The Shintaro Higashi Show - What Is a PhD?

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

In this episode, Peter and Shintaro shift gears from grappling to dive into Peter’s current main focus: earning a PhD. They explore what it means to pursue a PhD, the challenges faced by doctoral students, and how this journey parallels competition in sports like judo. Using vivid analogies and insights, they discuss the structure of PhD programs, the peer review process, and the impact of publishing research. Whether you’re curious about academia or intrigued by its connections to grappling, this episode offers a fascinating look at the life of a PhD student and the pursuit of independent research. (00:00:00) Introduction (00:01:48) The Role of a PhD Student (00:03:25) Universities as Dojos (00:04:25) Publishing Papers as Competitions (00:06:04) Master's Degrees vs. PhDs (00:08:40) Understanding Peer Review (00:20:30) PhD Program Milestones (00:23:37) Completing the PhD and Next Steps (00:27:31) Critiquing Published Papers If you're in business, then you have customer churn. Whether you're building a startup, growing a mom & pop shop, or operating in a fortune 500 powerhouse, Hakuin.ai measures, predicts, and improves your customer retention. https://hakuin.ai

during the peer review, so the reviewers don't know the identity of the authors, right? Oh, okay, so that paper has been through the peer reviewed system, and it has to go through that in order to be published. Published into a journal or a conference, yeah. All these published papers are peer reviewed. You can get a wild card to the Olympics from an unknown country kind of a thing, you know? Yeah, but not going to win a medal. Yeah, that's true.

That's the thing, getting it published is almost winning some kind of prize in a competition. Hello and welcome back to the Shintaro Higashi Show with Peter Yoo. We're going to take a different approach today. We're going to talk about a PhD., we're gonna relate it to grappling somehow. But everyone has been asking, hey, can you make Peter talk more? People request it to be Shintaro Higashi show with Peter Yu and have Peter Yu in the logo. Peter's very popular. So let's do it. Let's talk about a PhD. This is take two actually because Peter was... I was like nervous, man. Like I said was nervous man. I think the motivation is that I really appreciate your support.

People wanted to hear from you. And also there's some like a changing demographic in the grappling world. Where I noticed that when I started back in like 15 years, not a lot of tech people in this field, you know, in this area. Now I realize that a lot of software engineers are getting into this and you know especially in BJJ it's kind of more they take it as a more cerebral thing so maybe I was like maybe I could take this opportunity to kind of tell people what I do every day and then kind of make it relative to grappling so hopefully that will be interesting to you guys yeah alright so here's an idea you ready yeah

I'm gonna make an analogy yeah there's theoretical physics and experimental physics competition judo players versus the bureaucratic here's my knowledge here's my the bureaucratic like the paperwork guys who just kind of talk about the, and then they do CADA and they're in it and they're teachers, right? So there's like a competition route and a non-competition route kind of. So if you were to kind of make an this episode that's what I was trying to explain as so I wouldn't kind of I wouldn't even distinguish like between them like fifth theoretical physics or experimental

physics is like that I think PhD students PhD candidates are the athletes and theoretical physics, computer science, all these different fields are different sports in a way. Ooh, that's interesting. Interesting. And there's some cross pollination, obviously, interdisciplinary studies and whatever.

But those are- You gotta do math. Yeah, exactly. So those are different sports though, with different rules, different expectations. different sports though with different rules, different expectations. And then a lab is more like a team headed by the professor, the coach, the manager. And then underneath the coach, they might have some post-docs, they'll be kind of like the assistant coaches. They just compete at the Olympics and they're like, oh, I don't have, I don't know what

to do. So my dojo is a university. It's I think your dojo is more like a university that focuses on undergrad education. Excuse me? Undergrad education, which is just as important, I'm saying. Yeah, if you start focusing on actual producing like competitors hmm that's more like the graduate school I think you know what I mean that's how I see so so but if I have a pot of guys training with me after practice wouldn't that be sort of

oh then you're yeah yeah then you'll be a university with a graduate school yeah I like that subtle put down like I, so I went to a I went to a Tier 3 community college Thanks for that Peter You are an R1 institution that focuses more on the undergraduate education which is what my alma mater is. Princeton

is known for their undergraduate Oh, you went to Princeton? I didn't know that I don't think anyone knew that You slipped that one in there But yeah't know that I know I don't think anyone do that yeah there you go you slip that one in there okay but but yeah so that's how obvious it experimental physics is and then theoretical physics they kind of play different sports with different rules and then what is the sport they play where what's the competition is the journals it's the conferences though and you score your medals are basically publishing your

