Letter: Science may have issues, but that isn't one of them

From Ian Stewart, University of Warwick, Coventry, West Midlands, UK

In your interview with Stuart Ritchie on problems in science, you quote him as saying: “People who finish their PhDs now are expected to have some astonishingly high number of peer-reviewed publications, something like 19 (22 August, p 36). A few years ago, you’d be expected to have five or six.” That isn’t the case.

“People who finish their PhDs” appears to refer to PhD students who have just completed a thesis. They have never been expected to have peer-reviewed publications, if only because it takes too long to get them published.

The editor writes: Stuart Ritchie has clarified that his take on this applies only to some PhDs.