Is there anyone out there doing a professional doctorate? I'm currently writing my thesis for mine, in a psychology field, and I'm in absolute despair. My supervisor has guided me towards doing a study which is fundamentally flawed. It's so unbelievably bad that I am dreading submitting it. She is not an academic and has no understanding of even basic statistics or research design. Has anyone had experience of doing a viva in a similar field? How high are the standards? The only strength I have is writing, I've sailed through other assignments on the course simply because of this fact. I am feeling atrocious about this, can barely get myself out of bed in the morning.

Just choose an external examiner that has similarly limited knowledge and you will be fine :P

Seriously though, are you sure you are not overreacting? Can you ask someone else for their opinion?

If it's fundamentally flawed you should highlight this in your thesis and what could be done in further studies to rectify this. This will show that you are aware of the theoretical issues and limitations of the study.