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As a PhD student, I want to limit myself to 40 hrs/week. How to maintain this boundary?
So I am considering a PhD position as it appears one opened up and I was contacted about it by a professor. I'm not desperate to get a PhD. I think it's a nice goal and I am interested in the subject but its completion is not something I am dead set on.
I have read some horror stories about hours worked which I refuse to fall into. I plan on documenting my hours worked and limit it to about 9-5, mon-fri, basically view it as a very poorly paying industry job while maintaining time for personal projects/startup ideas.
So my question is if my advisor starts to get pushy and demand I spend more time working, what's the best way to respectfully maintain my boundaries?
I figure the worst that could happen is my advisor cuts my funding at which point I would terminate. Practically speaking my MS is complete so besides giving me a bad reference there's not a ton that could be done to me.

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Many people draw conclusions out of your post like "I am not dedicated to research", "I will under no circumstances work longer then 8 hours", "as soon as I find something better, I will go". Can you comment on them how true or false they are? Also, which country do you want to do the phd in?

@user111388, some of your questions can be answered looking at: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/150158/phd-expectations-of-commitment

My interest in completing the PhD is dependent with how much benefit I gain from it vs doing something else which depends on opportunities available at the given time. Again I think it's a nice goal, probably worth trying but I will continue to also spend time on other things. I live in the US.

The best weeks of grad school were the ones where I worked 80 hours because I couldn't stop thinking about the fascinating problem I was solving.  I'd wake up in the night with a new idea and start working on it then.  Of course, not every week can be that way.

A PhD is an exercise in personal development.  If you treat it like a job you can leave at the office, you're only really cheating yourself.  You're right that the pay is poor - because the dividends are paid in experience.  People work hard at a PhD because you have a limited window of opportunity to make the most of your time there.  If you're planning to just treat this like a job, I'd seriously consider just getting a normal job.  The pay is better and you don't seem terribly interested in taking advantage of the non-financial incentives that make the PhD worthwhile.

@DavidKetcheson: For many people (and importantly, for the partners and maybe children of the students!) the 80h weeks are the worst. Especially if they are (maybe implicitly) mandated by the prof and not, as seemingly in your case, self chosen.

I strongly disagree that wanting to keep regular hours is missing the point of a PhD. I would actually say the opposite: failing to set boundaries around work during your PhD is a great way to ruin your mental and physical health, can make you susceptible to workplace abuse, and, ironically, will probably make you less productive. I would recommend that OP look into Cal Newport's blog posts on "fixed-schedule productivity" which address this exact issue in the context of graduate school.

Radhika Nagpal's piece entitled "The Awesomest 7-Year Postdoc" may also be interesting to OP. It is about setting time boundaries in the context of an assistant professorship, and provides some evidence against the idea that the willingness to work 80 hours a week is what determines success in academia.

First of all, I know many PhD students (also myself) who did exactly that and finished their phd:
They worked 40 hours a week (or less), had a "normal life" , knew they would go to industry afterwards and wanted to learn/do research before (and stay connected to the system "university") because they loved uni/studying. It helps that in my country, studying and also titles are traditionally seen as something valuable (so there is no feeling of "only study if this aids you in your future job" in my country).
Some students also saw it as a fun experience to live abroad before returning home.
For me, it was similar: I didn't want to become a researcher because for me the postdoc life seems horrible -- but one can do a phd realtively risk-free. (Now I teach at university).
It is certainly not possible to work only 40h with all profs/in all subjects. Maybe also not in all countries (in which one do you want to study?) Probably it is also not possible with the most famous universities/professors.
I do recommend you to do good research on your prof what kind of person they are. Is it possible to do this kind of work with them or not?
I do think your attitude "I am not dead set on completing" is great. If the prof makes unreasonable demands (or other things like misconduct), just go. When they suggest longer working hours, tell them you don't want to do this unless absolutely necessary, if they keep insisting, just go.
Do keep your eyes open while doing the phd for skills you need in industry.
Note that there are even (incredible) people who finish a  PhD and have little kids (and some of them, no partner!)
(Of course, you might have two fewer papers afterwards for a good university career, but as this doesn't seem to be your goal..)

+1, though I would strengthen "do good research on your prof" to "explicitly discuss expectations and goals with the prof before accepting the position."

Bear in mind that this "just go" ultimatum is equally likely to be wielded against you. PIs are used to being able to hold completion (and future career / network) over their PhDs, so you will need to mean it when you say this won't work on you

@benxyzzy: Yes. But if the professor says "do this bad thing or I kick you out" it is better not work with them.

This is almost word for word what I intended to reply. I was in that exact situation, had great fun with my PhD, had great fun with my friends partying hard, had great fun with my girlfriend to the point of marrying her and had a great time working for a company by the end of my PhD (which lengthened it by a year or so). I left academia after that (a mixture of not wanting to work in a feudal system, attraction to industry and willingness to quit at the top of the fun and to have only great, fondling memories of that extraordinary time in my life)

+1 across the board. I'd also advise you to contact some students who have worked with your prospective mentor to get a feel for what that person's expectations are like in practice.

This really should be updated with the field that your PhD was in, since not all are as conducive to what you are discussing.

One of the nice things about working at a university is that the working hours tend to be very flexible. In my experience, this is the main reason why PhD students (and faculty) don't have a 9 to 5 workday. Some work late, but many of those start late. Some work in burst, working long hours for some weeks (before a deadline), and taking it easy in other weeks. This flexibility is realy nice, but it does make it easier for advisors to demand unreasonable working hours from PhD students. We have all heard horror stories, but none of this happened to me or anyone I know directly. Most advisors are just normal humans who don't want to exploit others. Also, the topic of the power imbalance between advisors and PhD students is very well known in universities, and in all universities I have been at there are many faculty who may not be actively searching for signs of abuse, but do keep an eye open. None of this guarantees that no abuse happens, but it does put the horror stories in perspective (that does not help if you find yourself in such a horror story)
I have known one PhD student who maintained a Monday to Friday 9-5 workweek. This requires a lot of discipline, as you cannot rely on the institution to impose those hours on you (that is the flip-side of flexibility). She could do that by being very efficient while at work. By doing so, she got more work done than most PhD students who worked long hours. People, including her advisor, knew that, and respected her for that.
However, given the way you describe your "interest" in the position (not interested in completing, very poorly paid industry job), it does not seems you have the right motivation for this job. So I would recommend you think again whether this is really what you want to do.

I don't see the OP is not interested in completing the PhD. They mention they are not dead set on completing. I think that means "I want to finish, but if my advisor demands unreasonable things like abandoing the rest of my life I would rather give up". This is a good attitude, not a bad one. Remember that on this site, there is usually the advice "walk, don't run" and not "finish the phd no matter how much your health suffers".

The complete sentence is "I think it's a nice goal and I am interested in the subject but its completion is not something I am dead set on." That does not sound very motived to me...

It does exactly sound very motivated to me. OP wants to do research but not at the cost of their personal life. This is totally reasonable. (If everyone would do this, conditions for phd students would be much better)

@user111388 There's commonly a point in the middle of your PhD where you'll inevitably feel like giving up (which is an ok thing to do obviously, if need be, but may have an adverse impact on you in the short term). The thing that gets you through that is generally determination. The OP sounds half-hearted about finishing the PhD before even starting it. As a result, the chances that they'll end up giving up half-way through seem quite high. That won't be good for the OP. Few sensible PIs would accept someone with this attitude going into a PhD.

