How to deal with a student who most likely has a mental condition, and keeps arguing with me in class? I am a TA for an introductory computer programming course at a university in the US. There is one student in particular who, during lecture, will argue with me about every point I make, which eats up a lot of lecture time and becomes un-enlightening for the students, as I am mainly repeating myself to answer the question/respond to the argument.

The student doesn't have previous knowledge in the programming language, so I don't think he's some conceited maniac trying to prove that he's better than me. Simply put, I think the best inference is that he has a sort of mental condition.

For instance, if I show an example on the board, he might blurt out that it's wrong, and try to explain why. While I appreciate students double-checking me, almost 100% of the time, the examples and points that I make are not incorrect, and after explaining it, he becomes quiet for a little bit to process what I said, and tries to point out another flaw. Essentially, he would try to challenge me if I said "1 + 1 = 2", if he could.

These debacles can go on sometimes for up to two minutes before I have a chance to move on. Very frequently, he asks questions/challenges me on things that I just explained or went over, so the class doesn't benefit from this, and it's generally a non-productive use of time. Often times, I will say something like, "If you'd like to discuss this more, we can during office hours," which is a statement that he seems to ignore completely, and will continue his questioning even after I've said this.

Additionally, when I am helping individual students in the classroom during work time, he will shout out to me from across the room to tell me something or ask me a question, and when I say "I can help you shortly when I'm done with Sally here," he will sometimes leave his seat and approach me directly, interrupting my conversation with the student.

How do I deal with a student like this? It seems like he has a mental condition of some sort, based on his interactions and mannerisms, though I've never received a notice from the university's disabilities department. The reason why I bring up the possibility of a mental condition is because he is set off very easily, so I'd like to handle the situation as delicately as possible.

I have responsibility for students with alternate needs within a Computer Science department and thus have professional experience of the situation you describe. It is not uncommon in our subject.

Our experience is that computing attracts a higher proportion of students on the Autistic Spectrum than do other disciplines. We are operating with about (my personal guess) 2-3% (of total cohort) diagnosed and perhaps double that number undiagnosed.

Some of these students are often not aware of the rest of the class being present and treat teaching as a personal one-to-one dialogue with the teacher. They act as they would sitting with you across a desk. Sometimes it is more extreme and the social norms and boundaries of even working one-to-one are not clear to them. Although, as a spectrum condition, each person may be different, it is common that they wish to understand every point of minutiae before they can build the big picture understanding; becoming detailed obsessed is often a common trait. This leads to question after question as a form of quest.

You should seek advice from a more experienced professional in your institution. It is likely that the student's condition is known, but details are often considered confidential and perhaps not shared with you, because that is what the student may wish. The student may be receiving support elsewhere, perhaps in the form of mentoring. If that is the case then the mentor may be able to assist in explaining the social situation to the student and also give you guidance on how to reply.

Sometimes such students are not diagnosed with any specific condition and are not receiving support as it has never been needed. They are likely to have achieved high grades in earlier studies and the good results have propelled them through to your class.

For a student who is unaware that their behaviour is different from others in their class it is more difficult to handle. I ask such a student to speak to me in a one-to-one appointment in my office. I do not assume that they have any named condition, as this is not really relevant. I just talk to them to explain how lectures work, clarify my role and how I can answer questions. I often have to explain, sometimes in great detail, what makes a good verbal question in class, what makes a good verbal question, what makes a good written question for email, what makes a good question for the class VLE, what makes a good question for StackExchange and so on. It is often the case that no one has ever explained how information is obtained. It does take a degree of tact and experience to do this, which is why I suggested seeking more experienced advice.

Remember, some of the achievements in our subject have been made by people who others found difficult to work with. Look at the movie "The Imitation Game" and you can clearly see (in a fictionalised portrayal) Alan Turing is shown displaying tendencies similar to those you describe. I'm sure if you had a current student with similar attributes you would have been pleased to have had the opportunity to have someone so similarly gifted in your class.

Above all, be patient. Being an introductory computer science course/lab, realize many others will be interested in what is going on in your head and will further learn from you how you approach things in a professional manner. Try to be a role model for him and others. Yes there will be many who will be unstimulated. Realize given your knowledge things may appear rudementary to you, however are far from it for them. Try to adapt to your audience, they are different each and every time; a one-size-fits-all approach is not optimal.

I would strongly advise on keeping any classification of a mental condition to yourself. If speaking to him, a professor, or others be very careful not summarize the behaviour as some sort of disability. Consider speaking informally to your university's title IX coordinator about how to behave before doing something you may regret! Both from a liability standpoint and the well-being of the student. Just drop by their office and chat.

I am not sure how to delicately handle him interrupting your dialog with other students, beyond being firm with him each and every time so that he learns. I encourage you to seek counsel from your department there.

As a personal aside in a similar situation, a consistently conceited/rude student had asked for help one and one, their phone rang, they held up their hand in a "talk to the hand" manner and proceded to talk to whomever on their cell phone. That student was permanently moved to the end of the queue for the remainder of the semester (and future grading in later courses).

As another aside from the vantage of a student, in Calc 2 there was a female as you describe, with at least a dozen questions every lecture. Eventually the instructor embraced her willingness and would call on her, and intermittently check to ensure she understood things. Some of her questions were rudementary, however I didn't understand much of the new material either; eight years later I am still thankful for her inquisitive nature and remember her with fondness. In a later course, I remember the instructor consistently reacting in an inhibitory manner and so she didn't speak up nearly so much; I worry that she didn't do so well there.


How to save a literature review? I have done a literature review, but every time I send my article to the journals I receive either major changes or a rejection because I have only searched in journals indexed by Scopus and Web of Science (40). The journals say I have to search the databases. I am in the last year of my thesis and I have to publish my work in an indexed journal. How to do so?

I searched also non-Scopus and non-Wos journals. They say that I have to search articles in the databases directly and not search in the journals indexed by these databases and then searching articles in these journals.

It is indeed considered best practice nowadays to search publication databases for literature rather than only individual journals or conferences, typically combined with some snowballing. Scientific fields are manifold, and it is very easy to miss relevant publications if all you do is look through a pre-defined list of journals (independently of whether they are listed in Scopus, WoS, or whatever). Essentially, for a literature review to add value it needs to be able to make a case for completeness, and it is very hard to claim that without a fairly clear and comprehensive search procedure (along with rather objective acceptance criteria for papers).

  I am in the last year of my thesis and I have to publish my work in an indexed journal. How to do so?

I should also say that this is, to no small degree, also a failing of your supervisor. Your supervisor should have told you early in the process that your research methodology has a good chance of not surviving peer review.

However, that doesn't really help you now. If you have repeatedly received this comment there really are only two ways forward:

Do as you have been told, i.e., search the standard publication database(s) of your field and extend your review with any new material that may pop up.
Lower your standards, i.e., go for a lower-ranked journal and hope that the reviewers there will be more happy with your approach.

As a sidenote:

  every time I send my article to the journals I receive either major changes or a rejection

In my field (Computer Science), "major changes" is qualitatively different from "reject". A request for Major Revision is typically the first step towards getting accepted - it actually happens to most manuscripts. You really should not back out once you have received a request for major revision - usually, you address what can be addressed and argue about changes that cannot be addressed. In the vast majority of cases such papers end up being accepted.

I suggest to look for another (better) journal.

I can't imagine the quality of a lit review coming more from completeness than from organization and explanation and selection.  There are a lot of junky papers in some fields.  I would even see completeness as a bug, not a feature.  It sounds like a link farm.


How likely are you to be stressed in academia? So a little context. I'm a second year masters student in theoretical physics and last year I almost had a burnout. I mean that I had symptoms of burnout but it was not severe enough to be an actual burnout (luckily). What stressed me out most was the frequent deadlines. The material also got harder compared to my bachelor which contributed as well. After taking it easy for a while now and talking to a psychologist to help cope with stress I'm feeling much better. I would rather not have this experience another time or even worse. So, since a lot of theoretical physicists go into academia my question is how likely are you to be stressed in academia? Or more specifically

How likely are you to be stressed in academia? Do you know examples of people who are very stressed/not stressed at all?
If it is stressful, is it possible to reduce your workload? Or is it possible to manage this stress?

A majority of the expectations tend to be self-imposed.

While there are some things you're made to do by others, most deadlines etc come from your own choices. Do you agree to referee that paper? Do you want to submit to that conference? Do you agree to give that talk?

There is no "having done enough".

There is always something more that you could do. There will be almost certainly peers who get much, much more done than you (or at least appear to do). Research is never finished. The academic job market is very tight, so until you have tenure, there is always this question of "could doing this extra thing be the decisive factor in whether or not I get a job"?

Deadlines tend to be on a medium time scale.

Unless you are eg a postdoc with a micromanaging team lead, you will be rather flexible in the short term. Teaching aside, things are of the "do this this week/month", nor "this day".

There does seem to be a widespread culture of celebrating stress.

