Advisor asking me to use my grant to cover his orders I am now working as a postdoctoral researcher in Japan. I came to work at this institute when it received a big grant from government more than 2 years ago. My research budget is paid from a small part of that grant. I am affiliated with a lab run by my current advisor, but I do my own research topics and build my own experimental setup without support from the advisor.

This year I applied for my own funding and was lucky enough to get a small grant for young researchers. My advisor applied to the same grant (more senior category) but failed, and later I learned that he has not succeeded to get any grant up to now. Last week he asked me to use my budget for his projects, because "in this lab, we share the budget together", as he said.

I feel awkward because I don't want to share my budget with him, but if I deny the request, our relationship will be damaged.
Has any of you experienced the same problem? Is my advisor a bad one? How should I deal with this?

This is delicate issue, and I would advise you to proceed with utmost care. There are a number of ethical, legal, and practical issues to take into account.

First, the legal side - as Bill Barth already mentioned, it is not a given that you even can (easily and legally) move money from your grant to somebody else in your lab. In a nutshell, only the funding agency or the respective support department from your university can help you with this.

Second, in terms of ethical issues, the question arises whether you do in fact "share budget in this lab". In other terms, did the lab head also share his budget with you when you did not yet have a grant? Do think about this critically. In my experience, young independent researchers (myself included) tend to take the support we get from senior researchers for granted sometimes, while being rather protective about our own funding. From your description, it does sound like you yourself are being funded from money acquired by the lab head. In that sense, asking you to give back a small part of your grant to support his research is not necessarily unethical. Further, has he helped you with your grant application? If he has, sharing a bit of your grant with him may be the right thing to do (if even possible, see above).

Thirdly, in practical terms, the question arises whether it is worth for you to fight over this issue. This largely depends on how bad it can end for you if the lab head is really mad at you (in Japan I would assume the answer to this is "very", unfortunately) and how much funding money is concerned. This is another issue that you can really only decide for yourself, but (again), do proceed with caution. You should consider that you not only need to work with this guy day to day, but you may also need his support for your next career step. I have unfortunately seen a few young researchers taking a stand with their mentors "on principle" over relatively minor issues. This kind of thing tends to not go as well as people hope.

All things considered, you would do well to not let your successful grant application go to your head. It is certainly a very important milestone in you career, but don't get into a lone wolf mentality ("I'm so good, I don't need anybody to succeed!").

Do the right thing and ignore/stop the recursive career considerations of the other answerers. If he helped you, now you help him. If he was not helping you, then explain you cannot. If he was miserly, then be miserly. You are ultimately beholden to your own self.


Controlled publication of an efficient factoring algorithm? Is there a procedure in place to cover the possibility that someone might find an efficient algorithm to factor large numbers and thereby break RSA encryption? This is just an instance of the more general problem where someone wants to publish a result that breaks an encryption standard. It seems like there are two main possibilities (I welcome the consideration of others):

Full publication, say, to a widely-read web site, newsgroup, etc. Likely outcome: chaos on a large scale as criminals break into the private spaces of innocent individuals.
Limited dissemination, perhaps to a few mathematicians or a government agency. Likely outcome: the government grabs control of the algorithm (and potentially its discoverer) and does the unpleasant things governments do with such things.

Of course, possibility 2 could easily devolve into possibility 1 if the algorithm becomes public.

Is there a consensus in the academic world about what to do with this problem?

You can prove that you have the algorithm without publishing it by publishing the factorization of a large number of well known test cases. Then people have time to adapt to a possible threat. If you are afraid of the government or the mafia, there is a sufficient number of ways to publish the algorithm at a preset date in the future, from cron jobs to hidden messages to good old notaries.

Yup: name the algorithm after its creator.

What you're referring to is called "Shor's Algorithm". It's a (quantum) algorithm for integer factorization that runs in polynomial time. In layman's terms, that's a fancy way of saying it can break most public-key encryption schemes (including RSA) in a feasible, scalable, efficient manner. Of course, the catch here is that it requires a quantum computer of sufficient size -- which doesn't exist yet, but likely will in the foreseeable future.

What follows is more speculation on my part than anything else, but the question itself is (in my opinion) highly speculative, so I figure that's fair.

I imagine a variation of option 1 is the most likely scenario (but instead of a widely-read website, it would be a highly prestigious mathematical journal). Woud mass hysteria follows? I think that's unlikely. For one, symmetric-key encryption (AES) wouldn't be touched. For another, there are other asymmetric-key encryption systems that don't rely on integer factorization but rather another hard mathematical problem. And I think we can safely say that all of those hard problems won't be solved overnight.

And then there's always quantum cryptography. So I think we're going to be fine for a while longer.


Can I add a baby as a co-author of a scientific paper, to protest against co-authors who haven't made any contribution? Can I put the name of my baby as one of the co-authors of a scientific paper?

I know it sounds disturbing, but it's a way of mine to protest against co-authors that haven't made any contribution (they haven't even read it or are part of the research area) to a paper, but they are part of the research group.

What are the legal / ethic concerns?

So technically I was writing the paper with my baby in my hand and the baby was talking with me in its own language. The baby even wrote a few characters in the paper when it managed to get near the keyboard while I was holding it.

There was a similar case in 1975, when an American mathematician and physicist, Professor Jack H. Hetherington of Michigan State University, added his cat as a co-author. Apparently, a collegaue who had reviewed his manuscript, had pointed out that he had used "we" and "us" throughout the manuscript, but this was incorrect as he was the sole author. so, instead of typing out the entire document once again (those were the days before Ctrl H), he decided to speed up the process and added the name of Chester, his pet cat as a co-author. However, to disguise the fact, he put "FDC Willard" as the name, with FD standing for "felix domesticus" and the C for "Chester." And Willard was the name of Chester's father.

However, these days, with so many regulations in place, I'm not sure if it would be ethical to include your baby's name. If however, you choose to do so, I would suggest you inform the editor and mention this in a disclaimer somewhere within the title page, so that readers are not misled about your intent.

Another well known case is the paper "In a fully H-2 incompatible chimera, T cells of donor origin can respond to minor histocompatibility antigens in association with either donor or host H-2 type." by Polly Matzinger and Galadriel Mirkwood in The Journal of Experimental Medicine, 1978.
As Ted Anton described it in his book Bold Science, "Refusing to write in the usual scientific passive voice ('steps were taken') and too insecure to write in the first person ('I took the steps'), she instead invented a coauthor": her Afghan Hound, Galadriel Mirkwood. Once discovered, papers on which she was a major author were then barred from the journal until the editor died and was replaced by another.

You risk the ire of your co-authors, which may not be worth it, especially if you are already unwilling to confront your co-authors about their lack of co-authoring. But if you do, following the answer by @Kakoli Majumder, you can add the disclaimer in the Acknowledgements (I lack sufficient points to add a comment to that question). Or you can simply add a sarcastic reference in the acknowledgements to having written it by yourself. But again, you risk ire.


The importance of having a "big name" as your thesis advisor When it comes to postdoc positions in mathematics in the US, does it make any difference for the hiring committees if your thesis adviser is a big name (say, someone like Gromov or Milnor)?

I'm surely not the most qualified person on this site to answer, but I have been on a postdoc hiring committee in pure mathematics and I quite disagree with the existing answers. The single most important factor is going to be your letters of recommendation (with second on the list being your publications and preprints). I think having a famous advisor is going to be of minor importance in comparison; most people understand that also great mathematicians sometimes have students that are just mediocre, so that it's no great predictor of future success. In fact I heard in a sense the opposite argument being made, that if an applicant from a smaller university with a less famous advisor has strong letters from big names, then this is more impressive than if a student at a "top" university had the exact same letters.

Yes, it makes difference.
However, your personal relationships with the prospective advisor make even more difference.


When is it acceptable to report classmates who cheat on an exam? So for one of my computer science classes, we have a WhatsApp chat among all students in the class to network and help each other out with questions regarding homework, or if we have any confusion on assignments. It's a given that we can get help on these types of assignments.

But exams are proctored online, and getting help on them is strictly forbidden. However, some students in the chat have posted to the WhatsApp chat during their proctored exams, posting photos of the exams, the questions, and receiving help from others during their exams.

Why would I care about this? So normally, when a student cheats on an exam, it would have no effect on another student because the two overall students' grades are unrelated. However, the exams are curved. So these students that cheated on the exams **not only have an unfair advantage, ** but they also put other students at a disadvantage. Them doing exceptionally better than they would have has the potentiality to reduce other students grades by up to 10-15% of what it would be. So if Student A would normally get a 65 because they don't know the content, they now get a 89, thus, throwing off the entire curve. However, student B who actually DID try his hardest and studied got an 74. Their grade would have been higher with the curve, but student A cheating disrupted the curve. As a result, student B gets an 79, where they would've had an 84 without the several cheaters with almost perfect exam scores at the top.

