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Suppose you can't ask for anyone's help with anything at all in your research, but you'll be able to get any online/offline book/material and funds you want to study.You have been given a topic to research, is it possible to complete your research producing some acknowledgable result?

The gist of the question is "Is Phd something managable by individual efforts?"

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    The answer to the first paragraph is YES, it is possible. But that first paragraph is not a Ph.D.
    – GEdgar
    Commented Jun 28 at 19:01
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    What, exactly, do you mean by "on your own"?
    – Buffy
    Commented Jun 28 at 20:56
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    @AmitRai In general, I think purely hypothetical questions are discouraged, partly because concreteness matters, and partly for focus of the site. From this help page: You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.
    – Kimball
    Commented Jun 29 at 8:36
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    @ChristianHennig I certainly agree some people get PhDs with very little guidance, but the OP commented it is a hypothetical question and it seems a bit unclear to me what the precise situation they have in mind is (have no advisor at all? ask them for a problem and never interact with them till the defense?)
    – Kimball
    Commented Jun 29 at 12:13
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    The answer to the title is "yes, but ...." And all the devil is in the details. There's a difference between having a supervisor who is just rather busy and has minimal input (which seems to be what you are thinking), and literally just doing all the work for a PhD completely on your own. And also, one person's "I get not much help from my supervisor" is "my supervisor trusts me to do what I need to do and is there when it's absolutely crucial". Commented 2 days ago

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Someone else has to give the PhD. If you could give it to yourself, it would not be worth much. This is organized such that university award PhDs. So without a university you cannot get a PhD. This typically involves getting an advisor from that university.

This makes sense: the process of doing your dissertation research and writing it down with the help of your advisor is the learning experience. We don't expect a student to know everything before they start and all we need to do is test that student. It would be an extremely inefficient test if it takes 3, 4, or more years. Instead we expect them to need to learn a lot.

So in short, no this cannot be done alone. At the very least you need an advisor.

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    +1 for mentioning that it has to be officially granted by an entity which is widely recognized. This means that even if you were a supergenius of comic-book mad-scientist-level proportions and knew more than all professors combined, you'd still need an advisor and apply to a program at a university, to make it official.
    – vsz
    Commented 2 days ago
  • You can off course apply after you have done all the work, for example in many European universities that are publicly funded there would be no reason to not take such a person in as it would mean a instant payday for the university. You would have to do a bit work but essentially no reason not to award a PhD if it makes sense otherwise
    – joojaa
    Commented yesterday
  • @joojaa in principle true, but in practice not a viable nor desirable strategy for most. The process of getting a PhD is more than just a test, it is supposed to be a learning experience guided by an advisor. Anyhow the fact that such people exist is a dangerous argument: beware of survivorship bias en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias Commented yesterday
  • @joojaa At American universities with which I’m familiar, there’s a minimum residency requirement for anything other than honorary degrees. You can’t just come in for a few days, fork over some money, and walk out with a PhD that reflects academic recognition.
    – pjs
    Commented yesterday
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To be clear: at least in modern mathematics, whether or not such a thing is "possible", it's not advisable. It wouldn't set you up for anything good subsequently, unless you are ... ahem ... "the chosen one". Etc. That is, even very clever young people can benefit (woof, to say the least...) from guidance...

Anti-ironically, if you think you cannot benefit from any inputs from more senior mathematicians... ah, well, "there's your problem".

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    unless you are ... ahem ... "the chosen one" --- Over the years (decades, actually) when I've seen internet posts by people who want to know if it's possible to do X in math (Ph.D., publish in top journals, solve a famous open problem, etc.) without Y (usually some minimal attainment, such as attending college or having to learn calculus or something), my mental response is that if the person were capable then the person would surely already be famous for doing Z (something sufficiently significant for their age/background to be internationally newsworthy). Commented Jun 28 at 21:30
  • @DaveLRenfro, ah, yes, indeed. Still, perhaps-crazily, I've come to wonder whether I really should attempt to squelch peoples' misguided-but-happy impulses. If they're not actually directly dangerous to anyone? Commented Jun 28 at 21:38
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    @paulgarrett Unfortunately they are often if not dangerous then at least damaging to themselves. Commented Jun 29 at 10:46
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    While at the gym just now I thought of an analogy for my previous comment. The desire to do X in math without Y is somewhat like someone who has never played high school or college basketball and wants to know how get chosen in the NBA/WNBA draft -- if someone was that good in basketball then he/she would not need to ask this question, as his/her basketball exploits would already be so well known in basketball circles that those involved in the draft selection would already know about him/her. Commented Jun 29 at 14:12
  • @Marianne013, yes, indeed, "damaging to themselves" is a very likely appraisal... but, in my anecdotal observations, it's not been clear whether the parties involved really had much better psychological/life options than to live with a (harmless?) delusion. That is, sadly-often, the main strength was (misguided...) self-confidence, rather than skill or potential or accumulated practice. And some of the "the so-called experts said it couldn't be done". Commented Jun 29 at 16:23
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There is such a thing as a PhD by publication. This means that instead of the traditional model where a PhD candidate works with an advisor from the beginning of their PhD project, the candidate instead applies to a university to be examined on the basis of research they have already published. In principle, the already-published research could have been done "on your own" without an advisor; whether that is "manageable by individual efforts" depends on how literally you take that, since it would at least be very unlikely to complete enough research without ever writing an "Acknowledgements" section.