paper interesting and then is the Nobel Peace Prize the Olympics peace prize yeah I mean that's like a different sport right yeah noble it depends for example for math there's no Nobel Prize for math sure fields medal and like touring awards is for computer science so they are there there's some like but they're not really like Olympic medals because they're more like honorary yeah because usually they go to like more well-known researchers who have made that I guess they'll be more like your like red right red belts I think okay all right so PhD a lot of people don't know what it is. Yeah. So the book definition is the doctor of philosophy and then philosophy refers to the original Greek meaning which means love of wisdom, the pursuit of knowledge. So, but at the

end of the day, you are, you're, it's an apprenticeship program to become a researcher, that means like independent researcher, so a person who can formulate their own problem and then kind of solve that problem and then convince your peers, others, that your research is valuable you know I love that I love that because yes when you're in a master's degree you know you're at a higher level of understanding if you're getting a master's in like let's just say like I want to stern for my MBA right you get no you went to stern I want to start I'll try about that I'll tell you but you're really just reading texts answering questions doing case studies and you're kind of just following the syllabus yeah you're not really coming up with your own ideas you're just studying all the people's ideas all the people's yeah literature and then trying to solve problems the

way and there's a solution to it already somebody already solved it you're doing it right yeah it's kind of like just going to dojo and learning from a teacher that exactly I mean that's kind of a good analogy so a master degree's degree would be more about actually learning the art. But I think once you start competing, you can kind of say that you're getting a PhD actually. Because that's when you need to come up with your own solution and you're adding to this body of knowledge. Yeah, there you go. That's the main thing. You're trying to specialize in something. Maybe I specialize in the wazza transitions from top to bottom like Kanto right he wasn't he didn't learn all that stuff from somebody he's adding to the body of

knowledge of Judo that existed before and he has an entire system Flavio Kanto right right top to bottom the ground stand into ground transitions and now there's a whole section of people who study that specific thing. Yeah. And that's, there was this piece dissertation in judo, I mean, and then you, you, and then the last piece is that you have to prove that it's, it works, right? And you have to convince your peer. So in Flavio Canto did that by competing at the highest levels and getting results and so of course I'm not everyone I'm me including like not every PhD student is going to make like groundbreaking discoveries you know and but the and just like not all judo athletes will medal

And just like not all judo athletes will medal at the highest levels, but in a way in their own specific specialties, they make some contribution and then you know, and then also so after you get the PhD, if you're a PhD, that means that you've proved to your peers like your other PhDs in your field that you are capable of conducting independent research. As just as like if you medal at an international like prestigious judo competition, you've proved yourself to be a competent judo player who can add your own flavor to it. Let me ask a question. Yeah. So if I go to PubMed and look up research on certain things, like for instance, I would look up the study of, not because I'm on anything or anything like that, but I was looking at the link between testosterone

and heart arrhythmias. And there's all these research papers that come up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If someone's a PhD student doing that thing, is that ranked lower than people who are established or if that comes from a much more prestigious university as opposed to or is it like everything there is even playing level so everything that's relevant will pop up to the top so

that's a good question like you're basically asking what which paper is better than the other in some sense and more credible, right? Kind of because I know yes bigger population size whatever it is. Yeah, I get all that like which one shows up at the top versus so I don't know the pop med system, but usually so so there are a lot of questions in here, but let's go with the if the paper written by PhD students For so like at their level you have to understand the

Actual research of like the pipettes and the writing code and it's done by the PhD students the actual competition Just like in judo and BJJ the competitors actually, not the coach. Right? Yeah, true. The coach, the coach's name is on the paper or the PI, principal investigator, the professor, the advisor, his name's on it because they help the students or the athletes actually do the work. Right? So you have to understand most of the scientific research is produced and conducted by the PhD students. Okay so got it.

Alright so who's the most published person in your field? In my specific field, oh there's a professor named Yejin Choi. She's a Korean lady. She's a professor at University of Washington. She's very well known. So that kind of a celebrity in my own specific field. Okay, so how many papers does she publish? I don't even know, man. So usually they count by how many citations you get. How many times people have cited your work to build upon. Is it risky though if one of the things that she did was not true and everyone kept citing to it and then all of a sudden you're building your

ideas on something that's not real? I mean that's just the nature of it so I think one thing you have to understand and I think I want to also dedicate another episode to this peer review system but it's just like the competition too, judo competition. There's one meta that works so well for a while. Yeah, yeah, it does, yeah. And then sometimes someone else comes and says, hey, that meta is actually shit. Let me show you how.

