Is it correct protocol to thank your committee members in a PhD dissertation?
In the American style, at least, your acknowledgements are yours to do with what you like. Other answers on this site include thanking the makers of Dr. Pepper or dieties and pets. Thus, if you feel thankful to the members of your committee, you should feel free to thank them in your acknowledgements section.
My policy - in my thesis as well as on papers - is to not include the acknowledgments when I send the draft to anyone. As others have mentioned the thesis acknowledgments are yours alone and should not have any bearing (or relationship) to the actual content of the thesis. After all the comments and corrections were received and dealt with, I added the acknowledgments to the document - my committee saw them in the final copy I gave them on the day of my defense.
!Please note: This answer may only reflect the German cultural intellectual style. But maybe the points (or some of them) are applicable in other cultures too. Germans often reduce to factual questions, leaving emotional connections unannotated. (Compare with Galtungs teutonic style)
The general suggestion I read and heard a lot about acknowledgements and persons, that should be named there (or avoided to be named) is:
- name people contributing content, ideas, algorithms etc. to your thesis. This is a must (or someone could blame you of plagiarism).
name people or institutions that fund(ed) your research
to be polite you can thank other people supporting you mentally or spiritually etc. anonymously
thanking persons for general help without specific connection to the thesis' content is sometimes judged to be kitsch or smarmily. don't name them.
- in case of the committee:
- did they (in particular) contribute? (if yes: name them)
- did they (in particular) fund your research? (if yes: name them)
- being part of the commitee can be a paid job (why thanking one doing his/her job?)
- being part can be personal engagement of a person (nice thing, but not connected to you, giving a reason to thank for it)
Don't thank your Mom for having you born...You receive a degree no Oscar.