“So is it possible to fail, once you’ve made it to the defence?” I asked, hoping the answer would be no.

“Oh yes!” he answered with glee. “Absolutely! Actually, there was one particularly bad case in medicine a while back. Everything looked great until one of the doctoral candidate’s lab assistants asked a question ex auditorium.”

“What was the question?”

“Oh, he just asked why none of the human subjects who had died during the experiments were mentioned in the thesis.”

Once my relieved laughter had subsided he added, “I think that was back in the twenties.”

“So what about the other times people have failed at the defence?”

“Other times? I’ve never heard of any other times that’s happened,” he said with a smile.

I’d still prefer there to be no questions ex auditorio.

7 thoughts on “ex auditorio

  1. larsd

    Det er et tilfelle fra Danmark, hvor en forsker ble fratatt sin doktorgrad p grunn av avskrift. Om dette ble avsl¯rt ex auditorium, vet jeg ikke

  2. Jill

    Plagiarism? How embarrassing! No, I’m sure I wrote it myself. And I’m sure nobody was killed due to the writing.

    😉

  3. HÂkon Styri

    I’m not certain whether the case Jill was told about is the same case that I vaguely recall, but that wasn’t back in the twenties.

    It’s correct that a lab assistant asked a question ex auditorium, but the lab assistant did have to answer a few questions regarding the lab reports during the investigation.

    I belive the incident was called a scandal and the candidate was awarded a PhD at another university.

  4. Jill

    Ooh! So it’s true to some degree! Goodness. Thanks, HÂkon. Any more details, anyone?

  5. real icon

    Shouldn’t it be “ex auditorio”, by the way?

    “You need to cultivate a consumer mentality: remember how much you’ve paid to get to this moment, and take advantage of the all-star cast (a.k.a. your committee members) you’ve assembled by asking THEM questions.”
    (Joan Bolker)

  6. Jill

    Oh, you’re right! I never studied Latin, so I even had to do a web search to check this, but yes, you’re absolutely correct. I’ve fixed the title, now 🙂

    And WOW. I need to plan my QUESTIONS!!

  7. Jamie

    Now that you are about to join `the club’ it is time that we can reveal to you the secret of what you should try to avoid at your defence: http://www.angelfire.com/ak/Smitter/thesis.html (although #91 is probably okay nowadays).

    I’d wish you good luck but you obviously don’t need luck because you’ll be awesome as always.

Leave A Comment

Recommended Posts

Triple book talk: Watch James Dobson, Jussi Parikka and me discuss our 2023 books

Thanks to everyone who came to the triple book talk of three recent books on machine vision by James Dobson, Jussi Parikka and me, and thanks for excellent questions. Several people have emailed to asked if we recorded it, and yes we did! Here you go! James and Jussi’s books […]

Image on a black background of a human hand holding a graphic showing the word AI with a blue circuit board pattern inside surrounded by blurred blue and yellow dots and a concentric circular blue design.
AI and algorithmic culture Machine Vision

Four visual registers for imaginaries of machine vision

I’m thrilled to announce another publication from our European Research Council (ERC)-funded research project on Machine Vision: Gabriele de Setaand Anya Shchetvina‘s paper analysing how Chinese AI companies visually present machine vision technologies. They find that the Chinese machine vision imaginary is global, blue and competitive.  De Seta, Gabriele, and Anya Shchetvina. “Imagining Machine […]

Do people flock to talks about ChatGPT because they are scared?

Whenever I give talks about ChatGPT and LLMs, whether to ninth graders, businesses or journalists, I meet people who are hungry for information, who really want to understand this new technology. I’ve interpreted this as interest and a need to understand – but yesterday, Eirik Solheim said that every time […]