For example, at the University of Portsmouth you can apply for a PhD by publication by submitting "peer reviewed academic papers, complete books, chapters in anthologies, or equivalent materials accepted for publication, exhibited or performed" plus a 5,000 to 10,000-word commentary tying it all together. You still have to pass a viva voce examination, and I would guess (or hope) that the university assigns a supervisor who can help you with the commentary and to prepare for the viva. Nonetheless, the actual research of the PhD project would have been done "on your own".

One of my former colleagues took this route as an already established academic, earning his PhD on the basis of 10 years of research which he had completed while employed as a senior lecturer. As far as I know, he did not have a PhD supervisor while conducting that research, though I'm sure he benefited from working in an environment where he could learn from other researchers.


There is also such a thing as an honourary PhD, but this isn't a thing you can plan to earn.

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    Yes, there's a great difference between fields where you need a PhD to even just start doing actual academic work in any serious capacity (or at the very least could have gotten one without difficulty, but there are special circumstances), and fields where people have a stable academic job teaching and doing research (or perhaps are in industry doing work in the area), and then get their PhD based on that work (either as a standalone thesis or by publication). Commented 2 days ago
  • +1 This is the correct answer
    – seldon
    Commented yesterday
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In addition to Maarten's answer: Whether you would be able to produce quality research worthy of PhD entirely on your own depends heavily on your research area. For instance, it is possible in math, theoretical physics, theoretical computer science, philosophy. (By the time I got to graduate school, I was working on research entirely on my own, without any input from my PhD advisor. But I needed help and direction when I was an undergraduate student. I know many professional mathematicians who had similar experience.) It is impossible in lab sciences, for instance, in experimental physics, chemistry, biology, medical sciences.

Edit: One of the most remarkable modern examples of working in isolation that I know is somebody writing a PhD thesis in Complex Analysis while serving 2 years in the military after graduating from college. (The person was lucky to work in the logistics branch of the army.) The person defended his thesis, of course, only after finishing his army service.

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    My sympathies for not having a PhD advisor who was more expert than you, etc. I realize that it does make "the PhD student" more self-sustaining... but, wow, it's like leaving babies on a cold mountain-side, in my opinion. Sigh. Commented Jun 28 at 20:43
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    @paulgarrett: I heard many stories from former grad students in Berkeley, from 1970s and 1980s, where it was very common. Commented Jun 28 at 20:45
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    Argh. Sigh. ... I'm still not convinced that the Spartan model is optimal... >:-( Commented Jun 28 at 20:53
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    And, yes, I've had a "colleague" here tell me that "it's unethical to help a student with their PhD thesis". At the time, I couldn't process that remark. Really, wouldn't it be unethical to not help your students? ... My candid appraisal is that many of these people simply cannot help their students (due to technical under-powerdness, for example), and want to rationalize that failing to be a virtue. (So that anyone who does not have the same failing is "bad"!?!) Commented Jun 28 at 20:58
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    Sigh.......... I think "mathematic/mathematicians" can do better than this kind of thing. Forgiving peoples' gross rudeness, etc, because "they are smart", is a bad trope, I think. Commented Jun 28 at 21:35
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My brother-in-law did that. He worked for years as an independent engineer/consultant in industry and ultimately created theoretical models, calculations and did measurements which were published, and then combined into a PhD.

This is very dependent on the area your PhD is in. You cannot do experimental high-energy physics on your own but anything industry-related or theoretical is conceivable.

Obviously, someone needs to be your thesis director (the "sponsor" of your PhD at an institution) and the institution must be willing to accept your PhD project and manage its lifecycle (submission, defense, ...)

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  • And in engineering there would be little incentive not to accept the PhD, it brings in money and recognition at very little cost to the university.
    – joojaa
    Commented yesterday
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Proving you can do research autonomously is only one part of a PhD, i.e. theses are submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a degree. In addition, many PhD candidates are ipso facto working on their own, rarely seeing their advisor/thesis director.

An academic degree is a form of recognition granted by an institution, and I know of none where you can get a degree without being first registered in a program. In the case of a PhD, the program requirements, in addition to the thesis, will often include courses and seminars so the candidate is exposed to the current trends and ideas in the field, either as background material or as state-of-the art concepts. Part of the requirements is that a candidate should have a sufficiently broad knowledge and demonstrated sufficient mastery of their research area so the contents of the thesis are relevant to others and actually advance knowledge in the field. After all, if you don’t know the field how can you move it forward?

I feel what you are asking is a bit like: can I become a commercial pilot on my own? You can learn to fly on your own, but no serious airline will certify you as a company pilot unless you learn a lot more than just operate the aircraft.

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