on. "I would like to advise outstanding students in China to learn from it when choosing their favorite universities."
External review of the paper: Some people are blindly reviewing, and some people are "blindly reviewing"
Another point that makes Ma Yi feel upset is that the flawed External review of the paper ruined the good things of this student.
Some netizens commented that the saying "Apart from each other is like a mountain" is very real in cutting-edge subdivided fields. The paper blind review experts should be divided into more detail by their major, otherwise the paper will not be understood and it will easily mislead people's children.
In response to this incident, , an academician of the Royal Canadian Academy of Sciences and a professor at the Canadian Academy of Engineering and Duke University in the United States, also said that if the external audit expert is not selected well, sometimes he will encounter that does not know much about the cutting-edge scientific research of small professionals.
, but some netizens also disagree with this: "If you choose small fields, blind review will become 'transparent review'." The implication is that if the division is too detailed, the paper review may become a "small circle meeting".
At present, the quality review of degree thesis by various universities and institutes is becoming increasingly strict . For example, the University of Electronic Science and Technology requires that "all doctoral dissertations be sent to experts from off-campus units for review."
, and blind review is often placed in the last part before the thesis defense. If the review is not good, students may face the results of "delaying graduation" and "no degree award", and the instructor and the college will also be punished accordingly.
is also true for this reason, illiterate review cannot be "blind review" . Professor of the School of Life Science and Technology of Shanghai Jiaotong University Qiao Zhongdong On his Science Network blog, he published a blog post "Do not treat blind review experts as bricks" and disclosed several types of blind review experts he encountered became "blind reviewers":
There is a doctoral student who studies the mechanism of virus invasion of cells. During the Ph.D., the student published 4 related SCI papers .
tutor organized the school experts to conduct a pre-defense and put forward pertinent revisions to the paper. The students will carefully revise their doctoral thesis based on their opinions and submit it to the blind review.
blind review opinions are one of the opinions that the results are good, but the other opinion is that they fail to pass. The review opinion that
failed is: it is believed that the doctoral student should not study the mechanism of virus invasion of cells, but should study how to prepare a vaccine.
Another doctoral student published 3 SCI papers with an impact factor >5, and also submitted for a blind review after pre-defense.
results are also high and low. The blind review opinion with low scores copied half of the title of the paper, and wrote less than 10 words in total, and then all the scores were 68 points!
According to the standards of Jiaotong University at that time, the student was unable to participate in the defense. The review opinions of
high scores are sometimes ridiculous.
There is a paper that has all the blind review opinions: the research is meaningful, the experiment is reliable, the research methods are feasible, the conclusions are credible, etc., but the final summary is that it is not approved, the reason is that "the paper has no value."
Another student received a blind review opinion of more than 90 points, but the comments were very poor, even very negative, and many modification opinions were put forward. What’s strange is that these revision opinions are not specific content, and students cannot modify the paper based on this evaluation opinion.
There is also a student who studies neurodevelopment. The evaluation opinions returned were all about DNA repair, which made the student not know how to modify his own paper.
According to the provisions of Shanghai Jiaotong University , students should modify the paper based on blind review and explicit review opinions before they can initiate the defense procedure.
helplessly, the student found the review expert, but the expert said, "I'm sorry, because of carelessness, I pasted other comments into the student's evaluation opinions!"
Qiao Zhongdong believes that the paper review experts should stand on the stance of fairness , and should have a strong sense of social responsibility, professional ethics and professional knowledge, have a good attitude, high personal quality, and have no prejudice against things, so that the reviewed papers can seriously and responsibly put forward overall evaluation and modification opinions on the reviewed papers, so that doctoral candidates can continue to modify the papers based on their opinions.
"Thesis review is related to the future and destiny of every graduate student, cannot tolerate any carelessness ." Qiao Zhongdong said: "Otherwise, he will become a brick-hit whoever wants to kill anyone he wants."
professors: First-class schools do not need to be anonymous external review
Since Ma Yi triggered the illiterate review of doctoral thesis at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chen Yiran, a well-known professor in the Department of Electronic Computer Engineering at Duke University in the United States, has been watching "eating melons".
After learning that the student went there later, he felt that "although he needs to study for a few more years, it is also a good thing to be a student of Teacher Shen and Teacher Ma."
In addition to "eating melons", he also had in-depth thinking on the external review system of thesis.
"I read netizens' messages saying that the external audit system is too rigid and that the six-year graduation period is too dead and needs reform. These comments make sense." Chen Yiran believes: "After the regulations are promulgated and implemented, always needs to keep improving in line with the times."
He also reminded that the external audit system is not Chinese characteristics .
"I myself have been invited to review papers from several countries, some are anonymous and non-anonymous." Chen Yiran introduced that Australian doctoral supervisors in law cannot give comments on paper review, but are determined based on most opinions on external review, "It is considered an extreme."
He also analyzed that the external audit system mainly prevents doctoral supervisors or internal schools from "playing tricks" and creates a lot of "water blogs".
Starting from 1995, Tsinghua University began to "firstly conduct peer experts' hidden review of outstanding doctoral dissertations applied for school-level excellent doctoral dissertations. After that, this review method was gradually promoted to about 10% of doctoral dissertations that were randomly sampled by . In 2001, the proportion of peer experts' hidden reviews of doctoral dissertations was further expanded."
Since then, the anonymous review of the thesis has gradually expanded to some master's thesis random inspections and has been spread to various universities and institutes. In Chen Yiran's view, "This has played an important role in improving the quality of graduation thesis and the value of degree in history."
However, "of course there are many problems" in anonymous external review. Chen Yiran admitted, "For example, how to invite external audit experts with a truly suitable professional background? What should I do if the external audit experts are not serious (especially anonymous because I don't have to be responsible)? There have been many discussions before."
Chen Yiran believes that the reason why domestic universities dare not relax anonymous external audit is not that the schools do not understand the disadvantages here, but that they can only "take the least of the two evils" between "no matter if you care, you will be in chaos, and if you care, you will die."
Back to this incident, Chen Yiran felt that Ma Yi and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China did not have the problem of who is right or wrong, but that everyone has different backgrounds, their starting points and positions are inconsistent, and it is normal for them to have differences.
"And I hope that one day, some schools can say confidently and proudly that we control the quality of our graduates ourselves, and we do not need to conduct any anonymous external review or quantitative indicators. As long as the degree we award will be shining brightly and will be recognized everywhere in the world." Chen Yiran believes that at that time, we will be truly a world-class university.
Reference materials:
1. Qiao Middle East Science Network blog post "Do not treat blind review experts in doctoral thesis as bricks"
2. "Talking about the hidden name review of doctoral thesis", Sun Xinyin, Gao Hong, Liu Ying, Zhao Wei, Chen Haoming, etc., "Degree and Research" Student Education, 2002[J]
3. "Implementation Rules for the Award of Graduate Degrees of University of Electronic Science and Technology of China", University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, No. 9
4. "Measures for Handling Quality Issues of Graduate Degree Thesis of University of Electronic Science and Technology of China", University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, No. 8