While relaxed academics exist, in my experience most academics tend to convey an aura of constant low-level stress. Of those, many seem to enjoy this. Admitting to be overwhelmed is very much acceptable, but I suspect that the stress can be infectious for some people.

It is stressful but it comes with rewards.  The key thing is to assess if these rewards - they are not necessarily monetary but rather as Feynman stated just “the pleasure of finding things out” - are enough for you to compensate for the long hours and the actual stresses.
Personally I find I was well prepared for the challenges of research but not so well prepared to confront the naked stupidity and populism of some people I work with.
I deal with this by increasing my workload, giving me an out to avoid interactions with the people I like least.  This ability to basically isolate oneself from the local sh!tstorms and work pretty much always with people I like is probably the most important way I manage my stressors (not so easy for students or junior faculty though).


Sending a second reminder to a professor about LORs, after the first reminder As graduate school application deadlines roll around this season, I believe this site would get a lot of questions concerning letters of recommendation, including sending reminder e-mails to professors about this.

My question is now what is the best approach to sending a second reminder to a professor concerning writing an LOR? A couple months ago, after having discussed my graduate school plans with the professor, they agreed to write his letter and have me send them the e-mail link to the LOR. I sent the first reminder last week, but they did not respond. And this professor is normally responsive in e-mails about other things, such as coursework and advising. I suspect the professor is beyond busy, and I hope that is the case; I just hope they haven't forgotten about the LOR or changed their mind about it.

I would like to add further that my two other recommenders have already submitted their LORs. I am still waiting on this professor now. Should I mention this in my second reminder e-mail to them, if I should send that second reminder at all? What should I be saying in the e-mail, to politely remind them for the second time?

Any input helps.

A week since your first reminder is somewhat on the short side - personally I would wait a couple more days (maybe two weeks since the last email) to send another email.

A week before the deadline is a good point of time to send a reminder. There is no need to state that this is a second (or nth) reminder. A short email, roughly of the form 'thanks again for agreeing to write a recommendation letter for me. I just wanted to quickly remind you that the deadlines are one week away. Please let me know if you need any more information from me. Thanks again for all your help, etc.' is sufficient.

Send a polite email. Also contact by phone. But do not hesitate to show the needed urgency. You might also want to request a fourth person to be ready to submit a recommendation for you, in case this one doesn't do it, finally, due to whatever reason. Waiting till one week before deadline is too risky.

(P.S. Three years back, I was in a similar situation. Only one professor, who was usually quick to respond to any email, was holding back due to some reason. Ultimately, close to deadline, I had to request a fourth professor who immediately obliged. )


What laws exist in India to protect students from harassment by teachers/professors? I am a college student in Rajasthan. I had a chance to address a large group at a college function, and in my address I said unfavorable things about professors in the college. Since then, I believe their behavior towards me has changed, and that they are personally targeting me.

I want to know what steps we can take against:

teachers scoring us according to some personal vendetta,
extremely rude language/behavior,
unnecessary targeting.

What laws exist in India to protect students from harassment by teachers/professors?

From the discussion above, it seems like you are an engineering/technical student. Technical education in India falls under the concurrent list -- i.e. both state and union laws apply.

The relevant national body is the AICTE, which does have a mechanism for grievance redressal, this is often used as the primary source of complaints against ragging.

You can submit a grievance here. The 2004 Guidelines for Grievance Processes require a sub-30-day resolution of complaints. In fact, all accredited technical institutions in India are required to have a local Grievance Redressal Cell and Ombudsman as per this 2012 notification. Finally, you could contact AICTE directly

Students may also file grievances at the UGC (University Grants Commission). The UGC is a statutory body in charge of "coordination, determination and maintenance of standards of higher education". In 1987, they released "Guidelines for Student Entitlement". See sections 2.5, 2.6 regarding fairness in evaluation and section 5 which deals with discriminatory treatment.

At a state-level, you could try Rajasthan Sampark, which only applies to government institutions.

As others have stated, you need to ensure that you have documented and clear proof to support your accusation, and that you should not back down in fear of reprisal. The process of collecting evidence may help you determine if you truly have a valid complaint, or are perceiving bias that does not exist.

To the best of my knowledge, in answer to your second question, no, Indian jurisprudence does not have a similar concept of student rights as the United  States and some of Europe.

While reading the links for the other answers and searching for policies for this post, the one thing that becomes clear is a worrying lack of depth in policies and transparently available policies and data. If you choose to take this forward, I hope that you will document and publish your efforts.

The guidelines issued by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) on eliminating corporal punishment in schools, elaborating the RTE's classification, defines corporal punishment not only as physical punishment but also mental harassment (defined as 'non-physical treatment that is detrimental to the academic and psychological well-being of a child' such as sarcasm, ridicule, calling names, derogatory remarks and so on) and discrimination (defined as prejudiced views and behaviour towards any child because of gender/caste/class).

Juvenile Justice Act, 2000
Section 23 of new Juvenile Justice Act, 2000 provides punishment for cruelty to juvenile or child. Whoever, having the actual charge of or control over, a juvenile or the child, assaults, abandons, exposes or willfully neglects the juvenile or causes or procures him to be assaulted, abandoned, exposed or neglected in a manner likely to cause such juvenile or the child unnecessarily mental or physical suffering shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months, or fine, or with both.

Lodge a complain to nearest police station.
Yes,punishment in schools is strictly prohibited and one can directly lodge a FIR against the teacher and rest police will work out.


Is there a general way to find or get notified of relevant conferences and meetings in your field? Here's the problem: I don't know what are the relevant conferences and meetings for me to potentially attend/present in. Every conference I've been so far has been passed down to me by a much older professor who knows it by experience.

I feel like this is an important topic, and yet all the tools I tried to use to find conferences (such as allconferences and conferecealerts) fail to find me relevant things.

Is there a method to reliably find relevant for you conferences worldwide?
Ideally it would be good to get notified when a new relevant conference is announced.

I know there are some websites (such as arxiv-sanity and google Scholar) that suggest papers for you to read based on previously loaded papers, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was some similar tool where you put some conferences with a few keywords and it spits out suggestions.

Cheers

Many professional societies publish lists of upcoming conferences in their magazines and/or journals, and send monthly emails with information that usually includes calls for papers for future conferences. I assume one would be interested only in conferences in one's field. I would expect that one would know about the professional societies in one's field and how to receive notifications, although in many if not most cases such notifications go only to the society members.

Moreover, other conferences in one's field can be identified in Google Scholar by where the relevant papers have been published. Then the most recent (at least) web site for such conferences can be found with Google. The date and venue for the next conference in that series is sometimes posted on that web site.

I worked as an administrator for the 21st McGill International Entrepreneurship conference and we listed our conference on a conference announcement directory called PaperCrowd.

It attracted several delegates from around the world. I found out it was in the same city I lived in and I applied for a job there and got it! I am now the proud community manager of PaperCrowd. We are working hard to improve the services for researchers worldwide.

You should try PaperCrowd - a global directory of academic research conferences. You can search by topics, geography and keywords for research conferences you are interested in such as law, legal etc.

Organizers add their events in a couple of minutes and it’s free. It’s restricted to academic research conferences.

It feels good working for a company that I have seen myself was effective.


First year Math PhD student; My problem solving skill has been completely atrophied and continues to decline I'm a first year PhD student in mathematics and I'm in a pretty bad spot.
Over the last year or so of undergrad and first semester of grad school, I've completely atrophied my problem solving skill. At some point I became more comfortable with looking up a solution than trying to solve it myself. At this point my first instinct is to google something instead of trying to solve something. I need to fix this; it's already been affecting my performance and well being across the board. I'm almost instinctually aversive to trying to solve a problem by myself at this point. I feel like I've lost the ability to actually do math. I initially justified it by saying that my interest in math stems from my interest in the theory, and that I'm not particularly interested in problem solving. It's clear now that that was just cognitive dissonance. I need to fix this.
I know what the obvious answer is- don't look stuff up. And try to do problems on my own. Practice, practice, practice.
But I feel like it's not so simple either. I'm doing graduate level math after all. I managed to get into a fairly top level, rigorous program. I have performed well enough in the past that I managed to place ahead of my peers, and am doing relatively advanced courses (after all, I wouldn't have resorted to looking up stuff if it wasn't working well for me, until recently). As such, it seems like I already need a solid, strong problem solving capability in order to deal with my classes, which are quite demanding. So when I'm faced with HW or other problems, I'm unable to solve most of the problems even if I try really hard, because my problem solving skill is just so bad at this point, and I have to resort to looking things up once more. This further worsens my skill and on and on. It's a negative feedback loop. And I'm struggling to break out of it. I wanted advice on how to escape this loop especially. The idea of simply not looking stuff up is sound, but it's hard to follow through when I have only a finite amount of time before I have to stop thinking and submit my answers, or when I simply don't possess the capability anymore to try and solve the problem.
These days the idea of solving a graduate level HW set seems impossible to me, and I'm just incredibly lucky graduate level courses tend not to have exams. It's reached the point where it's threatening my future in my PhD program so I really do need to fix it. Googling my way through life isn't possible (or desirable either). I really am desperate now.
I feel like a lost cause at this point, like the damage has already been done to me, and I can't really fix it without going back to undergrad or something.
I was just hoping for concrete advice and from people who have had similar experiences, and what I should do.
Clarifications:

I am referring to problems/solutions in my graduate courses. The research portion of my PhD has not started yet.
My advisor and I are not particularly close (only interacted a few times so far due to the pandemic), so my awkward attempt to bring it up with him didn't really go anywhere.