Personally, I hate to be 'that girl' that reports someone else like a snitch... But I worked so hard in this class. I studied for 6 hours every day before this exam, and got an 83... and these people admit in chat that they would probably fail if they didn't use WhatsApp (have it screenshotted-saying that exactly). So I worked so hard and got an 83. They cheated and got a solid 90, doing no studying, no hard work on their own part. They work full time, so they complain they don't have time. But how is that my fault, or the fault of the other students that the cheater makes different life choices, or chooses to put less time into school, and we as a result should suffer? That's my rationale for wanting to report them. I play fair, so why should we suffer because they don't?

The answer to the title question is:

Always

(barring some sort of really bizarre circumstances that I am not able to think of right now).
The specifics of the situations does not make me change my answer in this case.

Some people cheating is unlikely to significantly sway the curve one way or other. By reporting this you will affect someone much more negatively than how they affected you. Also, if it ever gets out that you were the "snitch", you will incur a significant social standing hit and may very well be excluded from any future whatsapp groups for example.


Is it appropriate to copy a drawing from a book in my master thesis? I would like to know if it is appropriate to copy a drawing from a book (specifically a directed graph) and develop my theory on that drawing? It is sure that I am going to make a reference for that drawing.

Note: The author of that book I intend to copy the drawing develops his theory based on that figure, but I am going to approach everything it matters more deeply.

Well, to my eye this is a good case of improving the state of the art, of course citing appropiately your sources. It is the same as quoting from a book.

On the other hand, if the publisher is especially nitpicking, maybe you could just use a software editor to re-create the drawing (still sourcing!) instead of using the "edited" drawing from a book.


Adjective order in academia: "Italian young adults" It's always been my understanding that age precedes nationality in standard adjective order (see, for example, The Royal Order of Adjectives); thus, it should be "young Italian adults" rather than "Italian young adults".

However, I'm revising a demographic study and decided to double check this by searching Google Scholar. To my surprise, I found 539 uses of the latter vs. 217 of the former. Regular Google delivers 88,700(!) vs. 1830, and I get similar results with various nationalities and also from Google Books (though not from the news).

I don't think such a large discrepancy could be ascribed to overall misuse, and the "incorrect" order occurs mostly in academic texts. So, my questions:

Is there some reason why the order of age and origin adjectives
should be reversed in academic (specifically demographic) texts?
Is that really the standard?

I speak English only as a second language, and I don't do research that involves young adults, but my guess is that it's because "young adults" is a fixed expression that is very close to a compound word. So it feels weird to split it with an adjective. This would be a good question for English.SE, but I think that we are in the middle of a linguistic process where this expression is transitioning to become a true compound word.

Anyway, it is a common saying that "the international language of academia is broken English", so you shouldn't take academic texts as an example of style. For most academic writers English is a second (or third, fourth...) language, and many write by translating word-by-word constructs from their native language. It shouldn't be surprising to find the wrong word order.

The Italians have started using this "phraseology" after the last war. Until then there only existed either" children- bambini", "youngters-giovani" and "adults-adulti". After the war, the people of Italy began to create the "mammoni" a new generation still with a child brain but of an 18-40 body, that clinged to mummy (and daddy) purely for financial reasons with full permission of their doting parents. The cynical side of Italians ( the envious working class), invented a new word to describe this new generation. This was made up of adults, (after 18) and men (after 21) and named "young adults-giovani adulti" more as a denigration than a grammatical adjective. It was a bit of a "micky take" that has been accepted by the outside World non Italian vernacular speaking . I would not waste too much time in reasoning as to why some academics have adopted this translation but , I presume, it is always good to keep the brain active! Ciao.


Do you have to accept a postdoctoral position if the university has paid for accommodation and international flights for you to come and present? I have been invited to give a seminar related to applying for a postdoctoral position. The professor has been very kind and seems  like a very nice person. He also helped me look for a postdoctoral position for my girlfriend. Now I have received the tickets to travel to the university with first class accommodation and luxury amenities. The trip involves  international travel and also that I have been talking with other professors to see my best options.

Does this force me to accept the position or is it common that researchers give these nice invitations?
Do I need to mention  to the professor that I am exploring other options?

If you are getting excellent treatment, that likely means they are fairly keen to hire you.  They are working to recruit you.  Accepting nice accommodations and amenities from them during the hiring process places no obligation on you--none at all.  That being said, this sounds like it might be a really good place for you.  Use your judgement about what will be optimal for yourself.

I am not completely certain I am interpreting your question correctly, because your English isn't completely standard.  I think you're saying that you have been invited to give a job talk, with your travel expenses paid, and that the job you are interviewing for is a post-doc position.  I will answer based on that understanding.

Only go if you are seriously interested in the job.

(Side note: keep in mind that you may have to pay income tax next April on the travel costs paid by the university that invited you.)


How to handle requests for a race-based exam structure? A colleague of mine is a non-tenured teaching-track faculty
in a neighboring university.
We work together frequently through our joint outreach and REU projects.
He is currently teaching a summer course in mathematics (pre-calculus algebra) with a compressed schedule from mid May to early July.
The final exam is scheduled in two weeks.
Last week he received students’ requests/suggestions,
cosigned by presidents of two large student organizations¹, that:

The final exam should be cancelled for minority students (but remain the same for the rest of the students, i.e. minority students will do strictly less work); or
The final exam should be modified to contain only questions that relate to life experiences of marginalized minorities; or
Marginalized minorities will take an easier final exam.

None of these requests are realistic at least in the current semester.
Indeed, imposing different grading standard by race is likely illegal too.
So we can start with the premise that
none of the requests can be granted.
Yet, it seems dangerous to dismiss these requests completely, as they are backed by large student organizations.
Moreover, in one discussion, some student estimated that the failure rate in his classes has a strong correlation to race factor in the last few semester.
(Students probably reached this estimation only by
surveying other students who took his classes in the past, but my colleague admits that it: “sounds about right”.)
It sounds to me that the students are collecting data for the next level of action should he reject the requests.
The vague official message from the chair and dean is that he, as the instructor, has the right to design the course.
However, it is seems that the administration is getting ready to let him take the blame, should this develop into a PR disaster – e.g., the chair will only discuss this on the phone but not over email.
He feels that his job is on the line.
How could one react to this and avoid both a PR disaster or doing something illegal?
There may not be enough time to save my colleague, but I’m still curious, as I wouldn’t be surprised if this would happen on my campus soon.

¹ The two presidents are not enrolled in this class, but many club members are enrolled. This letter was only addressed to this one instructor, cc’ed department chair. If they send the same request to other instructors, we wouldn’t know.

I would suggest offering something in response that makes the students feel like their concerns are heard, without compromising the academics of the course.
For example:

I understand that this is a difficult time, especially for minority students. Unfortunately, if I cancel the final exam, I won't be able to assign a grade to these students and they won't get credit for their work this semester. But in recognition of the extra challenges some students are facing right now, I am going to schedule an additional review session and office hours before the final exam. This way, students who are struggling can get additional opportunities to master the material before the exam.

A response that communicates empathy and understanding is much less likely to develop into a PR disaster than one that is irritated, defensive, or dismissive.

The technology does not allow the school to administer a "fair" exam (example).
I am a little surprised that the chair told him that he has the right to design his own course (I believe departamental exams are more common in remedial math courses).
Since all the students are stressed out by the current events, he should not administer any final exam, but just give everyone an "A".


Am I being a "mean" instructor, denying an extension on a take home exam I am currently teaching part time at a community college (in the US) and I have one student who is about 16, I think he is a senior in high school (at least he is about to graduate HS in the spring).  He is currently applying to MIT, Harvard, etc...  and he is taking my differential equations course. But he wants an extension on his take-home exam.

I gave my students their exam last Monday.  It was too hard... if anyone is interested in what "too hard" means, I can post it, but trust me, it was difficult... anyway, so I give them their exams back this past Monday (after our Thanksgiving break) and I tell them "give thanks, the exam is take-home now and due Wednesday".  He didn't show up for class that day (which when I was in HS was called being delinquent) and I told the class I would also make the announcement on our "online blackboard" so that anyone who missed would get the announcement.  I forgot to do this, and Wednesday I made the announcement that I forgot to post it Monday and so I said it was due Friday (this time I didn't forgot to post it online).

In any case, the student in question (and only one other student) weren't there Monday but did show up Wednesday.  He asked for me to make it due this coming Monday.  I told him that was not reasonable because the final is next Wednesday and I need to get the grading done in time plus I want to post solutions to the exam so they can study it to help them for their final (but I obviously can't do that if he hasn't submitted).  So their submissions are due in just about 1.5 hours and he is the only person who has yet to submit his exam.  This past Wednesday after class he said he wishes I would "work with him" because he has 7 other classes he's in (I think I'm remembering that correctly.... that's insane) and he has some winter concert he has to perform in for his school band and... he's never had a B ever... but in my class he has a C, many of my students by the way have A's.  I think he lacks maturity and I told him if he wants to go to MIT that he should act like an MIT student and quit complaining and get his work done.

