The Semantic Enrichment workshop has left me thinking about the presentation of science. The thesis or long dissertation of post-graduate courses, is surely one of the oddities of the scientific education system. If you read "Origin of the Species", and other literature of the time, with its slow, gentlemanly meanderings, then then, perhaps, it makes sense. But, in this day and age, almost no scientific research is publishing in long-hand, book form. Everything happens in the papers. Even our books are normally a collection of papers.

So, why do we force PhD students to write a thesis? It clearly is not the best training for what is to come after.

Originally published on my old blog site.