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2021/01/21
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<issue_start>username_0: I have a couple of questions about how to report the funding I earned or maintained while at my previous employer on my CV. I worked for a public university academic research center where we had several state government contracts. The center director was listed as PI on all of these contracts, even though I led every aspect of the projects (developing the scope of work, budget, managing the project and staff, etc.). The center director submits the contract (along with other contracts) to the state agencies and negotiates any final budget details. The total awarded over two years was about $900k. How should I report this funding on my CV?
The second issue is that I was PI on two grants (one for $245k and the other for $650k), one was awarded two days before I left the center and the other a month after I left. I wasn't allowed to transfer the funding to my new organization (a non-profit research organization), so the center has all of that funding and the two projects to manage. I oversaw every aspect of the idea development and grant application process and would've been PI had I stayed. Can I report this funding on my CV? If so, how should I do it<issue_comment>username_1: In conference presentations, there is a bias against mentioning one's own name because the speaker knows their own name and doesn't realize their audience has forgotten who is speaking.
It's not an unwritten rule; it's a common mistake. If you are citing your own work, do write your own name correctly so people can find the reference if they want to.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: There is nothing wrong with mentioning your own name in full in citations on your own slides, and nobody would think anything of it if you did. However, there are a number of reasons why people do this.
1. Replacing your own name with initials is a subtle way of emphasizing that it is *your* work that is being cited. You can think of it as a “humblebrag”.
2. Since you are usually talking about your own work, you end up citing yourself a lot. Replacing your name with initials simply saves space, especially if you have a long name.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: In my experience in pure mathematics, it seems to be somewhat of a norm not to write your full name when citing yourself and just use initials. I have seen this on many conference presentations or any other talks using slides.
When giving a blackboard talk it has the advantage of using less space on the board which typically is a scarce resource.
On the other hand, I have also seen the occasional talk where this "rule" was not followed and I do not think that this left a bad impression on anyone.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: To the question, briefly: Abbreviating as described is common in math, but I can't imagine anyone reacting negatively or at all to variations in something so minute.
An alternative motive from a mathematician's perspective I don't see in the other answers or comments:
My surname is fairly common. So I use just an initial in my slides when referencing theorems I've worked on as a concise clarification that I am the person referred to. I'm not aware of anyone else sharing my surname in my field of specialization, but that's hardly a guarantee. This has nothing to do with encouraging memorizing my name, as that's in a header/footer on virtually every slide.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: That depends.
I saw one prof get credit for someone elses work by putting his name on the slide and pointing to the other persons results!
Why do you want your name on the slides?
Isnt the title page on the first one enough?
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_6: The bias is against self-aggrandizement, and that's what helped establish the norm username_3 [mentioned](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/161644/7319) in their answer: If you cite yourself a few times, and you use your name, it is as though you bring people into a room where you show them many images of your name. Of course that's not the contents of the presentation, but there is at least some element of that. So, symbolically, you self-deprecate by limiting your self-mention to a single letter. Your full name on the first slide of the presentation is actually common, though (so people know who's giving the talk if they've forgotten or don't know what's on the schedule today); there's no bias - that I know of - against that.
Upvotes: 2
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2021/01/22
| 2,637
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<issue_start>username_0: My partner is currently interviewing for tenure track positions. I am a first year PhD students and We would ideally like to be in the same city. Ideally I would like to find a co-superviser to continue the path of my current PhD or find a new PhD that I like and start over.
When is the best time to mention this two body problem? ( It is not mentioned in his application)
What is a good way of phrasing it? The positions we are talking about are in the UK and Denmark.
p.s: Is it possible that mentioning the two body problem will reduce his chances of getting the position?<issue_comment>username_1: (The question changed. This advice is not for Europe.)
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> Is it possible that mentioning the two body problem will reduce his chances of getting the position?
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It's possible. I see no reason to inform the search committee that you have a problem that might make the hire more complicated.
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> When is the best time to mention this two body problem?
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Probably never. The faculty search committee does not control PhD admissions, particularly if you plan to get your PhD in another department or at a nearby university. They will not be able to help you achieve your goal.
I think the most you can hope for is that your partner's new job comes with a tuition waver for you. Tuition wavers are not usually negotiated as part of salary packages. They are automatic.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: Two-body problems is something which is usually only brought up proper once you have the offer during the negotiations phase. Then, hopefully, your partner's future institution will really want to have them, and hopefully try to accommodate their wishes.
Of course, the room for negotiations at tenure-track level might be limited, depending on the place. But then again, giving a funded PhD position is a comparatively low effort/risk, as compared to giving a partner a permanent faculty-level position. So I would think that chances should be reasonably good, though it might of course mean that your partner will get less startup funding e.g. for PhD students (the university will ultimately look at the full package).
Finally, if your partner is being asked in the interview if there is a two-body problem, or generally about family-related issues with relocation, they should answer truthfully.
Independent of all that, it should also be a feasible task to find a new PhD yourself in the new place (unless it is very small), as PhD positions are much easier to get than faculty positions. So overall this might not be so much of an issue.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: This type of question will be discussed *after* your partner has been extended an offer. If a department is committed to hiring faculty, they will, within reason, attempt to help their spouses get settled too. If you’re both in the same field, this might work out; if not, there might not be much they can do. Given that you’ll mention it after an offer has been extended, it can’t hurt your partner. And at that point, there is no need for special phrasing as two-body problems in academia are common.
Given how hard it is to find a tenure track position even without further constraints, you might also want to begin discussing with your partner what to do if getting you to move into a Ph.D. at the same university/in the same city won’t work out. Off-hand, I can think of two cases where the spouse was accommodated, but of plenty more where that was not possible.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: **Context:** US based answer. I’m a professor and former department chair who has had a lot of experience with situations like these, both on the hiring side and in other ways.
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> When is the best time to mention this two body problem?
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It’s important to understand (and this is something that I think the other answers are missing) that this question **has no right answer**. There isn’t a “best time”, just different pros and cons to mentioning it at different times.
If he mentions it early in the interview process, he is giving information that is potentially useful to the interviewing department. They may be able to help with the two-body problem, which would give them a competitive edge over other departments. This could make them more excited about the prospect of hiring him, and a bit more likely to make him an offer. They could also tell him and you about resources that may be available to help with situations like these, like extra funding to support your acceptance to the local PhD program, which could help you focus your own search efforts and perhaps ease some of the stress you may be dealing with.
Alternatively, the information may make the department *less* excited, and a bit *less* likely to choose to make him an offer, if they get a sense that the hurdle of causing him to choose to move to their city is improbably difficult or too much trouble. This could happen for example if your area of PhD specialization is so esoteric that they think it is very unlikely that you’ll be able to find a co-supervisor in their university or another nearby one, or if your partner is only a marginally attractive candidate to them to begin with.
At the very least, revealing this kind of information early on will signal that your partner is a serious person with a professional attitude, who is engaging with the interview process in good faith and is not wasting people’s time by playing games. Some people (me, for example) would be impressed by such an attitude, and that could also conceivably affect the likelihood of getting an offer. Even if he doesn’t get an offer, it’s always good to leave a good impression as this could end up helping in various ways with his future career.
Conversely, springing this information on the department at a late stage after an offer has been extended may (or may not, depending to some extent on the local culture and on the way he brings this information up) feel like he is pulling a bit of a “bait and switch” maneuver on them. It may be a dealbreaker and leave the interviewers with a sense that their time has been wasted, leaving a sour aftertaste.
Finally, revealing the information early on may help avoid wasting *his* (and your own) time and mental energy. Bringing this up could give both of you useful information and possibly rule out that institution as a viable option. If there is no hope for you to find a PhD co-adviser where he is interviewing, are you both sure that there is a point in going through the interview process?
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> What is a good way of phrasing it?
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In a forthright and polite way. He should simply explain the situation and avoid giving any obvious signs of dishonesty or immaturity by disclosing misleading information or answering follow-up questions evasively.
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> Is it possible that mentioning the two body problem will reduce his chances of getting the position?
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Yes. It’s also possible that it will increase the chances as I explained above. The most likely effect will be that the chances of him getting hired will not really be changed at all, but the interview process will go more smoothly and pleasantly for both your partner and the people interviewing him, he will leave a slightly better personal impression, and you and him will be a little bit less stressed out while the process is playing out.
**Summary.** At my (US) university it is definitely helpful to mention a two body problem early on. We have lots of experience and resources to support candidates and their family members in those situations, and usually see them as an opportunity rather than a reason for discouragement or to give up on promising candidates. During the years when I was a department chair I interviewed around 20-30 tenure track candidates, and the topic was a standard one to discuss, and one that we were able to help with on several occasions leading to a successful recruitment.
On the other hand, the other answers suggesting not to mention it until late in the process also have a valid point. I don’t think anyone will argue that your partner has an ethical obligation to explain his personal circumstances before receiving an offer, and if he feels that there is a strategic advantage to withholding this type of information, it’s perfectly legitimate to do so, and there are specific situations where that could be a good idea. However, personally I think any perceived advantage to such an approach may not be as significant as people without experience in such matters typically think, and may be nonexistent.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: UK perspective
==============
First, it is important to remember that **the UK is a relatively densely populated country with reasonably good transport links**. As a result, it is very common for academic couples to work at different universities (many UK cities have more than one university), even in different cities. Some couples manage to find positions that are close enough geographically to enable them to live together all week -- examples of city-'pairs' that are eminently feasible for commuting: Manchester & Liverpool; Edinburgh & Glasgow; Bristol & Cardiff; York & Newcastle. But it is not unusual for UK academics to do long-distance commuting, even to the extent of staying in hotels or renting a 2nd home (even before COVID-19, some UK academics would cluster their on-campus commitments to a couple of days per week, and then work from home the rest of the time).
**In the UK, "spousal hire"** (that is, offering a job to a person by virtue of his/her being the spouse of someone who has already been offered a job) **is generally illegal**. When it comes to hiring, every candidate must be treated as an individual on merit alone. The same principle would apply to a PhD position (although it is not employment, strictly speaking).
So, there is almost certainly no point bringing up the two-body problem until **after** you have received a job offer (possible exception: if your spouse already works in the local area, and you are thus applying for the job in order to **solve** a two-body problem, and you are applying for a lower-ranking position than your current post).
Of course, staff at the university are perfectly entitled to offer **informal** advice to the spouse of a colleague. It may, therefore, be appropriate to seek such advice **after** receiving the job offer but **before** signing the contract.
Now, as far as getting a PhD place in the UK is concerned: as long as you have a coherent research proposal (you need to have a fairly clear idea of your thesis topic, although it is understood that this may change/evolve somewhat) and the appropriate credentials to pursue it, getting a place somewhere is not too difficult (of course, actually completing the PhD is still a long and hard journey). The two main challenges are securing an appropriate supervisor and funding. If you want a **funded** PhD place, it is much more competitive, and may require some flexibility on the topic, supervisor, and institution.
Upvotes: 2
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2021/01/23
| 1,656
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<issue_start>username_0: I am about to submit my application to a PhD in Statistics and I was wondering whether writing in the SoP about being willing to work in the industry to make a tangible impact would downgrade my application with respect to writing that I would enjoy being a professor in the future.
They already make clear that they prefer recommendations from academics rather than practitioners but I do not know what figures they expect to train (professors vs. practitioners).<issue_comment>username_1: Nearly all PhD students will never be professors. Some PhD programs might prefer to recruit PhD students who intend to become professors, but sensible PhD programs will realize that students who wish to work in industry are students capable of making a realistic plan. That is a good thing.
Stating your intent to work in industry is unlikely to hurt your application. If it does, then you probably applied to a program that will not help you reach your goals.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: **Yes** (but it's usually an unconscious bias, and not openly stated).
[Many academics consider failing to become a professor actual "failure"](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/108543/what-makes-academic-failure-different-from-failure-in-another-career). An academic career is supposed to be a vocation. PhD students are supposed to be passionate about the topic, so much so that they'll want to continue to work on it after graduating. The best graduate students go on to become professors; the not-so-good ones are eliminated and "get a job" (because being an academic isn't actually a job!). The belief is pervasive enough that [many academics who quit felt compelled to write blogs about why they're quitting and why they don't consider themselves to have failed](https://community.chronicle.com/news/216-why-so-many-academics-quit-and-tell).
Viewed this way, a prospective PhD student openly states they want to work in industry is a red flag. They've already ruled themselves out of being the best, they're likely to fail. Admission committees might not think this crassly, but they'll come up with the closely-related reasons "not passionate enough" or "applicant is not motivated by the subject, therefore when things inevitably go badly in the PhD they might drop out", both of which stem from the idea that the only way to be sure the applicant is passionate/motivated enough is for them to want to be a professor.
Granted not all academics think like this, but unless you are certain otherwise (e.g., you are applying to work under [<NAME>](https://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science), or the program description explicitly says they have an eye on preparing students for industry jobs), I think you should err on the side of caution and say you will consider an academic career even if you are almost certain you will join industry, or at least be non-committal about your future plans.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: this generally seems to be the case in econ. not sure how it is in stats. my advice is to say that you want to be in academia and don't hint that you'd rather do something else even if that's the case. i agree with others that it's very hard to get a job in academia and that you should have a backup plan as a result, but for the sake of maximizing your chances of getting in, please keep those non-academic plans secret.
phd programs are for producing academic researchers. the thing about getting recommendations from academics instead of practitioners for this purpose is that academics will generally be far better judges of your ability to survive a phd program and become a successful researcher than someone who has never taught in one or even been through one.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: I am faculty in a Biostats department. In my experience, there is a small premium placed on students who are likely to remain in academia (doesn't matter what fashion) in that they are more likely to publish components of their dissertation. As these papers often include substantial contributions from their advisors, this means more senior-authored papers for the advisor. However, a PhD is such a winding road, students who claim to be dead-set on acquiring a faculty position will not seem so credible in a personal statement.
My advice: do be honest with what sort of problems excite you, and why they motivate you to pursue a PhD. But perhaps do not spend much time describing your eagerness to enter industry *per se*. After all, a PhD is a poor time and money investment for an industry career in statistics / data science right now.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: PhD admission committees are made up of people, and people are notorious for having individual opinions that vary greatly from one person to the next. So: some people may care; others won’t care; and some people will care, but in the opposite direction from what you think. (For example, if I were to read your SOP and got a sense that you want a PhD because you have a passion for changing the world through groundbreaking industry applications of statistics, I would regard that as a wonderful motivation to have, and one that is much better than the generic “I’ve always dreamed of becoming a professor” line I see in every other grad school application I look at. Disclaimer: I’m in pure math, not statistics.)
For that reason, personally I feel it’s a fool’s errand to try to game the admissions system by trying to guess what the admissions committee “really” wants to hear and then give it to them.
Of course, I am confident that now that I have publicly posted this bit of wisdom, grad school applicants everywhere will stop these silly guessing games and just write the honest truth about who they are and why they want to do a PhD.
Anyway, best of luck with your applications, and my apologies for this non-answer.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_6: I think it's difficult to answer this question universally. However, you can look at the placement record of the institution of which you are applying. If many previous graduates go on to academia, then you might be hurting your chances at that particular school in stating a desire for industry. If it's 50/50 or even more-so weighted on industry, then it probably doesn't matter. Of course, applying to grad school is always a crapshoot, but this is a way to get some 'data'.
Generally speaking, however, I would be honest with yourself and your application. I'm currently a PhD student in a statistics department, and a good department and good faculty/adviser (both of which can be hard to find) will help you reach your goals. It's going to be a long 4-5 years if you're working towards a goal you don't really want.
Upvotes: 1
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2021/01/23
| 701
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<issue_start>username_0: I am preparing a research seminar talk in an academic discipline which I'll give online (with Beamer) at University X.
I like to show images of the people whose ideas have gone into my work. Most of the time I can get images which have been clearly released under some form of Creative Commons License, allowing me to use it provided I attribute the copyright holder. However this is not always possible, and sometimes the only photo I can find of Person Y is on their personal homepage at University Z, where there is no mention of copyright on the image, or whether it may be used by others.
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> Is one allowed to use the photos found on the personal webpages of people working at academic institutions for non-commercial purposes such as in the slides of a research seminar talk, if there is no explicit mention of copyright or limitations on its use by others?
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><issue_comment>username_1: To avoid all questions, and in the absence of a clear license, ask the person for permission to use a picture. They might even have a better one that they would prefer be used.
For a deceased person, ask the university, either through their former department head or a university publicity office. If they can't grant you a right to use it, they can possibly put you in contact with someone who holds the rights, such as their estate, for example.
I don't guess anyone would turn you down, and this is simple enough to do.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: In the United States, and perhaps elsewhere, copyright exists as soon as a "creative work" is "fixed in a tangible medium." So, in the United States every modern photograph is covered by copyright. The Creative Commons license is just that, a *license* to use the work. If there's no mention of a license, then the assumption should be that use is not allowed without prior approval.
Copyright law in the United States, and perhaps elsewhere, includes the doctrine of fair use, which in some cases permits unlicensed use of material under copyright. The trouble with that is, fair use claims are adjudicated on a case-by-case basis, so one could be sued and even prevail, but have to bear the cost of defending the suit. The U.S. Copyright Office has a lot more information on [fair use](https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html).
Your best course, as username_1 has already written, is to contact the person whose image you want to use, and *ask.*
I guess I should add that images of people who are deceased are a different and messier can of worms. The decedent's estate likely owns the image. Images of, *e.g.* a famous actor, might be owned by a corporation. I haven't worried about images of people who died before 1920 because there were major changes in U.S. copyright laws that made 1920 an important date, but this isn't legal advice, and I could possibly come to regret not worrying.
Upvotes: 2
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2021/01/23
| 681
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<issue_start>username_0: As a graduate school student, I have two professors teaching two separate classes that go from 4:30PM to 5:50pm and 6:00pm to 9:00PM. This happens every one day of the week.
I'm not sure whether I can handle concentrating for 5 hours and I have the option to not take a class but it would delay graduating by a semester.
Do I negotiate with the professor to reschedule or do they have the power to deny it?<issue_comment>username_1: Academic timetabling is a notoriously difficult problem. Professors have several classes to teach, students have several classes to attend. There are restrictions related to classroom sizes, specific equipment (e.g. computer labs). Some professors may have individual restrictions, e.g. can only teach on specific days or hours due to other commitments.
Normally, Professors do not decide their own timetables, but submit their preferences to the Timetabling Office, which then generates a timetable for everyone. Students can also try to submit their requests, but usually as a groups (cohorts), not individually. If you are not happy with your timetable, it is definitely worth trying to change it, but bear in mind that it may not be easy.
However, if you class is scheduled up until 9pm, which is significantly beyond the core hours, you actually have a much better chance of having this class rescheduled, particularly if any of other students attending the same late class have caring responsibilities. Your Student Rep / Student Union Rep / Athena Swan Rep (in the UK) might be able to help you with the process.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Yes, you can ask. However, it is likely that professors cannot change the schedule. It is also quite possible that it is too late for anyone to change the schedule. It depends on individual circumstances.
It would be normal for a three hour class to contain a rest break. This may solve your problem.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: You can ask, but school room/building scheduling, other students preferences, prof's preference, and other factors will make you look silly and entitled.
If you did not like the schedule you should not have signed up for both of them if they ran back to back.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_4: 4:30 pm is an odd time for an evening class to start; chances are that it was selected either specifically to fit into the professor's schedule, or specifically to allow motivated students to attend both the 4:30 class and a 6 pm class.
(For example, some students may find it far more convenient to travel to campus one day a week for a 6 hour session than to travel on two different days.)
In addition to asking if the classes can be rescheduled for your convenience, you might also ask if there other classes you can take towards your degree.
Upvotes: 2
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2021/01/24
| 3,667
| 15,229
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a lecturer in charge of a course with over 250 students and several TAs. The TAs are partly responsible for grading the homework assignments. Since these are assignments in programming, no two submissions are identical, so it is impossible to cover all possible cases in the grading guidelines, and the grading has some subjective element.
I noticed that one TA is consistently stricter than the others. For example, if the guidelines say that "code efficiency" is worth 20 points, then this TA would deduct 15 points when the code is inefficient, while the other TAs would deduct only 5 points for a similar issue.
A potential problem here is that it might be unfair to the students in the strict TA's class, but this can be solved by allocating the assignment task "horizontally" (each TA grades all 250 submissions in some of the assignments) rather than "vertically".
But I have a different question: I noticed that students who are graded more harshly, take the feedback comments more seriously, and tend to become better programmers. So, rather than just being "fair", I would like all TAs to grade in a stricter way - for the sake of the students. The problem is, most TAs are not motivated to grade strictly - they gain nothing from it; all they get is having to handle students' complaints and appeals, and risking lower marks in the students' feedback (since the students do not understand that it is in their favor until after they graduate).
The TAs are not lazy - they do put a lot of effort in teaching and helping students; they just don't like to be the "bad guys" who give low grades. How can I motivate them to give stricter grades?
CONCLUSION: Thanks a lot to all repliers. In addition to the excellent answers, two things that I did were:
* I assigned myself to one of the TA sections (where the assignments are graded), in order to get a view of the grading task from the perspective of a TA. It was a very interesting and important experience, and helped me refine the rubric.
* I introduced the use of a static analysis tool (specifically: `clang-tidy`, for C++) as part of the automatic grading. It was way more strict than both me and the TAs in detecting readability and code-quality issues. Students learned a lot just from trying to make `clang-tidy` run on their code without warnings.<issue_comment>username_1: From my experience, the best way to ensure consistency is by setting *simple, clear-cut* rubrics.
This can be done via a moderation exercise: have all the teaching staff mark 10 scripts together and see where the disagreements lie.
Alternatively, if you have access to moderation tools like Gradescope, then this obviates the need to meet in person.
Bottom line - just be clear about your expectations. Explain to the TAs the purpose of grading - either harsh or lenient, and the need for consistency.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: You have a bigger problem than encouraging stricter grading. You need to provide *consistent* grading. Otherwise your scheme is fundamentally unfair.
For starters you don't have an option to fail to provide a proper rubric. If you aren't doing that, then you are failing the students. If it is a lot of work to do it, then you have a large task, but a required one.
You can make the rubric as strict as you like (though I don't really like the concept of narrow interpretations), but it has to be clear to your TAs and it has to be reasonable to your students.
One way to assure some consistency is to have more than one TA involved with each student's work. They need to agree with each other or appeal to you for a judgement. If they enter student grades into a spreadsheet you can easily see the differences and can also use it for further TA training as needed, such as, for example when one TA is consistently "too" lenient.
For an exercise with lots of parts, it might be possible to have each TA responsible for only one part. This tends to work for final exams where students answer questions, but less well for programming assignments.
Another way to achieve a good rubric is to have yourself or a small team of advanced TAs scan the student work without grading it and use what they learn to refine the rubric to assure consistency. It is probably a mistake to use this trick to create the rubric in the first place, but it gives you an idea of where the students are going wrong and need correction. An overall view. Once that is in place, the actual grading can occur.
Another trick, though not very easily done in pandemic times or with a large pool of graders, is to bring everyone together in real time to grade all the papers. This could possibly be done online (zoom) and you could be present to answer questions and make decisions.
But, again, consistency is a requirement. The rubric needs to be complete to assure that. The "strictness" is a secondary concern, but could be improved (your idea, not mine) with a proper rubric that everyone finds clear.
---
Moreover, if you try to grade things on a fixed scale that are fundamentally "fuzzy" then you have an impossible task. If you can define "efficiency" in your example, then fine. But if it is a fuzzy concept then almost every rubric is likely to leave the grading to intuition. Give precise grades on the things that are precise. But for other things, judgement and a bit of compassion are probably needed.
In CS, some things are clear, of course. If a student uses bubble sort on a large array it is clearly inefficient. But selection sort is more efficient than quick sort at a certain scale, which is why library versions of quick sort normally drop back to selection sort for small sections of the initial set.
But judgments about "proper factoring" of code are judgmental. If your feeling is "I can't define it, but [I know it when I see it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it)." then it is nearly impossible to provide a rubric that will be used *consistently* by a group of TAs.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: Several suggestions, dealing with several aspects of the question.
Spend some time training the TAs. At the start of the semester, have everyone grade the same set of sample submissions from a previous semester. Meet in a group to discuss what you and they think matters when correcting inefficiencies and inelegancies. If you can reach consensus, fine. If not, make your own requirements clear to all. Perhaps repeat this exercise with the TAs after the first assignment.
Consider two separate marks for each assignment, one for correctness and one for style. Perhaps be strict on the style scale but weight that mark less.
Weigh programming assignments at the end of the semester more than those at the start, and make sure the students know this. That should mitigate the effect of strict standards at the start and teach them what they need to do to do better later.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Assuming "You" is is the university: Pay your TAs more to increase motivation. You cannot expect good quality work or higher motivation for bad quality pay. Generous grading is low-effort grading.
The other answers advocating rubrics and training are also correct.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_5: A few things to add:
* Be sure the TA's know you'll back them and will be the bad guy. The students know the TA's are using your guidelines. If a TA uses their judgement but was too harsh, you'll let both them and the student know it was your fault for not being more clear.
* Emphasize the benefits of consistency to the TA's. Remind them students compare scores. Let them know it's OK to ask another TA how they grade something (or you). Let them know if they give too many points, it's causing problems for the other TA's.
* Remind them they had to work hard to pass this class (assuming they did). Students tend to be protective of their majors, especially TA's, and want to maintain standards.
* Get TA buy-in for the grading criteria. This is similar to the last bullet. Suppose it's -50% for not using functions, even if it works. Remind them this is the "learn to use functions" assignment and it said they were required, and you went over functions in class all last week. 50% off is generous.
I managed to go 5 years never having heard the word Rubric, then it was 6 months more before I realized it's the exact same thing as a grading key. I try to be somewhat detailed over a range:
>
> Style:
>
>
> * -5: didn't try. nonsense var names, random indents, looks like garbage
> * -3: barely tried, and only in some places
> * -0: actually tried but still looks bad.
>
>
>
"Efficiency" seems way too vague. I try to list specific things they need to do:
>
> Efficiency:
>
>
> * -5: no array loops, just lots of IF's.
> * -3: No nested if's
> * -0: at least 2 useful nested if's (even if others could be)
>
>
>
But (and I know this isn't what you asked) in a regular coding class they're often just trying to learn the new stuff and make it work. "Good style" is often too much to ask "Efficiency" can be even scarier and more confusing.
I've never done any training exercises with TA's. Just gone over grading at the first meeting. Then discuss the upcoming assignment, and how to grade the one coming due at every other meeting.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_6: For programming assignments, there is nothing better than a suite of automated tests that look at accuracy, performance, and code smells.
You can have tiers of tests:
* Tier I - basic tests
* Tier II - advanced/edge-case tests
* Tier III - performance, code smells tests
Based on the tier, the points/grade is determined.
Of course, you can use TAs to skim through the solutions to adjust the points for clever solutions and attempts to play the tests.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: What I and the other TAs did on last semester's course to make sure we graded all students as evenly as possible:
* Before the assignment was released to the students, we went through the rubric to try to poke holes in it. We wanted to make sure that what the students were told to do in the assignment, what the assignment told them they would be graded on, and the actual rubric we would use, were all in agreement. If they weren't consistent, we'd take it back to the lecturer and propose a refinement.
* When results came in, we took a couple of submissions and graded them collectively, to calibrate between the TAs how we would apply the items in the rubric in practice. After the first assignment we had a good idea of who were strong and weak programmers so we'd pick a presumed-strong and presumed-weak submission to calibrate at both ends of the scale.
* When grading an assignment, we'd keep notes on what points were scored for each item the rubric. So you could look up why exactly a student got the grade they got, and what they should improve on a re-sit.
* We also tracked the average mark given by each TA, so that we could do an inspection if one TA's average marks were significantly higher or lower than the others.
This approach worked out quite well.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_8: It sounds to me that one of the TAs is not calibrating their marks to reasonable expectations of the student cohort, but to absolute criteria, e.g. x-points lost for each of a list of potential deficiencies. This can be unfair because the deficiencies are often correlated, rather than independent, which leads to a bimodal distribution of scores - they all either got it basically right, or basically wrong. In the U.K. system, where we have first-class, upper- and lower-second class etc., I'd ask the TA to look at the score they have given for the student and ask themselves whether that was consistent with the implied degree classification. For instance if there were 20 marks for efficiency and a marker awarded only 5, then that is saying the work is a borderline fail, according to that quality. Phrased that way, they might see that the score is incompatible with their subjective assessment of the work, rather than the objective "tick-box" score. If another marker could have given it 15 marks, it clearly isn't in fail territory!
... of course it could be the other marker is too lenient, but again it is a calibration issue, they should ask themselves (in the U.K. system), whether the work was "first class" from an efficiency perspective, as that is what the score of 15 (75%) would imply.
How the TAs would moderate their original marks is another matter, but it is a sanity-check of their calibration.
Programming has a large subjective element. The point is not just to write a program that computes the right answer (hopefully efficiently), it needs to be written in a way that is understandable by other human beings, so that it is maintainable by somebody else. Overly prescriptive rubrics can cause more problems than they are worth, because sometimes students can come up with good solutions that don't fit your rubric, and they shouldn't be penalised. Students also enjoy a degree of freedom to be creative in programming assignments, and I think that makes them better programmers in the long run.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_9: If you want to reduce variance, you can multi-pass marking.
All deductions come from a combination of a marked part of the code, a reason, and a deduction because of a marked part of the code.
Take such information and hand off the marked part of the code and reason to another TA, and they independently determine the deduction based off your Rubric.
If they significantly disagree, send it to a 3rd TA.
If they still significantly disagree, escalate to you, and improve Rubric.
The first TA is spending most of the time (looking for problems), the second TA only has to apply the Rubric on an identified problem, so this should less than double the marking workload.
Because you are now comparing two (or three) TA's determination of how severe something is, you can bias the average towards the more severe rating. TAs who regularly are the least severe you can review the work of, and encourage to be more severe if they need to be.
You'll note that you can even use such a mechanism to have student-student code review (looking at what other people do wrong or right is of high value when learning). Students are told to use the Rubric to review other student's code, and identify areas that violate the rules. Then TAs can review the student's selection of issues and issue marks that way.
That student-student review can also be used to spot problems that a TA is missing; if TA consistently misses violations of the Rubric that students catch (and a 3rd party TA marks as good catches), then that is a reason to consider talking to that TA about being more strict.
In short, you need visibility into the process. This is expensive to do yourself, so you need to have your large number of Students and TAs provide useful cross-review, consume the resulting data to find exceptions you want to deal with yourself, and then apply corrective action on the exceptions. That should efficiently move the marking to be more consistent, and correctly harsh.
Upvotes: 0
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2021/01/24
| 2,001
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<issue_start>username_0: I always find myself in a difficult situation on the rage of students who are upset about their marks they just received. I feel it is kind of difficult to reply to students' emails that sound very angry. Especially when they first receive their marks.
1. Why did I get this MARK!
2. How could I get this mark, when my colleague got higher!
3. I will provide my mark to the dean! (some already done so!)
I know that this is not uncommon, but I feel we have the duty to know how to deal psychologically with this behaviour.
How do you deal with this situation?
Some say, do not reply to this email before at least a week so that the student acknowledges and time for them to relax.
The issue is that I will have to deal with these same students in a module next term and I am worried about how they will portray me.<issue_comment>username_1: When dealing with angry students, your number one priority should be to de-escalate the situation and bring it back to a more factual ground. That means you want to:
* **Stay calm.** Even if you are getting agitated yourself, you should never let it show through in your answer (easier via email than personally, but the same principle applies independently of the medium). I tend to opt for a more formal tone than what I usually use, mostly because I have found more formal phrasing harder to be misunderstood as dismissive (your milage may vary).
* **Provide short, to the point, answers.** Answer the student's query or complaint politely, but don't get pre-emptively defensive and don't overly detailedly explain your reasoning. The more you write or say, the more an unhappy student will find to be upset about. There is a time and place to give a student detailed feedback, but when they are currently raging isn't it.
* **Stay with the facts.** Scrub all subjectivity from your own answer. You want to bring the conversation to a place where you are talking about specific assessment results (exam questions, assignment tasks, etc.) rather than "I felt I did better", and the more you are using subjective statements in your own answer the more the student will feel validated that his own subjective understanding of the situation is as valid as yours.
* **Require the student to provide concrete, factual arguments.** Once you bring the discussion to a more factual level, you should ask the student why, specifically, they disagree with their grade. Are there specific assessment results they feel were wrongly graded? Are they unhappy with how you aggregated the assessments? Once you are discussing on this level, it becomes easier to both, convince a student that their grade is correct according to the framework, and see cases where your framework is indeed unfair (or can at least be perceived as such).
* **Answer, but don't answer too quickly.** Especially when receiving complaints via email: avoid the temptation to immediately answer questions by upset students. Give it a day, this will allow both you and the student a chance to calm down. A little delay in your interaction will also motivate the student to think more carefully about what they are actually writing, since a non-question like *"How could I get this mark, when my colleague got higher"* just means longer delay for them.
* **Remember that student's don't have to agree with their grade.** At the end of the day, not all students will be happy with their grade, and even after you have explained your reasoning not all students will be convinced. That's ok. You and the student don't have to agree on the final grade. There is a process in place what, if anything, students can do to further escalate a grade dispute (I don't know if that includes sending a mail to the dean at your department, in mine emailing the dean about a grade dispute would mostly result in a username_5 dean).
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Your first step should be to **make sure the mark is accurate before you reply.**
I once had a student complain about getting an "F". I looked in my gradebook and saw that the student had a "B"! My first thought was that I had written the wrong grade on the report sent to the registrar's office. I went, with the student, to the registrar's. There was a "B" on the report I had sent. The error had been made at the registrar's office. Of course, the student's grade was changed to "B".
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: While @username_1's answer pretty much sums it up, I would like to add that
>
> "A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it."
>
>
>
Students complain about marks if either
a. Your rubrics/grading criteria are unclear or inconsistently applied
b. The students perceive you as pliant.
Of course, there are those students who will just complain for complaining's sake or with the hopes of you just not wanting the hassle of dealing with them. Those are, in my experience, a very small (albeit vocal) minority. Moreover, since their complaints are rarely justified, you can easily handle them.
If you handle (a) well, then students are much less likely to complain about you, and would greatly appreciate the transparency. I make my rubrics clear-cut and public, and ask students to refer to specific rubric items in their regrade requests. I tell them in advance that I do not grade feelings or intentions, just what actually made it to the assessment paper. Make sure that this grading policy is public on week 1; perhaps even get students to acknowledge reading it (say via an online form).
Students won't perceive you as pliant if you fix (a) and stick to it. I actively encourage students who threaten me with going to a higher authority to follow through on their threat (politely), something along the lines of
>
> "You are well within your rights to take this matter up with the dean, and if you feel like you have been mistreated in any way, then by all means do so".
>
>
>
No one has gone on to complain yet. They know they have no standing.
Given that we are teaching in unusual times, you can (and should!) be lenient when the situation warrants it, *as long as you are consistent about this as well*. If one student complains about an inconsistency or possible interpretation and you find their argument valid, go back and fix it *for everyone*. If a student asks for an extension for no particular reason, grant it *for everyone*.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: As a high-school student currently, (and I've gotten my fair share of Cs and Fs), I have always been more accepting of my grade (and less upset about it) when my teacher would explain why he/she gave me that grade, and then give feedback about what I could change next time I had to take an assessment in the same course. By doing this, you do two things. 1.) You tell them what they can do differently so that they have something to work towards in the next semester. (And often based on this feedback, they will do better the next time.) And 2.) They see that you care about your students and their work, by taking out time from your day to give them feedback/explanations. This may also inadvertently make them pay more attention in class/try to do better on their work. (I have found that I have learned and retained more from teachers that care than from those who don't.) This shouldn't ruin your reputation with your students, as they may still be mad at you, but they would at least understand why their grade happened the way it did.
This is probably not the opinion which you are seeking, but I think that it covers a unique perspective of the question, not covered in the other answers.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: I understand that at the moment this is the grade that reflects the student's efforts and this is the grade they deserve. In this case, I would explain to them using facts why they received this grade.
However, in the future, you may consider emailing students when they start to fall behind in your class. It personally gives me no pleasure to see a student not succeed in my class. When I have had such students, I have reached out to them via email. Some did not respond. One responded that they were suffering from depression due to the pandemic and asked to redo the assignment and was then able to catch up with the rest of the material.
It then helps to use this as evidence. You have a paper trail showing that you tried to help the student and they did not accept the help so they definitely deserve the low grade.
Upvotes: 1
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2021/01/24
| 654
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<issue_start>username_0: As an undergraduate in the field of biology/Chemistry, I've seen plenty of professors recommending at least two textbooks for a mere credit hour of two, each of which comprised of more than 1000 pages. I'm somehow confused by this huge amount of text and it came to my mind to only rely on my class notes instead of the books from now on. Plus some of these books, despite being said to target undergrads' needs, are so hard, complicated, and extensive that even many master's candidates wouldn't take a look at according to my conversations with other people in the field. How should an undergraduate focus on the subjects with this bombardment of information, specifically how should an undergrad prioritize among textbooks, class notes, papers to be read(if any)? and roughly how many textbooks should one read for the whole four years to obtain proficiency in the field? (Is it a good idea to count them in the first place?)<issue_comment>username_1: I went to college more than half a century ago. I accumulated and still have all (I think) of the books in math. But I never actually *read* any of those books front to back. They were used as a resource to make it possible to gain insight and to solve problems. Some of them were more useful on the insight part, of course.
But, to answer the question, one way to use the books is to let the lecture notes be your guide as to where you should focus within them. Use keywords from the lecture, along with the table of contents and the index to find the things you need to focus on.
Textbooks aren't novels. They provide the outline of a field and, hopefully, plenty of useful (hard) exercises to build skill. With enough hard work, insight may come.
Read textbooks in "snippets", stopping frequently to think about what you have read and find associated exercises to solidify the ideas.
This is especially true for the later chapters. It may be necessary to do more, such as re-reading, for the early parts, since you probably start out with very little skill. But the exercises may be more important than the text itself.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Ignore the textbooks and concentrate on the lecture notes. If the lectures say "read pages X to Y of [textbook]" then do that, but otherwise look only at what the lecturer provides. After all, that material is what will actually show up in the exams.
Use the textbooks if:
* There's something you don't understand well from the lecture notes (or you can ask the lecturer/TA about it).
* You want to understand [topic] in more detail than in the lecture notes. Usually this will be out of interest or desire to truly master the material, not from the need to pass the exams.
* To find exercises and examples.
Upvotes: 2
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2021/01/24
| 384
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<issue_start>username_0: So I did my masters in the UK, but I didn't build any relationships with my professors (I wasn't thinking I would be wanting to do a PhD later on). I only saw my thesis tutor once during my whole dissertation. Now I want to apply to a PhD scholarship, and they ask for reference letters. I am currently employed in my home country and I can get reference letters from my job and from my undergraduate program that as well, I completed in my home country.
I think my chances of being granted with a scholarship decreases because I will not be submitting a reference letter from my Master's degree...
What do you think I should do?<issue_comment>username_1: The absence of a reference from your latest academic qualification will raise questions. I think it would be better to get a less than glowing letter than have nothing at all.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Will there be bad things written in a recommendation letter for your masters? Or is the worst thing which could happen is that your tutor would write that they didn't see you much due to X (where X is not your fault), and thus provide a cautious assessment?
If if is the latter, I agree with username_1's answer that it is good to have such a letter. People will read it, they will understand that they should not give it too much weight after reading it, and they will also see that you have nothing to hide, and nothing bad happened during your master.
You should really only not have a letter from your last qualification step if you expect it to be *negative*. Not having such a letter will raise questions and tend to count against you.
Upvotes: 0
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2021/01/24
| 2,726
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<issue_start>username_0: I am doing postdoc in developmental biology. Recently I started to leave work at the lab, meaning that I don't work at home anymore. Before I spent many hours at night (at home) analyzing my data; now I spent that time on my side project not related to science.
I would like to ask if that kind of schedule is sustainable? Can I be a good scientist if I only work in working hours (now and later when I have a long term position)? Other scientists seem to work both at the lab and at home.<issue_comment>username_1: How well this will work for your career depends entirely on your ambitions.
If you want to become a professor, it will likely be very difficult to limit your work to a normal work-week. Competition for faculty positions is extremely high and many of your competitors will be working well beyond normal work-hours to make themselves as attractive as possible for potential faculty hiring committees. There is also a very "macho" culture in much of academia that supports this type of burnout-inducing overwork.
If you are OK with working in research outside of "traditional" academia, however, it's quite possible. In addition to industry (which spans a very broad range of research maturity levels!), there are all sorts of non-profits, national laboratories, foundations, consultancies, government agencies, etc. Some of them have the same problems as academia (especially startups), but many of them have much more humane cultures and are much more serious about work-life balance
Bottom line: mostly no, for "traditional" academia, yes for the much larger research world outside of it.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: If you wish to stay in academic research, what is important is that you produce thoughtful, rigorous and impactful work, that gets published well, and well cited. How you arrange your life to achieve that is a personal question and no one else can dictate to you what the best way for you is (no matter what some colleagues might try to tell you).
It is true that most people in academia do work significantly longer than the standard hours. There is a macho culture that says you have to do this, and people compete to have the most outrageous schedules. But this is not universal. I know some very talented and successful professors who have always only worked (more or less) office hours. Perhaps 8-6 rather than 9-5, but still, not the crazy hours you hear about. Often those with children have no choice. What these people have in common is a razor-like focus on what is important, and a very well developed organizational ability. By co-incidence a fair number of these are developmental biologists.
Not everyone can achieve this, but its not impossible. I know I can't, its just not how I work. I do tend to only work at the lab, its just often I spend long hours there. And even I manage to maintain side projects beyond academia despite being an early career PI (not sure I could if I had children).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: It is possible. For the last eleven years (from the seventh month of my PhD trajectory onwards) I have worked the standard 40-hour work week: Monday through Friday, from nine to five. I don't work weekends, and I don't work evenings. Last Summer I got tenure.
Even though it is possible, it is not necessarily easy. You will need to be very efficient within those 40 hours a week, and you will need to have the support of those around you. If your university has the culture that faculty are available for work at all times, it's going to be hard to break through that culture on your own. Even if your university supports you in fighting for a reasonable work/life balance, you still may need to manage the expectations of those around you; I have made my colleagues aware that they shouldn't expect, for instance, email replies from my side on the weekends.
It is also entirely possible that in the long run, my 40-hour policy will reduce my chances for promotion: if full professorships open up, I may lose against those people that have worked 80-hour weeks. I'm not convinced that this will necessarily be the case: by regularly taking time to relax, I ensure that my mind is very sharp during the working week, and that makes me more productive in those 40 hours than others can be in 50, 60, or even more. But even if my policy will cost me an eventual promotion to full professor, I will not regret my choices: by working 40-hour working weeks, I get to spend lots of time with my family, which is simply more important to me.
Upvotes: 8 <issue_comment>username_4: My friend is an astronomer who has discovered several exoplanets, and is quite respected in the field. He certainly does not work more than the standard working hours sum up to, but sometimes crunches two weeks worth of work in one.
Working in the medical field myself, we have different realities. Some doctors do respected research, but maybe suitable patients for their topic come about twice a month. They collect data for years along the work, and then put together a paper, not necessarily sweating too much.
I guess it depends entirely on what you do. Obviously one can be a legendary mathematician with very little amount of hours, as long as you come up with the stuff.
My impression is that biology (the lab intensive microbiology especially) does require a solid amount of hours to get anywhere. Though I'd suggest to be aware that in many cultures it is customary to magnify one's hard working spirit and "productivity". Americans do this a lot, and often overestimate and exaggerate the amount of work people they somehow admire do, even if they have absolutely no clue about the field, or the actual job.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: Limiting yourself to only work at fixed times will on the long run not work out well. If you work from 9 to 5 every day, you'll tend to plan your work more tightly than if you allow yourself more flexibility. The constraint on work time in combinations with deadlines that you have to meet, will end up steering your work routine toward a "getting things done" mode, where "getting things done" is visible progress after one working day, like progress made writing an article, finish work on a conference talk etc.
You'll then end up performing quite well on getting routine tasks finished on time and also performing quite well on such tasks. However, you'll end up falling short on obtaining spectacular new results. The main difference between ordinary work for industry and science is that you need to also explore ideas that in your judgment are unlikely to yield good results.
If you always bin ideas that according to your preliminary analysis, are unlikely to work well, you'll end up working on things that will end up yielding results but not really spectacular new results. The reason is that anything that's easily visible as potential spectacular result has likely already been investigated, so the new spectacular results are usually hiding as things that look like bad ideas not worthy of investigating.
It's then your 9 to 5 work routine that biases you to not go all out on far-out ideas. If it's Friday and you look at your watch an you see that it is 3 pm and you can work for two hours to finish writing part of an article and also work on your conference talk for next week, you are unlikely to opt for spending the next two hours on, say, writing software needed to investigate some far-out idea. Your colleague who does not mind working in the weekend could more easily make that choice, as he/she can decide to do work on the article and the conference talk in the weekend.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: I think one source of the trope that as an academic you have to work insane hours is simply a question of perception. Academics often mix private and work life a lot more than people in other professions. Because they can. And because it fits the type of work. Like a colleague once said, "I don't care about your office working hours, as an academic you also work in the shower when the right inspiration hits. I care about your output.". I always loved the possibility to just take a 2h break in the middle of the day to hit the pool at sunny days and then work a bit more in the evening - or half an hour in the whirl pool.
But that means that many academics also work sometimes at least on the weekend, because that is when they get an idea or because a deadline is close and they work well with deadline motivation or because right then an experiment needs attention etc. So while there are 70hours work people, a good percentage is likely perception.
So from my perspective, in many academic jobs you *may need to be more flexible* compared to regular 9-5 jobs. I.e. you may need to be fine with deadline crunches, video chats at insane hours with collaborators from the other side of the world, checking your experiments on the weekend etc. Then again, it's a field where you also *can* be more flexible and just run off in the middle of the day to run some errands.
Academia like, say, game development, attracts a lot of enthusiasts who love their work, but in both branches for most people a healthy life-work balance is important to stay productive. However, 9-5 jobs aren't necessarily providing a healthy life-work balance. The ideal mix can be real individual. However in academics you might find that flexibility often counts more than the overall hours. Work on hard problems when your brain is willing and eager, no matter the time, but also give yourself times to relax in sufficient ways.
That being said, there are also jobs in academia that fit well with a 9-5 job, but they are more rare than if you decide to be - say for example - a car mechanic.
You will in any job compete with over-achievers. With people who put in insane amounts of time (whether that actually helps them to get better results or not) and with people who seem to have not to work at all and still get better results. Don't measure yourself by other people. Measure yourself by your own achievements, how happy you are with your job and with what you earn to support yourself/your family.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: In academia, you will be evaluated on your accomplishments, not how long you worked on any given week. While it's not a perfect analogy, you might consider yourself a salaried employee -- you are not paid hourly, you are not offered overtime. You put in enough hours to accomplish what your salary is paying you to do.
My experience is that there will be time periods where you need to work very long hours, and time periods where you will not need to work long hours. If you're a better time manager than I am, which is likely, you will probably need to work less hours than I do.
If it's very important, for example, to get a grant in before deadline, and you find yourself in a position where you need to put in 70 or 80 hours a week for three weeks to get it done, you do it, or accept the consequences for not doing it. If you're not amenable to that schedule, than you fix your time commitments in the months leading up to that so you don't have to be in that situation, and can still reach your goal in a 40-hour week.
