IMO the PhD description here isn’t really useful for STEM fields and is too simple/idealized. What you learn in a PhD is how to do science. You learn about: experiment design, getting funding in your field, writing papers in your field, using the tools to understand data, learning who are the people in your field you want to work with/for to achieve your personal research goals etc. It’s not “you make a dent in the universe of knowledge”, its “you learn the stuff you need to know to make a dent in the universe of knowledge”. Actually making the dent is ancillary.
I certainly pushed the boundaries of knowledge by a tiny amount during my PhD - that's what publishing is all about. Sure, you're learning how to write the paper, how to conduct the research, how to think about science, etc. but you're also __researching__. Matt gets it exactly right in this description.
I remember many years ago a friend's father commenting on my PhD by saying "isn't it wonderful to be the only person in the world to know about this thing that you're working on?" That's the moment when you have your unusual observation, something that nobody else has seen before (or at least nobody has published before) and it truly is a wonderful feeling. You rely on your advisor to tell you work to look initially, and eventually you get good at finding those places to look yourself.
As Frank Westheimer once said (paraphrased) "Science starts with an unusual observation. When you have an unusual observation, one of two things has happened: you've made a discovery or you've made a mistake.". That's also an important lesson, and one that formed the core of my PhD.
I agree this should be the goal, but I’m not sure it’s consistently realized in practice. It seems an awful lot of research is derivative or auto-cited, so I’m not not sure it would fall into the “pushing the boundaries” category.
I can only speak to my personal experience here, I'm certainly not an expert in how effective PhDs across all disciplines are at pushing back the boundaries of knowledge.
What's interesting is that the chemical reaction that was described in my paper that I linked elsewhere in this comment section [1] was originally discovered by some Japanese scientists in 1970, and we referred to their work as the "Oka Fragmentation". They too pushed back the boundaries of knowledge a little bit as well and we built on top of that. Also, my paper was arguing against conclusions made by a different team at Johns Hopkins - our work was ultimately shown to be correct as born out by subsequent experiments from our research group and others. So that contributes to the boundaries of knowledge by showing that some other body of work isn't correct. Who knows, perhaps our work will be shown to be incorrect in some future research.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that it's very difficult to discern impact at the time that you do the research - the impact can only truly be seen through the lens of history looking backwards.
Sir or Madam, isn’t the ultimate motivation for the pursuit of scientific knowledge to enlighten humanity with the experience of wisdom? If so, how enlightened has humanity become thanks to your contributions? I ask because your subjective “wonderful feeling” of possible arcanum may be as pointless as, say, a science of coffee tables, to human progress.
I suppose this is the reassurance of being educated in the engineering sciences: the results speak for themselves.
Yes, I judged correctly behind the paywall, your research pursuit is irrelevant to promoting self-knowledge. Unless you are willing to enlighten me on the dielectric effects of the catalytic reactions you are experimenting with? That would be helpful in understanding a more universal and necessary principle of the Laws of Nature you are seeking to understand.
Sure, but if you learn all that stuff without actually making a dent, you don't get granted your PhD. All the procedural stuff you learn along the way is necessary, but that's not what the PhD is.
It's also learning to manage how to live on a criminally low salary. If I were to give advice to my kids, that would be a resounding - don't get a PhD. You can do research in industry while getting paid extremely well and most likely your work won't go waste. The only problem is that industry only hires PhDs for serious research - this needs to be reformed. There should be a possibility of allowing non-PhDs learn the process of research while they're working there.
Salary/stipends vary significantly with country and research area. I can tell you that in Sweden for example a PhD student earns significantly above median wage and more than a teacher for example. In engineering you earn about on the same level as a masters graduate (slightly below typically).