Main Points:

I have a young student applying to MIT who is a dual credit student in my differential equations course.
He is complaining because he has a C in the class, but I feel he isn't putting in the appropriate work.
He claims there is a lot of work to do in high school and wants an extension on a take-home exam.
I disagree with his request for an extension, and I wonder if his request is reasonable and if I'm the person being unreasonable here.

You give a lot more information about the student than seems relevant to the question.  That the student is applying to MIT for instance is neither here nor there.

That your student is in high school may be slightly relevant.  It feels awkward to have a high school student in a college/university course when they are not doing well, because usually students (especially in mathematics) take such courses because they are too advanced or gifted for their high school programs, but that does not automatically make them prepared for college/university standards.  If you are an inexperienced instructor (and I think you are: more on that later) then it is a good idea to talk to colleagues to get some perspective on how high school students are typically dealt with.  This may well be different at a community college than at a research university, by the way.  I will say that my attitude in dealing with high school students in (research) university math courses is: if there are any special rules or dispensations that apply to them, these should be made clear at the time of their enrollment in the course.  In the absence of such rules, I try to treat high school students identically to all other students (keeping in mind that "all other students" is a large and inhomogeneous group).  I would certainly avoid talking to them in a way that would not be appropriate or respectful for an adult university student.  E.g. you write

  I think he lacks maturity and I told him if he wants to go to MIT that he should act like an MIT student and quit complaining and get his work done.

This sounds rather condescending to me.  As I said above, that the student wants to go to MIT is really not relevant to your course, and dragging that into the conversation is unhelpful.  By the way: telling someone to "act like an MIT student" presumes some involvement / affiliation with MIT on your part.  If you don't have that, what you say can come off as obnoxious.  I have taken classes at MIT (as a Harvard PhD student) and have some colleagues on the faculty there (for instance, I spoke there last month).  But I would not tell anyone to "act like an MIT student": while MIT students are in the aggregate very impressive, they are people, not stereotypes, and in my experience evince a wide range of behavior, including complaining.

Coming back to the matter at hand: honestly, what strikes me most is the way you are teaching your course.  Giving an exam which is too hard -- even much too hard -- is something that instructors do often, and it is not necessarily a problem but needs to be dealt with very carefully.  Turning an in-class exam into a take-home exam after it has been taken in class seems like a prohibitively poor idea to me.  If you are not sure about why, you may want to ask that as a separate question, since it would be helpful to get a range of responses about this.  By the way, I also find

  "give thanks, the exam is take-home now and due Wednesday".

to be a bit obnoxious.  A week after an exam was given, a student is expecting to receive their graded exam back again.  Coming into class on a Monday and learning that they are getting a "pop take-home exam" is something that a wide range of college/university students would not be thankful for.  Most students are very busy with a range of activities (academic, extracurricular, work, health, family...), and very busy people plan their schedules in advance.  Giving the exam back without a grade, asking the students to do it by the next class, and then forgetting to communicate that to students who missed that one class, is not great behavior on your part: honestly, it looks a bit lazy to me.
You say that you want to post the solutions in time to have the students study for the final.  That's good.  However, remember that you were the one who created the time crunch in the first place by making an exam you were so unhappy with so as to mess with it later.

Okay, what do I recommend?

You won't want to hear this, but: giving a take-home exam in an undergraduate math class in 2016 is probably a bad idea full-stop.  As a participant on math.stackexchange, you know well that your students can get solutions to even a way-too-difficult undergraduate differential equations class rapidly without leaving home.  I have colleagues at SLACs who feel confident that the majority of the students take the honor code seriously enough not to do this and feel that the cheating by a small minority of students is more than offset by the gain in learning from students who work through a carefully crafted take home exam.  When I was a postdoc, I had the experience of students cheating on a take-home exam (at a research university) and saw the poisonous effect their higher grades had on the morale of the other students, so for me even a small minority of cheaters is a high price to pay.  But this is not a carefully crafted take home exam: it's a too-hard in class exam.  And moreover it's a take home exam that was already given as an in-class exam.  Don't you think that many of the students spoke to each other about the exam afterwards?  And that a few of the students may have been interested enough to look up the answers online and/or talk to outsiders (e.g. more advanced students, tutors, instructors) about it?  I see no way to guarantee academic integrity in this situation.
You could make a different exam for your student and all other students who want to take it / can't solve the take home according to the deadline(s) that you rather precipitously announced.  Alternately, you could admit that the assessment coming from this midterm is not the greatest and just offer to drop everyone's lowest midterm grade.  In fact I usually drop the lowest midterm grade in my undergraduate classes conditionally on satisfactory performance on the final.  (And in fact I often don't announce it until near the end of the course, because I want all the students to take all the midterms.) I find that students are very happy with this, and since I too often give exams that are a bit more difficult than I had wanted, this ends up with course grades in the range that I want.

My opinion is if he doesn’t make the deadline for the exam, make up another exam and give it to him. You can make it available as extra credit for other students too. Admittedly, this student may be stretching himself thin (something the establishment is encouraging him to do, depending on who is around him), taking up a massive workload, and yes, he’s floundering. But you grow through struggle, it’s easy to bite off more than you can chew, and it’s hard to grow if failure means you totally screw up your chances permanently.

Am I being unreasonable? A physics professor of mine would give the option of redo exams several times a semester. He said to me, "If you really want to study this material more, learn it better, and you want to do extra work for this grade, then i should help you do that. Sometimes you have something going on in life---who knows? Anyway, real learning doesn’t work on a deadline, and my job is to help you learn. The class, and every other class, has enough deadlines that I don’t mind doing this."

A chemistry professor of mine told me of a professor at Berkeley didn’t believe in failing students; he only gave incompletes. Students could do extra work after semester to bump up and get their grade. If students didn’t take care of it, it would bottleneck their class progression, so most students ended up finishing their work. The result? More students ended up not only passing, but did better overall and learned the material better. My professor said this man was only allowed to get away with these shenanigans because he was tenured. What a pity.

You may say people need to learn discipline and to adhere to deadlines. Remember who you’re talking about: students in differential equations who have plenty of experience, and will constantly be, working under deadlines their whole life. This is not a lesson that needs to be hammered in at every opportunity to the detriment of people’s futures.


Do professors like answering questions from non-students/private citizens? I am a non-student/private citizen and I am eager to meet with professors at universities in my area so I can ask these professors a particular question about a particular subject matter.  I want to ask them the same question to see if they all will give me the same answer.  Based on their answers, I will then decide whether or not to pursue writing an article to be published which relates to this particular subject matter.

I have sent emails to six local universities requesting a meeting with a professor in this particular area of study and so far I have only received one e-mail reply. In that one email reply, the professor suggested that I meet instead with one of their graduate students because his consultation fee is very high. I am still waiting for the professor to provide me with the names of these grad students.

I have decided to wait at least a week before sending follow-up e-mails, or perhaps calling them directly to ask for an appointment, because I realize that professors are busy people.

This experience with trying to communicate with college professors makes me wonder if professors, in general, like answering questions from non-students/private citizens. Is it safe to say that professors, in general, would prefer that non-students/private citizens seek answers from subject matter experts in the private sector?

As in general, people are typically happy to be asked to exercise/express their expertise on the things they've worked their whole lives to understand.

But/and the most expert people are very busy, working on moving forward in that.

So their time is very valuable.

So an email response is much preferred, typically. The email back-and-forth, to arrange a physical meeting, is not preferred...

And if I, for one, found out that my opinion as a professional whatever was just supposed to be one vote out of some larger number... for the potentially misguided project of an amateur... I'd most likely not agree to spend the time. It's disrespectful, whatever you feel about that, for non-experts to think that the time of experts is at their disposal in this way, for free, etc. Be serious.

Many academics are kind and generous, but like to have just a token of respect and appreciation (rather than big bucks).

Call them and ask the question. It is much easier to get 5-10 minutes informally with someone on the phone than expecting them to write a well worded e-mail. If your question takes more than 10 minutes to answer you really should compensate them in one way or another.


Is it appropriate to attend a friends' dissertation defense/FPO (USA)? My initial reaction would be that it would be highly inappropriate to attend someone's defense unless explicitly invited, and you should never ask someone for and invitation to anything. It should be something very private.

However, it referred to as a "Final Public Oral Examination" and the time, date, and location (i.e. Zoom link) is shared by the department and the university. I have been told that some things I would find mean and offensive are actually supportive and kind things to do, so I do not know if my initial reaction is the "correct" one.

I want to be supportive, while not going where I am not wanted/should not go. At the same time, I am not sure if there is just some level of unspoken assumptions/norms that I am unaware of.

