Our readers present their “thesis in 180 seconds” proposals

• "My thesis in 180 seconds" is a popularization competition intended for doctoral students.

• The main goal is to get everyone interested in subjects that are often obscure or niche.

• Three sociologists have analyzed the effects and draw a mixed report.

Ready, Set ? Go! You have 180 seconds, not one more, to present your thesis topic. "If I could participate in the" My thesis in 180 seconds "competition, I would recite a poem against a musical background with which I would make listeners travel in my little universe bubble", confides Khalid, "autistic and passionate about astrophysics". “Over nearly twenty years, I developed a theory that aims, among other things, to unify the laws of cosmology. Moreover, I popularized my work in a pocket book and I am currently finalizing another which explains the origin of fundamental constants, such as that of Planck, Einstein or Newton ”, he explains. . 

asked its Internet users about their thesis ideas to present in three minutes.

If our reader Khalid seems to have thought through the question well, another, "Mr Bokeh" seems doubtful about the feasibility of such a challenge: "In 180 minutes (sic), I could only give thesis subject titles that I could develop further… ”An observation shared by sociologists Stéphane Le Lay, Jean Frances and Jean-Marc Corsi who in their book

(Editions du Croquant) regrets "the rapid installation, in the field of ESR, of a competitive and fun device encouraging doctoral students to question their relationship to the rules of the scientific profession".

The challenge of popularization

In an interview with

, the three researchers point out the flaws and strengths of this competition, which landed in France in 2014, which aims to popularize subjects that are often obscure, even unknown to the general public, while allowing doctors "to communicate on the basis of their work in a different way from the purely academic format, which they master ”. An idea defended by Anaïs, a French doctoral student expatriate in Quebec who is pursuing her “thesis on the impact of chemical pollution on orcas. Ultimately, I hope that my research will improve conservation efforts and help our politicians reduce the pollution that plagues not only this charismatic species, but also the indigenous people who depend on the same prey. The researchers are thus highlighted,their subjects also and we add "the" fun "and spectacular side to the device with animator, music, training with the Improvisation League ...", according to our three sociologists.

This aspect of gamification of scientific work is however double-edged: with the competition aspect, it is no longer really a question of popularizing but of winning.

“In this context, we observed a very clear gap between the way in which people defined their thesis project, and the way in which they presented their research at MT180.

The probative dimension, which is to provide proof, specific to popularization, is also being overlooked.

We go from a research question to the announcement, more often than not, of results which make sense or which are quite spectacular.

», Reveal the authors of

Show, provocation and show off

Making a show is the goal of some of our inspired readers who have proposed as the subject of their thesis and therefore for a possible MT180, the manufacture of beer, premature ejaculation or the assessment of the five-year Macron. "We are in fact dealing with what the specialist in communication sciences Mathieu Quet calls a" promising communication ", which is an ellipse and a silent passage of everything that makes research difficult". We remain in the spectacle, in the provocation: "How the moderation of left-wing newspapers censors everything that is not well-meaning" or "How a small microbe of a few microns can destroy the freedom of 67 million French people", propose still other Internet users.

The most promising having been sent to us, being undoubtedly: “State of current knowledge on the life and work of Raboliette Huglin, hoof pliers at the Malicornay gravels farm from 1325 to 1332.” So many fanciful subjects which point out how difficult it is still today for the general public to understand the ins and the darkness of the PhD world.

“It clearly underlines the desolate state of the academic field.

Because, when we manage to set up devices like that to recreate links, cool atmospheres and highlight the work of doctoral students, it is because, in a way, we have failed.

», Conclude the three sociologists.

But on “boiling soft-boiled eggs”: who's the egg or the chicken?

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