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An oral defense is ultimately a meeting, with the same weaknesses as other types of meetings. In particular, if new information comes up in a meeting, you canno

An oral defense is ultimately a meeting, with the same weaknesses as other types of meetings. In particular, if new information comes up in a meeting, you cannot reasonably expect to get useful responses from the other participants. First impressions maybe, and plausible-sounding bullshit from those prone to generating that. If you want anything more, you need to provide the information in advance or schedule another meeting later. Oral defenses in academia are largely rituals. If a student fails their defense, it's almost always the supervisor's fault. The supervisor is supposed to be the primary quality control. With their regular meetings with the student over the years, they should be able to tell whether the student has achieved sufficient understanding and contributed enough to graduate. If the supervisor thinks the student is ready to defend, the reasonable expectation is that the student will pass and graduate. The defense is mostly there to let the other examiners validate the supervisor's judgment.

smueller1234 20d ago
Here's another example of a similar but slightly different failure mode of the live defense: The department where I got my degree had a practice around PhD defense where there would be a prof each representing the four research pillars + the dean. It was well known that certain professors disliked each other enough that they would snipe each other's candidates. You'd just hope not to work for one whose enemies got picked for the panel. If you were a superstar, you'd pass, but if you were an okay candidate or someone strong but with stage fright, you be could toast even if you did good research. The defense was only briefly about the actual thesis, then switched over to whatever research interest the committee members had, and they'd drill into their pet subjects. This was in physics, hardly politics forward normally, and at a very well respected university.
abdullahkhalids 20d ago
You are missing the entire point of the oral defense while almost stating it. The existence of the oral defense is what extrinsically motivates the supervisor to do their job well. If the student fails, the supervisor loses faces in front of their peers, which obviously they try to avoid. Removing the oral defense would massively reduce the quality of PhDs because supervisors will not do their job. Also in my observational experience in physics, a fair number of students (probably like 10%) get some sort of major corrections to their thesis. After writing this, I did a search, and in the UK, the number across all fields is 16% [1]. [1] https://www.lexacademic.com/blog/how-common-is-passing-with-major-corrections-from-a-phd-lex-academic-blog/ https://www.lexacademic.com/blog/how-common-is-passing-with-...
MarceliusK 20d ago
I think this is true of defenses as they exist today, but that may be partly because the thesis currently does most of the signaling.
bonoboTP 19d ago
And even then, the other examiner will only fail the candidate under egregiously extreme conditions. Rather, if the supervisor wants to pass someone who is unfit but not egregiously, this will just erode the supervisor's reputation among peers. Because there is a grapevine of course. So it can't be regular. But academics also really care about face and embarrassment, so they won't make a scene, u less there is preexisting drama around the supervisor. The only fails during the oral I've heard of happened when the candidate insisted to defend against their advisor's wish.

smueller1234 20d ago

Here's another example of a similar but slightly different failure mode of the live defense: The department where I got my degree had a practice around PhD defense where there would be a prof each representing the four research pillars + the dean. It was well known that certain professors disliked each other enough that they would snipe each other's candidates. You'd just hope not to work for one whose enemies got picked for the panel. If you were a superstar, you'd pass, but if you were an okay candidate or someone strong but with stage fright, you be could toast even if you did good research. The defense was only briefly about the actual thesis, then switched over to whatever research interest the committee members had, and they'd drill into their pet subjects. This was in physics, hardly politics forward normally, and at a very well respected university.

abdullahkhalids 20d ago

You are missing the entire point of the oral defense while almost stating it. The existence of the oral defense is what extrinsically motivates the supervisor to do their job well. If the student fails, the supervisor loses faces in front of their peers, which obviously they try to avoid. Removing the oral defense would massively reduce the quality of PhDs because supervisors will not do their job. Also in my observational experience in physics, a fair number of students (probably like 10%) get some sort of major corrections to their thesis. After writing this, I did a search, and in the UK, the number across all fields is 16% [1]. [1] https://www.lexacademic.com/blog/how-common-is-passing-with-major-corrections-from-a-phd-lex-academic-blog/ https://www.lexacademic.com/blog/how-common-is-passing-with-...

MarceliusK 20d ago

I think this is true of defenses as they exist today, but that may be partly because the thesis currently does most of the signaling.

bonoboTP 19d ago

And even then, the other examiner will only fail the candidate under egregiously extreme conditions. Rather, if the supervisor wants to pass someone who is unfit but not egregiously, this will just erode the supervisor's reputation among peers. Because there is a grapevine of course. So it can't be regular. But academics also really care about face and embarrassment, so they won't make a scene, u less there is preexisting drama around the supervisor. The only fails during the oral I've heard of happened when the candidate insisted to defend against their advisor's wish.