Another DNB thesis lands in my inboxโjoining its MD cousins.
My task is to evaluate it. A formality, really. The postgraduate has written it, the professor has supervised itโor so the paperwork claims.
I enter the username, type the password, and open the fileโwithout hope.
An immaculate PDF appears. Crisp formatting. Polished grammar. Elegant English. Tables aligned with military precision. P-values refusing to cross the ๐๐ข๐น๐ฎ๐ข๐ฏ ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ฌ๐ฉ๐ข- the 0.05 threshold. It looks like research, but it isnโt science.
There is no question, no curiosity, no wonder. Only data, arranged to pass. Methods are borrowed. Results, brazenly copied. Plagiarism software outwitted. This isnโt scholarship. Itโs certification.
What happened?
There was a time when the thesis was a rite of passageโtyped line by line, slowly, painfully. Pages corrected, retyped, carried with care and pride. Imperfect, yes, but sincere. Today, a ghostwriter assembles your thesis while you sleep. For a fee, you purchase data and lease your integrity.
Each thesis I read tells the same silent tale: borrowed questions, recycled methods, conclusions without meaning. The student doesn’t understand it. The guide doesnโt care. The institution demands compliance, not curiosity.
How did we get here?
First came the software. Then the internet. Medical colleges mushroomed. Degrees multiplied. But the time to teach research disappeared. So did the desire to learn it. The rot spreadโquietly, completely, from the top down.
Truth, today, is casualty.
Weโve made deception routine. We’ve taught our students that science is not a way of thinking, but a passport to the MD exams. That it is easier to fake findings than to ask questions. That looking like a scientist matters more than thinking like one.
This is not just bad science. This is anti-science.
And no one pauses. Not the student. Not the guide. The department head does not care. The Dean looks the other way. The examiner does not blow the whistle.
Not even the journal editor who may one day publish this charade. With in-house journals and institutions chasing publication metrics, every thesis stands a near-certain chance of getting published.
And ignored.
We are not training scientists. We are producing impostors.
We must stop. Scrap the thesis, if we must. Yes, stop them. At the very least, donโt compel students to partake in this parody. Let them learn honesty before technique. Let them fail truthfully, rather than succeed through fraud.
Sir Doug Altman, the British statistician, warned us in the ๐๐ ๐ in 1994: โ๐๐ฆ ๐ฏ๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ฅ ๐ญ๐ฆ๐ด๐ด ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ด๐ฆ๐ข๐ณ๐ค๐ฉ, ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ต๐ต๐ฆ๐ณ ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ด๐ฆ๐ข๐ณ๐ค๐ฉ, ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ด๐ฆ๐ข๐ณ๐ค๐ฉ ๐ฅ๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ฆ ๐ง๐ฐ๐ณ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ณ๐ช๐จ๐ฉ๐ต ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ข๐ด๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ด.โ
He was right then. He is right now.
The publish-or-perish culture lives on. But the tragedy is this: we are publishingโand still perishing.