Hi all, i have my viva next month, feeling very anxious about it and generally think that it will be resubmission (if even that!) but I want to prepare for a fight. I'm wondering how you have dealt or going to deal with the question about 'weaknesses of your research'? And how did you turn it round so it doesn't affect how they perceive the research. Could you give me some specific examples?

Weaknesses fall into two groupings- those you are responsible for (your theory, say) and those you are not (external condtions etc); the former you cannnot be criticised for, and with the latter, the trick is to turn the supposed weaknesses into strengths.
And outrightly tragic is to highlight complete cock-ups off your own accord...

My approach would be similar to Ed's - I'd have a think about 'weaknesses' that I can talk about in a way that leaves something positive to say. So for example, in my studies the number of participants is quite low and I haven't been able to randomly allocate people to different groups, but I'd counter that by saying I gathered lots of demographic info to check that there weren't huge or important differences between the groups.