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badger comments on Open thread, Jan. 12 - Jan. 18, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I have heard that in economics and possibly other social sciences Ph.D. students can staple together three journal articles, call it a dissertation and get awarded their doctorate. But I've recently read "Publication, Publication" by Gary King, which I interpret as saying a very bright and hardworking undergraduate can write a quantitative political science article in the space of a semester, while carrying a normal class load.
This is confusing. Now, Dr. King teaches at Harvard so all his students are smart and it's two students writing one paper but this still seems insane. I'm guessing a full course load is around 6 classes a term and people are to write a journal article or close approximation thereof in a semester when three of them will suffice to get a Ph.D. and many people fail out of said degree who are very, very smart.
Where am I confused? Is research not that hard, a stapler thesis a myth or these class projects not strictly comparable to real papers?
http://gking.harvard.edu/classes/advanced-quantitative-political-methodology-government-2001-government-1002-and-e-2001
From an economics perspective, the stapler dissertation is real. The majority of the time, the three papers haven't been published.
It's also possible to publish empirical work produced in a few months. The issue is where that article is likely to be published. There's a clear hierarchy of journals, and a low ranked publication could hurt more than it helps. Dissertation committees have very different standards depending on the student's ambition to go into academia. If the committee has to write letters of rec to other professors, it takes a lot more work to be sufficiently novel and interesting. If someone goes into industry, almost any three papers will suffice.
I've seen people leave because they couldn't pass coursework or because they felt burnt out, but the degree almost always comes conditional on writing something and having well-calibrated ambitions.