Questionnaire for doctoral study directors

Doctoral studies under the spotlight of artificial intelligence

Confronted with new, disconcerting practices in the field of academic misconduct, our institutions often remain tetchy or become rigid in an increasingly exposed system.

We refer to our study, carried out over ten years ago, on theses of convenience: (Bergadaà, 2012)1 : it is clear that the measures taken have not fundamentally changed the situation. So, what will happen in the next two years, with manuscripts largely produced with IA, some of them illegally?

We defined a thesis of convenience as follows: The award of an official doctorate for a thesis that does not deserve it, because the manuscript shows insufficient knowledge of the field concerned, and/or a lack of originality of thought, and/or because it contains textual plagiarism and/or fraudulent models presented, and/or analyses.

Below, we re-examine four findings from our 2012 research and a 2022 exploratory study, from the perspective of the role of stakeholders in the awarding of PhDs.

Question 1: The thesis juryAt the time of our 2012 survey, an initial observation was widely shared: the president and thesis jury members don't have the means to verify a candidate's ethical qualities.

Limited to examining a manuscript and with no access to the candidate's working behavior, they have no mandate to question the future ethics of the candidate. And yet, they do bear responsibility for this, since the doctorate is merely a doorway to the future moreover, even if they judged a candidate to be weak and their practices questionable, most of our respondents considered the impact on society to be low, as these doctors of convenience would disappear from the academic universe or be de facto marginalized fro

Q1-In your opinion, are these diagnoses still accurate in 2025? (10 lines maximum)m it.

Question 2: Thesis directors and doctoral schoolsIn 2012, many of our colleagues thought that the lax thesis director, or the one who supervises ten or fifteen theses with minimal follow-up, was well known to all.

Our recent exploratory studies confirm this: when we agree to be member or president of a doctoral jury, it's not out of concern for the doctoral student, but out of affinity - intellectual, diplomatic, or self-interested - with the thesis director. In some countries (France, Switzerland, etc.), “doctoral schools” have been set up to control excessive “mandarinism” in the doctoral-dissertation supervisor relationship, and an omerta between peers in problematic cases.

Q2-In your opinion, can doctoral schools mitigate these risks? How can they do this? (10 lines maximum)

Question 3: Integrity training for doctoral studentsThese theses of convenience concern us, because they are at the root of the impoverishment of knowledge. Why should we care?

Graduates quickly find themselves confronted with the injunction to publish. Either they are intellectually incapable of doing so, and AI will produce for them, or they have not acquired the ethical rules of our profession. They will pursue their activity as delinquents of knowledge. Responsibility for our future (Jonas, 1991) requires that the fundamental values of our profession be acquired during the doctorate. Since 2012, the response has been organized: many institutions ask PhD students to take a MOOC on integrity in their first year, in France, new PhDs are required to take an oath of integrity at their thesis defense.

Q3-In your opinion, are these preventive measures sufficient? Why or why not? (10 lines maximum)

Question 4: Integrity training for thesis supervisorsHow can we ensure that thesis supervisors can accompany their doctoral students along the path of academic integrity? IRAFPA has consulted our colleagues in Europe, Canada, and the United States: no integrity training is planned for future PhD supervisors.

In France, the regulations governing the Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (HDR) diploma do not include the terms “ethics”, “integrity”, and “responsibility”. However, to manage doctoral students and researchers in a profession that is becoming increasingly complex, these thesis supervisors will need: to distinguish between the moral principles of scientific ethics, grasp the habits and customs rooted in collective responsibility, explain the role of conventions and regulations anchored in their deontological framework, and then know how to explain how the academic and legal norms of our knowledge-based society fit together.
At their last colloquium (2024), the IRAFPA researchers proposed introducing three measures for future teachers supervising doctoral theses.
a) That the applicant takes part in an introductory training course in the sciences of integrity.
b) That he or she orally explains how he or she deals with issues of scientific integrity and ethics in his or her research activities, and how he or she plans to support doctoral students in their efforts to achieve academic integrity.
c) At the HDR or when taking up a professorship, to swear an oath identical to the one required of new PhDs.

Q4-Are these rules realistic? Do you have any complementary or alternative proposals? (10 lines maximum)

Supplementary question 5Q5-Do you have other ideas or opinions on the subject? (10 lines maximum)

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Questionnaire for doctoral study directors

Doctoral studies under the spotlight of artificial intelligence

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