All that said, you're seeking a career of responsibility. You will have people working for you, and people dependent on things getting done. If people find you're not getting things done, "I only work 40 hours a week" will not be something people will want to hear.
Upvotes: 3
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2021/01/25
| 731
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm currently an American sophomore undergrad and I'm looking into research opportunities at the moment. My problem is that the area of mathematics that interests me the most is mathematical logic and set theory, and even more specifically inconsistent mathematics, but there appear to be no opportunities for undergraduate research in this field. I'm unsure what to do or what would be the most helpful choices for me at this point. I know my college recommends cold-emailing professors if I have trouble finding something, but I'm also worried that I'm narrowing my search down too much. So should broaden my search first, just go ahead and start writing emails, or do both at the same time?<issue_comment>username_1: >
> I'm currently an American sophomore
>
>
>
Not to sound dismissive, but I wouldn't be too focused on one area of math at this stage in your career (note: not a mathematician). Many (most?) sophomores haven't declared a major yet, much less settled on an area for graduate studies. That is to say, don't dismiss opportunities in other areas - you might find that you enjoy research *more* in those areas, even if you didn't like the classes.
>
> So should broaden my search first, just go ahead and start writing emails, or do both at the same time?
>
>
>
I think most people would agree cold emails are the least successful way of obtaining anything, *especially* during COVID when professors are even more overworked than they were a year ago. My point is, is if they haven't posted looking for an undergrad, they aren't very likely to have the bandwidth to add one.
So I would strongly recommend finding an open position that at least somewhat interests you, doing good at it, and using that professor to help you find a position closer to your interests (perhaps supervising a bachelor's thesis?). When that set theory position opens; you're going to be more competitive with a year of work behind you than without.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I suggest you greatly broaden your search. There are common features to all research. Perhaps even look at research projects and programs in adjacent areas, like combinatorial research in computer science.
Since you could easily wait until the following summer to get involved in a research project, you can write programs and professors (in the area, or where you might want to visit) and ask about what you might do to prepare for the projects that exists. If you do not know computer programming, perhaps that is a gap needing a fill.
It would be good to be exposed to many areas of mathematics before you decide on what you focus upon in graduate school. I was convinced I wanted to to algebra when I was an undergraduate, but then topology started to be appealing. In graduate school I switched to analysis. Now I mostly do applied math research related to physics.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: You should do a narrow search first and then a broad search. Treat it as an experiment to see which method works better. You will likely need to try more than once, quite probably over multiple years.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: I thought getting a PhD in my mechanical engineering field would lead in gaining confidence in the field. However, it became other way round. I am far less confident on my skills and knowledge than I was when I started my PhD.
I am well published in my research field, I have decent theoretical knowledge about my field. However, I am not confident. I often hesitate with my answer, even though I know I am right.
I get afraid before starting a new project and technique even though I am sure that I can acquire new skillsets easily.
Self doubts is a recurring theme during all research endeavors. When I feel low confidence, I also start to regret my decisions to be in academia and pursue masters and PhD.
Does anyone else get this feeling? How to cope up? Can I find a place in academia with this issue?<issue_comment>username_1: This is very possible. Many people in academia struggle with [impostor syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome) and find themselves on the "I know how much I don't know" side of the [Dunning-Kruger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect) effect.
While this is common, that doesn't mean it's a good thing - it makes you miserable and so it's worth doing something about it. There are a number of things you can do:
* Check if your university has counseling services. This is something they'll have experience with.
* Having the occasional honest talk with your peers. It can take a big load off your shoulders to find out that other people at your level also aren't always confident. One of my professors noted that a lot of academics like being a "magician", able to conjure amazing results seemingly without effort. But most magician's tricks take lots of practice that you never see.
* Teach or coach students at a lower level than your own, like Masters or beginning PhDs - you have a lot to share with them, and it can help ground your confidence to see just how much you *do* know.
* Find colleagues you can trust to occasionally talk over your work with. They don't have to be exactly in your precise field, but close enough that they can ask critical questions. It can boost your confidence to know that you do have a backup that helps you avoid missing "the obvious".
To summarize: what you're experiencing is not unusual, it's a normal result of being smart enough to know what you don't know, but you don't have to suffer. Help is available.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I would advise what some others here have done, i.e. to explore what I read as a likely *general lack of confidence* with some professional (psychologist, psychiatrist) experienced in such issues.
I think the suggestion of carry on for x more years and it will come is foolish: life is short and changes are harder the longer we postpone them.
But I would be more inclined to avoid university based psychologists or counsellors. I would advise seeing one in private practice downtown: their clientele would come from a far broader cross-section of humanity and stress situations. And your situation may well have nothing at all to do with your work environment *per se*.
Naturally, I would seek opinions as to which particular one I would see from trusted people. And if you see little connection grow between you and your professional then do not hesitate to seek another.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: It is also possible to have a career in academia where you primarily focus on teaching and public service. Such positions would probably not be found at a top research university (unless your "public service" area is something they desperately want to get), but could be at a regional university, a 4-year college, or a community college.
Upvotes: -1
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<issue_start>username_0: Is it fine for a teacher who makes a topic look easy by saying things like:
>
> "Good!"
>
>
>
or
>
> "Easy!"
>
>
>
or
>
> "Everything becomes perfectly clear now!"
>
>
>
Things I can think of in favor of doing this is that it might reduce students' concerns and will create an environment where nothing is too complicated.
On the other hand, I'm afraid it can also create an environment that if for some students the topic is not clear, they will feel worse now as the teacher said that "it's supposed to be easy" and they might even be afraid to ask to not show that they couldn't understand something that supposed to be "easy".<issue_comment>username_1: If a teacher is speaking to one student and has evidence that the student now grasps something, then is fine. Otherwise, I'd worry about such things.
Every student is different and some will fail to grasp an important point for various reasons. Sometimes it is something that the teacher said that the student misinterpreted and was misled.
Those of us who teach sometimes fall into the trap that what we say is said in the most perfect way possible. But we have a long history that leads us to speak in a certain way about our subject and the students don't share that history. The human languages we use aren't perfect and often don't map words and phrases one-to-one with the ideas we try to convey. Language is seldom exactly precise, especially for complex things.
Saying "All is clear now" to a group is, therefore, probably not true. Those for whom it is not clear will be frustrated and feel frustrated and even angry.
Asking "Is it clear now?" is a better approach. And if you then get questions, don't use exactly the same words over again to try to make it clear. Those words may be the problem.
Many things need to be explained in several ways before a group of people will reach a common understanding. Even some mathematical proofs are suspect because they leave out "obvious" or "trivial" steps that a reader doesn't grasp without a lot of work.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I started my academic career as a high school teacher. As part of earning the credential to teach high school, I had to go through a semester-long "internship" as a student teacher---I taught in a classroom under the close supervision of a veteran instructor. One of the first bits of feedback I got was that I had a tendency to say that a problem was "easy" or "clear". In my own head, it was in the context of a universe of possible problems, e.g. "This problem is easy as compared to this other problem on a similar topic," or "Let's start with an easy example before moving onto harder examples." My supervisor encouraged me to avoid this kind of language, because
1. no problem is easy and nothing is clear, and
2. telling a student that a problem is easy destroys morale when they can't figure it out.
### No problem is easy
There is a great [Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic](https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/how-math-works) which describes a view of how ideas come about in mathematics, and how we disseminate those ideas. Essentially, modern mathematics is the distillation of several thousand years of thought. The ideas and results were hard-won, yet we somehow expect students to master them in very little time.
I imagine that this observation is true across disciplines. For example, I can't imagine trying to give a one-hour lecture summarizing <NAME> and the modern study of kinship, nor can I imagine how clear the ideas would be to students after such a lecture.
Ultimately, I think that this is a form of the [curse of knowledge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge): as instructors, we might *think* that the ideas are easy because we are so familiar with them, or perhaps because we never had difficulty with them ourselves, but that doesn't mean that they are *actually* easy. We have to figure out how to put ourselves back into the shoes of a novice, and remember how difficult the ideas were in the first place.
### The impact on morale
Because mathematics is so often stigmatized[1], I think that mathematicians are (or, at least, should be) particularly sensitive to things which are likely to further drive people away or cause them to shut down. However, I think that all instructors across all fields should be aware of how their style impacts morale, so this isn't really a math-specific observation.
If you tell a student that something is "easy" or "clear" and that student is still confused, you are implicitly suggesting that the student has failed to grasp an obvious concept. This tells the student that if they admit to their confusion, they are admitting to being inferior, and that they might become an object of ridicule. The student understands the failure to be theirs, and theirs alone, rather than a failure on the part of the instructor, or a blameless failure in the process of communication. Such a student is not going to ask a question, is not going to seek clarification, and is likely to withdraw from the topic.
As such, I think that it is imperative that we avoid saying things that trivialize the work that we and our students have to do. It is bad form to tell a student that a concept is clear, or that a problem is easy.
### What might we do?
In the question, it is suggested that an instructor who makes a topic *look* easy might note how easy things have become. I think that the reality is quite different: the teachers who make things *look* easy are those who are most sensitive to how difficult things really are. They lean into that difficulty, and explain clearly to students where the problems lie. It is then up to *students* to come out the other end and say to themselves "Wow! I thought that idea was hard, but the professor really made it easy to understand!"
I don't think that there is a one-size-fits-all solution to this, but there are a few things that I do in my own practice which, I think, help:
* **Ask Questions:** I don't assert that ideas are clear; I ask if they are clear: "Is this clear now?", "Do you all understand?", "Do any of you have any clarifying questions you'd like to ask?", "Can we move on, or would you like to work through another example?", and so on. Indeed, I often ask "Is this clear?" in a situation when I *know* that it should still be quite unclear to students. Done often and early enough, this gives students permission to admit that things are confusing.
* **Provide Context:** To the extent possible, I like to give students some historical context for the development of ideas. For example, we might spend as little as a week defining the derivative of a function. This short period of time belies the enormous intellectual achievement it represents: the ancient Greeks were the first to spot a problem (Zeno's paradoxes), Newton and Leibniz (both of whom "stood on the shoulders of giants") first put the ideas together, Euler (and Fourier and Cauchy) introduced the modern notion of "function", and late 19th/early 20th century mathematicians (Hilbert, among others) nailed down the formalism. *If* the derivative looks easy, it is only because it took such a long time to refine and distill the ideas. It is actually a remarkably hard concept.
* **Employ Appropriate Comparatives:** It is, I think, entirely reasonable to assert that one example is less difficult than another. Logically, this is the same as asserting that one example is easier than another. However, when one says that a problem is "less difficult" it could still be hard, whereas if one asserts that a problem is "easier" then a student might only hear the "easy". I don't start with "easy" or "simple" examples; I start with "less difficult" or "illuminating" examples.
---
[1] Speaking from the perspective of an American, it seems that no one has a problem with a person saying "I'm just not any good at math!" or "I'm not a math person!" Fear and loathing of mathematics is considered appropriate, and mathematicians are seen either as god-like geniuses, or asocial nerds (or both, I suppose). It is considered okay for a "normal" person to be mathematically illiterate. A seemingly equivalent admission of illiteracy ("I'm just not any good at reading!") would be shocking.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: I do think this is a poor piece of rhetoric.
It shares shades of writing that includes a lot of "obviously", "of course", "trivial to see", etc. This tends to signal a place where the writer has a weak explanation and is trying to get over that hump by using a [proof by intimidation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_intimidation).
As an example, when I [reviewed <NAME>'s Udacity Statistics 101](http://www.madmath.com/2012/09/udacity-statistics-101.html) course, this is one of the criticisms I made (see section 9, "Hucksterism"). In those presentations he had an immense number of, e.g., "You now know a lot about scatter plots!"”. "Isn't this a lot of fun?", "You are a very capable statistician at this point!", "smile and say you took Sebastian's Stats 101 and you understand!" -- which was pretty thin paper over lectures he was clearly ad-libbing with no prep or editing, late at night after his day job.
It's not the biggest issue in the world. But I do think it's a clear mistake -- and usually symptom of other weaknesses in the presentation.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: I've often rated the topic at the start of class: "a lot of people think this next thing is hard. I'm going to go over the problem it solves, then hopefully the rules will make sense. There are only 2, but they're weird". In that context when I say something is easy I'm saying that compared to the class so far, it won't be as bad as you were expecting.
But that thing about "*...who makes a topic look easy by saying "Good!" / "Easy!" / "Everything becomes perfectly clear now!*" seems like a nervous habit. Maybe that's their way of saying "and that's the end of explanation" -- "*and now everything is clear!*". That seems fine. I used to say things like "So...was that a minute longer than it needed to be? Let's do some problems". If someone is sincerely taking extra time to say "my explanation is so good that you understand it perfectly now", that's just weird.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: I agree with the other answers here that such statements are problematic because they can both demoralise students and also make it difficult for them to ask for clarification or a better description.
However, I would also, in general, heavily advise against using questions such as *Is that clear?* Before I became a TEFL teacher (English language teacher for non-native learners), I used to use such questions all the time in my teaching. It may surprise readers to learn that within that field such questions are considered a cardinal sin of the highest order. I believe this evaluation to be correct, and have used this insight to improve my teaching elsewhere. However good or bad my teaching may be, there is no doubt it is better for avoiding this pitfall—painful though it has been to take this on board.
The problem is that questions such as *Do you understand?*, *Is that clear?* or even *Have I explained that clearly?* put students in pretty much the same kind of situation as when a teacher says *And suddenly it all becomes clear*. The reason is that students don't like to say *No!* to question like these. Even if they are not scared of offending their tutor, they will be unlikely to want to show themselves up (as they will see it) in font of their peers, and they certainly will not want to risk looking slow or stupid. If tutors ask questions like these, their students will almost definitely be chasing their friends in private to help them better understand the material afterwards. It really is neither here nor there if occasionally one has experienced students saying "Actually, no that isn't at all clear". It's not what most students will normally do.
How to get round this problem, then? Well, one way is to prepare, decide what the key points that your students need to understand are, and also note what some predictable misunderstandings may be. Then check your students' understanding by asking a very few, very simple questions. Ideally a majority of these, but not all of them, will require your students to disagree with some presupposition in the question or to give the answer *No!*. This is just because otherwise the students will just say "yes" repeatedly. There are very many ways to go about asking/presenting such questions and soliciting answers. (For example you could ask them as a group directly, you could get them to anonymously fill out a three of four question mini-quizz before leaving and stick their answers in a box on the way out. They could ask their peers questions from a slide and so forth). It doesn't matter how simple the questions seem to you.
To reduce this to a ridiculously simple example, from which one can extrapolate out to physics, some point of law, or propositional logic: Suppose I've tried to teach my beginner English students the item *rice* amongst some other vocabulary. My two main concerns are that they understand what the word refers to and that they know that this word is uncountable in English. I might say,
* Is it meat?
* Is it black?
* Is this good or bad: "I ate a lot of rice"
* Is this good or bad: "I ate many rices with my chicken"
Of course, in this situation the students won't give just *yes* or *no* answers, but will supply a lot of extra information. Compare this with:
* So then, rice is that white stuff that you eat with curry or with chicken. *Rice* is uncountable in English. You can't usually say *two rices*. Do you understand?
---
Yes, of course, given the appropriate resources one could clear up half of that by using a photo of some rice. But for the purposes of the example, let's suppose such resources aren't available!
Upvotes: 4
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<issue_start>username_0: In my research paper, I have cite from a curriculum published by the Ministry of Education in my country. Should I cite the name of the ministry in my own language (i.e. *Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı*; MEB as abbreviated in subsequent citations) in Turkish or in English translation (as Ministry of National Education; like MoNE, 2020)? And how should I reference it at the end in the sources section?<issue_comment>username_1: If the rest of your paper is in English and aimed at an international audience, it's more helpful to cite it in English translation. You might even want to write "*Turkish* Ministry of National Education", to make it clear which country's ministry you're referring to.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Both. If the legal/official name is X, then you certainly want X appearing, for example as a searchable item, whether or not it's in English or whatever. At the same time, yes, you probably want to give an explanatory translation (e.g., into English), for what the official title/name/label *means*.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: The standard in APA when citing something titled in a language other than the one you are writing is to use the original title (transliterated to the Latin alphabet if necessary) but to also include a translation enclosed with [ ]s.
For an example from the link below:
<https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2018/09/how-to-quote-a-foreign-language-source-and-its-translation.html>
>
> <NAME>., <NAME>., <NAME>., & <NAME>. (2017). Efficacité et efficience des programmes de transition à la vie adulte: Une revue systématique [Effectiveness and efficiency of adult transition programs: A systematic review]. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne, 58, 354–365. <https://doi.org/10.1037/cap0000104>
>
>
>
See also <https://guides.library.uq.edu.au/referencing/apa6/works-in-non-English-languages> and <https://guides.library.uq.edu.au/referencing/apa6/works-in-non-English-scripts>
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a novice researcher.
I received an article to review, and I don't know very well how to critique such an article.
Can you recommend an excellent book (or other source of information) about how to critique a journal article?
Any recommendations are highly appreciated!<issue_comment>username_1: Not a book, but an article:
"[Ten Simple Rules for Reviewers](https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.0020110)" by <NAME> and <NAME> (PLoS Computational Biology vol. 2, issue 9, e110, September 2006)
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.0020110
1. Do Not Accept a Review Assignment unless You Can Accomplish the Task in the Requested Timeframe—Learn to Say No
2. Avoid Conflict of Interest
3. Write Reviews You Would Be Satisfied with as an Author
4. As a Reviewer You Are Part of the Authoring Process
5. Be Sure to Enjoy and to Learn from the Reviewing Process
6. Develop a Method of Reviewing That Works for You
7. Spend Your Precious Time on Papers Worthy of a Good Review
8. Maintain the Anonymity of the Review Process if the Journal Requires It
9. Write Clearly, Succinctly, and in a Neutral Tone, but Be Decisive
10. Make Use of the “Comments to Editors”
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Not a book, but a blog post
[Tips and advice when you review a scientific paper](http://www.bestoun.net/tips-and-advices-when-you-review-a-scientific-paper/)
Gives quite a few tips on reviewing a paper.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: In general, I'd suggest Chapter 6 of the following book:
<NAME>., & <NAME>. (2020). Reading and sense-making. In <NAME> & <NAME> (Eds.), The Unwritten Rules of PHD Research (3rd ed., pp. 71–89). Open University Press.
For systematic literature reviews, I'd go for the checklist in the Appendix of the following paper:
<NAME>., <NAME>., <NAME>., & <NAME>. (2009). Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: the PRISMA statement. PLoS Medicine, 6(7), e1000097. <https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000097>
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: I was taking a language exam that asked us to finish writing an essay. Because of COVID, the exam went online and used Canvas as the platform. Neither scratch paper nor any other software was allowed so we had to use the textbox to draft the outline. The textbox was tiny. Therefore, I had to scroll the sidebar and I could not see what I wrote at the beginning while proofreading.
I finished the essay and submitted it. However, after submission, I realized I did not remove the draft outline at the beginning of my essay and submitted it as well.
The exam was super important for me and I am now literally freaked out. Is it going to be a huge problem? What should I do?<issue_comment>username_1: Making a mistake on an exam is, in most cases, not a huge problem.
Exams are, by definition, a measurement of the work you can do *during* an exam. In most cases, you cannot do anything about a mistake on an exam after the exam is over.
Move on to the next stage of your studies/career. If you continue to feel distressed, seek assistance from a mental health professional.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Probably not.
But there is really only one person that knows for sure: the professor in question. So, as <NAME> already mentioned in the comments, send them a message, explain that you forgot to remove the draft outline at the beginning of your essay and ask them to ignore that part, and to exclude it from the word count limit if applicable.
Be aware that you might not get a response if the professor is busy, which doesn't mean there is a problem.
Upvotes: 4
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a PhD student. This is my first month in the program. I met my advisor a while ago. Very nice guy, but as the title says, he does not know what I am writing about. I don't mean it figuratively. He literally does not know what I am writing about.
I was taken aback when I realized he is not specialized in my area of research. But not knowing what my research is about is just plainly freaking me out! (He thought that I was writing about a different subject, and he doesn't have any other PhD students besides myself)
There is only one professor who is specialized in my area of research in the school, and she is not taking students.
I thought about it, and decided that transferring to another school is on the table. The thing is that the closest school is ranked higher than mine. (Mine in the top 50, the other school in the top 15), and I am not sure if they are going to accept me.
Should I go to the other school and talk to the admission office? To the dean perhaps? For my major, it is not common for students to contact prospective supervisors. (I don't know anyone in there who I am interested in working with because I did not see this coming).
What should I do?
\*This a comment that I posted below, but just because it came up many times, I'll put it here:
"Just to clarify, and this is something I clarified above, it is not a common practice in my field that we -students- contact supervisors before getting into the program. We apply and then the school itself assigns students to supervisors. Actually, some departments ask explicitly that you DON'T contact any faculty member. I did not choose my supervisor. I was not given his name until I get into the program and started"
Someone has pointed out another question about a similar case, the lonk has been useful. But, my situation is different as I have no other alternatives. (Advisors)<issue_comment>username_1: >
> But not knowing what my research is about is just plainly freaking me out!
>
>
>
So it seems like there are two issues here. One is the classic "my advisor works in field X while I want to work in field Y" problem (you will find lots of discussion of this problem if you search this site). The other is that your advisor is hands-off to the point of you being completely on your own. Given both of these factors, your decision to seek a new advisor seems reasonable. And yes, if you are unwilling or unable to work with anyone locally, then it follows logically that you will have to transfer.
>
> The thing is that the closest school is ranked higher than mine. (Mine in the top 50, the other school in the top 15)
>
>
>
You may need to consider schools other than the closest one. I assume you were not able to be admitted to a top-15 school when you applied last time. Unless you've done something impressive in the last year, your odds of getting admitted are probably lower than they were last year, not higher.
>
> Should I go to the other school and talk to the admission office? To the dean perhaps? (For my major, It is not common for students to contact prospective supervisors.
>
>
>
You say you are in the US, so I am surprised by the question. Graduate admissions are usually done by the department, not by the admissions office; the admissions office is usually for undergraduate admissions. The dean is also not usually involved in such things.
The only way to "short circuit" the usual admissions process is to find a professor who wants to work with you, and have them help you from the inside. But if you don't have such a person in your network already, this is a long-shot; most professors will just say "please apply to the program and we can talk if you get in."
Bottom line: You should pursue all the options in your desired subfield, not just the closest one. But if your subfield is small and all of the programs are highly-ranked, you may need to consider other subfields, "like it or not."
>
> I don't know how I ended up here. I just found myself here!
>
>
>
I suggest that you reflect on this. You did not "find yourself here"; rather, you applied for admission in this department and then agreed to attend. There is no real harm in making a mistake; we have all made many. But it's important to recognize what went wrong so that you can avoid having it happen again.
Update: OP has since clarified that their field is Law. I cannot speak to whether this answer makes sense for law, not my area.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Since you describe your university as top 50 and your field of study (based on your comment) is a mainstream one, I will assume that both the university and the PhD program you’re in are not new, but have been around for at least 10 years, and probably much longer.
Based on this assumption, it seems highly probable to me that the reason you are “freaking out” is because you have some misconception about your situation and about the significance of discovering that your supervisor does not work in your exact research area. My bet is that this is simply not the catastrophe you imagine it to be.
I don’t know what your misconception is exactly. But start by taking a deep breath. The key thing to remember is that this PhD program is an established, successful one. Whatever their procedures are for assigning advisors to students, they have been using them for a while and they have been working. If mistaken or suboptimal assignments occasionally get made, the department will have resources and people in place to hear out what you are unhappy about and help you correct the situation. Keep in mind that by admitting you into their PhD program, they are effectively betting a large amount of money on your success. So they have every incentive to not let that gamble be a losing one.
What I suggest you do is:
1. Take another deep breath.
2. Go online and look at your department’s website to see what advice and resources they offer to incoming graduate students. Is there a graduate student handbook/survival guide? Is there a list of staff and faculty advisers with their contact details? Is there an explanation of the process of getting started with your thesis research? Since you are from abroad, be aware of the possibility of language issues that might lead you to misunderstand some of the explanations. Use google translate or ask friends for help if there are things you’re unsure about. (By the way, based on your post your English is excellent so I don’t think this is very likely to be an issue, but thought I’d mention it just in case.)
3. From the website, find an adviser or relevant administrator (faculty or staff) you can talk to *in person* by making an appointment or calling them during office hours. I am serious that this needs to happen over an actual voice/video/face to face conversation; do not settle for trying to get advice over email unless there’s absolutely no other option.
When you have the appointment, explain your situation to them, calmly and in detail, and ask what your options are. Do not be shy about asking about switching to a different advisor or other creative ideas of this type, even if you don’t think they are likely to be allowed. And again, make sure there isn’t a language barrier that’s standing in the way of you understanding things accurately and correctly.
After you follow these steps, I believe you will already be much better informed and feeling much less despondent about your situation. The bottom line is: you have a misconception. You need to be sure that you have diagnosed the problem correctly before being able to plan a solution. Right now, I strongly suspect that you haven’t diagnosed the problem correctly. So that should be the first priority. After that, remember, your school is invested in your success and has resources to help. So use them, and I believe you’ll be all right where you are and not end up needing to switch schools. Good luck!
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: Because your own advisor admitted that he is not informed about your topic proposal. I suggest starting there.
Sit down with your advisor and discuss the situation. At the very least, the advisor should be interested in helping you to fix the situation:
* Is your topic proposal relevant after admission? Sometimes a proposal is required to judge your critical thinking/writing/argumentation skills during the admission process and not to guide your life for the next few years.
* How much expertise in your specific area is needed to supervise you?
* Is it feasible for you to adjust your topic to have a better fit with the advisor?
* Is the advisor willing to bring other more knowledgeable people to the advisory group?
* Understand mutual expectations
Is such discussion if fruitful, great! If not, consider transferring somewhere else.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Looks like lots of good advice already. I will add that this does not sound like a deal-breaker to me.
In the US, Masters candidates learn the field they want to study before jumping into a PhD program. Most professors will tell you that they expect their PhD candidates to know more about their field of study than the professor themselves. At the beginning of your study, you may not know more than the professor. But the expectation is that very quickly, you will surpass the knowledge of your professor in your particular field of study.
Your advisor seems to be setting an honest, realistic, and proper expectation with you.
Lastly, in the US, PhD candidates have a committee comprising of multiple professors. Ask the other professor, the one who is an expert but is not taking any more students, to be on your PhD committee. So they are not your advisor but are still aware of your work. This way, you can still get advice from them. Also, because they are the expert in your field, they will help you make connections once you complete your PhD.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a relatively new tenured professor. My responsibilities increase gradually, and this year I have started supervising students' thesis: a bachelor thesis and a master thesis. (This is in Europe, so master thesis is not PhD-lite).
Somehow it feels like I am expected to already know how to be a supervisor. There are no resources anywhere that I can find. The training I received at the start of my tenure focused exclusively on classroom teaching, and my PhD/postdoc only prepared me to be a researcher, not a supervisor. Of course, I already know more or less what a supervisor does - after all, I have been supervised through many academic endeavors myself and I was able to observe. I also have experienced colleagues who have supervised students for years that I can observe or to whom I can ask advice.
But I don't think that this is "good enough". There are certainly some skills that I can improve, some issues that I can plan ahead for, etc, that I haven't noticed while I was myself supervised: after all, I was busy with my own project at the time, I was not learning how to supervise. I'm also sure that there are some things that were done / should have been done by my former supervisors that I can't have noticed (e.g. how to set an agenda and stick to it for a meeting, how to adapt to roadblocks, etc). Moreover, like everyone, my own experience is unique, and the students I'm going to supervise are not me: what do I do if a student loses a relative, becomes discouraged, or on the contrary outperforms everything I've expected, needs more guidance than I can provide, needs a less hands-on supervision, needs career advice about a career I've never thought about...???
I realize that this is a huge task, so I am certainly not asking for a full answer right now - knowing stackexchange's reputation, such a question would probably get closed immediately for being too wide without concern for whether the question would actually be helpful to myself and, I hope, many other people. Anyway. I will instead ask for resources on supervisory skills: books, websites, classes, etc. What have you found that helped you become a good supervisor?<issue_comment>username_1: There are three sources that I would look into.
1. Internal: you got a PhD and had fellow students share their experiences. What worked for you? What didn't? Advising is a very personal process so I think it's wise to make it your own.
2. Departmental: what are the advising norms in your department? Do you have a department mentor, or does the university offer workshops to new faculty? If so - attend them. They are invaluable for you to understand how *your* university perceives the advisory role, which may be different from place to place.
3. External resources: there are several online resources, I personally found this piece by The Professor is In [here](https://theprofessorisin.com/2014/02/23/the-5-top-traits-of-the-worst-advisors/) useful; [this](https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2019/04/what-matters-phd-adviser-here-s-what-research-says) Science article is also very useful. TL;DR: be consistent, honest (for better and worse), supportive and attentive.
Good luck!
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: There is an online course "Supervising Doctoral Studies" <https://www.epigeum.com/courses/research/supervising-doctoral-studies/> which can be purchased. Usually it is purchased by a whole university, not a particular faculty member. I did the course. You might find it useful if you have absolutely no idea what you are doing.
Read your university's policies for the degree programs of students you are supervising. No external training program can prepare you for your university's weird rules.
If your university does not have internal training in supervision, you could ask administration to fund it. They really should have it.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: Congratulations on a relatively recent permanent academic position. This all sounds... very familiar. While I actually had to attend a mandatory "PhD supervisor training", the whole thing lasted for maybe an hour. Yet in my first year I ended up supervising a MSc (*by coursework* as opposed to *by research*) project, a MSc intern, a BSc inter, a postdoc, and starting with a second postdoc now (for various reasons, no PhD students as such). I was also expected to get involved in many other things I've never done before (mainly grant writing) and I sorely missed all the watercooler wisdom I couldn't get due to WFH and the pandemic.
It was a mixed success: while I think I handled an intern dealing with an extremely painful and difficult personal situation as well as I could have, I am currently categorically refusing to even consider supervising that person in the future as I fear I may not be able to do right by them if something like that happens again. (And I'm still trying to decide if this makes me a bad person or a bad supervisor.) However, my MSc student recently let me know that when considering job applications after working with me, they realised what excites them the most is research and are looking into PhD programmes. I have not stopped bragging yet :)
The sources I would recommend are very similar but slightly different to what [username_1](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/161842/4249) is suggesting:
* Are you still in touch with any of your former colleagues from your PhD?
I did this by chance rather than planned, but I had a reunion with my PhD-mates just before the pandemic hit and I started the new post. We did a bit of reminiscing, but we also ended up discussing our PhDs and supervision and how that influenced our careers after our PhDs. A lot of "my supervisor did this and that had this effect", and "my supervisor never did that and it took me a couple of years to realise it on my own".
* I relentlessly ask for help and advice. Very politely and never insisting that I deserve somebody's attention straight away. Don't rely on any one person's help, but by all means, do ask for it (and take opportunities when they're offered).
Do your best, try to improve, but if you get stuck, don't postpone asking for guidance. That is, in the end, what I was hoping for from my students, so I just got over myself and followed my own advice.
Try to talk to colleagues with different supervision styles and research styles from yours if possible. A curious thing I noticed is that despite the fact that I am very much a "beginner" in my new role, people are suddenly wary of giving me advice. I found that what helps is making it crystal clear that I am asking for advice - a datapoint - to help me reach a decision, but the decision itself is still mine and I take full responsibility of it.
*Involve* a third person in the meetings to help, or to moderate, if you still can not make it work.
* Do your own research into supervision, look for materials, learn from them. As you say, your education so far prepared you to do research. From the looks of it, your main area of expertise is not pedagogy, *but you should have the skills to tackle a new area, even it if is quite removed from what you know*.
To be fair, starting with full-blown research texts and literature would have been too much for me. The best and most accessible resource I found was [this Vlog by the Dean of Graduate Research at Flinders University](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwdaNGhdSAwzdztgLTqyhgA) (no affiliation). The Dean is an absolutely amazing and intense Professor who worked and supervised students all around the world. While most of the Vlogs (counting over 250 30min videos at this point) are aimed at PhD students, some are also specifically made for early career researchers, the topics presented are meticulously researched and presented through supporting literature rather than personal experience, and they're fantastic.
Spend 30 minutes to an hour every week (day?) learning about supervision. Watch some videos, read some papers, read academia.se. Check out the training offered by your University, even if scoffed on by your colleagues, and decide for yourself how useful they are.
In the end, I think you are already doing the most important thing: caring, considering the right questions, and trying to find the answers.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: * <NAME> and the Office of Graduate Research at Flinders Universities have very good resources on PhD supervision. See for example [Why do students change supervisors?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJXpbB_0Znw).
* Also [ALLEA](https://allea.org/) the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities.
* There are journals like [Accountability in Research](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08989621003791929?src=) with interesting papers on academic issues.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I realize that this is a very atypical question for this forum. To be frank, I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask. But it is part of my academic life, so I'm going to give it a try.
In the beginning of Fall 2020, our university (in the U.S.) created a mailing list and automatically subscribed the entire university community to it. It comes from a certain non-academic unit within the university, newly created to address certain social issues both within the university and in the wider community. Now, there's nothing abnormal about that. Of course, a university is a social organization, and there are multiple non-academic facets in its life. Our university has many such mailing lists on various academic and non-academic topics, which can be crucially important for everyone (payroll) or optional for interested persons only (university sports).
But one thing makes this new mailing list different: it seems to be impossible to unsubscribe from. I believe the university has a uniform mailing list platform for many of its newsletters, including this one. There's an unsubscribe link at the bottom of these emails. Clicking the link takes you to a subscription profile page. There's an option to unsubscribe from the publication at the bottom of the profile page. I checked the unsubscribe box months ago... and it had no effect whatsoever. The messages keep coming despite my unsubscribed status.
This was never an issue with any other mailing lists that used the same platform and that I was able to unsubscribe from (say, I'm not interested in sports, so I unsubscribed from that one). So my question is:
>
> Are there any legal and/or ethical regulations and/or guidelines for non-commercial mailing lists within an organization, in particular within an academic organization?
>
>
>
I tried searching online. Clearly, [CAN-SPAM](https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business) doesn't apply here, because this is a non-commercial setting.
**EDIT:** In response to a comment below. Yes, I thought that it might be a bug. I emailed the university tech support about a month ago. They said that they don't know of an immediate source of the issue, and promised to escalate my request to a higher-level email team... and now it's been a month, and I haven't heard back from then again.<issue_comment>username_1: It's normal for universities to require all staff and all students to be on a mailing list. This is how university leadership attempts to communicate what it is doing to everyone.
It would be odd if alumni cannot unsubscribe.
I think you will find the university is actually sending emails to email accounts it owns. There will be no regulations restricting that.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> Are there any legal and/or ethical regulations and/or guidelines for non-commercial mailing lists within an organization, in particular within an academic organization?
>
>
>
I’ll address the ethical angle. University administrators make many decisions every day that affect the lives of the thousands (for a typical large institution) of people belonging to the university community. One of those decisions involves deciding which information to send out as emails that go into everyone’s inboxes and that cannot be opted out of. And with any such decision that affects such a large number of people, it is impossible to make a perfect decision that pleases everyone and also helps achieve whatever other visionary, big-picture ideas the administrator in question sees it as their role to advance. There is always a trade-off involving the knowledge that an email will represent yet another small annoyance and nominal waste of time in some people’s workday.
The point is that making such a decision to prevent people from opting out of certain emails is generally ethical if it is done in good faith by an administrator who believes the email is doing enough good to justify the small negative cost it incurs. They don’t have to be objectively correct in that assessment in order for the decision to be ethical, and typically for any specific email some people will disagree and will think the topic of the email is not relevant or interesting to them. But unless the administrator is deliberately, knowingly sending out emails that they know are useless spam, there is no ethical problem here.
P.S. We all receive these sorts of emails regularly, so I feel your pain. If it’s any consolation, I think the situation is much worse in the corporate world...
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: Although several comments alluded to this point, and actual laws (so not necessarily about ethics per se) surely vary from region to region, I have the impression (especially in my experience in the U.S.) that if the email account is "owned" by your employer, created fundamentally for your use as an employee, even if there are some privacy assurances, ... some emails will not be block-able.
I've had that experience in my univ, where a considerable amount of PR/spam/propaganda/informational [sic] email is sent from univ offices, and cannot be blocked by any of several devices.
Annoying, but... hard to be tooooo resentful if the univ is paying for the account, and wants to be certain that they can send certain messages. Probably they are not interested in my opinion of the value or interest of the messages. :)
So, no, not unethical. I'd wager *legal* everywhere. Annoying, yes. Like many things one's employer may impose, although hopefully one has benefits worth the cost.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I've recently completed my Master's Thesis (and I'm a little proud of it). I'm interested in publishing my findings in a journal, but I'd also like to expand on my ideas and write a book for a wider audience. Is this an acceptable thing to do? I don't want to shoot myself in the foot.
For context, I haven't initiated the process of publishing the book version or of being published in a journal, yet. I simply would like to figure out what to do before I make any major decisons.<issue_comment>username_1: Publishing a book that incorporates and expands on previously published work in a journal is common in academia. You will have to cite the previous publication properly.
If you want to directly quote the previous publication or include it as chapter you may need permission to reproduce.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: If you publish your thesis as a book, yourself or with a publisher, and it is the first time that it appears as a publication, then you can copy freely without citation. This assumes that the university doesn't somehow "publish" your work. The university will probably give you advice on how to proceed.
But, once it appears, then the correct way to work is to cite the older work as needed and to quote your old work properly. The best way to think of it, once it has already appeared, is to treat it just as you would the work of any other author. If you give up copyright to a journal, then you also are limited by the length of any quotes so as to avoid copyright infringement.
Self plagiarism and copyright are separate issues and you should explore both. The first is about words (specific expression) but the latter is about the ideas, even if paraphrased. So, you need to cite even your own *published* ideas.
However, with respect to the *topic* itself, you are free to publish other things, in particular, extensions of the older work. It is the words that need to be quoted and the ideas that need to be cited.
I'll also warn you that a self published book is probably a mistake unless you are already well established. Very few people will be able to find it and it is unlikely to be cited. Working with a publisher is a better bet, but they have their own ideas about what they want to publish.
For most young academics and those hoping to become academics, publishing in journals is the best path since you get some editing/reviewing help (also with books), but the publication itself has some visibility.
Upvotes: 0
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2021/01/27
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<issue_start>username_0: Disclaimer: This is the [third](https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/questions/25556/how-is-trustworthiness-of-medical-research-established) [incarnation](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/50245/how-is-trustworthiness-of-medical-research-established) of my question because the previous two have met with silence.
Adapted to this site:
For a scientific study to be accepted as "truth" the standard process is peer review. When the subject is something like math where you can follow through all the steps and recreate the logic in your head, that works great.
But what about cases when that's not an option - for example, research into the efficiency of a vaccine or a new drug? After Phase 3 trials the pharmaceuticals company releases the data which is then scrutinized by (I'd expect) both peer researchers from rival companies and government agencies. But how can they detect that it's not all or in part a lie? There is after all a huge financial motivation for the company to do it. Even when the reviewers are highly motivated to find any traces of fraud, what is the actual process by which they do it, if they can't replicate the study itself and compare the results?<issue_comment>username_1: I take issue with your first statement, that for a "*...study to be accepted as "truth" the standard process is peer review*". The purpose of peer review is not to be the judge of what is true or not, but to evaluate (simply put) whether a study is well-conducted, is using adequate methods, is acknowledging relevant previous research, and if the conclusions are supported by the data and analysis. Another way of putting this might be that peer review is about validation of the claims made, but not about validation of truth. Some other thoughts and guidelines on the purpose of peer-review can be found here; [on scope and responsibilities, from PNAS](https://www.pnas.org/reviewers) (see "Peer Reviewer Instructions" and "Reviewer responsibilities), and a relativly clear statement on [the scope of peer-review, from *The Royal Society*](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/for-reviewers) (see "Reviewing instructions").
In a scientific context, "truth" is something that follows from repeated studies that confirms previous results, and is based on a network of theory and observation that is (to a large extent) congruent. However, generally, I would say that it is more appropriate to define the scientific method as a way to search for "truth", than a method to determine what is "true" (opinions will probably vary on this though).
When it comes to cheating, especially with regard to data, the possibilities to detect this during peer-review is limited, even in the ideal situation when data has been made fully available. If researchers for example fully fabricate data, or tamper with raw data, this will not be caught in peer-review, since only the modified data will be avaliable. Add to this that the time available to peer-review is very limited, so a full statistical re-analysis of the data is not possible. This is also one of the reasons for the need of replicated studies and other studies with supporting evidence before results are accepted as "true".
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Quite simply, it doesn't and it can't. Further, the aim of peer review is not to detect fraud. Peer review can answer the questions:
1. Does this study answer an interesting question that has not already been answered else where?
2. Does the study use the correct methodology to answer the question? Are there flaws or gotchas in the implementation? For example I am currently having a back and forth over what is the most appropriate way to remove a particular sort of bias from a data set. These are the sort of subtleties that a non-expert reader might not be able to detect
3. Check that the conclusions drawn are supported by the data and analysis provided. Are there subtle reasons that what the authors claim doesn't follow? For example, it might take an infectious disease epidemiologist expert to tell where a particular interpretation of results about Covid is falling victim to the [Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_sharpshooter_fallacy).
Journals can and sometimes do detect particularly egregious cases of fraud (like some categories of imagine manipulation), and reviewers will hopefully catch cases where authors are being evasive, cherry picking data, ignoring flaws in the data, or suggesting things that don't quite follow, but outright lies are more or less impossible to catch.
This is why generally things don't become accepted as truth on the basis of just a single study. While outright replications are rare, future studies will use previous studies as starting points, and if those previous studies are incorrect it will become apparent as the house of cards built on them doesn't stand up.
In fact we rarely ever accept anything as TRUTH. Science doesn't find truth, and all papers are wrong. Instead science as a whole, average over everything asymptotically approaches truth, but on a small scale it is not a smooth approach, but random walk. A biased one to be sure, more two steps forward and one back than the opposite.
This is why breaking into a new field can be difficult. You need to absorb the complete milieu of the field. You need to get a feel for what the field as a whole believes, rather than what an individual paper says. That's not to say the field is always right and the individual paper wrong, but siding with the field will make you right more often than wrong.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: TL;DR: Finding outright fraud is not the job of peer review; it is not difficult to cheat in a publication and it is not easy in general to discover it. However, fraud in important work will ultimately be found out. Fraud in unimportant work may linger for a while because nobody will bother to use or reproduce the results.
Peer review rarely can identify fabricated data directly (there are exceptions, see the case of <NAME>, where graphs were identically reproduced in different contexts; or cases where image manipulation can be clearly established).
However, note that fabricating data is the ultimate scientific crime, even worse than plagiarism. If the question is important, you waste other researchers valuable time and direct them away from other more productive lines of work.
Furthermore, if the question is important, **you will be found out**. It may take time, but **you will be found out**. This is how science works. It makes mistakes, results are foggy, but the fog will clear at some point. If you ever fabricated data, you will have a very hard time to ever be believed again - actually, I would venture so far as to say
you will never be believed again. No one wants to waste their time on work by someone who is not just sloppy (such as the Cold Fusion case), which is bad enough, but actively mislead their peers.
If the question is unimportant, and one is out of the eye of scientific scrutiny, then one may survive for a while in the system (there were cases where whole careers were built on this over longer periods); however, then, what's the point? What's a charlatan without an audience?
Peer review is mostly a sanity check for the most coarse omissions, mistakes, or really clumsy fakes. But discovering the latter is not the purpose of peer review. Given above incentives to not lie, peer review assumes that the authors have given their best shot at being truthful and it tries to capture honest mistakes; another role is evaluating the quality of the research (which is often very subjective and may have a latency of decades before it becomes more "objectively" evaluable).
[Addendum: One major class of issues could theoretically be discovered by peer review in a similar way as vote tampering, namely by statistics such as Benford's law - however, unlike in voting where results matter immediately and on a large scale, peer reviewers do not typically invest the time to run detailed evaluations of whether the statistics has been tampered with. Scientific work is not treated as adversarial as would be vote manipulation or intelligence work, and it would be a huge waste of time to do so, as there is enough to do with the exploration of the unknown.]
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: I will change my affiliation from University X to University Y in mid February, and I have got a paper accepted just before I move. The proofs will be sent back to the journal just a week before I change my affiliation.
Is it valid to use my new affiliation in the paper? This would be useful as it will count towards my publications in my new institution.
I have already signed a contract and will receive my new email address soon, however, my start date in my new affiliation is just a week after I submit the final version of the accepted paper.<issue_comment>username_1: Different journals may have different rules, however, in general:
Affiliations indicate *where the work was done* (to be precise, where a (co-)author has been working while doing the work presented in the paper).
If you change institutes *while working on a paper* (including writing up and revising) you should enter both affiliations. When you are affiliated to multiple institutes while working on a paper (simultaneously), add both as well.
However, in a case like yours, assuming that the paper is now accepted (no more revisions), only the old affiliation should be added (unless your journal of choice suggests something else). No work has been done while you are working in the new position.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: The answer to this question depends on your field.
In some fields, affiliation indicates where you did the work. In some fields, affiliation indicates where to find you (as of the time the paper was published). There is probably some correlation to how much research actually depends on resources (e.g. lab space) provided by your institution.
Find some papers by people whom you know moved, and see what they did.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I was invited for an interview for a postdoc position at a research institution in another country. At the end, the panel told me that the HR will reach out early next week. I didn't hear back from the HR and decided to follow up the next week, in which the HR told me that "the panel are yet to confirm their decision" and I should expect an update in the next three days maximum.
Today was the last day of *that* deadline. The issue is that in a few weeks from now, I might start other activities in other universities (teaching and research on another project). I didn't confirm anything until I receive a response for that postdoc position. Can I follow up again and told them that I might have another engagement next week?
I am afraid that this might backfire, because they're asking me to wait and this gives me the impression that I'm plan B or something.<issue_comment>username_1: Maybe you *are* plan B, but I think that setting a deadline for them is more likely to backfire than help. The easy thing for them to do is to withdraw your name from consideration - especially if you aren't the top candidate.
Don't give up other opportunities and make your own decisions on what you think best for your career, but I urge patience here. They may have entirely different reasons for delay.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: You should let them know that you have other opportunities at other universities that you need to respond to, and what those deadlines are.
If they can, they will try to avoid the situation where they can not hire you because you have been forced to agree to another job. That does not mean they can.
Generally speaking, people being informed is good. Setting deadlines that look arbitrary is not.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: You can't and shouldn't try to "set a deadline". Instead, just let them know gently..."I am getting other offers and need to decide soon". Also, "I am very interested in this position, but may need to accept another one, if your offer is delayed too long". Given the market imbalance, I don't think competing INTERVIEWS are important or compelling. However, other OFFERS obviously are. And you are being responsible to let them know you may become off the market to them.
Realistically, you're probably not getting contacted because you are not high on their list.
But there is some chance they are just slow or bureaucratic. So, yeah...reach out gently to inform/check with them. But it should be more in the mode of letting them know you are in demand. Not "setting a deadline". Of course, if you have an exploding offer from someone else, let them know. But again, you are not "setting a deadline". Just letting them know when the great candidate might become unavailable.
My experience in hiring/getting hired is that this is generally positive...to let people know that you are in demand. "Speculation drives the market." But be gentle and smooth about it.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: Some time ago, I wrote a paper with a coathor, who is the head of the lab I am currently working at and, essentially, my boss. We sent the paper to one of the best journals in our field, got overall positive reviews, revised the paper, and recently the paper was accepted for publication.