@StuartGolodetz:As I am not the OP, I can only speak for myself, but my attitude was similar: I was determined to finish and to work occacionally longer, if it seemed reasonable. What I was not determined to finish when it would mean working constantly overtime, be sexually harassed by profs (as collegues did), spend my free time with research, pay myself for conferences. If those things would have happened I would have left. But I finished my phd.

Note also the comment "I want some side hustles though and if they get funded or we're successful I would put the PhD on hold" - i.e. "I'm only doing the PhD as a 'faute de mieux' thing while I try and make other things work, and if they do, then 'c'ya!'." That just means taking up a PhD slot that the PI could have given to somebody else who actually intended to finish the PhD.

@StuartGolodetz: I do sincerly hope that my (bachelor and master) students, but also every phd student leaves university when they find a better path for themselves. That is more important for me as a teacher than that they finish. Moreover, I would recommend every phd students keep eyes out on industry - an academic career is nothing you should ever count on (before you are tenured).

@user111388 I'm not arguing in favour of working constant overtime. I am arguing against going into a multi-year PhD without being serious (it's in nobody's interests). Leaving in the middle of a PhD is ok, if it makes sense. Going into a PhD with an a priori high probability of doing that is silly. It sounds to me like the OP is thinking of doing that. It doesn't sound like you did that - and congratulations on finishing your PhD. No-one should have to accept being sexually harassed, clearly, whether in research or not.

@StuartGolodetz: I do think we agree on everything except on how motivated exactly the OP is. Probably we need further input from them here..

@user111388: I agree, young scientists do not realize how much of their work is pushing things ahead and feel that they are bound to being overworked. Young engineers understood that and will change jobs when what they do is not what they wish to do anymore. And this will force financing on academia, normal approach to work, the fact that maybe someone is not a milking-papers-producer etc.

I am very sorry you had such a bad environment around you that only 1 PhD student you ever known has worked 40h/w, while the others have done more. I hope you realise how toxic that idea is, and that asking for people to work more than that is not only making them be more unproductive, but also just plainly ethically wrong. I, and eveyone around me, worked 40h/w or less and got a PhD. Are we the best profesors in the field? no, but we got our PhD which is what OP is asking for.

@AnderBiguri No need to petty me. Neither I nor my collegues were exploited. We made a trade-off. We wanted to work when we felt like it, so we did not keep the 9-5 hours. I suspect we spent a bit more than 40 hours a week in the office, but not that much and that extra time was mostly spent on fun side-projects or simple chatting. This flexibility is one of the great advantages of working at a university. The point I made, is that you can do 9-5 hours if you want. However, you have to use your own discipline to maintain that, as you can't rely on the organisation to enforce it for you.

Apologies if I misunderstood, but this last comment reads very different to your post. Your post seems to suggest "only one person could even do it, and if you are not willing to, it seems that you are not ready for a PhD", which is the opposite message of what you just wrote. Once thing is wanting to stay more voluntarily, but you seem to suggest that that "volunteering" of your time is the only way of getting the PhD, which is not true. In some sense, you are saying that the only way to do it is by being happy with being "exploited". If that extra time is not optional, then its exploitation.

"basically view [the PhD] as a very poorly paying industry job while maintaining time for personal projects/startup ideas"
Only that a PhD is not an industry job. In fact it is not even a job, at least not in most cases, or the successful cases.
How does the following sound like?
"I want to star in films by Quarantine Tarantino or Martin Scorsese and become a Hollywood star. But I'm afraid they will push me to work beyond 40 hours per week for each film I'm starring in!"
Like any other highly creative and competitive work (e.g., film starring), doing research is not a job (again, in the successful cases). It is a dedication that one usually is passionate about. Viewing research and being an academic as a job is flawed in my opinion. Although it is possible to reduce it merely to "a job", it is logically flawed. If it is merely a job then it is not a good one: you can work less, be under much less pressure, and earn more and faster in other jobs.
Hence, my answer is that the premise of your question is dubious, and thus there seems not to be an appropriate answer to your question in the first place.

(Not the downvoter). I see no flaw: The user is motivated enough to work for less pay because of passion. But they don't want to work crazy hours. With "a job", IMO OP means "work job-like hours", not "doing something without motivation and passion".

Possibly it is unfair to use previous information here, but the OP has already discussed in length his/her "poor motivation" for pursuing a PhD in a recent question. This question seems to be a continuation of the same kind of reductive arguments trying to turn a PhD into a paid job, with the aim to minimise effort. In any case, the premise of this OP is wrong: a PhD is not a job!

or even "I want to win an Olympic gold medal in tennis, but I'm afraid they'll make me practice a lot".

Research is not highly competitive work, except for those aiming for a tenured position in a research university, or something similar. As most PhD graduates end up with jobs outside the academia, we should not assume that PhD students are even trying to become academics.

"except for those aiming for a tenured position in a research university, or something similar."---which is basically the vast majority of PhD students. So the fact that they don't end up with academic jobs just proves the extreme level of competition.

@Dilworth: do you have a source for your claim that this is true for the "vast majority of PhD students"? Among the math/computer science PhDs in my social circle, as well as among the psychology PhD students my wife supervises (and I work with on their statistics), I would say 10-20% of the students aim at a professorship. The vast majority I know just want to stay in academia for a few more years, go into more depth in a particular subject, and then leave. (As did I.)

There's quite a bit of research that shows working more than 40 hours a week makes your work quality worse and lowers your total work output. You haven't made a very good argument for working more than 40 hours a week on a PhD -- the gist of your argument is pretty much survivorship bias.

@StephanKolassa My source is basic reasoning: many human beings are competitive creatures who strive to achieve what they perceive as success. Academically inclined people who enter PhD already participated and succeeded in some academic competitions (grades, acceptance to grad school, etc.), hence they'd perceive as success climbing up the academic ladder. This concludes my argument. That said, I agree that many PhD students don't aim to continue in academia. But the reason in my experience is mostly that they're afraid they don't have the drive to succeed in such a competitive environment.

@Kathy I don't know how you or the OP count hours like "40 hours". I'm talking about the principle: the OP wishes to limit his/her efforts so to work on other projects. No research can refute the universal obvious: on average, as you put more effort and are more dedicated to a creative work, you achieve more (in sports, arts, research, etc.). As for "survivorship bias", I cannot comment because I don't know what that is.

This post uses false dichotomy.  Also, many films stars have working hour protections: https://www.sagaftra.org/rest-periods-forced-calls

@Dilworth In my experience, many PhD students choose to leave the academia, because the prize (faculty job) is not particularly good. Industry jobs often pay more, have shorter hours, and offer a better work/life balance. You have more choice over where you will live, and you can spend more time on research, as you have fewer other responsibilities. While you have more freedom to pursue your interests in the academia, many of the brightest PhD students would not take a faculty job even if they were guaranteed to get one.

@JouniSirén, of course, we are in agreement: being an academic is not a good career track. Conditions are bad and pressure is high. This is why I wrote that academic research is not a "job". It's a personal passion/devotion mostly. (The same with e.g. being an Olympics athletic. It's not a good career.)

@StephanKolassa: I can add that in my field (chemistry) it is also very common to do a PhD while never intending to go for tenure track. If you want to go e.g. into industrial research or higher level industrial jobs, a PhD is pretty much required.

Getting a PhD is not comparable to "star[ring] in films by Quarantine [sic!] Tarantino or Martin Scorsese". Not even remotely close.

