I read this question and the answers, and found it interesting: PhD thesis without acknowledgements
I would like to ask some follow-up questions to this topic.
Speaking for myself, I have a long time in front of me before finalizing my phd, but I would really like to skip the acknowledgements, for 3 different reasons.
1) I think there is something principally wrong for a phd student in thanking a supervisor. It is like saying thank you to your boss in public. Nobody can know if you thank him only because you are dependent on him. And to thank somebody in public that feeds you seems like selling your soul.
2) Everybody knows that a phd candidate can not do all the work himself. He doesn´t need to actually say to the general public that a lot of other people contributed. Everybody knows it. That doesn´t mean he is not a generous person, does it?
3) Regarding personal life, I´m not interested in sharing that with anybody in the acknowledgements. If you write acknowledges you must include your wife or girl-friend. So if you don´t have a wife or girl-friends, isn´t this a pretty good reason for skipping acknowledgements in your phd?
I´m not afraid of destroying my carreer by skipping the acknowledgements. What I am afraid of is to be looked at as a person who is not generous, or even a social moron.
I´m not a mathematician, I´m doing social sciences. Does anybody have good examples of people who have skipped the phd acknowledgements without being seen as ungenerous or a social moron witin social sciences or humanities? If so, could you paste the links to these theses?
Is it more socially accepted to skip acknowledgements for people who are unmarried/ single?