My lab got a substantial funding this year and my coauthor wants to include the funding information into our paper. However, there is a complication. The acceptance date of the paper is earlier than the date when we recieved the funding. As a result, the paper will not be accepted by the funder (we asked the funder about that). My coauthor decided that we should do something to change the acceptance date. We asked the journal about it, and the journal replied that the acceptance date, basically, cannot be altered. The only way to alter the acceptance date is to withdraw the paper on the basis that we have found some crucial mistake in our findings, then resubmit a revised version of the paper and undergo a new round of peer-review, which, I am afraid, might take a long time (it usually takes at least a year for this journal to make a decision). My coauthor insists that we should try to do that and he even asked me to try to find some flaws in our paper or something that can be improved in such a way that the need for improvement can be justified.
Frankly, I feel dishonest, weird and even somewhat dirty for being involved in this situation. I want to publish the paper as it is, without including the new funding information and altering the acceptance date. Moreover, I find the whole matter somewhat unethical.
I told my coauthor about my concerns and my opinion that it is reasonable to not include the new funding source. But he wouldn't listen. What's worse, is that I am the corresponding author and I have to negotiate all the matters with the journal.
I'm not really asking for advice. I just want to know your opinion about the situation.
**Edit:** I would like to thank everybody for the comments. Your feedback was very helpful to me. I managed to persuade my coauthor to change his mind and do the right thing.<issue_comment>username_1: I agree with you that this is unethical. There may be some gray area around assigning paper credit to certain funding sources, but it pretty clearly exceeds that gray area to tweak an acceptance date without an independently valid reason merely to attach it to newer funding.
It seems especially foolish to do this when both the funder and journal are aware you'd like to do this and when you've been informed it's not allowed.
It would be like trying to cash a check addressed to you and another person, being rejected by the bank, then trying to white out their name and walk back into the bank with it. The first ask is clearly a potential honest mistake - you didn't know you can't do that. When you come back with a workaround, it's clear you're cheating the system (and in the scenario I describe you've made pretty good evidence for intentional fraud).
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: In case the ethics argument fails, here is another argument against pulling the paper. If you withdraw the paper for any reason, you run the risk that the resubmitted paper will be rejected. The refereeing process is partly a random process.
The worst case is it takes a year for the journal to decide to reject your paper, and science moves on and your paper is now out-of-date and will not be publishable anywhere reputable.
In addition, the editor and others involved will now associate you all with making errors. A good reputation is worth a lot in academia.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: Your coauthor is asking you to commit academic misconduct bordering on [fraud](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fraud). It’s unethical and pathetic, would mislead the scientific community and funding agency, and would waste the journal’s resources without any justification. And now that you’ve posted the question apparently using your own name, your coauthor’s intentions are publicly stated, which makes the behavior very risky to both your reputations if carried out.
The only way to achieve what your coauthor is trying to do in an ethical way is if your coauthor gets approval from the funding agency to acknowledge it as a funding source despite the acceptance date being earlier than the date of the grant. This actually seems to me like a reasonable thing to ask for, considering the fact that articles typically still undergo minor revisions after being accepted, and that working on such revisions requires time and effort. So my suggestion is to make such a request — it may not work, but seems worth trying.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: My ethics says I would have to take my name off the paper.
You might also run the risk of retaliation by your boss and getting fired.
Could you change the wording to say you were promised consideration by group x and hope to be getting funding?
You could tell the editor your dilemma and ask him to remove the funding sentence when published.
Sorry but sometimes in life doing what is right will cost you.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_5: In computer science, very few people dares to retract and resubmit a paper.
The risk is so high. When your paper is accepted, it is because your method is faster, more precise, etc than state-of-the-art approaches. But after one year, things may change rapidly, your awesome experiments can become inadequate. You risk never publishing that paper again.
Of course, this is unethical, but people do it all the time, I'm afraid.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: I just finished the grad school application process, and I'm getting my first letters of acceptance. I got one letter from one of my bottom three schools, one from a "middle of the pack" school, and one from a dream school. And, at the risk of humble bragging, this is a great school with a great reputation and true luminaries in my specific research interest amongst its faculty. I literally screamed when I got the letter. However, it is not funded.
They sent me the letter of acceptance only three weeks after I submitted my application. As I understand it, that's a very quick turn-around time, especially for a prominent research institution. I assume that's a very positive thing.
I'm not sure whether to just accept the offer right away, or wait to see if some of the other dream schools respond. At least one of the other dream schools will have funding for me from the get-go if I'm accepted. I know "non-funded for any amount of time" is a big red-flag, but I feel the pedigree of the school that I got accepted to trumps that. Having good recommendations from any of the professors I would work under would be worth more than gold. I feel like, in this situation, you just bite the bullet and go for it.
But I also feel that if you might have basically the exact same opportunity, except *with* funding, at another institution or two, it might be worth waiting/holding out a bit to see how things play out.
I feel left with a few questions:
1. Is it stupid of me to hold out at all, given the high level of the institution I received the letter of acceptance from? I worry my ego might have got too inflated, and it's wrong to hope that another dream school (with or without available funding) will come knocking at my door.
2. If I do accept the offer, but then receive an offer from another dream institution that could offer me funding, would it be bad form to pull out of my agreement of acceptance? I wouldn't want bad blood.
3. How long is too long to wait on accepting the offer? Will they fill the open position if I take too long to respond? I don't want to miss out on what could be the opportunity of a lifetime because I sat on my hands.<issue_comment>username_1: Generally speaking, there’s no need to accept an offer as soon as you receive it. Offers have a standard deadline for you to respond. It is normally somewhere on your offer letter. It’s absolutely fine to make further inquiries with HR or one of your prospective advisors regarding funding opportunities:
* Can I apply for financial assistance?
* Are there any scholarships or teaching assistantships I qualify for?
* Can I be funded by your research grant professor X?
All excellent and valid questions that show your genuine interest in enrolling. Graduate school is expensive, and not everyone has the financial privilege of spending several years with no financial support. Admission committees know this and will try to make it easier for good applicants to get some support if possible.
Accepting an offer and then backing out in favor of another is a big no no. Not only did you waste everyone’s time, you also made some other candidate miss an opportunity. People will rightly be upset.
What you can do is ping the schools you’re waiting on. A simple “Hello, I just received a few offers I’m seriously considering and would like to know whether your department had the chance to review my application. I need to make a final decision by XXXXX so would appreciate an answer before that deadline, many thanks!”
You will likely get an answer pretty fast.
**Edit:** as username_2 mentions in their answer, taking up an unfunded PhD is a bad idea. You may find yourself in a financial hole that you may not be able to get out of for years to come, having to hold off on other important life decisions (buying a house, starting a family) that may look very far away now, but will become frighteningly, depressingly real before you know it. This comment does not hold for Masters degrees: these are often offered on a full tuition deal, but are also a short term commitment.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Unless you are independently wealthy, you should never take an unfunded offer for graduate school in mathematics.
Even before the pandemic, some people with a dozen good papers after two successful postdocs - a well above average publication rate - were failing to find jobs.
When I was last broadly applying for academic jobs 10 years ago, the general advice was to send 80-100 applications to jobs you were competitive for in order to have reasonable certainty of getting at least one offer. Even before the pandemic, there weren't that many jobs in total to apply for, and each job gets more applicants than they did 10 years ago. (This year is brutal; the only people getting research-oriented jobs will be AMS Sectional plenary lecture candidates (there are roughly 40 per year, total - that's less than the number of Berkeley+Stanford PhDs per year) or better.)
There are even fewer jobs in industry for which a math PhD is a better qualification than several years of experience.
For a more teaching-oriented academic job, the funded position at a lower-ranked graduate school is actually better preparation, because you will be teaching for your funding, and because the undergraduate population at a lower-ranked school is generally more similar to the undergraduate population at most universities than the undergraduate population at a highly-ranked school.
If you borrow money for graduate school, you could end up in a situation where you are unemployed with no means of paying back your loans. Don't forget education loans cannot be discharged via bankruptcy.
Going to graduate school in math with funding is already a costly decision from the financial point of view, though it's fine if getting to spend a few years doing math is worth it for you (as it was for me). Going to graduate school in math unfunded is potentially ruinous.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: ### tl;dr: Agreeing to work for free hurts your colleagues. Don't.
Graduate-level research is important work, which benefits society, the academic institute and the PI/advisor/lab/research group. It merits reasonable compensation - similarly to how you would expect payment seeking other work based on your undergraduate degree.
In many places the term "unfunded PhD" is not used. As a PhD candidate, you are a proper employee of your university or research institute. If you don't finish your PhD within an allotted amount of time, your employment will run out, but doing a PhD while being non-employed is like volunteer work. It's not impossible, but it is unreasonable for you to work full-time as a volunteer, for years.
Unfortunately, graduate researchers, whose work involves both practical contribution and an aspect of traineeship, are in a situation that's easy to exploit - and exploited it is. The struggle for proper employment conditions, and even recognition of status as a contributing employee, is ongoing in many countries.
See also: [Why do universities fund Ph.D. students in the sciences?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/68912/7319)
Now, you might say "Ok, but personally I'm willing to forego a salary and various rights and benefits to get into the research institute I like" (and note: It's not primarily a school, despite the term).
But - it's not just about you. **You are hurting your fellow graduate researchers by accepting a position as a PhD candidate researcher without pay. So - you should not do it.**
Maybe you don't need the income and can live off of savings, or support from your parents or spouse. But - suppose one of them worked as, say, a nurse or a teacher; and now, the government starts a volunteer program to promote education or public health, and places volunteers as nurses or teachers, in hospitals and schools - for zero pay (This is not a made-up example, this happens in some countries.) I'm sure those volunteers will have the best of intentions; and it is not inconceivable for someone to volunteer to tend to the sick or teach children in their community - but still, in a money-based economy, they would be used as a cudgel to beat down those who rely on these job for a living.
---
A related question: [Can I somehow leverage my willingness to work for a lower salary in job applications?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/61933/7319)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Accept the offer. If you receive a better offer down the line, politely back out.
This may not be easy for you, but it's not personal, it's business.
What can happen is that you decline the offer, the others say no... and you're left high and dry with nothing.
Upvotes: -1
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<issue_start>username_0: For example, take the sentence: "Gaussians are widely used in mathematics & statistics".
At this point there probably tens of thousands of papers that use Gaussian functions in some way (that's not even counting the papers in other fields like the social sciences that make use of Gaussians). It's impractical to cite them all. The sentence still calls for at least some citations though. How does one choose which papers to cite?<issue_comment>username_1: Either none at all if you can assume that the most likely audience of your publication is aware of that as if it was a basic fact of life.
Or recent reviews that provide a wide overview of Gaussians used in mathematics and/or statistics.
I searched for `TITLE: (Gaussian) AND DOCUMENT TYPES: (Review) AND YEAR PUBLISHED: (2015-2021)` in *Web of Science*. The query led to 56 results, many of which have accrued considerable citations and thematize mathematical or statistical issues. Perhaps you could do a similar search and pick some suitable papers to cite.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: If you really want to write such a general statement: Look at the statement and think about what it means. The references should provide evidence that the statement is indeed true. So in your example, you need a selection of references that show that "Gaussians are widely used in mathematics & statistics" (sorry, it is as simple as that). This selection does not need to be complete, nor must it be 100% representative. A few more or less random, but fitting references from publications using Gaussians within the mentioned topics suffice, maybe from different time periods and different (well-known) authors. I would go against citing reviews only, at least a few primary sources should be mentioned.
However, it makes more sense to be more specific and to give some more context. For example you could simply write:
>
> Gaussians are widely used in mathematics & statistics, *e.g.* in topic 1 [citation 1], topic 2 [citation 2] and topic 3 [citation 3].
>
>
>
In this case, the selection of references is a little less random which is to be preferred.
---
Your example is not a good one, it is common knowledge and does not require citation. However, I treated it just as an example for a general statement, and of course there are general statements that are not common knowledge.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I am doing my Masters in Mathematics at a reputable university in the UK. I am taking a statistical programming class. There has been a lot of cheating so far.
Due to Covid, we have two forms of assessment:
1. Coursework
2. Open-book, open-internet, two-hour exams
Throughout the first semester, I had multiple students reach out to me for help with their coursework — I would give them some tips or maybe refer them to a section in the lecture notes. This wasn't really an issue. As the semester progressed, there was more evidence of serious cheating. For example, during one of my group coding assignments, within 15 minutes of the assignment being released, an international student sends the group the entire solution. Hundreds of lines of code in 15 minutes, something that would usually take us a week to do. This is just one example. Surely the professors know that this is going on?
During my undergrad, after leaving the exam room, I would have a good estimate of how I did. If I answered 80% of the questions, I would get ~80%. There is no room for guessing, you either know the answer or you don't.
As part of my revision for the winter exams, I did all the past papers and found them fairly easy. The exam, however, I found extremely challenging and not closely related to our lecture notes. This makes sense, it was an open-book, open-internet exam — they wouldn't ask questions that could be answered by looking through the lecture notes.
Fast-forward a couple of weeks, the professor sends out an email saying that the average grade was 2% higher than previous years' grades. This surprised me. How did students score higher on a substantially more challenging paper?
Last week, I was invited by a coursemate to a discord group. Most of the members were international students and they were speaking Chinese so I couldn't tell what was being said. As I started scrolling through the messages, I found an entire exam paper (the actual exam, not a past exam!) was uploaded to the discord group chat and they were sharing answers!
Should this be reported? How would I go about reporting it (what should I say, and to whom)? Would anything be done? Do the professors really not know that this is going on?<issue_comment>username_1: You should definitely report it.
At my university, students can report academic integrity infractions they witness not to the prof, but to the administration. A committee made up of independent profs and lecturers reviews cases submitted. It may invite you, the other students and/or your prof to testify. It may find the other students guilty or not, depending of the facts presented, and hands out a sanction if relevant.
I hope your university has a similar mechanism.
It is not a matter of competition. It is a matter of fairness, of playing on a level field, and of intellectual integrity.
Best of luck!
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: You should report this immediately, but be sure you collect evidence.
**Edit:** *The reason that you should collect evidence is that you are accusing your fellow students of gross academic misconduct that would result in serious consequences. Not only will it be impossible for anyone to pursue the matter without evidence, but making baseless accusations could result in negative consequences for you.*
Screenshot correspondence (if it’s in Chinese get it translated or find a native speaker among the faculty who can translate). Emails, text messages etc should be saved as well. If your university is reputable, it will deal harshly with these cases.
The actual procedure varies by institution but the first person to contact is the professor. They’d likely want to know that this is happening and would be furious to hear this. It’s quite possible that the professor is unaware, or simply unable to obtain evidence that something is going on: if everything is happening on a non university server there’s little they *can* do to catch cheaters.
Would anything be done? That depends on the institution, but what you’re describing is pretty clear cut. Students can get expelled and in the case of international students, have their visa revoked as a result. If this happened in my class I would do everything I can to ensure those students are punished as much as possible. The likeliest outcome is failing the class and getting a remark on your transcript.
Help make academia better and report them.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I am going against the grain here and advise you not to report it. Not based on ethics but based on the realistic outcome of this entire procedure.
If you report this, how is anyone able to differenciate between cheaters and non-cheaters? Being part of a discord group is no crime and there is no way to know who took a glimpse at anything uploaded there. Also, discord is usually rather anonymous. Who would be able to associate *user572780* to a actual student?
What course of action would realistically be left to a faculty member being **officially** informed that cheating occured? Anybody in the discord server has plausible deniability and probably 90% of everyone on the server couldn't be matched to a real person to begin with. Flat out accusing N amount of people of cheating is no thing to be taken lightly.
They could void the entirety of the exam but this would punish everyone who took this exam without cheating. I have never heard of such a thing to happen and I imagine the steps involved in such a undertaking are extremely troublesome.
Or the person you report it to acknowledges that they can not do something reasonable about it. Best outcome, a few people get accused of cheating who can entirely deny it or at worst you get everyones grade revoked.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_4: It's a bit of a struggle between both, but I would consider what username_3 said and not report on it. It's too ambiguous to tell which users are actually students and they would probably tie it back to you, which would get you in unnecessary trouble.
And, as you mentioned, you getting invited would only add to the suspicion. Although this might sound unfair, it's best to leave yourself with the least amount of involvement. What I could suggest is that you anonymously report it to the professor after the exam has been taken.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_5: Depending on the rules at your university you may be **required** to report academic dishonesty by your peers when you are aware of it. Before determining whether one "should" report academic dishonesty, OP should determine if it is a requirement of being a member of the university community.
I can't speak to what is required at OP's university (nor can any other answer without knowing the specifics), but many universities require students and faculty adhere to an Honor Code. At my university (a large, public research university in the US) the bulk of this code is dedicated to promoting academic honesty. Not only are students are prohibited from giving or receiving unauthorized assistance, but they are required to report violations of the code when they become aware of them.
I'm not sure if this was the original intent, but in my experience, required reporting makes prosecuting cases of academic dishonesty much more straightforward. In the OPs specific case, it would be difficult to prove a student relied on materials posted to a discord channel when submitting their assignments. Under the Honor Code of my university, however, one would only need demonstrate a student *was aware* someone else was distributing prohibited materials and failed to report it. Simply being a user of a Discord channel where students were sharing exam answers during a test would likely lead to an Honor Code hearing (although without evidence they provided or used the prohibited assistance the punishment would likely be nothing more than a warning that would be removed from the student's record if they didn't commit further violations.)
I would suggest OP:
1. Immediately unsubscribe from any discord channels where other students are committing academic dishonesty
2. Familiarize oneself with the requirements placed on students for reporting academic dishonesty at their university and report what they know if required
3. If they are are not required to report academic dishonesty when they become aware of it, then ponder their moral obligation to report it and after that the costs/benefits of reporting.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: Today I watched [a YouTube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkNf00Ut2TQ&t=56m33s) interview of [Pierre Deligne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Deligne). I have some confusion about a statement given by Pierre (video timing: 56:33 to 58:20). Here is the outline of the statement in the video:
>
> Interviewer: Would you like to write letters to other mathematicians?
>
>
> <NAME>: Writing a paper takes a lot of time. Writing it is
> very useful, to have everything put together in a correct way, and one
> learns a lot doing so, but it’s also somewhat painful. So in the
> beginning of forming ideas, I find it very convenient to write a
> letter. I send it, but often it is really a letter to myself. Because
> I don’t have to dwell on things the recipient knows about, some
> shortcuts will be all right. Sometimes the letter, or a copy of it,
> will stay in a drawer for some years, but it preserves ideas and when
> I eventually write a paper, it serves as a blueprint.
>
>
>
What type of letter is he talking about and why does he write a letter to other mathematicians?
I mean, there are many different types of letters out there. I mean, some love letters, friends letters, etc.<issue_comment>username_1: I just did something like this last month...
Well, with modern technology available, I didn't write a letter; I wrote up some notes, scanned them in, and attached them to an e-mail. Keep in mind, though, that Prof. Deligne started his career in the days before e-mail, and telephone calls (from rotary dial phones attached to landlines) were expensive (like a dollar a minute.)
I had an alternate approach to proving a theorem in a paper I had read and thought perhaps the approach could also generalize beyond their theorem. I wrote up a sketch of the alternate proof (for which some details I have not actually proved) in 3 pages of notes. I scanned them, and attached them to an email to the authors that read something like "Dear X and Y, I hope you are well. We talked about this at Online Conference Z and I'm attaching some notes. I'm happy to meet by Zoom and talk. Best, -me"
I didn't write up a paper because it would take 10 pages and at least a couple weeks of work to give precise definitions of everything, and any paper would only be publishable in a fairly low-tier journal (since the result isn't new and the approach also isn't new, having been applied to other problems before), which at this point in my career doesn't count for anything.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I am a mathematician and I have written exactly this type of letter before. It was to a collaborator explaining what I thought could be the basis for our next project. As it happens, this collaborator and I are very close friends in addition to being collaborators.
In terms of format it was a letter to a friend. “Dear friend...” then four pages of math where I only had to explain things he didn’t already know and finally best wishes to him and his spouse.
Any actually time sensitive communication was already done by email and if necessary the phone. So this letter was a deliberately slow method of communication. It’s primary value was for me to sit down and think through the entire idea. That I put it into the mail is something of a secondary effect.
So to answer your “what kind of letter” it is probably best to imagine it as an informal business letter between colleagues who have known each other for a while and can include friendly chatter as well (but the chatter probably happens through other channels anyway.)
Just an oddly relevant piece of experience.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: Imagine a time before fax machines were standard, before the Berlin wall came down, before TeX. Travel to see other mathematicians was not always possible, and about the only way to communicate mathematics that involved intricate diagrams was to write and draw with pen and paper, and put it in the post. Perhaps someone the age of Deligne will post an answer, but at least I have worked with Mathematicians born about that time so I know a bit of their habits.
By 1972, I imagine that photocopiers were easily accessible at L'Institut Des Hautes Études Scientifiques so the author of a letter could easily keep a copy. One could write another mathematician with a partial result, a conjecture, perhaps the outline of a new theory.
Knowing the recipient personally was decidedly optional.
Mail to another country could take one to twenty weeks, so it often made sense to write letters that went on for many pages. If one knew the background of the recipient, one could skip that bits about notation and definitions and also ignore the realities of technical typists.
Sending by fax become affordable to academics circa 1990, and one could write shorter letters as one could expect a timely reply. However, drawing something as simple as a 3D commutative diagram was really hard except drawn by hand.
The last time I received such a math letter, albeit in the form of a fax, was probably in 1995. The first such letter I ever wrote was in 1985, I think, on special lightweight paper so it could go by air from the US to Romania.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: >
> but often it is really a letter to myself
>
>
>
In engineering, this is a key concept as a part of the review process. Of course a reviewer provides a second pair of eyes to spot mistakes by the designer. However there is an secondary well-recognized effect as well: having to explain your design to someone else can allow you to see flaws in it which were not obvious during the design process.
The same thing happens with fault-finding. It is not at all uncommon that in the process of explaining a confusing problem to someone, you realize what the cause might be.
This is commonly known in software engineering as "Rubber Duck Programming", on the principle that explaining the problem to an inanimate object (such as a rubber duck) can be as useful as another human being.
The author in this case is finding the same thing. Whilst his correspondents may have useful insights, what matters are the insights he finds himself whilst writing that explanation.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: I do research in applied mathematics and computer science and, whenever I have an idea, I write an email explaining it and send it to myself.
I found that writing such emails helps me find holes in my reasoning (things I missed or skipped over) but also helps me synthesize my ideas (which sometimes leads to simplifications of the resulting concept).
This emails also prove useful when I want to email other people to exchange on my ideas.
Furthermore, I write new developments as answers to the first email which gives me a centralized place to see the evolution of the idea and be able to come back to my previous positions on the subject.
The main downside is that, at the moment, I am the sender of most of my unread emails...
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: >
> The lengthy and fruitful collaboration of <NAME> and <NAME>.
> Littlewood was the most productive in mathematical history. Dominating
> the English mathematical scene for the first half of the 20th century,
> they produced a hundred joint papers of great influence, most notably
> in analysis and number theory.
>
>
>
(From a transcript of <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asXHAvibq1g> )
They did that joint work almost exclusively by correspondence, even when they were at Cambridge together.
From <https://moleseyhill.com/2010-03-22-hardy-littlewood-rules.html> :
>
> Hardy Littlewood Rules
>
>
>
> ```
> Axiom 1: It didn't matter whether what they wrote to each other
> was right or wrong.
> Axiom 2: There was no obligation to reply, or even to read,
> any letter one sent to the other.
> Axiom 3: They should not try to think about the same things.
> Axiom 4: To avoid any quarrels, all papers would be under joint
> name, regardless of whether one of them had
> contributed nothing to the work.
>
> ```
>
>
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: Rubber ducks, and then drawers
------------------------------
It's a form of [rubber duck debugging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging) where you preserve the conversation in the form of paper/letters.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: There is a rather touching book by <NAME>, the famed chaos theorist, entitled *The Calculus of Friendship* chronicling decades of correspondence between him and his high school math teacher, Joff. Usually, Joff would write with a puzzle or general question on something and Steve would respond with the solution in addition to some banter or small talk. There are some very interesting proofs/discussions of nontrivial (at least to me) topics (e.g. general method for deriving closed-form solutions for recurrence relations with shift operators, the convergence point of sum(sin k / k) for k=1,inf) explained in understandable ways, its fun to read and probably an enjoyable thing to do so it is not unheard of as many have already testified.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm working on some edits to a paper under review with coauthors. Comments include advice that a better writing style be used and awkward wording be fixed. Coauthors are comfortable and expressive in English as a second language but to me some sentence construction and phrasing is awkward and un-smooth and it sometimes takes me a while to see how sequential points connect. I'm not a particularly good writer myself.
Coauthors are readily amenable to grammar and word order fixes much but less so to paragraph rewrites; "no, that's now how I want to say it".
I sense that further suggested rewrites on my part might not be the way to go, but "objective" advice on writing might still be welcome.
Short of a professional technical writing service, are there dispassionate tools (e.g. websites or programs) that tackle paragraph-scale technical writing construction, and do academic journals every recommend any of these or similar? What other solutions might exist for this situation?<issue_comment>username_1: Universities often offer professional writing assistance. This can be courses, seminars, workshops or someone you can send your manuscript to for the exact purpose of proofreading and revisions.
Journals don’t generally offer such services to my knowledge (at least not in my field).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Yes there are such tools. An example is [Grammarly](https://www.grammarly.com/). Caveat: they won't be as good as having a real human proofread your manuscript.
Journals will probably not recommend any tool or service, unless they've formed a partnership with the tool/service ([example](https://www.editage.com/about-us/2019/Wiley-Partners-with-Editage-to-Enhance-and-Expand-Services-for-Authors.html)).
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: I just failed my 2nd Qualifying Exam in my PhD program. It was supposed to be a 60,000 word paper but it was an incomplete work.
I am in my 4th year at my PhD and my research is in field of humanities. My major is Geography. It is an integrated course, as in I joined as soon as I got my Bachelor's. I am doing my research on a multidisciplinary and very practically useful subject based on sacred forests and urban landscapes (I won't go into details). But, I was going through some intense emotional time for 6 months (June to December 2020-a critical period) due to personal tragedies in my family. Also low funding is also a problem. I am an international student. And pandemic is just making it worse.
Now, I feel absolutely devastated.I am not going to get a chance again at re-exam, and that is fine too. I can understand why they wouldn't want to invest in such a bad student. I do work very slowly, but sincerely and did learn and correct accordingly as my advisor said for this 60,000 word hell. Though I could not do field surveys and data collection due to strict travel sanctions, I tried backing up my research with more literature. The problem here is my research is focused on a more practical part of urban forestry, and it is so niche that there is a severe lack of academic work on my topic, if you don't count ancient scriptures (which is hardly academic).
I realise my mistakes and I am willing to do everything to correct them. I just need some more time. But being told I am not suitable to be a PhD student just based on the incomplete paper (it was just 40 pages long) hurt me more than being told how my research was absolutely useless. I am aware that my research IS useless at current stage, but I had all the future work set up in proper parts so it becomes relevant. I was not sure if I can give reasons about tragedies and poor health because last time I tried that they had said 'so what? even pregnant ladies do phd" and that was that. And that is fine too. But being told I am useless as PhD student was like taking a direct hit on what defined me. It was sort of an existential crisis. The shame and incredible sense of loss is palpable and making me clam up instead of working to get out of it.
I know it is not the end of the world and I am sorry for long sob story. I want to know how to proceed? Is it possible to get into a PhD after failing quals? Or do they dismiss you if you have failed quals? Should I immediately apply to a PhD or gain some work experience before?
Thank you.<issue_comment>username_1: I have evidence that it is possible to do a good PhD in a new university after failing to pass qualifiers in an earlier one. In fact, the person I'm thinking of finished at a higher rated university than the original.
However, in this case, it took the efforts of a faculty member (and mentor) of the person to strongly advocate for the candidate's admission and to express complete confidence in their ability. The candidate had a bad experience with many factors at the original place but turned out to be very well respected by faculty at the second.
You have a hard road and it may not be possible to travel it, but look around you for any advocates that will argue for you. If you are currently suffering from burn-out you will need to get that under control. But advocates can help with that, also, just from their attitudes. Having a new advisor in a new place might work wonders if you can convince people of your ability and likelihood of success.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I am sorry to hear you have had such a dramatic experience. I also understand the self-doubt and hit to your self-confidence caused by this current event. One thing I suggest you do is to objectively evaluate the situation you find yourself currently in. Do you think you deserve to pass the exam based on your progress and efforts? That is the main answer you are looking for. If you want to stand for yourself, you should first think about your argument and you need to believe in it. So first step first. What is your argument here? Was your progress acceptable but your committee was unfair? Or do you agree with the committee that they rightfully failed your qualifying exam? I need to remind you that your advisor and committee members are humans and their opinions may not represent the objective reality regarding your situations. Some other professors in some other universities might have found your progress actually satisfactory if your work was presented to them. So, don't think of the opinion of your committee as something to tie your self-image with. You need to acquire their approvals of course, but it doesn't mean you should base your self-image on what other people's opinions of you are.
After you come up with an honest self-evaluation of your situation, you could start advocating for your case based on what you want to achieve. If your past situation is a culprit, providing appropriate documents supporting your case would help. If you think your committee members were not just in evaluating your progress, you might be able to change your committee and go through re-examinations. These all also depend on how supportive your supervisor is since you didn't mention his/her opinion here.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I am doing a course in a university. Course has 60% of weightage alloted to the project (which involves implementing algrithm to solve a problem), which we may turn into thesis if at all we succeed to find out something new (we have only one semester duration). I have to write a initial document of the work. I want to know if its ok to specify webpages (which I went through for some related information, not strictly of referred jornal papers, but some articles on some site) as references. I have never seen any journal paper to include webpage URL in the references. But, at least now, mine is a project and not a thesis (not yet come up with something new). So, I was thinking whether should I include webpage references.
**Q.1** I was thinking I should include them as long as its a project (implementation of existing algorithms). Once I come up with something new, I can skip webpages and specify only non webpage references (books and journal papers which helped me find new algorithm) in the thesis. Am I correct with this?
**Q.2** Also if I have to include webpage as a reference, in what format should I?<issue_comment>username_1: From my experience:
Q1: Include it as a regular reference (like an article) and if you find a published paper then exchange it. At our department we followed this strategy and published also our papers with references to websites.
Also I personally do not like this strategy, it seems inevitable in some cases. Be careful to include only really meaningful websites which correspond to a specific topic or software package.
Q2: I would recommend to use Bibtex and follow the style in this question: <https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/3587/how-can-i-use-bibtex-to-cite-a-web-page>
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: You should cite any source of information. So yes, you cite web pages.
Whether you should follow links on those pages to primary sources is a question for your instructor.
Your bibliography software may suggest a format. If none i s given, provide the title of the page, the author (if appropriate), the url and the date when you last visited it.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_3: The general rule for such things is that if you use the work of others for things not commonly known, then you *must* cite them. So, yes, cite web pages as needed and quote, formally, from them also when needed. But cite them even if you paraphrase things.
You also probably need to do more than just include a list of references at the end of the paper. The reason for including a reference should be made clear, usually in the text itself. There are exceptions to this, but it is better to be clear about why you include a reference and to be specific about what you have used within any referenced article.
The form of the citation/reference is a bit less important than the fact of it and unless you are given some specific format, use examples from things you read. Use something similar to what is used in Wikipedia or a textbook if you have no better source.
---
One note about citing web pages. Since such things can change without notice, the correct thing is to include the date at which you last read/used the web page. "Last accessed 29 Jan 2021" for example
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: Short answer: Because this is not yet a thesis or scientific publication, you may be able to cite websites instead of papers and books (your Q1 question). Other answers have already discussed the format of citing a webpage (Q2), and there are [a few related questions on academia.stackexchange.com](https://academia.stackexchange.com/search?q=cite%20website).
However, there is also the long answer:
You should try very, very hard not to cite websites. The reason is that you should not use websites as sources for scientific information:
* The website may disappear after publication, making the reference useless and putting the burden of trying to find an archived version on the reader of the work.
* The website may change (and become irrelevant or wrong).
* Websites are (more often than not) full of mistakes.
* It is hard to verify the reliability of the information if you do not know where the author of the website got it.
* If you do know where the author got the information, that is probably the source you want to read and cite (see also: [wikipedia on Chinese whispers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers)).
So the question is: why are you using the website(s)?
*To learn something that is "common knowledge"?*
If you use a website to learn something that is common knowledge, there is no need to cite it. The exception is when you copy text literally from the website, but that is usually frowned upon and sometimes violates copyright (even if a reference is added). In most cases you are better off by reading multiple sources and rephrasing the knowledge to fit the style and application of your work.
*To learn something new?*
If a website describes something that is not common knowledge, you should ask yourself where this knowledge came from. That will often lead you to a better source to cite. This is a check you should be doing anyway (even when reading and citing scientific papers) to make sure you are citing something that is scientifically sound.
*Because you found the one website on the internet where good scientific research is published that is not published elsewhere?*
In my field (biophysics) I have never seen any examples in grant proposals, scientific papers, or other academic works where a website contained useful information that was not available elsewhere. But if you found the rare case where citing a website is really necessary, you should absolutely do so. By citing the website, the interested reader knows where to find more information (hopefully, this was discussed above). And of course you would not want to be accused of plagiarism.
*Because of a lack of time?*
Totally understandable, but not exactly a good reason.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_5: The answer is a definitive YES. We live in the information age and fully connected to the internet 24/7, where everything is a web link address.
One may ask the question differently: the web address is long and ugly. In such cases, the writer should try to find a more standard and commonly used address link. For instance, use links of type DOI when referencing a published article.
For example, <http://doi.org/10.3352/jeehp.2013.10.3>
An example of a reference in APA style is as follows: (boldface type added for emphasis but not included in the reference):
<NAME>., <NAME>., <NAME>., <NAME>., & <NAME>. (2015). The color-sharing bonus: Roles of perceptual organization and attentive processes in visual working memory. Archives of Scientific Psychology, 3, 18–29. <https://doi.org/10.1037/arc0000014>.
As last resort can use an address shortener, as long as a clear description is made before including the link in text paragraph (otherwise you may leave the reader wondering what is the link for)
Remember that all the style manuals are especially picky about how citations are formatted and those styles can change over time, so when you’re including a Web address in a citation, be sure to check the specific style you’re supposed to be following. For example, the current APA style is to not put a period after a URL in a citation. Their rationale is that the specific alphanumeric sequence is important because it is what points readers to the reference.
The Modern Language Association style guide also recommends using the short URL in running text—simply Forbes.com instead of <http://www.forbes.com>, for example).
Upvotes: -1
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm finishing grad school in STEM. I have a postdoc offer already, but will be applying for more. During grad school I volunteered at a suicide line taking phone calls. If you volunteer a certain number of hours (I have) they will write you a letter of recommendation.
I chose to volunteer just to volunteer. It has been helpful training in other areas though. Learning how to listen, empathize, etc. has been really helpful and surprisingly relevant to other areas of life.
Is there anything I can use that letter for as I go from grad school/postdoc to TT and beyond? If not that's fine, I was just volunteering to volunteer.<issue_comment>username_1: If you have a PhD, a letter that does not describe your teaching and research ability is not helpful for applying for academic jobs.
So no.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: If you have to write a diversity statement or some other such non-academic statement, then you might want to **mention** this experience in it, but I would advise against including an actual letter from where you worked, as this will likely seem a bit strange and probably also goes beyond the intended application materials you are requested to submit. Moreover, even if you have to write such a statement, I think mentioning this experience would be more appropriate when the position involves some teaching. In any event, if you're not sure, then I would go with what @username_1 said and not mention it.
Incidentally, certain subfields of psychology are considered STEM, [I think](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22stem%22+%22psychology%22), and probably for psychology such a letter would seem a lot less strange and perhaps even helpful. Indeed, in some research areas not restricted to STEM (e.g. [suicide prevention research](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22suicide+prevention+research%22+%22postdoc%22)), such a letter would be very appropriate.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I would like to ask you concerning a situation I was a few years back.
I was an unofficial intern at a research institution. The aim of the internship was to study and search for new methods from a field that was unfamiliar to me or my supervisor and to check how it could be used in my supervisor's field. During this internship, my supervisor asked to study an article that was put for submission, and to write some kind of peer review report on it. I was unfamiliar with the topic, and the supervisor was unfamiliar with one of the topics (it was an article that used a combination of two fields). I did it, but eventually realized that it didn't seem to be ethical, as you need an expert to conduct such work. I even wonder if it was legal.
The situation took place in EU.<issue_comment>username_1: The only ethical concern I see here is possibly one of deceit. If the supervisor or yourself misrepresented who the author of the review is.
But you didn't mention the destination of the review or where the original request came from.
But there are many situations in which such a thing would be perfectly fine. For example, a review used only internally. Or a situation in which the supervisor wanted the intern to learn enough to do a good job and get the experience of a review. This isn't especially rare in the case of advisors asking doctoral students to write reviews either as a form of practice or to provide a "first draft" of something.
But you can't expect that every reviewer on every paper is completely knowledgeable about what is in the paper. That would imply that science doesn't actually advance at all and that only "known" things appear in articles.
But, submitting your work under their own name would be a form of deceit. And, sadly, this happens in the case of doctoral students noted above.
Another form of deceit would be misrepresenting one's qualifications to do a review, though I don't see elements of that here. That would be an issue between the supervisor and the editor.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: To my mind, is not a best practice at best and probably can be seen as unethical too.
The rule of thumb to follow is to make things clear in terms of who is the author of what and how the workload is distributed in terms of reputation gain.
In most situations like the one you presented, someone is left thinking about the conduct, and when publicly available, depending on the impact factor of your research work, if it includes a copy of previous works as if it is your own, one might not point you out what is wrong, but instead decline the invitations from you or even be misleading when they shouldn't. This depends on the type of research field and at what research group your part of, of course. Many research groups so "highly competitive" (although the term is inaccurate ) and collaboration only happens at a cost/benefit. But there also other groups that are opposite. Opened, collaborative towards a common research goal.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: It seems to me this *could* be entirely appropriate and ethical. Many journal web systems have a place where the reviewer types in the name of a sub-reviewer. In my experience, the system can take a while to inform the sub-reviewer of this, and in any case it could be via email that is lost.
You should learn from others about how refereeing functions in your discipline. I had not heard of sub-reviewing at all the years I worked only in pure mathematics. It is not really done in some disciplines. I learned about this when a physicist asked me for my opinion on a paper. I started getting request from math journals and physics journals. See elsewhere on this site on the art of saying no.
For reference, here is the [Physical Review Letters Guidelines for Referees](https://journals.aps.org/prl/referees/guidelines-for-referees). It specifically talks about how a referee is to declare "colleagues who help in writing the report."
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: There is something called a [habilitation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habilitation)\* in Poland, Germany, Austria, and a number of other European countries.
How is a European habilitation viewed by people in the United States?
\* "Habilitation is a qualification required in order to conduct self-contained university teaching, and to obtain a professorship in many European countries. Despite changes implemented in European higher-education systems consequent to the Bologna Process, **habilitation is the highest qualification issued through the process of a university examination, and remains a core concept of scholarly careers in these countries**."<issue_comment>username_1: [Habilitation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habilitation) is not a term in common use in the US, but if the Wikipedia article is accurate about the meaning, then it would seem that a holder, with no other qualification, would likely be eligible for a faculty position at one of the lower ranks: Assistant Professor or Associate Professor, perhaps.
Most full professors only get there through promotion, not directly. Sometimes an associate professor will be hired as full professor if they are at the verge of promotion at the first university. And a few (very few) people might be hired directly at full if they come from outside academia with an exceptional research record. But in such cases the person can expect to have a short probationary period. So, with habilitation (and a PhD) in hand, more is needed to be hired at full rank. And without experience in academia other than as a student, even initial hiring at associate level is not assured.
But if the person had other relevant experience and held a position similar to full professor or associate, then they might be considered for full professor.
But the holding of it, alone, wouldn't likely be enough. It would further depend on the work done by the person, perhaps the same work that led to the awarding originally.
So, with respect to the final paragraph, most would consider the holder to be very proficient, especially in the German or Austrian case. But every holder of a doctoral degree would be considered very proficient, also. I have no way to guess whether the situation in Poland is the same.
If you hold a PhD or equivalent then habilitation probably doesn't mean much in the US. If you don't have a terminal degree and want to use habilitation to get employed, then you will need to explain in detail what it means in the country in which you earned it. For those jobs *requiring* a doctorate it might be hard to convince them depending on how firm the rules are. But don't expect that it will be automatically understood.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: For the most part [habilitation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habilitation) is restricted only to Europe.
No real equivalent exists in the United States or other parts of the world. The closest equivalent in the United States would be a promotion after tenure and before reaching a (Full) Professor rank. At many institutions I know, however, there would not be such a rank because the jump to Associate Professor happens before or with tenure.
Many in the US may not have even heard of habilitation, but anyone with close European collaborators will likely know about it. I first learned about it, for example, when I was asked to support a colleague for their habilitation. For those who do know about it, I would not expect there to be any special awe, just a recognition that this is an academic rank and its approximate equivalence in their own system.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: >
> How is European habilitation considered in the US?
>
>
>
It is considered a foreign custom with no relevance to the US.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: **An up-front comment**: This answer has managed to attract a fair number of downvotes, as well as several very helpful follow-up comments (which have since been moved to [chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/119168/discussion-on-answer-by-mico-how-is-european-habilitation-viewed-in-the-us)). One hypothesis offered by a commenter for why so many have chosen to cast downvotes is that my answer maybe too focused on just one field (economics, which happens to be my field) while failing to explain what a habilitation is. Well, the question was *not* about what a habilitation is, was it? Instead, it was about how it's viewed in the US (and, presumably, Canada as well).
I've decided to shorten my answer drastically to make it focus on (a) what I believe are commonly held views among academics based in North America and (b) an explanation of why they are likely justified in holding these views.
---
I suppose any answer to your question will depend importantly on your field of study. My answer is informed by what I know is the state of affairs in my field, economics. However, I believe the views I state below are not limited to academics employed by North American economics departments.
* Simply put, most academic economists based at North American universities have never heard of -- or are, at most, barely familiar with -- the concept of a "habilitation". To the extent that they think they know what it is, it's widely regarded as an awkward and even embarrassing device by which a person, after having earned a doctorate, enters an extended period of indentured servitude to some "big name professor", during which time the "habilitand" is supposed to acquire and demonstrate serious research skills and, ideally, manage to publish a couple of well-regarded papers in top-notch journals -- while also having to engage in such career-irrelevant activities as sprucing up the big-name-professor's lecture notes and fill in for the professor's lectures when the professor decide to be some place else.
* To the extent that a European habilitation has any value at all in North American economics departments, the only thing that matters are the publications that (should) go along with the additional academic degree. The degree itself is pretty much irrelevant.
* Is this state of ignorance willful and detrimental, or is it maybe entirely rational for these academics not to bother finding out a lot about what this habilitation thingy might be all about? I'd say it's the latter. In economics, there has been -- for many decades -- a huge difference in the perceived quality and status of a U.S. or Canadian Ph.D. degree in economics on the one hand and a (continental) European doctoral degree in economics on the other. (Aside: what matters, of course, is the thoroughness and breadth of learning and the research skills that come with the pursuit of the degree, *not* the nationality of the degree holder.)
* Earning a Ph.D. degree from a high-quality North American graduate program was (and largely still is) seen as *the* vehicle that opens doors toward obtaining an assistant professorship at a selective university or college.
* In contrast, most (all?) US econ department hiring committees know -- usually from painful first-hand experience -- that they needn't bother with considering applications from persons whose main qualification is that they have just received a doctorate in economics from a European university. (Well, there have been some notable exceptions to this rule of thumb in economics. However, they are the exceptions that prove rather than refute the rule.) If the European job applicant possesses both a doctorate *and* a habilitation, the only things that matter are the quality and quantity of the applicants' publications. Well, if the position entails some teaching responsibilities, the applicant's proficiency in English might also matter a bit... If anything, the European doctorate/habilitation candidates might be at a disadvantage relative to their peers with "just" a Ph.D. from a North American institution, who often have just one or two promising job market papers but no publications (yet) in top-notch journals.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: This question has been bugging me for a long time.
I don't know how to put it according to Academia.SE 's prescribed standard. Kindly help me to formulate this question by editing my question if you find it not conforming to the standards.
---
I know a Pakistani guy who has a Ph.D. in leadership from the University of Malaya and working as a clinical assistant professor at the University of Illinois and adviser to the PM.
I know a Bangladeshi girl, who completed Ph.D. in accounting from the same university and now working as a professor in a Malaysian privately funded university.
I know a Bangladeshi guy who completed a Ph.D. in IT from the same university and now working as the head of the computer center in a Bangladeshi university because of the political lobbying and backing of his father.
I know an Indian guy who completed Ph.D. in physics from the same University, and now working as a private tutor online.
In my opinion, the latter two are failures. Coz, they have failed to make proper use of their PhDs.
My question is **if the latter two are not as competent as the 1st and 2nd one, how did they manage to acquire a Ph.D.?**
N.B. kindly feel free to comment if you want to know more about these persons.<issue_comment>username_1: In any reasonably large population of this kind (e.g. PhDs from a particular university)
there will be a large range of outcomes. You have chosen to examine two outliers at each end of a spectrum you have vaguely and arbitrarily defined and called "life success" and asked for an explanation.
The answer is "variation". In that population there are many randomly distributed determinants of "success" (by any definition). Some of those people are smarter than others. Some are more ambitious. Some are luckier.
Your question really has nothing to do with academia, or doctorates.
I think your underlying misunderstanding is of statistics.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: In most universities, what you must demonstrate to obtain a PhD is that you have made a novel contribution to knowledge in your field of study. Specifically at my university the requirement is worded as:
>
> A candidate for the degree of PhD, PhD with Integrated Studies, MD, DDSc, DMedSci,
> EdD, DEdCPsy, DClinPsy or EngD is required to satisfy the examiners that his or her
> thesis:
>
>
> * Is original work which forms an addition to knowledge
> * Shows evidence of systematic study and of the ability to relate the results of such
> study to the general body of knowledge in the subject
> * Is worthy of publication either in full or in an abridged form
>
>
>
All of you above examples could easily have demonstrated the above. I'm assuming you believe that individual who works as a private tutor is the least successful of the four (this is only true if this is not the life they wish for themselves, many might see this as a nice life). Do you have any reason to suspect that this individual is not capable of making a novel contribution to knowledge? But passing this bar does not mean you will be a good government advisor, or professor.
The larger point is that PhDs are not tools for ranking people. People with PhD are not just people with better bachelor degrees - PhDs rather are apprenticeships in knowledge generation. Nor are jobs on a single ladder, each job has its particular set different skills it requies. Its not like being a government advisor requires a higher level of competence at the same skills as an IT centre manager. It requires a different set of skills.
Of those that you describe, the job that is closest to being a match for the precise skills a PhD teaches is Professor (although not even then really, as a professors job is far more than research). But there are far more PhD graduates each year than professor jobs. Consider: To maintain a constant number of professors, each professor needs to be replaced by one person when they retire. However, during their career, a professor might graduate 20-30 PhD students. There is no way all of those student can become professors. Luckily professor is a job that only appeals to a subset of people, and not everyone that does a PhD wants to be a professor.
It is important for any student to realize, before they embark of a PhD, that irrespective of how prestigious a school they go to, a PhD cannot guarantee anyone a good job.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Your judgement of the two latter cases is unfair and misinformed. They are only "failures" if they, themselves, consider themselves to be failures. They may feel wildly successful, doing precisely what they want to do. The doctorates may have had less to do with their happiness and sense of personal fulfillment than being active in some way.
