A senior colleague that belittles my contributions, expertise and won't acknowledge a published error that I identified I am a PhD student and the most junior person on our small team (me, a lab manager, a statistical analyst, a wet-bench scientist, a senior statistician, and our PI). The statistical analyst has been on this team for over 15 years--we'll call her Emily. Emily trained me in some areas when I started, but I've learned a lot and I have become very independent in the 5 years I’ve been a trainee.

Some Context

Emily and I have been working closely on a project lately.  Because we work so closely, I often ask her for documents related to relevant analyses that she has previously done. I have come to realize that Emily is very error-prone, which I believe our PI already knows. Lately, many of these errors have been discovered when I say something like "that estimate doesn't seem quite right to me" in a lab meeting. I nearly always turn out to be correct and Emily is livid with me for pointing it out. She is typically very defensive and it's very difficult to persuade her to re-check her work. She is dismissive of pretty much everything I say to her directly.

When we went to publish a paper for which I wrote the entire first draft, contributed half of the figures/table, and designed ~90% of the experimental approach, my PI said that Emily and I should be "co-first" author. I agreed because Emily had done ~80% of the experimental work (she wrote most of the code). When my boss made the suggestion that we equally share first-authorship, Emily was so upset that she wasn't the sole first author that she literally screamed in my PI's office about it and then didn't come into lab for 3 days after. These things have set up a poor working relationship between me and Emily.

The Problem

That paper was published, and I'm currently working on several papers that build on those published findings. In working on these new projects, I've discovered an important error that Emily made in the published paper that we are co-first author on.

I made the decision to go to Emily about the error first so that she had a chance to address it with our PI. She denies that there is a mistake and tells me that I'm "too confident about myself" when I say that I'm 100% certain that there is a mistake and lay out all of the evidence that definitively proves it. Unfortunately, I lost my cool a little bit and some of my responses to her were harsh and less-than-professional.

So, I have an email thread that documents Emily's mistake, that I approached her about it directly, and that she actually doesn’t understand what she was doing and therefore denies that the mistake is real; however, we both made some statements that were unprofessional.

The mistake needs to be corrected in order for me to continue with publishing my recent projects (but fortunately does not change the main takeaway of the paper). Emily plans on telling our PI that I’m just a trainee and that I don't know what I'm talking about and that she did not make a mistake (again, I can definitively prove that she did with the email chain). She also has some clout with our PI because she's been there much longer than I have and is more experienced.

How should I proceed?

When we went to publish a paper ... my boss made the suggestion that we equally share first-authorship, Emily was so upset that she wasn't the sole first author that she literally screamed in my PI's office about it and then didn't come into lab for 3 days after.

If possible, it is always a good idea to negotiate contributions and authorship of a paper prior to conducting the relevant research and drafting of the paper.  This kind of dispute can best be avoided by having all the researchers sit down prior to the research project and agree on the roles of each of the researchers, and how the authorship will be allocated (i.e., who is a co-author vs an acknowledgement, order of authors, etc.).  In some cases the actual contributions may end up differing from the initial plan, and so a renegotiation of the authorship could occur, but in many cases you can avoid disputes by having a clear set of expectations at the start of the project.  Once a dispute arises, there is going to have to be some negotiation and decision made about the dispute, but in the future it would be best to avoid these problems by agreeing on authorship details in advance.

  ... I'm currently working on several papers that build on those published findings.  In working on these new projects, I've discovered an important error that Emily made in the published paper that we are co-first author on.  She denies that there is a mistake...  The mistake needs to be corrected in order for me to continue with publishing my recent projects (but fortunately does not change the main takeaway of the paper).  Emily plans on telling our PI that I’m just a trainee and that I don't know what I'm talking about and that she did not make a mistake (again, I can definitively prove that she did with the email chain).  She also has some clout with our PI because she's been there much longer than I have and is more experienced.

Firstly, you should do everything possible to see if you, Emily, and your PI, can reach an agreement on whether or not there is an error in the published paper.  I would suggest making a meeting with your PI where all of you can look over the details of the claimed error, check your working and discuss the matter, and see if you can come to agreement about whether or not there is actually an error.  If you can get your co-authors to agree with your view, then you could all submit an erratum to the previous paper correcting the error.  If your co-authors can convince you that there is no error, the matter is also resolved.

It sounds like this might not be possible, and so if you try all this and exhaust all possibility of agreement, then here is what I would suggest.  You are the author of your new papers, so it is up to you what to write in them.  It is perfectly acceptable for you to claim in your new papers that you have identified an error in the previous published paper.  For full disclosure to your reader, you should make your claim in the paper, but also note that the claim of the error is disputed by your co-author.  (You can give relevant details in a footnote, but keep it succinct and professional.  Do not bog the reader down with excessive detail or a big shit-fight.)  Re-run the previous analysis without the error, note the new results, and proceed with your new papers on that basis.  Emily will be just as entitled to submit new papers claiming that she is correct and there is no error.  (Both sets of papers would be vetted by referees, but it might be difficult for them to tell who is right, so you might find that some referees will be reluctant to recommend publication.)

If you are unable to come to an agreement on the alleged error with your co-authors, ultimately that is going to mean that you end up claiming one thing and she ends up claiming another.  If these are your papers, and you have tried and failed to reach agreement on the matter, I see no reason why this issue would require any further intervention of your PI, so her greater "clout" with the PI should not make any difference.  You are entitled to submit research to journals making claims you believe in good-faith to be true.  (If you want to, it would also be legitimate for your to submit an erratum for the previous paper to the original journal, notifying your co-authors, and noting clearly in your erratum that your claim of an error is disputed by your co-authors.  I suspect that the journal might not accept this, but you could submit it if you wanted to.)

  Unfortunately, I lost my cool a little bit and some of my responses to her were harsh and less-than-professional. ...  we both made some statements that were unprofessional.

That is a problem, and you are both going to need to cool it.  (And it is probably worth apologising for any comments that were unprofessional.)  Keep your focus on the work, and the correctness or incorrectness of the methods and results.  If you cannot engage with Emily without making unprofessional comments, you should disengage communication with her.

For the current project: Focus on what the scientific error is.  Stop focusing on whose fault it is.  You may need to get the error fixed to continue with the followup work, but presumably the followup doesn’t depend on anyone admitting fault.  All the issues about digging up email trails to show whose fault it was are a massive distraction — things like that serve no scientific purpose, and will make Emily more defensive, and make it look to other people like you’re (at best) mean-spirited and intolerant of other people’s fallibility, and (at worst) like you have a vendetta against Emily.

If, instead, you point out a mistake and its content without finger-pointing about the blame, people are much more likely to be willing to admit the mistake and help fix it (and to try to avoid such mistakes going forward).

Even though the water has been muddied, it’s hopefully not too late for damage control.  Apologise to Emily, either privately or in the group setting, for anything unprofessional you said.  Hopefully she’ll then apologise in turn, but if don’t try to make her — that won’t help anything.  Maybe also apologise, if you can bring yourself to, for having focused too much on finger-pointing.  Emphasise that you just want to make sure this scientific point is correct, going forward.  And then if she disputes the issue further, be ready to explain again what you think the mistake is — purely the scientific error, nothing personal, no finger-pointing, describing things as “we wrote X…” rather than as “Emily wrote X…”, and being genuinely open-minded to the possibility you might be mistaken (even though you’re sure you’re not).

On this possibility: bear in mind that happens to all of us sometimes, even when we’re pretty sure about something.  If you are phrasing the problem as “Hey, I’m worried we have a mistake in that pervious … could someone else check this with me?”, and it turns out there’s no error after all, then it’s still no big deal — you’ve not lost much face.  If on the other hand you phrase it as “Look, Emily made an error here!” and it turns out she didn’t, then that really looks bad for you.  Being diplomatic, tactful, and a team player isn’t just about being nice to others (though that is important) — it’s also much better for you in many ways.


Impact of the quality of a presentation in a conference on the number of citations the corresponding article receives Is there any research/study that looked at the impact of the quality of a presentation in a conference on the number of citations the corresponding article receives? (quality in terms of form, not the content itself)

I am most interested in the United States and the field of computer science.

This survey by Dalton (2014) reviews literature that correlates citation rates with dissemination strategies. Research into a correlation between presentation quality at conferences and subsequent citation rates is notably absent, suggesting that there likely is not much research on this question. That said, a few things can be inferred:

  Frenken et al. (2010) carried out a study on collaboration in scientific research and found that international collaborations tend to receive more citations than national or regional level collaborations.

