Chapter 1100 - 823: Finding Fault Where There Is None (Part 2)

This response somewhat strays from the discussion, beginning to repeat itself.

In fact, for all second-year graduate students, prior to their thesis proposal presentation, they have all received such advice—when a teacher asks you a question you cannot answer, just nod and say, "Thank you, teacher, for the question. I hadn’t considered that aspect before, and I will conduct further research and improve upon it later."

However, it is evident that the second-year senior sister is too nervous, and Bi Yanling’s line of attack is fundamentally challenging.

Bi Yanling continued, sentence by sentence: "You’re directly applying a Western model to domestic college students. Have you considered the issue of cultural adaptation? Are the communication styles within families and the understanding of ’intimate relationships’ the same for locals as they are for Westerners?"

She leaned forward: "In your literature review, have you specifically outlined the cultural characteristics of domestic families? How many articles are there? What is the earliest publication year? What is the most recent year?"

The second-year senior sister’s lips moved, taking a second or two to respond: "...there is some involvement..."

Bi Yanling nodded: "That’s just it."

She reclined backwards: "I’m not saying this topic is unfeasible for you, but if you want to pass with this theme, you need to be more comprehensive in considering cultural aspects. Otherwise, to be direct—this research won’t solve a real problem. Why do it at all?"

...

[Why choose this research? It’s obviously for graduation!]

[It’s normal for PhD students to extend their graduation, but for master’s students, if you get delayed, just see if the dean will come looking for you!]

These two remarks resonated almost in every graduate student’s mind in the audience.

As for whether this research truly lacks value?

Watching the second-year senior sister nearly stumble as she walked off stage, everyone’s thoughts were varied.

But visibly, the students sitting in the front rows began to tense.

The next student presenting studied the relationship between social media use and self-esteem, and Bi Yanling, after other teachers questioned, still launched aggressive criticism targeting the innovation points.

The third one worked on foundational research in working memory training; this time Bi Yanling remained silent.

Nan Zhubin noticed the expressions of the second-year graduate students in the front row becoming increasingly solemn.

By the time it was Senior Sister Bun Head’s turn, she was already the fourth student.

Blue Tie sat uneasy in the back, softly asking Nan Zhubin, "Are you all staying in this classroom?"

Mo Kai nodded on behalf of Nan Zhubin: "We’ll leave after this one—by the way, is Teacher Bi always like this in lectures?"

"...Not at all."

Amidst the commotion, Nan Zhubin remained silent.

He watched Senior Sister Bun Head go on stage.

Compared to the previous three second-year graduate students, Senior Sister Bun Head seemed to be the most composed.

During the reports of the previous three students, although Bi Yanling’s questions were most aggressive, at least her questions remained within the framework of academic discussion.

The students’ bewilderment was mostly due to nervousness about the current setting and lacking the social experience of being questioned and responding publicly.

As for Senior Sister Bun Head, she was relatively familiar with such occasions.

She began confidently: "Hello teachers, I am Li Wan, a second-year master’s student in applied psychology. My thesis proposal topic is ’Negative Emotion Shift Warning Mechanism for Intelligent Customer Service: Longitudinal Tracking Research Based on BERTopic’."

The PPT cover appeared on the screen.

She flipped through the PPT page by page according to her prepared rhythm, unfolding her research framework one by one.

"First is the research background..."

"My research objective is..."

"Regarding model selection..."

"To verify my hypothesis, I conducted preliminary comparative experiments..."

"At the theoretical level, my research framework is based on..."

"..."

The presentation lasted approximately fifteen minutes.

"This concludes my thesis proposal report, thank you all for listening. I also welcome any critique and corrections from the teachers regarding the shortcomings of my research."

The presentation ended.

This time all five review teachers remained silent for three breaths, seemingly organizing their thoughts.

"Your research leans towards the user experience direction, correct?" Finally, it was Teacher Waterpot sitting in the center who spoke up.

This is currently one of the directions in all areas of psychology that is strongest in practicality.

Compared to basic research, it is also at a relatively new and early stage but is the easiest stage to generate economic value in the initial phases.

Both Teacher Waterpot and Teacher Hot Cloth did not speak, but instead, two relatively younger teachers who had been less vocal began questioning:

"What is the scale of your comparative experiment’s dataset?"

"About 2000 dialogue entries, consisting of real desensitized data from intelligent customer service platforms."

"In setting your sample size, did you consider the non-independence of the data? The same user might have multiple dialogue records."

"I considered it. I adopted a random intercept model to control for intra-group correlation between users, with adequate sample size redundancy left during the power analysis phase."

Focused details, Senior Sister Bun Head responded fluently.

Among all current students, Senior Sister Bun Head’s research is indeed the most detailed, most solid, and can even be said to be the so-called "most meaningful" research.

"Are there any other questions?" Seeing that two teachers had asked queries, Teacher Waterpot looked around.

They established early that today’s report atmosphere was to be serious and earnest. Nonetheless, with truly solid reports, there’s no need to find fault unnecessarily.

In this situation, Bi Yanling finally spoke up.

Unlike previous times, this time her body posture was not as aggressive, but instead leaned back into her chair.

"Regarding your topic," Bi Yanling said, "I reviewed your abstract and framework; there are several areas I don’t quite understand."

She flipped through the printed thesis proposal on the table.

Besides the students’ live reporting via PPT, each review teacher had with them pre-organized printed proposal materials, which compiled all the thesis proposal documents written by students in accordance with the required format.

Senior Sister Bun Head seemed to predict something, taking a gentle breath.

"Firstly, BERTopic which you selected, are you certain it’s truly suitable for your purpose? The outputs in terms of theme labels and their logical correlation with ’emotion shifts,’ can you confirm these are actual causal relationships, or are they merely statistical pattern matches?"

Senior Sister Bun Head responded rigorously: "At this current stage, my focus is to establish an effective warning mechanism, not to confirm causal relationships—"

"So you’re saying, you haven’t confirmed causal relationships." Bi Yanling interrupted before she finished, "Then what issue is this work really solving? You’re providing a ’warning mechanism,’ but if I don’t know what psychological processes this warning represents, what practical significance does this warning have?"

Senior Sister Bun Head paused for a moment, then said: "Teacher Bi, I’ve specifically discussed this question in a section of my literature review. My viewpoint is that, in application scenarios, early recognition itself holds intervention value..."

"I’m aware you’ve discussed it." Bi Yanling interrupted once more.

The pace was quick enough that the other review teachers beside her couldn’t help but glance slightly.

Bi Yanling’s speech was a bit faster this time, "But on what literature is your discussion based? What papers did you use to support your perspective? What are the publication years and journal levels of these papers?"

Asked too thoroughly.

All of this was actually available on the printed documents Bi Yanling had, but she seemed unwilling to read them herself, wanting the student to recapitulate instead.

The review teacher sitting closest to Bi Yanling glanced over again.

But for now, Bi Yanling’s questions were not considered out of line. Asking students to recount references can examine whether students truly read the papers for "reference," rather than merely listing some entries at the back of the document to pad the numbers.