Traditionally (i.e. several hundred years of tradition) these things are public. Intentionally so. I urge you to go, or at least ask your friend whether they would object - which they should not.

In fact other students in the department should probably also attend, just to get a sense of the sorts of things that get asked.

My own final act as a student was called a Dissertation Defense, not an oral exam, but anyone on the committee could ask any question, even quite off the wall questions. But no one did that. I remember the room as being quite full with lots of professors and even more students. I don't recall whether the rules permitted the public to ask questions, but that is sometimes allowed as well.

The candidate is expected to say sensible things, but not necessarily to provide an answer to every question posed. But think of it more as a sharing of new ideas with the community than a grilling. If grilling was needed it probably already took place in private oral exams covering some aspect of the field of study.

There are a few horror stories about people not getting their degree because of their (lack of) performance at such things. Some of them involve questions by out-of-field committee members that are a feature in some places. But the sorts of questions they are likely to ask are necessarily elementary and it is a real failure to not be able to respond sensibly.

In many cases not only it is not inappropriate but it is welcome and set in regulations. In Denmark, as an example, Doctorate defences are public in the sence that they can (and are) be attended by any member of the public, university related or not.

In principle I completely agree with dissertations being accessible to anyone. However, to be on the safe side, you might want to first ask for your friend's opinion and then to chech with the Department. If neither objects, just "walk in". It would by no means be a faux pas.


All my papers have alphabetical author lists, but an award application asks for author lists to judge contribution I am a graduate student in pure math, namely graph theory and combinatorics. I have recently been nominated by my department to be the math department candidate for a university-wide research award. In the award application materials, it asks for my CV and is very specific that the authors names need to be in the same order as on the published paper so that the level of my involvement can be judged.

I am in a field where the convention is to put all names of co-authors alphabetically, regardless of input. It is clear to me that I need to mention this on my CV, but I am worried that if I just say that that the order of the authors is irrelevant in my field, the people judging my CV will be unsatisfied because then they won't have any information about how much I contributed to each paper.

Is there a tactful way to deal with this issue?

If you are concerned, you may want to include more information about the culture of coauthorship in mathematics.  For instance, you could enclose the following updated AMS culture statement.

As a mathematical "lifer," I want to be honest: the way that we handle coauthorship in mathematics does sometimes obscure the individual contributions of the authors.  On the job market, this is often circumvented by getting letters from one's senior coauthors describing the contributions you made.  You might consider doing that here, or that may be too heavy-handed for this case.

You could also talk to a mentor in your department and see what they think.  They may have more experience with what happens at the university level.

Another idea is to include something like an annotated bibliography for you papers.  Included in your annotation will be a description of your contributions to each paper.

Doing this will have the added benefit of helping prospective employers understand what roles you played in each paper.  It will also help if you are in academia and are going up for rank advancement.


Are course grade distributions supposed to be bell shaped? I just got done teaching my first course, and my grades are heavily skewed:

I consider my assessments to be fair and have had them vetted by more experienced faculty.  Also, the course averages are usually high in this course (mine was 83.5 or so).  However, it seems like I have a strange distribution of grades.  What might have caused it?

The distribution doesn't have to be of bell-shape. In very large scale open exams it may be reasonable to assume a bell curve. In many other situations, the distributions can be affected by the class size, mix of the students, objectives of the course, validity of the exam questions, and difficulty of the exam questions, etc.

Class size: The smaller the class, the harder to observe any discernible distributions, such as a bell-shape normal distribution.

Mix of students: If you're teaching a quantitative class and there are two streams of students from i) art programs and ii) engineer programs, you may see some other distribution like a double bell-shape bimodal distribution.

Objectives of the course: Some courses can be designed based on a fixed and stringent set of standards. For instance, if you teach anesthesiology and the passing grade for the students to take the board exam is 90%, the end distribution is unlikely to be bell-shape.

Validity and difficulty of the exam: Invalid questions may lower the accuracy which prohibits you to see the true distribution; overly easy or hard exam can move the curve towards high- and low-boundary, causing truncated bell-shape distributions.

If I have to give an assessment I'd first suggest removing the 0% as it's a special case and yet tilting the impression of the curve quite badly. For the rest, I'd say if you're teaching an introductory course in which students are expected to gain a good foundation, this is not a bad distribution. If you're teaching a very advanced course, with nearly 20% getting close to full mark then the assessment may benefit from a re-tuning.

Generally, I'd advise:

Analyze the grades and your course objectives in tandem. Just grade distribution itself does not tell if you're doing a good job.
Accumulate more data across cohorts of students. I find that after 3-4 times teaching the same course the patterns would start to emerge.
Compare to historic grade distribution (just a few years before you picked this course up) to make sure you are not way off. Consult the appropriate dean if they are.
If so inclined, try to analyze your exam items. There are special statistics to check if your exam questions are "good" questions. Most academic institutes should have an education affair office that can help you.

If you class size is large enough and you test isn't too easy or too difficult (with respect to the capabilities of your students), you should get an approximate bell curve.

Your distribution is bimodal. Either the students cheated(they had the questions before the exam) or the paper was too easy.


How should I deal with discouragement looking at others success? I'm a master CS student. I had so many troubles in my life. I didn't have proper schooling and were in difficult situations which led to me being not so good compared to my peers now at the graduate school. For example I had problems with math and so and when I got into my new graduate school everyone was almost far better than me. Then I started working day and nights to improve my skills and after a year of really hard work now I achieved almost their skills. However in that time my peers were also developing their skills and doing fancy projects and so on. Sometimes when I get to look at their success and projects I feel stressed and discouraged that I really still have way too long to achieve that. Or that I'm really putting so much work into myself because of the problems I went through but at the end I find myself still far. Whereas my peers are enjoying their lifes and at the same time achieving something. I know life is not fair nor I'm jealous, but sometimes I just feel sorry about myself that I work really hard but without much difference :(. This is also is leading so some self-confidence issue, that whenever I see one of my peers I get stressed and sometimes afraid to discuss a topic with them because I don't want to look bad not  knowing that easy stuff for them.

This is always leads to a voice in my head saying: oh if only a professor in MIT or Stanford sees how hard working you are, you might be there now. But of course I won't because I will always be far from the students there because of what I went through.

What to do to overcome this?

I will apologize in advance, because this answer won't give you what you are probably looking for; but it might give some perspective so I will reply anyways hoping that helps somewhat.

First off, know this: you are not alone! It's actually pretty common to look at your peers (at the office and elsewhere worldwide) and feel shitty about the "insignificance" of your accomplishments compared to those of others. To further strengthen the point, I can say that I am battling with this every single day for instance, despite what I hear from others about the quality or importance of my work when I look around and see what others achieve I feel depressed...

Secondly it's also good to try and remember that life isn't a competition. Well, some aspects of life are competitive, for sure, but you cannot go about living your day competing with others in every single aspect of your life. This is a simple but a very powerful insight, also very hard to digest it properly and take it to heart.

Think of all the aspects your life, from research to parking your car, from buying groceries to whatever sport you enjoy the most... I can guarantee you that there will be several (if not more) people within your immediate surrounding that will be "better" than you in each one and single aspect, if you isolate them one at a time. But I can also assure you that they won't be the same people if you consider different aspects. Overall, you are the person you are and constantly comparing yourself to others in single aspects (and focusing on your shortcomings) will only drive you towards unhappiness.

So does that mean you should just relax and go with the flow? Absolutely not! You have to play catch up, if you can identify your shortcomings in particular fields (like maths, or programming experience). It'll be frustration, it'll be long hours, it'll be effort... Try to focus on setting goals for yourself when you are in catch-up phase.

I strongly recommend checking out S.M.A.R.T goals concept which helps in getting things done and bagging that sweet feeling of accomplishment, little by little.

Hope this answer helps to some extent and it all works out in the end!

New Ideas, you need new ideas, new ways of doing things to achieve what you're looking for, and if it's being better than them, I think that's not a bad thing, I mean how many are they 10, 20 people. obviously that challenged you and without this you wouldn't have thought of changing your status Quo. and even better how about something you're interested in that they don't know anything about (it doesn't have to be sports) it could be in the field of CS too, but was left out for some reason, they're a limited no. of people and even if they are 100, they're not the rest of the world, so probably they are not good at something in CS, if you're interested in that thing (only if you're interested in it, passionate about and want to learn) this can be a great advantage of yours. go for it, be good at every other subject in your masters but be excellent at your newly found interest, a hint: it might be something related to business (think gates and jobs left school for a reason), this could be a killer. in my opinion frustration is the fuel for extraordinary success only if you keep at it.