I think it’s not a coincidence that the timing of this decline matches up with the pandemic.  A lot of people are really struggling right now, I feel like I can’t do math as well as I could a year ago.  In this post it sounds like you’re being really hard on yourself.  Counterintuitively I think a big part of what might help is being more compassionate with yourself.  It’s ok that you’re struggling, and it’s ok to just not solve some of the problems.  Research math mostly involves failing to solve problems most of the time, so it’s really ok to just not answer some of the questions and get used to that feeling and be kind to yourself because they’re hard problems.  You can always come back to those problems next year.  I guess what I’m saying is that you also want to develop the skill of giving up on a problems as well as the skill of solving them.  The former is perhaps more valuable in research than the latter.

Ask your self:

Do I like doing math?

There's no rule that a person will always enjoy doing what they are good at. It's possible that you have mathematical skills, but you don't actually enjoy doing math.
Ask yourself why you enrolled in this program; was it to pursue passion, or to pursue a specific career, or was it simply the path of least resistance?
Other answers point to several effects that could cause a temporary, reversible lack of interest/motivation (e.g. pandemic, undetected depression...) and these would likely have a broad impact over many aspects of life. So if your ability to enjoy anything has atrophied, then look for a temporary, reversible effect and if possible seek some counseling or professional assistance.
However, if it seems to be specifically mathematics that's lost it's shine, then consider some significant courses of action sooner, rather than later:

Look into a more applied field of mathematics like engineering, physics, some aspects of molecular biology or social sciences and see if these spark a new interest in wanting to solve problems. Maybe it's simply that you are more of a goal oriented person and when the solution has a practical use it feels more compelling.

If that's not effective, then consider that you've discovered that Math just isn't interesting to you. Maybe you simply don't like it any more. In that case you may have some decisions to make.

For comparison, here's how some people feel about mathematical problem solving:

Addiction to Math Stack Exchange
Can Math.SE be addictive?
Am I the only one getting addicted to this site? How do you manage time doing other things?


Is it fair to punish absent students with a one-question exam? I recently came across a post (that I won't disclose because it contains the professor's last name):

Attendance in this course was regularly low, so the professor used a one-question exam to punish students who weren't attending a class. Those who weren't in class would have obviously failed this exam, and those who were in class (presumably) would have all gotten A's. The final remark on the note on the door was "maybe we'll do this again some time".

Let's assume a few factors about the course and this one-question exam, since we don't actually know how they're implemented:

The course has an attendance policy (3 days max missed before your grade starts dropping, for example)
This one-question exam has an impact equivalent to a homework assignment (could drop your overall grade by 1% if you get a 0).
By the language of the original post, this is not something the students would have expected to happen; this means that the policy would not be outlined in the syllabus.

What if the course didn't have an attendance policy and the professor is simply annoyed that students aren't attending the class? What if this one-question exam was only worth a point or two instead of a whole homework grade?

Is it fair (ethical, if you will) to use this kind of tactic to impose additional punishment on students who don't attend lecture?

Clarification: Students who are absent (if intentional, extraneous circumstances aside) deserve to lose the points for the work they missed. However, this tactic is being used to additionally punish students solely for being absent; this is also why I posed different assumptions about attendance policy.

I think that this is unprofessional, and is leaving the institution open to all sorts of action (up to and including legal proceedings, if it impacts on a student's progression, for example). For example, what if a student is unavoidably absent?

If it's only "worth a point or two", then I don't think it's worth antagonising people in this way. The sarcastic note left on the door simply underlines how poorly thought-out this whole thing was...

What is it that we want to achieve/check by having an exam? In my world it is what the student is capable of doing/what the student know.

How the student has achieved the information is (in my world) irrelevant.

So the only fair exam is the one that tests the skills/knowledge the students have to the subject. That cannot be tested by asking just one (silly/irrelevant) question.

So to answer the question: No it is not fair to ask a question like that! The professor will have to ask the questions about the subject. If the students that have not attended his class knows the answers they should pass. If they dont know the answers - they should fail. And that goes for the students who has attended the class as well!


Application form for lecturer position provides a template for an academic resume, should I follow that? I am trying to apply for a Lecturer job in another country; I noticed that they're asking for an academic resume and they provided a template as well. Here is what they said:

You should provide attachments, including your academic CV and details of research, publications and grants if not already covered (an Academic CV template is available here).

Here is the issue: the template has sections of stuff I didn't do or don't have. Since I completed my PhD in another country, we have different "evaluation metrics". For instance, in my country (3rd world country), it's pretty hard to find funding for your research, and most students do a PhD with no funding (my case). I do however have experience in preparing project proposals to get funding, but I never got funding. So, I don't know what to write in the "Research grants and contracts" section.
So my question is: is it a good idea to use my own template? The template they're providing is pretty detailed and they're asking for specific sections, such as contribution to the department, contribution to the faculty, contribution to the university and to enterprise. A resume is not an official document, meaning that the candidate makes his own resume and not some institution, am I right?
Update:
I want to thank all those who took the time to comment and answer my question.
I emailed the university and they said I can use my own template.
I want to clarify that the resume I have now (and I am using to apply for other opportunities) is not a representation of my lack of interest! I did re-format my resume a lot of times, in fact I used to prepare tailored resumes each time I apply (my field is cyber security and IA, so I did target vacancies that want a profile that unites the two fields, but I also applied for jobs that seeks individual skills). Before I apply, I always ask for external input from a professor in our lab about the resume I used. But I truly believe that it won't change a lot if another candidate has +5 years experience more than me and uses a generic format.
Even my supervisor noticed that and asked me to only use one, because according to her is "what's more important is the content of the resume and not how it looks". So, I prepared one standard resume that took me +3 hours!

There is nothing in the statement ``(an Academic CV template is available here)'' indicating this is a required format.  I would assume that most applicants would not use the template.
I suspect the template is there to help applicants.  Does it have a place for hobbies?  If not, probably you want to not list hobbies.  It does have a place for ``contributions to the university'' so be sure it is clear on your CV if you ever sat on a campus-wide committee or some such thing. Different cultures put in different things in a CV, but in this case you have a guide.
The fact that the template has separate sections for different types of service makes me suspect this is a generic format used for scholars at many ranks and many departments. There may be many sections any specific person would have blank.

I've always found that typesetting a CV well (getting page beaks in sensible places, preventing different bits of text from being printed one on top of the other, preventing lines from sticking off the edge of the page...) is difficult and stressful.  You could take it that, by providing a template file (as long as that template file is a good one), the university is offering to do a lot of that hard work for you, and protect you from that stress.  I wouldn't be inclined to turn that offer down.


Is there any reliable website other than google translate to translate from Chinese to English? So I have come across a paper that will highly beneficial to me and my research group ,but the problem its in chinese and it heavily involves chemical formulas and mathematical data,so its hard to translate using google translate.Is there any site that translates academia papers?

Please pay a mathematical freelancer on Upworks.

a good tranlate software is DEEPL. Just google for it.


Should a young professor avoid using dating apps? I am a recent PhD graduate in mathematics, and I will be starting a tenure-track position this fall at a small liberal arts college in a northern US city.

My graduate degree was completed at a large university in a college town, and I made occasional use of dating apps during my time there.  They were only mildly useful at best, but they facilitated interaction with people outside my normal social circle, which I enjoyed.

My instinct tells me that I should avoid such apps in my new position, but I'd like to seek outside opinions.  I already have some of my own ideas, but what are some potential pitfalls of maintaining dating app profiles?  Should I simply refrain from using them?  Would anyone in my department or administration have a problem with me using them if they knew?

Since it might matter, I am a 27-year-old male, and my new city is home to about 100,000 people.

Note: I am well-aware that dating students at my university is a bad idea.  (For what it's worth, I am not interested in meeting people more than three or four years younger than me anyway.)  I'm looking for advice that goes beyond some of the more obvious points.

Professors both young and old are known to use dating apps. So do students, doctors, engineers, lawyers, dental hygienists, and any other kind of person. In other words, there is nothing about being a professor that disqualifies one from using dating apps (or that makes one a special kind of human being in any other way, contrary to what seems to be the popular belief on this site at least).

The only pitfall I can think of is mild embarrassment, but that's true for everyone using these apps whether they are a professor or not. My advice is, go out there and have fun, worry about yourself and don't care too much what other people think. And if you want to date students too, personally I don't see a problem either (especially considering your age) as long as they are not your students and you otherwise behave ethically and responsibly.

