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Letter: You have been warned

Published 18 March 2008

From Anselm Kuhn

Matthew Killeya, offering suggestions for how to choose a PhD supervisor (23 February, p 54, UK edition), omitted one thing. I know of academic supervisors too inflexible to consider modifying the research programme they had originally mapped out – and PhD students who dropped out as a result. Supervising a PhD project calls for people-management skills which, sadly, not all academics have. If Professor X has more than one or two dropouts to his/her discredit, be warned.

Stevenage, Hertfordshire, UK

Issue no. 2648 published 22 March 2008

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