Mentor added his name as the author and changed the series of authors into alphabetical order, effectively putting my name at the last I was recruited by a university to work on a research project as a research fellow and have dedicated over 8 months to it. I have maintained a schedule of fortnightly presentations with another senior research fellow and professor to update them with the progress of the research. After I shared the first draft of the paper with them, the senior fellow rewrote the introduction and added his and professor's name to the author list. He alphabetized the list by our last names stating that's the convention they are beginning t follow, which effectively puts my name at the very last. I have done all the research and I feel shortchanged. I did not like the fact that this was not even discussed with me before changing and the senior fellow will be presenting my paper, I was informed. Again, I am upset about this.
Yet, I have been in the system for 8 months, 4 more months to go before my contract is over with the institute. It matters a lot to me that my name appear first in the list of authors as I am planning to do my PhD soon and having a list of publications with my lead authorship will help me get work with the university of my choice.
What should I do? Should I let this go and not be bothered or should I discuss my concerns with the professor? The senior fellow and professor are very good friends and have been working together for over 6 years and I do not want them to gang up against me as I am new to the field. Please advise.,

Speaking from a field where author lists are always alphabetical: This will do you good in the long run! If you follow this convention, you will never have to argue over authorship order - take a look at the amount of questions on this site dealing with exactly this question, and be thrilled that you have the option to simply exclude that from your life.
Since I am in such a field, I also know what people do on their CV: they explain what they did for the study. You can write that you did the experiment, the analysis and wrote the first draft of the paper. This will be more informative for a hiring committee than any amount or author-list ordering principle you can come up with.

This sucks big time. As a start, if you haven't submit the paper yet, it may not be published in 4 months, due to peer review taking usually some time, so adjust accordingly if you want to apply for a PhD soon.
I am afraid there's not much I would do in your current situation rather than talk with the professor and explain what you said here. There are probably legal and journal policy things you can do, but it's probably not worth the pain. If he's still holding on the order, he's most likely an asshole and better to let him be. These people can hurt very hard when they want and have the power to do so. When applying for the PhD, you can tell this things in confidence during the interview; it's good to let know what you did and that you tried to solve it diplomatically.
Importantly, don't loose your hope. Not all people are like this, most are actually very decent :)


The use of pseudocode examples in CS program--is it plagarism? I'm an undergraduate in CS and I had a class in Adv. Data Structures & Algorithms in the spring of this year. Near the beginning of it I was pressured by a fellow classmate to "google pseudocode examples" and use them to do my labs. I guess the point here was that it wasn't copy and paste (being pseudocode) and still had to be adapted to the language for the class. I did something like that once to finish an assignment in that class (most of the code was my own that I solved myself). None of this did felt right to me, but again I felt pressured. I heard a lot of chatter from fellow students concerning the using of pseudocode. Again I didn't feel this was right.

Time passed and I forgot about it. The school recently sent out an email survey regarding plagiarism. That's what got me thinking about the previous semester. I want to note that I've never plagiarized in my life and I make every effort to avoid it [I have principle's]. I also have a good definition of what plagiarism is, to a point I think I understand this better than most.

So my questions are: is using pseudocode examples an act of plagiarism? If so where do I go from here? Shall I email the instructor openly and honestly tell them what happened?

Honesty is one of my principle's. I'm posting this here in the hopes that some of you will understand that. Logically it sounds like using said pseudocode is an act of plagiarism (the idea's are the same). Its still ambiguous to me, I need to know what others think.

Plagiarism is when you claim somebody else's work as your own.  We most often hear about it with regards to words or images, but it can just as easily be applied to other types of intellectual work as well, including pseudocode.

The critical question, then, is whether what you have done can be reasonably understood to be claiming the work as your own.  This depends on the particular assignment, but the cases here fall into two general categories:

If the assignment is asking you to create a piece of code, then finding a piece of pseudocode that does the same thing and translating it would be plagiarism because you are pretending to have created the code yourself, when in fact you have not.
If, on the other hand, the assignment is asking you to create a complex system, one component of which happens to be implemented using a subroutine that you have translated from elsewhere, then it is essentially the same as finding an appropriate library call and entirely acceptable (unless there were rules clearly intended against such).  In this case, the creative work is the assemblage, and you are not representing that particular fragment code as your own --- though it is best practice to be explicit about your sources in comments, for copyright and license reasons.

Given that your professor was encouraging the use of outside resources as part of the project, it seems to me that what you describe is both ethical and normal practice.

No, it is neither plagiarism nor cheating. During the algorithms course you're supposed to learn about existing algorithms, and there is no way to study an existing algorithm other than by looking at its pseudocode.


How can software piracy in academia be reduced/eliminated? Software piracy is obviously illegal as well as being wrong for a variety of reasons. However, from my experience it is extremely common to see pirated software being used by research students. This appears to be implicitly condoned/encouraged by some academic staff.

Usually software piracy is done by an individual for their own use. In academia it is being done with implicit consent by the organisation and for the purposes of conducting research which may end up with commercial applications, or be built upon by others.

How can software piracy in academia be reduced/eliminated?

Actually, part of this is by design.

Software companies turn a blind eye to students and faculty pirating their software, so the students learn how to use their program. Once they go on to companies, they will request to use what they know best, and the companies will pay the hefty fees.

How can we avoid this? The best solution is at the root: replace all commercial software by open source versions, when this alternative has a comparable level of quality. This has two costs that would have to be weighted before doing the switch:

The instructors would need to learn another software, that is perhaps not what they are using for their research.
If the industry standard is a commercial software, the students will have to learn it, preferably when still at university.

On the other hand, sometimes the open source version is superior to the commercial version. For example, I think the Scipy ecosystem is much better than MATLAB except for a few niches. So, when MATLAB users do the exercise of evaluating the quality of Scipy for their applications, they may discover that making the switch in both teaching and research is, perhaps, a good move.

This switch should be encouraged even more for introductory classes, where none of the advanced features come into play, and classes where the software is only used marginally (limited to, for example, one or two practical sessions). Once students have knowledge of the free alternatives, they would have alternative resources before pirating.

(Disclaimer: I personally dislike MATLAB quite a lot, but I know of many people from many fields that are making the switch, and of no one that is doing it back. YMMV.)

Another front is in the software companies themselves. My university provides some commercial licenses for free for us staff. But the list of instructions to install and launch some of the programs is as long as my arm, and quite often (judging from the emails the IT department sends), unreliable. So, even though people can get a legal version for free, the pirated version may prove to be easier and more reliable; so I wouldn't be surprised if several people had chosen that option.

The answer is obvious.  Make a confidential report to the Business Software Alliance.  The BSA will investigate your university and if they receive a monetary settlement will pay you a reward.

After a university gets whacked by the BSA stick, they will find ways to reduce or eliminate software piracy (if they had not done so before).


What should a lecturer do when an international student plagiarises and the student claims it was unintentional? A student has plagiarised her assignment. The lecturer gave all students a lecture on plagiarism at the beginning of the semester. The student maintains she was absent that day but the university does not keep records on attendance. However a copy of the lecture is on BlackBoard. Her excuse is that she didn’t realise she was plagiarising.  As she is an overseas student a fail in a unit means she risks losing her visa.

What actions should the lecturer take?

If your institution keeps a record of academic misconduct, be sure this gets into the record.  If you don't do that, you enable serial cheating.

Do not allow a "do over."  The message you send is that there's no penalty for for misconduct, even if one gets caught.  Misconduct must have some irrecoverable penalty, however small.  It need not be a grade penalty; it could be extra work, but see below about setting a penalty.

Follow University policy if there is one.  If you have the opportunity to set the penalty, and I hope you do, consider the magnitude of the offense.  A single un-cited paragraph from a work listed in a bibliography is far less egregious than a substantial part of the work copied with no attempt at attribution.

It is not your problem that the student missed the plagiarism lecture.  Do not allow the student to make it your problem.

It is not your problem that the student might lose her visa.  Do not allow the student to make it your problem.

It's hard to imagine a better learning opportunity than this.  And anyway, do we want to destroy her life, or help her learn a very important lesson?

Be creative, be effective.  For example, in addition to giving her an incomplete and having her re-do the assignment, you could reduce her final grade by one letter (i.e. from B to C), and you could have her write a separate research paper describing three famous plagiarism scandals of her choice.

To quote a classic story:

  At a certain school in [your region here] some girls were beginning to use lipstick, putting it on in the school bathroom. After they put on their lipstick, they pressed their lips on the mirror, leaving dozens of little lip prints.

  Every night, the maintenance man removed the prints, but the next day,
  the girls put them right back. Finally, the principal decided that
  something had to be done. She called all the girls into the bathroom
  along with the maintenance man. She explained that all these lip
  prints were causing a major problem for the custodian, who had to
  clean the mirrors every night. This inspired yawns from all the little
  princesses.

  To demonstrate how difficult it was to clean the mirrors, she asked
  the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required. He
  took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned
  the mirror with it. Since then there have been no lip prints on the
  mirror.

  There are teachers… and then there are educators.

As a graduate student instructor, I encountered these problems occasionally.  In one case, as an example, of a student who had not done his own programming, the end result was that he had to take the class again in the summer.  He learned to write simple programs, and he learned to hand in his own work, not someone else's.  And he got a Bachelor's degree.