Intuitively, a principal reason for attending conferences and workshops is to expand one's network and meet potential new collaborators. A good presentation is more likely to serve this purpose than a poor one, because it can set a first professional impression of you.

  A considerable amount of work has been published on the positive effects of open access on citation rates. Lawrence (2001) carried out an investigation on the impact of free online availability of papers on citation rates in computer science. The results showed a clear correlation between the number of times an article is cited and the probability that the article is freely available online. The more highly cited articles were significantly more likely to be available online.

If you publish your presentation online after the conference, then you are increasing the open access material related to the paper. Especially if you are publishing the research manuscript behind a paywall, the presentation may open the research to a broader audience. Whether the presentation is well done, intuitively, is likely to affect whether you are willing to post it online and the amount of time that readers are likely to interact with it. If you present it well, you are probably more likely to post a public video of the presentation  online.

  Thelwall et al. (2013) [...] found that there were statistically significant associations between higher citations for articles and the use of various social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs and forums. Similarly a study carried out by Shuai et al. (2012) showed there was a statistically significant correlation between social media mentions and download and citation counts.

Further to the previous point, if you publish your open-access presentation online after the conference, it creates an opportunity to create a social media buzz around it.

Summary There might not be much research on whether a direct correlation exists between presentation quality and citation rate, but a good presentation can amplify factors that have been shown in literature to increase citation rates.

References

S. Dalton (2014). "Increasing citations: key evidence." Retrieved from: http://library.leeds.ac.uk/downloads/file/616/increasing_citations_literature_review_april_2014 on 15 October 2015.

K. Frenken et al. (2010). "The citation impact of research collaboration in science‐based industries: A spatial‐institutional analysis." Papers in Regional Science: 89(2), 251-265.

S. Lawrence et al. (2001). "Free online availability substantially increases a paper's impact." Nature: 411(6837), 521-521.

X. Shuai et al. (2012). "How the scientific community reacts to newly submitted preprints: Article downloads, twitter mentions, and citations." PloS one: 7(11).

M. Thelwall et al. (2013). "Do altmetrics work? Twitter and ten other social web services." PloS one: 8(5).

In my view, impact of the quality of a presentation in a conference, is relative. There are many factors that model "perception" of "quality". It draws down to the researcher or presenter. If we assume the audience understand the topic under discussion. Generally, the presenter models the impacts that a presentation will have, meaning the concept "impact of the quality of presentation" is socially constructed domain and therefore has many dimensions of causality


Should I be honest with postdoc candidate about awful lab working environment? I work as a postdoc in a lab that is extremely mismanaged.  The head of the lab micromanages all the staff, often claims successful work as his own, and rejects new ideas that are not from him.  All the employees (both scientists and technicians) are miserable, and some of the team has become destructive, creating regular conflicts between team members that the lab head refuses to resolve.
The head of the lab is hiring a new postdoc, and I, as the only other postdoc, will meet with the candidate as part of the final interview step.  I am already planning to leave, but haven't told anybody yet.
My question is:

If asked by the candidate, should I be honest about the working environment?
If not asked by the candidate, should I tell the candidate anyway?

I feel it is dishonest to let someone enter a destructive work environment without them being prepared.

UPDATE: I had no chance to speak to the candidate alone; the lab manager stuck by the candidate's side the whole time.  Interestingly, the candidate later declined the offer, so perhaps they were astute enough to recognise the environment for what it was.  Thanks to everyone for the help and advice!

The general rule in these situations is that being honest is okay (though consider that it can be risky if word of your honesty makes it back to the boss), but it's important to stick to facts and to your opinions about your own situation/experience.
"The team is destructive" is not something you should say, nor is "the lab is mismanaged". Those are your opinions about other people: stay away. What you can say is "I feel like I've had trouble getting credit for my work", "I wish I had more freedom to choose the direction of my work", etc. Even better is to use specific factual information (note: opinions are not facts), like "I've only been able to get one first-author publication in the past three years."
That said, take care of yourself, too. If you need a recommendation for a future job, it might be necessary to bite your tongue a bit. It's good to want to warn a candidate off gently, but consider that once you are gone someone is going to get that position, and it's even possible that the person who does will have a different experience than you did.
Also related: https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/137037/can-i-tell-a-prospective-employee-that-everyone-in-the-team-is-leaving (not an identical situation but I think the advice there still applies).

I applaud your concern for honesty, and I understand.  That said, I would strongly discourage you from being overly honest about the bad working environment.
First, this is your opinion on the environment; it may be unlikely, but it's possible others would find the situation better than you do, and you coloring the situation at the start wont help them or be appreciated.
But even if you do your best to stick to facts, as other responses have suggested, you stand basically nothing to gain, and in fact have a ton to loose.  You don't know this person, and they have no reason to be loyal to you.  What if you imply something negative to them and they promptly tell others what you said?  What if they decline the position because of you and tell the lab director the honest reason why?
Unfortunately this extends to "no comment" answers intended to be obvious catcalls regarding the bad environment.
Personally, I would avoid lying outright, but also do my best to evade any sort of opinion question with excuses like "oh, I mostly keep to myself" or "I've managed one publication this year, so I was happy about that."


Slept through final, professor is giving me a zero and failing me – is there anything I can do to change this? I slept through my 8 am final last Thursday, and I didn’t wake up until 11:50 am. By the time I scrambled to remember what day it was, it was already noon. I frantically sent the professor an email telling her what happened and asked if I could take it in her next section (the syllabus said no, but I was desperate). I found her at her office where she said she couldn’t meet with me unless the head of the department of marketing (her boss) was present. The meeting is tomorrow at 12:30, after two other finals starting at 8.

A 0 is the grade you receive when caught cheating. I did not cheat; I did not lie; I slept. I don’t believe an F is a reflective grade of the knowledge and work that I put into that course is an honest one. I don’t believe that a student should learn and learn for an entire semester and then have one time slot to prove their knowledge. People make mistakes and I need a chance. I need to think of an innovative assignment to turn in after the meeting that may interest her in giving me a few points to pass. Or, I need to market to the marketers my case.

Does anyone know what I can do? What I can take upon myself to do – even though my professor said there is nothing – to show her that I am willing to put forth the effort and that I am committed to learning.

It feels like one of the deadly sins but it's actually a physiological need...

If it's a physiological need because you were sick at the time of the exam, then your school should have a policy about how such situations are to be handled.

While I sympathize with your plight, it sounds like the problem was that you were too tired and just slept through the exam. If that is the case, then I'm afraid to say that the professor may have every right to assign you a zero for not taking the exam. There are some schools where the policy would be to assign an incomplete in such circumstances, but this is entirely school-dependent.

The essential issue is that if you do not have an excused absence for an exam, you're at the mercy of the instructor and any existing policies. At my school, for instance, the policy says that anything other than an approved university activity cleared in advance is at my discretion. So if the instructor chooses to give you a zero, there's nothing you can do.

You also need to consider things from the instructor's point of view: giving you a do-over because you slept through the exam would require that she give any future students who did the same the opportunity for a do-over as well—after all, why should only you get special treatment? Granting your request would mean that, in the future, all you'd need is to say "sorry, I overslept" and you could postpone an exam you weren't ready for. This is simply unfair to the instructor and to all the students who prepped for the exam at the scheduled time. This is simply not a fight you can possibly expect to win unless there are exceptional attenuating circumstances that have not been mentioned.

Is this a UK thing?

In the UK if for any reason you miss an exam you can resit it later in the year but the maximum grade you can receive is the minimum pass mark usually around 40%.

Also I’m pretty sure there is a way to defer your whole course by one year, keeping the points for the current modules and just redoing the maths part next year. Not sure about fees tough.

It is a cold harsh world out there man. You screwed up.

But maybe a good thing for you as it sounds like you are not a 9 to 5 kinda guy. University degrees are for people who want to join a company and spend their life working as an unwitting slave 9am to 5pm to make someone else rich.

If you believe sleeping in is not screwing up and you shouldn't lose your job (or grade) over it, go find something more fulfilling to do with your life and reach your full potential whatever it is.


Have American universities cut back on H1-B visa sponsorship of new international faculty and F-1 student visa sponsorship for PhD students? Concerning industry, I've read that Google and Amazon have cut back significantly on its H1-B visa sponsorship of new candidates (though it's unclear what the renewal rate is for currently sponsored employees.)

Is the same sort of thing happening in academia?  Are American universities cutting back its H1-B sponsorship of new, international faculty candidates and student visa programs for its international PhD applicants?