(Edit: in certain U.S. institutions there is a general prohibition on faculty dating undergraduates - thanks to @EllenSpertus for the reference in the comments. Given your stated age preference this is not very relevant to your question since students in that age range would typically be graduate students, but it's worth at least checking the policy at your institution to make sure you are aware of the rules.)

There is no general custom of sexual policing of employees by universities - so long as you do not cross legal boundaries or rules on harassment, your dating life is your own business, as is the electronic means by which you facilitate this.  As others have pointed out, the only exception, where otherwise innocent dating or sexual behaviour might violate a university requirement, would be if you have a relationship with a student, especially one you are teaching or supervising (though not necessarily limited to this).  This is a subject that your university probably has a specific policy and guidelines on.  Since you are obviously well-aware of this danger (and if anything, you are overstating the scope of this limitation), you will be fine.


I can't trust my supervisor anymore, but have to have his letter of recommendation. What should I do? Background
I did my masters research project with Prof X. While doing this I joined his lab, where he used to ask me to do random tasks i.e. taking part in different projects, conducting lectures to undergrad students, help him preparing presentations, doing literature reviews not related to my project. I did all those things because of my curiosity and passion for learning as many things as I could. Unfortunately, this delayed my progress in my masters research project.
The Prof. X seemed not at all concerned not only about me but also his other students, except when he wanted us to publish. Although the research field was new to me and I had to do everything on my own and I learned a lot. In the end, he was quite happy and satisfied with my work. He offered me  PhD position at his lab but having bad experience with him, I politely refused that right now I don't have any plan to pursue my PhD.
After that, I could notice he is very cold towards me. During my writing stage, he continuously burdened me more with different tasks related to lab. Moreover, after submission he totally ignored to pass the examiner's names to faculty and it delayed my masters results further two months, even though I requested him multiple times. Once I came to know about this delay through faculty, I told him very politely that how can he do that? He just said (laughingly): sorry I forgot about it.
This is not the first time I found him selfish and not consistent while having no concern about any of his student.
Question
Now, I am applying for PhD position and I need references. I have other other faculty members with whom I have worked with or taken courses and they are willing to witness my motivation and good performance. The problem is that they require one of the referee must be the main research supervisor, in my case Prof X. I don't trust Prof. X in this matter. What should I do now?

If you submit an application with a bad reference, it will quite probably sink your application. On the other hand, simply ignoring the requirement in the application may lead to a desk reject.

However, if obtaining a good reference from your advisor is not going to happen, you should probably address that up front in your statement of purpose and include the reference anyway. Disclose, in a neutral fashion, that you had difficulties with your previous supervisor, and focus on what you learned from that. If you can show in your SoP that you can endure challenging situations, and even grow from them, while also showing you are able to conduct high quality research, this may outweigh not having the critical reference.

Pros:

It meets the requirements of the application (if, indeed, you have verified that this is a hard requirement)
It demonstrates that you can endure challenges in research, as you will inevitably face more during your PhD (just hopefully of a different nature)
It shows maturity in your application (by favouring openness and transparency)

Cons:

It includes a weak reference letter in your application, if you can even persuade your advisor to write it
It risks presenting (rather than concealing) less savoury characteristics of your past research profile, which shows that you're not a "golden," flawless candidate.

In this case you should not select Prof.X as your PhD guide since he behaved very badly with you. Also you should inform your fellow mates that they also don't select him as guide. My advice is that you write your master's thesis without his supervision.

He offered you a PhD position at his lab but having bad experience with him, you have done a very good job if you have politely refused by telling him that right now you don't have any plan to pursue your PhD.otherwise he (Prof. X) would have told
you to write your master's thesis under him which could be disastrous for you

Since this matter is very serious you should complain about his behavior to your department's higher authorities i.e.the head,dean,chancellor,vice-chancellor,etc.


How to annotate/summarize research papers for long-term retrieval? I am new to my field (cell biology / immunology) and I would like to ask about the best practice to annotate or summarize research articles and reviews for long-term retrieval. When I start reading into a new topic, I end up highlighting almost each paragraph of the paper/review. This doesn't make any sense, and it is actually making me slow and frustrated and it is holding me from reading more. Could you please share your thoughts.

Update: although two very important points of how to approach new papers and how to tag them have been addressed in the answers so far, my main concern was about the new acquired details which I can't remember a few months later. For example, I read a paper about JAK/STAT signaling two months ago, now I can't remember for example which JAK attaches to which cytokine receptor and interacts with which STAT. I need to skim through the paper again to find this piece of information. So, what I am looking for is an approach to accumulate the new knowledge and to facilitate reviewing them without the need to skim through the paper again and again. I know this will come with experience, but at the beginning there are too many new facts to keep track of.

I find it important to be as active as possible in your reading, especially for papers close to the questions you are working on. If you are only highlighting, then this is largely a passive activity, and does not help much with retention or even later rereading. If you are making notes, it is a little bit better, but still largely passive.

For important papers, I try to read the paper and then write up a quick summary for myself of the key ideas relevant to my interests: a sort of mini-review or personalized-abstract of the paper. For papers that don't contain important tools I use, but contain facts I have to cite I usually include a section that lists in what settings I would expect to cite this paper. This helps a lot at the writing stage. These little summaries of the paper are usually too rough and critical to be useful to others, so I keep them private.

I usually organize these summaries in a little personal wiki like Tiddly Wiki where I can tag and do full text search as well as include links to the original PDF of my computer. Each article gets its own tiddle and is tagged according to topic. Other useful tools are available in:

Is there any efficient non-linear note-taking software?

For some heavy papers (say important math papers) the reading has to be even more active. Usually including reproving the theorems and sometimes presenting these proofs to others in my group.

There is no "best" way, everyone has their own way. I like to read the abstract and the discussion, and then the figures, and after that, the text. Its not something thats been tried and tested, you just develop your style over time reading hundreds of papers.


Is it OK to refuse to cite paywalled papers? I wonder how reviewers would react if authors of a submitted paper refuse to cite paywalled papers. Is it a valid reason to refuse citing some papers?

I am mostly interested in the field of computer science, and English-speaking venues.

If I was reviewing a paper, and the authors failed to cite important literature, I'd recommend rejection until the authors provided correct citations.  It's the authors' responsibility to provide appropriate references.

I assume that many other reviewers would feel the same.

Are you aware that the decision of the international community not to cite research done on Jewish prisoners by Nazis was considered highly controversial?  There was no question that the knowledge had come by unethical means, but the question was whether it is right to flush away any human knowledge?  Given the arguments over that, it's pretty unlikely that an academic community would back you shunning those who prefer the traditional strategy of charging readers over the new strategy of charging the authors.


Is publishing as an undergraduate a thing that really happens? Sometimes, there are questions on here about undergraduate students publishing research (see here, here, and here). The answers don't seem particularly surprised that this is happening or try to dissuade the asker, they treat it like a normal question.

In my entire life, I've never heard of undergraduates publishing results apart from a handful of examples from famous science prodigies.

Furthermore, my experience of undergraduate was not conducive at all to publishing. I graduated from a mediocre UK university, and there was no original research done at all. Undergraduate is for getting you up to speed on the foundations of a field, preparing you for postgraduate where you study one sub-field, then a PhD where you push the boundaries of a sub-sub-field.

The questions linked above give advice like, "Discuss it with your supervisor". But as far as I'm aware undergraduates don't have supervisors.

Is this really as common as it would seem from questions on here? Is it a regional thing? Something that happens only at top universities?

Most undergraduates do not publish, but it's quite normal for undergraduates who get involved in research to end up publishing.

Reasons why few undergraduates publish include:

They aren't interested in research, or are more interested in all the myriad other awesome things you can spend your time on as a newly (semi)independent adult in college.
They are interested in research, but don't manage to find a good mentor (typically a professor) to work with.  Nearly all undergraduate institutions have professors doing research, but some institutions or departments within an institution have a lot more going on than others.
They get connected to a research project, but their work isn't publishable.  Undergraduates are typically unreliable (see first point), and so often are given high-risk or boring work (a friend of mine got a "research" job one summer crushing rocks into fine powder with a mortar and pestle).
They do publishable research, but it doesn't come out until they are no longer an undergraduate.  Even the fastest project rarely takes less than six months from start to publication, and many take multiple years. If a student starts researching in their junior or senior year, even a great project may not result in publications during undergraduate.

That said, none of these are particularly insurmountable obstacles, and with the right combination of interest, a good environment, and a bit of luck, it's quite reasonable to have work published as an undergraduate.

Some undergraduates even become quite well-published, simply by virtue of having the right combination of skill, luck, and circumstances.  For example, this week a colleague of mine mentioned to me that one of his undergraduate students now had approximately a dozen journal publications. Until they said it, I hadn't realized this student's numbers had accumulated quite so much, but it didn't surprise me, since this student is a good contributor to a complex many-person project that publishes frequently.