Putting class ranking in CV, but against dept guidelines I graduated last year from a master's course where I was fortunate enough to graduate top of my class. However I was told this in confidence by one of my referees to a PhD programme, and they informed me that under no circumstances was I to put this on academic applications, as it would be against 'department guidelines'.

I also tried to enquire with the department directly concerning class rankings, but as expected they were unwilling to reveal this information to me.

I'm now considering applying for a job, and believe that the class ranking would be a good thing for my CV. However I really ought not to know this fact, as it was revealed to me in confidence by my referee, and I risk jeopardising my relationship with him if the department found out.

Am I overthinking this, and should I just put it down, or is there a way to resolve this in a less risky way?

So, you put it on your CV, the future employer does what employers do and phones the institution to check details of awards, years etc.

BOOM - the institution does not confirm you were "top of the class" as that is just not done.

Now the future employer is confused - what else may be wrong on your CV AND your referee is pissed at you as well.

Do you really want to go there?

Ordinarily, the way details of your performance in your program would be
passed from graduate department to potential employer would be in a letter of recommendation. In my own letters of recommendation, I have often used
phrases such as "one of our very best students" or "the best performance I have
seen in several years," backed up by specific, relevant reasons for saying so.

I hope your discussions about this issue haven't damaged your relationship with your
adviser and others who write such letters.


Is it problematic to use a Wikipedia article I wrote in my PhD thesis? I'm working on a specific subject, and I thought that sharing my bibliographical and synthesis work from peer-reviewed journals on Wikipedia could be a good idea. Moreover, there is no Wikipedia entry on that subject.

But as I will use that work for my PhD thesis, is this problematic because someone might think that I have plagiarised the material from Wikipedia?

Note that this question could apply to any similar collaborative encyclopedia, not just to Wikipedia, and that the article I'm writing is subject to collaborative change.

Edit : by synthesis work I do not mean :

  combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion
  not explicitly stated by any of the sources

but

  reduce the information in lengthy sources to an encyclopedic length

More information on Wikipedias SYNTH policies and here

Also the question is related to sharing my bibliographical work on a collaborative platform, regardless to the platform policy (assuming I can), and potential problems re-using it afterwards, in a PhD thesis.

No, but make sure you cite it and mention it, to avoid being accused of copying and pasting from Wikipedia.

In any case, it is great that you have contributed to Wikipedia and I wish more people considered using pieces of their introductory chapters for Wikipedia. Just make sure that people know that you copied to, not from, Wikipedia. (I mean, the order is irrelevant, i.e. whether you first wrote text for Wikipedia or your thesis, but the authorship is.)

Yes, it's problematic. Quoting wikipedia is, to some people, always dodgy, whatever the context. Just don't do it in an academic work.

And you can't reuse your own words, having broadcast them once in wikipedia, without explicitly stating that you're quoting wikipedia - that would be self-plagiarism, just as when if you'd quoted a previous paper you'd written, without explicitly identifying that it was a quote.

So don't do it.

If you've written your best stuff for wikipedia, and left yourself with a dead end for your academic work, then count it as a lesson learnt.  But it's more likely that you've just put on wikipedia one first attempt at formulation. So now do a better one, completely rephrased, and use that in your thesis. Then you don't need to mention wikipedia in your thesis at all, except in the acknowledgements section if you wish.


I sent an unupdated version of my MSc. thesis to a supervisor of a PhD project I am applying for I am being considered for a doctoral position and after what I think it was a very good interview, the project supervisor asked me for a copy of my MSc. thesis. Even though the results of the thesis have not been published yet, he assured me full confidentiality, so I sent the thesis for his appreciation.

Two days after sending the document, I have realized I have sent the wrong version of it. These version was very close to the final one, but with a few minor mistakes, such as grammar and a few misplaced commas, one legend that was partially wrong, and differences in text colour also in one legend.

I really want the position, and I am very afraid these minor mistakes will make me come across as sloppy.

Do you think I should send an email explaining the situation and, likewise, send the "good version" of my thesis? I am also very afraid that this will make me come across as sloppy. After all, I did not make 100% sure I was sending the proper updated version.

What would you do in my situation?

I really appreciate all the help!!!

Thanks!!

Even final published theses can, and do, have errors.

Don’t worry, if the errors are typos etc you will be fine, however if there is a serious error in the theory or analysis then that may be different.

I think most people have done this at some point, it is unfortunate that it happened when applying for that position. I would send him the updated version with a small explanation stating that it corrects some small grammar/color/graph/ect issues. If he hasn't already read the paper, I'm sure he would like an updated one.


What does it mean if my advisor decides to remove his name from a paper we co-authored? I recently received a rejection to a paper that I co-authored with my advisor. There was nothing wrong with the content but the reviewer believed it was too simple by the journal standards. My advisor's advisor who has more that 30 years expertise in the field has suggested to combine the paper with its sequel (which I was in the process of writing) and submit elsewhere.

While I am getting ready to do the same my advisor has asked to remove his name from the paper. This worries me a little. It makes me think that the paper isn't good enough and that is why my advisor want to disassociate himself from it.

Could there be any other reason why my advisor is doing so? Should I ask him?

Please ask your advisor politely. There can be numerous reasons he wanted to have his name removed:

The quality of your work is too bad and the paper might affect his reputation. I do not believe that this is the case. You worked together on the paper for the first submission where he agreed to be on author list. Why should he remove his name when there is better content, now?
No right of authorship: He may know that all of the work was done by you and he has too little contribution to the paper. So he is friendly by declining authorship of your work. This might be quite likely, at least this has happened for me. However, if this is the case, consider including him in the acknowledgements.
He wants you to become more independent. You may have worked rather closely on the first paper but now he wants you to take the lead and do most work on your own. This may be due to a limit of time on his side.

All in all, just ask him, you need this answer/feedback to continue your work.

Your advisor just wants to give you all the credits for the paper. It is your hard work after all. Since he is so shy and goodwilling, don't bother him with such an indiscreet question : don't ask him why. Just tell him thank you for so much support.


"Garbage in, garbage out" - Is it rude to call others' works as 'garbage' compared to ours? I'm working on a data model which, I think, produces more accurate and valid results than some of previous works by others, including my supervisor, who by the way supports my work. But so far, the relevant community in general hasn't paid enough attention to the need for such more accurate results in this field.

When presenting my work (verbal/poster/paper), I need to emphasise the importance of the problem and the need to using better models, and that if we used less valid models (such as some of the existing ones) we should expect less accurate results.

Is it rude to use the computer science axiom "garbage in, garbage out" (or similar phrases) when referring to others' works in this context?

Edit: I missed important details. In my case, by 'garbage' I specifically mean the low-quality data usually used to solve the problem, which makes other models less valid. Even though, I would never use it as it might be misinterpreted as evaluation of the works per se, rather than the resources used!

But I was surprised and not comfortable to read the analogy in a published comment which criticised another author's results for using unreliable data!

Yes, it's rude to describe somebody else's work as garbage, and unnecessarily so.  You've already said it much better yourself:

  if we used less valid models we should expect less accurate results

There's no reason to confuse this simple factual statement with a value judgement.  Just because something works poorly doesn't mean it's garbage---it may also simply be earlier and less well engineered.  Would you call a Model T "garbage" just because it gives inferior performance compared to a current car?

Yes, it is conditionlessly rude. Other answers explain very well, how bad is if you communicate negatively in a hierarchy. I extend this from the other site:

Although it is rude, it can be justifiable. Sometimes people do garbage, it can have many reasons, many of them is tolerable, many of them isn't.

And, naming the things as they are, makes the situation much clear if the reality is masked by complex polite formulas.

It depends on the balance. But, don't forget: people around you will weigh the real hardness of your negative words probably more serious, as you intended it!


Does one have to list all publications on a CV? Some years ago, I published some papers that I'm not particularly proud of. They aren't in prestigious or widely known venues in my field, and I'm sure that few if any people in my field have seen these papers. When I apply for a job, am I permitted to omit these publications from my CV? Or am I, for some reason, obligated to list all prior publications?

If the CV is for job applications, you can certainly omit publications.  If you omit a lot of publications, you might want to title your publication list "Selected Publications".

If the CV is for a grant application or a promotion, there may be more specific rules about what can and cannot be included, so you should check those.

During a CV coaching I once was told that your CV should not contain publications at all. After some protesting, they allowed me to keep the three most important / the free most relevant ones (with respect to the target company/university) in the CV, and maybe add a link to a webpage with the full list.

The coaching was mainly oriented at industrial jobs, but I guess having a selection in the CV and adding a link to the full list is also a good strategy for academic jobs. That way you can keep those unwanted publications somehow seperated from your CV.


