Feedback
The problem with getting feedback, especially from people who are cleverer than you are, is that they often immediately identify the parts of your work that you were hoping they might skim over - the ones that you yourself know aren’t really up to scratch.
They also begin by making general statements about how great your work is, before making direct criticisms that cut right to the heart of what is wrong with everything that you’ve done. A PhD is, I’m assuming, worse - since they represent four years of peoples’ lives (who knows where the apostrophe goes there?).
Today I received by PhD examiner’s reports, which were mixed. One examiner recommended that the thesis be passed after minor textual corrections have been made, whereas the other suggested that several paragraphs be added, some statements be clarified and some of the figures be changed slightly.
My favourite bits included:
The combination of diverse research approaches employed to address community ecology and trophic structure is almost unique, not only among aquatic studies, but ecological studies in general.
…represents a lot of effort in stomach contents analysis, and I commend Mr. Rayner for having the tenacity and patience to do this.
So most of the inferences from the isotopic findings are pure speculation, and virtually unsupported by the analysis as presented.
it is highly unusual to see them [the methods] integrated into a single body of work.
Overall, the thesis is very cohesive, with the information in each chapter building towards a comprehensive model of trophic ecology in the Mulgrave River. My congratuations to Tom on a job well done.
It is not clear how many points were measured for the various variables
Given the low level of taxonomic resolution, the food web depicted in this figure could just about apply to any lowland river, tropical or otherwise.
So, it’s back to the drawing board for a week or so.
February 27th, 2007 at 8:01 am
Taxonomic resolution? Trophic structure? Isotopic findings? It’s just lucky for the fish that they don’t have to do a stomach contents analysis of Tom.
And it’s “people’s” - “people” in this case being a collective noun. It can be singular as well, such as when it is referring to a tribe etc, as in “the various peoples of the Pacific”…like the way we use “family” to refer to a group of people but you can also have “families”… and the respective plurals become “family’s” and “families’”.
February 27th, 2007 at 10:46 am
‘…represents a lot of effort in stomach contents analysis, and I commend Mr. Rayner for having the tenacity and patience to do this.’
This must be a comment by the cane farmer’s wife Mrs Rossi as she deep fried the catfish that you gave her
February 27th, 2007 at 11:58 am
I agree with unclegeoffie about the apostrophe.
And I absolutely agree with you about feedback. The reason I mostly avoid creating anything is that I know I would force myself to ask the most capable people I know to provide feedback. And I know before I even start that this will be a bad idea.
February 27th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Does the “low level of taxonomic resolution” refer to the fact that maybe you couldn’t identify the difference in species between one microscopic bit of semi-digested, fish mush from another?
February 28th, 2007 at 8:06 am
My thoughts exactly…