Exactly this! I found myself recently saying in the heat of the moment "I refuse to work for money!". And then I've though about it and I actually agree - I am doing stuff that I find fun, that I am passionate about, that I am dedicated too, not because somebody pays me but because that's what I truly want to do. If I actually had to work (i.e. do stuff I have to rather than want to) to get compensation, I know I could get a better paying position. If my academic job ever starts feeling too much like work -- that is very likely the plan. But, it's not about the hours, it's about content.

Phd students and movie stars should be both passionate, yes. But to compare them, maybe phd students should earn the same money as Tarantino movie stars first?

I do think it is possible to do a PhD and only work 40 hrs a week on a normal week, if you are head down, supper efficient and committed with in that time. I'm not sure how possible it is if you are absolutely ridged about that, never working more than 9-5 irrespective of the circumstances. There will be times when experiments take longer, or deadlines are approaching when more is needed. The better organised you and the supervisor are, the less common such time will be, but I don't think they can ever be completely eliminated. For what its worth, I think this is also true of any profession job, academic or not.
In terms of commitment, I think its healthy to feel that you could walk away if it doesn't work out. But do have to want it to work out. The way you word things makes me feel like it working out and you finishing are not even  your best case scenario (which would be your side hussle to pay off). If you are taking a PhD, the supervisor (at least a good one) if investing a lot of their personal capital and work into you. A student who leaves is a black mark against a supervisor. For a young supervisor in a competitive field it can be career-ending. For a poor or abusive supervisor this is deserved. And if the PhD is making somebody unhappy, hopefully a good supervisor would be able to take it on the chin. But to go in with this being your preferred outcome is not a good sign. This is what I meant when I talked about taking a PhD "in good faith" on your previous question.
If what you want is a poorly paying industry job, get a poorly paid industry job. A PhD is not an equivalent experience.

If you want to maintain this boundary, I would say it's quite simple. You tell the professor now, before starting the PhD: "I will not work beyond 5pm or on the weekends. I do want to keep side hustles going. Do you still want to offer me the PhD position?"
If they say yes, awesome, start the job. If they ask for more time from you, remind them of the boundaries you told them about before starting. As you say, there is not a whole lot that can be done to you, if getting the PhD or the recommendation is not important to you. However, do not be surprised if under these conditions, they do not want to offer it to you: I know of multiple professors who refused to take students who wanted to keep their own company going during the PhD. Precisely for the reason you mention: if the company takes off, the student will usually want to focus on that and not their PhD. And do be honest about this: pretending the PhD is your ultimate goal to the professor, while it's not, is not ok.
That said, even if the professor says yes, I would think really hard about whether you want to do this. There is nothing wrong with protecting your time off, and I actually think that on average I did not work much more than 40 hours per week during my PhD (I did some 80-hour work weeks before conference deadlines, but there was probably also enough slacking to offset the extremely busy weeks).
But this attitude of really not wanting to work a minute more and not caring (a whole lot) whether you finish is not often found in PhD students. It is also an attitude that may limit what you get from the PhD in terms of opportunities. If you're also happy to walk away after two years with no papers and no new opportunities (and possibly some burnt bridges) - then you have nothing to lose. If you would not be happy with that outcome, then consider it some more.

"It's quite simple" -- if and only if you have good social skills to formulate this well. "I don't want to work more than 40 hours on average" might sound bad to say in an interview, even if the prof was okay with it.

I would try to publish at least one paper, making it somewhat worth while even if I didn't complete it.

@FourierFlux If a professor still says yes after you say to them what you described here, here's something to think about (although it's less of an issue with PhD positions than "postdoctoral" ones): Is there a chance that this professor was just looking for more manpower for their lab? Someone to get mechanical work done? Do the programming, do the experiment, move the big project forward (their project, not yours): these are things you can do Mon-Fri 9-5 and treat as a normal job.

@FourierFlux  If this is what that professor expects of you, you'd also be denied any independence, the chance to set your own course, the opportunity for creative work, all of those things that are worth getting out of a PhD. If you present yourself as just wanting to be a worker, with strict separation between work and personal time, you risk being treated as a mere worker. Except you'd get much lower pay than if they hired a programmer or a technician. So what would you be gaining from the PhD?

Same as with a related question, there is an issue of the field.
You might not be able to, if your field does not permit

Are you basically doing an office job in a low-competitive field? Probably, yes.
Are you literary working in a field? Probably, no.
Are you working with animals or cell cultures? Probably, no. And also forget about holidays and weekends for the duration of your PhD.
Is it easier / cheaper to get machine / instrument time during non-working hours and you really need those 1000000 cores / 100000 MWh / 1E14 MeV / 7 meter dishes for your research? Probably, no.
Do the experiments take a lot of time and typically finish in the middle of the night? Probably, no.
Do you need to perform observations at night, because Sun is evil? You guess it!
It is well accepted in your field that a person cannot maintain top intellectual performance for the full 8 hours and you really need that to get your research done? Probably, yes. (However, my impression is that mathematicians use quite every single moment of time for their research, they just interweb highly demanding parts with routine.)
Are there too many aspiring PhD candidates and too few positions? Probably, no. Because, why get someone, who works 40 hours/week, if you can get someone willing to work 80 hours/week for the same money? Sorry, this is cynical and probably against the law.
Again, are there too many aspiring PhD candidates and too few positions? Then it would be possible to hire someone for 20 hours/week and to coerce them to work 40+ hours and also on a weekend. Again, labor laws might have a different opinion on that. But, probably, no.

What are your goals?
People here mentioned a lot about PhD studies not being a job, research passion, and so on. If some anecdotical evidence helps you, most people I know, who have remained in academia, do not work 9-to-5.
So, if your goal is to stay at the university after your PhD: probably, no.
But why?
You might ask, why are we doing all this? Why are many of us sacrificing a lot of non-working time to do work-related things? Very simple. Research, and, by extension, academia, is not a job. It's a passion, which, coincidently, gets the bills payed.

I think the problem is more the funding than the field itself. It is completely thinkable that people in biology etc. have holidays, get properly compensated for working at night - the problem is only that their is too less money and too many people are willing to take the little money.

Funding is a problem, too. But the thing I've head through a grapevine, almost verbatim: "If you work with cell cultures, you don't have weekends, because you need to feed your cells every day". It might be insufficient funding for technical personnel, yes. Or it might be just how some labs roll.

But that's not the cell cultures, but funding or a sadistic professor. In the so-called "real life", there are also jobs where 24/7 someone has to work (eg prison or public transportation), yet people alternate on weekends and get paid a bonus for working on weekends and get the time they worked off during the week.

@user111388 No, it's the cell cultures, or the animals, or so forth. There are similar jobs in industry where you know going into it that you might need to work a weird shift or late nights here an there since someone has to be there to do the work. Ideally you work in a big enough group where you coordinate the bad shifts (academia) or you are compensated for it (industry), but sometimes it just is what it is.

basically view it as a very poorly paying industry job while maintaining time for personal projects/startup ideas.

That is a bad way to start a PHD. There are a lot of "poorly paid industry jobs" in which the misalignment between you and your supervisors expectations will be smaller.
Yes, you can do a PHD 9 to 5, yes you may even get the title, and yes, maybe your supervisor is ok with the 9 to 5 part. What they definitely will be not ok with is that getting the phd for you is a low priority.
Maybe they would be happy to hire you as a lab technician (yes, bright people are needed there too, even if they don't want to get professor). But the continued mismatch between your goals and what you signed up for can not be a persistent thing. What I could imagine what works is: you check for 6 months, maybe you opinion changes. If it doesn't, you talk to you prof an tell him you are willing to work in the lab, but that a scientific career may not be for you (that is a discussion they will have had more often in their life).