The current ban was stopped by court,
we are waiting if supreme  court of USA will take complaint from Trump administration but that will likely not happen because of the composition of a court.
Regarding American universities, occupations that are related to academia (post-doctoral fellow, research fellow, etc.). You can check referenced link and put desired profession name in search menu and compare rates of awarding H1B by the universities.
Conclusion is honestly that university never awarded so much H1B in a first place, and it is a noticeable trend of declining H1B sponsored by academic institutions ( institutes, universities, hospitals... etc..)
website myvisajobs.com give you opportunity to search and compare different occupation and employees.


When should I start applying for a PhD program in the UK? I am starting my MSc. this September (UK), and am strongly planning ahead and setting myself goals. Simply, when would be the appropriate time to submit my applications?

My MSc is 12 months long and will go from Sept 2018 to Sept 2019. I was thinking of applying 6-8 months into my MSc.

What do you think? When is the most logical time to submit my applications?

Funded PhDs in the UK usually follow the academic calendar and start in late September or early October. Accordingly, application deadlines tend to be in February or March (often set by the funding councils and hence will be the same for every university).

The exception to this is if you are planning to self-fund your PhD, in which case you will have more flexibility on starting dates (but check with the universities you are going to apply to if you are planning to do this).

The best time for you to submit your applications is probably as close to the deadline as possible, especially if you want to use your supervisor/ tutor/ other lecturer from your MSc as a reference. The longer you wait to submit the application, the better they will get to know you and hence be able to write a better reference.

However, don't wait until the last minute to ask for a reference! Ask well ahead of time (>1 month) and let them know when the application deadline is so they have time to prepare.

Google up the schools you are interested in and ask them. The people who will know are the support staff of the head of department, head of grad studies, and like that. Their secretary, clerk, assistant, etc. That's who you want to ask.

These are people that you should always try to stay friends with. They know everything. They see everything. And they know what will work and what won't. Always stay friends with the support staff.


Can I slack off and get a PhD? I am not a genius but I am a good test taker and a very practical person. I went through undergraduate school without studying much (skipping classes, doing homework, reading the books and doing some exercises the day before the test) with a 3.6 GPA in Computer Engineering from a decent school (CWRU).

I know I might get angry answers from people saying that it simply cannot be done. I am interested to hear from the people in the other side of the spectrum. Can it be done? Have you done it?

I want to become a college professor so a PhD is a requirement I need to fulfil.

slack off = not put much effort and work in, like when you didn't bother to google that word!

Can I slack and get a PhD?

Yes, definitely. I have known PhD students that graduated, which I can only describe as lazy.

Now the more important question is Why the heck do you want to? If your goal is to stay in research, slacking off during your PhD time is career suicide. If you do not want to stay in research, and you are not particularly interested in the research contents, then a PhD degree will not be much more than a piece of paper to put on your office wall. A piece of paper for which you have accepted 3+ years of lousy pay.

Edit:

  I want to become a college professor so a PhD is a requirement I need to fulfill.

I correct my point from above: "If your goal is to stay in academia, slacking off during your PhD time is career suicide". Let me put it this way - faculty positions, including those at liberal arts colleges, are typically competitive to get into. Having a PhD that shows that you are less than enthusiastic about your field will likely not land you such a job. If this is your career goal, you need to ask yourself not "What is the minimum amount of work I need to put in to get a PhD?" but rather "What is the minimum amount of work I need to put in to have a real shot at scoring a position afterwards?" (where the second effort is substantially larger than the first effort).

It depends where you work. If you have a lot of original creative thinking you can meet research requirements easily if you don't work for a lab. Labs have routine grunt work that has to get done.


Is there any way to automatically link in-text citation to individual references on the reference list? I have an article with in-text citations and list of references. I have not used any of reference managers, just used word.
Is there any way to automatically link in-text citation to individual references on the reference list?

Yes. It is quite easy to do, once you know how.

First, go to the References tab, then click on Insert Citation and Add New Source.

Next, fill out the information as appropriate.

When you want your References List produced, go to Bibliography.

This is extremely helpful when you need to change some detail (say publication date) and you have many citations to the same material. Change it in one place and Word will update all of the in-text citations as well as the references list.

Highlight the link, right click, click "Link", Make sure you select the tab on the right that says "Existing File or Web Page" then click OK.


How to manage very weak students presenting problem solutions? In some of my more advanced classes, I have students present solutions to problems on a rotating basis.  Not all solutions are perfect, but for almost all students this goes okay.  However, sometimes there is a student X who seems incapable of solving all but the most trivial problems (and cannot always do those correctly).  I am unsure whether X is even aware of the difference between themself and the rest of the class (my impression is they are not), but the X's presentations are not pleasant for the rest of the class, and probably not for X either.  They typically involve me or other students making several corrections, taking 2-3x as long as needed (and the problems X has gotten so far have pretty easy already), then me eventually cutting of X and saying "Okay, all you do is [...].  Next."

  I was contemplating only giving this student trivial problems to present.
  Is this a good idea? Are there better ideas?

My concern about doing this is that it will probably be obvious to the rest of the class if X is routinely getting significantly easier problems to present.  It may also be obvious to X, though that is less clear--if so, I can imagine it might be embarrassing.  (And if X cannot successfully solve those, it would be more embarrassing.)  Not letting X present would probably be the most embarrassing.  Right now, my inclination is to let X's problems naturally vary between trivial and normal, based on the rotation, but make an attempt to keep hard problems away from X.

Another option is to say something to X, but I am not sure what, apart from suggesting X check their solutions with another student before presenting.  One thing I definitely want to avoid is teaching X individually outside of class.  Based on previous interactions, this could quickly become a time sink, and I am too busy already.

There are at least two+ different issues: (1a) your suffering (1b) suffering of the other students, (2) the obliviousness or incompetence or low-energy of the individual student. The easiest argument that there's something needing repair is that the other students shouldn't have to suffer, in any case.

My anecdotal evidence indicates that whether it's obliviousness or incompetence or some sort of lethargy, any one of these can be an essentially fatal obstacle, and is not within anyone else's power to change in the short term. Maybe long-term. Giving easier problems will not be understood as such, and can have the effect of passively "confirming" the inadequate strategies of that individual.

So: time limits on presentations, at least. Perhaps "failure limitations", too, meaning that a certain smaller window is allowed to persuade the audience that things are going in the right direction. This criterion gives a device to get failing performances off the stage and not waste other peoples' time.

Similarly, in my experience, it is possible to spend unlimited amounts of time on some students "with problems", thinking to "lift them out of failure", but have essentially no impact on them. Don't do it. Allocate the reasonable amount of time, and then stop. This is absolutely not an argument against spending time and energy on students (a.k.a. "teaching"), but is an argument against pretending that one has infinite personal resources, and against pretending that bad allocation doesn't harm other parts of the enterprise.

Possibly time to mention the Dunning-Krueger syndrome again, too? That is, that sometimes the most problemmatic scenarios are those in which someone lacks the meta-cognition to understand that they "even have problems". If someone has already passed/failed that filter, the chances are slim that you can call on their meta-cognitive faculties to help them... Sadly.

So, you cannot deny weak students resources, but don't misallocate so as to harm others. And the cost to you yourself should be limited. One does not have unlimited responsibility (in time or energy) to students. Definite responsibility, yes, but definitely limited.

Your question:

  I was contemplating only giving this student trivial problems to
  present. Is this a good idea? Are there better ideas?

Whether this is a good idea depends on what your learning goal for the course is. If your goal is "students should be able to effectively solve an unpracticed problem in front of an audience," then helping student X get better at this skill is important. @svavil's ideas of a short meeting that makes sure the student understands the problem and provides resources is great.

If your class goal is only "students should be able to effectively solve an unpracticed problem" then my answer is different. If public presentation is not an important skill, provide other opportunities for students to work in small groups or work independently to show they can succeed without the social pressure of an audience. Mixing it up even one day a week can make a nice change and give students an opportunity to talk to each other instead of just sit and watch each other struggle.


Is it normal to preferentially invite female speakers when there would otherwise be few female speakers? My institute is creating an annual list of invited speakers and solicited suggestions from staff. It was at pains to point out that although only "n" 18% of suggestions received were female, they made up "n+1" 31% of the speakers selected to talk. As a female student, this makes me feel uncomfortable that women seem to be getting preferential treatment - is this normal practice in academia, in the UK or elsewhere?

