Letters – 25 October 2018

Just how will viva rule change help women?

Your story “PhD viva rule is ‘unfair on female academics’” (News, 18 October) reports that the University of Glasgow will insist that female PhD candidates have at least one woman on their viva examination panel.

I’m unclear what problem this is supposed to address. Is there any evidence that female PhD candidates at Glasgow are failed more often than male candidates? If so, does this trend disappear if a woman is on the panel?

If there is evidence of that kind of discrimination, then there are serious grounds for concern, and I agree that some action is needed – in that case, however, keeping a video recording of the viva might be a less onerous way of ensuring fair play. But unless there is evidence of that kind, this measure seems unnecessary and misguided.

In specialised areas, it can be hard enough to find appropriate examiners, so restricting the gender creates difficulties – on top of the extra burden on female academics. As a woman, I also worry that this move could serve to reinforce the idea that we are poor, weak things who can’t defend our arguments in challenging situations. A PhD should train you to do just that.

Dorothy Bishop
Via timeshighereducation.com

True love waits

In the feature “What’s love got to do with it?” (18 October), Agnieszka Piotrowska argues that intimate teacher-student relationships must be off-limits even if consent is not at issue.

There is one possible way of dealing with strong physical attraction between a professor and a student that has yet to be mentioned: waiting. Students, even postgraduate students, are not students for ever. If the individuals concerned have a genuine emotional, and not merely physical, attraction, and mutual respect, then they have the option of delaying the start of a romantic relationship until after the student is no longer a student.

There is also the option of the professor’s extricating himself or herself from any and all positions of authority relative to the student in question. Have the student transfer to another professor’s course, resign from the student’s dissertation committee, recuse oneself from discussions concerning the student’s progress through the programme and so on.

Arguably, all that should be done when a professor becomes aware of a strong attraction, even if there is no mutual acknowledgement and no actual physical relationship yet. Yes, students and professors will continue to be attracted to one another. There are more and less responsible ways of dealing with that, however.

mgpiety
Via timeshighereducation.com

Feedback fits fine

Every time I see the word “feedforward”, it grates just a little more.

At the end of the Second World War, Norbert Wiener, mathematician and father of cybernetics, was tasked by the US military with solving a problem resulting from the high speeds at which the new jet engine operated – it was so quick that pilots often were unable to react in time to avoid collisions. Wiener’s solution made a significant contribution to the development of the autopilot system through which an on-board computer gathered information (about altitude, pitch, airspeed and more) from the environment, evaluated its implications for the aircraft, made any necessary adjustments and then re-evaluated the situation – and did all this much faster than a person could.

The term Wiener coined for the process in which information from the environment was used to inform subsequent actions and decisions was “feedback”.

In his book The Problem with Pilots, Timothy Schultz of the US Naval War College writes: “A key aspect of this [cybernetic] process is information feedback [which] converts information to action; this action generates information used for future action, and the system continues to self-regulate as information is fed back into it.”

Accordingly, “feedback” is the correct term to describe information, such as comments on students’ essays, that is intended to inform future actions and decisions (that is, what students should do differently next time).

Whoever coined the term “feedforward” clearly didn’t understand the meaning of “feedback”.

Rutherford
Faculty of Media and Communication
Bournemouth University 

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