I am a PhD student who works in theory. Too many times, I have to defend my ideas or claims in front of my supervisor. I have failed to do so in the past and it worries me. Please note that I am only interested in defending correct ideas, not wrong ones.
Some of the things I have tried are:
- Doubt every line which I read.
- Try to prove each term clearly in front of him.
- Go over the material at least two times.
These kind of things are not working.
My research supervisor has told me that I need to defend my ideas and claims. There have been many times where he asked me to change something about the idea; I did it; and then he asked me why I changed it.
Question: How to defend your correct ideas or claims in front of your supervisor?
Edit : Many times I have tried to defend a wrong idea and there were some times in which I have changed my right idea ( based upon his feedback) and after I changed my idea he told me "your original idea was right, why did you change it?". How to deal with this situation also?