Edit: I didn't mean my question to sound insulting, I'm sorry if it sounded that way. Everyone invited is perfectly qualified and I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. It just seemed a little strange all the women on the shortlist made it through whilst quite a few men didn't. And that the email took on an apologetic tone and emphasized this so heavily. I was just interested in whether this is common as it makes me feel a little uneasy that gender plays such a prominent role in the organizers' thinking. Thanks.

First of all: if the women who were invited to speak are in fact highly qualified for this invitation, they are not getting a "free pass". A "free pass" implies that they are invited only because they are women, and are not otherwise qualified. Qualified women are at best getting a "priority pass" to make up for being often overlooked (especially when the organizing committee is all male), and possibly not getting any kind of special pass.

It is a bit insulting (although I am sure this is not your intent) to suggest that these women were invited to speak because they are women, and not because they are doing quality, competitive work. I can see why you were uneasy when the organizers sent an email emphasizing the gender of the speakers, instead of their contributions to research; I would also be.

Second: depending on the sample size, it may not be entirely significant that 31% of invited speakers were women when they made up 18% of the list of suggestions.

In answer to

  Is this normal practice in academia:

Yes, sometimes a conference or workshop organizer will look at the list of invited speakers, see that women are heavily underrepresented, and think carefully about whether there is a qualified female researcher doing excellent work who could be added to the roster.

This is done as a deliberate response to counter a known bias. We know that we (as humans) are very bad at evaluating people based on merit alone; we tend to let our cognitive biases get in the way. (See, for example: Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students.) Deliberate attempts to increase the representation of women in underrepresented fields exist to counter this known bias.

The only thing that matters is qualification based off of merit. Unfortunately, in school and infesting its way into corporate culture, it's more about filling quotas than worrying about who is most qualified or who deserves it the most.

"Free pass" may not be the correct term for all 31% of those women, but it's more than likely the case for at least some of them. The organizer is sexist, plain and simple. People can bat words around and pretend that any particular group of people "have it harder," but in the end, it's just sexism and discrimination. Who's to say whose upbringing was worse and why that entire group of people should have more rights than another group? You don't see any of those same groups of people complaining about the lack of males in nursing or the lack of females in hard manual labor jobs.

If you feel uneasy about it, that's good. It means you have a fair mind and don't like one group having preferential treatment over another.


How to deal with unavoidable failure in my first year of tenure-track applications? I got my PhD recently. I applied to many tenure-track positions and got selected for several onsite job interviews. Yay. However I have actually been told in no uncertain terms by several trusted people that this year, my chances are extremely close to zero, considering my short track record.

I cannot help but get my hopes up. How do I deal with this upcoming unavoidable failure and put a good spin for myself on my situation?

It may sound stupid but like many people in academia, so far I have been quite successful and have not had to deal with professional failure much... (Consider this: good in school, good in university, graduated with honors, got accepted to masters, got accepted to PhD, got the PhD - most people in academia follow this kind of path. I hope this does not come across as immodest, I am very aware that I am just a cog in the grand (grant?) scheme of academia. I am good at what I do but not at the rest.) Of course I met failure very often in my private life, but this does not feel the same.

I suggest dealing with the situation by revising your (misguided, IMO) definition of “failure”. Even if it is, as you say, “ineluctable”, that you will fail to land a tenure-track position this year, you will still be a highly qualified and highly successful person with excellent career prospects. To refer to this as a failure is itself a failure - a failure of the imagination, that is.

I and most other successful academics had to spend multiple years after graduation to get a good tenure-track position. Almost all of us struggled with repeated rejections, job uncertainty, and geographic dislocation before arriving at a good place career-wise. Keep your eyes focused on your long-term goals and on the fun and passion of doing research, and given your description of your situation I predict that you will be fine. Regardless of what happens with your current job search, a “failure” you most certainly are not.

There are two possible ways you can approach this.

Trust the multiple trusted people, and don't apply to positions that they say are beyond your reach at this stage.

Or, you could use the applications as a barometer, a measuring stick.  If you get offered a job of the type you would like, then you are one in a million.  If you get shortlisted but not hired, then you are pretty close to your goal.  If your applications don't resonate with anyone yet, that shows you your next steps to take, to work towards your goal.  It's like the elves cutting out the leather for the shoemaker to sew together the boots.  Once you have that feedback (the lack of resonance), that gives you the cut of the cloth.  You know what to do next.  You know how to sew the boots together -- that is, you know how to find topics, do your research, do your writing, submitting, revising.
Focus on those things.  Focus on the timeline that you are ineluctably marching along.  Focus on goals and work and progress.


Grant "pre-approval" issue Background:
I work in a public university as a staff member, and also a part-time lecturer, allowed to teach only 1 class (per Union).
Last year, I applied and received multiple grants/awards for my teaching position. I already completed the work and received payments. The grants did not require any approvals from department/dean.

Recent development: Now, our dean approached me with the following conversation:

“You need to send me info prior to your grant submission..
You are only a lecturer…
We hired you just to teach 1 course…
You have a limit for a course teaching… you have a limit (per Union)...
You need to consult with the dean and the department chair about any grant’s proposal and share your idea with us…
 I know that you are not required to submit for internal review to the dean, but since I knew nothing about it, I was in a dark, moving forward you must inform me about your plans… You need to work with a tenured faculty on grants…”

My question:
What do I suppose to do in this situation? I obviously do not believe dean’s well wishes, and would like to apply grants in the future without “dean’s blessings”. I also feel that the dean would go behind my back and ask for denial of my proposal. I do not wish to share my ideas for free.

It might help to understand where your Dean is coming from. I work for my university's research administration department, and I can understand his position. For context, we are an R1 university in the United States.

There are likely a few things going on:

Grants often create liabilities for universities. There may be cost-sharing requirements or other implicit costs which the university will be required to pay. Administrators need to keep a close eye on these requirements in order to keep the university functioning smoothly.
Grants create risks for universities. There are many legal and ethical rules surrounding grants. Although some of the risk is on you, much of the potential penalties are assumed by the university. For this reason, many (if not all) research universities have dedicated research administration departments and all grants are required to flow through those departments.
There are legal issues. In all of the grants I've seen, the grant goes from the granting agency to your employer. It is not a grant to you personally. You should be careful about accepting money on your own. Carefully re-read the grant terms to be sure that this is not the case here.
Not all the reasons are bad: universities often like to reward individuals and departments who do a great job of soliciting grant dollars. If they can't keep an eye on grants, how are they supposed to that?

Other answers have mentioned intellectual property. I'll only repeat what they have said: if you work for a university you should not assume that any intellectual work product is your own property. Make sure you understand what the rules are in your location.

Overall, I would treat this as an opportunity to develop in your profession. If soliciting grants is an important part of your career (current or future!) then it would help to understand how it works. It's not as simple as just applying for a grant - and for good reason!

I believe you're in a tight situation. But do not feel singled out: I have heard of many such cases where department higher ranks exploit younger staff. The academia is unfortunately full of opportunistic predators nowadays. This person seeks to be put in a position from where he can blackmail and manipulate you.

I do not know anything of the local social & cultural standards of where you are, or whether you are a local, or an immigrant. I am afraid you must make a moral choice which will affect your personal life and career. This person probably seeks to parasitise and sabotage you. You must find a way of neutralising his actions with minimal damage.

The best for everyone else in the bigger picture is that you confront this dean head on. Offering open resistance and wide exposure directly weakens a bad workmate. If everyone resists, abusers cannot thrive. Problem is, it will likely cost you your peace at work, and force you to move away. Possibly confronting authorities may not be socially acceptable (e.g. China) adding to a bad reputation and extra enemies / penalties.

Another way is to scam the abuser. You may pretend to scared and frame fake ideas and proposals, provide elusive information. This will lead to a cold war and eventually he will realise, but it buys you time (e.g. a dean may be temporary).

Or you simply abide and pray for the best. This is probably what this person is used to seeing.

Evaluate your chances where you are, and whether moving on to a better environment wouldn't be the best for you. By all means, when you get the chance, please do neutralise this person. Time is your friend against abusers.

Good luck.


What makes a good reference letter for a junior faculty position I'm in the process of applying to junior faculty positions (e.g. Assistant Professor). This will be my first time I ever apply for an academic position.

My direct supervisor asked me to write a first draft for my own reference letter for this application. I know that this can be considered unethical but I cannot change it. I have never before written such a letter nor read one. The examples I found online are not very helpful.

What are the elements of a good reference letter?

What distinguishes an excellent reference letter from a good one?

Disclaimer: I have not served on a faculty hiring committee, so this answer is not based on first-hand experience. What is expected of a recommendation letter also greatly depends on the field, country, and whether the department is teaching-focused or research-focused and how "elite" it is.