I like your question. I don't think so what you propose is possible. Time limits would only be enforceable in jobs which are well defined for example cutting the grass, fielding sales calls, etc. PhD is an open-ended job, quite unlike conventional ones. It is done with a fixed goal in mind. The goal may be to publish a certain amount of papers, do sufficient research, etc. Basically do some amount of work which would satisfy your supervisor.  When the works are ill-defined they are less enforceable in the amount of time they take. This problem is surely going to torpedo your working hour limits. Hence it would either cause you to leave within a month or so or you would continue to solder on having completely betrayed yourself.

Of-course all this is assuming you can get an advisor to agree with your terms of working hour limits. You should count yourself to be very lucky indeed to get hold of such an advisor in the first place.

It is an interesting question. What you did not mention is what discipline you want to do a PhD in and in what country.
For instance, in the UK, PhD costs a lot of money (about £9000 per year for at least 3 years for home students and at least twice that for internationals). So, if you are paying and have done 2 years already (and spent £18000 only on fees and about the same on living costs) you are unlikely to do out.
Saying that, most people do not pay for themselves though. There are a lot of funded positions (and you will even get reasonable bursary), but they have a catch. If you are funded by the department or university, you will have to do teaching (usually, 500 hours per year, lab sessions, marking, etc). Alternatively, your position can be funded through the project grant which your supervisor has. In that case you will have to work on the project besides your PhD topic. In any case, you will effectively have two jobs.
Also, discipline do matter. I cannot say for Humanities (probably reading enormous amount of literature), but on physics, chemistry, biology you will have at least some experimental work. Some experiments are very-very long and/or require attendance over several days (including weekends). You may have some resources they require regular maintenance, e.g. mice or mosquitoes which need to be fed and cared for 7 days a week. So, in this case keeping it to 40 hours a week is virtually impossible.
In disciplines like maths, computer science, data science etc it is a bit easier. You can choose when and where you are working, but these disciplines usually involve a lot of coding, which again usually requires about 10 times more time than planned (due to code debugging).
I have done PhD in applied math, I was definitely working much less than 40 hours a week (except about 2 months during writing thesis) and still did it in less than 3 years. Yes, I was also teaching and doing actually much more than 500 hours a year (getting very generous pay for the extra hours).
In general, I would not say that normal prof will demand you to work any specific number of hours. Academia is about flexibility. Nobody cares whether you are working 1 hour a day or 20 hours a day. All people care is the results you get.
The biggest issue here is that I am afraid, you have a bit wrong attitude towards academic work in general and PhD in particular. Even if you do not actively working on something, you usually keep thinking about something ("where is the mistake?", "How to make this work?", "How to improve this?", etc). Academia is not an industrial job, it is a way of life. And PhD is not different. And you should enjoy this way of life. At the same time I should admit that I can spend a lot of time with family and maintain healthy work-life balance.
So, if you are not sure, I would suggest going to industry for several years and then decide whether you need a PhD or not. Actually, many large companies would happily fund your PhD course if you will make a compelling case that you need it to fulfill your duties better.

It does not change much, but fees for home students are less than half of that (£4,327 for 2019-20)

"Alternatively, your position can be funded through the project grant which your supervisor has. In that case you will have to work on the project besides your PhD topic."
In most cases the PhD topic is part of the bigger grant project, not a separate one.

Thank you very much for correcting regarding fees. You are right, PhD fees are a bit lower than UG and taught PG degrees. Yet, it is still a lot.

Regarding the project funding, PhD topic is usually related to larger project, but in most cases not exactly the in line with the project. So, whereas learning part can be combined, actual research is actually separated. That is from my experience working in several research groups with PhDs...

You state clearly that you wish to have finite commitment because you want to reserve time for other projects.    What you are describing is de facto part-time  studies.
If you are serious about your PhD, it will require as much time as needed to complete it, with little to no time for start-ups.  If you are serious about a start-up, this will also require as much time as needed, leaving no time for a PhD.  [Famous quote: you do not own a start-up, the start-up owns you.]
In a PhD or in the start-up world,  there will be moments when 40hrs/week will be vastly insufficient because of deadlines, i.e. exams, presentations, prototyping etc to prepare.  If you are working on an experiment or doing field work, you need to do as much as possible when the apparatus works or when you are in the field: one does not stop at 5pm after spending all day correctly tuning some piece of equipment.  If you have an investor meeting on a Monday morning, expect to spend the weekend working on your product, or the sales pitch, or whatever is required by your boss on Monday morning or before.
Finally, if you want your supervisor to commit time and resources towards your success, you better first show that you yourself are willing commit all the time needed.

Talk about this in your interview. If you aren’t having an interview, you need to make sure there is one - you need to hear the professors expectations, and share yours. If you aren’t on the same page with the professor about hours and other factors, you’ll have a challenge staying in the limits you want to set yourself, or it will lead to conflict.
A 40-hour per week doctorate is possible, if you are not expected to teach or pick up other duties besides those purely related to your research.

But, as I said somewhere else, formulate your statemwnt well! Most supervisors I know who have no problem with someone working "only" 40h would be turned off if someone says at the interview "I only want to work 40h on avarage". First impressions are important!

The first thing would be to make sure the professor you would be working with does not expect anything else. That would mean speaking to people who know them, have worked with them, or even email some of their past PhD students to see what they are like as a supervisor. Even better if there is someone in the department you know well that you can ask about them (via unofficial channels as any bad habits are more likely to be glossed over via email ect). And when speaking to them about it, it is worth raising this as a concern and ask about it. If they try to emotionally manipulate you (e.g. 'you should do this because you love it' or something to similar effect) then you can just safely ignore the offer.
A practical point if you do start is to organise regular meetings with your supervisor (which you can also ask them about) and keep track of what you accomplished in the last week and what you aim to do in the next week and in the next month to help keep you on track. This may help you be more productive, but you are going to have to work smart during those 9-5 hours. You may also have to be flexible and expect to work longer some weeks and less other weeks, or working a non-standard work week (particularly if you have international collaborators or experiments to run).
But the most important question is why are you considering doing this PhD? You said that you would be happy not to complete. Is this a field that you are interested in and want to learn more about? Is this a field you want to work in at some point in the future or are open to an academic career? Are the skills you would pick up important for future work or would you like to do a start-up in this field? Is this a placeholder that you aren't against doing but really is just there to fill time?
If this is not important for your goal career or not something that you really want to learn more about (and are willing to dedicate a number of years of your life to) then you might want to ask yourself what other options could you take that would help you towards that goal. If you are interested in start-ups you could try to get employed at a start up to see how people run them, as well as potentially getting some connections that are important for initial funding. But also keep in mind that if you are interested in start ups in this field you have been working on then the skills you would gain in a PhD would be useful, particularly there are some similarities between a start-up's lean development, and the hypothesis design/testing of research (I'm particularly thinking in the sciences).

It is actually very difficult to maintain any boundaries while doing PhD. Up to degree that in some universities PhD students employed 50 % are expected to work somewhat 120 %, and whose who do not are quickly dismissed by professor simply saying "I think you are not the right person type for a scientist".
Researchers are, you see, mad a little bit, just like a pop culture pictures them. If you want to "balance life and work" or something the like, just do not join them.
Similarly, students are often expected to work hard and not to "balance life and work" instead. PhD is still considered an education.
I do not know, maybe somebody see this answer as disrespect to something but I would like bystanders to know how the knowledge and technology we all later enjoy is built. Regardless if you search for a new planet or a new algorithm of computing, it is always a real hell of work and uncertainty.

