The last illusion of the illusionless man

I received a no-nonsense reply to my DBA appeal letter. It seems that I have been labouring under a misapprehension for several years: apparently the DBA research committee in their review from Oct/Nov 2019 said that there was a problem with the contribution of the research. Indeed: looking at my blog entry holding my response, I see that I quoted the report, writing This important part of the thesis [the abstract] does not provide an insights [sic] into what the findings indicate, why these findings are important, and the overall contribution of the research to both academia and practice.

It would seem that I blanked this out, or that I disagreed with the reviewer (probably both). All these years I've been living under the illusion that there was a contribution. My supervisor is as much at fault as I am, as he was constantly telling me that the process is more important than the final result, but I don't want to blame him. 

It seems that I am suffering primarily from the sunk cost fallacy; as I wrote in my thesis: The sunk cost effect can be defined as "a greater tendency to continue an endeavour once an investment in money, effort, or time has been made" (Arkes and Blumer, 1985, p. 125). An alternative and more technical name for this bias is "the escalation of commitment to a failing course of action" (Brockner, 1992). 

I have to tell myself that not achieving the doctorate is not a personal fault, but rather an academic fault, choosing a topic whose significance was not sufficient. 

I sincerely hope that this is the last blog ever on the DBA topic.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
41	20/06/2006	Look what they've done to my song	Psychology, Martin Seligman, Bar mitzva
255	20/06/2010	Sunday morning	Programming, Office automation, Psychology
490	20/06/2012	Elaphiti Island cruise (Dubrovnik log 6)	Holiday, Dubrovnik
725	20/06/2014	Sorrento to Catania (Sicily log 0)	Holiday, Sicily, Italy
726	20/06/2014	First day in Catania (Sicily log 1)	Holiday, Sicily, Italy
1234	20/06/2019	The end is in sight!	DBA
1399	20/06/2021	Sequencing "House with no door" - revised/revisited	MIDI, Van der Graaf Generator, Home recording