Academic recommendation letters are quite different from non-academic reference letters.
A good academic recommendation letter should be detailed. Simply saying "spore234 was my student and they were the most smartest, and hardest working student ever" is not going to cut it. In particular, it should discuss your research, its significance, and what you contributed to each project. This is particularly important if your research is collaborative -- recommendation letters can elucidate what you contributed relative to your coauthors. It should also discuss teaching and service if applicable.

That is probably why your supervisor is asking you for a draft -- you are more familiar with your work than she/he is and can thus provide more detail. Hopefully your supervisor will heavily edit your draft (please encourage her/him to do so), but you can help provide details to include in it. Don't underestimate how little your supervisor may remember about what exactly you contributed to this or that project, or even what the project was. By drafting the letter, you are providing a reminder.

Furthermore, recommendation letters sometimes include a comparison to other students. E.g., "I have advised 10 PhD students during my career and spore234's research contributions would place her in the top two. Spore234 is comparable to my former student X, who has gone on to a successful career as a now-tenured faculty at the University of Y." This is still a subjective assessment, but it's a more precise way to express an opinion than simply spouting superlatives. (I would be hesitant to draft such a paragraph about myself, but perhaps you can let your supervisor fill in the blanks.)

Of course, a recommendation letter should also include the usual pleasantries, some detail about the recommender and how they know the subject, and some forward-looking discussion of future potential.

You can google and find plenty examples and tips:
https://www.google.com/search?q=writing+recommendation+letter+faculty+position
In general, a good recommendation letter, regardless whether it is academic position or postdoctoral fellowship, should be supported by evidence as much as possible. Not just a hand-waving, that he is excellent and brilliant. But he is excellent because he published in such and such journals, trained such and such students, achieved such and such accomplishments etc etc. Try to support everything. Try to convince.
For academic position (your case) state explicitly why you fit for this position (e.g., your track record, mentoring / teaching experience).
Excellent vs. good is the difference of how enthusiastic the letter sounds. "He is one of the best in..." or "you will not find better candidate for this position" will likely make a letter  excellent. But as I wrote in item 2, the letter should not be a mere hand-waving. But given that the letter does provide good factual information, the more enthusiastic the letter is the better. Put it simple: if the person who recommends you is of very high opinion of you and what he/she describes is supported by the facts (e.g., publication record, mentoring, teaching), then the letter will more likely be excellent.

Good luck!


Getting a Masters at a school without courses I want? I was accepted into a Masters program (MS in Computer Science) at a nice university that has research groups working on the things I want to research (natural language processing).

However, looking through their course catalog, it seems they don't actually have any courses directly focusing on NLP. I like almost everything else about their program except for the lack of courses, though they do have courses in machine learning and related concepts.

Is it a bad idea to go to a school that doesn't have courses related to my exact focus?

I don't think it's necessarily a problem.  At the graduate level, you're expected to learn things in many other ways besides formal courses: self-study, informal seminars, independent or supervised research, individual discussions with faculty or other students, thesis work, etc.  Likewise, you'll have evidence of your learning in other forms besides course grades: published papers, your thesis (if it's a thesis-based program), recommendation letters from supervisors, etc.

So this isn't necessarily a red flag.  However, it is worth bringing it up with prospective advisors or others in the program: "I want to work in NLP.  What opportunities exist for building skills and doing research in this area?"

One note is that besides being accepted to the program, if you want to work in a particular research group, the faculty leader(s) of that group will have to agree.  And there could be obstacles unrelated to your abilities - too many students in the group already, not enough funding, etc.  So if you are really tied to working in this particular area, then before deciding to attend the program, you should talk to the group(s) that work in your area of interest, and find out if it is feasible for you to work with them.

Ask if they have some kind of "joker" courses (i.e., "Special topics in XYZ", can be taken several times for credit, contents to be arranged), and see if you can persuade somebody to teach it (might take gathering enough interested students, or just ask the professor nicely). Be warned, this will probably turn out more of getting some hints dropped in weekly meetings, studying on your own, get graded for some longueish term project, than "regular classes".


Does a recommendation have to be from a professor from your university? Suppose I want to get letter of recommendation for a PhD program. Could this letter be from someone not from my institution? Could is be from someone I have collaborated with online? Or generally do schools want recommendations from professors from a student's home institution?

A letter of recommendation absolutely does not have to be from someone at your university. It should be from someone you have collaborated with. In general, a letter of recommendation will be most valuable if:

It can speak to your potential as a researcher: letters from supervisors of research projects are much more valuable than letters from people who have only had you in class
It is written by someone well known in the field that you are attempting to enter. When this person says you have potential to be a researcher, it is much more credible if they have experience working with excellent researchers in the field.
It is written by someone who knows you well. They should be able to point to specific things you have done with them, specific conversations you have had, specific ideas you have had.

You should pick your letter writers by seeing how well they optimize these three properties. It won't matter if they are at your home institution or not. The only reason not to get a letter from "someone you have collaborated with online" is if they don't satisfy these criteria. In particular, I might be concerned that they don't know you well enough if you have never met them.

That being said, it might raise a red flag if none of your letter writers are from your home institution. But if you have one of these, that should be enough.

Generally if it’s for a PHD program they want letters of recommendations from a professor .
It depends on the program though, so it’s better to ask the admissions office at the school your applying to .


How to cite computer terminals like Bloomberg or Thomson Reuters? Consider that I looked up some data, more specifically credit ratings for a sovereign, in the Bloomberg and the Thomson Reuters terminal for my thesis:

  The sovereign is rated Aaa by Moody's, AAA by Standard and Poor's, and AAA by Fitch (Bloomberg).

What is the best practice to cite a computer terminal as the source after using data from that terminal? I mean there is no specific author or authoring date other than "Bloomberg" and the date that I've accessed it. And just stating "Bloomberg" as above looks odd.

This question is not directly related to any citation style, however I'm using BibTeX with the APA style for my thesis.

Unless there is a unique, persistent link to the statement from the rating agency - e.g. a link to their archive of ratings, etc, you cannot use that information as a citation. You should imagine the reader far in the future, reading and trying to verify your work - what would they consult, if anything in order to validate your statements, or reproduce your work.

If the agencies do not maintain a public archive, you may be able to take a screenshot of the terminal, and publish it to a place which will keep a persistent public archive of it, e.g. figshare.


How unusual is getting a Masters degree in a slightly different field than Bachelors? Would it be out of the ordinary to get a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering and then go for a Masters in something like Civil or Structural Engineering?

I don't know a lot about how transitioning to a Masters program works.. Do people usually continue on in the same field, or is branching out common?

This depends on where you are. In the US, this would generally not be too difficult, particularly if one uses elective courses at the bachelor's level to take some of the courses in the "new" field.

Here in Germany, it would actually be almost impossible to switch as you've suggested. The reason for this is that the "prerequisite" for enrolling as master's student in a particular field is usually taken to be the bachelor's degree in the same field as taught at the university!  This is known as a "consecutive" degree requirement, and makes life very difficult for people coming from outside Germany.

I know it is defintly possible. My father is a civil engineer and a couple of his coworkers have gone that route. I also know if you are trying to go into civil, many civil engineering companies like to hire a few mechanical engineers.


Can one without a single paper on a topic write a review paper about it? I am faculty in a technical field, and I started exploring a new research direction that I could work on in the coming years.
I have not worked yet on this particular topic I am exploring, but after reading a bunch of papers, I have a solid grasp of the state of the art and research opportunities.
Given that I read many papers and made lots of notes, I started writing a review paper summarizing the literature and discussing a research agenda. There hasn't been such a review paper published so far.
However, many journals are very particular about review papers. Their guidelines often state that it should be written by an expert established in the field (presumably one with many papers), and some journals even state that they welcome review papers by invitation only. I have written review papers before, but in this case I do not have a single paper written on this topic yet, so I am not sure how to proceed.
Would it be wise to continue writing the review and submit it somewhere? What strategies can I employ to increase the chances of having it published in a good journal?
As a solution, I can contact a more established person and offer co-authorship, but that does not have my preference as I am halfway writing the paper and I can finish it on my own.