As someone who is about to finish his PhD soon, the fact that you consider this "normal" is the problem itself. If what you're suggesting is true then it means that Academia is toxic to a healthy lifestyle on principal.

I do not know exactly the recent situation, but at the time I was doing PhD it was not uncommon to employ PhD students in some branches (notably biology) 50 %. This does not mean that these students were expected to work 50 % only, and I know the case when a person who assumed have been dismissed as I describe. This was happening inside a highly reputable university on the center of Europe. I know laboratories where professor called a meeting on Saturday, expecting all to be present. As a researcher, I see unethical to adjust the truth regardless if it looks toxic to somebody or not.

I agree with h22 that this thread is giving prospective PhD candidates a false impression, which is unethical. The current publish or perish working culture is more often than not toxic to a healthy lifestyle (look up mental health surveys of PhDs, almost all of them excelled as undergraduate students), and we should not hide that, putting all responsibility on the individual with statements like "but if you are very disciplined you can do it in 9-5" or "you don't belong to us if you are not passionate enough to be in work mode 24/7".

The overworking culture may not be worth it, and we need to think something about that. The overworking culture exists.


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How is it possible to do a master's and PhD program at the same time?
I was browsing through Academia SE and found this question.
To save you from reading the whole thing, here is what confused me: the person who asked a question is in Master program at university, but the top answering person (with high reputation) asked them "By the way, do you mind my asking, why aren't you in a PhD program? In physics it seems a bit unusual to be in a Master's only program."
Maybe I got something wrong, but does this person mean that you could be in the Master AND in PhD program at the same time? How is it possible? I am going to apply to a Master program next year (in Europe: Finland, Switzerland, Russia, etc.) and all universities without exception require finished Master degree in order to apply for PhD program. I always thought that the process is the same worldwide, i.e. Bachelor -> Master -> PhD

In the US, in many fields, it's common to enter a PhD program with just a bachelor's (and typically, someone who does that can earn a masters along the way to a PhD.)
I did this myself - I am an electrical engineering PhD student with only a bachelor's degree.

Why is it so? I mean it basically gives US students PhD in much less time than students in Europe and Asia. Seems a bit unfair to the rest of the world, if there is no good reason.

@Science not really, see Why is there such variation in PhD length internationally?

oh, so most USA PhD programs are 5-7 years after Bachelor? hm, it makes sense.... Sorry, I was not learning much about USA system since it is not an option for me. Turns out its quite different from part of the globe I live on :)

@ScienceSamovar But actually, following your logic, the UK PhD students are at a disadvantage (check out my answer too). You can start a PhD programme straight after your BSc, and that would still last 3 to 4 years (3 of which research focused), or at least the funding would.

In addition to the other noted answers, sometimes it's possible to actually be in multiple graduate programs simultaneously if you obtain admission to one while in the other.
For example, I did not get into my Ph.D. program when I first applied, but did manage to get into the M.Eng. program, which had a separate and much easier application process.  While in the M.Eng. program, I applied to the Ph.D. program again and was admitted.  My second year of M.Eng. was thus also my first year of Ph.D.  All of the human administrators dealt with this as fairly routine, but I had some difficulties with the computerized systems from time to time.

It can depend on whether the masters is a research masters or a course work masters. In my field of psychology in Australia it is common to do a combined Masters/PhD where the masters involves coursework and placements required for registration as a psychologist and the PhD involves doing a large thesis.
More generally, it would occasionally make sense to combine some more ad hoc course work masters with a PhD. For example, you might do a course work masters in statistics in parallel with some quantitatively focused PhD. Doing such courses in combination might violate some university rules about additional study or it might require the student to do a PhD part-time while they are doing units in the course work masters.
If you are talking about research masters degrees, then it doesn't make sense to do both a masters and a PhD by research at the same time. The exact relation between these two degrees can vary a lot between institutions, but here are some possible scenarios:

Students may be required to enrol in a masters and if they do good work, they may be allowed to upgrade to a PhD. This can be the case where the student failed to get adequate grades to get direct entry into a PhD.
Students may be required to do a masters by research in order to do a PhD. In other cases, students may simply be required to have completed a previous research thesis. So for example if they haven't completed an honours thesis, then the masters thesis is an alternative way of satisfying this requirement.

hm, It seems Australia is also not quite the same as Europe in that sense. I haven't seen any mention of research and course work masters, here it is just master and that's it. Like I learned in the other answer, the rules are not so similar to EU/Asia as I thought.

@ScienceSamovar Actually the UK (I know they don't really consider themselves European but ha) has both the Masters by research and ... coursework one (forgot the name). France also has something similar, two distinct types of Masters (tho I forgot their names too.. I am bad with names), one better suited for people with aspirations to research.

Since nobody mentioned it yet, the situation in the UK is similar to that of the US - a Bachelor's degree is enough to get you into a PhD programme.
The "classical" PhD here is a 3 year position, the students enrol into a Masters (by research) programme and turn in a transfer request after a year, entering the PhD programme proper. A newer format comes in the form of CDT ("Centre for Doctoral Training") positions, formally 4 years long, where the first year includes (fairly heavy) coursework and the rest focuses on research.
Still, a large portion of PhD students in the UK actually have their Masters when starting a PhD position. I attribute this to the fact that there is actually relatively low amounts of UK students vs. EU and international (non-EU) students, and they typically start applying for a PhD when it is common in their countries (having the UK as just one of the options for a PhD).

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How to choose between industry and academia after mediocre past work in both?
I feel like I am at dead end of my career, need some guidance to restart it. Here is my status:

Masters in Physics (2009)
Industry position (2009-2013)

In the industry position, I learnt machine learning for applications in biology. After four years of work experience, my career reached a saturation level since I was always at back-end due to field mismatch, even though I was excelling in my work, so I decided to pursue PhD in my own field, Physics, to give a boost to my career (not a wise choice I know). I was doing fine in my PhD and
   then my supervisor left the university for a better opportunity and I
   had to take up another project delaying my PhD by at least 2 years.
   During PhD, I have taken one year maternity break as well, followed
   by juggling between PhD work and baby. Now, somehow I have submitted
   a mediocre level thesis last month.

PhD in Physics (2013-present)

I am 34 years now, with no
   clarity on what I want to do in career and financially broke since my
   funding got over more than six months back. Neither I am good at
   machine learning, nor at my PhD work. I don't have any teaching
   experience as well to go to academia so I am not sure how will I
   perform there. Going for postdoc with a two year toddler and at this
   age also looks daunting. So I have no clue from where should I
   restart my career. My confidence is at all time low level.

Dear negative voter, if you are reading this, may I know the reason for negative vote? I have been following SE and have seen many people posting their issues, so it would be nicer if you can tell me the reason for voting down this question. If it is so off-topic I will remove it. Thanks for your help.

I tried to improve the layout slightly, I hope it helps, if not please revert. (I'm not the negative voter and I think negative voters should explain downvotes.)

Thanks a lot user2768. It really helps!!

Any other  reason you left industry besides my career reached a saturation level? (I am not the downvoter, I actually upvoted the question).