In short: undergraduate publication is statistically infrequent, but entirely normal.

I suspect what you're thinking of as "undergraduate" isn't what others are thinking of when they say they do research as undergraduates. For example, suppose a student goes directly into a 4-year undergraduate program topped off by a one-year long research project (known as an "Honours project" in some places). The results of this can certainly be publishable. Other possibilities could be, a summer research project, or a direct-to-Masters program like the MPhys. In all these cases, the undergraduate will indeed have a supervisor.

Of course undergraduates, being relatively inexperienced, are not likely to get revolutionary results, but they can still achieve publishable results, and that can lead to publications. It's possible, and I'd say quite common for the best undergraduates to have published something before graduate school.


Are academic questions (used in textbooks etc.) owned by the publisher, or is anyone able to use them in their own content? I am wondering whether mathematical and scientific questions (or any type of question to be honest) is considered to be owned by the publisher? For example, if I see a math question in a textbook, am I allowed to use that question on my website, or is that legally considered an infringement?

To write this in more detail, the text of the questions is clearly owned by the copyright holder. The ideas embodied in the questions are not protected by copyright. It's usually considered plagiarism to completely rephrase and rewrite a question without citing the original source, but plagiarism generally isn't illegal.

As noted in the downvoted answer, in some communities there is a broad acceptance of some kinds of copying when it comes to exercises, but I wouldn't want to endorse wholesale copying of homework exercises from one book to another. There are likely to be canonical problems that should be worked by every student in a particular discipline, and those would probably have the least claim to protection and the least interest in protection from the publisher. The more creativity going into the question, the more protection it has and the more enforcement you are likely to see.

Writing good exercises is challenging, but you should endeavor to do so for your website. You should cite to sources when you adapt an exercise from somewhere, and you should mention that an exercise is a classical example that all students should be able to do when you draw on something that Gauss or Euler proved as an exercise centuries ago.

Copying questions from textbooks etc. and pasting them with a little or no change in something (homework sheet, exam, etc.) without citation is technically illegal, as the questions of another person are still his creative property.

But, it is still a common practice (at least where I live) for professors to “steal” exercises from textbooks or previous exams (maybe with a tiny change) and use them for homework sheets or even exams. In both cases (especially in the homework case) giving a citation is impossible. This practice is considered acceptable here as homework sheets and etc. don’t really count as a creative material the professor claims as his own.


Publishing in the lower quartile journals: better than nothing? Having a realistic option of publishing a minor study in a 4th quartile journal, is this better than nothing? The articles of many, but not all, authors are kind of pretentious and unremarkable (not being cited nowhere), but not plagiarized, or computer generated.

In the UK the value of a publication is often based on the REF and the QR model. For the REF, only your top 4 publications in the 5 or so year return window matter. If you have less than 4 publications, low quality publications are definitely better than nothing. For the QR model, only research which is considered

  Quality that is recognised internationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour.

is worth any weight to the university. No one really is willing to define what "internationally recognized" means. This means that for hiring and promotion purposes, assuming you have 4 high quality publications, multiple low quality publications are not worth anything.

While the REF and QR model influences hiring and promotion decisions, as well as funding body decisions, I believe there is still a place for low quality publications. They can be helpful in allowing you, and other, to refer to them in later higher quality publications. It is also a way of archiving and sharing your research.

Academics obsess about publishing in recognized journals and while this is "proper" form, the arena is far from its ideal landscape, which few, if any, academics have actually analyzed or questioned.

Consider, for example, Hesse's idea in Magister Ludi: a uniform platform for all human knowledge, interlinked together, stewarded in perpetuity by those with highest credibility for their respective domains -- not by publishers with profit motivations or university presses with their own interests in mind.

If your work has merit, publish it to the web, on a blog, for example, where it can get many eyes, receive comment, and your work can progress.  Ultimately, it is the ability to defend the work's value, not receive a blessing from some higher authority, which is important.


How to review bogus science without hurting feelings? I've been forwarded a four-page outline of some sort of "theory of everything" whose ambition is to explain just about everything in the universe in terms of particles oscillating in and out of some kind of hidden anti-universe. I've been asked to give my opinion on the theory.

It has all the hallmarks of bogus science written by someone with only the vaguest notions of quantum physics and cosmology (no equations, electrons being defined as the antiparticles of protons, cute drawings). Perhaps more telling is that most of the ideas are unfalsifiable, in the sense that I couldn't think of an experiment that would prove or disprove any of it.

I'd like to give my frank opinion about it without hurting the person's feelings. How should I go about it?

So, I see that you're conflicted by the desire to give your honest opinion and your desire to be nice. While some say you should let go of the desire to be nice, I think in this case it might be more productive to first look at how you can be nice. But first, let me briefly talk about 'cranks':

What are cranks?

The following quote from Nature is prominently placed on the Wikipedia article on cranks:

  A crank is defined as a man who cannot be turned.

Less cryptically, an important property of crank is the unwillingness to change their line of thought or accept being wrong (they likely admit to make 'unimportant' mistakes and will immediately explain what they 'actually' meant). This will become a very useful definition. Suppose for the moment that exactly one of the following is true about the motivation of your correspondent:

"I have a brilliant idea about the universe and by showing this to an expert, I'll get the recognition I deserve."
"I don't know much about Physics, but I think this is a good theory and want to know what the experts think."

Note that person 1 is a crank, for when you tell (1) that this idea is 'bogus', the reaction will be likely hostile, as (1) will refuse to be 'turned'. Any conversation with (1) is a waste time. If your know for certain that you're dealing with person 1, ignoring, aborting and running away in the most polite way possible is recommended. However, as you desire to be kind to your correpondent, I doubt you are certain that you're dealing with person 1. (Also, assuming 1-ness might be dangerous. Applying Hanlon's razor seems like a good idea.)

How to be nice to person 2

Now, is person 2 a crank? (2) could be a crank, but not necessarily. Perhaps (2) is simply a layman who always had an interest in physics, but never had (or took) the chance to pursue this interest with proper study and thinks this is how physics can be done.

For person 2, I think the best way to be nice is to not give your opinion on the  work, other than that it simply is hard for you to judge (2)'s actual ideas as they are very non-standardly presented. (This can be a lie. But I think it is a very useful lie.) It is important that you add the advice that if (2) has an interest in physics, (2) should learn more about physics so that (2) can properly present the theory. It is good to add some explicit method for (2) to do this, such as some introductory books, courses or videos.

In the best case, (2) will start learning things and eventually will realize that his theory is 'bogus' by themselves! In the worst case, (2) will show the inability to 'turned'. But thereby, (2) reveals to be (1) all along and you can therefore safely abort communications with your correspondent.

Conclusion

I think it is good you ask this question, because I believe there is a true dilemma here. You must choose at most one of:

Share your (brutally) honest opinion with your correspondent.
Help your correspondent by gently directing them to the path of learning.

Any combination of the two will likely act as a discouragement for your correspondent from attempting to learn, for your correspondents idea that they might be able to do some physics is likely crushed by the weight of an experts opinion.

bogus science

You could start by not being judgemental (Please note I'm not implying that you are!). In history and today today, there are people running around with theories that seem crazy ("Jesus rode dinosaurs!", "The earth is at the center of creation!", "Light travels through the ether!", "We evolved from apes!", "The NSA listens to us all!" (See what I did here?)). In fact, String theory itself was recently called "bogus". Theories with involve government abusing power are called conspiracy theories, theories that focus on the mechanics of the universe are called pseudo science. As seen in the comments already, people developing such theories are easy negatively labeled "crackpots" or other insulting names. While there are people who could be assumed to spit nonsense for a living (example in German) there are also people who genuinely believe what they do is correct. And sometimes such people are somewhat ignorant and can't understand why their idea cannot work or is extreeeeemly unlike to do so (e.g. the person portrayed by the woman in this video).

But one in a thousand times if not less, people with different ideas are right. The most prominent example is Galileo, the most prominent of this century until now would be Snowden in my opinion. But there were many critics of Einstein, "Evolution is only a theory", and the current president of the united states doesn't believe in climate change. But to be fair, the country he rules has made its own steps of ignorance before his presidency. And people believe or don't believe if Jesus was a God sent messiah. I'm kinda expecting a flame war in my comment section by now.

  Perhaps more telling is that most of the ideas are unfalsifiable, in the sense that I couldn't think of an experiment that would prove or disprove any of it.

This makes it sound a little bit less "bogus" and more like the typical "Your inability to find a proof doesn't mean there exists none." If I remember correctly, it took a while until relativistic effects could be proven experimentally and the non existence of ether was proven by an experiment that tried to prove it.

However, this line you should give to whoever asked you to give your opinion.

Maybe the nature of reality is mathematically undecidable, so we will never know for sure what is true and what is just a nice approximation. I for once sinceriously believe we will never be able to check the "source code" of the universe.

