u/Handful291

Hi everyone,

I’m a MS student. and I’m getting ready to defend my thesis soon. My committee has already reviewed and approved my thesis, and my defense is scheduled. At my university, once the thesis is approved, it’s essentially considered finalized—so after the defense, there typically aren’t revisions or continuation.

While going back through my work, I realized something about one of my figures that’s been stressing me out. I have two conditions: cells treated with the same drug but at minute A and at min B washout. When I originally analyzed the data, both conditions showed the same trend, so I grouped them together to represent overall treated cells in that figure.

However, in earlier versions of my thesis, I was treating both of these as if they were min A only, which I now realize isn’t technically accurate. The overall results and conclusions don’t change at all—the trend is the same whether they’re grouped or considered separately—but I’m worried about how this might be perceived. The way Its shown in my figure is "Drug treated cells increase number of cell". Which I believe is general enough to group both conditions because we are only looking at if the drug increased the cell number, which both conditions did.

I’m planning to clarify this to my advisor and potentially update the figure legend to state that these were pooled conditions. But I can’t help feeling anxious that this might be seen as misleading or worse.. data manipulation, especially since my thesis has already been approved and is essentially finalized.

So I wanted to ask:

- Is this considered a normal/acceptable analysis choice as long as it’s clearly stated?

- Am I overthinking how serious this is?

- Would this typically require major revisions, or just a clarification?

I’d really appreciate any perspective, especially from people who have gone through thesis defenses or worked in research. Also if anyone has advice on how to bring it up or how I should discuss this with my advicer. He's pretty strict and probably wouldn't take this lightly but sometimes he's layer back. It's a hit or miss honestly.

Thanks so much.

Hi everyone,

I’m a 2nd year MS student. and I’m getting ready to defend my thesis soon. My committee has already reviewed and approved my thesis, and my defense is scheduled. At my university, once the thesis is approved, it’s essentially considered finalized—so after the defense, there typically aren’t revisions or continuation.

While going back through my work, I realized something about one of my figures that’s been stressing me out. I have two conditions: cells treated with the same drug but at minute A and at min B washout. When I originally analyzed the data, both conditions showed the same trend, so I grouped them together to represent overall treated cells in that figure.

However, in earlier versions of my thesis, I was treating both of these as if they were min A only, which I now realize isn’t technically accurate. The overall results and conclusions don’t change at all—the trend is the same whether they’re grouped or considered separately—but I’m worried about how this might be perceived. The way Its shown in my figure is "Drug treated cells increase number of cell". Which I believe is general enough to group both conditions because we are only looking at if the drug increased the cell number, which both conditions did.

I’m planning to clarify this to my advisor and potentially update the figure legend to state that these were pooled conditions. But I can’t help feeling anxious that this might be seen as misleading or worse.. data manipulation, especially since my thesis has already been approved and is essentially finalized.

So I wanted to ask:

• Is this considered a normal/acceptable analysis choice as long as it’s clearly stated?

• Am I overthinking how serious this is?

• Would this typically require major revisions, or just a clarification?

I’d really appreciate any perspective, especially from people who have gone through thesis defenses or worked in research. Also if anyone has advice on how to bring it up or how I should discuss this with my advicer. He's pretty strict and probably wouldn't take this lightly.

Thanks so much.