It is a bit dangerous to judge other people. You say you know these people. What do they think? What are their objectives? What opportunities or obstacles do they have?
Not everyone feels that academic success is the highest value that life can be judged by. Not everyone has the same opportunities, even with good degrees.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: I am in the last year of my Master in Physics, I am writing the Master Thesis and I am looking around for some PhD positions. It is something totally new for me. I have seen that people in general require 2 reference letters.
The problem is that the only person who knows me well is my supervisor of the Master Thesis. I got good grades in general in the courses but I do not think the other professors know, or remember, who I am.
I do not think I can ask also my professors of the Bachelor (I did it in another University), with whom I had anyway a good relationship, because I finished it three years ago.
So my idea was to contact a professor of my university, or of other universities, and maybe ask if I can do a "mini master thesis" or a project or something, so that he/she can understand that I am motivated and so on, and eventually can write for me a recommendation letter. What do you think?<issue_comment>username_1: For the second letter find someone who knows you well enough and has a high enough opinion of your work that they can recommend you without qualification. They need to make a prediction about your future success. Someone recent is better but absent that, an older relationship should work, generally. And someone in academia is better than someone else.
But there is probably no reason to delay your application to do another project. At worst, you could apply in parallel with starting another project as a backup.
Note, however, that my perspective is US, not Germany.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: When in doubt, try to find someone who is not a professor, but (ideally) with a PhD, who can judge your work. It is good to have one letter from a professor, but it is not necessary that both are professors.
The point is that a letter from a professor who just had you in their course will not say much: Basically, if you had an excellent grade they will be saying that you had an excellent grade (which people can just as well see from your transcript). If you got them involved in lots of discussions, maybe they can say more. But a key point is that success in coursework is *correlated* with successs in the PhD, but by no means the same. Indeed, there are people who are great at courses but mediocre researchers, and (somewhat less frequent) the other way round. So in the end, you preferably want letters from people who can assess your abilities in *research*.
There are some caveats, in the sense that postdocs have less experience in writing letters. But it they are smart, they should still be able to write a strong letter. And, what is more, they might be more dedicated to it that a professor who has to write lots of letters, so they might be more meaningful ones.
So I'd recommend trying to ask someone who you interacted with on your master's project beyond your professor.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I've worked through a major publisher to contribute applied portions to several textbooks, and am listed in the acknowledgements sections. These were not one-day content reviews and singular practitioner projects, but ongoing contributions spanning over a year. I currently have the books cited under the work experience section in my industry resume, via employment through the publisher while citing the primary authors and disambiguating my role in the bullets. However, as I apply for a second graduate degree, I am wondering if the books should be moved up to the publications section (still citing the main authors and not myself, of course).
In case this is relevant, the publications section currently has four direct authorship items, so isn't empty. Still, they're nothing special, and I'm concerned about down-playing the textbook work in my apps.
Similar questions have been asked about [generic contributions in papers](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1112/should-i-include-a-publication-where-im-only-acknowledged-and-not-one-of-the-a), [minimal contributions](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/47339/listing-acknowledgments-on-cv), and [paper authorship as an anonymous team](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1246/should-i-include-publications-where-i-am-a-team-member-in-my-cv), but I am unsure if this advice applies to textbook-scale work.<issue_comment>username_1: You can put anything on your CV that you think contributes to your professional standing. For honesty, I'd suggest using a separate section, however, not the "publications" section unless you are listed as an author. Perhaps something like "Contributions to published work" or similar.
Overstating the case can have a negative impact, not the positive one you want.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: The universal convention in academia, and I’m guessing anywhere else, is that listing something in your CV under “Publication” implies that you’re an author or coauthor of the work.
So if you’re not a named author but only listed in the acknowledgements section, you should not list the work in the Publications section. It would be seen as dishonest or at least misleading and reflect poorly on you, even if you added some asterisk or footnote to indicate your role.
Upvotes: 4
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<issue_start>username_0: I have found a very good overview of a topic and I want to cite it in the introduction of my paper. The writers are very well known people in the field. Is it then okay to cite the paper that is not published and is only available in arXiv?<issue_comment>username_1: If you use the work and you found it only on arXiv then you *must* cite it there (or elsewhere) to avoid plagiarism.
But, the publication process takes a long time. I suggest that you cite what you have found, especially if the paper isn't formally published yet and watch for it to appear. If it is ever going to appear it may well show up before your paper is finalized.
But failure to cite is a serious matter. But a more permanent citation is preferred over arXiv. You don't need to wait for it to be finalized to cite it.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: You can cite everything that you want, including arXiv contributions. However, you might want to look for alternatives. In case of review/overview articles you often will be able to find some and use them instead without risking plagiarism. In academia, peer review is the standard way to make sure a paper meets the necessary quality criteria, so peer reviewed publications are more trusted sources.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_3: There is nothing wrong with citing paper, reviews, etc., which have appeared on the arxiv (and only on the arxiv). Go ahead and cite the paper.
(If your paper gets accepted at a journal, they might ask you to update in case the paper has been published in a journal in the meantime, but in the fields where the arxiv is commonly used, journals and referees will have no issues with references to the arxiv.)
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: I recommend using "peer-reviewed" rather than "published" for a paper on arXiv (or otherwise on the internet), because such papers are literally published, in the sense of being publicly available (even more than those behind pay-walls). The distinction that may matter is peer-reviewed (or not).
The question of whether peer-reviewed papers are more reliable than arXiv papers by well-known, reliable, experts is a separate question.
But my point, somewhat tangential to the literal question, is that "things on the internet" are *published*. They are cite-able. The question of their relative reliability is subtler. Peer review is no guarantee of correctness...
So if you use something from arXiv, cite it. These days, in math, for example, everything appears on arXiv or on peoples' homepages a long time before it is "peer-reviewed", and the latter may be "never"... simply because in some peoples' perceptions that "peer review" does not add value, but is fairly expensive in time and trouble.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: This interview is at a liberal arts college and will be 15 minutes. Is it necessary to wear a suit to this sort of interview or is it okay to wear a dress pants, dress shirt, and a tie?
Update: There seems to be some confusion about what I mean by 15 minutes. I meant that the interview is scheduled to be 15 minutes long. This is a math TT faculty interview at a SLAC.
I appreciate the good answers that I received below. Thank you.<issue_comment>username_1: This depends on the college. What you want to wear for a Reed interview or a Washington and Lee interview will be different. Most likely it's okay to ask them.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: My supervisor gave advice to another PhD student in our group doing post-doc interviews. He mentioned that since the zoom setting is more relaxed it is good to just wear a dress shirt, but if the interview is on-site, it would be better to go for the suit and dress shirt.
My partner also did a couple of tenure-track interviews and he went for the dress shirt which seemed totally fine.
These interviews were in the field of CS though.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I hope this doesn't come too late to help you, but, for the possible benefit of future readers....
Let me suggest that appropriate wear for such an interview, assuming it is with faculty and possibly students, would be something like what you would typically wear to a face-to-face teaching session or lecture in that place. I don't remember ever wearing a tie to teach in a forty year career, for example. And yes, this might be somewhat less formal than you would wear to a face-to-face interview, but not necessarily.
For an interview with a dean or provost (which might happen at a small school) step it up one notch. A jacket over an Izod, perhaps. (I've dated myself with the Izod ref, I realize).
You need to project professionalism appropriate to your field and the position you seek, not formality. They aren't the same.
But there is another issue I'll mention for the ZOOM generation. Pay attention to the background of what is seen in your session. It is much better if it has a scholarly look (bookcases, say) than a messy room. And try to arrange it so that there won't be interruptions (family, pets, phones, ...) during the session.
Finally, note that this is a US perspective. There are other places that are more formal and others less formal than here. But if you consider what is typical dress for teaching (and/or research) in that place you should be fine.
If you are interviewing at a place with a different academic culture than what you are familiar with, note that many colleges and universities have set of faculty pages with photographs. That can give you a guide as to what that particular faculty is comfortable with.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: Every now and again, academic departments are threatened with closure by university administrations.
One current example: Pure Mathematics in Leicester is under threat of closure (making academic staff redundant).
What successful strategies have departments been able to use to see off threats like this?<issue_comment>username_1: * Once you are threatened with closure, it is probably too late to fix your problems.
* Increase enrollment of new students with marketing.
* Increase retention of students with better teaching and extracurricular experiences.
* Seek donations.
* Find a new source of revenue.
* Unionize. A union contract can force cross-subsidies from money-making departments to money-losing departments instead of closure. However, this will not work if there are no money-making departments.
These decisions are all about money, and there's no easy way to get money.
A more detailed answer: <https://ep3guide.org/toolkit>
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: If the academic department offers courses that directly contribute to the university's mission and vision, then this can be used to justify its continued existence. For example, a religiously-affiliated university would not close a theology department even if the department has dwindling enrollment.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: This is, in fact, the *second* time that Leicester's maths department has faced these kind of threats. The previous time (in 2016), they backed down following a petition and other objections organised by a variety of mathematicians.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: Check with whatever accreditation outfit your school uses. I was once at an engineering school and the engineering faculty really thought that they could teach the "math their students needed" and would really liked to have gotten rid of the math department. But whatever accreditation body they used to have an accredited engineering program insisted that they have a real math department staffed by real mathematicians.
So the answer might be "if you close your math department, you'll lose your accreditation." And who wants to send their kid to an unaccredited school?
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: <https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/crisis-looming-u-s-colleges-not-just-because-pandemic-n1235338>
At least in the US, the outlook for many universities is utterly dire. Enrollments have plummeted due to the virus, but at least in the US education has been headed towards a major correction for some time. Many will go bankrupt, or be gobbled in an acquisition or merger. Mergers and acquisitions almost always mean redundancies, either by thinning a department or eliminating it entirely.
Thus, the answer to the OP is that it greatly depends on why exactly a department might be eliminated. In some cases there may be strategies that can be employed to save a program if it's a marginal case (such as the petition mentioned in another answer). However, in many cases the best thing you can do if the writing is on the wall is to polish the resume and get out ahead of everyone else.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: First of all, let me say that I find what is happening at Leicester utterly horrible.
However, the truth is that pure mathematicians do, *in general*, tend to have a disdain for applied work. In not a few places "mathematics departments", which originally contained within them areas such as statistics or computer science, tended to eject any type of applied field and let them create their own departments, while leaving only the purest of the purest within the administrative division labelled "mathematics". This attitude is now coming back to bite them.
As a long-term strategy, it might serve mathematics departments well to maintain more diversity in their research focus, and not segregate "pure" and "applied" research. After all, there isn't really a very clear line between "pure" and "applied": a single researcher may do some of both, and some types of research touch on both. If the University of Leicester did not have two clearly separated administrative divisions labelled "pure math" and "applied math", then they could not pull this off.
This is not meant as criticism, but as a pragmatic suggestion.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: Making the studied subject useful at something would be a good start.
In the specific case, the definition of "pure mathematics" deserves an historical introduction, to make clear it has nothing to do with the problem-solving mathematics. It is a subject that was founded only in the thirties by the Bourbaki group in France. The group was chasing the goal of finding a complete and coherent foundation of mathematical analysis, since few members of the groups had found some counterexamples in the Gourstat's book used back then.
The complete detachment from physics, and consequent creation of theories descending only from axioms, where no single problem is ever solved, is what characterises the "pure" approach established back then.
Fortunately or not, Goedel incompleteness theorem wiped out the possibility of the coherent and complete theory sought by Bourbaki for good. Despite this event, the branch of "pure mathematics", as it fits very well with the academic environment and the need of a hierarchy not based on merit (if no problem is solved, who will tell who deserves a promotion and how does not), is still a subject per se, and it had become as well as a pedagogical methodology (and a detrimental one, according to many).
* [https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~ardm/bourbaki.pdf](https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/%7Eardm/bourbaki.pdf)
* [https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html](https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/%7Emunsteg/arnold.html)
Interesting to notice that there have never been such a thing as "pure mathematics" before Bourbaki, having maths always something applied to solve real problems for the entire history of humanity: finding algorithms, and generalisations only when it was possible to apply a solution found in one instance to solve a wider range of problems. Archimedes, Gauss or Euler would have not understood the question: "are you a pure mathematician?".
To the commenters distressed at the idea of a university without a math department, they can be reassure that "pure mathematics" has nothing to do with the mathematics they have studied for the A-level, or the mathematics they know of as a tool to solve problems.
Besides the theoretical groundlesness of pure mathematics, as mathematically proven by Goedel, the "pure" mathematics studies certainly have a detrimental effects on their students. I recently interviewed a candidate with a pure mathematics background, graduated with full marks with a thesis on a subject he was not able to explain during the interview, who turned out to have never heard of graph theory. Also he heard of the existence of differential equations, but as something for another department, not for him, so he had never solved one.
There is the curious situation of an increasing amount of industries thirsty for mathematical talents, as problem solvers and algorithms developer, and the "pure" mathematics department is producing graduates with the title of mathematicians who are crippled by too much useless theory, lost in a machinery of details, and unable to solve anything or compute anything.
Leaving the abstract manipulation of symbols, and teaching Algorithms and Differential Equations ("with their applications", as purists like to put it) instead of axiomatic theories closed in boxes, would be the best strategy to keep the maths departments alive, and provide students with capabilities other than knowledge.
---- Edit:
I must have touched a point, since all my posts have been downvoted shortly after writing this one. Bringing down the reputation of the author instead of talking about ideas, now, that's a strategy never used before! .-)
Upvotes: -1
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<issue_start>username_0: 15 months ago, I improved the bounds for an open math problem which I think is worthy of publication. Later, 9 months ago, I came up with two further results that I also would like to publish. I have even confirmed with the authors whose work I have improved upon that my results are interesting and my techniques seem valid.
However, I have gotten myself hopeless lost in the editing process for my papers. With the pandemic, professors I know from college and REU have been too busy dealing with shifts in administration to take a look at my work. I’ve written drafts for two the results which I feel are “mostly there,” but I’ve been floundering when it comes to wrapping things up. I have some learning disabilities, and so on a number of occasions I’ve been stuck for an unreasonable amount of time on something basic such as clearly phrasing a particular definition. I have become frustrated with myself and the writing process because it doesn’t feel like I’m making progress anymore, which just drives me to write less.
Obviously, something has to change. To the best of my knowledge, my school does not have a writing center. I’m thinking I will have to pay a technical copy editor look at my work, and perhaps advice me on how clearly express some definitions. I was wondering if this would be looked down upon, and would devalue the worth of my papers. I am also interested to hear where I can find technical copy editors, and if there any other options I should consider.<issue_comment>username_1: For scholarly work, as opposed to classwork, it is fine to ask for help whether you are an undergraduate or a full professor.
However, the nature of the help needs to be considered. For simple editing and phrasing, an acknowledgement of the help within the eventual paper is probably enough. But if it crosses the line to the point where the "helpers" are contributing ideas, then they become collaborators and co-authors.
Some publishers will provide technical copy-editors if that is all you need, but I think this is more likely for books than papers. It might even be that most of the editing you need can be done by a general text-editor as long as you vet what they suggest. Sometimes they will get it wrong and you need to be able to see and correct that. But such services are likely more available than someone with experience in your field.
After submission, some reviewers will suggest rephrasing as needed. But there is no guarantee of it. Telling an editor of a journal that you need a bit of help with the language might be worth the effort, but, again, no guarantees.
And, no, having collaborators and co-authors doesn't degrade the work. Collaborations with the right people can enhance it. But if you originated the key ideas you want to assure that you get credit for that. In some fields it is being the "first author". In others it is just a short paragraph describing contributions. But at such an early stage, *any* publication will help you along. There aren't a lot of people who achieve that.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Getting help is fine, and so is asking that someone collaborate with you. However, asking someone to collaborate is asking them to commit a lot of time. I can only keep at most three collaborations going at a time and am selective about this.
Asking the other mathematician to be a collaborator was perhaps a mistake. It seems like you have a result, and what you need is assistance with the writing. There are options other that asking "please read my paper" which are more likely to get a response.
Ask a professor in your math department if they know of a writing center on campus. Ask the people who ran the REU for advice on what journal to submit to. You probably need help with latex, selecting a good title, writing a good abstract.
There might be a seminar in your department where you can make a presentation. It really helps to have a forum to talk this over. Of course, seminars are not what they were in the Before Times.
Everything is slower and harder during the pandemic. This is why I suggest small things, like help with a good title. You may have "On an improvement to the glorious theorem of Dr. X" and it would take a professor five minutes to suggest "Improving the bounds in the theorem of Dr. X."
Best of luck. These are good problems to have.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: You are in excellent company.
Nobel Prize winner [<NAME>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dirac) was famous for the difficulty he found in writing papers for publication where he would agonise interminably over phrasing. His colleagues in Cambridge jokingly defined a unit called a "dirac", which was one word per hour.
Ask for writing assistance and acknowledge it in your paper.
Good luck!
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: I would ask the PhD/PostDoc association of the math department at your university for support in writing the paper.
You may find someone supportive, with some spare time to help you.
Good luck with your effort and thumbs up for being so passionate to embark yourself in writing a paper at such an early stage: the learning curve is steep, but it has to be done only once (ok, maybe two :D )
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: How does a math journal react to a crackpot math research paper?
In mathematics (especially in Number Theory) there are many meaningless papers on the web, and possibly a ton of meaningless submissions. Also, how does a journal react when a proof of a major unsolved problems, such as the 'Riemann Hypothesis', is submitted?<issue_comment>username_1: Here are the basic mechanisms that I know of, having only limited experience on an editorial board.
The first is a classic desk rejection. This is where the editor who makes the initial assessment, just says no, without asking for referees. This has to happen, or one gets flooded with AI generated nonsense as a joke.
Some journals insist that you list a few potential referees. I believe that one of the reasons they do this is to see if you have interactions (even just closely reading their papers) with mathematicians. If the author of a number theory paper list as potential referees three Fields medalists from three different areas of mathematics, probably they have no idea what they are doing. Makes a desk reject easier.
The second is the editor asks for a quick opinion from a mathematician in vaguely the correct area, asking if the paper is worth refereeing. You can tell if you get this type of rejection sometimes as the editor says after a few weeks something like "the feedback I have gotten are that this is out of scope for our journal." So I have heard. From a friend.
Finally there is just sending it to one or more reviewers. If the editor needs one referee, asks four in succession and they all say no, then the editor is likely to reject the paper.
There are problems with these methods. Some innovative work is hard to classify, and a paper gets rejected because the editor asks all the wrong people. I had a paper go to a topic editor, go out for review, then get assigned to another topic editor, out for several reviews. It finally landed on the correct reviewer, but this could easily have gotten rejected.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: Your question has a somehow detailed answer in the following paper:
* <NAME>, "An Editor Recalls Some Hopeless Papers", *The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic*, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 1-16, 1998, [JSTOR:421003](https://www.jstor.org/stable/421003).
That paper is dedicated to the many papers the journal received refuting Cantor's proof that real numbers and natural numbers have different cardinalities. It analyses the paralogisms contained in these papers, and I think that what it says can be generalised to other situations as well.
But beware that it's not only maths that receives crackpottish submissions: each field has its targets. For instance, in physics, relativity, quantum mechanics and Newton's third law are quite a target. And the submitters may be professionals and not only amateurs. To give you an example, there is a now retired well-known researcher in my field (metrology) who about twenty years ago developed a "theory" which he thinks should substitute Einstein's general relativity. So, about twenty years ago, he started to submit his work first to physics journals, which outright rejected it, and then to conferences in his own field, hoping for acceptance from his colleagues. This caused some headaches to the organizing committees, which anyway rejected his work (as far as I know, it's not been published so far).
So, as far as I know, most editors probably simply shrug those kind of submissions off.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: A famous number theorist once told me he receives approximately one submission a week claiming to prove the Riemann Hypothesis at the top journal where he is an editor. Thus the need to conscientiously and in good faith evaluate such submissions is a real drain on his time and the time of other experts in the community. It’s not an acceptable solution to reject them all without even looking at them, and neither is it acceptable to handle them all using the “usual” process.
Fortunately, if I remember correctly what he told me, he can rule out all but an extremely small percentage of those submissions as being obviously invalid (where “obviously” means he doesn’t have to spend more than 5 minutes looking at them, and can then desk-reject them with an easy conscience and even sometimes provide a bit of feedback to the authors) by applying a simple set of heuristics he developed over time. They go something like:
>
> * the paper doesn’t use standard notation or terminology, or otherwise show some obvious misunderstanding of the problem or related body of knowledge
> * the paper uses only properties of the Riemann zeta function that are shared by a larger class of functions, for some of which the analogue of the Riemann hypothesis is known to be false
> * the paper proves something that’s actually much stronger than the Riemann hypothesis, and known to be false
>
>
> [*etc - there are probably more subtle rules of thumb that are still considered by him very trustworthy given his expertise in the subject*]
>
>
>
I believe other experts who are regularly asked to evaluate purported proofs of famous open problems have developed similar heuristics. See for example <NAME>’s “[Ten Signs a Claimed Mathematical Breakthrough is Wrong](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304)”.
The bottom line is that it is actually quite difficult to come up with a crackpot paper that doesn’t instantly fail a set of obvious sanity checks that experts will know about but the crackpots (or honest amateur mathematicians who are not complete crackpots but simply lack training in the area) don’t. The only people who actually have the ability to “fake” a proof in a way that will require significant effort to detect the fake, are experts themselves, and they usually ([though not always](https://www.math.purdue.edu/people/bio/branges/Papers)) know better and don’t write such papers in the first place.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: I'm not a mathematician and I never saw this happen myself, but I heard from a friend that the policy of their department was that if a crackpot paper was received they gave it to a grad student to look over. The instructions to the grad student were "Read it until you find the first error, then STOP, write a quick summary of the error, and then send it back". I think the grad students took turns with this.
I don't remember why but apparently their department tended to be a magnet for papers about a particular topic (possibly the Riemann Hypothesis thing, maybe? I don't remember and am not a mathematician) so any paper coming in on that topic got the above treatment.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: There is always the possibility that some gem is hidden in what otherwise seems like a crackpot submissions. An editor has to accept the that a field can be revolutionized by a single new idea.
A good editor knows most of the ways that thinking goes astray and can categorize wrong ideas easily and tell the author where their own thinking is wrong and respond with stock responses they've already collected. When they can't do this, either the individual is onto something new or a new path of wrong thinking has been found and the editor can update their set of premade responses. In either of these cases, the world gains.
If you can't do this, you've succumbed to the hubris that established power often falls into and it serves no one, ultimately. Honestly, unless it's vandalism or disrespect of the establishment, people should be worthy of responding to.
If we have a society where people are too worthless to give criticism or feedback, then a Doctor of Philosophy has to step up and understand what's going on in their society.
Upvotes: -1
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a master student in mathematics. I developed a new notion and did calculations for some examples. I believe it is original because I can't find it in literature. Now I want to publish my results, but I don't know if they are publishable or not. I have already asked my advisor but he said he doesn't have the ability to supervise me in that field. Should I just find an expert to talk with? The question is I don't have relations between any experts and me. Because of pandemic, it is also not a good idea to find them personally, so the only remaining idea will be cold email them. But it does not seems a good idea as well, so what should I do?<issue_comment>username_1: Cold emails are very common in this situation, and not at all a bad idea. Indeed, I know of many cold emails that have turned into coauthored papers.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Adding to the answer from @username_1 .
Be careful and professional in the (cold) email. Try to state what you found clearly early on. If you can refer to a paper written by the recipient, do. Many cold emails are of the "I solved the Collatz conjecture" variety and quickly end up in the trash. You don't want yours to be prematurely assigned to that category.
I have tossed many cold emails from cranks. But one led to a joint paper.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: There is a related question about questions to expect for PhD defenses here: [What questions to prepare for PhD defense?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/42627/134392), but the question (and answers) are referring to the public oral defense.
Generally, at least in Biology in the U.S., there is a "closed-door" or "non-public" part of the defense where the committee "grills" the student about all types of things. I am wondering what types of things are appropriate. It seems that sometimes questions are not related to the thesis or dissertation specifically, but general questions in a large field / body of knowledge. If committee members do not provide you with reading material or potential questions, how would one even go about knowing what to expect? Is it appropriate to fail someone for not answering seemingly random questions - as if they are to have encyclopedic knowledge?<issue_comment>username_1: Generally speaking anything and everything is on the table unless you are told otherwise. There are no limits. It is up to individuals what is asked and up to those and other individuals to evaluate the answers. The candidate may not be able to answer everything.
But it probably isn't required to answer everything. What is required is to say sensible things, including "I never studied that".
But for the foundational knowledge of your field, you'd better be able to give pretty good if not absolutely ideal answers.
The (second) worst story I ever heard, though it may be apocryphal, is one in which the candidate in biology or chemistry gave his dissertation presentation in which he repeatedly mentioned [pH](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PH). There was an outside member of the English department on the committee who said she didn't have any real questions, not understanding the subject, but would like some layperson's explanation of pH from the candidate. The person, who had long ago studied it formally and was able to use, froze up and gave no answer. He failed.
But maybe that was just a horror story told around grad students to scare them into working harder, something like a campfire ghost story.
In a private oral exam of my own I was asked a question and started to develop an answer (math - algebraic topology) and it went nowhere. I stopped and admitted that I wouldn't be able to finish it, but was able to say exactly what the flaw in my argument was. This actually impressed the examiners more than if I'd given the correct answer immediately, as they told me later.
So, you don't have to be perfect, but you do have to make sense. Do that and you will probably be fine, subject to the vagaries of personality.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: As the norms and rules vary enormously from institution to institution and department to department even within the US, **ask your supervisor**.
In my experience the supervisor and committee do give at least broad outlines of what's expected/what topics will be covered. (My personal opinion is that we [academic supervisors] give *way too little* guidance about what to expect, making the process far too stressful.) You can and should at least ask for this guidance.
Also in my experience, the broad "anything goes" questioning you describe in your question applies more to *comprehensive* or *qualifying* exams, where the goal is to find out if the student has an adequate level of foundational knowledge etc. to begin a research program, than to the defense. The PhD (or master's) defense is usually much more focused on the material in the thesis/project itself, although it can of course stray into related topics (see the answers to the question you linked about PhD defenses for more discussion of the typical scope of these exams).
As for
>
> Is it appropriate to fail someone for not answering seemingly random questions - as if they are to have encyclopedic knowledge?
>
>
>
When you put it that way, of course not. **But** ... a student's and a professor's view of "seemingly random" is often different. A professor might legitimately feel that a researcher in field X should know about topic Y, even if that seems unrelated to the student. Again, I think it comes down to reasonable expectations being set *and communicated* before the student starts to study for the exam. (As I say in my third paragraph above, that applies to comprehensive/qualifying exams. Students usually *shouldn't even have to study* for their thesis defenses — the defense is about exploring details of a topic that they've just spent several years immersed in ...)
I agree with @username_1's points that making any reasonable effort to answer the question will count in your favour (e.g. "well I don't know that but it seems related to ..." or "let me start working that on the blackboard and see how far I can get ...") Again in my experience your examiners are actually *on your side and want you to succeed*, they will usually provide hints if you make a good-faith effort to tackle the question.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: One of the best pieces of advice I have received is to defend only what you have done. That means that you have to be an expert in your thesis and to a reasonable level in the field as a whole. This perspective enables answering tough questions:
1. Why haven't you done X? We thought about doing it, however after analyzing our case specifically we opted for Y because of A, B, and C.
2. Why X is missing? Agreed! It would be good to have it. I did Y instead because it seemed the right way at the time because of A, B, and C.
3. Your result X goes against state-of-the-art! True, however we take into account A, B, and C that others have overlooked.
Any tough question can be turned into a silent agreement and "selling" what you did instead of defending what you could have done.
Upvotes: 2
|
2021/01/31
| 2,100
| 8,397
|
<issue_start>username_0: Since I was a master student in (the North American) X university, my email `<EMAIL>` has been still active, even though it is a couple of years that I have left that university. Now, I'm about to finish my Ph.D. in (the European) Y university, and Y will be immediately closing my current `<EMAIL>` upon my graduation. I have heard that writing an unprofessional email address, e.g., `<EMAIL>`, in the contact information section of an academic CV does not make a good impression on readers. So, I am wondering whether I may use the still-active email of mine corresponding to X in my CV for that purpose. My main concern is two fold: whether or not I am allowed to do that in view of X, and whether or not it is ethically a sound decision because it can mislead readers thinking that I am currently affiliated with X.
PS. My question relatively resembles what are discussed [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/109439/is-it-appropriate-if-my-current-affiliation-is-different-from-the-ending-of-my-e) and [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/134543/email-address-etiquette-which-address-should-i-use-to-contact-professors), but the difference is that those questions' contexts are paper affiliation and contacting professors, respectively. However, mine is about the contact information section of a CV.<issue_comment>username_1: I can see no legal or ethical problem with using an email address from a former institution, as long as you are clear about your current affiliations in your communications.
That said, there may be better options:
* Professional societies often offer an option of an email address. As a roboticist, for example, you can almost certainly affiliate with the IEEE, whose excellent email service I use myself.
* One of your former institutions may offer an alumni email address (or at least forwarding service). I believe this is more common in the US than Europe, but it's fairly arbitrary which institutions do and do not offer this.
Both of these can typically be set up very quickly and also have the advantage of being permanent, even when you change institutions.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: **TL;DR: Yes, you can, but, why not setup a permanent address.** E.g.,
```
<EMAIL>
```
You've already discovered that institutional email addresses don't serve you long-term, find yourself a long-term solution.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I don't think the premise holds. I have been on the hiring committee for many post docs, and I have never heard anyone mentioning the email address of a candidate. I could just as well cook up an imaginary argument saying that a hiring committee will find it unprofessional that you use your work email to apply for a job (that also does not hold). I would probably not go for wildly inappropriate handles, but normal ones are not a problem.
If you don't like using your gmail in professional settings, set up an alternative. I use <EMAIL> (which just happened to be available), and it is easy to set it up to forward to gmail. So you don't even need a mail server of your own.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: You're overthinking this.
<EMAIL> is just fine as a professional email address.
When people talk about unprofessional emails it's the bit before the domain that causes issues, not the domain itself (unless you've deliberately gone out of your way to pick an unprofessional one).
If you're unsure, you can always go with `firstname.lastname @ CommonlyUsedDomain`
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_5: ### Get Your Own Domain
The ultimate solution to this problem is to have your own domain. It does not have to cost a lot. For really good hosting, on the order of $60 to $100 per year. If you don't need much in the way of hosting - i.e., a really basic domain with very little storage because you just set it up with one email address that forwards everything to your gmail address - then it can cost much less.
Some people think you can only do that if you have a web site. That is not at all the case, but if you want to have a web site (a virtual CV) you can do that too.
Depending on the domain you get (e.g., lastname.com), you may be able to share it with family as well. Most full hosting includes (effectively) unlimited email accounts, subject to storage limits (which don't apply if you are forwarding everything).
While it is pretty obvious that "real University accounts" are at the whim of the University and could change at any time, even "alumni accounts" that have a fundraising reason to exist (and therefore are not likely to disappear suddenly in the name of cost-cutting) could have problems. Plus some hosting platforms (free or paid) can change over time (e.g., Verizon moved their "free" accounts to AOL's system). If you own your own domain, you can always move it to a different host if you don't like the original host.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_6: Leaving asside the issue of unprofessional looking free email services, the worst type of email to provide to a prospective employer, is an address which may stop working at any time.
It's likely the email address is still active simply because the system administrators haven't gotten around to removing it. If someone decided to do an audit of the email addresses, they would very likely delete all of the old addresses, without any warning.
You won't get in any trouble for continuing to use the email address, but it seems very risky to put it on a CV, since you have no way to know how long it will continue to be accessible.
it would be a bad look if an employer attempted to contact you, only to receive a bounce message stating that there is nobody at the university matching that address.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: I would say it's more unprofessional to receive an important email at `<EMAIL>` but never see it because they've either shut down your account or you grow distant from it and stop checking.
An email bounceback is not guaranteed in the event your email becomes disabled.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_8: >
> I have heard that writing an unprofessional email address, e.g., `<EMAIL>`, in the contact information section of an academic CV does not make a good impression on readers.
>
>
>
I disagree -- having an `@<EMAIL>.com` email address is no issue at all if this is the most up-to-date way to reach you.
>
> So, I am wondering whether I may use the still-active email of mine corresponding to X in my CV for that purpose.
>
>
>
I think the drawbacks outweigh the benefits. The benefit is that if X is a super prestigious university, `<EMAIL>` carries some "weight" to it and sounds impressive. But the drawback is that this is very confusing because you aren't currently at `X`. Anyone reading this would assume you are still working at `X`, or at least recently graduated, whereas this is actually an institution that you left a long time ago.
>
> My main concern is two fold: whether or not I am allowed to do that in view of X, and whether or not it is ethically a sound decision because it can mislead readers thinking that I am currently affiliated with X.
>
>
>
Ethically, I think there is no issue, but I think it is not in your interest to use the old email address as I (and others) have argued.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: You are overthinking this here. All you actually need is to present yourself as a reliable candidate. The contact in CV should work for them for longer time.
Using domain you are no more affiliated with may be frown upon. And noone can grant you will get the emails they wil send you anyway. You can read the email address <EMAIL> as "Average Joe is working/studying At X".
Using public domain is not badly seen unless it is <EMAIL>, <EMAIL>@<EMAIL> or <EMAIL>. Reasonable private address is as sufficient as the university one. if you cannot affiliate yourself with any university (because your studies are ending) there is no need to stress about that.
What you can actually do is using two contacts - one using Y.edu while you are still there and private one when your studies end. The hint what one to use is in your CV anyway, or they will answer to both.
Upvotes: 0
|
2021/02/01
| 691
| 2,935
|
<issue_start>username_0: Inspired by a recent question regarding [Crackpot research paper](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/162044/78796), I was asking myself, what to do, if you have a new theory or approach but it is not accepted in the community? You are not allowed to speak on conferences, your papers are rejected, and your voice is not heard in your scientific community.
What can you do? What have others done?<issue_comment>username_1: It is usually not the theory or the approach that is criticised, but the lack of evidence or scientific rigor.
If your theory or approach does not get accepted by the community, you should provide more evidence to convince them. If the proof becomes so good that the theory is no longer controversial, it will be accepted. This is how science works.
The stories you may hear about brilliant scientists not being believed are a typical case of *survivor bias*. Most crackpot theories are made by crackpots.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Let me suggest a somewhat broader point of view. We are mostly thinking about "the scientific method" and "the scientific process" in terms of observations, proofs, theories and so on. However, as it is clear from other discussions here, there is a great amount of "soft-skillish" element involved, as with any activity that concerns *communication*.
As such, "a paper" is a way to *communicate* / spread our ideas, and if some theory of ours doesn't take roots, it means that we aren't very efficient communicators. Thus, even if a theory is eventually published in a respected journal, still a bumpy publication road may indicate that our way of transmitting ideas isn't particularly appealing.
Therefore, there is certain psychology involved, too. For the sake of the argument, suppose the theory I am pushing forward is sound. Even in this case, people are wary of "grand theories", where they first have to accept certain premises, and then see what kind of great building is being constructed in front of them.
I'd say that a more pragmatic approach would be to attack specific individual problems and show that you can solve them. Yes, it might be based on a certain (unknown or unaccepted) theory, but why bringing it in right away? Here is a problem, here is my solution, answer obtained, knowledge increased, everyone happy. After several success stories of this kind one might try to unify them all under a certain common umbrella of a "proposal" or "presumption" and let it to take root.
In other words, we should remember that we write for the reader. Why readers should care about our theories or take time to ponder whether they are sound or not? Readers seek something for themselves, and the best way to push our agenda is to show how it aligns with possible goals of our readers, and give the readers tools for their tasks in bite-size chunks, if possible, without overwhelming them with grand structures.
Upvotes: 2
|
2021/02/01
| 492
| 2,067
|
<issue_start>username_0: I'm about to submit a paper where one of the authors is a past student who got a master's degree at my university a few months ago (I was his advisor). He plans to apply for PhD positions at the next deadline, but is presently unemployed. What should we write on the manuscript for his institution? "Master's graduate, previously at XXX University"? "Former student at XXX University" (this doesn't specify that he actually got a degree, though)? The dreaded "Independent researcher"?<issue_comment>username_1: He performed the research activity while affiliated with your group. You do **not** need to be PhD/Professor/Dean/whatever-self-important-academic-title to submit a research for peer review. If you really need a *title*, it can be "scientific assistant", or "pre-graduate student" or any linear combination/contraption of the terms.
Along this note, it is clear to me that even Master thesis work is still work (you are even thinking about publishing it), even if the student is learning, so I strongly feel he/she should be compensated, however, let's not derange from the question.
Judging "independent researcher" as dreaded is absolutely unintelligent. No offense intended, it is just a sign of the time, since some independent researcher are known to be independent from their brain, then all independent researcher are to be considered so. This is the most antiscientific way of thinking I can think of.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: Whenever I co-write a paper with former students of mine, based on their MSc thesis, we typically put XXX University as affiliation of both the student and me. The bulk of the work has been done when both of us were affiliated with this university, so this seems appropriate. The fact that the student is no longer affiliated with the university seems of minor importance to me.
Does the venue to which you submit demand that you specify the role of each author? If not, I'd just let it be. If so, consider "MSc alumnus", substituting the appropriate title for "MSc".
Upvotes: 2
|
2021/02/01
| 1,344
| 5,823
|
<issue_start>username_0: I have a friend whose has a professor who is forcing students to sign up for a website (that requires them to pay a monthly subscription fee) where they will be posting lectures, notes, assignments, etc. The professor did not inform them of this until a few days before the first class would be starting, meaning students who could not afford to pay it right away essentially couldn't attend class on the first day. We've had departments use different websites before, but this is the first time I'm hearing about someone using one that students have to pay out of pocket for. From what I know it functions the same way as Blackboard, but it isn't covered by the school. They are also expected to pay a lab fee and buy the textbook so it just seems like overkill, but I don't know if it's something that can be brought up as an issue to higher ups.<issue_comment>username_1: This is typically permitted or at least not forbidden.
It is much more common that you pay in one payment at the start of the course, as opposed to monthly, but it's essentially the same as a textbook rental, which is common and often digital.
If you think the price is too high, you can certainly complain.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: ### Talk to the student ombudsman about making a formal complaint.
You're paying for 13-ish weeks of education. If the professor's actions made it impossible for a large chunk of your class to receive the first week's lessons, I think that would be something that you would be justified complaining about to the relevant university authorities. Additionally, something like this would cause equity concerns, since a monthly subscription would cause more financial harm to some students than others, especially right now with the effects that Covid is having on the economy.
As a result, I would recommend that you talk to the student ombudsman at your university about making a formal complaint, and ask them what the proper process for it might be.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: This started as a comment but I decided to give an opposing view from the one in [Anonymus Physicist](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/162127/4249)'s answer.
As you might have guessed, **the answer to this question is location dependant**.
In my University **in the UK, this is explicitly forbidden**. It is, in fact, forbidden to ask students to register to any website or service in order to follow the course materials, even if the registration is free. There is a (fairly short) list of approved services, for which the University has ensured that they follow the (now local, but still based on GDPR) Privacy Laws, which students may be asked to use. This list is updated yearly, and I believe the process is substantially more complex than sending somebody an email saying "I want to use X in my classes next year".
As this is done to ensure compliance with Privacy Laws, I am fairly certain that all British Universities have the same clause. As the current Privacy Laws are still based on GDPR, originally passed as European Union legislation, I would guess that something similar is in effect through EU Universities as well.
(However, note that since UK Universities are ran much more like companies than public education institutions, as is common on the Continent, they are also much much more careful about any legal liability their actions might cause. So it might be less enforced outside of the UK.)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: To provide a concrete example of what might/might not be allowed, here are the [abridged] rules governing "digital learning resources" at my university (Ontario, Canada). The reference to "Ministry Guidelines" suggests that they would be similar across the province. Most of the rules below seem fair and sensible to me ... it wouldn't necessarily rule out the situation you described, unless the web site fees were too expensive/unaffordable (I've emphasized relevant bits below).
>
> In line with the Ministry Guidelines, [the University] permits the following:
>
>
> * Instructors may require students to purchase:
> + Access to DLR [digital learning resources] including e-textbooks, simulations, assessments, remote response devices and software for the duration of the course; ...
> * Instructors may require the use of DLR materials in the same fashion as they would use a printed textbook (i.e. as content that can be the source of assignments and assessments that are evaluated directly by instructors and their TAs. No more than 20 percent of a course grade may be from purchased DLR assessment tools (i.e. assignments assessed not by the instructor, but by the DLR itself), unless written approval is first obtained from the appropriate Associate Dean of the Faculty.
> * **Instructors should endeavor to keep the costs of DLR and devices at a level that students can reasonably afford. DLR costs should not exceed the total costs normally associated with non-DLR learning materials (i.e. printed textbooks) for a particular course. If DLR materials are in addition to printed learning materials for a course, they should not amount to more than an additional 10% of learning materials costs**.
> * **In situations where acquiring the DLR and/or device would cause undue hardship, instructors should provide students with an alternative assessment method or a more affordable option.**
> * Instructors must notify students if digital assessment is required or optional on their syllabus or course outline and/or on their course website before classes begin. There must be a clear outline of the percentage of the total course grade that relates to the use of DLR-specific assessments.
> * Faculty departments should maintain a record of all required and optional DLR used by instructors.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 2
|
2021/02/01
| 476
| 2,083
|
<issue_start>username_0: I had an interview for a lecturer position at a UK Russell group University 2 days ago and haven't heard back yet. From previous experience, I am usually given a call within 24 hours of being successful in an interview. I am holding off signing an offer by another University (not a great University) and being pressured to respond. I really want the first job but feel my chances are getting lower by the day?
I'd like to hear about other experiences and whether this timeline is unrealistic? I work in the field of science, not sure this makes a difference?<issue_comment>username_1: Depending on the customs and practices in a particular University, it can take from one to several days before the decision is made, approved, and the first candidate is contacted. "Several days" is typically below a week, but in rare cases can be longer.
If you are not contacted within 2-3 days, you may not be the first candidate. However, there is still a slim chance that the first candidate does not accept (for whatever reason), and the offer goes to you.
If you hold another offer, it is usually the best to let both Universities know the date, when you will make the final decision, based on what you have at this date. Everyone understands that candidates are usually applying in several places simultaneously, and HRs/HoDs can be quite efficient when they must (i.e. if they are interested in hiring you), and inefficient otherwise.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I worked at a Russel group university and was on the hiring committee a few times. Sometimes, we would have interviewed candidates on different days (because of availability). Thus, we had to wait to see all candidates before making an offer. Then, the offer would go to the top candidate and give them some time to answer. If the answer was positive, we would inform the rest of the candidates. If the first candidate rejects, we would move to the second appointable etc. Now with covid and all, things might move slower as well (e.g., candidate/committee availability, etc.)
Upvotes: 1
|
2021/02/01
| 452
| 1,808
|
<issue_start>username_0: On my hunt for a postdoc position, I have applied for some postdocs at many universities, but also I am applying for a postdoctoral fellowship (result date in July 2021) with a professor X at University A.
I can't help but think of a scenario where the two events will clash. Suppose I found a postdoc (university B) and started working on it, then a few months later I got the research fellowship with professor X. What's the right and "responsible" thing to do?
I can't do both because the fellowship doesn't allow it.
```
The applicant must not hold a permanent academic position before the start of the postdoctoral research fellowship
```
I know there a lot of assumptions going on here. But I'd like to know the answer for that particular scenario, should I quit the postdoc or let go of the fellowship?<issue_comment>username_1: A postdoc is not usually considered a permanent academic position. It is the most temporary of temp academia positions. The rule on not holding a "permanent" position likely means that you cannot be working as a (tenure-track) professor and then take the fellowship. This would be a question you would need to ask directly to the sponsors of the fellowship.
I also am not clear on how a postdoc and a Postdoctoral fellowship are different. These usually would be the same type of position in my mind. If so, the position at U of B versus the position with Prof X are really the same sort of thing. It would just come down to interests and pay at that point.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: If you receive a fellowship with a salary from a funding agency, it is normal to resign your current job to take the fellowship.
In a few cases you might keep your current job but have your duties changed to the fellowship research.
Upvotes: 0
|
2021/02/02
| 297
| 1,246
|
<issue_start>username_0: I already know of the app Researcher, but lately I found it is quite buggy and was wondering what people do to keep updated. Do you just join mailing list from selected journals or search daily for some keywords? Or is there something else I could use?<issue_comment>username_1: A postdoc is not usually considered a permanent academic position. It is the most temporary of temp academia positions. The rule on not holding a "permanent" position likely means that you cannot be working as a (tenure-track) professor and then take the fellowship. This would be a question you would need to ask directly to the sponsors of the fellowship.
I also am not clear on how a postdoc and a Postdoctoral fellowship are different. These usually would be the same type of position in my mind. If so, the position at U of B versus the position with Prof X are really the same sort of thing. It would just come down to interests and pay at that point.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: If you receive a fellowship with a salary from a funding agency, it is normal to resign your current job to take the fellowship.
In a few cases you might keep your current job but have your duties changed to the fellowship research.
Upvotes: 0
|
2021/02/02
| 261
| 1,078
|
<issue_start>username_0: How can I change my position/title that was mistakenly written in a published paper?<issue_comment>username_1: A postdoc is not usually considered a permanent academic position. It is the most temporary of temp academia positions. The rule on not holding a "permanent" position likely means that you cannot be working as a (tenure-track) professor and then take the fellowship. This would be a question you would need to ask directly to the sponsors of the fellowship.
I also am not clear on how a postdoc and a Postdoctoral fellowship are different. These usually would be the same type of position in my mind. If so, the position at U of B versus the position with Prof X are really the same sort of thing. It would just come down to interests and pay at that point.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: If you receive a fellowship with a salary from a funding agency, it is normal to resign your current job to take the fellowship.
In a few cases you might keep your current job but have your duties changed to the fellowship research.
Upvotes: 0
|
2021/02/03
| 3,419
| 14,458
|
<issue_start>username_0: Currently, the situation in academia is that graduating from a top PhD program is almost a requirement for landing an R1 tenure-track job. However, many of these graduates will not end up at similarly top-ranked schools for their job, and as such are at middle to lower ranked schools.
At these schools, their research is generally still along the lines of what they did in their PhD/postdoc, and PhD students as such follow them, doing this sort of research. But some research fields have little to no industry relevance— a PhD student working in such a field at a middle to lower ranked school would have bleak prospects for academia, and also related industry jobs.
These PhD students as such often have to switch fields to stuff like data science etc. (often through self-learning in online courses) which are unrelated to their original field of research, or end up on a string of postdocs endlessly searching for a job. Many may have been better off getting a job right after undergrad and slowly working their way up.
In such cases, is it immoral to advise these PhD students?<issue_comment>username_1: While the question in the title is a good one, your post also makes some assumptions, in some cases dubious, which are really worth investigating first:
* *But some research fields have little to no industry relevance* -- The truth is that almost all PhD research is highly esoteric and specialized, and unlikely to have any direct impact on industry. This is certainly true in my field (computer science), and probably true in many others to a greater or lesser extent. Why, then, do industry hiring managers even care that you got a PhD? Sometimes they don't, but often they value far more the qualities that having a PhD demonstrates, rather than the content of your research. For example: the ability to communicate well and sell ideas, the ability to solve technical problems, and the ability to dive deeply into learning what you do not understand -- these are fundamental skills gained during a PhD that are equally valuable in industry.