Which review recommendation should I give to maximize the likelihood that a manuscript is rejected? DISCLAIMER: As some readers have found the following question and prior title (How to best kill a manuscript as peer reviewer) outrageously unethical, I want to clarify that, by asking this question, I was simply and constructively trying to be provocative, not suggesting any means to hijack the peer review process.

I often peer review manuscripts for scholarly journals. In the most typical scenario, the editor asks me a quality appraisal and a priority appraisal.

For quality, the typical recommendations can be (mutually exclusive): accept as is, minor revision, major revision, and reject.

For priority, the typical alternatives can be (mutually exclusive): top priority, mid priority, low priority.

My experience and perspective is that most manuscripts do not deserve a rejection, as they most often have some merits, at least in the field of pragmatic cardiovascular research, where most works are only incrementally original.

If my will is to try to "kill the manuscript", i.e. maximize the likelihood it is eventually rejected because I find it unsuitable for that specific journal, but still finding it has some incremental value, I simply recommend minor or major revisions, but give low or very low priority.

Is this sound and appropriate? Am I wrong in this approach?

Is this sound and appropriate?

No. Your job as a reviewer is not to choose which manuscripts are accepted or rejected. Your job is to advise the editor as to the merits and the flaws of the manuscript, and then let the editor decide the fate of the manuscript.

Thus, you should give the manuscript the ratings that most accurately reflect your perception of it, not the ratings that you think will get it "killed".

  I think that there is an underlying misunderstanding

I don't think I misunderstood the first version of your question, and my answer still applies. It is not up to the reviewer to maximize the likelihood of any particular outcome; just tell the editor what you think of the manuscript, and leave the rest to the editor.

This means that if you are asked by the editor to recommend an overall decision, you should recommend an overall decision. If asked by the editor to recommend a decision based on quality and specifically excluding the priority, novelty, and usefulness of contribution, then you should do exactly that. (If you aren't clear on what factors should be included your quality recommendation, ask the editor.) If you believe that a manuscript should be rejected from a given journal because its contribution is incremental, you can indicate as much in the part of the review where you're asked to assess the manuscript's originality and/or in a separate comment to the editor.

Answers and comments here jumping at your throat have to do with the publishing culture in computer science and maths (what most users of this site do), which differs significantly from the one in biology or medicine. I think your question is not optimally phrased, but if curating for quality is your ultimate goal, I applaud that intent. Quality curation is a critical aspect of academic publishing and there generally is too little of it.

  How to best kill a manuscript

Unfortunately, you can't.

Authors almost never resolve themselves to ditch a manuscript because that's very frustrating, and that would mean a shorter bibliography. You can be instrumental in its rejection from the journal you review for, but it's simply going to pop-up in the review queue of another less reputable journal.

  How can I maximize the likelihood it is eventually rejected because I find it unsuitable for that specific journal.

By recommending rejection exactly for that reason. Write a review pointing out what you think should be improved in the paper, that's the service you're asked to do to the authors, and tell the editor you think the paper's contribution is too modest to warrant publication in that journal.

If you want to have more decision power in that process, you should become an editor yourself. But that is not something you typically decide on your own. If a community values your curating abilities, then you might get that job.


How do I abbreviate the titles after my name? I just got my Ph.D and I'm trying to work out how to do the full series of abbreviations after my name.

My scholastic qualifications are:

Ph.D University of New South Wales, Philosophy
Masters of Science, Rochester Institute of Technology, Information Technology
Bachelors of Science, RIT, Information Technology

RIT Scholar (University Medal)
Highest Honors.

Given that I have both American and Australian degrees, what series of abbreviations is appropriate to put after my name?

This varies between countries.  My impression is that listing titles after the name is more common in the UK and Australia, and there may be fixed conventions as to the ordering, but I can't address that.  What I can deal with is the U.S., and my advice in that context is simple: don't do it.  In the U.S., if you list one title ("John Smith, Ph.D."), you'll look a little pompous and like you are overemphasizing your degree (leading to questions like "Gee, is that Ph.D. still his proudest achievement?" or "Does he worry people will think he didn't get a Ph.D.?"), and if you list more than one it will look ridiculous.  In particular, don't list titles after your name in academic job applications, CVs, signatures for letters of recommendation, etc. that are being sent to the U.S.  Of course, conventions in other countries may be different.

You absolutely list your credentials. ALWAYS! In the U.S., list the highest one in each field. In the EU, it's more common to list them all.


How to prevent an idea / innovation from being stolen or plagiarised I have come up with an innovation to obtain linear motion without using any external source of energy. The idea arose from a paper I wrote on an alternative model of magnetism. I have built and tested the innovation and have written a paper describing it, which I wish to submit for publication.

My worry is that considering the novelty of the idea, it may get stolen or plagiarized. How do I prevent this from happening?

If you have an invention, patent it. It's an expensive and long process though. But it may be dangerous to publish the paper first. Your patent could possibly be denied if the paper is deemed "prior art". This varies by jurisdiction, of course. Keep it as a trade secret until you file the patent.

You can't actually "prevent" plagiarism. You can only try to reveal it.

If you publish the paper without obtaining patent on the "invention", then people are free to use the idea. They just can't legally violate your copyright nor morally plagiarize the paper. But, ideas are free to use.

If the idea is valid and novel, you might be able to partner with some company to exploit it. Don't reveal it, however, without non-disclosure agreements in place first.

Much of this requires a lawyer, of course.

If you have a truly new idea, it's very unlikely anyone will want to steal it.  You will have to sell it, first.  Think of Steve Ballmer's reaction to the iPhone.

But to take your question a bit more seriously, you have basically four strategies for protecting your intellectual property:

Trade secret.  You license your IP to licensees who promise to keep
it secret as well.  Your protection is that your IP is so clever
that you don't think it's likely anyone can independently recreate
it without knowing how you did it.  Works surprisingly well (think
formula for Coca-Cola).  But if your idea is recreated, there's
nothing you can do about it, especially if they decide to patent
before you do.
Patent.  This applies to inventions, like what you're describing.
You publish your idea by submitting it to the patent authority in
your country.  If your patent is granted, you can prohibit others
from using your idea without licensing it.  But it's expensive, both
to get the patent and to enforce it and whether you got the patent
or not, everyone can read your idea.
Copyright.  This applies primarily to written, audio or video
material and would include, e.g., any computer source code in your
product.  Copyrights exist from the moment of conception, though if you
want to sue someone for copyright infringement you must first
register your copyright (very cheap).
You can give it away.  You can publish it with, e.g., a GNU or
similar open source license.  This lets anyone use your IP but that
also ensures you can always use it as well.


Is it usual for finished PhD students to send out physical copies of their thesis to unknown persons? Some time ago, a recently-graduated PhD has sent me a physical (book) copy of his dissertation. The graduate works in a somewhat-related field, but is personally entirely unknown to me (I have some loose connections to the advisor, though). I was reasonably confused by this - I personally have never heard of a custom of sending physical theses to anybody besides maybe parents. I was 100% convinced that I received the dissertation in error (also because the mailing was addressed to my name, but using a wrong department name).

Last week I by chance got hold of the graduate and told him that he sent me his thesis by accident, and asked whether he wants to have it back. He seemed confused and a little bit annoyed that I wanted to give his thesis back - it turns out he actually sent me the book on purpose, assuming that I would be interested in his work. He told me that he thought it is customary to send a finished PhD thesis to people that he thought might profit from its results.

So, is this a thing, at least in some fields? If so, why not just send the core papers or a link to a digital version of the thesis? Mailing out printed copies seems extremely expensive, and also (at least for me) very unlikely to result in anything else than me having another book gathering dust in my office shelf. I am honestly very unlikely to read an entire thesis, especially if I only have it in a dead-tree book version.

This is not uncommon in the country where I did my PhD (the Netherlands). There you have to print a reasonably large amount of hardcopies anyway, typically people get around 200-300 copies in my field. It is not uncommon to send some copies to researchers that you genuinely believe may be interested in the work, usually people that you have been in contact with before, or are in contact with your advisor.

The cost of the thesis printing and mailing is generally reimbursed by the university (of course, all within reasonable limits). In countries where printing the thesis is not so common, I can imagine that the practice of mailing around copies is not common.

Totally uncommon to me. I'm doing my PhD thesis and if I were that student, I'd send first an email asking whether there is an interest or not. In any case, I'd not expect that someone will read my thesis (book) just for fun or because that might interest you. Even PhD supervisors complain reading PhD theses that look like books!


How to explain to department's president that my time spent as an undergraduate assistant/intern was goalless? This is a follow-up from my question here on my atrocious relationship with my internship/assistance as an undergraduate at a teaching lab.

Since I only have some weeks left to end this awful experience, I am planning to visit the department's head(who is also my professor) at his office to explain how unproductive and pointless my "training" was and how I was being exploited by my supervisor.