The simple and short answer is Yes!
You have the freedom to try and publish anything you want, assuming the publisher is accepting it.
Now the long answer. Your concern is that since you do not have any expertise in this area you might do a poor job. This concern is valid and indeed there are high chances that you will do a poor job. But there is no rule written in stone that you cannot write a good review if you spend sufficient time and effort in learning about the new area.
Let us also explore a few more questions.
Why do we need to write review articles and if you get it published, will it be useful?
Review articles help many researchers in understanding the state-of-the-art in their field of research and sometimes new researchers actually start by writing review articles, in the first year of their PhD. And some of them end up doing a decent job with that.
Review articles are of a different nature. Some of them are written by experts in a field to make it more popular and they try to include reviews of articles written by their collaborators with the goal of improving their citations. I believe your goal nobler and you should carry on with it.
I am from the field of computer science and I just wrote a blog reviewing vaccinology 3.0 and how data science is enabling it. While doing this review I learnt a number of important concepts regarding vaccines and my review are also useful for an audience which is of similar background.
Since you are writing a more formal review you have more responsibility but with proper care and hard work you should be able to do a good job. Moreover, you will always get feedback from the reviewers which will help you a lot in further improving your understanding of the field.
Best of luck!

Please do not do this! People like review papers precisely because they are written by acknowledged experts in the area. Just don’t, please!


What should I do if my advisor urges me to do a project that I have no interest or faith in? About a year ago when I was a first-year graduate student, my advisor wanted me to follow up on a project left behind by an honors student. I agreed because, at that time, I thought the topic was important and the findings were rather interesting. However, over the past year, I was busy with other projects and my qualifying exam, so this project was put on hold for almost a year. This summer, my advisor urges me to get it done as soon as possible.

I'd be more than happy to, had I not realized the original project is not methodologically sound. My RAs who re-coded the original data share the same feeling: The experimenter made various mistakes and was overly flexible, yet all data points entered into final analyses. I don't want to spend months chasing after effects that don't exist. Moreover, due to the complex study design, I can foresee what a nightmare it can be to build computational models in the future.

I suggested radical changes that make the experiment more rigorous and subsequent modeling efforts more tractable, but my advisor refused my proposal several times, arguing that making any changes will only delay the starting time. I feel stuck: On the one hand, I don't want to pursue this project as it is since it's most definitely going to fail; on the other, I don't have the courage (or "moral capitals") to defy my advisor because I have put off this project for so long. To make matters worse, I only have one advisor, so if our relationship deteriorates, I have no one else to turn to.

Any advice on what I should do is much appreciated!

Sometimes it is necessary to "bite the bullet" and demonstrate that the method doesn't work. But you need to provide clear and irrefutable evidence in a way that can actually convince people, not just a vague claim.

A classic example of the failure to do this is the Challenger explosion: all of the information needed to delay the launch was known, but because the engineers who had the data didn't present it in a clear manner–just a raw output of data—their supervisors overruled them. If they had come in with plots showing failure of the O-rings as a function of launch conditions, anyone could have recognized the danger of the situation.

So if your advisor is insisting, you probably need to demonstrate why his approach  is infeasible or he will continue to insist upon it.

You are in a hard spot. I'll try to offer more than sympathy here. You seem to have tried the main direct approach (changing the problem) and indicate that the other (changing advisors) is closed off to you, so the advice will need to be a bit, well, subversive.

"Subversive" is probably the wrong word, so don't take it too literally. But note that proving that something isn't true is (or at least can be) just as valid as proving that something is true. Knowledge is advanced in both cases. If you set out to prove that "Dingledorfer's theorem proves the Smittyburger hypothesis" and learn that it doesn't, you may still have the basis for a thesis: "Dingledorfer's theorem doesn't imply the Smittyburger hypothesis". It is hard to speculate whether you have an option like that or not, but consider it.

The second option is that you can make the original study a very subservient part of the whole of your work. You can even, in the thesis, provided that your analysis here is correct, say why the original formulation is incorrect, make a correct formulation and work with that. Unfortunately that sort of thing costs you time as what was originally major is now minor.

However, I don't know exactly what you mean that you have "only one advisor". Is it the situation where no one else is available at all (small department...) or just that you have been assigned only one advisor from a larger pool. In the latter case, again costing you time, you can probably appeal to a higher authority and change advisors. The correct way to do this, I think, is to approach someone else with whom you believe you would be more successful and ask them to permit (and assist in) a switch. You could then go to the department head to make it a reality. I failed to do this once and it cost me more time than making a break would have. In my case it was extreme introversion and a fear of rocking the boat. But the boat needed rocking.


My advisor signed a contract to hire me, but then external funding fell through. Should I force him to take me anyway? I'm in a very strange situation. I have been accepted to a PhD program in the UK which was supposed to be financed by an external company (this was arranged by the advisor). I've already accepted and met my conditional offer and stipend but the external company withdrew their support and I (implicitly) understand from my advisor that without funding he will not be able to take me on.
From what I understand the accepted offer and stipend are considered contractually binding and that the lack of finding is not "my problem" anymore. Is that so? and if so, can I and should I really insist that my advisor take me on regardless of finding new funding sources?
Clarifications:

I have discussed this with him already; he is actively looking for positions for me elsewhere.
My contract does not say anything like "contingent on availability of funds."

Edit:
My goal was never to litigate the matter or get some compensation out of it but to find a way to do the PhD program. As many said in the comments it is not realistic to force such a relationship even if "i am in the right". He is already doing his best to find a solution and I will work with him to that end. I guess that if it fails I will simply move on.

Your offer is made by the University, not your advisor. Someone in admissions probably messed it up, but fwiw this is neither your, nor your advisor's problem. As soon as University gave you an offer, and you met the conditions, it's legally binding.
Many other answers are written under assumption that PhD is an employment and hence "probationary period" or "redundancy" can be applied. This is not correct. In the UK, PhD is considered "training", not employment. The University's offer for you is their promise to provide you with a particular service. Even if the industry partner goes bust (which is not impossible), the University is still under obligation to fulfil their side of the deal. If the University absolutely can not serve you (e.g. the only qualified professor has just left, the lab building collapsed, their license is revoken), they must find another suitable program for you and pay your tuition fees and relocation.
These obligations are not merely ethical, but can be and often are enforced. The relevant regulator in the UK is  the Office for Students. Obviously, I am not a lawyer,  so I can't give you any legally reliable advice. But I believe you are right and OfS will be able to support you if the University disagrees with your arguments in this case.

Talk to a lawyer.
This is a dispute regarding a broken contract, which is a legal matter that nobody here is capable of answering - even if someone here was a lawyer, they wouldn't be able to give you legal advice without taking you on a client due to legal ethics. However, a lawyer specializing in UK employment law should be able to advise you on the possible courses of action.
Note that I’m not counselling you to sue, but merely to speak to a lawyer, since they would be able to tell you what your options are.


Stepping around student religiosity In the not-too-distant past, I was teaching a course on cognition and language. One class focused on language and communication in different species. A student later emailed me to ask a number of clarifying and follow-up questions. One of which was "If God wanted animals to communicate, why wouldn't He just have them talk"? This student was an international student from a country where religion is a much more prominent component of public life, so - for lack of a better phrase - I took it as a good faith question that would have been pretty normal back home. I don't think it's my place to put forth my theological views, I don't teach anything close to religion/theology, so I answered the questions that I could and ignored the religious question. Is there a better way to have handled this?

Thanks

You were correct in not engaging in religious argument in an academic setting. But a valid answer, that is probably acceptable to most people, whatever their faith, is, "I don't know. Your question is outside the realm of science."

If further asked, "What do you believe?", you can say that it is a private matter.

Unfortunately too many religious discussions end up here.

Answer: "I have no idea why you are bringing this up here. Speculations on motivations of hypothetical omnipotent beings are not part of this lecture".


Entering Name With Accents on arXiv I'm trying to submit a paper on arXiv, but I can't figure out how to enter my name with accents.
It's supposed to say "Dörr", but arXiv turns it into this:
Image
I tried to enter the UTF character directly and also tried to use the latex syntax for accented characters, as described here.
Using a different browser didn't help either.
On the same site it says "make sure [...] that any accented characters are properly represented", so it has to be possible to enter them.
Any ideas? It can't be that difficult.

I contacted the arXiv support, here's their reply:
"This is actually something we manually fix later in the process, after you submit. Our legacy perl based system does not handle utf gracefully. If you proceed with the submission as is or with Tom D\"orr we will change it to Tom D\"orr in the metadata so that it will be displayed correctly.
We are also in the process of updating our code base to python/flask that will support utf."

I got rid of accent marks. You'll always have problems with them.