What I'm saying is: *industry relevance of your PhD research* is often not the top criteria for getting a good job; what matters far more is your general knowledge, technical skills, and communication and interpersonal skills.
* *These PhD students as such often have to switch fields to stuff like data science etc.* Data science is a rare case where PhD research in data science appears to be valued in industry; most other PhD fields are not as valued in industry *specifically*, only generally. Do you suggest that all academics should just start doing data science? I think that would have some positives, but overall be a very sad world only motivated by money, rather than a true pursuit of scientific knowledge.
* *Many have been better off getting a job right after undergrad and slowly working their way up* -- This is absolutely true, unfortunately. But do you also believe that *the only good reason to get a PhD is to get a job in industry?* That premise is absolutely false. What we can do and should do: raise awareness and encourage people to get a PhD for the right reasons, rather than the wrong ones. If you are thinking of spending 5+ years on a PhD, it should be because you truly want to do it, and you love the research you are doing for its own sake.
To answer your last question:
>
> *In such cases, is it immoral to advise these PhD students?*
>
>
>
It is immoral to be dishonest: to make the PhD students believe that their research will have direct practical relevance if it does not, or to lead them to expect a particular job in industry when they graduate which may be beyond their expected skillset.
To be sure, some professors are guilty of such dishonesty and immorality.
But no, it is not immoral to *advise* students in a non-industry-relevant topic, if the expectations are clear and the expected topic is of mutual interest. In fact it is one of the most beautiful and compelling parts of science, that we do not need to be constrained by what is currently practical in industry.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: It is not unethical for PhD students to study things that will not lead to employment. Learning and creating knowledge are inherent goods. It is obligatory to inform students about career strategies and the fact that certain career strategies have very low chances of success. E.g. copying your advisor's career path rarely works.
If your PhD students are doing productive work, your are obligated to pay them at least a living wage. I think more PhD students are abused with low pay during their PhD as opposed to low pay post-PhD.
There is copious evidence that in some fields getting a PhD is correlated with earning more, but I have seen zero evidence that the relationship is causal. It could be that *all* PhD students are sacrificing their future earnings.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: **A PhD is about learning to do research without supervision.** It is not only about mastering a particular niche topic. Indeed, even the students that do become professors are likely to eventually move onto topics that they did not study during their PhD. So, even given a near-certainty that one will not be competitive for a faculty position, a PhD is not necessarily a bad investment.
On the other hand, I am unmoved by those who say "spending six years doing something you love is worth it, even if it doesn't lead to anything." Or "I will not be a complete person without a PhD." A PhD is just a qualification (and not the only qualification!) for a research job. So, a PhD may indeed be a bad investment for students without a realistic path toward some kind of job that will benefit from having a PhD.
>
> In such cases, is it immoral to advise these PhD students?
>
>
>
Strictly speaking, morality is outside our area of expertise. It's one of those topics where everyone thinks they are an expert and few actually are. Still, I see two possible concerns here:
* **Informed consent.** The (opportunity) cost of doing a PhD -- in years and dollars -- is much higher than most young students realize. Further, most students are not knowledgeable about industry and view it as roughly akin to the pits of Mordor. If students were more knowledge about industry and had identified a specific, fulfilling, well-paying alternate career path, they might have made different choices.
* **Societal cost.** Many students are funded by tax dollars. These costs easily run into the six figures. If students do not use their PhD after graduation, one might ask whether that money could have better been directed toward fighting hunger or homelessness or disease or climate change.
Still, in STEM, I think we can say the answer is **no.** STEM students generally earn enough money to live on, and they learn skills that will be useful for a wide variety of careers. Further, the state of the academic job market is no secret. While we might be concerned that some students don't seem to be following an optimal or efficient career trajectory, such things are hard to judge -- everyone's goals are different, and "even the very wise cannot see all ends."
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: It's only immoral if you mislead them about their career opportunities post-graduation. You should help the student make an informed decision to do a PhD, and if they know what they're going into but choose to do it anyway, it's not yours to judge them for their decision. Refusing to supervise someone because you think they'd do better joining industry directly imposes your choices over theirs, and comes across as arrogant (the student would likely go to another university anyway).
If this concerns you, consider having a serious conversation with the student about their career goals before agreeing to supervise them. Make it clear that it isn't an "admissions interview" in the sense that you will supervise them if they want it, but you want to make sure they really want it because of the post-PhD career experience. That's important because "what do you want to do after the PhD?" [can be stressful for the applicant to answer if they believe admission is on the line](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/161702/do-phd-admission-committees-prefer-prospective-professors-over-practitioners).
Talking points with the prospective student:
* If they want to have an academic career, point out that it's hard, it's especially hard if a significant other / children is involved, it could require working on a "trendy" topic, etc.
* If they want to have a career in industry, then construct the PhD project to accommodate that. It doesn't have to involve a topic with industrial applications, but it should involve transferable skills. For example, in recent job advertisements I've seen for PhD graduates, some key skills asked for are Python/C++, SQL, statistical data analysis (multivariate analysis, sampling methods, etc), and so on. The more of these skills can be included in the PhD, the better.
* If they want to have a teaching-focused academic career, again try to get them the necessary experience: conducting classes, grading, maybe even helping with course design.
If you're really concerned, you could look over some job advertisements with the student (try searching for jobs that require 'phd in [your field]') and discuss how to acquire the core competencies asked for.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: I wouldn't be as anxious as you seem to be about this.
For sure, if a PhD is knowingly misled as to his future prospects after a particular research programme then that is immoral - and probably also very foolish of the research supervisor from an entirely amoral standpoint: he/she will make a bad name for themselves.
But I wouldn't say that industrial employers are always going to take relevant research experience as their *primary* criterion in deciding between candidates for research positions. Industry is largely about (or supposed to be) cooperative research and a clear communicative link between candidate and employer's existing researchers in thesis/publications and moreover conversationally at the job interview is what matters most of all, I would say. Cooperability is worth far more than individual brilliance in a team effort.
Sure, it's not nice to see someone sidetracked. But if that person made a decent fist of the project, wrote it up clearly and accessibly and presents themselves positively then they will get a position where they can show more of their talents. If not, it's time to try another *métier*.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_6: There are several careerist reasons to spend several years in a PhD program.
First of all, getting a PhD in some country is the most reliable way to immigrate to that country, for a lot of developed countries.
Second, having a PhD on your resume opens lots of immigration doors that are otherwise shut, even if you don't want to stay in the country where the PhD was based.
Third, the PhD salary may be much more than what you would earn in industry in your home country.
The fourth thing, which applies more to higher-ranked universities: during your PhD, you meet many competent people and do lots of networking, and this can help your career later -- especially if your undergrad was from a non-famous university.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: I think people are confused about one critical point. So, will try to clarify. The question was
Is it **IMMORAL** to advice PhD students...?
rather than
Is it **UNETHICAL** to advice PhD students...?
Most of the answers I read answer the question from an ETHICAL point of view. The rest try to tackle moral aspects. And there's the problem. If you go by the strict definition of the words, morals are personal views while ethics are instilled by a professional groups or organizations. For example, medical doctors and lawyers have "Code of Ethics" by which the abide by. Obviously, their code of ethics are different from one another.
Another problem is that ethics aren’t always moral and vice versa. For instance, there are people that have huge reservations with defense lawyers. They ask themselves "how could anyone defend such a monster?" Simply put, because that lawyer has an ETHICAL obligation to do so. And to do so to the best of his or her abilities.
The problem with a philosophical question such as this one, is that our morals are different. So, there will never be a straight answer for this question unless you specifically target a group of people you know share similar moral values to your and ask this question directly to them.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_8: When I went to grad school after two years doing technology consulting, I swore to myself that I would never work in industry again. I did go to a top grad school, and I did eventually end up with the job I now have at an R2, but it was a close enough thing that I thought about my alternate plans when I was on the job market. I decided that, if I didn't find an academic job, I would work as a peace activist. I hope it's clear that peace activism doesn't make any money and most peace activists support themselves by working minimum wage jobs, part time so that they can devote time to peace activism.
I might add that, before I was tenured, my salary was less than my salary before grad school without taking inflation into account, and, if you take into account inflation, then my salary still is and always will be less than my salary before grad school. But I am still reasonably comfortable financially and don't care.
I'm definitely in the minority, but there are others somewhat like me. I would not have done a PhD on a topic that had a direct tie to industry, and whether a topic had applications or not was and still is irrelevant to me. My view of pure mathematics is that it is an art. Does one ask a novelist or composer if their work has applications? (And do we tell people who have no realistic chance of becoming professional writers or musicians to stop studying writing or music?)
The PhD students I have had certainly understand they're not going to get a research-oriented job. They've decided that spending a few years learning and doing math while making barely enough to survive is worth it to them. I would not agree to work with a grad student who was delusional about their future prospects.
Upvotes: 1
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2021/02/03
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<issue_start>username_0: I started last November but I've been having this gut feeling that this project may not be the one for me
The big picture is that I'm not really happy with the theory- if I'm being totally honest with myself, I feel that the project is disconnected from what I truly enjoy.
It's not something I'm considering lightly but the last few months I've been working, I sometimes wake up dreading the day ahead. I can't even enjoy my weekends without feeling this way. A PhD is a big undertaking I know but surely I should be happy and enthusiastic about approaching it? Even with a supervisor as prominent as mine, I just feel like I'm not having a good time.
I'm going to leave it a few weeks but I may need to take some time to consolidate my plan.
To summarise:
1. I feel that the field doesn't satisfy me, after extensive literature review and discussions, it feels as if the field has no practical uses and is purely academic. I wanted something that's engaging and hands on- so far my supervisor hasn't been able to answer about the applications of the research.
2. I think that my mental health should also come into it, the thought of dealing with this project makes me feel utterly depressed, I wake up dreading every day I need to work on it.
3. Something else which I didn't mention is the admin and HR department is very poor. For starters, I'm on a funded project and they tried to invoice me £8k. Moreover my supervisor put in a purchase order for some software and books I need and it still hasn't been approved after 3 weeks.
Thanks for reading.<issue_comment>username_1: Your question has several aspects:
>
> I feel that the field doesn't satisfy me, after extensive literature review and discussions, it feels as if the field has no practical uses and is purely academic.
>
>
>
* Isn't your field of study? I mean you did your bachelor and master in the same field. Right? If you want to do a PhD in another field, I am afraid you need to study the basics of this field: Bachelor and Master.
* Of course, pursuing a PhD means doing academic work "mainly".
* I don't know what is your field, but in many disciplines (e.g. argumentation), there is no direct applications.
>
> I'm not really happy with the theory
>
>
>
In research, you have a problem and you need to solve it or approximate its solution. You don't have any power on the fundamentals and you cannot choose how the solution of the problem or the method that lead to that solution. You work as a researcher is to find that method after trying anything and reading a lot of papers, etc.
In summary, pursuing a PhD is not a necessity in life so if you are not happy about how academia works, I suggest you to quit especially if it is affecting your health and private life. Unfortunately, there are many things (e.g. relatively low salary, a lot of stress, etc.) that we need to accept when we decide to do research.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: Let's separate the issues:
1. You don't like the topic? This is not what you want? Reflect very thoroughly, give yourself a few days. Then decide. If necessary, make a hard cut. There is no point wasting 3-5 years of your life on something you do not enjoy at all. There is always potential for frustration during a PhD, but it should be just an episode, not the the underlying mood of the PhD.
2. The depression is in such cases often coming *directly* from something that is wrong with your situation. Many people here are quick in recommending therapy, but I personally believe in first trying to get rid of the situation that causes you feeling badly (of course, this is not true if depression has always been an issue with you, I talk specifically about situational depression). Fix the situation, and you'll feel better. A clear decision (see point 1) may help.
3. Administration is a notoriously fickle thing. Rarely you enjoy the luck of an efficient administration. Don't let that ruin your day. I do not understand the invoice for 8k. For what is this? Fees? You should make sure you get a studentship, I really do not recommend paying fees for a PhD. In any case, this should probably be the least of your worries - it should be the worry of your prof.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: I just read your question and I decided to sign up here so that I can answer your question.
As you say PhD is a long "journey", you are going to spend several years working on that project, and I really think that you should "believe in" your project to keep motivated. If it helps, I'm in my 3rd year of PhD, I am studing microbial ecology, which is not exactly my field (I studied Biotechnology and little ecology), but I was interested in the field I could see why it was important. Although I don't see future applications in industry (at least right now), I am aware of the importance of doing "basic research" and builging a general knowledge that help to better understand the world...
During my 2 and a half years I have had good and bad moments, and sometimes, talking with my supervisors helped (I must day that I'm very lucky because they are great persons), but most of the time, motivation depended on me, on seeing through the "bad days" and working on mental health, which includes not working on the week-ends, spending time out of the office, doing sport, talking about my work-related problems with other people in and outside academia, taking holidays...
This is my experience, if you have just started and you already have this feeling, I think you should look for other project or other type of job. Sometimes, deep inside, you know what you want but you are a bit scared/worried/embarrased to confront it (I don't want to make any assumptions). Problems with invoices, books, money etc are usual in all labs (in my experience), so you might encounter similar problems if you move to other lab. But mental health is so important!! If talking to your supervisor doesn't help, try other people around in the lab, with the experience of doing a PhD. You should be the most motivated person about your project, if you cannot see its usefulness, or you don't like it, it will get worse... In the next years, you will need to defend your project in papers and dissertations, you will have to read a lot of literature related to that to build a good knowledge, so at least you should enjoy reading and learning about that topic, if not, everyday will be a torture...
In any case, don't feel bad about your supervisor if you finally decide to leave, I know it can be embarrasing after the month he/she has spent teaching you etc, but if you think it is the right decision, you will be grateful in the future ;)
Hope this helps!
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
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2021/02/03
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<issue_start>username_0: Long story short, I realise that I do not like the field of study I have chosen and I Cannot see myself having the ability to successfully complete a PhD in it. I studied physics and went onto enrol on an applied mathematics PhD- whilst it doesn't sound that far removed from physics, I am a physicist at heart and I do not have any enthusiasm for the field I thought I'd love.
I guess the number 1 rule was to listen to my true feelings- I feel genuinely depressed at the thought of having to carry out the work.
Moreover, I feel that my supervision team have taken far too much on as my principle supervisor takes over a week to reply to things I send them, even after they request I do so. I feel that the best option for me is to resign and take some time to evaluate what I really want to study--I'm a physicist at heart and still want to pursue a PhD, just not in applied maths. My question is two-fold:
1. How do I approach this with my supervisor?
2. Is it okay to quit a PhD?<issue_comment>username_1: Yes, it's OK to quit if what you signed up for is really not what you want (professionally). Plenty of people who start PhD's don't finish.
That said, in your particular case perhaps consider finishing the year. Use the time to learn the kind of applied mathematics you could use when (if) you return to physics. It's too late for your department to use your slot for someone else. They might save a little money if they are supporting you - but if you are earning that support by teaching or grading then your leaving has no financial value to them.
I don't think you should decide this rashly. You should be able to talk about it with your advisor. Perhaps try to set up an appointment (virtual if necessary) rather than discussing in email.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: There are a few options you might want to consider. First, you can always change your supervisor and many departments are quite supportive in helping students find their best matches. Did you check if there are other professors in your department that share your interests? Chances even are that there are professors in your department that have a seat in the physics department as well. Department name really doesn't matter as far as doing a Ph.D. is concerned. I wouldn't be surprised to find out there are professors in your department that have a background in physics and do physics-related stuff. You can even start talking to professors in the physics department of your university and see if they are willing to co-supervise you jointly with a professor from the math department. Once you find such a professor in the physics department, it is not usually hard to find a professor in your department (math) to take on the role of shared supervision but act as a place-holder of some sort and just loosely supervise you. You have a better chance with that if you approach more senior professors, even semi-retired ones. Since I assume you applied to a math department for a reason, your interests lie on the boundaries of computational and mathematical physics and not experimental physics. Assuming that, you have a good chance to work out a place to do work on what you want without withdrawing from your program.
If it all doesn't work for you, you can always quit the program and apply for another one. However, make sure you have a sound explanation for your decision when you apply to your next program. Your next program/supervisor (rightfully) would have the right to be skeptical/conscious about your past experience, but if you approach it all it is not the end of the world and you can definitely succeed in finding another position.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: It is absolutely too early. I do not know if this is a genuine feeling. In case it is the answer would be quit. But for what I know, and having had my own PhD experience as well as having witnessed the experience of at that time fellow PhD students as well as that of current PhD student, I can only say wait.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_4: Before you talk to your supervisor there must be people you can talk to in your department. At my university I had "annual reviewers" who I could go to when I had problems with my PhD. Discuss your feelings with someone like that before moving on to your supervisor.
The second thing to bear in mind is that PhDs are not fixed in stone and often go in all sorts of directions. If you as the researcher want to take your PhD in a more physics-y direction and you think your supervisor can advise you that is a possibility. People can also change supervisors: if you think there are academics in the maths department that do sufficiently physics-y things you could switch to being supervised by them. If all of these options fail then you could consider dropping out.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: >
> How do I approach this with my supervisor?
>
>
>
Honestly. This is a very good conversation to have with them. As an advisor, I would definitely want to know about my students' concerns.
Of course, you should try and suss out what kind of a person your advisor is, and what are the options you have if you quit.
>
> Is it okay to quit a PhD?
>
>
>
That depends on where you are. No one can force you to stay in the program. However, some universities may ask you to repay scholarships or stipends you have received (which means a non-trivial amount of money you'll need to return). One option that you could discuss is whether you can leave after two or three semesters with an MSc degree. This transition is not uncommon (at least in US universities).
On the moral side of it - yes it's definitely okay to have a change of heart. Motivation and drive are crucial to a successful PhD. Ultimately, a PhD is a significant financial investment (see [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/135211/why-is-getting-a-phd-considered-financially-irresponsible-by-some-people/135217#135217)), even in lucrative disciplines like computer science. You don't want to sink that money into something you hate.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: “Is it ok to quit the PhD?”
Morally? Of course! It’s completely Ok to explore something, decide that you don’t like it and quit, before digging yourself a deeper grave and pulling down others with you. And frankly, if you really feel that way about your research, it’s better for you to quit- research can be hell for people who don’t like their work.
Legally? I don’t know about the rules governing these things for your university. Some require you to repay the scholarship money and that could be a problem if you are short on cash.
“How do I approach this with my supervisor”
Say to him what you wrote here. Be honest about this. You don’t think you are a good fit for this research and are not passionate about it. That’s it. You didn’t do anything wrong. Besides, any supervisor worth his salt would know that a de-motivated grad student is a drag on research.
Upvotes: 0
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2021/02/03
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<issue_start>username_0: I have come to know a prominent EU university in which it is an official policy that examination questions will be external to the lectures.
For example, say, they are teaching Probability & statistics. Say, they didn't lecture on Poisson distribution. They will put a question on Poisson distribution. If there are 5 questions to answer, they will somehow keep the questions within the syllabus but external to the lecture slides and/or handouts.
I felt that very strange.
Is this policy very common among universities?<issue_comment>username_1: If its on the syllabus, then you will be expected to know it. But its not necessary that all material on the syllabus will be taught by lecture.
It might be that the material is part of the prerequisites for the module. It might be part of the recommended reading for the module.
It might be that the question can be solved via application of knowledge taught in the lectures, but this is application of the knowledge to a different situation. For example: I might teach the concepts behind a hypothesis test, and give examples using t-tests. I might then set questions using the Poisson distribution. As long as I have the appropriate formulas or probability tables, I'd except students to be able to transfer the concept of a hypothesis test from the t distribution to the Poisson distribution.
I would also be aware that this was a difficult question, and would be to separate the top students from the good students, but it would demonstrate that someone had understood the concepts rather than just learning to plug numbers into formulae.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I personally stay away in exams from material not covered in assignments or tutorials, simply out of fairness rather than by a policy requirement. Once can always argue that, if it’s in the course description or the syllabus, it’s also fair game even if not covered in class but to me at least that’s over the line.
There has to be some flexibility to allow instructors to go beyond what was strictly in the lectures: in an absurd example one could argue that, if the instructor showed in class how to multiply 3x5 but not 4x7, then the first example would be legitimate a legitimate exam question but not the second.
A reasonable boundary is to expect that *topics* covered in class - rather than specific material covered in class - are fair topics. In the example of my previous paragraph, both are examples of multiplication so both would be fair questions in my mind.
Thus, it is possible to have an exam question on the Poisson distribution if the question deals with properties common to distributions rather than a unique property of the Poisson distribution, provided that distributions were a topic covered in class or tutorials.
I do not know examples where allowing exams questions not covered in class is a *policy*. I know of plenty of instructors (including myself) who make it a habit of not asking in exams the same examples covered in class, although the exam questions are on *topics* covered in class.
Upvotes: 2
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2021/02/04
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm a junior research engineer of AI.
Looking for the code in the particular paper, I found two git-hub repositories.
However, I think it's weird that how they show different performance, even though they are based on exact same paper and have a similar structure at the code level.
(Of course, I didn't compare the code line by line)
Is it possible, and common things?<issue_comment>username_1: It's certainly possible. You just demonstrated that. (I assume you have compared implementations in the same language, compiled the same way.)
I don't think it's surprising. Implementing any reasonably complex algorithm calls for many choices that can affect performance to different degrees - choice of data structures and libraries, efficient use of space or memory.
Whether you should or want to compare the implementations "line by line" to ferret out the differences depends on how the difference in performance matters to you.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: It's certainly possible. A simple example is, perhaps one code is [parallelized](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_computing) and the other isn't. More technical differences could be, perhaps one code uses X method to perform numerical integration and the other uses Y, and X is better than Y for small datasets and inferior for larger ones.
As for whether it's common, I imagine it's uncommon for complex codes to have the same performance. That's how one can tell they're written independently.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: In the machine learning field, it is in fact surprising if you *could* manage to get similar results. Unfortunately, we are still far away from reproducible science. Authors do not disclose different parameters of their model and the tuning process and since many of the improvements are marginal, it is quite possible that a small tweak in the results causes the performance to decline drastically.
Upvotes: 2
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2021/02/04
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm a PhD student in Physics and I'm very worried about something. I have participated in two conferences in the last year. The first one was in a field related to the one I'm studying and the second exactly related to the field I'm studying.
In these two conferences something got me *very* worried. I've watched the seminars and during the seminars I didn't have any idea of questions to ask. On the other hand I saw people raising all sorts of interesting questions that led to all sorts of interesting discussions.
This got me extremely worried because (1) I think that asking the right questions is the most important thing in order to do a good research and (2) asking questions and starting discussions seems like the way collaborations get started and certainly having people to collaborate with is very important.
After going through this in the first conference, in the second I've watched the lectures trying hard to find things to ask, but I only got ideas of some things that I felt could be so stupid that people could look at me as someone who isn't really good at the subject.
Now the main worry I have is: having ideas of questions to ask during seminars like that is something that comes with experience (and therefore all this is just reflecting the fact that I'm inexperienced) or is it some sort of ability that either we have or we don't? This is being quite alarming to me, because I fear that this might tell that perhaps I just have no ability to do research, which would be terrible to me since I *really do want to follow this career*.
Finally, a disclaimer. I know some people might say "talk to your advisor about this", but I really never had conversations about the process of doing research with him. In fact the way he works is more like "calculate this, then we talk about the calculation" and he really does not have much patience to talk about much else, so that I don't really feel comfortable bringing this up.<issue_comment>username_1: A conference sessions might have 50 people in it (at least in the conferences I go to), and yet there will only be 3 or 4 questions on each talk, even if five people have questions for every 1 that has the guts to put their hand up and ask it that most people don't have questions for most talks. You might also notice that its the same people that ask questions about every talk.
I wouldn't worry about it, especially if you are just a PhD student. One thing I would say is that questions should be asked from a position of ignorance - that is you ask a question because you genuinely don't know the answer and want to. Not because you think you can trip the speaker up, or make yourself look clever, so questions that you think will make you look dumb might be the best questions.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Ian's answer is already good, as is the link to "How to ask stupid questions". But I wanted to touch on the last paragraph of your question:
>
> Finally, a disclaimer. I know some people might say "talk to your advisor about this", but I really never had conversations about the process of doing research with him. In fact the way he works is more like "calculate this, then we talk about the calculation" and he really does not have much patience to talk about much else, so that I don't really feel comfortable bringing this up.
>
>
>
This is something you should seek a solution for. It doesn't have to come from your supervisor. One of the most inspiring courses I took was titled "Better Science for Computer Scientists" and it was filled with a mix of Master and PhD students, and led by a veteran professor. Much of the course was really a view at what really happens behind the scenes - how to people behave at conferences, what do they do in breaks during conferences, what really goes on at the editing desk of a journal and so forth. The key was that *academics are people*, there is much more of a human and social dimension to academia than you might imagine seeing it from a distance as an undergrad student.
One of the things the professor pointed out is that a lot of academics like being magicians: pulling complicated results out of a hat and making it seem like that's easy. We all like other people to think that we're amazingly smart. But magicians' tricks take a lot of practice that you don't see.
What I encourage you to do is talk more with people you're not answerable to. It's a bit easier to have an honest talk about how things really work with someone that isn't also deciding on your thesis. So have conversations with your peer PhD students, and talk with faculty members that you think are nice people. If you're finding this difficult, then that's definitely a warning sign that there may be some impostor syndrome at work; "I don't dare ask such things because I'll be found out!" indeed.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Don't worry too much about it. I still have issues coming up with good questions, especially without thinking that I'm asking a stupid question.
One thing to latch on to is if the presenter is looking at a temperature or pressure series is to ask "Why did you choose those temperatures/pressures?"
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_4: I am the opposite. I always have many questions and try to limit myself to one or at most two.
If you truly never have questions about a seminar, it can mean a number of things:
1. You believe the speaker is infallible and therefore you believe everything they say unquestioningly.
2. You find the seminar easy or obvious. You really don't *need* to ask anything.
3. You are scared of looking stupid. You can bet that half the audience are wanting to know the answer to this question and they are all unwilling to ask first. Very often I have asked a question and a number of people have turned to me and nodded approvingly or said, "Yes, I was wondering that".
4. You are shy. This was something that I had to overcome. Things get easier the more you do them. The first question is the hardest.
Note: I was twice offered a ***job*** at one seminar, by a scientist who had a big team and lots of funding. He did this in front of the audience! I asked what seemed to me to be a seemingly obvious question. He was impressed that what had seemed obvious to me was actually very rarely spotted by those in the field. (It wasn't even my speciality - I was attending out of interest). I didn't accept the job because I was involved in other things.
**Conclusion**
If you literally never have a question at any seminar then either you are a genius and you have understood everything, or the subject matter is very basic. If you understand everything then you can ask, e.g. "Why did you choose to do it that way - couldn't you have done it this way instead?" or "That was fascinating, thank you for such a clear explanation, what is your next step going to be?" If you really are fascinated by the subject, you can even drop a hint that you would be interested on researching the same subject and say *what part of it* - it might even pay off with a studentship or a collaboration.
Finally, don't try to 'think of questions', that is completely pointless and will come across as insincere and annoying. Ask about what you don't understand or think could have been done better or where the research will lead.
---
P.S. If you agree with this answer completely, then please upvote it and accept. If you disagree then please **ask me a question** about the part(s) you disagree with. It is much more tactful to ask than simply tell someone they are wrong. If there is a point I made that you are not sure will work, **ask me a question**, e.g. Has it actually worked for me in real life - can I justify my answer? Stack Exchange is all about asking questions and you have just asked a very good question, i.e. *"Should I be worried that I don't have ideas of questions to ask during seminars?"*! Practise asking questions on Stack Exchange.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: I had the very same problem. Practice helps. You could make a goal to ask one question on a conference. Then on the next conference, two questions, etc...
About what to ask: for me, questions come when I ask myself: "what would I ask if I had to continue this study from tomorrow?".
About being afraid of asking silly questions: you can begin with "You might have already said it in the presentation, but I just want to ask..."
But don't worry about asking something too basic. People at conferences come with different backgrounds. Nobody knows what your curriculum was. Also, I think people rarely ask questions that are "groundbreaking".
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_6: Some of the other answers here are good, particularly the point that as a PhD student you are still relatively junior and no one really expects students to ask questions in conferences, or even departmental seminars. I think the key message is not to beat yourself up about this.
Like yourself I generally do not come up with questions during talks - essentially I tend to think about things slower and (hopefully!) in more depth. I find I will sometimes come up with good questions hours or even days later after a little more thought. If I am sufficiently interested I will email the speaker with them and on more than one occasion collaborations have been born out of that email. Additionally, social anxiety means I am reluctant to raise my hand even when I do have a good question to ask.
Is being able to quickly come up with and ask questions a useful skill? Absolutely, aside from anything else it will help get you known in your field, which has clear benefits for career progression. Additionally as a skill it tends to correlate with being able to quickly gain a reasonable understanding of a paper, another useful ability.
However, is it a requirement for forging an academic career? No. There are many other ways to demonstrate your abilities and other abilities besides being able to quickly digest talks.
Returning to anecdote, despite essentially never raising my hand in conferences or seminars I landed a series of decent to good postdoc jobs before eventually getting a permanent position at a top-tier university (also in physics) - so it doesn't have to be a barrier (though insert caveat about survivorship bias).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: I agree with Anon21: this issue has probably to do with the way you reason, i.e. "absorbing" the content at talks and drawing conclusions later, vs. reacting immediately. I experience the same. There might be some reinforcement to the process by some extent of impostor syndrome, which is absolutely normal at PhD stage (and later, too). At the same time, I do see that people who "work" either way look more brilliant at conferences. Again, I agree with the advice you've been given: talk to your peers in different settings, in which you feel more comfortable. Reactivity at talks, anyway, partly improves with experience.
Upvotes: 0
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2021/02/04
| 1,349
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<issue_start>username_0: I recently worked on a research project for a client of my organization who was chosen for a highly prestigious lecture in my field (delivered annually). As part of convention, the lecturer is also afforded the opportunity to publish, ahead of the lecture, a single-author-only invited paper in a high-profile journal. From what I understand, no other authors are "allowed" to appear, but having been the sole person responsible for producing literally **all** tables, models, and visualizations in the manuscript, I still feel strange about this.
I wrote all code used to wrangle and analyze the data and am listed in the acknowledgments for "data and statistical support". Would it be acceptable (conventional, ethical, etc.) for me to list this publication alongside the others (for which I am listed as author) on my CV?
If so, what's the appropriate format? Can it be *Only-Author, [Publication Title]* or *Only-Author **et al.**, [Publication Title]*?
This kind of scenario does happen somewhat frequently at my organization, so just thought I'd try to get some insight to avoid raising any eyebrows for grad program applications/future employers. Thanks in advance!<issue_comment>username_1: >
> Would it be acceptable (conventional, ethical, etc.) for me to list this publication alongside the others (for which I am listed as author) on my CV?
>
>
>
No. If you are not on the author list in the publication, never imply that you are on the author list in your CV. It's dishonest, even if you deserved to be on the author list.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Assuming that you really cannot be an author of this paper (about which I have doubts, see my comments), you cannot list it as a publication in your CV.
An alternative, ethical way of taking credit for your efforts would be as follows: You can have a separate section in your CV called "Additional research experiences". There you could mention this project and the tasks that you performed in it.
This would be worth more than nothing, but also less than a publication.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: The other answers/comments provide accurate information from the perspective of academia, where authorship (including co-authorship) is an important metric for achievement and prestige, and where a lot of attention is therefore given to its fair allocation.
I'll add a perspective from someone who has jumped around between academia, industry, and the grey area in between. **In many instances in industry and general-public-focused publications in particular, it is only the prestigious seniors who get "credit in the byline".** Or sometimes the publication channel limits the number of authors that can be listed and the contributors are expected to sort it out. When I was starting in my field, I was multiple times the grunt who did a lot of the work for such papers but wasn't listed as author, and in recent years have sometimes become the prestigious senior.
It is good form\*, where someone has done a significant part of the work but isn't listed as official co-author, for them to be **credited in the text or at least a footnote**, e.g. "the author acknowledges the significant contributions of <NAME>, Jr. to this paper". But whether this happens depends largely on how much priority the prestigious senior puts on it, and often editors will resist. In particular, if the editors feel they have scored a coup by getting <NAME> to write a paper on "Future trends in intradisciplinary factology", they may not want to dilute the prestige by an overly fulsome acknowledgement that implies it was effectively ghostwritten.
As others have said, **you can't claim authorship for a paper where you are not a listed author in the "Publications" section of an academic CV**. But you can -- and should -- **mention it under "Additional research experience"** or somesuch. For the purposes of job hunting -- when you are still fairly junior -- or grad school applications, it should be still be treated as very **positive evidence of your ability to do and write about research**. As you become more senior, for a while it will hang around your CV as a shoe-horned unloved stepchild as you build up more conventional publications. (Many of us have them, the "it-felt-like-a-great-accomplishment-at-the-time-but-I-didn't-quite-realize-it's-not-peer-reviewed" type of publication) You will eventually axe it from your CV once it's long enough for it not to matter.
I'd like to hope the "prestigious journal" in question isn't an academic journal, since if they are, they really ought to know better. So probably even you had been listed, it wouldn't have counted as peer-reviewed.
*\*I recognize from the perspective of academia, it is much more than "good form", it is an obligation. I'm deliberately using this weaker statement here to emphasize that the culture outside or on the boundaries of academia can be different.*
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: What does "producing the models" mean to you?
Did you choose something from a drop-down menu and massage the code a bit?
Or did you formulate a mathematical model entirely from scratch based on this person's verbal description of the relevant assumptions?
I grant it will be somewhere in between, but I am just sketching the end points of a continuum of possibilities. On the one end, you should just quit yer bitching, but on the other, yes, I agree you have been had, and if this is a structural/systematic problem in your organisation, you could try and bring this to the attention of its leadership.
Upvotes: 1
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2021/02/04
| 841
| 3,651
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<issue_start>username_0: I’m a Postdoc. Last year I was given some data from a former postdoc. My PI told me that the data had never been published and. I worked on that project night and day, designed the analysis plan, did tons of analysis, came up with a novel technique (which hasn’t been used in the literature before). I got pretty interesting results and last week when I showed my results to my PI and the former Postdoc, my PI said that she (the former Postdoc) should take the lead of the project and be first author.
I’m a bit confused, I didn’t know they had that in mind. The former Postdoc didn’t analyze the data, is it ok she gets first authorship with my design and analysis? She said she could write the manuscript (but of course she’ll need help writing methods because she didn’t do that). I felt bad about this. I do understand that it’s her data from her previous project, but I wish they had told me before I did all the work. Am I wrong, or should I be considered first author?<issue_comment>username_1: Let me formalize my comment. The *effort* someone puts in to a paper may have a lot or only a little to do with the intellectual content. In the worst case, the work is just grunt work: watching solutions boil and bubble and taking notes.
The more important questions for *lead authorship* is who drove the intellectual content here. For example, who first noticed that this is an important and "interesting" set of questions to ask? Who formulated the hypotheses? Who designed the experimental structure if it wasn't completely standardized. Who defined the standard of "success" in answering the important questions.
The person(s) who do that are the authors. Designing programs to analyze the data may be as important as that, or not, depending on the needed innovation.
I'm not going to try to judge your case (and couldn't, in any case), but those are the important questions.
I hope it is something more essential than lab politics that is the determinant here, but that happens also.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: This sound like a classic case of clinician-statistician interaction. Both sides tend to under-appreciate the contribution of the other, and conflicts like this happen a lot. For the future, the lesson is to discuss authorship as early as possible when engaging on any projects.
For now, I'd add two things to consider:
1. Even assuming that the entire intellectual contribution so far has come from you, the other postdoc would not be entirely freeloading. The first author has a lot of responsibilities, such as deciding on the overall presentation, writing the manuscript, presenting the results in conferences, responding to reviews etc., and I personally think that is a significant intellectual effort. It may be unfair that you were passed over, but in the end the other person will still have to put in a lot of intellectual work, while you are free to move on to other projects.
2. Ask yourself if your analysis method is a sufficiently strong advance to stand as a publication on its own, i.e. could you write a methods paper using some simulated or publicly-available data. If so, pitch that to your PI, along the lines of *"I believe I have found some more general methods to improve PET data analysis, and I would like to write that up with a technical focus, in an appropriate journal. By the way, this won't actually need [other postdoc]'s data"*. The PI will surely see the cause of this, but as long you're being honest and tactful, nobody should be offended, and whatever the outcome, this should help all parties understand each other's contribution better.
Upvotes: 3
|
2021/02/04
| 590
| 2,248
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<issue_start>username_0: I study Msc in Belgium and I just got my exam results back. This was my first semester and I was 5 weeks late into the semester due to visa and immigration issues. Out of 4 exams I got 16-15-15-9 out of 20 scale which is like A, B+, B+, F on the US scale. This is the first time in my life that I get F for an exam and I’m freaking out as I wanna apply for PhD starting this summer. The F is not directly related to my field of research but I have no idea how it will affect my chances for PhD admissions. The exam resit is apparently normal in Europe but I haven’t had any experience like this as I did my undergraduate in the UK. Please tell me if I’m screwed already? I did apply for the exam evaluation but I’m not counting on it. I only need one mark to pass the subject but I have to deal with three professors for this subject.<issue_comment>username_1: At my university (which is not in Belgium, but not too far away), when you take a resit for a course, your final transcript will only show the best of the two grades you obtained; the worst of the two grades will basically disappear. You might want to check if the same holds for your university. If so, you can fix your entire problem by doing well on the resit.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Exam resits are quite common at Belgian universities; in the more difficult MSc courses 15 - 25 % of students will fail their first try.
For a PhD in Belgium, a typical formal requirement is an average of 14 or better; if you have 16 or more that should give your application a bonus point.
At this point there's no reason to bury your PhD plans, but you should aim for results on the level of your other 3 courses in general. Definitely go to the exam feedback - not as a way to try to change the result, but to learn what was missing and what you should focus on for the resit. In the end, a result of 14 or better in the resit will be more helpful for a PhD application than arguing your way to a 10 from the first exam.
Regarding the timing for PhD program applications, if you have a 2 year MSc program and you want to start a PhD in Belgium then it's better to wait at least until December / January of your 2nd year with the applications.
Upvotes: 2
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2021/02/04
| 573
| 2,117
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm wondering which are the best search engines for scientific books. I know google book, but here I'm not able to find books which contain the specified key words and published by a specific editor. E.g. key word "real-time system", editor "wiley".
Could you suggest me which are the best search engines to reach this goal please?<issue_comment>username_1: If it has to be a free one, I recommend [LENS](https://lens.org/).
Search for `real-time system`, then under "Publication Type", tick `book`, and under "Publisher", opt for `<NAME> & Sons, Inc`.
[Here are the 208 results](https://www.lens.org/lens/search/scholar/list?q=real-time%20system&p=0&n=10&s=_score&d=%2B&f=false&e=false&l=en&authorField=author&dateFilterField=publishedYear&orderBy=%2B_score&presentation=false&stemmed=true&useAuthorId=false&publicationType.must=book&publisher.must=John%20Wiley%20%26%20Sons,%20Inc.).
Other than that, there are commercial databases like *Web of Science* or *Scopus*. It is best to ask your university library whether they have a subscription to them.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: There are a number of non-commercial meta-catalogs that cover the stock of various (often national) libraries. For example, Germany, Austria and Switzerland have a common cross-library interlibrary loan catalogue called "Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog". In the United States, there is the Catalogue of the Library of Congress, which probably has the largest coverage in the country. Italy has the "OPAC SBN" of the "Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico".
In terms of coverage, meta cataloges like these represent the submerged part of the iceberg that Google Books only sees the tip of. However, only small parts, if any, of the inventory are accessible for full-text search.
The use of these catalogs is free of charge, but small fees are charged for checking out books or for ordering copies of book sections, journal articles, or other documents.
In general, it's always a good idea to talk to a librarian for particular queries or about search strategies.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
|
2021/02/05
| 365
| 1,520
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<issue_start>username_0: This is probably a very USA-specific question: My university is implementing a new sensitivity training framework. This is so new that no information about it can be found in faculty handbook, school website, or anywhere I tried. This framework appears to be completely independent from colleges or the senate. I am one of the lucky few to be "invited" to join the training.
The invitation letter stated that such trainings are *not mandatory*, but in light of a recent "incidents" such trainings will of great value to me. My chair and dean all said these are optional yet they strongly implied that I should just go with it ("There's no reason to cause trouble").
I don't yet have tenure. So for me, in the current climate, is *not mandatory* a code phrase for *mandatory*?<issue_comment>username_1: I just read a couple of your posts about how you interact with your students. Sensitivity training isn't optional. The people who will be voting on your tenure think you have a problem. Frankly, I agree with them.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: No, in general 'Not Mandatory' doesn't mean 'Mandatory', also not in the 'current climate'.
However, in your case, given the advice of your chair and dean, I'd say it would be unwise not to go to these trainings. You could even gain something, both in the sense that you learn something and in the sense that you will get in a better view from the chair and dean. It will cost you some time, but not going might cost you more.
Upvotes: 2
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2021/02/05
| 863
| 2,477
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<issue_start>username_0: I am long retired (2008) In the field of cardiology I am a pariah, there is an embargo on my publishing in major journals. I have therefore been forced to go to obscure journals where the referees are not from the cartel that ban me. <NAME>. and <NAME>. I have so far with these journals persuaded them to accept only cost covering fees, i.e. reduced from over £2000 to around £500. It is embarrassing to do this and with 5 papers already done this way in last 2-3 years hurts my measly pension. I now have a sixth to submit and it is again ground breaking and against the establishment's dogma, the reason for the embargo. I have tried various funding agencies but there are none I can find to get funding of anysort, e.g. I need an updated Mac.<issue_comment>username_1: The *Directory of Open Access Journals* (DOAJ) currently lists [1,845 open access journals in the field of Medicine](https://doaj.org/search/journals?source=%7B%22query%22%3A%7B%22filtered%22%3A%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22bool%22%3A%7B%22must%22%3A%5B%7B%22term%22%3A%7B%22bibjson.apc.has_apc%22%3Afalse%7D%7D%2C%7B%22term%22%3A%7B%22bibjson.other_charges.has_other_charges%22%3Afalse%7D%7D%2C%7B%22terms%22%3A%7B%22index.schema_codes_tree.exact%22%3A%5B%22LCC%3AR%22%5D%7D%7D%5D%7D%7D%2C%22query%22%3A%7B%22match_all%22%3A%7B%7D%7D%7D%7D%2C%22size%22%3A50%2C%22sort%22%3A%5B%7B%22created_date%22%3A%7B%22order%22%3A%22desc%22%7D%7D%5D%7D) that do not charge any publication fees.
You could use the advanced query functions to the left to narrow down your discipline (e.g. to Internal Medicine), and browse through the list of journals to find some that may be suitable to you. That way you would not need any funding at all.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Suggestion 1: I notice you've spent most of your career at the University of Cambridge. Are you a member of the Cambridge Philosophical Society? Providing financial support to a member in this situation sounds like the sort of thing they might consider to be within their remit (assuming that they don't know of some good reason why you really *should* be a pariah).
Suggestion 2: I believe you first expressed the view that a cartel of referees was rejecting your papers from mainstream journals for scientifically unsound reasons c. 2007. Even assuming that you were completely right about that at the time, are you sure the cartel is still operating after all these years?
Upvotes: 3
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2021/02/05
| 2,262
| 9,956
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<issue_start>username_0: I have recently been accused by someone of stealing their idea and doing the work required. In fact they had come to me to do, let's say, a literature review because they didn't have the expertise to do one themselves. They gave me an umbrella topic and told me to figure the rest out. I ran with it and narrowed down the topic to a specific research question. Step by step I made sure to keep the person looped in and updated on my progress, as well as answered their questions (such as: what is the research question? What does this mean? What is the point of doing this review?). When it came time to move it forward, the person bailed and said they were too busy to continue.
A year later, I nudged them again as I wanted to finish it off and said I have other resources now (ask a student to do some data validation) to help complete the next step so we could start writing. The person agreed and we finally started to talk about authorship. They asked what I wanted, I said first as I had done a major part of the work. They also needed a first so I counter suggested we do first co authors as it had requires/requires both of our efforts. They were extremely reluctant, saying that I had stolen their idea and that it was wrong for me to do the work when they didn't have the time, and suddenly say that I deserved first because I had done the work but they also needed me to teach them step by step on how to do the lit review.
I feel that I have not been deceitful by hiding information or falsely claiming authorship away from this person. I believe it was a joint effort although I'm not sure what the norm is. What does actually constitute as idea stealing? Did I overstep by asking to be recognised as an equal contributor?<issue_comment>username_1: *This answer assumed that OP was in some way senior to their counterpart, either in position or experience. Since this assumption is not true (OP is a masters student, the other person is a PhD student), it seems there is some fault for both parties in how they communicated expectations at the beginning of the project.*
---
It's going to be difficult if not impossible for anyone here to judge this because none of us are in the situation and have the daily exposure required to do so.
However, with the limited information you give here, it sounds to me like someone came to you with an idea, and rather than *help them with their idea* you judged yourself more capable to do the work and took off with it.
It's like instead of helping a student understand their confusion on part of their homework, you've done most of the assignment for them, while keeping them informed of your progress. In doing so, yes you've helped them complete their homework, but you've stolen from them the opportunity to learn while doing it. Or imagine a 5 year old assembling a train set. They've run into a problem and can't get a loop connected because they've installed too tight of a bend, and ask for help. Do you provide some suggestions on how they might fix the problem? do you rearrange a piece or two to help demonstrate this? Or do you wait for them to go to sleep and show them when they wake up how you've completed it all for them and solved all their problems? Clearly you get the credit for completing the train set, but was it fair?
It sounds a bit like you've stolen an idea to me. The conversation about the project and authorship should have occurred **at the beginning** before you decided to "run with it", or at least in one of the intervening times when this person indicated they didn't have the time right now, not when you'd like to finish off the project and already did all the work. Arguably the other person should have brought this up on their own then and not now, but there are various reasons (such as social hierarchies, cultural norms, and their own personality) that may have prevented them from doing so, and if you are the more experienced person in the situation the onus is on you.
You very much may deserve the majority of credit on the final work. The infraction is not in deceit about what you were working on, but on taking on so much of the project that it became yours without getting permission or an understanding up front. Especially if all you were asked was if you would help with a literature review.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I will first try to answer the specific question: What constitutes as stealing of an idea? (Not specific to the OP situation)
In theory: Ideas are not subject to property, and therefore they cannot be stolen (nor protected by copyright or patents, although I am not a lawyer). This is commonly expressed as: "Ideas are free as the air". In other words, ideas are free and do not have an owner. You cannot steal something that is free and does not have an owner.
Also, ideas are cheap, and people frequently have ideas that are not followed through. If you decide to share your ideas, you should be proud if someone follows them through.
In practice (as experienced by the OP): People feel they do own their ideas, and these sentiments can be strong. Usually, people feel their ideas have been stolen when they communicate them to others, and these others follow them through. If an agreement was made to develop an idea jointly (or even to give away an idea), these sentiments would not be expected, but they could still arise (people forget, change their minds, make untold assumptions, etc.). The best way to avoid these situations is to have clear, written agreements before starting to do the actual work, including authorship of possible publications, as explained by username_1.
As for the situation described in the question, I would say:
Getting a reputation for "stealing" ideas can hurt your chances of collaborating with others in the future. Try to avoid leaving your colleague with that impression.
I would try to negotiate with them, always being polite and sustaining your position with facts. Decide beforehand what would be an acceptable outcome for you, so you know what are your limits. Maybe they can be "corresponding author" if that applies in your field, and you could be first author. Maybe a joint first coauthorship with their name first could be acceptable to both of you.
