Sandwalk: March 2026

Friday, March 06, 2026

A new kind of PhD program?

Getting a Ph.D. means that you become an expert in that subject and you have demonstrated that you can think critically enough to advance our knowledge and understanding. In the case of the sciences, it also means that you have mastered some of the techniques required to advance knowledge.

But mastering the techniques in order to investigate problems should not be sufficient, in my opinion. Above all, a Ph.D. candidate needs to demonstrate a deep understanding of the basic science that underlies our current models and theories. That's absolutely necessary if you are going to be capable of challenging those models and theories.

An editorial in a recent issue of Science caught my eye because it proposes to "reimagine" graduate degrees in STEM disciplines. The authors are Ian Banks who is director of Science Policy at the Foundation for American Innovation in San Francisco (California, USA) and Prineha Narang who is a professor in Physical Sciences and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, California, USA). [Reimagining STEM doctoral training].

Here's part of their proposal ...

But if one of the goals of granting an advanced degree is to produce professionals who can drive innovation—applying new ideas, methods, or technologies to create value—then academic programs must be available to support that outcome too.

The solution is not to replace existing PhD programs, but to add a STEM innovation PhD track. The selective program would require deep private-sector engagement in an accelerated 4-year program in which a student immediately joins a structured research project with clear milestones, crafted by a faculty member in consultation with a relevant industry partner. During the second and third years, students would participate in 2- or 3-month internships with companies that are aligned with their research.

I do not agree that one of the goals of a Ph.D. program is to drive technology to create value. It may be a consequence of mastering critical thinking but that's not the same thing. I do not think that the average student who obtains a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology, geomorphology, or astrophysics has to demonstrate that they are "professionals who can drive innovation-applying new ideas."

Furthermore, the idea that Ph.D. programs at major universities would be partially controlled by industrial partners is repugnant. When I was training Ph.D. students there was no way that I would have teamed up with a biotech company or a drug company and allowed them to exploit one of my students for free research.

What do you think? Should Science be publishing such editorials on the prominent first page of the journal?

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Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)

Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Peter Atkins

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake. Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory. Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat. Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True

I once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000

It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma

One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick

There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins

Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod

The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.

Richard Lewontin

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Friday, March 06, 2026

A new kind of PhD program?