Hi sccaahu, it was a research oriented profile and people with PhDs were getting promotions and career growth. I tried for a part time PhD as well while continuing same works but they had tie-ups with only biology department where I was not eligible for admission. Hence, I planned to pursue PhD and move back to my core field. But it didn't work out as expected.

Some negative voters explain themselves as a matter of course. Others seldom do. But I've never noticed anyone responding to a plea to explain. It could be anything. Even a stray word.

Not the downvoter but you probably got a downvote because this sort of "what should I do or how should I choose" question is not typically well-received here. There are too many factors and mostly it comes down to "it depends on your circumstances and values."

Thanks Bryan for constructive feedback!

I'm upvoting just to cancel out the negative votes.

@Allure That's a terrible abuse of the voting system. I hope you also vote down to cancel out everyone's upvotes...

@curiousdannii I disagree - upvotes are more benign than downvotes and in my opinion should be used liberally. But that's a discussion for the meta.

Editing the title...the stated title was far too broad (which probably led to the close votes / downvotes), but the interesting (i.e., generalizable) piece of your question is your (claimed) mediocrity both in past industry work and in academia

You're in the lucky position of having both industry and academic experience. That gives you a much better view of what to do next, and you can use your experience to inform yourself about the better option.
If you go to industry, chances are you'll have a more stable life. You won't have to move as often (possibly never). This could be better not only for you, but also for your child/significant other. You'll be paid more. You'll deal with different kinds of problems. If you're considering this path, I wouldn't worry too much about you being "not good" at machine learning because you've already excelled at your previous role. The odds are also good that you'll have learned something transferable in the course of your PhD.
If you stay in academia, chances are you'll have to move, a lot. Postdocs are transient positions that don't usually last longer than a few years. You'll also usually be paid less - often substantially less - than in industry. On the other hand you'll get to think about blue-skies problems that you might enjoy more, you'll have more flexible hours, and you can often work from home quite easily.
So which option do you want? Only you can make that decision. I'll just suggest one more thing: compare the time you spent in industry (2009-2013) against the time you spent in the PhD (2013-present). If you were stuck in a time loop and had to relive those years again and again, which epoch would you rather relive? I would favour that option.

Thanks a lot Allure! This is a nice comparison of both industry and academia jobs. Really appreciate it. It would have been best if both my experiences were in same direction. But currently these are totally out of phase, with nothing common in both. Looks like I will have to let go of either of experience counting PhD years as just a degree.

Look into getting a government job.  DOE labs, NSA, NIH, NASA, etc.  Depending on how it works out, can be interesting work.  Pay is decent and job security high.  Often in desirable cities as well.
I don't think the postdoc makes sense, given your situation.  You can apply for industry jobs also, but even here, they may be looking for someone a little more eye of the tiger.
P.s.  Don't sweat the mediocre thesis.  Pass-fail.  Just get the ball across the goal line.  Doesn't matter how fancy as long as you get the Ph.D.

I'm going to assume your statements about mediocrity are true, though obviously it is difficult to judge oneself.
I would not pursue an academic career. As you are probably aware, academic careers are hyper-competitive. Even getting a post-doc in physics is surprisingly competitive these days. With your academic background, you may not be able to get a spot even if you try. Moreover, there is absolutely no value in doing a post-doc that does not lead to a permanent position. While you may find post-doc work to be fun, you will eventually find a good permanent career that is also fun -- it's a much more efficient use of both money and time to start down the road to a rewarding permanent career now rather than putting it off further. Even permanent spots teaching college are surprisingly competitive, and that does not seem to be a passion for you.
There are interesting jobs with your background. Companies will not view you as a failure -- you got your PhD (in physics, no less) and have some background knowledge in machine learning, which is very useful these days. You need to see yourself in this way as well. So start looking for jobs and doing some interviews -- you'll see a lot of boring stuff that's really depressing, but you'll also find some interesting stuff, and you can narrow your search from there.

While your path has been difficult, don't think that it leads to a dead end. Others have (and are) traversing similarly difficult situations. But it is probably a mistake to try to do too much on your own.
I'd first suggest that academia is probably a better option for a woman with a young kid. Schedules can be arranged. Universities can sometimes provide day care. Student helpers can be paid to babysit. Some companies have good records recognizing that people have families, but I think that is more rare.
Next, I'd suggest that you try to exploit your contacts as much as possible to find you a suitable position wherever it is. Your current advisor may be able and willing to help, but your previous advisor might also be a good resource, as you were doing well with her/him. People you have met at conferences and such may be able to support you. But try to build up such relationships in any case. Every young (yes, you included) needs a circle of associates with similar interests. Older researchers seem to have these but actually they were built up over time. Other faculty as well, both in your doctoral program and earlier education.
Your age is not an issue. My former spouse started her career at over 40 and did very well (retired now).

Thanks Buffy for the encouragement. Yes, I had good rapport with all of my advisors and my acad record have also been good. I have been a topper throughout my academic career, probably that's why it is more demoralizing to end up in such a situation. Liked your suggestion to build up contacts be it industry or academia. Thanks again!

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Are experiments described in scientific papers *actually* peer-validated today?
Background: the answers and comments on this question prompted this question.
I know that when a new scientific theory is published there is a rush for people to devise experiment to prove or disprove it. However there is lot of research that involves original experiments that are not necessarily related to new not-yet-proven/accepted theories.
Now, obviously science relies heavily on peer-verification of theories and experiments, but are experiments today actually verified by independent peers?
The thread I linked to made me grow some doubts: if an experiment has so much trouble being funded, how is it possible to scientifically verify the results of already published data, especially of high-cost experiments. If there is no incentive in doing that verification, how can articles describing a new experiment be validated scientifically?
Disclaimer: sorry for the possible dumb question, but I had only a brief experience in academia at the beginning of my career (and it was in SW engineering, where "experiments" are way less common than proof of concepts software, so verification is a far less difficult subject there).
As a further explanation of my doubts, the last time I remember an experiment being rejected because it couldn't be validated was the thing about cold fusion by Fleischman and Pons, back in the late 80s. At least that was a case that reached mainstream media. I guess such events (both validation and rejection) are more common in the specialized journals, but I don't remember any other "big event" that reached the mainstream media since then.
Please, note well that I'm not claiming that experimental results never get published by the mainstream media, here I'm focusing on the validation by peers that are independent from the original authors/scientists.

Maybe I wasn't too clear, possibly because I didn't use the right terminology.
I'm not particularly interested in the review process details (although I welcome any correction about my lack of terminology), but in actual scientific validation of experimental results.
What I really care for is whether or not published scientific experimental results are effectively put under experimental scrutiny by the scientific community.

Related: Who is supposed to repeat experiments?, How does “reproducing other labs' results” work?, Why isn't it the norm to have research repeated immediately by other academics?

If somebody else's result has some bearing on my research direction, it will probably end up being tested in my experiments. But that is not the same as replication. Testing a single strand is not often done, testing the interwoven results are.

I think the problem with your question is the way it is phrased it appears that you think the academic peer review process involves experimental scrutiny. This occurs because the title of your question with the emphasized "actually" implies that this used to be the case or is claimed to be the case.

@BryanKrause Sorry. I already edited the question to specify that I lack the correct terminology. What I'm interested in actual application in academia of the "phylosophical"  scientific principle of experimental validation. In particular when what is being validated is not some theory, but an experimental methodology.

@BryanKrause To be bluntly concrete: if someone performs an experiment and publishes setup and results, how can the scientific community accept the results if no one has verified them? If the verification is only based on palusibility "on paper", doesn't that go against the very scientific principle of experimental verification of any claim?