How to explain to my supervisor that her style of input is hindering my progress? I am in the fourth year of a part-time PhD. I have at least another couple of years left, the next two years are for writing up and this year was supposed to be for data collection.
I hit problems with research and data collection because of COVID, a lot of us did. But one of the things that has come to my realisation is that it is my supervisor who chiefly hindered my progress.
I cannot blame her for this, she is just doing her job and she is very respected in her field. I do like her. The main problems came in November 2020. I had a tutorial and I said, "I want to do X this way", she came back with "why don't you do it this other way?" I initially agreed but then, a few hours after the tutorial, I felt like the wind had been taken out of my sails. I didn't know it at the time, or understand it, but she had totally killed my enthusiasm, not only for the piece I was working on, but for the project. This has been going on since November and I have found it very hard to produce anything. In fact I haven't written anything since November apart from one piece.
The crunch time came a few days ago. I wrote a paper plan for her, something that I was interested and intrigued to get on with. The same thing happened again, she wrote back and said, "this is too broad, remove this [very interesting] part and focus on this [not so interesting but practical] part". Try as I might I could not muster the enthusiasm to continue and the paper has been shelved.
I had a discussion with her yesterday and we have agreed for me to take three months off. It occurred to me after our talk yesterday that the problem is that I am not given enough freedom to do my work how I want. YES she is the supervisor, and I am here to learn, I understand that, but this is not working for me this way. I now have three months 'off' but I am thinking of not not doing any work but doing things how I want to do them: I have enthusiasm again for the PhD and am starting to get filled with ideas. I have a research blog which I haven't updated for months because she wanted to vet anything I put on there, but, I asked her yesterday if I can put things up there ANYWAY in the next few months regardless of her input and she said yes.
I am worried that, after these three months, I will have put entries on the blog - much of the content/themes of which I want to put in the final thesis - but we will just go back to doing things the old way and she will say a lot of the stuff I wrote isn't that relevant and she will want me to focus on authors I am not interested in and for me to remove ideas I had.
How do I explain I need more freedom and her management style/suggestions are not working for me? Or should I not say that at all? I respect her and want to put this point across in the best way. Or do I just do three months of work my way and then, when she sees how effective a more hands-off approach is, she will agree to do things that way?

There are several intertwined issues here, and it is going to be difficult to sort them out:

Your supervisor is an expert.  She likely knows things you don't.  So if you suggest one way and she suggests another, it may be because she has seen that way tried before and knows that it doesn't lead anywhere.

Your supervisor doesn't seem to be great at leading, or doesn't recognize that you are not her colleague yet.  If two people at the same level are trading ideas, shooting them down or poking holes to patch can be a very useful exercise.  As a new researcher, you aren't at this level yet, but she may be treating you as though you are.

What you consider interesting and what she considers interesting may not overlap

What you consider interesting and what is actually publishable within the scope of a single paper or blog post may not overlap.

Let's treat these individually.

I have seen many grad students (and I have been one myself) who don't fully grasp the field.  I've read papers, thought "Oh, I can fix that problem", then gone on to work for a week and then find the paper written 20 years prior that solves it.  She has a much broader understanding of the field than you do, and she knows what's been done.  Take her suggestions helpfully: "I want to do X, but my supervisor suggested Y instead.  I'm going to compare and contrast the two methods in a literature review and see which is best".  That's your job as a PhD student anyway.

This is time for an awkward conversation.  Depending on your personality, I personally suggest being a bit blunt but polite.  Tell her what you told us: "When I suggest something and you change it, it takes my enthusiasm away.  Can we work together to make sure that my ideas are fully explored, even if they aren't the best?"

This is up to you two to figure out.  This is more fun.  Ask her what she thinks the big problems of the field are, why she's in the field, what interests her about new research etc.

My supervisor was phenomenally good at writing.  I am not.  He was also very good at focusing a paper onto the key relevant points.  I was not.  We fought over papers a lot, to be honest, and to be equally honest it was a mutual problem.  Both of us had reasonable ideas, but he was better at it and knew what it took to get published.  I did not.

If your supervisor thinks that you are proposing something too broad, that's a very, very good indicator that you are.  Think of those broad ideas as your research program, and the individual smaller ideas as your research projects.  Projects lead to papers, programs lead to careers.  Don't take it as "this is a useless idea", but more as "this is not suitable for publication because you haven't actually solved the big problem.  You have, however, solved a smaller problem that moves us towards the bigger solution.  Let's publish that and keep making progress"

Choose one of two options:

Get out as fast as you can by finding a new (synergic) supervisor and, likely, a new research topic. It also may mean moving to a different department or even University.
Continue grinding until you get the degree done.  Does not look as an enjoyable option given your experience with the current supervisor.


Could I choose a PhD supervisor from a different university? I want to apply for a PhD at a Canadian university, but I currently am in a Masters Program in the US. If I attend this new university, would I be able to choose a PhD supervisor from my current university?

It is very unlikely, probably impossible, that you could have a primary supervisor from another university, especially in a different country.
You also really need someone at your doctoral university to guide you through the rules and such of that university. Someone from the States wouldn't be very good at that.
However, some universities permit co-supervisors, so that might be a possibility. It would be easier if your primary supervisor has a professional relationship, already, with the person you would like from the States. It would be up to the primary (local) supervisor to agree to such a relationship.
And bad things can happen if it turns out that your various supervisors don't agree on things.

I changed universities between my Masters (actually, German Diplom) and PhD. However, it was in the same country. And I knew my supervisor-to-be by attending her lectures – there was a collaboration of both universities.
So, a good idea might be to go to your preferred institution as an exchange student.
Else, all the other answers on choosing a supervisor on this site apply.
Oh, and the affiliation of the supervisor matters. A bit simplified, you cannot be a PhD student at one university and have a supervisor somewhere else. Exceptions mostly involve the supervisor moving out and are, basically, a recipe for disaster. Don't do this.


How can I enter into the mathematics field at the graduate level when I only took a few math courses as an undergrad? Background
I was ignorant as an undergraduate and didn't focus heavily in any specific area. I finally graduated with a single math/computer science degree that consisted of 5 math classes beyond multivariable calculus and a few relatively basic computer science classes (algorithm analysis, SQL database design, etc.). My only research experience is in economics.
Now, I work at a research institution in economics where I primarily write Stata/MATLAB code.
Question
I'd like to get more mathematics under my belt over the next few years in order to either enroll in a PhD program in economics/finance or a M.S. program in finance. What are my options for getting more math experience that I can use in graduate school admissions?
Options
These are the options I thought of so far, but I would like to know more if possible.

Study enough courses through a system like Open CourseWare to gain enough experience to enroll in more advanced undergraduate classes part time, which my employer might pay for, and then ideally move into an M.S. program in applied math.

Return to my alma mater for a M.S. degree in math that would at least give me a basis to either move into another math graduate program with higher rankings or a lower-ranked graduate program in the fields of my choice.

Join the Air Force and hopefully take advantage of the GI bill to take more courses somewhere and gain entrance into an M.S. program in applied math.

(Sadly) Forgo advanced mathematics and find a consulting job, which although unpleasant in the field of economics (in my opinion), wouldn't be difficult to obtain given my research background in the field.

Do I have any other options? I also plan to take the GRE subject test in mathematics to prove that I have at least minimal knowledge, regardless of what course I pursue (since many graduate programs will require it).

It sounds like your best bet would be to contact the graduate officers at the economics and finance programs you're interested in attending, and ask them what their minimum entrance requirements are. It's a much more efficient route than just deciding to take more math courses, and spending significant time, energy, and money on a quixotic goal.

In my experience...
I needed a few business classes before I'd qualify to apply for the MBA.  So, I simply took a few business classes, after my BS.  Then, I had all of the undergrad requirements for the MBA program.

Figure out which advanced degree you want, find out the pre-requisites, and you should be able to take them, either at your undergrad college, where you want to go to grad school, or even somewhere else, or online.


Cannot present paper at conference. Instructor wants to move me to second author Due to unforeseen circumstances, I am not able to present my paper at a Computer Science conference. Without the presentation the paper will not be published. My instructor has said that she will present the paper instead, but wants to move me from the primary author to the second author. I did all the work as a graduate student while she reviewed and gave general feedback. What is the proper etiquette here? Is it okay to move her to primary because I cannot present?

UPDATE

In the interest of fairness to the professor, I want to provide some more background. This started off as a end-of-semester project. Each student needed to come up with an idea, then propose, implement, present and write a paper on it. I initially proposed a vague concept of using PSO to train neural nets. My instructor said her lab is working on something similar and if I wanted, I could tackle an extension to their algorithm, which depending on the outcome could lead to a published paper. During the course of the semester, my instructor offered little to no help for the project, presumably because that would give me an unfair advantage. All the work, code, paper, the specifics of the algorithm extension are all mine, and all I had was the published paper of the previous algorithm to work on.