Who "needs a first authorship" should be irrelevant in these negotiations. Take into account the authorship policy of the journal that you plan to submit if they have one.
Never mention your impression that they did not have the knowledge to do the work themselves. That would only hurt their ego, and you cannot be sure your impression is correct, let alone prove it. From their point of view, they were probably guiding you to do the work, even if you feel differently. I would ignore any accusations of "stealing" the idea, as dwelling into that is not productive. Just continue to seek common ground if they insist on that.
Consider having someone else present while you talk to them, although this is delicate, and they might refuse. If you reach an agreement, you could send them an e-mail afterward with the conclusion reached.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: Some researchers have a habit of casually run their vague ideas by others in their team, particularly those on whom they have some kind of power or influence. If you refuse to work with them, you may be labelled "not a team player", which no-one wants. People are generally excited to collaborate, and happy to put down some work to start what they think is a promising collaborative project. Several months later, when almost all the work is done, the person who "generated" an idea would come back and claim the first authorship (leaving it to you to do experiments and write the paper). If you try to negotiate, they will gaslite you claiming you stole their brilliant idea. And if nothing comes out of the idea, you wasted your time and the person will simply move on, probably telling others how useless you are.
Ideas *en masse* are cheap. Excellent ideas are rare and worth much. But telling which is which requires hard work, which is actually the main resource required. Having an idea is like having a mollusk on a seabed. It may have a pearl inside, or it may be empty. It takes time and effort to get the mollusk out of the sea and open it.
Some people have a skill of analysing their many ideas and discarding the least promising ones without bothering others with them. They often end up leading large and successful research groups, because their ideas are typically specific, well-elaborated and have a better than average success rate. These leaders do not chase others to work with them, quite the contrary, people will queue up to work in their lab. If you happen to work with such people, you can quickly tell that they know their stuff and can explain the proposal really well, as well as which role they ask you to take and how this collaboration can benefit you.
It seems that on this occasion you have met a person with a different skill set. It is unfortunate, and it may be better to accept that there may be no good solutions. You already did most of the work, and the choices you have are to either complete it and publish together (which is exactly what this person wanted), or walk away from an unfair deal and risk to be badmouthed by them.
If you have someone willing to listen (your supervisor, head of lab/department), you may try to involve them, but chances are they will not want to investigate deeply, and will stick to a usual "collaboration is good" matra. Well, unfortunately, it takes two to tango, and in a good collaboration everyone has to pull their weight, which is not always exactly what happens in academia. This is not your fault or failure, just a sad manifestation of a very competitive and sometimes toxic landscape of a field of academic collaborations. Hopefully your next collaborator will be much better than the first one. Good luck.
Upvotes: 2
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2021/02/05
| 4,127
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm confused about a statement [<NAME>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Grothendieck) made in his book *[Récoltes et semailles](https://forum.azimuthproject.org/discussion/2208/grothendieck-quote)*.
>
> In fact, most of these comrades whom I gauged to be more brilliant
> than me have gone on to become distinguished mathematicians. Still
> from the perspective or thirty or thirty five years, I can state that
> their imprint upon the mathematics of our time has not been very
> profound. They’ve all done things, often beautiful things, in a
> context that was already set out before them, which they had no
> inclination to disturb. Without being aware of it, they’ve remained
> prisoners of those invisible and despotic circles which delimit the
> universe of a certain milieu in a given era. To have broken these
> bounds they would have to rediscover in themselves that capability
> which was their birthright, as it was mine: The capacity to be alone.
>
>
>
Why did Grothendieck say “*the capacity to be alone*,” and how does this phrase apply to researchers?<issue_comment>username_1: As this is a translation, the words "capacity to be alone" may not be the best way to phrase it. Perhaps this is a more literal translation, but from context I might write it as "independence".
He is saying that other people who he perceived as more capable individuals ("more brilliant than" he) as researchers were successful, and yet were constrained by doing work similar to others. Perhaps they worked on incremental solutions to problems within a general framework in the research community.
He implies that the status quo ("invisible and despotic circles which delimit the universe of a certain milieu") is a constraint on creative work.
He is suggesting that his own impact has been more profound or more revolutionary because he has been able to be more independent from others, to make his own path either in the problems he approached or in the solutions he found, and that he thinks the other people he talks about would have had similarly profound impacts if they had been less focused on the work or opinions of others.
Who knows whether he is correct that this is how researchers should think, it's just one opinion. I think it's somewhat dangerous to assume that because an approach worked for someone that you should take their advice that it would work for everyone. There is a lot of [survivorship bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias) in that those who go their own path but are not successful are seldom heard from - who would read their book?
I'm not a mathematician and am not familiar with Grothendieck's work. Just from his Wikipedia page it seems he became a bit reclusive and didn't engage with the broader community later in his career. From Wikipedia which talks about the work that you quote from:
>
> In the 1,000-page autobiographical manuscript Récoltes et semailles (1986) Grothendieck describes his approach to mathematics and his experiences in the mathematical community, a community that initially accepted him in an open and welcoming manner but which he progressively perceived to be governed by competition and status
>
>
>
It could be that he misjudges the ways in which his earlier work that became so influential benefitted from that of others around him, and misjudges the profundity or impactfulness of the work that he later pursued in solitude. Just because someone has a genius in mathematics or any other field does not necessarily mean they are good at assessing the reasons behind their own success; self-reflection is an entirely separate skill set.
For what it's worth in contrast, another famous mathematician wrote, ["If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants"](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton), which seems to be a bit of a different philosophy (though I may be treating Grothendieck uncharitably, as it seems his quarrel is less with the *work* of others and more with the *academic establishment*, but it still speaks to the value or lack thereof of independence/solitude in academic work). [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com) uses the motto "Stand on the shoulders of giants" in recognition and tribute to this sentiment.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: This is maybe unrelated to the question you are asking, but if your goal is to glean life lessons about how to be a good and successful researcher, then Grothendieck is probably a flawed source. Brilliant mathematician: Yes. Role model: Hardly.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: All indications are that Grothendieck did not lack self-confidence. Just as well, considering his harsh and unlucky childhood and life situation prior to academic mathematics success.
It's not really that he "created a new subject" (modern algebraic geometry), but, rather, apparently found a path (that others were also seeking) to revivify the subject. He did have <NAME>'s support by correspondence, which not all of us do. :) Still, the homological ideas in his Tohoku J. article (in particular emphasizing sheaf cohomology as right-derived functors of the global-section functor) were not "entirely new", as Eilenberg and <NAME> write their book at about the same time. As far as I know, though, the sheaf-cohomology idea was new, with Cech cohomology still a competitor into the 1960s.
<NAME>'s 1949 "Foundations of Algebraic Geometry" was the main preceding attempt to rigorize (and extend...) the intuitive physical geometry of the Italian school from early 20th century. It did not seem to offer a good extension to deal with the Weil Conjectures, which Grothendieck had set his sights on.
He was evidently a forceful personality (I never met him) as well as a very good mathematician, and managed to persuade a small army of collaborators to work to implement/develop his vision.
At some point, evidently, he did become disenchanted with French academic culture... and "retired". To my mind, there is a considerable irony that the "establishment" he decided to disdain nevertheless supported him... and he apparently accepted most of that support.
Coming back to the specific question: I think it really amounts to a difference of taste. Grothendieck could not help himself but be rebellious, and disdained those who were not rebels. Oop, not counting the people who worked very hard to make his visions come to life? I myself am unsympathetic to this, but nevermind.
So, if we are to take it seriously, his claim was that those other talented people could have been as "great" as he, Grothendieck, if only they would have adopted *his* approach, instead of ... following their own?
At best, it seems to me that his remarks confound the institutions with the people.
EDIT: hoping to clarify, in response to some comments... First, I do not at all wish to diminish AG's rightfully earned reputation as one of the luminaries of the 20th century. But/and I *would* want to say that much of his legacy was, in fact, a team effort, with him as a/the leader. But, also, for sure, several or many other exceptional people "helped"! :) This fact is not as often made clear in the heroic legends. AG *can* be a heroic figure without diminishing the other very, very good mathematicians who made huge contributions (if not quite in his style).
Although I myself may be a small-time iconoclast, one thing I've thought a lot more about in the last 10-20 years is to try to give credit where credit is due. And not just to the "top ten" or similar most-heroic figures. And, factually, as my own scholariship has improved, I've learned that lots of great ideas were already manifest decades or a century or two earlier... but somehow not necessarily achieving top billing in textbooks and other professional-cultural mythology.
In AG's case, I think the Serre-Grothendieck correspondence shows the scholarly inputs Serre provided AG, although it is not easy to see that reflected in EGA nor SGA. The style of the latter did not seem much concerned with bibliographic/historical completeness.
I do think that one part of the Bourbaki impulse was an instance of "shedding the past"... partly for good reasons, but, also, throwing some babies out with the bathwater.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: Most of the great scientists and mathematicians work alone. The great Artist [<NAME>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso) says that “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.” And solitude refreshes body, mind and spirit.
[Einstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein) says that the monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
[Aristotle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle) says that the man who is content to live alone is either a beast or a god.
[Pereleman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman) also says that I decided to work alone and I had no closed friends. Most of his papers are not collaboration with others.
Grothendieck want to say that in alone your creativity and imagination power will increase. The more you are alone the more you have creativity power. This implies the meaning of capacity to be alone.
taken from [this](https://www.fermentmagazine.org/rands/promenade2.html)
Here is the outline of Grothendieck statement about alone
>
> To state it in slightly different terms: in those critical years I learned how to be alone (\*)
>
>
>
>
> (\*) This formulation doesn't really capture my meaning. I didn't, in any literal sense learn to be alone, for the simple reason that this knowledge had never been unlearned during my childhood. It is a basic capacity in all of us from the day of our birth. However these 3 years of work in isolation, when I was thrown onto my own resources, following guidelines which I myself had spontaneously invented, instilled in me a strong degree of confidence, unassuming yet enduring, in my ability to do mathematics, which owes nothing to any consensus or to the fashions which pass as law. I come back to this subject again in the note: "Roots and Solitude" ( R&S IV, #171.3, in particular page 1080).
> By this I mean to say: to reach out in my own way to the things I wished to learn, rather than relying on the notions of the consensus, overt or tacit, coming from a more or less extended clan of which I found myself a member, or which for any other reason laid claim to be taken as an authority. This silent consensus had informed me, both at the lyé and at the university, that one shouldn't bother worrying about what was really meant when using a term like "volume", which was "obviously self-evident", "generally known", "unproblematic", etc. I'd gone over their heads, almost as a matter of course, even as Lesbesgue himself had, several decades before, gone over their heads. It is in this gesture of "going beyond", to be something in oneself rather than the pawn of a consensus, the refusal to stay within a rigid circle that others have drawn around one - it is in this solitary act that one finds true creativity. All others things follow as a matter of course.
>
>
>
Grothendieck himself later wrote
“I learned then, in solitude, the thing that is essential in the art of mathematics — that which no master can really teach”
it is in this solitary act that one finds true creativity. All others things follow as a matter of course.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: Many of the responses here give correct answers. They also explain that the view of this quote is not the norm, and that one shouldn't necessarily trust Grothendieck's advice based anyway. I agree with all of this, BUT with caveats so significant I believe it deserves a separate response.
**Caveat 1: He is not implying that one should reject other people in the field and not cooperate with them.**
As a matter of fact, in the same text he talks about how almost all his first ideas in algebraic geometry were stimulated by Serre. He was certainly no stranger to collaboration, and this is completely compatible with this quote. Rather than explaining abstractly this compatibility abstractly, it may be more explain to learn how he allegedly worked. In his IHES days, he would present his seminar once a week and follow it up with discussions. Sometimes he would also often invite others to his home to do math. But on other days, he would work alone, often late into the night, to come up with the notions he would discuss with other mathematicians.
The most well-known example of this is the notion of a scheme. This idea, or at least close variants of it, were up in the air at the time. But how did Grothendieck know that the very foundations of algebraic geometry should be rewritten with them? (a truly gargantuan task) According to this same text, he had to work alone, plumbing this concept himself to see this was the way to do it all. Another concept, the "Grothendieck topology" generalized the very notion of a topology in a seemingly naive way. But this was what was necessary to define etale cohomology, which led to the proof of the Weil conjectures.
For a more detailed discussion, see [here](http://www.math.uu.nl/%7Eoort0109/AGRoots-final.pdf). It seems to me that whenever he did math, he had a grand vision. This vision was certainly stimulated and enhanced by others, but it was something he could "see" on his own that was remarkably unconstrained.
**Caveat 2: This quote is less a judgement of others than an expression of something personally important.**
While this quote does indeed mention the impact of other mathematicians, I don't think that is the point of the paragraph. If you read on, you will find that this section is about the "interior adventure", especially about his experience of mathematics. He explains that for him, innocence and his ability to listen to the nature of things were the most essential traits to his success in math. While this formulation may sound romanticized, the content seems sound to me.
The notion that other mathematicians would have gained from what he describes is, in my opinion, a valid one. I believe most of the pushback against it comes from the fact that he is saying about himself, which may lead some people to associate it with arrogance. As a matter of fact, I have heard people talk about how various fields could have used a Grothendieck without any controversy.
**Caveat 3: Just as one should not accept advice just because it is from Grothendieck, one should not reject it just because it is from Grothendieck.**
There are some rather disparaging comments in the other answers about Grothendieck as a person, and how we should not listen to his advice as a result. I find this attitude very troubling for two reasons.
First, it is largely based on negative stereotypes that are absolutely false in this case. I've even seen many of the concrete facts about him be twisted or even made up to promote this sensationalist archetype of a recluse mathematician who understands nothing but math. Having read some of his later writings, I can confirm that such a depiction of Grothendieck is completely wrong. For sure, some of the events in his life did superficially resemble the stereotype, but his philosophy and understanding of life are absolutely different.
Second, one should in principle not discount somebody else's opinion based on the person, but judge it on its own merit. Just because someone was "troubled" doesn't mean that their view is worthless. (Especially when the cause of much of the trouble was a perception of the coming environmental crisis, leading him to be one of the first ecological activists.) In fact, as Grothendieck possessed both a unique and a supremely educated perspective, one should not be surprised if he has interesting things to say. At the very least, they will not be the same clichés that add no value.
Even in his writing outside of math, time and time again I have been amazed by how his perspective on a topic already accounted for my own. Experiencing this is certainly startling when you expect to be the one assessing the supposedly crazy views of another. His work is one of the very few that I have learned from upon reading multiple times, which is why I am very disappointed when people dismiss him based off of a stereotype.
Upvotes: 4
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2021/02/05
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<issue_start>username_0: Many years ago, as an undergraduate, I was taking a physics class which had a peculiar exam arrangement: on Tuesday, the professor gave us a take-home portion of the exam which would be submitted on Thursday, but on Thursday, there would also be an in-class portion of the exam with a different set of problems.
In my case, I remember working out the solution to a difficult problem on the take-home exam throughout Tuesday and Wednesday. I had a solution, but I was unsure whether it was correct. Some equations didn't seem to make sense. At the same time, I was also preparing myself for the exam on Thursday. As usual, I read the textbook, but I also was in the habit of consulting other websites to help me whenever the textbook wasn't enough.
While doing this, I accidentally stumbled upon a Wikipedia article which explained the solution of a similar problem to the one I was working on in the take-home exam. It was not the same problem, but the general method used was sufficiently similar so that I immediately realized that my approach to the problem on the take-home exam was probably correct.
Perhaps the most ethical thing to do at the time was to stop consulting the Wikipedia article immediately. I have to confess that I didn't do this exactly: I couldn't help but glance at it a few more times. Coming across that article made me confident in my approach to the take-home problem, and it drove me to scrutinize my previously written solution more deeply. This led me to discover a simple algebraic mistake which I had made in my own solution, after which my solution made sense and was surely correct. In the end, I never copied anything directly from the Wikipedia article, but I cannot deny that reading it helped me realize my own mistakes.
On Thursday I handed in my work on the take-home portion, and did well in the in-class portion as well. I never told the professor about the incident. Internally, I reasoned to myself that when I came across the Wikipedia article I was not trying to cheat on the take-home, but simply preparing for the in-class exam.
Years afterwards, however, I started to have doubts over what I did was completely ethical. I did not exactly cheat - in the sense of copying solutions from the Internet - but I was indeed "inspired" to become confident in my existing solution because of something I found on the Internet.
Was what I did dishonest? Unethical? Did it rise to the level of cheating that should have been disclosed to the professor? Or was it just a fortunate accident, the product of an odd exam arrangement?
(Note that the professor did not have a clear policy on consulting materials other than the official textbook from Tuesday-Thursday during the take home portion of the exam. While it was generally considered cheating to search out solutions on the Internet for specific problems on a take-home exam, I did not consider it unethical to look up online resources when studying a course and preparing for an in-class exam. In this case, I was doing the latter and accidentally stumbled upon material which was more similar to the former. The fact that there was a take home exam occuring right before an in-class exam resulted in a gray area.)<issue_comment>username_1: I suggest that you don't lose a lot of sleep over something that happened several years ago. While you may have crossed a line, your description suggests it wasn't a bright line. Assuming your description is honest, you started out (probably) appropriately looking for alternate explanations of the material, not solutions to the problem at hand. But, rather than the internet it might just as well have been a different textbook.
But if it bothers you, then, assuming you are an academic, make sure that your own students get more explicit advice about what is and is not permitted.
It would have been better, of course, if you had pointed out the situation to the professor. But let the past be the past. Make the future better than the past if you are able.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Echoing @username_1's remarks, but also paraphrasing/amplifying:
You were acting in good faith. That's the primary point. So don't worry about it.
Next: any system that tries to make rules to inhibit using more sources, looking around, comparing textbooks, etc., is seriously misguided. Yes, in my own earlier experiences, kids could get in trouble for reading ahead in their books! Could get in trouble for using ideas/methods from other sources!
In mathematics, and apparently in computer science, there is the idea that one should at least *attempt* to re-solve many basic, iconic issues for oneself, *before* seeing the highly refined iconic solution. Up to a point, if one has the time, obviously it's good to engage and appreciate the non-triviality before seeing a presumably masterful resolution.
"However", a person looking (e.g.) at math in a non-school-work setting, possibly skimming through various textbooks "for fun" (pre-internet!?!), could inadvertently see the iconic solution/discussion before being asked the iconic question in coursework. This happened to me a few times. My memory was good enough that I could more-or-less reproduce the iconic argument. I do not know what the grader thought.
Currently, in the grad-level math courses I teach, up front I emphasize that all the questions I'll ask them on homework and exams are important and iconic, and have been asked and discussed many times before. And while some engagement and reflection prior to seeing what other people have done is surely useful, there is a point of diminishing returns. And, rather than have people embrace crappy versions of iconic discussions, I do attempt to put on-line discussions that I at-least-currently think are better quality, if not perfect.
A thing that did not occur to me as a kid (and it was a different situation, internet-wise) was to explicitly acknowledge sources. This should have been emphasized then, but it was harder to "search" for things. Certainly this point must be made clearly nowadays.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: It’s not unethical to *accidentally* benefit from anything, since the fact of such a thing happening is, as the word suggests, accidental. You didn’t mean to cheat, and it was the professor’s idiosyncratic testing policy that set up the perfect storm of circumstances that caused this “accident” to happen: note that the combination of a take-home exam and an in-class exam, and the way the two exams were scheduled, created a period of several days during which you were not allowed to search online for solutions to a specific set of problems, but during which you *were* allowed, and in fact incentivized, to look up general material related to the course. Hmm, I wonder what could go wrong with such an arrangement...?
TL;DR: **no**.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: A take-home test is not, as a more formal test or exam would be, strictly a test of knowledge.
It tests the synthesis of your knowledge and resourcefulness in a fixed time frame, in all respects no different than an essay.
Anyone who gave a test of that nature should expect the student to make use of all available resources and only plagiarism to be unethical.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: I would say that it's generally understood that on a take-home test you can use some external literature.
Typically with a take-home exam that takes a day or more, the expectation is that:
* Open-book: you're allowed to use the handbook for the course, as well as your lecture notes, and any recorded lectures and so forth.
* Extra literature: is allowed, although not necessary.
* No collaboration: you're not supposed to share your answers with, or receive answers from, other students.
* Your own work: don't ask other people, even people outside the course, for the solutions.
* Based on reasoning and application of what you've learned, not recalling facts. The problems may be harder and more diffuse than what you would get on an on-site closed-book exam.
There is probably some anecdotal exam that breaks each of these assumptions. As a teacher you'd do well to be explicit with your rules and expectations.
Using external literature to be inspired, to learn something that is helpful in the exam: fine. Adding a reference in your answers to where you found this useful literature: excellent. Rooting out an answer list on the internet: not okay.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: >
> Unethical?
>
>
>
Given what the professor had directed you to do, I'd say no. I would even be of two minds regarding the unethicality of consulting a textbook during a take-home-only exam.
>
> Was what I did dishonest?
>
>
>
You were not maximally forthcoming - by your own standard. I guess that's what's bugging you, morally. By your professor's standard you were just fine.
>
> Did it rise to the level of cheating that should have been disclosed to the professor?
>
>
>
You're implicitly assuming your a no-good low-down sinner. Stop that.
Anyway, no. Also, if you had told your professor about this, I'm pretty certain he would have said something like "Well, you lucked out, that's life." Or maybe even "The fact that you noticed the problem were related and one was applicable to the other is an indication you have good command of the subject matter."
>
> Or was it just a fortunate accident, the product of an odd exam arrangement?
>
>
>
This.
But moreover - you're giving too much weight to what an exam means. It is not a fatal moral trial by the gods to determine your true nature or anything like that. Think about it more like a lottery where your skills bias the odds... I know that might sound a bit extreme, but you should really let this extreme view balance the other extreme. The exam grade is just a number, it's not paid for in blood and there isn't a one-true-grade for people.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: If you found how to solve the problem it is all ok. I see the problem only if someone else did the work for you. Why is that? The exam is there to prepare you for your future job and problems that you would face at your work.
Your boss will not tell you: please solve this but don't look at Wikipedia, do not use Google or some other textbooks. Your boss will just want the problem solved. You proved that you know how to find the solution if you don't know, and that is all there it is to it.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_8: The exam had no clear policy, so formally you did nothing wrong.
More in detail:
>
> I also was in the habit of consulting other websites to help me
> whenever the textbook wasn't enough.
>
>
>
You were consulting other sources because you felt the textbook was not enough. It all boils down to that. It is perfectly fine, as long as the reason was "the textbook was not enough".
It is very different than "consulting other sources to find the solution to my take-home exam".
If you did it because of that, you at least learned the skill "how to retrieve information" although it was not a skill you were supposed nor required to develop during that specific course. So instead of doubting the morality of your exams' attitude, you should question the degree you pursued :) !
Upvotes: 2
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2021/02/05
| 2,259
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<issue_start>username_0: The community college I attend has an IRB that is not registered with the FDA and is supposed to review projects conducted by students or faculty. I (as a student) would like to conduct a survey (that involves minimal risk) through a mobile application that would be meant for, and open to the general public. I contacted my institution’s IRB and they said that this type of research would be out of the scope of my community college’s IRB. Is this true? Do I even need IRB approval for my research? I do not plan on publishing any information or receiving any federal or state funding, but the data collected through my survey might be used to create a product/service that might require FDA approval. Again, the survey and the mobile application through which the survey is conducted will not be submitted for FDA approval, but a product created from the data I collect (which is all anonymized before I receive it) might be. What do you recommend for my situation? I do not have the resources to get approval from a commercial IRB, and the universities I have contacted (who have federally registered IRBs), say they cannot review research from a student of another institution.<issue_comment>username_1: I suggest that you don't lose a lot of sleep over something that happened several years ago. While you may have crossed a line, your description suggests it wasn't a bright line. Assuming your description is honest, you started out (probably) appropriately looking for alternate explanations of the material, not solutions to the problem at hand. But, rather than the internet it might just as well have been a different textbook.
But if it bothers you, then, assuming you are an academic, make sure that your own students get more explicit advice about what is and is not permitted.
It would have been better, of course, if you had pointed out the situation to the professor. But let the past be the past. Make the future better than the past if you are able.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Echoing @username_1's remarks, but also paraphrasing/amplifying:
You were acting in good faith. That's the primary point. So don't worry about it.
Next: any system that tries to make rules to inhibit using more sources, looking around, comparing textbooks, etc., is seriously misguided. Yes, in my own earlier experiences, kids could get in trouble for reading ahead in their books! Could get in trouble for using ideas/methods from other sources!
In mathematics, and apparently in computer science, there is the idea that one should at least *attempt* to re-solve many basic, iconic issues for oneself, *before* seeing the highly refined iconic solution. Up to a point, if one has the time, obviously it's good to engage and appreciate the non-triviality before seeing a presumably masterful resolution.
"However", a person looking (e.g.) at math in a non-school-work setting, possibly skimming through various textbooks "for fun" (pre-internet!?!), could inadvertently see the iconic solution/discussion before being asked the iconic question in coursework. This happened to me a few times. My memory was good enough that I could more-or-less reproduce the iconic argument. I do not know what the grader thought.
Currently, in the grad-level math courses I teach, up front I emphasize that all the questions I'll ask them on homework and exams are important and iconic, and have been asked and discussed many times before. And while some engagement and reflection prior to seeing what other people have done is surely useful, there is a point of diminishing returns. And, rather than have people embrace crappy versions of iconic discussions, I do attempt to put on-line discussions that I at-least-currently think are better quality, if not perfect.
A thing that did not occur to me as a kid (and it was a different situation, internet-wise) was to explicitly acknowledge sources. This should have been emphasized then, but it was harder to "search" for things. Certainly this point must be made clearly nowadays.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: It’s not unethical to *accidentally* benefit from anything, since the fact of such a thing happening is, as the word suggests, accidental. You didn’t mean to cheat, and it was the professor’s idiosyncratic testing policy that set up the perfect storm of circumstances that caused this “accident” to happen: note that the combination of a take-home exam and an in-class exam, and the way the two exams were scheduled, created a period of several days during which you were not allowed to search online for solutions to a specific set of problems, but during which you *were* allowed, and in fact incentivized, to look up general material related to the course. Hmm, I wonder what could go wrong with such an arrangement...?
TL;DR: **no**.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: A take-home test is not, as a more formal test or exam would be, strictly a test of knowledge.
It tests the synthesis of your knowledge and resourcefulness in a fixed time frame, in all respects no different than an essay.
Anyone who gave a test of that nature should expect the student to make use of all available resources and only plagiarism to be unethical.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: I would say that it's generally understood that on a take-home test you can use some external literature.
Typically with a take-home exam that takes a day or more, the expectation is that:
* Open-book: you're allowed to use the handbook for the course, as well as your lecture notes, and any recorded lectures and so forth.
* Extra literature: is allowed, although not necessary.
* No collaboration: you're not supposed to share your answers with, or receive answers from, other students.
* Your own work: don't ask other people, even people outside the course, for the solutions.
* Based on reasoning and application of what you've learned, not recalling facts. The problems may be harder and more diffuse than what you would get on an on-site closed-book exam.
There is probably some anecdotal exam that breaks each of these assumptions. As a teacher you'd do well to be explicit with your rules and expectations.
Using external literature to be inspired, to learn something that is helpful in the exam: fine. Adding a reference in your answers to where you found this useful literature: excellent. Rooting out an answer list on the internet: not okay.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: >
> Unethical?
>
>
>
Given what the professor had directed you to do, I'd say no. I would even be of two minds regarding the unethicality of consulting a textbook during a take-home-only exam.
>
> Was what I did dishonest?
>
>
>
You were not maximally forthcoming - by your own standard. I guess that's what's bugging you, morally. By your professor's standard you were just fine.
>
> Did it rise to the level of cheating that should have been disclosed to the professor?
>
>
>
You're implicitly assuming your a no-good low-down sinner. Stop that.
Anyway, no. Also, if you had told your professor about this, I'm pretty certain he would have said something like "Well, you lucked out, that's life." Or maybe even "The fact that you noticed the problem were related and one was applicable to the other is an indication you have good command of the subject matter."
>
> Or was it just a fortunate accident, the product of an odd exam arrangement?
>
>
>
This.
But moreover - you're giving too much weight to what an exam means. It is not a fatal moral trial by the gods to determine your true nature or anything like that. Think about it more like a lottery where your skills bias the odds... I know that might sound a bit extreme, but you should really let this extreme view balance the other extreme. The exam grade is just a number, it's not paid for in blood and there isn't a one-true-grade for people.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: If you found how to solve the problem it is all ok. I see the problem only if someone else did the work for you. Why is that? The exam is there to prepare you for your future job and problems that you would face at your work.
Your boss will not tell you: please solve this but don't look at Wikipedia, do not use Google or some other textbooks. Your boss will just want the problem solved. You proved that you know how to find the solution if you don't know, and that is all there it is to it.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_8: The exam had no clear policy, so formally you did nothing wrong.
More in detail:
>
> I also was in the habit of consulting other websites to help me
> whenever the textbook wasn't enough.
>
>
>
You were consulting other sources because you felt the textbook was not enough. It all boils down to that. It is perfectly fine, as long as the reason was "the textbook was not enough".
It is very different than "consulting other sources to find the solution to my take-home exam".
If you did it because of that, you at least learned the skill "how to retrieve information" although it was not a skill you were supposed nor required to develop during that specific course. So instead of doubting the morality of your exams' attitude, you should question the degree you pursued :) !
Upvotes: 2
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2021/02/05
| 671
| 3,028
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<issue_start>username_0: Students often seek help from a variety of sources, including private tutors, who can be found either locally or remotely on websites such as Wyzant, Chegg, Tutor.com, Varsity Tutors, etc.
As a relative newcomer to the world of online tutoring I am gradually coming to realize that protection of academic integrity, while somewhat fundamental to the entire enterprise, is somewhat of a challenge; this is especially true when tutoring remotely. Academic integrity is a potentially sensitive subject, in the sense that it is easy to impose an unintended policy (or one with unintended side effects) on others by accident, either actively or passively.
I am wondering if it is appropriate for tutors to be in communication with their students' teachers in order to ensure that their lessons are not somehow incompatible with school or class academic honesty policies or integrity frameworks. On the one hand, teachers and Professors could benefit from knowing if a large number of their students are seeking outside help to understand lessons, and from having transcripts of one-on-one tutoring sessions as well. On the other, there is a small possibility that, for any number of what would amount to legitimate reasons, they (individual teachers and/or Professors) might regret this knowledge, and that the set of appropriate stewards of tutoring sessions (or the "relevant data" thereof) does not include them, but rather consists of a comparably\* sparse network of educators and administrators that is nonetheless robust. Would it be generally acceptable to leave this decision in the hands of the student? Or is there a more appropriate (more graceful or less awkward) way to maintain academic integrity for tutoring sessions?
\*That is, with respect to a "radically open" network that includes everyone who might have any interest whatsoever, including the course professor.<issue_comment>username_1: I recommend that you have a clear policy, accepted by the student, that you will contact their instructor at the start of your work with them, announcing yourself and asking for any guidance or ground rules that you should follow.
This policy makes it unnecessary to ask the student for permission and then wonder what to do if it isn't given. It also makes it clear to the student that you are a supplement to their instructor and not a replacement. Finally, it should make it clear that you won't listen to requests to do unethical things.
Moreover, as a newcomer, you might get some valuable pointers that will help you be more effective. For example, the idea that it is best to give students only minimal hints when they encounter problems.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: Academic integrity is the responsibility of the student. Everyone has a responsibility to decline to knowingly assist cheating. Only the instructor and university have a responsibility to actively discourage cheating.
So no, you do not need to contact professors unless your employer requires it.
Upvotes: 2
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2021/02/06
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<issue_start>username_0: I am not a course instructor, but I am a teaching assistant for a large course in [STEM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science%2C_technology%2C_engineering%2C_and_mathematics) in the large US school. I have been soliciting advice from students to improve the course and tutorial for the past some eight months.
However, during this time, I have been dealing with a series of taking students suggestions (or witnessing the instructor taking students suggestions) that "steer" the course, but then regretting it because it made things worse.
For example,
1. I host tutorials using PowerPoint slides. Students requested en masse that I should post my tutorial slides ahead of time. I followed their suggestion and the tutorial attendance plummeted to around 10 students, down from 80ish and the tutorial interaction disappeared altogether. Now I am basically talking to an empty room.
2. Students requested that the course problems should be more representative of the course, i.e., they should look like exam questions. The instructor and I decided to put test questions as assignments. Now the students complain that it is too hard and too lengthy. We augmented the questions and made them easier, now the student demand to see the actual exams and solution because now the questions are not the original ones.
3. This happened in the last semester. Two very vocal students went on week long rants about how hard the course was and how because of COVID-19 and all the stress we need to lower our exam difficulty. We took their advice and made the exams simpler. The course average wind up to be ~95% and those two vocal students were actually the best performing students all along. Even a snail could pass this advanced, highly technical undergraduate level course. The past year average were around 75%.
I have reached the perhaps pessimistic conclusion that
1. some students don't know what they want
2. some students just love to complain very loudly, even in anger, knowing that we have to remain placid, professional no matter how bad things get
3. students don't care about learning, only care about high score on exams. Some students would love it if the entire course was just one guy explaining the solution to all the previous year's exams.
How do we deal with following student suggestions in the online setting? I noticed that due to various online platforms and discussion board we provide them, in addition to semi-anonymity, some students are much more vocal, persistent. The instructors I've worked with are also more likely to give in to this small minority, lower the course standard, and basically getting steered by students into making the course worse.
Obviously I am a [TA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teaching_assistant) and my power is limited. But this might be useful for when I become a instructor myself or for other course instructors.<issue_comment>username_1: The game is: you listen, but then, you decide. Just because students don't like something, you do not have to do what they ask. Check whether what they say has merit, if so, you can promise to change for next year (or for the current if there is enough flexibility).
Well-designed courses often cannot be massively adapted on the fly. I always explain to students my rationale about unpleasant things, and I do that upfront (very important!). If you have no rationale, it means you have no good reason to do it the way you do and you should strongly consider to change it.
Note that giving in to every whim of your students is the surest way to lose respect. I am considered strict, but make sure I find out what students *need*, not what they *want*. And I practically always explain my rationale. I most certainly not always do what they ask, but I take it into account where it makes sense and they always get an insight of my decision process.
Most react well to that. If someone complains, I give them one opportunity, tell them I will decide whether I take it aboard, but then close the discussion. They have had their input, I will contemplate it, and apply either in that round or in the next years' one. Once the decision is made (which needs to be balanced and fair), you thank them for their input, but the discussion is closed.
In your case:
1. If absence damages the learning, revert to not giving out the slides, and explain why. However, if you are simply piqued by them not attending while the performance is fine, let it go. Ego has no place in the consideration. Alternatively, if they can pick up everything from the slides, maybe the latter are too detailed, or the course is too easy. Which of these is it?
2. Don't make the homework questions easier. Keep them hard and explain to them why. I mean, they need to have a chance of solving them (it shouldn't be impossible), but it needs to be a challenge. They will initially complain, but as they get better, they will start understanding why this is university and not just a continuation of high school. They should be harder than exam questions, as in an exam you have limited time. However, lengthy homework is not always desirable, there can be short, hard questions. You do not want to waste their time for hours with tediosity, you want them to learn.
3. Because of Covid, you could easily argue, the exams need to be harder, not easier. As they are carried out at home, they can be given access to material they can not access in class. This makes it possible to crank up the difficulty. Their argument works against them.
People react to what works. If you give in into any request made, not only they know they can play you, but they perceive you as inconsistent, and the situation will become increasingly worse. When you make clear how inputs are treated and how you will work with them, usually people respond well. Make clear that ranting, and emotional complaints or pressure *will not* cause you to change your opinion, but only rational arguments have a chance to do so. Make sure *you yourself* know that, that will reflect back implicitly to your students.
You set the ground rules early, and stick to them. It may be difficult for people who strive to be liked, but if a teacher blows like a leaf in the wind, few will like them, and none will respect them. On the other hand, some people are just randomly strict without rationale ("because I said so"); make sure you do not fall into that trap, either, by always considering an argument and understanding why you dismiss it.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: This is mostly the instructor's problem.
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> I host tutorials using power point slides.
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You're using a non-interactive teaching technique. That's not very helpful to students.
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> tutorial interaction disappeared altogether
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The instructor should have required tutorials to be interactive, and that interaction should contribute to student's grades. Then they would show up and interact.
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> Students requested that the course problems ... should look like exam questions.
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If the exams are well designed, then the students are right.
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> Now the students complain that it is too hard and too lengthy.
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Course difficulty should be determined by a consensus in your discipline. You don't control that and neither do your students. Explain to them *why* it is hard.
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> some students just love to complain very loudly, even in anger
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Teach appropriate classroom behavior. Teach constructive feedback.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Your aim is to **help educate better**, in broad terms. So you need to look at everything in a class, primarily through that lens.
What will help students best gain from the course? Is this going to help students become competent at the required material? That sort of thing.
What you're doing now, is more "of they want it and it doesn't sound too awful, sure, be helpful by giving what's asked for". You now know that some things work,some don't, and much more importantly, you now know the consequences/payoffs for your primary aim, of doing those 4 or so things.
That's inevitable. Trial and error,learning by doing, voice of experience... You have to try things, within limits, to see what happens. Watch for the rich learnings.
Be prepared to be surprised, too. Your PowerPoint thing... Attendance dropped. But if they only needed the PowerPoint slides and mastered the work, then you've discovered that in some cases that's actually what they need - they can use the time to study the presentation. Or perhaps they didn't... in which case take corrective action. "That didn't seem to work, but it was interesting to try. How did you all find it?" And maybe next time "that doesn't work well in practice for all students, so I'm going to give them out after." Again, learn.
As a professional everything educates **you** as well. Let it do so. Over time you'll figure what works and doesn't,but you'll always learn new things.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: ### What will be most useful for them going forwards?
Ultimately the test of any change is whether it helps the students learn the subject. Your course is not an island to itself - as an undergraduate program, it's delivering essential skills that will let your students become professional engineers/scientists. If they haven't learnt this, they *will* fail to progress further on their courses. Or perhaps worse, they will arrive in industry unable to do their jobs; and if this looks like a pattern then word will go round industry to avoid hiring people from your school, and then students will stop coming, and then your department gets shut down.
Slides available? Honestly, I've had lecturers who could have been replaced by a speak-and-spell, and the teaching would have improved. So that's a definite question mark.
Course exercises? I'm rather worried that the instructor doesn't know how to pitch coursework so that it assesses what students have just been taught. This indicates either complete inexperience or profound incompetence from the instructor. It very much sounds like the instructor needs mentoring from senior members of the department.
Making the exams easier though? Hard nope. If the exam can't show that the student is competent enough to continue, or (for a final exam) to show what grade they deserve for their degree, this is every kind of wrong. The instructor needs a PIP right now.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: This answer is based out of my own experience as a teaching assistant.
I didn't do much to respond to complaints because I'm a TA, not the professor. Since this is the professor's course, I defer to them when things like this happen (they generally have better decisions). I also generally feel that I'm not the one to set the rules; the professor is.
Students also don't argue when they know this is the professor's policy and not mine. If they dislike the policy, I recommend them trying to discuss it with the professor and not to argue with me. If I happen to dislike the policy, I just go on with it for the semester. After all, my responsibilities are to help the professor on this course, not to deliver knowledge on my own.
Regarding homework vs. exam: So far, my professors have been assigning equal difficulty for homework and exams, i.e. if both are worked on under no time-limit, both have roughly the same idea. The catch is, exams have very limited time as opposed to homework, and in itself it already makes exams harder than homework.
---
In hindsight, I know this answer does not represent the case where the professor simply says it's up to TA to decide the best for assistance sessions. Frankly I've never been in that position.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: Sometimes it is easier for the reader to understand a image if it is reused, even in the same publication. Just like we sometimes need to go back to a slide when doing a presentation.
What is the original reason for forbidding this? My guess is to save some pages. But now it is digital and manuscripts are already long and large.<issue_comment>username_1: >
> Sometimes it is easier for the reader to understand a image if it is reused
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Not really. You can go back and forth when reading a text. I see no advantage reproducing an image within the same document.
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> What is the original reason for forbidding this?
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It is not strictly forbidden. I would call it common sense. The fact that you do not see images reproduced in the same document is because most people are convinced it is totally not necessary.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I agree with you.
It would be great that simply by placing the mouse over the reference to an equation or graph, it would appear in the form of an overlay.
It is exasperating to have to go up and down in search of an equation and then recover the reading point. In more than one occasion I open the same document twice to avoid it, in one window I read, with the other I look for the references.
Upvotes: 0
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2021/02/07
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<issue_start>username_0: My research is in computational modeling of an additive manufacturing (3D printing) process.
My PhD advisor and now my postdoc advisor seems satisfied with my research output. My collaborators (professors from my university and other universities) seem happy with my work. I like my research field and there's so much to learn. I enjoy developing problems and finding solutions. I am decently published (8 publications) in my field and have received some commendation for my papers.
However, I feel I am wasting my time. I have been feeling this since midway of my PhD. I feel that my research is too easy and doesn't impact society or scientific community in any way. I think I am just good for short term projects and I am not required anywhere for permanent position.
I want to have an objective opinion on my experience and my career path. Is there any place to get that?
I am interested both in staying in academia or working in industry. I have applied for positions in industry, but openings are bleak at the moment and I haven't heard from them.<issue_comment>username_1: Your university might have a career services office that can help. Otherwise, hire a private career coach or consultant.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: There must be some counseling service at your university. Many students struggle with that kind of self-perception problems.
I say self-perception because, as you mentioned yourself, other accomplished people around you are satisfied with your work.
So maybe just reach out to someone who is psychiatrically trained and has experience with these kinds of problems.
Wish you luck.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_3: (This answer will not lead to *detailed* advice, but it will give you more *objective* feedback than any single mentor, coach or counselor can offer:)
Write job applications for tenure-track jobs. If you get invitations, you're doing fine, if not, you need to step up your game.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: I doubt that anyone outside your field can give you an accurate assessment of your CV and your progress. Your advisor seems satisfied, but you can seek the advice of other professors and/or industry professionals. Just ask for a quick review and if there are any glaring omissions.
But you should also explore [Imposter Syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome) for which I see a bit of evidence in your post. A profession counsellor is probably your best option for such an exploration.
Or maybe it is just a bit of burnout, which can easily occur at about your career stage. The accomplishments you list aren't trivial. Moreover, you may just be at the point of true expertise in your narrow subfield, so your insights make things seem easy.
Upvotes: -1
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<issue_start>username_0: Apologies in advance for a possibly naive question. When I search for literature relevant to my research work, I come across articles that are published variously as either a "Short Communication" or "Note" or "Research Article". Possibly there are other variants as well. I have seen this distinction in the articles published by the Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B.
My question is regarding the importance of the distinction between these categories for the purpose of properly citing a paper. Do I mention in the bibliography whether the article is a "Short Communication" or "Note" or "Research Article"? Somehow, explicitly naming the last category feels redundant, but the former two not so much. What are the best practices to be followed here? Is there a general rule that is to be followed for these as well as other categories?<issue_comment>username_1: In my field, there is no distinction. Short and long papers are cited the same way.
However this may vary by field. To find out if it is important to your specific field, read papers in your field. Do they make any distinction when citing? For example, after you've written your manuscript, take a look at all of the references you cited. How do they cite their references? Also figure out what journal or conference you plan to submit to. Read some papers on that journal or last year's conference. You should use a similar style.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: No. The citation guides I know of do not distinguish between types of published contents in journals. They simply use the overarching term of an "Journal Article" (e.g. [APA](https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/journal-article-references)) and do not require one to note whether it's an Editorial, a Review, a Research Article or Short Communication (or whatever of the [ca 45 labels](https://images.webofknowledge.com/WOKRS59B4/help/WOS/hs_document_type.html#:%7E:text=Some%20records%20in%20Web%20of,a%20book%20of%20confernece%20proceedings.) there are - possibly with the exception of a [Retraction](https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/journal-article-references#5)).
Perhaps the underlying reason is that there is not so much of an added value to the reader how the journal happens to categorize an article.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: No, you should **NOT** include this information. These designations are journal-specific and would provide little information to someone not familiar with each of the journal's classification schemes. For example, a short communication in one journal might represent a more impressive paper (because for some journals a very short paper might be, on average, more impressive than that journal's average quality paper **[1]**) than in [another journal](https://mathoverflow.net/q/71701/15780) where the bulk of the papers might be short papers, often being "announcement of results" type papers. Also, many journals have no such classification, and thus the reader of your bibliography may wonder whether the paper was not classified in this way by the journal or whether you simply forgot to include the journal's classification.
**[1]** "[Shorter Notes was established to publish very short papers of unusually elegant and polished character ...](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Shorter+Notes+was+established+to+publish+very+short+papers+of+unusually+elegant+and+polished+character+for+which+there+is+normally+no+other+outlet%22)"
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: In another [contemporaneous post](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/162300/when-should-private-tutors-communicate-with-course-professors), I asked about whether private tutors ought to establish communication with the course heads of their students, and received several thoughtful responses. Based on what I have learned so far, from those responses and from my own admittedly limited research on this subject, it seems that in one direction, involving *subjective* experience and private decision-making, questions of academic integrity are, at face value, somewhat cut-and-dry. Cheating is bad, one's work *should be* one's own, and all is well and good as long as one *knows* that one has followed the rules.
However, for potentially good reasons there do appear to exist people who care deeply not only about whether *they* follow the rules, but also about whether *other people* do as well. That is, these individuals, that I would count myself among, would seek to construct an *objective* experience of academic integrity so that others might benefit. In light of somewhat painful discussions of colonialism, racism, and of other 'other' problems that have cropped up recently, it seems necessary to give serious thought to how the objective side of academic integrity is understood.
Based on recent news about *police* conduct, there is a *possibility* that 'authorities' in some settings may, consciously or subconsciously, deem it acceptable for certain kinds of students to work honestly by themselves, but not for equally qualified others to do so, without some additional kind of clumsily imposed surveillance. This is obviously bad for many reasons, but in particular because it would mean committing to the idea that academia is really just a sort of quaint shell game with no real knowledge-generating value, and whose true motives are merely political. So authoritarianism, whether actively or passively imposed, is out.
In light of this, my question is: *Are there shared modern understandings or theories of academic integrity that can openly help interested students protect themselves and others from the risks, physical and moral, present and future, associated with academic dishonesty?*<issue_comment>username_1: I can only give my personal philosophy and hope that it is shared widely enough, though I have no doubt that it fails any universality test. I developed this over many years. As a young faculty member, I was too strict in my interpretations, not yet understanding many important issues.
First, I believe that our first responsibility is to our students. Among those responsibilities is the imperative to teach *every* student. I'm not a lecturer/grader. I am a teacher. What that means is that I need to "set the conditions" under which every student can learn if they are willing to do the work. They don't need brilliance. They need grit. Some need more grit than others, so my interactions vary with different students, depending on their needs. Some required huge effort to help them over humps. Some needed extra help to overcome poor prior teaching and even misconceptions they had picked up earlier. Some just never learned how to learn and I had to teach them even that. And some needed extra work to provide sufficient challenge to them to really grow.
Second, we have a responsibility to society as a whole to provide graduates who are both technically and ethically solidly grounded. We can't ignore either. My clear preference is to only fail people who haven't done the work. I try not to trick them. I try to find ways to pass them, even if it means more work for them and for myself. Mostly, in my later years, I succeeded at this. People who failed didn't have the heart to succeed.