@LorenzoDonatisupportUkraine Best to be most blunt and concrete when initially writing the question. :) We're in a bit of a pickle here since there are numerous existing answers, so it's kind of too late to change the question. Being very concrete, are you asking specifically about novel methodology? Because this is quite different from simply an original experiment.

@BryanKrause To add even more info on my doubt: from many answers in this thread and other threads, it seems that acceptance by the scientific community is more often based on trust and not actual independent verification. But trust is not something objective, and can be influenced by many factors that have nothing to do with science (economics, politics, friendship, mutual interests, etc.).

@BryanKrause I'm not making a difference between the two cases. The fact is that until I read the thread I linked to in my question, I was convinced that the scientific community had an habit of redoing experiments to verify the published data were reliable. In a sense, I was convinced that there were some sort of peer-checking mechanism for experiments similar to the peer-review system for papers. It seems I was wrong. So I asked this question. Sorry if it wasn't framed particularly well, but even as I'm reading the comments and the answers I begin to understand how to frame it better.

@LorenzoDonatisupportUkraine I'm not sure you're noticing then the difference between peer review and the broader scientific discourse; the former is based a lot more on trust than the latter. But yes, you've correctly discovered that science is influenced by economics, politics, friendship, etc: science is done by people, and people are influenced by all those things.

@BryanKrause Well Ok, now I sound quite ingenuous :-) I know that the scientific institutions and scientists are involved, as any human activity, in economics, politics, etc. What I'm a bit perplexed is discovering that what I thought a fundamental distinctive trait of Science (I used the capital S, just to be clear :-), the distinctive trait I would argue, seems not so central as I thought it to be.

I think you should do some research into the "Replication Crisis." Ongoing research by some Psychologists have found that they are unable to reproduce most published psychology findings, or they are but they find the effect is 1 to 2 magnitudes lower then the published effect... Some big experiments to mention are the Stanford prison experiment (Which we now know to be a poisoned experiment).

One of the suggested culprits is the positive hypothesis bias... And publish or perish. Journals have a tendency to not publish negative findings, so there is a push to throw out "bad" samples until a positive finding is achieved.

@Questor Thank you for the useful POV and info.

@Questor And yep, publish or perish is really bad for science IMO. That's also why I dropped out of my SW engineering PhD 20+ years ago (not the only reason, but it was another nail in the coffin for sure). It really didn't fit my bill.

When important claims appear, scientist are trying to validate or reproduce that in other experimental facilities, perhaps with slightly different methods. Like the ATOMKI claim of an X17 particle https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7738366/  that some CERN experiments are trying to reproduce. However, these experiments are often very specialized.

N.B.: If you want an example of high-energy failure to replicate, you don't have to go back to the 80's, as you could look at this failure in superconductivity reported two days ago.

@DanielR.Collins That's very interesting. Thanks.

Others have discussed the official process.
Generically, the thing is, the process is messy. There is no megalithic authority presiding over science, nor academia in general. We don't have a "king of science." There is no "pope of academia."
As such, it is possible for a false result to remain unchallenged in the literature for some time. This can be due to honest mistakes or actual fraud or various combinations.
The process of science eventually turns to re-examine old ideas. People are hungry for publication. There are teams and groups and milling armies of people hungry for publication. They search through old journal articles, read them, sit and think "I could re-do that experiment in a couple weeks with stuff in storage at the lab." And many variations on this. They re-do the arithmetic in published articles. They request the raw data. They compare other experimental results reported at other labs.
So, at any given moment, it is quite likely the literature contains many errors, mistakes, and a few (hopefully a very small number) of actual frauds. And science will try to correct them.
As Dara O'Briain said: Science knows it does not know everything. Otherwise it would stop.
Another thing that tends to happen is that a result becomes irrelevant due to advances that move us past it. As a trivial example that nobody probably cares about: Suppose somebody claimed they could make electronic vacuum tubes to perform a certain way, but that their result was wrong. The advent of transistors moved us away from vacuum tubes, so nobody cares anymore about the performance of tubes. Possibly such an incorrect result from 60 years ago might hang around in the journals and never get challenged. So there is a category of knowledge that one should take extra caution about accepting as authoritative, because the process of science dropped the topic.
So you can recognize a healthy science endeavour by the presence of people questioning the results. They need to be doing it in a well based manner, not simply sticking their fingers in their ears and going "la la la." They need to understand the issues, the theories, the current state of things. And then they need to be free to ask questions and make critiques. If there is nobody questioning a result that is a warning that the science has gone moribund.

This is an important point. If the science "matters" (loaded term), you can bet it will be attacked and investigated thoroughly, like Pons and Fleischman. Invalidating those findings is important and publishable by itself. But if it doesn't "matter", like vacuum tubes, nobody's going to spend the time and money to bother. Science is a dynamic conversation where the interesting ideas keep going, and the boring tangents get left behind.

There are two related but separate processes in play here.
On the one hand, papers are peer reviewed, i.e., when you submit a paper describing your experiment, results and conclusions to a conference or journal, two to three peers will review it. They review the paper - they typically don't have the time, funding or other requirements to actually re-do your experiment. They will check whether your arguments make sense, whether the experiment you describe can in principle be used to address your research question, maybe run a small simulation.
On the other hand, people will try to replicate your experiment, i.e., run a similar experiment and see whether they get the same results. (Typically they will run a modification, because straight-up replications are very hard to publish, and publications are important to academics.) If you have an exciting result, many people will try to replicate and extend it. If then most of these people cannot replicate your results (take a look at the "replication crisis in psychology"), the excitement of your results will wane.

Thanks for your explanation. So you are telling me that it's unlikely that an experiment will be replicated in the exact way its authors published it? I understand that some modification could be considered negligible from a theory verification POV, but aren't that modifications going to alter the experimental results, so potentially voiding the verification attempt (after all the original experiment could contain some kind of error that the modified setup could eliminate). Do I miss something?

In the end, it very much depends, especially on the field. Very few fields allow you to exactly replicate an experiment down to the last detail, so some changes between experiment runs are inevitable. What people look for in replications is mainly a consistency in the patterns, not necessarily a perfect match: do all the results point in the same direction, or did someone get a surprising positive result, but the next 20 similar experiments all got a negative result? Yes, there is some subjectivity involved in when experiment B is a "true" replication of experiment A.

It can actually be bad if everyone does the experiment in exactly the same way. Repeating an experiment with changes helps to confirm that a particular part of the experimental methodology isn't having unforeseen effects on the results.

@Yachsut OK, that I can understand. However if no one replicates the experiment in the exact same way then how can we be sure the experiment is valid?. Note that my question is not about validating the theory behind an experiment (in that case I'm sure different experimental approaches that give the same coherent results are indeed good). My problem is with work whose subject is the experiment itself (a new methodology, for example). In this case what can be said about that methodology if all the independent verification comes from different (albeit similar) methodologies?

@Yachsut To me it seems like (sorry for the brutally simplistic analogy) someone claimed he could fix broken shoe soles using just nails and a screwdriver, then all other people tried to verify the claim using hammers and nails. Then everyone claims "OK, the method is sound, but I just used a hammer instead of a screwdriver to verify it".

As above, there is always an element of subjectivity involved. The goal of a replication is to convince experts in this (or a closely related) field that the original method "worked" or not. "Worked" here carries various meanings: in a mature field, the broad outlines are known, and you are interested in what "works" for specialized details, and specialization gets narrower over time. Science is a social endeavor that works by Bayesian updating of beliefs.