The problem is that the president is also my professor(teaching courses I'm interested in), and I wonder if anything I say against my supervisor or my experience will worsen my future studies (and relationship) with my professor until I graduate.

I wonder if anything I say against my supervisor or my experience will worsen my future studies (and relationship) with my professor until I graduate.

It could, and this depends on many factors (including the character of this professor, his relationship with your supervisor, your character and how you explain things etc...), I don't think anyone can predict whether or not it actually will.

I recommend first considering what you hope to achieve in discussing this with the head of the department (aka president/professor). I can imagine a couple of possibilities:

You feel the need to unload and feel some sympathy.
You care about the system and hope this can be avoided for future students.

If it is mainly the first, I strongly suggest talking to a friend over a beer instead. You'll avoid the risk, and also won't essentially waste your professor's time (which would probably negatively affect his impression of you).

If your motivation is the second, I think this is quite a noble and selfless thing to do, showing high integrity, but it does put yourself at quite a bit of risk with essentially no gain (it helps future students, but if I understand correctly, not you). If this is your goal, I urge you to first consider whether you think this professor would actually care about the advice of an undergrad (I have known professors who would appreciate it, but also some who would simply consider the student to be complaining, in which case relations with that professor would indeed worsen). If you think he will, then I suggest the following:
Before speaking to your professor, make sure you can present the situation clearly, as objectively as possible and concisely (the longer you speak, the more it sounds like a rant and you lose interest - also professors tend to be very busy, and thus have low attention spans for issues that don't seem important). Be very clear straight off the bat that you understand and agree that what has already happened has happened and nothing can/will be done for you, and your intent is solely to raise awareness of the issue so that it can be avoided in the future. Possibly put this intent in writing when contacting the professor for the meeting (again, as short as possible).

In the end, taking action here will involve risk, regardless of your intentions. You will have to weigh how much you care about the issue, and what chances you think you have.

Since I only have some weeks left to end this awful experience, I am planning to visit the department's president (who is also a professor) at his office to explain how unproductive and pointless my "training" was and how I was being exploited by my supervisor.

Newsflash: Slavery has been abolished. If you were "exploited", it's because you didn't do your due diligence to find out what you were getting into. You should've asked "what exactly will I be doing?" and, if you were not satisfied with the answer "delivering mail", you should've looked for a different position.

  The problem is that the president is also my professor(teaching courses I'm interested in), and I wonder if anything I say against my supervisor or my experience will worsen my future studies (and relationship) with my professor until I graduate.

It might very well have this effect, since nobody likes a whiner. I'd recommend just dropping the issue, forgetting about the past and focusing on what you can do in the future to further your career. I forget the saying exactly, but there's a saying that goes something like "pushing other people down won't float you up".


Can I re-apply for a new PhD position of a better university if I am currently full funded international student of another university(both in US)? Can I apply for a new PhD position of a better university(Stanford, Berkeley) in coming fall semester if I am currently international full funded PhD student of another university (both in US)? After acceptance I will leave the previous university.

Yes: You can drop-out, give-up funding, and start-over with a new supervisor.
Albeit, that's probably ill-advised given the current climate.


Have I given my PhD supervisor enough time to react to serious issues before raising it above their head? I've been having doubts about the progress I've been making during the start of my PhD. About 2 weeks before I was due to go abroad for a placement at another lab I raised these concerns with my supervisor and they traveled the length of the country a week later to meet me in person to help with how I was feeling.

Now two months have passed (I'm still overseas), and my project is well overdue for a third party progress review within my department. This shook me again when it was brought to my attention, and I started to worry about the progress I've been making again. Adding to this, discussions with the experts at the overseas lab have made me question the value of my research as a whole, and whether or not anything I've done so far or will do for the next 8 months or so is actually worth anything - regardless of whether or not I'd made any real progress with it. (Which I haven't, but that's a whole topic in and of itself).

This has left me feeling terrible and I'm having thoughts of quitting my PhD. I told my supervisor how I was feeling again two weeks ago and they promised a phone call to talk about it, but they don't seem to have found the time. I'm so concerned that I want to raise the issues over their head, but I don't know whether I've given them enough time to respond. Part of this is because I'm out here to do an independent piece of work and not my PhD, so I wouldn't have noticed any changes that we could have implemented in my PhD project. I also haven't actively bugged them about how I'm feeling, as sending constant email reminders makes me feel even worse.

I could raise these issues with my third party project reviewer, as that's largely what they're there for, but I don't know if I've done enough myself to rectify the situation before raising the issue higher up in the 'chain of command'. Should I?

Your university has a responsibility to provide you with adequate pastoral care. If these issues are related to your well being you should talk to your student support services. If they are related to the managemt of your project and the progress you've been able to make as a result then keep emailing your supervisor and reviewer. If it's both, do both.

I agree with 'Jessica B' points but also consider these.
As a recent PhD graduate and a student Union representative for the duration I came across a lot of issues and as a rule of thumb (at least in the UK) I recommend complaining (but make sure this is not detrimental to your progress). A lot of academics treat their job as a cushy position for life and operate as slave drivers (AKA PhD student supervisors) with no regard for you. Don't quite, but feel free to use it as a threat to get the job done (loosing a PhD student after a few months has a terrible effect on an academics career as the decision is not taken likely). Note this does not apply to the supervisor that does their job or better still goes above and beyond.

All in all it's your PhD and you are paying to get it (even if you have a scholarship), so you expect to gain something out of it with receiving the support you are paying for. University's treat everything as a business except their 'customer care' because most people don't demand the quality they deserve.

Another important note, if you are a lazy person who hasn't done anything and do the things above they will throw you out, but if you have achieved the basic things expected of PhD students and not receiving the due service you will win.

Again use the above as a fluid guidance in your decision making process.


How old is too old for a PhD? Are there any age limits (formal, informal, or guidelines) that schools use when deciding to accept someone into a PhD program? I'm most curious about the upper age limits. For example, will most schools accept someone in their 40's? How about their 50's?

I would imagine most institutions would consider it discriminatory to judge on age, and in some places it would just be illegal. The real consideration is always whether the prospective candidate has a reasonable chance of success. Having appropriate education, or a reasonable substitute is of course the main criterion, though demonstrating research-level ability always helps (research publications etc.).

Personally I have seen PhD candidates of all ages. There's some skew to the distribution across disciplines (business and history for example often have higher proportions of older doctoral candidates than, say, mathematics), but this seems to be more a socio-cultural thing than any institutional influence.

It always amazes me that there are so many questions about what the maximum age for a PhD is and none about what the minimum "age" (experience) should be.
In my opinion, no one should be awarded a Ph.D. without a minimum of 20 years of professional experience. With the sole exception of doctorates "honoris causa" that could be awarded at any age, to recognize the merits of the true geniuses that so rarely appear.
Therefore, every educational institution should not only allow, but prioritize, the return of professionals who can contribute knowledge and experience in their work areas and want to share his/her knowledge in the form of a thesis.
At least in my country every year there are thousands of new doctors under 30, whose PhD thesis do not deserve the wood of the tree in which they have been printed.


Editor not taking action after I reported plagiarism. What steps can I take? Some people erased three author names including mine from a paper previously submitted (and rejected by three different journals) and got it accepted by Case Reports In Emergency Medicine.

I presented the publishing editor of the journal multiple clear proofs of the plagiarism. Although the journal declares that it complies with COPE, the publishing editor is dragging feet not to publish a retraction about this article despite the proofs. Instead, they are trying to overlook the situation by involving the politically driven hospital administration from where the paper was submitted from. This in turn caused  violation of my rights both as a human and as a researcher. I am currently subjected to serious mobbing by the hospital administration secondary to the inconclusive behaviour of the journal. This mobbing includes the change in my workplace and an official warning because "I ruined reputation of the hospital by contacting the publishing editor".

I also sent a message to COPE but there is no response.

Would anyone suggest any further action?

Working with the editor, until that process is finished, is probably the only thing to do at first.  It will undoubtedly be a long process, with delays, so patience and persistence will be necessary. Try not to let the mobbing get to you, and try to remain calm and professional at all times, despite any pressure others may exert.

If the editors, in the end, are unable to come to a resolution you accept, then the options will be (essentially) to escalate the situation or to let it go. But making an action of that kind while the editors are still working would be premature, in my opinion.

Search for legal help from an expert in I.P. , expose them publicly and hope for the best.
This doesn't mean that you'll be able to prove the rights if you didn't took enough precautions to protect your paper and ignorance by this side is hard to prove in court.
The next time though, you can publish your own thesis/essay/book and get an ISBN with total rights and you might still be able to publish your work before it gets published since "accepted" doesn't exactly mean "released" or "printed"(this isn't clear in the question).
After years of oppression, I find this as the only way to get proper recognition since many of those cheap "book makers with ISBN" can print your work "in hours" and you can begin to spread your own knowledge at your own pace and people will think twice before abusing with your intellectual property.