Conclusion

Your inability to come up with experiments to possibly falsify or prove his theory are no indicators his theory is wrong. The implied poor understanding of quantum physics is more likely an indicator, but on the other hand, Galilei also didn't like the tried and proven methods of the time, and these were "approved by god", a much higher authority.

So tell whoever asks

  most of the ideas are unfalsifiable, in the sense that I couldn't think of an experiment that would prove or disprove any of it.

Point out

  only the vaguest notions of quantum physics and cosmology (no equations, electrons being defined as the antiparticles of protons, cute drawings)

is not meeting an academic standard.

If you are feeling generous and interact with the theory person him/herself, tell the person that most other scientists would probably call his theory "bogus science" (this is where you are trying to be polite), a few would even use discriminatory terms like "crackpot" and that isn't going to change until someone (preferrably he/she) comes up with a scientifically accepted method of falsifying aspects of the theory.

Appendix: Stop calling people crackpots

A few readers seem to believe I'm trying to encourage people who are wrong to go on with their way as long as they believe hard enough. This is not the case. I'm simply stating history proves that someone who may seem to have a crazy idea about things may turn out not to be crazy at all and you have no idea of knowing in advance, you can only say that it is highly improbable. I'm answering OP "state your opinion and if you want to make others feel better, try to make the "bogus" more relative." I'm not encouraging OP to do so or question his motives for doing so, I'm simply answering him his question.

Maybe some are thinking: "Well, earlier they just believed in some magical entity that somehow came into existence and was responsible for everything, but today we have the methods of science! We may make mistake now, but in the long run, our methods will prevail!" In this case you are making the same mistakes as the people back then and your magical entity is called "laws of nature". Nothing is absolute. We are unable to rigorously proof non-existence of most things in reality. A person cannot even rigorously proof that it has an exact amount of money, because that means proving that nowhere in the world there is money the person hid there. Impossible*. So please, stop trampling on those intellectually you deem less intelligent, it is barbaric behavior and not worthy in the presence of scientific endeavor.

'* Nothing is absolute, but doing this would mean something like lifelong and/or earth-wide monitoring.


How Much Say Would A Prospective Supervisor Have In A Students Admission To An Applied Math Graduate Program? I am interested in applying to some applied math graduate programs but I have some deficiencies in a few math courses. However, I have reached out to a potential supervisor and our conversations are going well. So my question is, if a prospective supervisor wants to take on a particular student, but students have to enter a common pool of applicants, how much influence on An individuals admissions does a prospective advisor have in the process.

"Soft" influence
It's hard to judge how much soft influence a professor has. Every professor will have a different level of influence, and also a different approach in how they wield it. There is no way to answer this definitively. The most influential professors in departments that allow them to wield influence will have as much power as they want to choose students. Professors in other departments may have little to no influence at all.
"Hard" influence
In my experience, the more powerful control over admissions that professors have is money. For many programs, there are more qualified applicants than there are slots available for funding. That means that many qualified applicants miss the cut despite being qualified: there are simply too many other prospective students that either have better resumes or have a better fit to the program. However, the program still wants those students!
If a professor has resources to fund a student and offers to do so, that student can possibly skip the queue a bit, because they are no longer competing for the at large funding slots. In the grad program I attended, these students were referred to as "direct admit" students: they joined a lab immediately that offered to support them. Other students had a year to rotate and choose a supervisor.
Summary
I have no idea which of these categories your program and professor is more likely to fall into, if either. If you want to be a student, apply. It's better to apply and fail to be accepted than to not apply and guarantee you will not be accepted.

The answer to this question depends a lot on the university and the seniority of the prospective supervisor. I did not apply for a Math program but for computer science and though the prospective supervisor was keen the committee rejected my application. I believe there should not be a huge difference in the Math department.
Academia is ripe with politics and resources are limited. So there is never going to be one answer to this question. The influence of the prospective supervisor depends a lot on how good a politician he is. And that will determine how good he is in getting his prospective students into the programme. If the supervisor is junior then his senior colleagues will dictate terms. I have known prospective supervisors to write a personal note of recommendation for some students on the application who they think are more suited to work 'for' them.
In an ideal world, the supervisor should not be a member of the committee which shortlists the application. But even then I have seen senior academicians ensuring their colleagues who are close to them professionally being put into the committee to ensure they get what they want and vice versa.
If I were a prospective student I would care little about all this as none of this is in my hands.


What to put in a biography for a publication? A publication I submitted to said that I need to include a biography in the paper.  I don't have many formal qualifications, aside from my degree.  I have done my research on my own, and am unaffiliated.  What can I put in the biography?

I would check a few articles of the journal you publish in and look at what other author are putting in their biography.

Mostly it will be about your degrees (BSc, MSc, PhD, when and where), the field of research you are interested in and what is your current occupation. In summary you can state anything that shows your experitise in the subject you are discussing in the paper.

If no one but yourself paid you for the research, you can state it like:

  beside a job as your paying job he/she is working on paper subject

or

  Since date has been working on paper subject

If you don't have strong qualifications or your own research history it is best to focus on your interests and goals. Think about these questions:

What have you done?
What are you doing now?
What do you want to do in the future?
Why is this publication important to you?


What leverage do universities have over sexual violence in fraternities? IMPORTANT: The allegation of gang-rape in the Rolling Stone article that formed the basis for this question has been retracted; later evidence on the matter shows that the allegation that gang-rape occurred at the fraternity was false.  Other similar events have since been alleged at other universities: Baylor, Yale and Wisconsin

Rolling Stone recently reported a horrific preplanned gang rape at a Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house at the University of Virginia, with the victim's "friends" telling her afterward not to report the crime, on the theory that "She's gonna be the girl who cried 'rape,' and we'll never be allowed into any frat party again."

Under pressure, the university has belatedly decided to suspend fraternity events until January. This seems pathetically inadequate to me, but what can a university actually do in this situation that will have a significant and lasting effect on a firmly entrenched rape culture? Are there cases where other schools have done something more effectual? Supposing for the sake of argument that they were willing to completely disassociate themselves from one frat, or from the frat system as a whole, would it do any good? I assume that the frats own their houses, and the schools can't actually shut them down.

As it turns out, membership in fraternities is not, in general, strongly correlated with rape.  Rather, it appears that a large percentage of sexual assault is committed by a very small fraction of men who are deliberate predators, who tend to seek out environments where their behavior is enabled by people either turn a blind eye to their behavior or who are not willing to intervene in a problematic situation.  Some fraternities provide such environments, but many non-fraternity social environments do so as well.

Rape is committed mostly against women who know their attacker and who may even be intimate with them willingly under other circumstances (men are raped as well, but at much lower percentages than women).  One of the major recommended interventions for a college is thus to educate students, especially other men, on how to intervene in situations that are likely to be a prelude to rape.  This is one example of a broad spectrum of recommended prevention and mitigation policies, which appear to be both effective in reducing the incidence of rape and reducing the damage that compounds to rape victims in an unsupportive campus culture.

None of these interventions are particularly difficult or expensive.  The main challenges in implementing them are resistance from people who have some stake in keeping aspects of their campus culture from changing, or who are worried about potential image problems.

Now that the reported rape at the University of Virginia has been thoroughly discredited and exposed as serious journalistic misconduct, I think it is worth adding a new answer to this question that reflects that updated information.

The OP has suggested that the university’s action in suspending the fraternity, after receiving public pressure, was “pathetically inadequate”.  We now know that the allegation made against the fraternity was false, and they were the victims of a smear campaign.  The university has settled a defamation claim by the fraternity for $1.65 million in damages, and there have also been other legal settlements from the magazine and the writer of this rape hoax.  The legal settlements are minimal given the extreme misconduct and bigotry of the university and the magazine.

In view of these developments, I submit that the lesson to be learned in these cases is not to grab the pitchforks and rouse the town-folk due to unconfirmed (and farcically implausible) allegations levelled against socially unpopular groups.  People with the scientific training of academics should have the integrity to reject this kind of “trial by media” that proceeds without regard to evidence and due process.  Much of the academic community disgraced itself with this witch-hunt against a group of innocent men.  This is unfortunately typical of the rampant anti-male bigotry of modern academia.


In case of multiple job offers, should school name or offer letter be revealed? In case of multiple job offers, should candidates reveal schools names or show offer letters?

Some say do not name the competing institutions in either of these initial emails
Others say "there are too many crazies in departments--you never know what someone might do to interfere with the other institution's perspective. I've seen it happen, and it ain't pretty. On the other hand, it made the choice easier."
Some say do: "Just to let you know, I do have another offer that came in from Midwest State U. They have initially set my salary at ... "

I do not see any reason to show the offer letter. If the school you are negotiating with does not believe you, then that is not a good sign. As for mentioning the other university, it depends on if you can pitch it as a selling point that makes the other offer better. While you should always tell the truth, you can be somewhat selective and play both sides of the coin.