That's the exact scenario that you just described. Yes, I'm not gonna go into details about hard work, but there's some assumptions that have been made in our field that have been shattered like that. It's more of like a science doesn't happen like in linear fashion. It's more like this marketplace, just like a competition. So how much more is it important for you to get to us well-cited professor than as opposed to like a nobody at like a B-tier university as a PhD student yeah it's like if you went to her and then did your research on the her versus if you went to I don't know pick a university that no one knows like would your paper still be visible yeah that's the same about so the peer review system when you publish it's double-blinded so they don't know who

you are you don't know who the reviewers are so that kind of prevents that problem so when you don't know where this paper comes from oh really yeah I mean that's that's but you could see who funded it though no nothing you can't you can't have any kind of information that can identify so I looked up I read a article yeah research paper on on CIA Because watch I'll try to study for science because they were claiming that Cialis prevents estrogen aromatization right so oh, it's good for you, and then I was looking at it. I'm like oh Yeah, more than 10,000 participants you know blah blah

blah funded by you know the Cialis company yeah I think Sanofi or something right so but that kind of so proves your thing wrong no during the peer review so that people read the reviewers don't know the identity of the uh authors right oh okay so that paper has been through the peer reviewed system yeah and it has to go through that in order to be published published into a journal or a conference yeah all these published papers are peer-reviewed you can write so you went through that thing and then that's the thing does it so does it does the fact that it was funded by the company make it it a little sus, yes.

But does it mean that the paper itself was bad? No. Just like Russian athletes doing Russian judo are funded by some oligarchs or something and they say bad? Not necessarily. That doesn't mean that the athletes' prowess in judo is bad. Alright, so let me get this straight. This study was done by this company. It gets done. There's a paper that says yes if you take Cialis it helps with estrogen or emulsification. It goes to a peer-review period before it gets to me? Yeah. Yeah. All right. So how long is that period? It depends. So I'm assuming, so this is on the medical side of things. I am only tangentially familiar because my wife

did some clinical medical research as a doctor, but medical papers I usually go publish in journals and journals you basically send it in every month you can send it on something the editors and the reviewer will assign reviewers to this double blinded and they'll say either reject it, accept with revisions or accept outright right if it's accepted revision you have to make the revisions before they get published into a journal rejected. You can't you gotta Do something else. So how many people review this thing? I don't know So in my field you usually get three reviewers

Now if they're score, I don't know about the medical field. It's a field defender very sports You know who's reviewing your stuff. No, that's that's what it means to be double-blinded You don't you never know who's reviewing your stuff? No, that's what it means to be double-blinded. You never know who your reviewers are. But they are experts in their... But you have to review other people's stuff too? I do review other... How often? It's kind of voluntary based, but...

Oh, that's... I thought you had to do that to get a PhD. Oh, I mean, you do, because when you publish to do that to get a PhD. Oh, I mean you you do because when you publish now There's so much volume. No, it's very field dependent in my field because there's so many new papers that come in when you submit to a Conference you have to review other papers or you know My field is run by run through conferences conferences are more prestigious than journals feel, because there are a lot of reasons. But yeah, so like, there's some people who argue that reviewers should be paid, but I think they also introduced some other

stuff. But yeah, so at the end of the day, if you see if, if a research paper trickles down to the zeitgeist, like a lay person, it's thoroughly reviewed. There are probably other papers that criticize it. Yeah, it's like it's gone through the competition circuit basically. That's like a result. And then it's double blinded. No one knows. Yeah, that's the whole thing.

You don't know who wrote this. You don't know who's going to... Are there papers that are just useless? so you can put it on what they call a pre-print meaning that's not been pre-reviewed it just has less credibility it's kind of like oh I won a medal in my local judo gym tournament. my father was part of a research I told you this right right? Oh yeah, with the... Yeah, with the Tokyo University. Tokyo University, one of the most prestigious universities way back then. And my father had this theory like, all right, the more you could

push your hand into someone's scapula, your scapular mobility has a direct correlation to athletic ability. So the more you could stick your hands into someone's scapula, right? And they measured the length of how, right? The, the better you are an athlete, you know, so he had this idea. And obviously I was like, that's the dumbest theory I've ever heard. What was the result? And he was like, there's no correlation. So can you come up with a bunch of these like, and can you get that published?