But the basis of this is that one needs to understand how people learn and it is only through understanding this that you can really evaluate the effect of cheating and other academic dishonesty.
People learn through repetition/reinforcement along with feedback. There is a book by [<NAME>](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/1579220541) that explains this well. Hearing/seeing something once isn't enough for real learning. Lectures are only valuable in pointing students to things that they need to study. I used to tell my students that "It isn't important what I do here. It is only important what *you* do". (Please don't interpret that as implying I was lazy.)
So, I sought ways to teach in which that was pretty much guaranteed to happen, provided that the student put in the effort. Reinforcement followed up by my feedback, to help them not pick up misconceptions. I also sought to find evaluation mechanisms that were biased in the direction of deep learning and skills, not short term memory for which "cramming" would be effective. I sought ways for students to fall and then get up again (redoing old work for better marks, for example). Part of that philosophy is "You are here to learn. You are not here to prove to me that you don't need to be here."
Thus cheating is *bad* because for the student because it doesn't lead to learning. There is no repetition and feedback on their trials. So, they are wasting their own time (and lives) by cheating.
For society as a whole, it leads to dishonest people who can do great damage to society. At this very moment there are a couple of people in the US Senate (no, I won't name them) who went to the very finest schools and are technically gifted, but have no ethics whatever. They have become a danger to the republic. But they aren't the first, of course.
---
Academic integrity for the student means doing the hard work that it takes to learn and avoiding short cuts that prevent deep learning.
Academic integrity for the faculty (qua faculty) means setting fair conditions under which every student can succeed if they are willing to do the work.
Academic integrity outside the classroom is a bit beyond the question, I think, and isn't addressed here.
And, I guess I need to note that "set the conditions" was once used by a US Vice President as a euphemism for torture.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: In college and high school, I believe that I could have benefited to some extent from having been tipped off at some point to constantly and seriously question my own larger purpose in attending college, and whether the foundations I was setting then, beyond increasing my own basic knowledge and experience, were sufficiently solid to support that purpose without significant and possibly costly external intervention. At some level it should be perfectly fine to pursue one's work in private and to allow the larger questions of how one's own integrity coheres within a larger sort of 'integrity matrix' to resolve themselves subconsciously. But at another level, the less one is able to accomplish oneself, the more one must perhaps subconsciously rely on labor done by others who may not ultimately benefit from one's gratitude. Hence, I can imagine there being considerable value in inviting students to take these kinds of meta-matters into their own hands, and deliberately build and test their own academic infrastructure to whatever extent they are able.
The modern Academic Integrity movement in the U.S. can be attributed to <NAME>, although it has existed in various forms for much longer.
By now there is a wealth of additional perspectives on this topic, with more or less complexity or explanatory power.
As is often the case, academic integrity has been enforced for longer than conscious attempts have been made to understand it, and has been upheld through a variety of accounting mechanisms, and this context shapes or limits how the field itself can be studied and understood going forward.
The movement appears to be rooted in the subjective experience of what is regarded as *fair* or *just* at an individual level, as well as the objective experience of what may be universally regarded as *true* in a society. There can be more or less tension between these constitutive elements, especially where several different societies begin to overlap or rub against each other.
Within many societies (including most U.S. academic settings to my knowledge) authorship is regarded as an extremely personal quality, and is tied to the status (or grant funding, or influence) of an individual within that group.
In others, the role of an individual in achieving a certain desired result is viewed as secondary to the success of a group as a whole: a person's contributions are noted only to the extent that doing so increases the chances of the group succeeding in its future tasks, and are otherwise thought of as being in vain, or purely egocentric.
It might be interesting to examine what might happen at the junction of these very different philosophies toward scholarship, if doing so is not perilous. One might hope that the collective goals of academia are to bring a sensitive lens to bear on poorly understood subjects, and not an opposite thereof.
Note that a strict individualistic approach to academic integrity is not necessarily individualistic in its impact or intrinsically egocentric: it could serve the needs of the society in which it is maintained as well as an explicitly collectivist approach would, for example by deliberately attracting talented researchers from elsewhere. There would also be strong incentives to monitor individual behavior, and for individuals to express their values as faithfully as possible.
If the individualistic approach is clumsily or selfishly implemented, however, it could easily turn into a counterproductive and/or corrupt sort of self-ingratiation.
Objective stances toward academic integrity are most prominent in exam rooms and, to some extent, the evaluation of long-form essays. Short assignments tend to be given slightly less official scrutiny, for better or for worse, though often owing to technological or time constraints rather than limits to the inherent meaning of the work.
In the literature (c.f. [2] and [3]) there appears to be a tendency for academic integrity to be defined in terms of one of its opposites: cheating. This is a potentially untenable habit, as the notion of cheating is itself somewhat treacherous; its meaning is unambiguous in certain cases, but less so in others, and sometimes in counterintuitive ways. Can two students be accused of cheating if their answers on a test are conspicuously similar, if the teaching staff failed to notice it during the exam? Some might say yes, but would it not be cheating to allow cheating to occur, or to presume guilt, or punish without a hard justification? Moreover, there are other behaviors that can be corrosive to (certain interpretations of) academic integrity when taken to extremes, behaviors that are not obviously cheating: student isolationism or self-imposed hermitude (which can seem, subjectively speaking, like the complete opposite of cheating), enrolling in subjects that one has already studied elsewhere, or accidentally leaving one's bag unattended in a restaurant for 15 minutes. A philosophy of academic integrity expressed only in terms of cheating might be somewhat akin to a philosophy of virtue that is grounded entirely in (technical) prowess.
Be that as it may, how one might approach the subject of academic integrity in a constructive or positive way is a very sensitive matter, in part because of the ethical quandaries that surround the murky business of telling other people how to hold themselves accountable, or what kinds of pledges or promises or vows to make, or perhaps even suggesting that it is even possible to make pledges or vows in ways that are both meaningful and safe, as though doing so did not also involve accepting certain risks as well. It is somewhat nontrivial to come up with an explicit personal accountability framework that is both sound and allows one to make what amount to real, considerate, and unassailable, promises to others, but *that* (and, in an *a posteriori* sense, accommodating or forgiving impudence, possibly the 'grit' alluded to in username_1's answer above) is essentially what academic integrity requires.
Sources:
[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_integrity>
[2] *Pedagogy not Policing: Positive Approaches to Academic Integrity at the University*, <https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/2413/pedagogy-not-policing/>
[3] *Cheating in College: Why Students Do It and What Educators Can Do about It*, <https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/cheating-college>
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: I was recently asked for a minor revision a review paper submitted, including more detailed reporting on parts of the analysis. When performing this additional analysis, I noticed a big data extraction error which had a small effect on the results and conclusions. It has no relevance to our main conclusion. This wasn't picked up by the peer reviewers, who were generally very positive about the paper and I think it has a good chance of being accepted.
Obviously I intend to correct this error and the conclusions derived from it. What is the proper way to go about disclosing this? My plan was to include this as a general note to all reviewers at the start of the response document before addressing all of their individual comments. Should I explictly point this out to the reviewers and explain, or just fix it without explanation and only address their comments directly in the response?
Any and all suggestions much appreciated.<issue_comment>username_1: It is probably better to point it out. A note to the editors/reviewers is fine. You and everyone want the best science to be published. Full disclosure is best.
I doubt that this would lessen the chance of acceptance, but it might draw a bit more scrutiny overall. But that is a good thing in general.
This is similar to pointing out other changes in the paper, those that were called for and those that you think are relevant to improving the paper.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: In your response to reviewers, you can add a section at the end titled "Other changes" or something like that. Explain this data extraction error and mention that it does not change the results to any noticeable extent.
I think that by putting it at the beginning, you're implicitly saying that it's a bigger issue than it really is. If it really does not invalidate the peer review process thus far, it is more a footnote than a main point.
I would also triple-check your other data extractions. While one slip-up is unfortunate, two might signal that you're not careful in your methodology. You could specify that you have verified all your results in your response as well, if you fear that reviewers would doubt your results.
Upvotes: 3
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2021/02/08
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<issue_start>username_0: I am interested in applying to graduate schools in the US in a certain sub-area of computer sciences. However, most of my educational background is in engineering (BS+MS in systems engineering from a good university in Europe). While I have some research experience in the specific research sub-area that I am interested in pursuing, I feel that I may lack some of the more general knowledge that would normally be expected from a computer science graduate.
AFAIK, in the US, any Ph.D. student is expected to read courses for the first 1-2 years. This structure seems ideal for me, as it will allow me to convert my slightly inconsistent self-gained knowledge into something coherent. However, I have two questions:
1. Is it socially acceptable to be spending a significant amount of time during the first 1-2 years of the Ph.D. doing courses and, generally, exploring the subject widely (e.g. in Europe the perception is usually very negative: not dedicating all of one's time to research is often seen as a waste of resources and can result in negative consequences for one's career)?. If I am to also act as a TA + doing graduate courses, I doubt that I will be able to dedicate a significant amount of time to research.
2. Should I make it reasonably apparent in my applications (in the personal statement) that "I am interested in studying such and such subjects in-depth and I am pleased that the department XYZ provides a unique opportunity to do so". The reasoning behind it is that I do not wish to be perceived more competent than I am in the broad area of computer science. Thus, if I get accepted, I should not be expected to become a publication-production-device from day 1 of the program (not to say that I do not intend to publish, and I have published before).
---
If it is relevant, I am not aiming very high from the perspective of the rankings, while having a very good GPA in BS/MS, a very good quant GRE, some research experience, some semi-relevant work experience and at least one reasonably relevant first-author publication (possibly and hopefully two). Nonetheless, I was not very successful professionally, as I could never leave the "obscure start-up environment" with periods of unemployment.
---
I know that there is quite a number of similar questions on the website, but I could not find any questions identical to the ones that I am asking. Please do note that the question is not about the admission chances and hardly about the admission process. I am interested in what are the general expectations from the Ph.D. students with regard to the ratio of the time spent doing coursework/teaching/research during the first 1-2 years of a Ph.D. program in the US.<issue_comment>username_1: This will vary widely from program to program (so much so that this question is borderline "off topic" in this forum), so your best bet would be to discuss this with members of the department where you are thinking of applying (even/especially students). Still, some thoughts...
>
> I feel that I may lack some of the more general knowledge that would normally be expected from a computer science graduate
>
>
>
My biggest concern is your skills in analytical math (i.e., writing proofs). If you are starting from zero and expected to take difficult classes in theoretical computer science, this could be difficult. If your gaps are elsewhere (or such courses are not required by your program), it may be easier to fill these gaps through self-study.
>
> Is it socially acceptable to be spending a significant amount of time during the first 1-2 years of the Ph.D. doing courses and, generally, exploring the subject widely?
>
>
>
In my experience, these classes are **very** difficult, so it is socially acceptable to spend every waking moment trying desperately to pass. Research is for later years. Of course, this will vary school to school.
>
> Should I make it reasonably apparent in my applications (in the personal statement) that "I am interested in studying such and such subjects in-depth and I am pleased that the department XYZ provides a unique opportunity to do so".
>
>
>
Well, your application to a CS PhD program makes it reasonably apparent that you want to study the subjects in detail, and your application to department XYZ makes it clear that you approve of XYZ's program. So, I'm not sure what this sentence buys you. It's also unclear what you find to be "unique" (i.e., one-of-a-kind) about this particular program; offering courses in CS does not make a CS department unique.
>
> The reasoning behind it is that I do not wish to be perceived more competent than I am in the broad area of computer science.
>
>
>
I didn't get this at all from your quote. If this is what you want to communicate, I would phrase it as: "I do not wish to be perceived more competent than I am in the broad area of computer science."
Snarking about the language aside, I would suggest that you omit this from your application. Attempting to give a balanced picture of your strengths and weaknesses is perhaps a good idea, but recall that your goal during the application is to sell the program on you. If you yourself have doubts about your ability to be successful in the program, it is better to resolve these outside of the application process (i.e., either before applying, or after being admitted).
>
> I am interested in what are the general expectations from the Ph.D. students with regard to the ratio of the time spent doing coursework/teaching/research
>
>
>
Again, this will vary from program to program, but as a general guideline, I would say 80% courses, 20% teaching, 0% research for the first year, leading to 100% research by the end.
Upvotes: 2 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: My general read of your situation is that you're in fine shape. I'm a PhD student at a US institution who also switched fields between undergrad and grad school. I went from a physics BS to electrical engineering PhD and felt like the learning curve of jumping into a new field was very manageable, though of course the steepness of that curve depends on your background. Though I bet you have some decent familiarity with CS if you're pursuing a PhD in it.
To answer your questions:
1. It depends on what you mean by 'explore widely'. Depending on the program, you'll most likely be expected to start on research in some form your first year, but most of your time will still be dedicated to classes. In this sense, you will be able to explore the field without being preoccupied by research. However, all of your classes will be at the graduate level, so you won't be able to take an intro/mid level course (which is what I'd consider widely exploring the field) and have it count towards your degree. You can chose to audit other courses at any level, but this wouldn't count towards your degree and, due to time constraints, is probably not practical until you've finished your required courses. Dedicating ~50% of your time to classes instead of research will not be abnormal and will not hurt your career as long as you communicate with your research advisor and meet his/her expectations.
2. I don't think you need to say so. It would be unusual for your advisor to expect a publication your first year. If you want to take a lot of classes so you can build more breadth in your CS background, you could look for programs that have higher course requirements (some tend to be done within a year or two, others can be closer to three years of class work).
And the specifics of the time split between coursework, teaching, and research depends heavily on the program you're in, your advisor, and the class you're a teaching assistant for. But to answer your question, I think during your first and second years classes will get about 60% of your time.
Lastly, I don't think you need to write anything in your application to the effect of "I want to take courses to patch any holes in my background". For one thing, everyone feels that way to an extent. And any unresolved concerns you have about timing or research requirements would be excellent questions for grad students in the program you're applying to or your potential research advisor. You can also ask how people with different backgrounds tend to do in your program (I was surprised to learn that about a third of the people in my program don't have EE backgrounds, so you'll most likely have company).
Upvotes: 0
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2021/02/08
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<issue_start>username_0: I am an undergraduate student pursuing a double major in Computer Science B.S. and Mathematics B.S.
My dream career is to work in quant. finance. However, my school does not have a dedicated department to this field, resulting in lack of dedicated classes and opportunities for it. The page for "Mathematical Finance" is simply a white page with nothing but a list of three faculty members, linking to their page, two of which are Ph.D students.
I have found an associate professor who I believe can help answer a few of my questions and confusion about going down this path, but I have read a little here and generally, emails like this are frowned upon, and the last thing I want is for him to be offended by my request.
However, I don't really know any other professors or faculty members who would be able to give me insight on this.
My email would start off something like this
"*I would just like to start off this email by saying please excuse me and forgive any informalities or unprofessionalism. I hope to not offend you with this sudden email from a student you do not know.
I have found your email and page from MyCollege's "Mathematical Finance" page: mycollege.com/mathematical-finance*"
Then I would say something along the lines of *"given your expertise, what courses/concepts are important...what steps should I take now..."*
And then finally I'd say something like *"I know you are incredibly busy with research, school, among other things, so I hope you do not mind this email."*
I will also make sure not to completely bombard him with questions, but ask general, non-pressuring questions.
Is this a bad idea? I am not quite sure where else to get in contact with someone in this field with such close proximity, and aside from LinkedIn with people I will probably never meet, this seems like my best bet.
EDIT: this might be a duplicate of [OK to ask a professor at my institution with whom I have no previous relationship some questions relating to hobby-project?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/71765/ok-to-ask-a-professor-at-my-institution-with-whom-i-have-no-previous-relationshi)
but this is about a community college professor who is not doing research, which may be different from my circumstances, also his is about a hobby, while mine is about career and industry.<issue_comment>username_1: It is completely fine to send an email. Your request is totally reasonable. You are a student, at university to learn. The professor is at university to teach. If they get offended by a simple enquiry that shows interest in learning more about their favourite subject then you have a bigger problem on your hands.
It will not be the first or even the hundredth time this professor has received an email from a student they don't know and writing such an email is not going to cause offence in any way, shape or form. The worst that can happen is you get a polite "Sorry, I am too busy" or perhaps no reply. The professor will not be offended by you asking -- in fact, it's more likely they will be annoyed or frustrated that they don't have the time to help you, *not* at you for asking.
Finally, I would not start off with such a grovelling/self-deprecating tone. There's no need to apologise for sending a perfectly innocuous email. However, please bear in mind that academic cultures do differ, and I'm writing from a UK/Western European perspective, where the culture can be a little more blunt and far less deferential towards authority (i.e. professors) than in the USA (where I assume you are from). To me it would come across as *more* professional if you write to them as though you are a peer wanting to initiate a scientific discussion, rather than as a lowly student who isn't worthy to interact with an esteemed professor.
In summary, the best thing to do is make sure your email is short, polite and to the point. Briefly introduce yourself, ask your question and thank them in advance for their time.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: **Don’t over think it** I would drop a brief email saying as you wrote above I’m @simonshampoo studying Math and CS and have questions a, b , and c and was wondering if I could pop in during your office hours (or your university’s equivalent), or some other convenient time, to discuss.
You don’t need to be apologetic (as @astronat ‘s answer rightly notes ). Few faculty are going to decline to see serious students with interest in their area. I get such requests from time to time, mostly from maths majors, and have always found them interesting conversations. Many (most?) faculty, dislike answering questions which are available via google, but are often pleased to answer those in their area which are not.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: This is coming from a US perspective, so take that as you will.
Professors are pretty busy and generally just want to cut to the chase. A good email is one that is written clearly and concisely enough that it can be scanned in a few seconds and the gist of what you want to say is clear. Often after a quick scan the professor will decide if they are interested and want to reread it more carefully.
That being said:
* Introduce yourself briefly: Name, undergraduate, major, interested in X
* State what you want clearly and briefly. One bite-size paragraph for each key idea (~3 sentences each) has worked well for me in the past.
* If you want you can close with something like "given your expertise in this area I would love to get your input, but I understand if you are pressed for time".
+ Since it is a given that professors are incredibly busy, however, I might consider leaving this off. Some people don't like it when you state the obvious, while others might view it as a courtesy, it's really your call.
* Showing a bit of passion can be good. If fin. tech is really your 'dream' job then try to convey that in some way (just saying, "its my dream to work in x" is good enough). Professors are often very passionate about their work and like to help students that share some of that passion too.
I also think you should consider whether you want to ask to meet with them briefly rather than discuss things over email. Many professors are more than happy to share their wisdom and expertise with students. If you are more comfortable with email though then that is certainly fine.
If you do want to meet, then in the 'state what you want section' mention you want to pursue mathematical finance, that there is no apparent program at the university, that you are looking for guidance on what to study, and ask if they would be interested in a brief conversation about it sometime.
Don't be worried about these sorts of emails having a 'bad reputation'. The kind of emails that actually have a bad reputation are low-effort correspondence, often from lazy or entitled students. That is not the case at all here, your university is not setup to provide what you want and this professor is uniquely positioned to be able to help you. At worst he will read it, be too busy, and just move on without a second thought.
**What to Avoid**
Don't grovel like you did in your proposed intro, apologizing for any perceived offenses your email might be about to commit. This doesn't help the professor know who you are, what you want, or why he should keep reading the email and will likely come off as rather irritating. The professor fully understands the situational dynamics, so there is no need to make them explicit. Just stick to the facts. (quantitative people especially tend to like this)
As long as you are polite, direct, and respectful you should be fine.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Although I agree with the other answers that professors receive such e-mails every day and would not be offended to receive one from you, I would caution you against writing *this* e-mail: "what courses/concepts are important...what steps should I take now..." What is the professor going to tell you? Let me Google that for you? Such an e-mail does not show signs of having "done the homework" and will not make a good first impression. If you have a request to make of a busy person, it should be something they are *uniquely* qualified to help you with. This kind of general information could be found anywhere, particularly here on StackExchange.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_5: Nothing wrong with writing to this professor, but this professor maybe isn't the best resource to answer your questions. In particular, you mention that this is a community college--professors at community colleges can vary hugely in how much time and experience they have for things like this. On one hand, you have younger faculty who are just trying to make ends meet while they complete their own education/try to find a tenure-track job at a "real" university... On the other hand, you can have old industry veterans who only teach part time as a hobby and who would love to tell you all about their experiences.
1. Career services at your school (especially community colleges generally focus on providing career-oriented curriculum, so career services are usually pretty good).
2. Your academic advisor(s)...it is literally their job to help you decide what to study. In particular, they might be able to suggest some related areas that you have not considered, like stats or data science, which may be more available at your school. Also, they hopefully have some connections inside your department(s) and know who might actually have the knowledge and the time to talk to you.
3. The internet. There are literally a million results for what to study and how to get into quant, and if none of them seem specific enough to you then you can always post your own question.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: I know there is already an accepted answer, but let me suggest another option if it is convenient: Go by the professor's office in person. He almost certainly has office hours, and you could also call and arrange a specific time. An in-person conversation would give you a chance to clarify questions, and honestly it would also reduce the chance that he would sincerely mean to reply later and then forget.
Upvotes: 0
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2021/02/08
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<issue_start>username_0: Is there a way to get your research article peer reviewed without submitting to a conference or journal?
I am imagining something like openreview.net or even some private peer review system since you would most probably publish that article later in a conference/journal.
**Note** I work in computer science mainly Machine Learning<issue_comment>username_1: The way most people do this is to call one of their "peers" and ask them to review the paper. This could be a co-worker or someone from a different department or university. If you do not know anyone, talk to someone who does.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: This is a take-off on the [answer of username_1](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/162389/75368).
If you have confidence in your results then there is no need for this. Just submit to an appropriate journal and you will get the feedback you need.
But, for those cases in which you aren't sure...
This is why it is so important for newer researchers to form wide circles of contacts within their field. People who know enough, and are trusted enough, to give feedback on ideas and even read and comment on drafts and work in progress.
One way to do this, if you are at a large-ish institution is to form or join a research seminar devoted to a small set of topics. Papers can be passed around for comment. The coffee lounge is also a good place to do this, though it is probably something online these days.
Making contact with people at conferences (real or virtual) can help you build that circle. You can ask your advisors to be included in their circles. But, for effective research in the modern era, a circle is essential for most people, but especially for those at the start of their career.
But, cold emailing people isn't very likely to be effective. People don't know (or trust) you nor you, them.
And don't neglect to include your own students in your circle(s) as they develop.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: A platform specifically designed for this purpose is [*Peer Community In (PCI)*](https://peercommunityin.org/):
>
> “Peer Community in” (PCI) is a non-profit scientific organization that aims to create specific communities of researchers reviewing and recommending, for free, unpublished preprints in their field (i.e. unpublished articles deposited on open online archives like arXiv and bioRxiv1).
> ´
>
>
>
However, note that you need to "publish" your piece as an "unpublished" pre-print first. (Yes, there is a little paradox there, as pre-prints are not considered as "published".)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: **Give a talk**, in your department, at a peer's department, at a workshop (without proceedings).
**Share preprints**, with colleagues after talks, in public repositories, with fellow researchers whom you cite/respect/collaborate.
Upvotes: 2
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2021/02/08
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<issue_start>username_0: I have applied for PhD programme (in Dec 2020) and informed my potential supervisor that I have completed my application. Recently (9 days ago), he asked me if I have received any communication from the institute regarding my application and told me he has not received my application yet. To this, I replied that the Graduate admission office will not answer individual queries regarding application status and I will be receiving emails once the decision has been made (I informed this after making an inquire with the admission office). Also, I had asked him to update me if he has any further updates regarding my application. I have not received any email from the professor after this conversation. The institute has no specific timeline as to when the application decision will be made. Now, Should I write another email to the professor and ask him if he has received my application? or should I make another inquire in the admission office about my application status by mentioning that the professor had asked me about my application status?<issue_comment>username_1: It doesn't seem effective to ask the admissions office again if they have already said that you will hear only when decisions have been made.
But you could give the potential advisor an update that you haven't heard anything yet, asking if he has. But it seems unlikely that one of you would be notified and the other not.
Unless you have some actual reason for needing to know, such as replying about another opportunity, I'd suggest patience. You don't speed anything up by sending pointless emails.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Reply to the potential supervisor you submitted the application to the Graduate admission office (GAO) asking him if you should apply/submit all the required documents directly to him, or if you should contact the GAO to enquire about the status.
If he does not answer in 3/4 days, write to the GAO, putting your professor (he is the same as the potential supervisor, right?) in CC, asking for an update on the status of your application.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I am preparing some reviews of conference contributions. The online review management asks me to grade the assigned papers, add comments for the authors and comments for the program chair. I cannot leave any field blank -- so I am wondering what comments I should give to the chair? To my knowledge, comments to the chair include suspected or actual cases of plagiarism.
* Is there anything else, a chair might expect to read from me, the reviewer?
* Should I give them a short version of my comments to the authors?
The conference homepage and the reviewer guidelines do not give any hints.
Thank you for your input!<issue_comment>username_1: There is no point why you should fill anything into this field, unless you actually have some confidential comments that should not be part of the comments to the authors.
You can fill the field in a boilerplate manner, by using a text fragment such as: "I do not have any additional comments beyond those to the authors."
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I suggest that you make a recommendation on acceptance/rejection here and back it up with a reason or two. If there is something remarkably good or bad about the paper, mention it. You don't need to repeat what is in the author comments as that isn't exactly relevant to the job that the chair has ahead.
If you are familiar with the quality of the papers at this conference you will have an idea whether the paper measures up to the general quality. If the conference has a "best paper" award, don't neglect to make a recommendation if a paper qualifies for that.
Upvotes: 1
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2021/02/08
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<issue_start>username_0: There is a course at my university that has not had a correctly posed exam as far as any student remembers.
The exam consists of five problems of the type "Prove that if A, then B". At least one of the statements to be proved later turns out to be false.
This happens every year. No one from the teaching staff ever acknowledges this in writing, neither before nor after the exam. They usually make the grade cutoffs more lenient as compensation.
Has anyone encountered such a situation? What to do here, as a student?<issue_comment>username_1: [Answer will surely depend on location; the following is US/Canada specific]
**If** the grade cutoffs are adjusted as compensation for mistakes on the exam-setters' part (and not for some other reason: perhaps there is actually an intention to grade on a curve?), then that suggests that these really are mistakes rather than intentionally false statements.
Carefully collect as much documentation as you can. Then find the **lowest** person in the chain of command who will listen to you and politely present your case. (The tradeoff is that the lower-ranking people have less power, but they are also more likely to take the time to listen to you. If you can convince them they will have a better chance at convincing someone with more power to do something. Also, going too high initially [e.g. sending a letter to the head of the university] might get you dismissed as a troublemaker, if your contact isn't just ignored). Starting from the bottom:
* A current graduate student teaching assistant
* an instructor (you say "No one from the teaching staff ever acknowledges this in writing", but it's not clear to me what kind of approaches have been made to them in the past)
* (out of the chain, but worth trying if the instructors won't listen): an ombuds office/person, if one exists at your institution ([example](https://www.mcmaster.ca/ombuds/))
* the chair of the responsible department
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: You don't say what field this is, but in a logic or math course this might be a perfectly fine sort of question if the objective is to recognize errors, incorrect statements, and poor reasoning.
Recognizing that something isn't true and saying why can be just as valuable as providing a proof of something that *is* true. After all, in the political sphere there is a lot of such flawed reasoning that you can see every day in common media.
So, before you object, or claim that the professors are incompetent, explore why this is happening. Just the fact that it recurs implies to me that it may well be intentional.
However, I would hope that instructors using such a technique give some sort of warning beforehand.
I used to warn my students that the final would have one question that would be extremely difficult (nearly impossible) for any of them to answer. It was a thought provoker. But I expected students to say "something intelligent" for such questions even though I didn't expect solutions. The grading has to reflect this, of course.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I have never seen (or realized) an example of an academic website which displays ads.
I am thinking of a website not hosted by the institute, but as a personal website, paid by the faculty member.
Does it look weird/unethical/unacceptable if a person uses a service similar to AdSense for their website?<issue_comment>username_1: I don't think I would call it "unethical," but certainly weird and borderline unacceptable.
While I'm sure the idea is to just recoup server costs; it would strike me as very weird to try and profit off visits to your personal website and I would probably avoid visiting it again.
If you were being interviewed, I can't see it being a positive.
Also keep in mind the ads may be targeted. I don't think someone seeing a male enhancement pill on your website would be very impressed, even if it was their own search history that suggested it.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Such a website is itself an ad: for the lab, the lab's research, and for the personnel running/working at the lab.
In many ways, a lab website is like a resume. While it's not unusual for newsletters published by some local org (say, a school, church, youth group, etc) to have local ads to cover publishing costs from the neighborhood dental clinic, grocer, etc, but you wouldn't expect to find these on a *resume*.
Probably most people are conditioned enough to online ads that they wouldn't even notice them, but if they did it might seem a bit weird, and if they were at all intrusive it would be downright ugly looking and reflect badly on the lab. If I were working in a lab where the PI had a website with ads, I'd be embarrassed by it even though it wasn't my own responsibility. If I was visiting such a site, I might wonder if I've stumbled on some illegitimate content farm site by mistake.
I doubt a typical academic's website gets anywhere near enough traffic to make ads make much sense financially. The cost of potentially putting off a precious visitor doesn't seem worth it to me to pocket a few pennies.
If the site is hosted by the university or with any grant funds for research it is likely illegal or against some terms to make any personal profit off such a site; even if the funds are just used to pay back the site costs it's a gray area that is still probably not allowed. A university could certainly even have a policy on this even if their funds are not directly involved if anything about the website affiliates it with the university, including being an official or pseudo-official website for a lab operating out of that institution.
It's just not worth the potential conflicts from any angle I can see.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I'm not quite as negative as the other current answers here. I don't think it is unethical, for example, provided that the domain is your own. Weird, perhaps.
But, a warning. Don't sign up with some ad "service" that has the ability to place ads on your site according to their judgement, not yours. You will regret it pretty quickly, I'd guess.
However, there is unlikely to be any financial advantage to you unless you have a blog with millions of readers. And most of the folks I read (blogs) have periodic campaigns to solicit contributions. But they are also "in the business" of writing daily on subjects of interest to a wide audience.
Of course, academic authors often have "ads" on their web sites to enable potential readers to find their books. I doubt that anyone would object to that.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Yes, it is so weird to show ads on academic websites. But it wouldn't be enough frustrating if your ads are not inappropriate or other than interest-based but honestly, sometimes interest-based ads flow my mind to that ad's content rather than what and why I could open that website! So, this is also an awkwardness of ads.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_5: As Brian said before, there is not enaugh traffic on an academic website.
However, I don't think it would be unethical to show ads (if you can filter out what kind of ads shouldn't appear on your website). I think that in academia, we are primed to think that we shouldn't think about profit. If someone can make a good profit with ads on his/her webpage, it is alright for me. I would rather look at the papers to judge professionalism.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_6: It likely depends on what you consider to be "ads".
Some might argue that the entire website is an advertisement for the university. If you've ever sat in meetings with the alumni association, student recruitment, and the university's "development" department (the people who try to get you to donate money) to redesign the university's website, you'd know how obsessed they are over 'branding' and the like.
But even if you consider them to be a business (even if it's a real estate business that's obligated to teach classes), you'd understand their focus on branding and such. You wouldn't expect to go to ford.com and see advertisements for other vehicles show up ... you might see ads for Ford vehicles, but they want to control their brand. Looking at my alma matter's website just now, I found a few pages with ads for 'online giving'.
It's possible that a school might have a "Code of Conduct" or similar that specifically forbids monetization of web pages, especially if they're a non-profit. There may also be concerns about third-parties harvesting information about their staff and students. If a third party knew who was viewing which websites, they might be able to infer who were students and what courses they were enrolled in ... which may be a FERPA violation. (I'm not aware of any lawsuits / decisions on the matter, this is just speculation).
But we still get into the question of what qualify as "ads". You used to see a lot of groups that participated in "rings" where there would be some topic of unifying interest, and then sites would join the ring, giving links to the other participating sites while getting links back in return. So you had "ads" to link to other thematically linked web pages, but it wasn't like today's ad networks where you had absolutely no idea what might show up on your page.
As has already been alluded to by others, this is bad for the university. If their servers get used for a "watering hole" attack, it could lead to the site being blocked at firewalls for the federal government, which is *really* bad for research institutions.
You also get the occasional link to a sponsor's page. Usually it's just a text link or maybe a logo and link. You might see this on departmental webpages or various student organizations. There were a number of engineering competitions at my university that I believe all had corporate sponsors (solar car, concrete canoe, baja SAE, etc.)
There will be increasingly higher levels of flexibility and autonomy as you move from the "main" university's web pages to departmental pages & sites to organizations and personal (staff, faculty & student) sites.
These days, if staff or student wanted to monetize a website, it's easy to get external hosting. You wouldn't get shut down when academic computing decided to look into why the webserver was bogged down and found that a staff member had set up a porn site. And you can more easily move your content elsewhere if you control the domain name.
In general, it's just bad form -- does your page exist to give out authoritative information, or to trick people into visiting so that you can try make money off them and try to get them to go elsewhere? Webrings or other link exchanges might make sense in some specific cases, but things like AdSense and such make your website look unprofessional as you lose control over your page. The university provides the hosting, so it's not like you're trying to make your cost back for hosting the pages.
(note: I was the webmaster for a large private non-profit university in the 1990s. I have no idea how many people these days bother w/ university hosting vs. just having a facebook page. And yes, we really did have a staff member put up a porn site. He even worked for our department (night shifts on the helpdesk), and lots of our co-workers had complained about him, but management kept ignoring them)
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_7: A major cause why conspiracy theories, fake news, and bad science is so prolific today, is because it's profitable. The recipe is simple: create a website which pretends to be a newspaper or an academic site. Monitor the current news, and then write an article which states the exact opposite. People will share the "shocking discovery" on social media, their followers will click on it, and then the creator of the site earns money from the ads, especially if they get lucky enough and their article becomes viral.
You really don't want to create the image in your readers that you are operating such a site.
Upvotes: -1
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm a first year PhD student in mathematics and I'm in a pretty bad spot.
Over the last year or so of undergrad and first semester of grad school, I've completely atrophied my problem solving skill. At some point I became more comfortable with looking up a solution than trying to solve it myself. At this point my first instinct is to google something instead of trying to solve something. I need to fix this; it's already been affecting my performance and well being across the board. I'm almost instinctually aversive to trying to solve a problem by myself at this point. I feel like I've lost the ability to actually do math. I initially justified it by saying that my interest in math stems from my interest in the theory, and that I'm not particularly interested in problem solving. It's clear now that that was just cognitive dissonance. I need to fix this.
I know what the obvious answer is- don't look stuff up. And try to do problems on my own. Practice, practice, practice.
But I feel like it's not so simple either. I'm doing graduate level math after all. I managed to get into a fairly top level, rigorous program. I have performed well enough in the past that I managed to place ahead of my peers, and am doing relatively advanced courses (after all, I wouldn't have resorted to looking up stuff if it wasn't working well for me, until recently). As such, it seems like I already need a solid, strong problem solving capability in order to deal with my classes, which are quite demanding. So when I'm faced with HW or other problems, I'm unable to solve most of the problems even if I try really hard, because my problem solving skill is just so bad at this point, and I have to resort to looking things up once more. This further worsens my skill and on and on. It's a negative feedback loop. And I'm struggling to break out of it. I wanted advice on how to escape this loop especially. The idea of simply not looking stuff up is sound, but it's hard to follow through when I have only a finite amount of time before I have to stop thinking and submit my answers, or when I simply don't possess the capability anymore to try and solve the problem.
These days the idea of solving a graduate level HW set seems impossible to me, and I'm just incredibly lucky graduate level courses tend not to have exams. It's reached the point where it's threatening my future in my PhD program so I really do need to fix it. Googling my way through life isn't possible (or desirable either). I really am desperate now.
I feel like a lost cause at this point, like the damage has already been done to me, and I can't really fix it without going back to undergrad or something.
I was just hoping for concrete advice and from people who have had similar experiences, and what I should do.
Clarifications:
* I am referring to problems/solutions in my graduate courses. The research portion of my PhD has not started yet.
* My advisor and I are not particularly close (only interacted a few times so far due to the pandemic), so my awkward attempt to bring it up with him didn't really go anywhere.<issue_comment>username_1: I experienced a similar deterioration in those skills during my time as a Ph.D. student. A key element in enabling me to recover those problem-solving skills was TAing (working as a teaching assistant) on undergraduate maths courses, which gave me a good excuse to schedule some time to practise those skills, on entry-level problems, in order to help students with then.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: I think it’s not a coincidence that the timing of this decline matches up with the pandemic. A lot of people are really struggling right now, I feel like I can’t do math as well as I could a year ago. In this post it sounds like you’re being really hard on yourself. Counterintuitively I think a big part of what might help is being more compassionate with yourself. It’s ok that you’re struggling, and it’s ok to just not solve some of the problems. Research math mostly involves failing to solve problems most of the time, so it’s really ok to just not answer some of the questions and get used to that feeling and be kind to yourself because they’re hard problems. You can always come back to those problems next year. I guess what I’m saying is that you also want to develop the skill of giving up on a problems as well as the skill of solving them. The former is perhaps more valuable in research than the latter.
Upvotes: 7 <issue_comment>username_3: There are a few things that might be happening:
1. You are in a grad program, which is probably presenting you with more challenging problems. So - problems you are encountering might be actually more difficult than problems you encountered in your undergrad studies.
2. Your brain is tired. Stress of starting a PhD program; from a *global pandemic*; from knowing you are in a top program and feeling you're not up to snuff; from failing. Let go of these. This is clearly easier said than done, but perhaps finding comfort with friends and family, or talking to a professional (no shame in that at all! This is a stressful time).
3. You are giving yourself a crutch of Googling stuff, which is super tempting. Try to avoid that as much as you can, and even start by solving the basics first as was suggested by others here.
4. One of the big differences between grad research and undergrad studies is that *you don't know whether an answer exists*. In an undergrad assignment, you *know* that there's a solution, which is giving you some comfort that if you dig enough you'll find the solution. This is definitely not the case for research problems, where your problem may have no solution (or one that's way beyond your skill level).
Good luck!
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: Let me add my perspective on the first two points in the [answer of username_3](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/162436/75368).
1. Some students, and I was one, reach the limit of their natural "ability" in math early on, and others later. Before you reach that limit things seem fairly obvious and you can do math without a lot of hard work. But once you reach that limit only really hard work will get you to the required insights. It is possible to do that, as I did, but as soon as I started undergraduate studies I had to work hard to advance. My sister, on the other hand, hit the wall later and didn't really recover from it. But in her early life it was all pretty easy.
The solution for me was to do more exercises, even if I had to buy workbooks in order to find them. I once graphed hundreds of rational functions (by hand) using derivative information and developed deep insight into the behavior of real functions in doing so. But I had to learn not to depend on "ability" to get the job done.
2. You may have reached a point of burnout as I did early on in grad school. This is pretty natural if everything up to now has been very intense. Your brain, and maybe your body generally, need a break of some kind. I didn't get over it until I changed institutions and found a more supportive environment. But I also learned to take breaks - especially aerobic breaks, so that my mind was fresh when I attacked a new problem.
I don't know if either of these actually resonates with you or not. But it is probably worth taking a bit of time (a time-out) to look at where you are what underlying causes there might be for your block. A professional counsellor (perhaps at the university) might be able to give you advice fairly quickly. Small changes might be all that is needed.
I don't have more to add to username_3's last points, but they resonate with me also. Good advice there.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_5: A few things that have helped me in similar situations:
1. Write down several problems to try (on paper), turn off your phone and computer, and work for an hour. If you're staring at a blank page for an hour, pick easier problems from earlier in the course. The goal is to strengthen your Sitzfleisch, a mathematician's most important muscle.
2. If you're still stuck on some problems after the hour is up, talk to someone! Your professors have office hours -- tell them what you've tried and where you're stuck. Nowadays, you'll have to turn on your computer to go to office hours, but **don't look up anything about the problems before going to office hours**. The point is that you want to practice formulating and asking questions on your own.
3. Reach out to other grad students and work on homework with them. Be clear about your goals to not look things up right away. Working with others is a good way to keep yourself accountable. This is also good practice for collaborating on projects once you start research.
Regarding the last point -- it can be intimidating to ask to work with others. You may worry that they all know what they're doing, and that they will all see how hopelessly lost you are. However, being brave enough to feel stupid is an important part of doing research. And who knows if your peers actually know what they're doing? If they do, you can learn a lot from them, and if they don't, then you can all figure it out together!
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: I think your skills might not have atrophied as much as you think and you simply haven't adjusted your expectations!
It's difficult to diagnose the problem from afar but there might be the following vicious cycle at play: You start working on a problem with the attitude of "I am good at math. And I can do any math problem thrown at me!". But now because those problems are much harder you struggle much more compared to your times as an undergraduate. This generates enormous frustration ("I should be able to do this!! Why can't I do this??") which in turn makes it much harder to solve the actual problem.
Because solving hard math problem requires creativity and very high focus you need to be in a somewhat relaxed and positive state of mind. In order to achieve that I'd advise you to give yourself *much* more credit for partial progress. As an undergraduate you probably didn't give yourself any credit for just doing run of the mill homework. Maybe if you got 100/100 on every single problem set you felt a little bit proud. But below that you probably just didn't consider solving homework problems as an achievement. Now in grad school game is a different one!
The way to break our of your current state, is *not* to beat yourself up and try harder but give yourself positive feedback for much smaller incremental progress than you used to. Getting started with even understanding exactly what the problem is used to be "worthless" to you ("everyone can do this") whereas now it would equate to a very productive afternoon that you should feel proud and accomplished.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_7: Just to add to the great advice already given.
Please consider consulting a psychiatrist to make sure if there is a physiological component of your struggle, it is dealt with appropriately. Sometimes we forget that the brain is an organ and it needs proper nourishment and irrigation. A good psychiatrist has the right tools to assess whether someone needs treatment, and it could really help. I write from personal experience - I am not a mathematician.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: If you were able to intuitively solve problems up until now you then probably never developed a systematic approach to problem solving. Now when your intuitive approach fails, you have nothing to fall back on. The good news is that you can learn a systematic approach to problem solving. Then you just have to remember to apply your systematic approach instead of panicking (this can actually be quite hard, from my experience).
You may even recall other people using this kind of strategy while you "just solved" things.
1. Read over the whole question once.
2. Organize what information you're given--I recommend copying this off onto a second piece of paper, it really helps focus you.
3. Make sure you understand what you're being asked to find or show. If it's a multi-part question, focus on one part at a time.
4. Write down any definitions or ideas that might connect what you're given to what you're asked to find or show. Re-familiarizing yourself with earlier (undergraduate) classes will be helpful here!
5. Note any techniques that might help you (perhaps it seems like a proof by induction may be helpful, perhaps what you're being asked for is a change over time so some calculus might be useful, etc.).
6. If you still have no ideas, try either... a) Forming a simpler version of the problem. b) Trying a few sample cases to try and understand what is happening. c) Drawing a picture. d) Pretending that you are explaining the problem to someone else, using full sentences, and adding in more detail until the problem is clear.
[This previous question about how to get better at proofs](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/7743/getting-better-at-proofs) might also be useful for you. There are several very good answers that offer structured approaches to proofs.
Also, if you can find a bit of time (it's hard, I know), it can be useful to go back and find the boundary where your intuition was no longer enough, and start working at that boundary. Find a few problems that were difficult but doable and practice solving them using deliberate techniques...then see if you can move that boundary a little bit.
Oh, and one other thing. You may have to change your study skills, too. Or at least, I did. I never memorized things because I found it easier to learn the general ideas and then piece the specifics back together from principles when needed. But at the point where my intuition started failing I wasn't able to do that, I had to start actually studying the hard way using note cards and spaced repetition software and that kind of thing (it was awful, haha).
(Side note, I agree with others re: pandemic is *hard* and probably making things worse.)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_9: Here are some suggestions for both your courses and your future life as a researcher. These will reflect my own taste and approach, so may or may not be relevant to you. In particular, I think this applies to some areas of mathematics much more than to others. Some of the points below will be corollaries of the more general points preceding them:
* Instead of thinking of your job as solving problems, think of it as understanding "what is going on". In many cases at the level of graduate courses this will, in fact, be "all" it will take to solve the homework exercises (which is not to say that this is a small step). In research this is also often the most important part. Rediscover that understanding what is going on is something only *you* can do, and that looking up can only help so much with this. When we write papers, we often create an illusion: namely that at some point (or at several points) we had a brilliant flash of problem solving genius. In reality what happens much more often is that we grope our way to the final polished solution by way of many concrete examples, special cases, iterations of abstraction, etc., ultimately just understanding better and better "what is really going on". The next points are just going to be concrete elaborations on this general attitude.
* Compute concrete examples, unprompted. Don't delay this until you have been given concrete exercises to solve, start doing it when you learn the theory. As soon as you see a definition, come up with examples and non-examples for the concept. As soon as you read a theorem statement, try to disprove it before continuing to read the proof; work out and verify the statement in concrete examples; if you start out immediately believing the statement, try dropping some of the hypotheses and see if you still believe it; now find counterexamples to the versions with hypotheses omitted; now actually try to prove the result. You will discover (to your huge delight, I promise) that by the time you have done all of the above, you will often actually just be able to prove the theorem. Even better, you might get a sense of how one would actually discover the statement one one's own. That is always the ultimate goal in learning a new theory. And you will be able to transfer all these strategies to your homework.
* Try, whenever possible, to ignore time pressure, and actually to ignore time. Just set out to get to the bottom of things.
* If you can find a suitable colleague, try explaining what you have learned to them. When you prepare such a lesson, anticipate the questions, starting with the most naive ones. If you don't have a suitable colleague for this, prepare such a talk anyway. What this will do is it will make obvious to yourself the various gaps that you still have in your understanding that you were not aware of. Often when trying to get "to the bottom of things", one of the big obstacles is seeing where "the bottom" is. You get used, so to speak, to floating at a particular depth, and just by force of habit start thinking that this is where you are supposed to be.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_10: Hah, I had a different situation, but it may be useful to you.
Several years ago, I was able to consistently solve 4/6 problems at any IMO problemset.
Then happened my undergraduate studies and this horrible phase of mathematics education where I didn't really need to solve math problems. You learn the method for the exam problems, solve it, forget it and go on. I never did much homework, nor did I take any advanced courses.
I switched universities owing to the Bologna Accord, and then started taking serious courses. And I really found myself worse than I remembered, not able to really solve the homework in advanced graduate courses.
Then it was painful for a while, to be honest. I felt like my mental skills have declined.
But, I kind of slowly got my brain back once I started spending >10h/week just trying to solve problems, just like in high school. Ideas just started appearing more often after the first semester.
The point: it takes consistent practice to be OK at anything.
And you need grit; you won't get any returns in a few weeks only.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_11: How much sleep are you getting?
What other stress are you under? Financial, relationship, etc.?
Are you doing anything that is sapping your intellectual strength? Drinking, video game binging, porn, etc.?
Are you keeping up some measure of exercise? Eating reasonably healthy?
Mental sharpness is affected by a lot of things. These are a few basics to rule out before looking deeper.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_12: Ask your self:
>
> Do I like doing math?
>
>
>
There's no rule that a person will always enjoy doing what they are good at. It's possible that you have mathematical skills, but you don't actually enjoy doing math.
Ask yourself why you enrolled in this program; was it to pursue passion, or to pursue a specific career, or was it simply the path of least resistance?
