Unfortunately the final stages of PhD is a very sticky situation for many people. It boggles me (after my own PhD defense), how arbitrary the arguments are for

Unfortunately the final stages of PhD is a very sticky situation for many people. It boggles me (after my own PhD defense), how arbitrary the arguments are for 'sufficiency'. I learned it by experience that if a advisor wants the student to graduate, he will go the extra mile to make sure the committee & department are okay with it. Same holds in the opposite as well. Unfortunately there is too much power vested in the hands of a few for good or the bad. The OP in SE tells about 8 papers, but what is unknown is if the papers connect the dots in his thesis theme. I know lot of people who hop around several topics in their PhD work & the hypothesis presented is either connected weakly or none at all (For e.g. in my case a early virtualization paper couldn't fit into the overall theme of system optimization. It's a published paper but how does it contribute to the story? It doesn't. I couldn't even add that to my thesis). It is also quite possible that OP misconstrued 'preparing the thesis' with 'sufficiency to defend'. Too often advisors tell this so that grad students catch their loopholes early, as to where the logic & conclusions don't fit the story thread. And for this, they are also not totally at fault because PhD research work is supposed to be novel (and thus merits earning the degree). He is at times as clueless at the developing picture as the student himself. That being said, he should have been paying more attention if he has already authored 8 papers together with student. It sounds more like the PhD Farm/ Paper mill lab type of place. Hard to make guesses without the content of the research work