Measuring Ph.D

 Many years ago I posted a blog bemoaning the tendencies to measure everything, even those that cannot be measured. I am unable to recall in which space and under which title I posted it. Hence, I am unable to give a link to it. Now, I have an opportunity to visit the subject.

I read a newspaper article, “UGC to recognize ‘outstanding’ Ph.D research with award,” in The Hindu of October 8, 2024. Ouch ...

There are more and detailed “ouch...”es to come in the article. For example, “[O]ne each from five disciplines...”. In this post, I’d endeavour to bring out the not-too-hidden idiocies of this.

Can the value of a Ph.D thesis be measured?

Let me take the case of one Mr. Richard P. Feynman RPF). It was in the early 1940s RPF’s services were deemed crucial for a national mission, and though he had done much work– perhaps some here, some there and some elsewhere and everywhere; his advisor and the other big poobahs of the Physics department and the Graduate School of Princeton decided that he should just “write-up” his dissertation, defend it and get out, and join the super-secret mission to develop a nuclear device as a “Doctor” before Germany did it. His thesis was put in its place, to be rarely referenced, I believe. Let us hear Feynman himself on this, his initial foray into the theory:

So what happened to the old theory that I fell in love with as a youth [in high school and UG work] ? Well, I would say it’s become an old lady, that has very little attractive left in her and the young today will not have their hearts pound anymore when they look at her. 

The epilogue is, RPF won the Nobel Prize for Physics, for work much beyond what he did for his Ph.D, which was more or less gifted. If you wished to know more, go here, to the last page.

 Pretty much the same thing happened with Mr. Albert Einstein, though not with his Ph.D degree work. It was felt by the Nobel Prize Committee for Physics that he had done a lot of work and produced stunning work (recall Feynman, but time going negative!), but his epoch defining work –accelerated frames of reference, gravity– had not been experimentally verified. This had become a sine qua non conferring the Nobel Prize in Physics. And the prize was to be awarded for work done and validated in the year immediately preceding the announcement. But, the foundations of photoelectric work were experimentally verified many years earlier, in 1887. Einstein was awarded the physics Nobel for his work in 1905 in 1919. Tut, tut... The saving grace was that photoelectric work launched Quantum Electro Dynamics, QED, which ironically Einstein hated!

UGC must have had at least an inkling of the two instances mentioned above. The lingering doubt I have is did UGC think that its award had greater value than the Nobel? Yes. “Ouch” number one.

“Ouch...” number two. “...five disciplines, nominate one each from each discipline ...”.  This when the UGC is beating its breast about breaking down the silos of disciplines, the fashionable phrase being “multi-disciplinary”! So I ask, are the silos to be demolished or reinforced? One of the disciplines is “Sciences (including agricultural, medical sciences)”. Should we try to unweave the rainbow (from the title of one of the books by Prof. Richard Dawkins) of the two colours, agricultural and medical sciences? If we tried, we would reach the unitary field of biology–it is all biology, one human, and the other plants. It will further divide into bio-engineering and bio-technology. I do not know the difference between the two; excuse me if they are the same. “Ouch...”

The last mentioned discipline in the article is “[C]ommerce and management”. Paul Krugman, an American economist, was awarded the Economics, faux Nobel just as Amartya Sen earlier, in 2008. The citation reads, inter alia, “...for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity...”

Trade = Commerce and Location of Economic Activity = Management, remembering that logistics IS management! I conclude then that “management” CANNOT include work on logistics, as it is covered under “commerce”! Again, siloizing! “Ouch...” again!

One more example, merely to test the reader’s patience! The Nobel for Physics in 2024 has gone to two scientists, one paving the way for AI, and the other, going further back, to neural networks. Physics, as we understand now, has minimal input into the neither natural nor artificial neural network, save Boltzmann Statistics (not Physics) developed in thermodynamics (physics and chemistry coming together) – Sabine Hossenfelder, a German Physicist who seems to have soured on Ph.D, has this to say. It is fortunate/unfortunate for physics that there is no Nobel–at least a faux Nobel–for computer software. I would relish the day Elon Musk gets a Nobel, at least a faux Nobel.

The reason for this new award under the flag of the UGC took my breath away–admissions for Ph.D programmes have gone through the roof, the Y-on-Y rate is 10 percent. So, UGC, through the allure of a national award wants to increase it, damn the quality of a dissertation.

 Raghuram Ekambaram