I graduated last year with a PhD in a humanities field of research. Last year, I was helping a friend from engineering to revise his thesis before resubmitting it after the viva. Then a friend of his also asked me for help, and so on. So I have been looking over a few theses from engineering, mostly from IT related topics. I just help with copyediting, making sure everything is in order, tables, figures, references, etc.
Now, coming form the humanities, I knew everything that was in my thesis. Every single line. So I was quite surprised to find out that my friends dont seem to know what's inside theirs. I ask them 'what did you mean here' and they dont know. Fair enough, they are not native speakers, but neither I am! Is this normal for sciences? There's so much data that maybe some of it doesen't make sense to you? I am not sure if I should think they simply copy-pasted stuff without giving it too much thought, or maybe science research is too complicated for somehone like me (not good with numbers and equations).
Also I wanted to say something to PhD candidates: I know its hard at the end, but make sure your thesis is in order before resubmitting it. The last guy I helped, his thesis didnt have page numbers. I wasnt sure why, so I asked him if in engineering its ok not to have page numbers, and he asked me to put them in. This is one day before the resubmission deadline. Crazy.