It's not probably, it's not even a useful paper. So There that's what they call a negative negative results. Yeah, so it it is a little harder to I'll say a lot harder to publish negative results because I was wondering like why don't you just do a lot of negative results? Like yeah, you know say it's not So it's like a something do you want to it so for example in mathematics negative results are also more it's minus and carries more weight because you can actually logically prove that this is impossible right but in more empirical fields like mine or your father's idea just because you couldn't prove that correlation doesn't mean that it doesn't exist maybe your father's idea, just because you couldn't prove that correlation

doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Maybe your dad's experiment was just designed wrong. So it's hard to convince, get that through the peer review system, because as a reviewer, I'll question that. I was like, you probably, I think your design was flawed, you know? Yeah, I think it was like measuring running, jumping.

Yeah, I think I'll be like, yeah, maybe the, the regression analysis or something. Yeah. And then the doubt, I would argue that the definition of what a good athlete is pretty broad. So I think maybe that's where he failed. You get this kind of feedback. And then if it gets rejected, you can go back and then kind of kind of feedback and then if you get rejected you can go back and then kind of redo your experiments and then make it stronger so if I were theory right now let's just say eating peanut butter makes you stronger ah I could design a study and then freaking run this and then get it published and I could be a freaking guy yeah you could but and but here's the

thing going back to the judo BJJ analogy, you're just saying, can a random dude train and have a come-up with a crazy meta, like unheard of, train it for a bit and then make it to the like win a medal in the international circuit? What do you think? What do you say to that? You're doing Jiu-Jitsu? like win a medal in the international circuit. What do you think? What do you say to that? Yeah, because it's a newer field that happens in the science and other disciplines too. If it's a new field, you could do that. But that's the thing like wouldn't you need a team to train? You could get a wild card to the Olympics from an unknown country kind of a thing, you know? Yeah, but not gonna win a medal. Yeah, that's true.

That's the thing is that getting it published is almost winning some kind of prize in a competition. So what is the good number of publishings? It depends on the field. Like my field, like for my field the dissertation usually has like three to four separate papers kind of grouped in together. So you have a proposal review December 9th. Yeah I do. So when that happens, what is the process, where in the process is that a proposal? I could go through that. So is that a proposal? I could go through that. So I say so PhD is so widely different from field to field, but it generally follows this trend. So in America, Europe has a different system, slightly different, but in America the

first two years you take classes while you're kind of formulating your own research ideas like small projects so that's and then and then at the end of this two-year mark you should take what they call qualification exams quals and then that depends the format is different from field to field I just had to present my own research was the coursework difficult more so than the masters? No, I think the masters coursework is a lot more difficult than the PhD because as a PhD student that's not your goal. You just graduate level PhD courses are a lot lighter on the actual work because they're there to kind of just you it's assumed that you are already self-motivated to study. So what they do

a lot of the PhD courses are designed to kind of show you different areas. Hey, there's some research in this area, that area. Why don't you go and look it up yourself kind of thing. Interesting. And then the term mastering out is when you drop out of a PhD, just take a master's degree? So in the typical American program, you get a master's as a part of the PhD.

So when you pass the quals, or if you fail, you still get a master's because you took all the master's courses, right? So mastering out means that you decide to quit before you're getting the PhD for a variety of reasons. Maybe you didn't pass the quals, you you get multiple tries but you just didn't work or just you didn't vibe with the advisor which is very important. Like it's kind of like your coach, it's not working out with your coach. You can't compete and train. You know it's like same thing. So then usually you propose your dissertation. Like basically saying hey this is what I'm this is the new research I'm gonna do basically you're kind of declaring that I'm gonna win I'm gonna go to this competition and win a medal kind of thing this is my goal and then you after that you do your research and then you at the end defend

your thesis in front of the committee Your thesis committee, which is which comprises of your advisor and other professors who are familiar with your Research. Yeah, that's like once you pass that then it's not that's not really a competition because it's not double-winded anymore Right. Yeah, so that's more, hey, you're a good athlete. It's like, as a community, your peers recognize that you have the ability to conduct own research, meaning you can compete at the highest level. So, okay, so you get the PhD.

Let's say you pass, right? Everybody's like, all right, you're good. You get your cap and gown mm-hmm that's it right so okay so let's say you get accepted here that's over you have a PhD so yeah my proposal is accepted and I to the research the last bit of it and then I defend at the end and yeah that's I'm I'm a doctor then after what is that gonna happen you think my call is to do it in like May next year. And then usually that's like my five-year mark and then that's There's some funding issues. So that's I get my school guarantees five years of funding