For example, if you get offers from both Stanford and Harvard and you grew up on in the Bay area, but are currently doing a post doc at MIT, you could tell Stanford that you have an offer from Harvard and that you are really happy in Boston, so they will have to beat Harvard's offer. Similarly, you can tell Harvard that you have an offer from Stanford and that your family is in the area so Harvard will have to beat Stanford's offer.

Alternatively, if you have offers from both Stanford and Bunker Hill Community College and you grew up, were educated, and are currently in the Bay area, you would not want to mention the name (bunker Hill) when talking to Stanford, unless you can explain to Stanford what benefits Bunker Hill uniquely provides. You probably want to specifically mention Stanford when talking to Bunker Hill.

If, however, you grew up, were educated, and are currently in the Boston area, then you are in a gray area and may want to mention Bunker Hill to Stanford. Given the difference in the ranking of the two universities, it might be a hard sell to convince Stanford that the Bunker Hill offer is really competitive to the Stanford offer.

I received several competitive PhD offers and would suggest that you do not reveal unless asked, you have a right to privacy and I believe its best to hold back information like that as you can make the point that you have another competitive offer without being specific,the name adds nothing to the discussion.

I believe the principle still applies with faculty offers because it again adds nothing to the conversation, there is no need to mention another offer unless it is required for leverage for a certain benefit or if they wanted to know later on why you turned them down.

Furthermore, including the name brings in the personal opinions of the people who made the offer, removing aspects of your control. All they need to know (and only when negotiating your offer) is that you are considering another offer and why, you are already being taken seriously by the fact you have an offer.  Talking about other offers in too much detail (or when not necessary) brings in doubt and extra questions when they have already offered to hire you.

I employ the policy of keeping communication to the necessities in the rest of my life too. Its an efficiency and control thing.


An undergraduate said they may hire a freelancer to do their work for them. What should I do? I, a graduate student, have started tutoring undergraduates in computer science at my university to help make ends meet. One student who inquired about my services turned me down upon hearing my rates and remarked (in writing) that they might as well just buy solutions to their projects on a particular freelancing website for that price, as their friends do.

Should I tell the professor about this student, in case he wants to review their submissions more closely? I don't have any proof that they have already cheated, but to me their exact words (which to protect my anonymity, I have chosen not to publish) and phrasing suggest strongly that they are likely to. In this question, the OP appears to have evidence to suggest that cheating has taken place already, which seems more clear-cut.

[The student] remarked (in writing) that they might as well just buy solutions to their projects on a particular freelancing website for that price, as their friends do.

That does not sound to me like "admitting" that they "would" cheat. If I said to a prospective financial advisor, "your rates are so high I may as well just declare bankruptcy now", that does not mean that I am going to declare bankruptcy, it is merely a way to express that the advisor's services do not seem cost-effective.

Given this, I would do nothing -- you offered legitimate tutoring services and the student declined your offer. You have no compelling reason to suspect that the student will actually cheat.

I would probably forward the email on to the professor and let him make the judgement call. It sounds like this particular student doesn't want to cheat and may do the work on their own but does appear to know that cheating is taking place (potentially on a pretty wide scale) in the class. I think it would be good for the professor to know this. If the professor applies a stricter measure of analysis to all projects to detect cheating, it is still fair to those who didn't cheat. If you really don't think the student should be mentioned explicitly, it may be appropriate to anonymize the email, but I don't really think that is necessary.


PostDoc relocation Expenses I have recently accepted a postdoctoral position at a reputed institute in the UK. I am an oversees applicant, who will soon be moving to the UK to take on this role. During the interview, I did not enquire about relocation expenses, assuming there would be support for that, but I have now been told that postdocs in this institute don't get a relocation support. On top of this, new regulations on the UK visa mean that I am now having to pay almost 1200 GBP just to get a visa and permission to be in the UK.

The town I am moving to is quite expensive (almost London rates) and I am now having trouble raising money for the airfare and paying initial rent and deposit, let alone having money for food and miscellaneous expenses. I am in a very tight spot and don't know how to take the next steps. This role has come after a lot of difficulty, and this situation is making it very difficult. Any advice on what I could do ?

You have been told (by HR I assume) that postdocs can not claim their relocation expenses from the University. However, there is a chance you can claim (some) reimbursement from the School/Department or from your PI's grant. It is a bit late to negotiate this already, but it probably does not hurt to ask.

However, if the answer appears to be negative, unfortunately, there is not much to be done. Welcome to the dark side of academia.

I'm not sure why this point wasn't brought up yet, but have you considered the possibility of a part-time job?  The easiest as an academic would be to tutor high school or undergrad students. With your credentials there shouldn't be too many problems.

Or you could apply for jobs with very low requirements, like cashier at a grocery store, waiting staff at a restaurant, etc. Most people take up a second job when they're short on money.

You could also ask your PI of they can cover it by explaining your financial situation. But honestly, if I were you, I'd just get a part-time job to raise at least some part of the funds before asking others for help.


Should I notify the teacher that he accidentally gave out the answers to an assignment? For one of my class projects, the teacher coded the entire solution, then took out a few sections that we are supposed to complete for our assignment. This incomplete code was distributed to the class as a starting point. When he was writing the solution, he used source control. He forgot to delete his repository, so all of his commits are there... You can checkout the commits to get the full solution. I don't think he is aware of it, because he hasn't brought it up in class.

I found this while I was working on my solution. Once I found it, it was difficult to find a different path to the solution. I think my solution is dissimilar, but I feel I am playing a dangerous game here.

I'm not sure what I should do here. I could choose to not tell him and hope they don't catch it, or I could choose to tell him and basically admit I had access to the solution while I was working on it.

Send him a polite email explaining that, while you completed the assignment on your own (which I am assuming to be true), by stumbling upon the solutions in advance you had a hard time doing anything different. Professors are people--he should recognize his mistake and appreciate that you were forthcoming. Chances are he'll reassign the project or discount its weight toward your grade and just tell people to review it anyway because you need to know the material. The sooner you say something the better though. Indeed, after a while it may look like you were trying to hide it from him.

To be honest I don't know if there is anything you can do at this point. You have completed your assignment and as a fellow student I feel like once you know the answer, its hard to unseen the answer and forget about it and come up with a new one. And if you do tell the teacher about this, most students will probably have realized this too and the sneaky ones will probably have copied it and stored it somewhere before redistributing it again (believe me, and I am probably one of the sneaky ones). So yeah if you do tell him, I don't think it changes anything to be honest. I have a feeling my answer is a bad one.


My personal views and my research work kind of collide. What can I do? Climate change and mass extinctions are happening, so in my private life, I try to be as sustainable as possible. For example, I eat almost exclusively organic vegetarian food, I have no car, buy most stuff used, have a renewable energy contract and avoid flying (especially intercontinentally).
But when I look at my professional life, it is a different story: I am doing my PhD at an institute, working on a side branch of microelectronics. Our institute reportedly uses the amount of electricity in a year that is comparable to a city of 25,000 people. While certainly a lot of what we are developing might end up being useful, other developments aren't leaving the prototype stage once a project is finished. We produce a huge amount of electronic waste on the way to success and other not very sustainable stuff is happening along the way, too.
My dilemma is that I really enjoy working there. I love my colleagues, my supervisor is great, the work is challenging, but extremely interesting. I have a lot of freedom and support, and a good career outlook. And: I am really good at what I do. I published papers and I built a great network.
But on the other hand, I really question the need to integrate electronics everywhere. I cannot really stand behind a lot of what I/we do and the unsustainable practices in our industry. To make matters worse, we even sometimes work on projects for the military — which goes totally against my political beliefs — but the projects themselves are interesting and fun to research.
I am really torn between what my personal beliefs are and what I do at my work / during my research. I try to convince myself that what I do is ok because it is better to have critical people working on a topic, that aren't afraid to question the necessity of new developments, than just the ones who blindly think everything is great. But this sometimes feels like I am gaslighting myself into thinking that what I do is great, even though I know in my heart that it is (kind of) wrong.
What are strategies to deal with this, apart from changing careers (because that train has kind of left the station)?

The fact that some projects lead nowhere is natural to research. That is not "wastage", it's investment. If something works, it can be scaled up and benefit humankind. You can try and concentrate on projects where, if successful, it will save energy, optimize water, etc.
I suggest it is legitimate to waste material and energy to develop these to viable directions, because it will save orders of magnitude more than you waste now. So, I do not necessarily see a contradiction in finding good topics that correlate with your lifestyle/philosophy.
As for defense research, that's quite a different matter. If you really do not believe in defense work, there is no way you can justify to yourself to do it. To take the advocatus diaboli: some people may say that it is in the nature of things that there are less than friendly actors around in the world; neutral and even friendly relations can sour to a point where it is essential to have the country you generally agree to live in the military option at least in the hope that its use will not be necessary.
But if you are strictly opposed to this, either as fundamental principle of non-violence, or because you believe that with all lofty aspirations, the military-industrial complex and/or the political echelon has too many ulterior motives, then I do not see a possibility to reconcile your private beliefs with defense-related work.
The argument of people effectively supporting an activity they fundamentally disagree with by offering a "critical" perspective is not something you can easily get away with, unless you live in a dictatorship and have no reasonably good other choices. And there, being "critical" means being subversive.
To use a similar picture: If you like the taste of steaks and want to protect animals, there is a contradiction; unfortunately, that means that the best you can do at this point are vegan steak replacements. The ones I know are so yucky that it's better to identify genuinely vegan food that does not pretend it's something else.
Standing up to principles requires sacrifice - not always, but more often than not.

