Thanks for your commiseration, Avalon. It was not about changing words etc. It was about doing an entirely different literature review! and changing all the research questions! I'm in social sciences. The starting premise of the research was investigating the management of a particular chronic disease. What emerged from the interviews was an emphasis on illness conceptualisation and the impact social structures and culture in illness management. The lead supervisor (from the second team) insisted that I remove the literature surrounding the chronic disease and replace it with literature on health beliefs! and then insert the word "health beliefs" into all the research questions. So far, it sounds doable. But the interview questions did not even addressed health beliefs! Furthermore,  the interview schedule was approved by the regional ethics committee before the fieldwork started.
Nonetheless, it seems that reverse engineering appears a common phenomenon. The academic from another university is very baffled that the university turns a blind eye to such issues and blames the student for it.

Hang on there Pamplemousse, its a good job you are not some dean of some uni. You are making very sweeping statements indeed. Surely you are aware that there are lots of academics sunbathing and doing nothing? I've not considered "conspiracy" just poor management of students' grievances. Of the three supervisors from the second team, only the lead supervisor was a problem. I got on with the other two like a house on fire. Both of them are very sad to let me go but the sub-dean insisted that without the lead sup, the team dissolves. As for the first set of sups, I tolerated them for 3 and a half years before I filed a complaint of bullying and poor academic supervision. The entire PhD was based on informal help from academic within and without the university.
Contrary to your unfounded belief that I have the entire university against me, please check out the facts.

Maybe you picked the wrong University and the wrong set of supervisors then.
I can tell you, in my Department, there are no 'sunbathers'.
I don't doubt that academics can tend towards having poor social skills, but so can students!
At the end of the day, if they've told you your written work isn't up to standard then that's what counts. By your own hand you make clear it took you the entire duration of your funded period to collect your data, so I can't imagine it was particularly easy to judge your written work until after this point.

Well, I am not taking sides here, but I do think that there are a lot of sunbathers (good description) in the academic system. We have a couple of champion sunbathers in my faculty; it is much easier to hide laziness and/or incompetence in the academic world than in industry. And it's quite normal for a science student to need the full funded time to collect data, and then some, quite often.

Of course there are also students who don't take their work seriously - I've met some corkers - but there is no evidence that Hairui is one of those.

Wrong again. I did not choose the supervisors. They chose me after an interview for a 3 year studentship. My current uni is one of the red bricks. Also, written work is of PhD standard as we (myself and the second set of supervisors) agreed on paper list. One paper written with co-sup from second team and awaiting submission to publisher. Conclusion regarding PhD work not made by supervisors (neither first nor second sets of sups) but by sub-dean who hardly knows my area of research; he's a physicist and I'm in social sciences.

What have the ethics committee said about your supervisor's suggestiont to changing the wording in your research questions?

Thanks Juno! Before I started the PhD, I thought academics were the best thing since sliced bread until I found out there are some who does very little. And spend lots of time sussing out the next hiding place in the huge university.
I was told that the PhD research programme was characterised by independent work and slowly realised that it was a euphemistic term for DIY. I sourced help from other academics in and outside the university. Recently, I sent a chapter of my thesis to one of the big boys in my field for comments. He suggested moving parts of it elsewhere in the thesis, summarise some sections to make space for some areas that need more discussion etc. It was great to get such feedback as compared to feedback that I've been having, including "you've mentioned illness 5 times in this paragraph", "not layman but layperson" and the list goes on. How pathetic is that? I could have employed a monkey to do that.

MissSpacey,
They said that I should send a Substantial Amendment form for the committee to grant approval of the study, which has already been conducted and deemed as completed in Sept 2006!
When I raised this issue, the lead supervisor who insisted on the change refused to respond and claimed that the other two supervisors agreed. But those 2 chaps kept very quiet and showed no signs of agreement. I guessed they had to support each other and the student can just go jump.

Well, with respect to the ethic committee, you definitely need to get their approval to your new amendments as they could pull your thesis even if your sups agree on the amendments. Personally, I would have thought such retrospective amendments would not be allowed.

Me neither. But I thought I would check it out anyway. Well, since I have no intention of changing the research questions at the write-up phase, I guess there won't be problems. Thanks for your comments.