After the semester was over, I decided to see if I could get it published. I noticed a lot of mistakes I made with my implementation during the tight semester time-frame and spent several months iterating and refining my process and results. I was put in touch with the previous researchers who offered little help with the exception of getting a portion of their source code, which was also of little help to me. I would venture to say that my professor's role in this was mostly advisory, although at the end of it, I would send my paper to her to proofread it.

Fast-forward to now, my instructor is claiming that because I am not presenting, I am not taking ownership of my work. She is also claiming that the work was her idea and based on her lab's previous work. She gave me a choice of swapping authors or withdrawing the paper. Note that a camera-ready version of the paper has already been submitted. I offered to withdraw from the conference. She then tells me that she has already registered the paper so I shouldn't withdraw, but she wants the source files for my work (I assume latex files?).

She has now invoked university policy and copyright law, saying that since both our names are on the paper, I cannot withdraw without her consent, which she has not given. Since she shares ownership of the paper, she claims she is also entitled to the source materials of the paper. She has offered not to change the author order.

That is the majority of the story. The actual email conversation was not as civil. I have graduated and moved on... we never actually met face to face since this was an online class. So... given the above story, have I done anything wrong? Is the instructor entitled to the source material for the paper? This is for the IEEE WCCI conference this summer. We are the only two authors on this paper. This is my first paper, this is not her first paper.

Who presents a work should not affect its authorship.

Authorship is determined by the contribution to the publication.  That work is complete at the time when the publication is accepted and the camera-ready is submitted.  Now, it is entirely reasonable (and in fact common) for a paper to be presented by somebody other than the first author, and it's quite normal for the presenter to highlight their name in the presentation.  In no way, however, should that change the authorship of the paper.

While other answers have given what I also consider the morally/ethically correct answer, that does not help you much. You can bask in the warm glow of being in the right, it won't get you forward in life. Question is: What will?

You mentioned "circumstances" prevent you from presenting the paper. Try changing them. I mean seriously try. If it costs you some money, pay it. If you have to break a promise to someone, let them be the one hearing "due to unforeseen circumstances". Go out of your way (not too crazy, but out of your way) to make it there.
If you really can't make it there, get someone else to go in your stead. Again, that may mean paying - even if only for their plane ticket / conference attendence. You might get this money back, but probably not. Yet, that's not an unreasonable sacrifice given the amount of time and effort you've spent. Who can do it in your stead? Another graduate student, or even someone you know who's going to the conference and not presenting himself that day. Or if you have a grad student acquaintance or collaborator at that university, try to get them to do it. Make super-professional slides for them to use. Tell them they're saving your ass and that you'd be eternally grateful. I actually wouldn't officially tell the organizers I'm not coming - let your replacement show up and tell the session chair that due to grave personal circumstances you could not make it and asked him/her to present in your stead. This is not unheard of, and is relatively well accepted - in my limited experience. (Of course, I might be overestimating the importance of the acceptance.)
Get the head of the lab or other researchers there (or your advisor like others suggested) to lean on that instructor. It's extremely poor form (although not uncommon) to try to hijack credit for something which grew out of a student's course project, and your instructor should know better. If you have a graduate researcher / all-levels academic staff union, consult them about it and maybe they can bring some discreet pressure to bear.
She's acting in a very underhanded way. So, if worse comes to worst, consider replying in kind. For example, you could promise her you'll ask for the switch, but fail to send the email; or email the wrong person; or misspell the address slightly. Or you could even write the same person earlier, describing (some of) the situation, telling him you might be forced to relinquish credit against your will and asking him/her to politely refuse when they get the request. Alternatively, if you get her on record essentially blackmailing you - either by email, but better perhaps by voice recording - you could, right after she makes the presentation, demand that she undo any request you have made for the switch, and threaten to publicly denounce her and/or file a disciplinary complaint against her. These last suggestions are more risky, so think about the pros and cons and don't follow them without careful consideration. Another, safer, offensive measure is getting your union to do something like the above on your behalf - but unfortunately many/most universities aren't unionized that way.


“Theories”/“frameworks” for how multiparadigmatic research should work (in the context of interdisciplinary research)? Interdisciplinary research is research generated from collaboration between people from different disciplines (or one person steeped in different disciplines).

This can mean simply that the multiple disciplines have knowledge of different domains of the world, and integrate their knowledge without any “paradigmatic tension” (where paradigm is meant in the philosophy of science sense, e.g. Kuhn’s sense). For example, a biologist and a chemist may cooperate on studying the biochemistry of a bacteria. The chemist has more knowledge of the low level chemical interaction, while the biologist has more knowledge of the higher level structure. The researchers combine knowledge of different aspects of the system, but are roughly within the same paradigm.

However, for some disciplines, especially in the social sciences, different disciplines don’t merely have knowledge of different aspects of the system, but have different perspectives/frameworks for analyzing the same aspects of the system. There is some “paradigmatic tension”. For example, economists often use rational choice models, and may even apply them in contexts that would traditionally be seen as in the domain of sociology (e.g. there is a famous model of ethnic segregation using a simple mathematical toy model and rational choice). On the other hand, sociologists also study segregation but tend to use an entirely different methodology and philosophy. I think both approaches can generate meaningful insight about the phenomenon. interdisciplinary research between these two would I guess look somewhat different than that between a chemist and a biologist. The researchers not only have different knowledge about different parts of the (social) system, but also have different perspectives/approaches to analyzing a given aspect of the system. The researchers study perhaps overlapping aspects of the same system, but are doing so in different paradigms, which may have some tension between them

I am wondering: Have things been written about how to deal with this latter type of “multiparadigmatic” research? Are there  frameworks/philosophies for how to get such different types of disciplines to fruitfully work together?

Interesting question. My suggestion would be to look in the social and historical sciences for advice how interdisciplinary research can work fruitfully. The standards of methodology and reproducibility can vary very strongly from fields like engieenring to psychology so that researchers from both fields have a very hard time to find a common denominator apart from common vocabulary or measured quantities.

In the social psychology/historical sciences branch I'm aware of very fruitful interdisciplinary projects/collaborations and results that have been published.

Even phycisists study social systems, nonlinearity of complex systems, population growth models etc. So often interdisciplinary research seems to be worthwile to understand which and how distinct quantities in complex systems are scaling. Multivariate statistics is a common method here to understand the structure of complex systems by different perspectives and methods. But a common scientific language or method seems necessary, even if it is as simple as counting things in both disciplines and relate quantities to distinct phenomena. While machine learning algorithms are not very smart, they can show at least whre possible correlations or dependencies from perspectives of each discipline are.

There have been many tests by researchers to publish nonsense articles in journals of other disciplines, e.g. Sokal affair. So rather falsifications of multiparadigmatic/interdisciplinary research.

I think a good place to look would be EU funding calls requiring interdisciplinary collaborators and setting up clear requirements and goals for the project results to get a picture what modern interdiscplinary research standards are.


My former PhD supervisor has published conclusions from my thesis without citing my thesis. Is this ok? My former PhD supervisor has just published a paper on a scientific subject investigated by me in my thesis.  The subject (or question posed), was an idea that I came up solely during my PhD and which I chose to investigate as a sub topic - my conclusions were published in my thesis in 2015 and I assume (from a legal statement in the thesis), that I own the copyright.

The paper just published has taken my hypothesis and explored it in more depth.  Some of my studies have been repeated by other people in the lab.  Moreover, some of the key conclusions made by me in my thesis have been made again.  I have not been credited in any way.

Is this plagiarism and should I pursue this?  I’ve left academia so no longer publish anyway.

My former PhD supervisor has just published a paper on a scientific subject investigated by me in my thesis...The paper [takes] my hypothesis and explored it in more depth. Some of my studies have been repeated by other people in the lab. Moreover, some of the key conclusions made by me in my thesis have been made again. I have not been credited in any way.
Is this plagiarism and should I pursue this?

This is not plagiarism: As you have noted, the paper [takes your] hypothesis and explore[s] it in more depth (emphasis added), i.e., the paper goes beyond your results to provide something new. To determine whether plagiarism appears elsewhere probably requires more information than the OP has provided.

I have not been credited in any way.

A citation to your thesis or any of your other published works would be appropriate, perhaps even required, e.g., if the paper is entirely built upon your work.