Eliminate the hypocrisy by abandoning either your beliefs or your job.
The bind you're stuck in is that you're feeling like a hypocrite, by doing work that contradicts your personal beliefs. Well, that's because you are a hypocrite who's doing work that contradicts your beliefs. I'm not saying that to attack you personally; I'm just stating the facts, as presented by your question.
So, the obvious solution to this is to resolve the tension by abandoning one thing or the other. Abandon your beliefs about climate change, the importance of sustainability, and anti-military pacifism, or find somewhere else to work and quit your job.


What is the point of a lecture when you have a textbook? I never really understood the point of having a course with lectures when the course has a textbook. Sometimes the subject is so high-level or specialized or so modern that the contents are changing rapidly that there is no textbook (for example at the graduate level). But more often the textbook includes everything that will be said in the lecture, and much more: extra content, exercises, answers to exercises, appendices, etc.

I assume a STEM context, that is we can assume the textbook is available in the sense that there is one comprehensive source that contains undisputed facts, as opposed to a broad literature with lots of interpretations and opinions (as may be the case in non-STEM contexts).

So what is the point of a lecture?

I started writing a post about all the things I like to do that the book doesn't: offer an intuitive overview, a fresh perspective on the basics, etc.

Then I realized that of course, there's no reason that the book couldn't do these things. Most of them don't, but there's no fundamental reason not to. Everything I do in a lecture to help students see the subject from all sides could be translated to the book.

So I guess the main point of lectures is just that it's another medium. Yes you could learn from only one medium, but it goes faster if you use multiple media at the same time. Not just books and lectures: websites, games, audiobooks, documentaries, programming, role playing. Each medium has it's own slight advantages, and idiosyncracies. Even if the story is the same, the energy you have to put in, the mixture of senses you use, and the parts of your brain you activate are all different.

So what, specifically, are the benefits of the medium of a lecture? Here's what I can think of:

Obligation: You are expected to be there. It may be childish, but for a lot of students, it's difficult to work if someone isn't making them do it.
Interaction: It's not just that students are able to ask questions: lecturers can ask te audience a question too. And even if you're not the one answering, you're definitely checking in your head whether you know the answer, which means you're interacting with the material. A book can do this too, ask a reader to consider a question: but the sense of stress isn't there.
Intonation, rhythm and storytelling: A good speaker can hold the attention of an audience. If you're reading, you have to do all the work to keep the attention. The author simply has fewer tools to keep you interested.
Presence The fact that there's an actual person present in the same room as you, makes you sit up. This is a simple human convention. As most lecturers know, it's a convention that students find easy to dismiss, but the basic sense that you're in a room with another person still changes the energy.
Speaker guidance A good speaker will sense the energy of the room. This lets her change speed, take a break, or spend a bit longer on a subject if she notices the room isn't following along. This makes each lecture tailored to the audience. The smaller the audience, the more different the lecture from audience to audience.

Of course, it takes a special lecturer to understand these points and try to capitalize on them. Many don't and just follow the book.

Learning from lectures alone is very slow. Learning from books alone is faster. Learning from both books and lectures at the same time is very fast.

Edit: Since this answer is apparently unpopular, let me explain it a little bit more clearly. I have a PhD in Chemical Engineering and taught college-level chemistry for a few years, so I know something about how people learn difficult material and what makes a class effective. I don't have research data to back up these statements, so it is possible that other people would have a different experience. However, I have never met a person who did. I don't mean I have never met a person who did well in school without going to lectures, or without reading the book. What I mean is, I have never met a person who did not learn fastest from both lectures and the book.

Yes, you can learn via either method alone, and different people tend to learn more easily from one or other. It is also possible that a good lecturer can be more effective than a bad book, and vice versa.

My statement assumes that the quality of both the lecturer and the book are good (or at least equivalent), and is about efficiency - how much time/effort does it take to learn something. The reason books are more efficient than lectures in general has to do with information bandwidth. A book can communicate more complex material in a shorter time than a lecture can. The reason that lectures in conjunction with books are the most effective way to learn is that a good lecture can tell you what parts of the book to focus on - a good teacher points out the most important details. It also gives you a different view of the same material, and reinforces memory through repetition.


Why do lecturers give only couple of days to do exercises? I have always been on a courses where lecturer teaches something and then gives the exercises on that subject. Is that a better way than reveal all exercises when the course begins? I mean, why I should always have only one week time to write solutions and then wait until the next set is revealed? I understand that this gives equal amount of time to think every problem but is it always necessary, as people learns by various speed?

The instructor may not want the students to work far ahead in the class.

If the student does go on ahead and is doing exercises incorrectly (due to lack of knowledge of the subject), then it is may be harder for the student to learn the subject matter correctly due to the bad habits he or she has developed.

Why do instructors allow a short period of time between assignment and due date of homework?  Here are the reasons I am aware of:

The instructor feels that the assignment will not be understood properly if it is shown to the students prematurely.

In my opinion, even when there is some objective truth to this, the instructor could still provide a preview-level version of the assignment ahead of time.
The instructor is not well organized.
The instructor has not thought deeply about how people learn, stress levels in undergraduate and graduate studies, etc.
The instructor is concerned that far-away due dates might contribute to students getting behind.

In my opinion, if this is a true concern, then interaction with the instructor (or with TA's if it is a large course) should be built into the course, to enable problems to be caught and positively addressed.  I am convinced this can be done, even in classes with 200 students.  I had such an experience once as an undergrad, in a large music theory class, and once in a graduate level class in a large film history class.  In both cases, students were enrolled in both the 200-student lecture and in 20-student "discussion" sections led by well-trained TAs.
The instructor has (explicitly or implicitly) bought into his department's or institution's decision to use competition for grades as its philosophical and management foundation.  In other words, give students a short amount of time for each assignment as part of a general effort to crank up the sink-or-swim pressure.

Think about the whole concept of grading on a bell curve.  This builds in a certain expected failure rate.  (Not to mention a mediocrity rate.)
The instructor has explicitly or implicitly bought into the general philosophy so prevalent in higher education of trial by fire.

The reasoning, probably unconscious much of the time, might go something like this: "I survived the pressure when I was in school, look where I am today... therefore academic pressure creates positive pressures on students to work hard and succeed."


In which countries is cheating in university exams considered a crime? In the comments to the question
Methods to track behind cheating on exams using on-line sites?
, Federico Poloni states that cheating is considered a felony in Italy (see
https://www.normattiva.it/uri-res/N2Ls?urn:nir:stato:legge:1925-04-19;475).
This seems interesting to me as I had never heard of this. So I am asking: In which (other) countries is cheating in university exams considered a felony (and thus punishable by law)?

Note that I only asking about the existence of such a law, not if it has any implications in practise.

Also note: I am really asking about "classical university exams" and not about plagiarism when writing a thesis.

In Italy cheating in a public university can be punished with 3-12 months of imprisonment.
The relevant law is almost one century old, but it is still valid today.
From https://www.normattiva.it/uri-res/N2Ls?urn:nir:stato:legge:1925-04-19;475 :

LEGGE 19 aprile 1925, n. 475
Art. 1 Chiunque in esami o concorsi, prescritti o richiesti da autorita' o pubbliche Amministrazioni per il conferimento di lauree o di ogni altro grado o titolo scolastico o accademico, per l'abilitazione all'insegnamento od all'esercizio di una professione, per il rilascio di diplomi o patenti, presenta, come propri, dissertazioni, studi, pubblicazioni, progetti tecnici e, in genere, lavori che siano opera di altri, e' punito con la reclusione da tre mesi ad un anno. La pena della reclusione non puo' essere inferiore a sei mesi qualora l'intento sia conseguito.

My attempt at a translation (excuse the convoluted 1925 Italian syntax).

Law no. 475, April 19 1925.
Article 1: whoever presents as his/her own a study, dissertation, publication, technical project, or, generically, a work that is made by someone else, in an exam or selection, prescribed or requested by authorities or by the public administration to confer degrees or any other sort of academic or school qualifications, or for habilitation to the practice of a profession or to teaching, is to be punished with imprisonment from 3 months up to one year. This penalty cannot be lower than six months when the attempt is successful.

Besides explicite laws about cheating, some education organizations also use the concept of affidavits/declarations in lieu of an oath, which have a legally binding state. Especially used in final works like master/diploma works. They are mandatory part of the submission process (for example in Germany).