After that, I have to get my own money like somehow like or my advisor has to raise money So that's another thing like it's almost it's a team and also a lab is a team and also like a little startup run by. So the advisors primary job is to actually raise money. Yeah. Okay so now you're done with the PhD right? Yeah. Are you gonna keep making writing more papers or not? So there are multiple routes usually depending on the field. So the PhD was actually you know the primary goal is to train independent researchers meaning they will go become professors right. But the economic reality is that professorship is not it's very hard. There are not that many openings and it's very competitive and

the one fortunate thing about my field that there's a lot more money outside of academia. So I mean that was always my plan anyway. I'm gonna go get a job in industry. So you're gonna be a dirty capitalist. Out of all like the self-righteous, do the right thing for the world and the body of knowledge and you're gonna go out there and be yeah just some just some uh cognitive machine you know you know the hypocrisy peter the hypocrisy i i i would say i would never want i never intended to become a professor i'll say that you know what this reminds me of? What? When we were doing, when the peak of COVID, you know, you're like, mask up, you were like a mask police, do this, do that, be on the

right side of history. Guys, I'm going to do a wedding, you know, the peak of COVID, guys, it's going to be socially distant and all that. I follow all the regulations. I mean, yeah, that was such a strange time, wasn't it? Yeah, guess what? Now all the things that I was spewing back then are true now. What things like what? Don't get me started. I think that's that kind of goes back to I think a lot of people were confused during

COVID because it was such an extraordinary time that science, you kind of saw the raw side of science, I think, back then. Because it was such a novel thing that, I mean, that's usually what happens. If you're a researcher, the confusion and then what's right, what works, no one knows. That's kind of like where I live. Let me say something about that, okay? not the usual nonsense that I'm spewing but based on our conversation today Yeah in that short amount of time. There's not enough time for peer review this and that You can peer review during that time. I mean, it's a couple you can publish that Okay, March comes out March bump. Oh my god. There's this thing

It's March 2020 by the time like three months come like in three months Like you could have all these new papers that have been peer reviewed that have been through the process and all this stuff But the peer review doesn't mean that it's true. The peer review means that they they have a hypothesis They conducted the right research to support that hypothesis. It's of good quality Okay, so the process you really really reviewing the process as opposed to like... Reviewing the process, yeah. Alright, so when do you try to poke holes in it and be like the thing is not true? Like when do people circle that? So a lot of the faulty methodologies are filtered out during the...

Peer review is not perfect obviously, but a lot of bad papers so to speak are filtered out once published then the real match starts that people will publish responses to it science is more like a market it's like a competition always people trying to poke holes so that's why during covid it's such a novel thing it was developing so fast that the usual scientific process was just not fast enough. So they just defaulted to what we knew, which was the Spanish flu. A lot of the assumptions about COVID were made based on Spanish flu, which were not all correct. COVID is a different virus. So that's why there was a lot of confusion in implementing new rules. People are just trying to do the safest thing based on the knowledge at that time.

We'll do a whole separate episode about that. The PR review. That'll be fun. You could even say COVID on the internet back in the day. Yeah, it's because it was like, I think a lot of people were scared by the uncertainty. But that's kind of how it is in science. Like, I think the biggest pain point, the biggest challenge of a PhD is how to handle uncertainty. I really it's really it's taxing on your mind. I it really it's really it's taxing on your mind some people revel in it but I I really struggle with it uncertainty interesting you just don't know I mean that's the whole thing right you just don't know what's gonna work yeah speaking of tech can we talk about churn oh yes churn so if you're in business

then you have customer churn don't you have customer churn. So if you're in business, then you have customer churn. Don't you have customer churn, Shinaro? All the time, all the time. So whether you're building a startup, growing a mom and pop shop, or maybe a dojo, or operating in a Fortune 500 powerhouse, Hakuin.ai measures, predicts, and improves your customer retention.

Link in description, H-A-K-U-I-N.A-I. It's from our dear friend Drew. And he's one of our sponsors for the podcast. Thank you also to Jason. Thank you also to Levan, Judo TV, Discount Coach Chintaro, Higashi Brand and Fuji Sports. Thank you guys so much for your continued support. Please leave it in the comments whether you or not you liked the PhD discussion so different so different but I like I learned a lot today just now you know I learned a lot you know this is very interesting maybe it could be like a segment that we do yeah if people like it and you know I can talk about the aspects of conducting research and maybe I can comment on some tech stuff you you know, you know, and and

But yeah, all in all I think one yeah, like I said like science is very messy very distributed like Everyone has all the incentive to like poke holes at each other just like judo BJJ competitions You know, I think that's kind of like what I wanted to tell you and Be nice to your Friends who are doing their PhDs. It's a it's a it's a tough job tough for it is for sure All right Yeah, all right. Thank you. Thank you. We'll see you guys in the next episode.