How To Write A PhD In Biological Sciences: A Guide For The Uninitiated

295 Pages·2022·22.522 MB·English

by  John Measey

How to Write a PhD in
Biological Sciences

How to Write a PhD in
Biological Sciences
A Guide for the Uninitiated
John Measey
First edition published 2022
by CRC Press
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300, Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742
and by CRC Press
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
© 2022 John Measey
CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author and pub-
lisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or the consequences of their use.
The authors and publishers have attempted to trace the copyright holders of all material reproduced
in this publication and apologize to copyright holders if permission to publish in this form has not
been obtained. If any copyright material has not been acknowledged please write and let us know so
we may rectify in any future reprint.
Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced,
transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information stor-
age or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers.
For permission to photocopy or use material electronically from this work, access www.copyright.
com or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA
01923, 978-750-8400. For works that are not available on CCC please contact mpkbookspermis-
[email protected]
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
ISBN: 978-1-032-08021-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-08020-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-21256-0 (ebk)
DOI: 10.1201/9781003212560
Typeset in CMR10 font
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
Cover illustration: Saint George and the Dragon was adapted by the author from an original
work by Paolo Uccello (~1470). While the student (St George), supported by their laboratory
(White Horse), is attempting to bring about the end of their PhD (Dragon) using this Fool’s
Guide (lance), the advisor (Princess) is leading the PhD by a leash from the darkness into the
community towards the Scientific Project (town).
The follow-up to this book, How to Publish in Biological Sciences: A Guide for the Uninitiated, is
available at www.routledge.com/9781032116419
To my students,
past, present and future

Contents
List of Tables xvii
List of Figures xix
Welcome xxv
About the Author xxxi
I Right from the Very Start 1
1 Introduction 3
1.1 So you are doing a PhD? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.1 What is a PhD? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1.2 Is a PhD more than a thesis? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1.3 Criteria used to judge PhD studies . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.1.4 Who are the examiners? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.1.5 What will you do after your PhD? . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.1.6 Think about your career before you start your PhD . 8
1.1.7 Don’t rely on becoming an academic . . . . . . . . . 9
1.1.8 Doing a PhD is really hard work . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.1.9 Your mental health will likely suffer . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.1.10 Any PhD has to be yours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.1.11 Does it matter where you do your PhD? . . . . . . . 10
1.1.12 What to look for in an advisor . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.1.13 What to avoid in an advisor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.1.14 What makes a good project? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.1.15 Funding your PhD studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2 Reconciling Yourself to Doing Things You’ve Been Avoiding 17
2.1 And learning lots of other stuff… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3 The Scientific Project and Scientific Living 19
3.1 Example: Invasive species . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.2 Should society lead the sciences or sciences lead society? . . 21
3.3 Carl Sagan’s “Baloney detection kit” . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.4 Live your life scientifically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.5 Citizen science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
vii
viii Contents
4 Keeping Track of Your Mental Health 27
4.1 Being physically active improves mental wellbeing . . . . . 30
4.2 Time to think . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.3 Balancing work with life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
II The Nuts and Bolts of Writing for the Biological
Sciences 33
5 How to Get Started with Writing 35
5.1 How to write a hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5.1.1 What is a hypothesis? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5.1.2 What a hypothesis isn’t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
5.1.3 A formulaic way to start writing your hypothesis . . 38
5.1.4 Teleological versus causal hypotheses . . . . . . . . . 40
5.1.5 How to evaluate your hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . 40
6 Being Aware That You Can Get It Wrong 43
6.1 Changing the likelihood of a hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . 45
6.2 Increasing the statistical power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
7 What Happens If You Don’t Have a Hypothesis? 49
7.1 Central problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
7.2 Does it matter that you don’t have a hypothesis? . . . . . . 50
7.3 Avoid HARKing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
8 What’s the Big Idea? 51
8.1 So where would we find these big ideas? . . . . . . . . . . . 51
9 Writing a Paragraph 55
9.1 Topic sentence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
9.2 Supporting sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
9.3 The magic of threes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
9.4 Use an example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
9.5 Avoid lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
9.6 The last sentence of the paragraph: The clincher . . . . . . 58
9.7 Above all – read it! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
9.8 How does the paragraph fit into the flow? . . . . . . . . . . 59
9.9 Seeding ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
9.10 Breaking the rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
9.11 Some common paragraph mistakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
10 Construct a Logical Argument in Your Writing 63
10.1 Arguments in Latin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
10.2 Other arguments in English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Contents ix
11 Storytelling in Science? 67
11.1 The danger of a teleological argument . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
11.2 Science is the very opposite of storytelling. Or is it? . . . . 69
11.3 Can storytelling help memory of science? . . . . . . . . . . 70
12 Why Do You Need to Cite? 71
12.1 Research is built on existing work and ideas . . . . . . . . . 73
12.2 Your citations say a lot about you . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
12.3 Cite while you write (not afterwards) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
12.4 Citation styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
12.4.1 Vancouver style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
12.4.2 Harvard style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
12.5 Moving from Harvard to Vancouver . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
12.6 Where within a sentence should the citation come? . . . . . 77
12.7 What about the order of the citations in a string? . . . . . 78
12.8 What about citations as taxonomic authorities? . . . . . . . 78
12.9 Is it possible to mis-cite? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
12.10 Should I cite without reading the paper? . . . . . . . . . . . 79
12.11 What should I not cite? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
12.12 Do I cite the review or the primary literature? . . . . . . . 80
12.13 What is primacy and why does it matter? . . . . . . . . . . 81
12.14 How many citations are enough? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
12.15 Should I cite myself? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
12.16 Should I cite my friends? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
12.17 Does the impact factor of the cited article matter? . . . . . 83
13 Literature Databases 85
13.1 Searching the literature using a database . . . . . . . . . . 85
13.2 Keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
13.2.1 Boolean terms or operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
13.2.2 Proximity operators and parentheses . . . . . . . . . 87
13.2.3 Wildcards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
13.2.4 Combining searches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
13.3 Moving items into your reference manager . . . . . . . . . . 88
13.4 Citation searches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
13.4.1 What else are literature databases used for? . . . . . 89
13.5 Administrators want metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
13.6 Searching by scientist’s name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
13.6.1 Overcoming the difficulties of common names . . . . 90
13.7 Google Scholar, Web of Science or Scopus? . . . . . . . . . 91
13.8 What’s the difference between indices? . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
14 Reference Managers 93
14.1 Other points to consider . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94