Other answers point to several effects that could cause a temporary, reversible lack of interest/motivation (e.g. pandemic, undetected depression...) and these would likely have a broad impact over many aspects of life. So if your ability to enjoy anything has atrophied, then look for a temporary, reversible effect and if possible seek some counseling or professional assistance.
However, if it seems to be specifically mathematics that's lost it's shine, then consider some significant courses of action sooner, rather than later:
1. Look into a more applied field of mathematics like engineering, physics, some aspects of molecular biology or social sciences and see if these *spark a new interest* in wanting to solve problems. Maybe it's simply that you are more of a goal oriented person and when the solution has a practical use it feels more compelling.
2. If that's not effective, then consider that you've discovered that Math just isn't interesting to you. Maybe you simply don't like it any more. In that case you may have some decisions to make.
For comparison, here's how some people feel about mathematical problem solving:
* [Addiction to Math Stack Exchange](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/q/26466/284619)
* [Can Math.SE be addictive?](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/q/31051/284619)
* [Am I the only one getting addicted to this site? How do you manage time doing other things?](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3850/284619)
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: In manuscripts, a text between the chapter heading and before the first section might exist. Does this have a name?
This seems to be a good community to know the answer.
Thanks in advance.<issue_comment>username_1: If the text is a quotation, it is called an *epigraph*. See [this APA blog post](https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2013/10/how-to-format-an-epigraph.html) on how to format epigraphs.
Other than that, most citation guides do not seem to recommend the insertion of a section between a chapter heading and the next subsection.
But I have not found any particular term for that. The descriptive terms listed in the comments seem plausible to me (e.g. "chapter introduction" or a "preface" to the chapter [with multiple synonyms](https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/preface)).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: It's become quite common in academic books in the STEM fields to add such a section as a kind of abstract for the chapter. The reason for this is that the publishers are now selling online access to individual chapters of books through their web sites. When you search on Google Scholar, Web of Science, etc., you'll often get results which are book chapters- if you follow the link to one of these book chapters, you'll get access to the brief summary, but access to the full chapter will be behind a paywall. I've heard these called "chapter abstracts."
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Text between the chapter title and the first section heading is usually called the ["lead paragraph"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_paragraph) or "lede". Despite the name, this can be one ore more paragraphs of text.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: As a PI, I have quite a few projects that have gone nowhere. For some of these projects, I have submitted a manuscript that has been rejected. In others, I have written portions of a manuscript, but feel like the results are rather inconclusive. I could submit these manuscripts as they are, but I find it difficult to write papers with inconclusive results (there's no story to tell). It feels unethical to resubmit papers where I have not addressed the flaws pointed out by the reviewers. I suppose I can just be as upfront as possible about the flaws, but this also takes some time and finesse. It seems like the amount of time I'd have to put into these manuscripts to address the flaws would be better spent on projects that are working and have promising results.
My grad school advisor seemed to be of the mindset that you should just keep revising and resubmitting a manuscript until it gets accepted. I sometimes felt like he was succumbing to a sunk cost fallacy and that the time we put into rescuing these projects wasn't worth it. There's also the argument that you should publish any work you do, even dead ends, because it will avoid duplication and save other people time. But putting anything in a publishable form takes time and effort, which takes away from other projects. What is the opinion of the community on these issues?
Another complication can be the involvement of others in the project (students, technicians), who would like to have a better publication record. However, in many cases, it might be faster to make them part of a better, more promising project than to dump time into a project that isn't working.
I'm trying to be more choosy about the projects I take on in the future to avoid this dilemma, but it's hard to know where a project will go. I'd like some advice on how to handle such projects/unpublished manuscripts. Just submit them to a preprint server and forget about them? Submit them to journals that have a low enough bar? **How do you decide whether work is worth salvaging?**<issue_comment>username_1: My thoughts on
>
> How do you decide whether work is worth salvaging?
>
>
>
I think a better question is how to salvage, not how to decide whether to salvage.
You even suggest some possibilities
* If the referees' reports suggest changes that you think make sense
then the review process is working. Make the changes and resubmit,
there or elsewhere.
* Clean up some obvious bad places and post as a preprint.
* Incorporate the good parts in another project.
* Some dead ends should be acknowledged as such - and published. See [What to do when you spend several months working on an idea that fails in a masters thesis?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30995/what-to-do-when-you-spend-several-months-working-on-an-idea-that-fails-in-a-mast/31082#31082)
* Maybe the referees were right to reject. I have two manuscripts from
years ago that I never reworked or resubmitted.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: All papers have flaws, and all papers can be improved. The minimal criterion for whether to toss it or work on it is whether or not it provides any new information, however minimal. If it does, then you need only adjust your expectations on the quality of the journal.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: In order to decide whether to write up and publish a project as a preprint and/or journal article, you may ask yourself a few questions:
* Would it be interesting to give a talk on that material?
* Should the results be mentioned in review articles on the subject?
* If the article you consider writing had existed before you embarked in the project, would you have read it, and would it have influenced your work?
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I recently finished my PhD, and now I'm in the process of submitting a journal article on the work I did in the final few months of my degree. This work is an extension to some conference papers that I'd published earlier, and so I've cited them in my journal article stating how the submitted work differs from the published material. When I submitted the article to the journal, I mentioned in a cover letter that the same results/algorithms exist in my PhD dissertation.
After submission, I received a note from the journal to also cite my own PhD dissertation in the article, as there is a fair bit of similarity. The note said:
>
> You can resubmit after you have referenced the original article, and explained in your new article how this new work builds on your previous publication(s).
>
>
>
Considering the work presented in the journal article is not really an extension, and is pretty much the same as in the dissertation, how do I properly reference it? In my experience, I have not seen papers where the authors cited their own dissertation in the text.<issue_comment>username_1: If the dissertation is "published" then cite it like any other work. Otherwise cite it by name and authors and mark the citation as (doctoral dissertation, U of the Universe, unpublished).
It might only take a note or a short paragraph somewhere to explain how the present paper is related to the dissertation. "Builds" was just boilerplate. In fact, the note you sent to the editors might be enough if it is incorporated in a "prior work" paragraph or two.
"Published" is a nebulous term for dissertations. It can mean other than "by a recognized publisher". For example, some dissertations are "published" by the university and available via the Library or by ProQuest/University Microfilms.
But, failure to cite the ideas is self plagiarism. When in doubt, cite, even if you think it is over-citation.
---
Some dissertations are nothing more than a collection of previously published work along with a description of how it fits together as a whole. In such a case, just cite the individual papers as you would those of any researcher. Such dissertations are common in some fields and are also sometimes known as "stapled" distributions.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: In my experience (Theoretical Computer Science/Mathematical Logic) this issue is typically handled by having the sentence "This article is based on Chapter X of the author's PhD thesis \cite{myThesis}." as a stand-alone paragraph at the end of the introduction section.
Having just the plain sentence is consistent with the article having been edited only minimally to turn a chapter into a stand-alone article. If there are substantial differences, these can be pointed out in addition. Eg "We refer the reader to \cite{myThesis} for a much more detailed exposition of the proof."
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: You could try pre-printing it and citing the preprint. Benefits are short time to `publication' (a couple of days, maximum, and only on a weekend) so very short delay to resubmission, moreover, the citation still counts for h-indices etc. I am sure that arXiv does theses as I have definitely read some there.
A proper citation could simply be a sentence like ``[type of result] [number or name if applicable] was developed in [citation], and is [restated/extended/some other word] here."
[citation] Your Name, Year, Your Dissertation Title, *Dissertation from [your univ.]*
This citation may be adapted if you do indeed arxiv it.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_4: >
> When I submitted the article to the journal, I mentioned in a cover letter that the same results/algorithms exist in my PhD dissertation.
>
>
>
The editor made a mistake. Very probably an automated plagiarism check was performed without viewing the cover letter or examining the type of document the plagiarism check located. The editor thought your dissertation was an article, which it obviously is not.
Are you sure this is a good quality journal?
[How do I identify predatory and low quality journals? With Beall's List gone, how can I tell if a journal is spam?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/83764/how-do-i-identify-predatory-and-low-quality-journals-with-bealls-list-gone-ho)
It is perfectly normal to cite your own dissertation the same way you would cite someone else's.
Once you have cited your dissertation and determined this is a good journal, you can write in your response letter that the submission is a portion of your dissertation and it is not previously published in any journal (assuming that's true.)
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_5: Traditionally, PhD theses constitute a public proof of your abilities and therefore need to be published. (This is certainly true in the places in Europe I know, but a quick search revealed e.g. the same for [Harvard](https://gsas.harvard.edu/degree-requirements/dissertations/publishing-options), and I assume it is true for more US places as well).
The traditional way of this publication process would be to print a certain number of copies and hand them in at your library, which would then distribute it to some central libraries (national library etc.) which hold a copy of anything published in a country/region. There is no need to be able to order the thesis with a publisher, for it to have an ISBN number, etc.. (Semi-fun fact: When people started chasing German politician who plagiarized their PhD thesis, in some cases all copies were borrowed from those libraries and were never returned.)
These days, the publication process (at least in natural sciences) often consists in submitted an electronic version which is made available on the website of the university library. (It might be that a reduced number of printed copies still needs to be handed in.)
In either case, this constitutes a publication which can be cited. It should be cited like any other book, i.e.,
High Voltage, "On current and resistance", PhD thesis, Tesla University, Berlin, 2021,
or corresponding to the journal style. If it is published on the library website, it makes a lot of sense to add the URL or (if existent) DOI.
Of course, if the PhD thesis is *not* published, this is different, and it need not be cited. (In fact, one might argue it *cannot* be cited, as it is not a publication.) In any case, if you are unsure you should check with your university, most likely either the library or the graduation office.
Upvotes: 1
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2021/02/10
| 286
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<issue_start>username_0: I am preparing a manuscript for submission to Journal of Cardiology. The author instructions say "***Please provide inclusive page numbers, e.g., 51-9.***" What does that mean? How else can you cite page numbers.<issue_comment>username_1: Depending on the context, page numbers can be reported also in other forms, e.g. *from 51 to 59*. They thus want the authors to use an inclusive page range (meaning that all the numbers from the first to the last reported are included; I suppose it's for the bibliography) with the page numbers separated by a dash (typically a *en dash*) and, from the given example, I would say that they also want the authors to use an abbreviated form, that is, 51-9 instead of 51-59.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: The alternative is to include only the first page number, which is sufficient to clearly identify the referenced article but in this case the journal is wanting to use a style that includes the end page.
They probably included this in the directions because they cannot reformat references with missing info, and to save their publication staff the time of pestering the authors for the info at a later date.
Upvotes: 2
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2021/02/10
| 1,072
| 4,597
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<issue_start>username_0: I am an undergraduate who recently worked on a 1-page abstract (as a team of 3) and got it accepted to the conference.
However, neither our advisors nor the university agreed to aid us on the registration fee, which means that our paper will not be presented (I am not saying published here, because 1-page abstracts are not published in the journal).
Now I am wondering if I included this in my CV, how this paper would appear to whoever's reading my CV.
To be more specific, I will probably be applying for a Master's degree, and I was intending to use this to simply showcase my various experience and that I worked hard.
The paper I wrote is not related to the major I will be applying in.
I am basically asking this question whether it will be worth it to pay for all the fee ourselves to get it published(presented), or would it serve its role as it is.
Thank you in advance.<issue_comment>username_1: Submitting work to a conference, having that work accepted, and presenting that work at the conference has value, such accomplishments should appear on CVs.
Withdrawing an accepted work from a conference due to no funding shows lack of foresight, perhaps even disrespect (by wasting time), and likely shouldn't appear on CVs.
Seek other funding sources, e.g., the conference itself or a national funding body, perhaps ask your advisors for suggestions.
Whether you and co-authors pay yourselves depends on personal factors, e.g., can you afford to?
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: As the [answer of username_1](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/162475/75368) has stated, doing research which leads to an accepted abstract at a conference is a good accomplishment for an undergraduate. **Congratulations**. Doubly so since -- for whatever combination of reasons -- you don't seem to have extensive support from your more senior advisor(s).
If you find the funds to attend the conference and present the paper, you will turn this into an accomplishment that will be meaningful on your CV for years to come, not only to be admitted to a Masters' degree but afterwards. You will also hopefully learn a lot at the conference and begin to make contacts, which is valuable in its own right.
However, I deviate from the other answer's perspective that if you need to withdraw instead, it shouldn't appear on your CV, and would indicate lack of foresight or disrespect. This may be true for an established academic, who has or may be expected to have a stable portfolio of funding, but is not true of an undergraduate or other emerging scholar. (I hope this is true in all fields.)
If you are unable to secure funding for at least one of your team to attend to present and do need to withdraw, I think you should **definitely mention your accomplishment** (marked as "accepted abstract at \_\_\_" and leave it at that) on your CV **at this stage in your career, especially for the purposes of Graduate School admission**. It will help document, as you said, that you do have research experience of some sort already. Were I on an admissions committee, I would look at it favorably **in this context**.
The difference comes afterwards. I suspect that when you are job hunting **after** your graduate degree, you will censor out such an "incomplete accomplishment" because you will have more recent, more standard, and "completed" conference presentations and/or publications. While if you do find the means to attend the conference and present, the presentation will remain a line item on your CV documenting your sucessful research activity is of longer duration. This will quite likely have incremental value at that time.
There will, of course, be purists who will argue that nothing should ever make it onto your CV that will later be censored out (i.e., that your CV is a universal and evergreen list of all your accomplishments, as opposed to a résumé, less used in academia, which presents a subset of accomplishments chosen as most relevant at that moment for a specific purpose.) That is, perhaps, a good overall aspiration. But there are many junior academics who have at various points listed "submitted" or "manuscript in progress" items on their then-current CVs, since those were meaningful accomplishments at the time. But where for various reasons those items did not progress further, and were silently removed from the CV later.
Admissions committees get it! And they want to see whatever evidence you've got of academic and research experience **and** potential. So congratulations and good luck!
Upvotes: 2
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2021/02/10
| 1,330
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<issue_start>username_0: I am in high school and I find myself enjoying math a lot more than physics, probably because of the more focused teaching approach found in physics, which looks at specific cases and experiments and then goes on to explain these mathematically, where as in maths it seems to me a broader stance is taken; only after a foundation is laid one goes into specific examples. Still I would rather like to study physics or engineering at university, as I am more interested in the subject of physics itself than that of theoretical mathematics.
So how does university teaching compare to that found in high school in physics and mathematics, and where do I place engineering in this comparison?
PS: I am from Austria and plan to go to uni in Germany, in case that helps with answering the question.
PPS: I know this question is open ended and opinion based so feel free to flag.
Edit: I`m thinking of [this](https://www.ph.tum.de/academics/bsc/), [this](https://www.mse.tum.de/en/students/engineering-science/) or [that](https://www.uni-stuttgart.de/en/study/bachelor-programs/aerospace-engineering-b.sc./).<issue_comment>username_1: When studying physics at a German university, you will take three kinds of core modules:
1. Experimental Physics
2. Theoretical Physics
3. Math
Of these, experimental physics is somewhat similar to physics in school. You have a discussion of concrete phenomena, how you can measure them, probably quite a bit of lab time, too.
Theoretical physics is similar to math in school. You learn some more overarching theories about how to model things mathematically (like Newtonian gravity, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, and so on). A lot of what you do is calculations (compute an integral, solve a differential equation). If you want to learn how to do complex calculations with pen and paper, theoretical physics is where you do it.
Math at university level is a very different beast from anything most pupils encounter at school (at least in Germany). You'll encounter some familiar concepts (differentation, vectors), but in a far more rigorous way. You will not just be told that stuff is true, but you'll see the proofs (and be asked to prove simple statements yourself [at least if your math courses are shared with mathematicians, if you have dedicated "math for physicists" courses this might not be the case]).
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: Speaking as a physics PhD student here.
In physics you will apply and use math. You'll learn more math concepts along the way, but you will use math to solve problems. In that way, it is very similar to math in school. You'll learn physics in a much more profound way than they could ever teach in you in school, because you simply lack the math skills in school to do it.
Math is nothing alike anything in school though. You will rarely calculate stuff. You are more interested in showing relations and proof them. You will prove that a solution exists, but not necessarily, what this solution looks like. To me, this was always kind of boring. Sure, proving that a partial differential equation has a solution is a cool thing to do, but I'm much more interested in actually solving it (so thanks to the people who proved it's possible :p )
With that being said, I highly recommend choosing your field of study based on what is interesting for you, as a topic, not as a use of tools. What drove me into physics was to to discover the mechanism of our universe. That you can do it by using math so solve problems is just a bonus.
I'd recommend math if you are interested in pure math itself, if you're interested in the reason why certain math operations are defined the way they are, what really lies behind vector spaces, group theory, analysis, linear algebra...
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Short: There is a progression in rigor and abstraction that goes like this: High school physics, high school math, university engineering, university physics, university math. There are large differences between different universities and between different schools.
Assuming that an Austrian Matura is similar to a German Abitur or Swiss Matur (I don't know for sure), then even courses for physicists and engineers are going to have more rigorous math than you are used to, but it's a natural progression and if you have a passion for the subject and liked math ok in high school, then you should be fine.
Courses for mathematicians (which you might be required to take if you study physics) are at a level of rigor and abstraction that is not comparable to the math required for a Matura. If you think about enrolling in a program that requires such courses, I suggest you look through some exercise materials for linear algebra I and analysis I or whatever your study program of interest requires - try to solve some and skim the solutions for the rest. You will get a much better idea of what it would be like to study those subjects for real than by reading abstract descriptions of what it was like for other people.
That being said, some schools offer much more preparation than others. There are Gymnasien which offer an optional math course which is actual math, statement, prove, example, repeat. Some offer more hands-on math that will make the transition to an engineering or physics program easier, but won't make much of a difference if you decide on math. Some might offer additional engineering courses, etc.
The universities in Germany are going to assume the least amount of previous knowledge that an Abiturient would have (which varies a lot among Bundeslaender), but starting university life can be a stressful transition and if you have some more than the minimum it's going to make the first weeks or even months a lot easier.
Upvotes: 1
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2021/02/10
| 630
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<issue_start>username_0: I am currently an European undergraduate Senior waiting on results for various Master's applications.
I have applied to programs in both the US and Europe, my goal following my Master is to pursue a PhD in the US in said field hopefully in a top school (MIT,Stanford,Caltech,...). For such purpose do you believe I would be favoured by getting my Master in the US, at Georgia Tech, or by getting it at a top European school, such as ETH Zurich or EPFL ? Or do you believe it would not make much of a difference ?
I really like programs at all these three schools, thus one of the main factors guiding my decision would be how much getting my Master's there would increase my chance of being admitted for a PhD in a top school in the US.<issue_comment>username_1: It is unlikely to make a difference at that level (GT vs ETHZ).
But note that a MS isn't required for entrance into a doctoral program in the US. I'd guess that if you can get into a masters at Georgia Tech you could probably also enter their doctoral program directly. There is lots of competition, though and most of it is from highly recommended and well educated people.
Because of that competition, your probability of getting accepted into one of those three schools is very low even with a good masters, unless something really stands out.
I won't discourage you from applying to such places, but you should broaden your search to assure success. Your career will depend more on what you do than on the name of the school you attend.
In fact, you should probably be looking at doctoral admissions rather than masters if that is really your goal.
Most good doctoral programs in US will grant you a masters along the way. Some of them, just for asking. Others require a thesis of sorts, less than a doctoral thesis.
And note that the US undergraduate program is typically not very specialized. Approximately half of the required courses are not in the major field of study. This is, then, what a US student enters doctoral studies with - even at very good schools.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: For the reason you mention in your comments to username_1's answer, I suggest European masters. Some additional points.
1. US masters are rarely funded and are very **expensive**, EU citizens are privy to very low masters tuition in Europe. Consider applying to the Fulbright if you're dead-set on US programs to help finance you.
2. Masters in Europe usually require a **masters thesis**. Which is a huge plus for your application to a PhD. This thesis also gives you a great opportunity to decide if research is right for you.
Upvotes: 0
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2021/02/10
| 973
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<issue_start>username_0: I am currently enrolled in a Computer Science PhD program in USA, and this is my third year(I changed my PhD advisor after my first year).
I have written two papers with my new PhD advisor. The first one was submitted to two top-tier conference, but get rejected twice. The second one was submitted to a mid-tier conference(A-tier in Core Ranking still), but get rejected.
I feel really desperate about this.
I might be an idiot, and I feel that I might not be suitable for pursuing a PhD degree anymore.
Should I quit the PhD program to find a job or keep pursuing the degree? The thing I consider is that with Computer Science master degree, I can still find a good job.<issue_comment>username_1: Don't do anything without more information. In particular:
* Why were your papers rejected? Was it because of some analysis you did not do? Was the entire approach bad? Was it correct but not interesting enough for the journal? These rejection reasons all reflect differently on your ability as a researcher. Remember as well that your supervisor was almost surely heavily involved in the paper, so at some level it's not just you being rejected. If for example the entire approach was bad, then your supervisor is just as responsible (arguably even more responsible, since they're supposed to be guiding you).
* If you quit, what can you do? Don't just say "I can still find a good job". Make sure you know what kind of job you can find. Look at your local job portals and see what's out there for people with your qualifications. You may have a CS Master's degree, but can you program in the languages that people want, or perform the types of analyses that is asked for?
From the answers to these two questions you can make a much better-informed decision. If your conclusion is you are an idiot and not suitable for pursuing a PhD degree (are you *sure*? I would at least talk to your advisor to confirm that you are underperforming), then quitting makes more sense. On the other hand, if you quit now when you're actually overperforming your advisor's expectations, then you'd have metaphorically shot yourself in the foot.
Get the information first, sleep on it (so you don't make emotionally charged decisions), talk to your advisor, and then make a decision. Either way it'll be a life-changing moment.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I would like to add to username_1's answer. I think your decision should also depend on your motivation to do a PhD. Are you doing it just because you want to learn and love doing research (or, you loved it and think you can love it again when you get your self-confidence back) or is getting a job in academia also an important factor?
Especially if you are doing it mostly because you love learning and research, I would suggest not to take decisions of rejection/acceptance of papers as seriously. The few submissions you mentioned are not that many data points anyway (there is some randomness in the review process). Moreover, especially at top conferences, the bar is very high -- (almost) all the papers they receive are very good and most of them end up being rejected. Just the fact that your supervisor decided that your paper has a chance to get accepted at a top conference reflects positively on you!
It is completely normal to have papers rejected, it happens to everyone. It reminds me how one more senior researcher in my group who is one of the top researchers in the area once said that we should not feel bad about rejections, that he has had more than any of us [other people from the group].
If your goal is to find a job in academia, the decision process is slightly different. Getting a job in academia is tough. You may decide that you have little chance to get the kind of job in academia you would want. In such a case, it would be understandable to quit. But even in that case, I don't think there is any right/wrong choice. It depends on what you want in your life.
So to summarize, do not let a few rejections crush your love for learning and decide based on what you want to get out of PhD.
Upvotes: 2
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2021/02/11
| 930
| 3,971
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<issue_start>username_0: Can phd students submit their paper on their own? I have finished writing and polishing my manuscript (with my advisor listed as the corresponding author) and then sent it to my phd advisor almost a year ago but still has gotten no response from him. I am wondering if I can say sth like 'if I don't hear from you in 2 or 3 weeks, I am gonna assume that you have no problem and I am gonna submit it myself". Is this legit? Will I get expelled? I have hearded many different answers and need some HELP here! Thanks!<issue_comment>username_1: Don't do anything without more information. In particular:
* Why were your papers rejected? Was it because of some analysis you did not do? Was the entire approach bad? Was it correct but not interesting enough for the journal? These rejection reasons all reflect differently on your ability as a researcher. Remember as well that your supervisor was almost surely heavily involved in the paper, so at some level it's not just you being rejected. If for example the entire approach was bad, then your supervisor is just as responsible (arguably even more responsible, since they're supposed to be guiding you).
* If you quit, what can you do? Don't just say "I can still find a good job". Make sure you know what kind of job you can find. Look at your local job portals and see what's out there for people with your qualifications. You may have a CS Master's degree, but can you program in the languages that people want, or perform the types of analyses that is asked for?
From the answers to these two questions you can make a much better-informed decision. If your conclusion is you are an idiot and not suitable for pursuing a PhD degree (are you *sure*? I would at least talk to your advisor to confirm that you are underperforming), then quitting makes more sense. On the other hand, if you quit now when you're actually overperforming your advisor's expectations, then you'd have metaphorically shot yourself in the foot.
Get the information first, sleep on it (so you don't make emotionally charged decisions), talk to your advisor, and then make a decision. Either way it'll be a life-changing moment.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I would like to add to username_1's answer. I think your decision should also depend on your motivation to do a PhD. Are you doing it just because you want to learn and love doing research (or, you loved it and think you can love it again when you get your self-confidence back) or is getting a job in academia also an important factor?
Especially if you are doing it mostly because you love learning and research, I would suggest not to take decisions of rejection/acceptance of papers as seriously. The few submissions you mentioned are not that many data points anyway (there is some randomness in the review process). Moreover, especially at top conferences, the bar is very high -- (almost) all the papers they receive are very good and most of them end up being rejected. Just the fact that your supervisor decided that your paper has a chance to get accepted at a top conference reflects positively on you!
It is completely normal to have papers rejected, it happens to everyone. It reminds me how one more senior researcher in my group who is one of the top researchers in the area once said that we should not feel bad about rejections, that he has had more than any of us [other people from the group].
If your goal is to find a job in academia, the decision process is slightly different. Getting a job in academia is tough. You may decide that you have little chance to get the kind of job in academia you would want. In such a case, it would be understandable to quit. But even in that case, I don't think there is any right/wrong choice. It depends on what you want in your life.
So to summarize, do not let a few rejections crush your love for learning and decide based on what you want to get out of PhD.
Upvotes: 2
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2021/02/11
| 659
| 2,830
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<issue_start>username_0: Suppose I write a paper that contains mostly results that I previously published in my M.Sc. or Ph.D. thesis. The paper contains another author that is not related to the thesis (not the supervisor), who contributed some other results. How should I relate to the thesis when writing the paper?
* Should I ignore it altogether since the thesis is not formally considered a publication?
* Should I cite this as a "previous work"? It is not exactly previous work - it is the current work.
* Maybe I am not allowed at all to include these results, since it is considered re-publication of something that already appeared?
(domain: theoretical computer science).
EDIT: I am interested in two cases:
* Case 1: the submission is not anonyomous, so I can mention explicitly that it is my thesis.
* Case 2: the submission is anonymous, so I am not allowed to mention that is my thesis..<issue_comment>username_1: Write something along the lines of:
>
> A preliminary version of this paper appeared in Segal-Halevi's thesis [1], new results include X, Y, and Z.
>
>
>
That could appear as a footnote on the opening page, in your related work section (perhaps at the end), or maybe even in the acknowledgements. (Placement in the acknowledgements seems like a corner case that isn't relevant to the OP.)
For anonymous submission, replace *Segal-Halevi's thesis [1]* with *one of the author's thesis*, optionally adding, *(citation omitted for anonymity)*.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: First and foremost, you should fully explain the situation in detail in the cover letter for the article submission. Whether reviewers understand the situation is not as important as that the editor fully understand what is going on.
From your description, it seems that the current paper is essentially your thesis plus some new results. So, I recommend:
* For non-anonymous peer review (and for the final accepted version even for anonymous peer review): either in the acknowledgements section or in a footnote on the first page (depending on the journal's style), say something like, "An earlier version of this article was Author's master's/PhD thesis (Author Year)" and give the full citation in the references.
* For anonymous peer review: you do not need to say anything at all in the article about your thesis. You would not be able to refer to your thesis without identifying yourself, so it is irrelevant for reviewers. Since you will have already informed the editor in the cover letter, there is no concern of multiple submission. If the reviewer happens to come across your thesis and then thus discover your identity, it should seem quite normal to them that the thesis is now being submitted as a regular paper for formal publication, so there should be no problem.
Upvotes: 0
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2021/02/11
| 845
| 3,484
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<issue_start>username_0: I am writing a textbook and am in the process of making final adjustments, such as the positioning of figures and tables.
I know the basics: figures and tables need to be at the top or bottom of the page. However, I'm concerned about fine-tuning. I have three questions:
1. figures are always at the top, which makes sense because captions are below the figure and captions are very close to the text. However, does this mean that tables should be at the bottom? The captions are above the tables and if you put the tables at the bottom, the captions are closer to the text.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/I4YvD.png)
2. what is the best styling in the situation where you have two **unrelated** figures on the same page? From a contextual perspective, one should be at the top and the other at the bottom because they are unrelated. But from a caption perspective, they should both be on top, since the caption is closer to the text in this case.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6q9TY.png)
3. what is the best styling when the page is divided by a new section and the figure belongs to the new section? From the contextual perspective, the figure should be at the bottom because it belongs to the bottom section. However, from the caption perspective, the figure should be at the top because the caption is closer to the text in this case.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Eeojj.png)
Do you have any ideas for this situation?<issue_comment>username_1: The simple answer is that it doesn't really matter, as long as you're consistent about how you do it.
If you stick with the LaTeX defaults, the figure will always go to the top of each page, and that's a perfectly reasonable convention. If you shift to placing things "nearest", that's fine as well, but will take more care on your part, since it's easy to end up with unexpected shifts caused by distant upstream changes.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: This will depend very much on your style guide and on the expectations of your publisher. In general, the meta-rules are
* *consistency* - choose a standard and stick with it
* *accessibility* - choose a standard that provides a better user experience
For instance, in the 7th edition of the *Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association*, the chapter on Tables and Figures gives the following guidance on placement in-text (7.6):
* "When embedding a table or figure within the text, **position it after a full paragraph**, ideally the paragraph where it is first called out."
* "Place the table or figure so that **it fits on one page** if possible."
* "If text appears on the same page as a table or figure, **add a double-spaced blank line between the text and the table or figure** so that the separation between the text and table or figure is easier to see."
* "**Put a short table or small figure at the beginning or end of a page** rather than in the middle."
So APA would allow any of the placements proposed, provided that the table or figure fit after the paragraph which referred to it. (That paragraph could be on the bottom of the same page or the top of the next page.) Multiple tabes or figures on the same page are not an issue as long as they both fit and are formatted similarly as possible.
Upvotes: 2
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2021/02/11
| 625
| 2,936
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<issue_start>username_0: I have recently received peer review on a systematic review after six months, with revisions requested. This is on a dynamic subject with significant literature published since. I re-screened the papers and was able to include a further 5 from those published in the past 6 months.
Is it acceptable to update the review at revision with this additional data, as it will be undergoing peer review again regardless? I think it improves the review substantially to include more data, which is more recent, but I'm not sure if this is acceptable?
Thank you in advance!<issue_comment>username_1: Since it is undergoing peer review again, in general, you should be able to include the new papers. If you do this, though, highlight both the new papers and the changes to your conclusions in your author response / revision note, so that the reviewers know to pay particular attention to them and give them proper review - if you don't, they might not notice, and skip over important things because they think they already reviewed it.
It's common for reviewers to ask for new analyses or even experiments in revision, so this seems like a relatively normal kind of update in a revision cycle.
If in doubt, e-mail the managing editor. One way to do that productively is to make a specific proposal - e.g. include the new papers and highlight in the author response letter - and ask if that is an appropriate way to handle the situation for their journal.
A note that doesn't seem applicable to your specific situation, but may help others finding this answer: the exception to this is when you get what many journals call a "Minor Revision" decision, where only the editor will see the revisions - it won't go back out to reviewers. In such a situation, I would contact the managing editor and notify them of the situation. They may be able to handle the revision as a "Major Revision" and get reviews for it.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: It is essential to update the systematic review in the revision, identifying new studies, incorporating them into the results, and reconsidering the conclusions. An overarching goal of systematic review is to present a synthesis of the existing literature as close in time to publication as possible. If there are known new studies and they have not been included in the systematic review, the review is obsolete when published.
The conclusions should be modified to reflect the new information even if the conclusions are different from those in the original submission.
It is likely that one reason for re-submitting for peer review is to assure that the systematic review has been updated and the manuscript revised as appropriate. If the systematic review has been updated and the manuscript revised appropriately to reflect any new information, the revision will likely be accepted quickly.
You will need to move fast in a rapidly changing field.
Upvotes: 1
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2021/02/11
| 575
| 2,119
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<issue_start>username_0: Let's say a famous researcher contributed only a bit to a research project by a student, and the student could reasonably choose either to include or not include them as a coauthor.
Is it beneficial to the student to include them? It seems that having a big name would increase viewership and perceived legitimacy of the paper, while having more coauthors also seems to diffuse the ownership of the work.<issue_comment>username_1: >
> Let's say a famous researcher contributed only a bit to a research project by a student, and the student could reasonably choose either to include or not include them as a coauthor.
>
>
>
The student doesn't get to choose, the student gets to invite: It's the famous researcher's decision as to whether they want to be a co-author, since they contributed *a bit to [the] research project*.
>
> It seems that having a big name would increase viewership and perceived legitimacy of the paper, while having more coauthors also seems to diffuse the ownership of the work.
>
>
>
The benefits are significant, whilst the drawback of more authors is minimal (albeit, fields vary).
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Yes, it is beneficial.
See the paper "[Early coauthorship with top scientists predicts success in academic careers](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13130-4)" in *Nature Communications* from Nov. 2019 (or the [short news version](https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/high-profile-co-author-gives-young-researchers-scientists-career-long-advantage) at *Nature Index*).
In an analysis covering more than 22.000 scientists, it finds that collaborating with a top scientist early in one's career leads to an almost doubled increase in the probability of becoming a top scientist oneself.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: My experience with this, as a former grad student is as follows:
[student author][supervising professor][famous author whom professor knows][various techs who processed the data]
They're likely credited in dozens of papers, but if its direct, co-author w/o primary positioning.
Upvotes: -1
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<issue_start>username_0: In computer systems, it's relatively common to have a large problem which is broken up into multiple sub-problems, each of which is substantial in its own right and is in the realm of different subsets of students. Suppose there's two parts, A and B. Suppose that properly presenting B requires explanations and background which A establishes (concepts, principles, etc.), and preferably would reproduce some figures for clarity. However, A has been written but not yet accepted/published.
How should the authors of B proceed? Ideally the figures would be reproduced from the drafts and clearly cited as copies, but it seems weird as the original is yet unpublished. This also creates the worry that reviewers for a later submission of A would complain that these contributions are not novel as B's earlier publication have already presented them.<issue_comment>username_1: Dependencies like these are a great place to use preprints.
The arXiv is usually a good preprint server for computer science research (other fields use others, like bioRxiv, ChemRxiv, etc). Your preprint can go up immediately, and then it's publicly available with a DOI for citation ever after.
This both clearly establishes ordering and allows paper B to cite paper A in its preprint form. Even if paper B makes it all the way to publication before paper A, the preprint can be linked to the final form after paper A is published, which indexing and citation services use to consolidate the versions together.
Finally, most journals allow preprints these days, and some even force you to use them, so in most circumstances there is no downside to posting a preprint.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Preprints, as pointed out by @username_1, are a very good way to deal with your problem.
However, you might want to avoid making A publicly available for some reason before submitting B for publication. In this case, it is often possible to submit additional material (A in your case) that is necessary for review but not meant for publication with B. In B, you can then include temporary citations pointing to A that you have to replace before publication of B. You can additionally explain your situation to the editor in the cover letter. Then the reviewers have all the information they need to assess B.
There is one obvious drawback of this approach: You might be unlucky that B is accepted for publication before A, and you have no proper way to cite A. I have seen quite a few times, especially in older papers, that another paper of the same authors is cited as "in preparation" or "submitted for publication". I cannot say that I would recommend this (it is quite frustrating if that very paper never appeared), and fortunately it seems to be uncommon nowadays.
Another strategy is obvious: Wait with submitting B until A is published.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I’ve been interning at a research lab for 8 months now, putting upwards of 10 hours a week into our project. We find out if our first of three papers was accepted for a significantly-sized conference soon, the next two will come in March. Basically, I’ve put a lot of work into this project and it’s almost over.
I looked up my supervisor’s name tonight because I wanted to read his other papers, but instead I found a lecture he gave a year ago on why homosexuality should be classified as a disease. He said tons of disgusting things in the lecture and I don’t want to be affiliated with him, especially because I’m still in undergrad so I don’t want this following me around forever.
Should I pull my name from the papers at the last minute and lose accreditation for the hundreds of hours of work I put in, or do I leave my name in and risk having a reputation as “that guy who worked with the huge homophobe”, and maybe having a harder time getting into grad school?
Could really use the advice. Thanks.<issue_comment>username_1: I don't think you need to pull your name from the paper(s). You're junior enough, and there are enough odious high-ranking people spouting nonsense online, that people won't blame you.
I WOULD start looking for more mentors ASAP. You need stronger letters of recommendation, as some people are going to question his judgement and ability to objectively evaluate you. Also, this guy clearly has done a bad job managing his professional image, which means he might have bad judgement about professionalism in general. If you learn professional norms from him, this might do damage to your development as a researcher. This is red flag land, and the sooner you can disentangle yourself the better.
Upvotes: 8 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: While I strongly feel that people like this should be ostracized, I think the onus is on their instituations and peers - not on undergraduates. Very few people would blame you for having worked with your supervisor, and should you ever be accosted for it, you can truthfully point out that you embarked on the research internship before learning of his repugnant views.
From a purely pragmatic perspective, having this conference paper on your CV will do more than enough for your grad school applications to outweigh the risk of your reputation being tarnished by association here.
**If** you feel that you need to do something about the situation, my suggestion would be to signal your own views in other ways. For example, if your university has something like a gay-straight-student alliance, volunteering there and putting this on your CV should get you ahead of any unfortunate associations. Again, I don't think you need to do anything, neither from an ethical nor pragmative perspective.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: FWIW I worked professionally with one of the guys at Stanford who now has strong, shitty opinions that he feels twitter MUST know. The only blowback I've ever had was people chuckling about how he's gone off the deep end, and I was much more senior than you currently are.
The idea that academia will punish you for wrong opinions is mostly nonsense. If you aren't loudly bigoted about people your job requires you to interact with you'll be fine (like any job). Just make sure you aren't his TA or something when he goes on some insane rant and try to find a mentor who didn't lose their mind.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: The other answers here (at the moment: [username_1](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/162546/75368), [Arno](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/162549/75368), and [Libor](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/162553/75368)) give good advice that it is unnecessary for you to withdraw from the paper in *most* cases.
But there is an exception to this. If the nature of the research is such that the misinformed opinions of this person can affect the results, then you can have little confidence that the overall result is valid. And since you were mostly involved with technical issues, not the driving ideas of the paper, you should consider this.
There have been people in both CS, [<NAME>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley), and mathematics, [<NAME>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lee_Moore), who held terribly racist views, but whose scientific work was independent of those views. In a case like that you should almost certainly leave your name, since the work is done. But I would probably disassociate myself from them in future.
But if the field is closely related to those views, then it is much more problematic to be associated with them. But it is the views that you need to disassociate from, not necessarily the person. (But who needs the grief?) You don't have a choice in your crazy uncles, but you do have a choice in your colleagues.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_5: Consider how removing your name from the paper affects You and how removing your name affects the PI (Principal Investigator).
"I'll shoot myself in the foot, that will fix him!".
It's not the responsibility of (relative) beginners in the field to reform the personal habits of researchers in the field. You could do more pre- investigation of future employers, if you like.
Science is about discovering. Even A\*\*holes can discover.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: >
> Should I pull my name from the papers at the last minute and lose
> accreditation for the hundreds of hours of work I put in, or do I
> leave my name in and risk having a reputation as “that guy who worked
> with the huge homophobe”
>
>
>
You have met a true moral dilemma in life, and it is a big one.
My recommendation is to first examine your own beliefs rather than what others may or may not think about you. See how important your principles are and act accordingly.
1. **The martyr**
For those who value their principles above all, there is usually a price to pay. Jesus could have avoided the cross if he had backed down. Gandhi and his followers went unarmed against oppressors who were armed with clubs and received the expected bruises. Such a person is rare. In your case it would involved refusing to "consort with the devil" and simply being prepared to forfeit your hundreds of hours of work. You should also bear in mind that the other party may believe in their principles to a similar extent - rightly or wrongly. Thus have religious wars been started throughout history.
2. **The human approach**
You can consider humans as fallible and usually flawed. You can try to understand where they are coming from and even sympathise where necessary. Often when people are vehement and angry, they are reliving a past battle, maybe a trauma that remains unresolved. As a student hitch-hiker, I was once subject to an attempted assault by a gay man; luckily I escaped unharmed. In my case this did not turn me against gay men because I already had gay friends who were admirable people in every respect. Instead it made me much more careful about hitch-hiking! Had I been younger and not known better, it might have been the start of a prejudice.
3. **The pragmatic**
Here you look at outcomes, assess probabilities and make the best decision you can. To go this way you must be very clear what you want out of life. If you don't know the desired destination, you can't find the best method to get there. "Best" doesn't necessarily just mean short-term academic goals.
4. **The Machiavellian**
In this case you take sides and strive to come out on top. For example you could denounce the 'opponent', let public opinion do the dirty work, and at the same time declare your own virtue. When they are destroyed and retreat, you take the field, the spoils of war and the glory. However, unless you are very skilled this can backfire. Suppose the other person is not destroyed. What do you do then? Pretend that you didn't mean it and go back to co-operating? This will only show that your principles are not so true as you made out.
---
Life is a tricky business. I wish you all the best. Remember what Nietzsche wrote, “Out of life’s school of war—what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.” I'm retired now and have learned to believe it.
So many people are waiting for things to "turn out right". I believe it is better to see life as a series of challenges to be met, and to meet them. This can actually make life great fun but you have to take risks.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_7: **No** it sounds like the PI holds appalling views but no one will attribute those to you if you were merely his student. On the other hand those papers are valuable to you and hard to replace. Moreover the removal of your name from them may irritate your PI who, despite his antediluvian views, continue to be in a gatekeeping position in your field. We all have a responsibility to fight bigotry but that shouldn’t come at a cost to our most junior researchers — I suggest you pursue your careers whilst flagging his behaviour to those within and without the university who may be able to respond. Such a lecture would be sufficient to get you fired in many countries were it to be reported in a timely manner.
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<issue_start>username_0: It's typical in my field that after we post to the arxiv, people from the community reach out to the authors to ask questions about the paper. Every time this has happened to me, I've responded with more explanation to try and address their specific questions. Sometimes it does seem like the person is arguing with the central results of the paper, and frequently the communication extends past what I'm willing to do (asking us to generate more data or wanting additional plots beyond what are in the paper) and I usually decline these requests. I don't really have the time, and I also don't like the idea of sharing plots/data over private communication. I would be happy to show additional plots in a more public forum, like for example in a seminar talk, where it's clear where the work originated, and where I get some credit for the labor I've done in preparing the presentation.
Recently I've been wondering: what if someone participates in such an exchange, and is then tapped to be a reviewer of our work during the journal submission process? Is this ethical? Should they disclose that they had informal previous communication with the authors? Should I factor this possibility in when I think about how accommodating I should be?<issue_comment>username_1: In general, I would consider it unethical for a reviewer to deliberately communicate with an author outside of the formal review communication channels.
The reason for this is that the person ultimately in charge of the decision is *not* the reviewer but the editor who is managing the process. The communications in the reviewing system are thus the record that they have available to work with and that form the basis for their judgement not only of the paper but of the quality of each review and the weight that should be given to each reviewer's opinion. Moreover, if there are questions that arise later around the paper, that is what will be used to audit the process that was used to approve the paper.
If a reviewer takes their communications outside of these channels, then they are essentially choosing to hide their communications from the editor and the scientific record (even if it's a normally confidential portion of that record). That can have bad effects in both directions, causing a good paper to appear less supported (because they wrote a weak summary review based on a complex communication) or a bad paper to appear more supported (because information was communicated that weren't actually in the paper).
So what if a reviewer has already been communicating with the authors and then is asked to review? Well, first of all, they should let the editor know; the editor might or might not see this as a conflict of interest and wish to choose another reviewed. If the editor doesn't have an issue, then the reviewer should at that point stop having out-of-band communications and communicate about the paper through the review system---where they might be able to turn around a review extremely quickly if they already have a well-formed opinion of the paper!
But should any of this affect your choices as an author? I don't think so. Ultimately, the reviewers are just some of your first readers, and the impact of your article will be determined by the many more opportunities that people have to read it after that. If people are contacting you to talk about your work, that is already a great sign---even if they don't like it, they were interested enough to engage with it!
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Private communication doesn't benefit the broader research community and I recommend expanding upon your work publicly, e.g., adding *more explanation to ... address ... specific questions*, defending central results (when someone argues against), adding *plots/data*.
>
> someone [engages with my research] and is then [asked] to be a reviewer...during the journal submission process...Is this ethical?
>
>
>
Yes, such a reviewer has no obligations to the review process until they accept an invitation to review. Thereafter, they are ethical bound by the rules of peer review. As such, communication during the review period should be via the journal.
>
> Should they disclose that they had informal previous communication
> with the authors?
>
>
>
No. Although, an invitation to review must be declined if there's a conflict, such a conflict would surely be independent of any communication.
>
> Should I factor this possibility in when I think
> about how accommodating I should be?
>
>
>
Probably not: Your willingness to communicate should surely not hinge on the possibility that you're accommodating a potential reviewer.
Upvotes: 2 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: While reviewing applicants for a position, I noticed a disclosure in a letter of recommendation that is potentially unethical. I'm sure this happens from time to time - something like "<NAME>'s contributions are especially impressive because her husband is constantly busy working at a hedge fund and she has small three children, two of whom have cystic fibrosis". On the one hand, that does put her work in context and make it more impressive in some respects. However, if there are no hedge funds near my university or the local medical system isn't well developed to treat such a complicated condition, it'd be hard not to let that disclosure influence my or my department's thinking. Sometimes these disclosures are intentional, but I don't believe the one I noticed (which is not the scenario outlined above) is.
My first reaction is that I should take the disclosure as a positive if it is in fact a positive (maybe we have lots of hedge funds nearby and a cystic fibrosis research center, so Jane would consider stooping down to our department's level!) and try to ignore it if it is a negative. On the other hand, perhaps it would be best to check directly with the writer and ask what they intended by making a disclosure. If the disclosure is unintentional, this gives the writer a chance to update their letter.
Clearly, the approach taken should vary depending on the details of the case, but are there other options I'm not considering?<issue_comment>username_1: In your position I would (try to) ignore the extraneous information.
Perhaps well after the hiring decision is made you could say something to the letter writer in an informal way. I don't know whether I would. A lot depends on the tone and the details that you have (correctly) disguised.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: The job applicant's family is irrelevant to your hiring decisions. Always ignore information about the applicant's family, no matter where it comes from.
Asking the letter writer for more irrelevant information, or criticizing the letter writer, both seem rude or at least not helpful.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Ignore it. Speaking of unethical behavior, I think it’s borderline unethical to draw conclusions from the irrelevant information in the letter, which are quite obviously unwarranted, the way you are doing in your example. Many people work remotely these days, why would you assume anything about the relevance of there being or not being hedge funds in your area? And what do *you* know about what kind of hospital this job candidate’s children need? It seems rather presumptuous to me to think that your deductive powers are so amazing that you can make useful predictions about someone’s future job performance based on such tidbits of information. There is a real risk that this attitude will cause harm and lead you to reject a perfectly qualified candidate, or to accept someone less than perfectly qualified.
Judge the candidate based on her professional achievements. And leave to letter writers the agency to decide what to include in their letters. They won’t get it right every time, but your meddling certainly won’t help.
Upvotes: 4
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