@StephanKolassa So in the end it is getting toward the situation of some very specialistic research field in math (as a friend of mine working in math research told me), where the concepts are so abstract and difficult that there might be just one person that actually understand them all. In this case you don't get really a "peer" review. But that's math, which is not an experimental science, so "convincing" your colleagues (instead of "showing") could be considered close enough.

@LorenzoDonatisupportUkraine If you do find replication with a slightly different experimental setup, it's even better for the underlying theory. We usually try to generalize in science, we aren't usually interested in findings that can only be observed under one very specific set of experimental conditions. If you don't find replication with a different setup, it is on the experimenter to convincingly explain why the changes in setup shouldn't have affected the results.

@NuclearHoagie Yep, I'm aware of that. Sorry if I wasn't clear, but in a previous comment I stated that I did understand that the theory validation benefits from a palette of different experimental setup confirming the theory. What I'm worried of, however, is how one can confirm that an experiment with a given experimental setup actually worked.

@NuclearHoagie Here is a very crude example of my doubts. Theory T foresee some experimental results. Team A devise an experiment EA that purportedly confirms the theory. Teams B and C perform slightly different experiments (EB and EC) that confirm T. So T is accepted as valid. However EA was incorrect (or rigged) in a subtle way, so it wouldn't have been able to confirm T.  Since no one cared to exactly repeat EA, no one discovered that EA experimental setup cannot actually confirm T and the data from EA was wrong and happened to confirm T just by chance (or deliberate "forging").

@LorenzoDonatisupportUkraine In this case we have still obtained knowledge about the validity of theory T. That the wrong people might be credited with the 'discovery' is a shame, but only tangential to the purpose of the scientific process. That theory T was thought to be verifiable because of a mistake (experiment EA) is part of the messiness of science in practice. If experiments EB and EC would have disagreed with theory T, this would cast doubt on experiment EA, and it might then be (reproduced and) discarded as false. This is all part of the process.

@LorenzoDonatisupportUkraine: Actually the math situation that you describe, with "just one person", is highly atypical. Abstraction is what mathematicians do. For most mathematical papers submitted for publication, there are multiple researchers able to understand the paper, and peer review is the norm.

@LeeMosher Sorry if I wasn't clear, but I just cited an extreme example I know of because of my friend told me about the issue. I didn't claim it was a common situation in math (in fact my friend actually works in a math research field where there are a lot of peer-reviewers). I just cited that example because of what StephanKolassa said in a comment of his (...and you are interested in what "works" for specialized details, and specialization gets narrower over time. )

By that, I did not mean that there are fewer people who understand your work. I meant that advances are narrower in scope, simply because everyone agrees on the broad outlines of what works and what does not work in your field.

When laypeople are introduced to the idea of replication, they imagine scientists constantly redoing every paper that comes out, to "check it". At least I did. This is not the case in most mainstream sciences. The closest thing is when a paper is basically announcing the release of a software - then conceivably a lot of people might give it a try, since it's usually easy (or is it?) to just install and run a software on your computer.
This does not mean there is no replication. To be sure, there is a replication crisis, in the sense that we have too many studies that should be replicable but aren't. But it's important to remember that a lot of science can and is replicated.
The replication does not take the form of a researcher going to their PI, and submitting a 20-page document titled "Proposal for Comprehensive Replication of Jones et al. 2022". Replication is rarely a discrete project, it is embedded in novel research. The rare exception is extremely high profile and controversial work - for example, the Yamanaka induced pluripotency protocol inspired many outright reproduction attempts.
A lot of science these days is not "from scratch", but building upon and refining previous studies. Say Smith 2019 discovered that red M&Ms cure cancer in mice. Murphy 2024 might then test different chemical extracts of red M&Ms across various mutant mice, and discover that a specific chemical is responsible for the effect by acting on a certain gene - such a study might often begin with a "sanity check" by repeating a simple version of the original Smith 2019 experiment. Indeed the Smith 2019 regimen may serve as a baseline or control for evaluating the additional claims of Murphy 2024.
Another common situation is when published results are assumed to be true, and an experiment is set up such that if the assumption is false the experiment will produce nonsense results. For example, imagine that Dr. Murphy decides to feed some mice only the filling of red M&Ms, while other mice are fed only the shell. It's expected that either group will either be cured of cancer or not. But if all mice die of chemical poisoning, that obviously raises some questions about the results claimed in Smith 2019. It is often possible, with clever experimental design, to "cover" validation of past results as well as probe the actual hypothesis of interest.
You also mention cost. However, you make the false assumption that reproduction always costs as much as the original experiment. Think of it this way - if you decided to sail from Europe to America, would you need to be an equal to Columbus? A big sink of money, and time, therefore money, in original research is trial and error. There are a lot of unknowns about what experiment would work, so it costs a lot to perform it. However, reproducers can skip all that - with the benefit of hindsight they can avoid the false starts.

Thank you for the extensive answer. Particularly insightful the final part about skipping false starts.

... it's usually easy (or is it?) to just install and run a software on your computer - the nicest situation from my experience is when researchers provide a Jupyter notebook with their analysis, which anyone can run without needing to install custom software, preferably hosted on Colab; I wish this was more common.

but are experiments today actually verified by independent peers?

In some (rare) cases, yes.

The examples that I have are in Computer Science, where there is a big push lately for articles to share their "artifacts", which are environments that allow to reproduce their results.
Major associations such as the IEEE and the ACM now have their own "badges" (IEEE badge and ACM badges) that are awarded only if the artifact is publicly available, if the results can be reproduced, and if the environment is "re-usable" (read, it's easy to tweak their plat-form to test another hypothesis).
Major conferences such as Discotec or POPL now have their "artifact evaluation committee" whose main goal is to check that the results from the papers can be reproduced.

By "artifact" do you mean something that also include the source code?

@LorenzoDonatisupportUkraine Absolutely. An artifact generally contain the source code, instructions to execute the program(s) and various configuration files. One example (disclaimer: that I contributed to) can be found at https://github.com/statycc/loop-fission#reproducing-results .

I can confirm this is the case, I did a PhD in computer science (machine learning) and towards the end of my candidature it became increasingly difficult to publish without also including a link to source codes, datasets and other artifacts that might be needed to verify the results. In general, this is a good thing, for me it was a challenge as my PhD was industry-sponsored making it hard to comply.

@Clément Thanks for the added detail.

@DavidWaterworth Interesting POV. Thanks.

No, peer-reviewers usually just read the manuscript. However with a lot of experience reviewers can often tell from the presented results and the methods description if the research is valid.
If researchers have doubts about the published results they usually do a replication study and then write a letter to the editor.

I might be worth thinking about science from a Kuhn-ian point of view, rather than a Popperian one.
Start with the somewhat surprising assumption that all scientific conclusions are really models of how the world works, and that all models will eventually be shown to be false to some degree.
In Kuhn's model scientists conduct studies under the assumptions of the current Paradigm (i.e. the set of models that people assume to be true). As long as the results of those studies produce data that makes sense under the current paradigm, they support its truth/usefulness of the models that make up the current paradigm. To the extent that those studies propose new models, they become part of the paradigm. Thus we build up "sandcastles", each new theory based on the validty of the those that came before it, and the success of the new thoeries support the validity of the old. But over time, anomolous results accumulate that can't be explained by the current paradigm. At first these can just be ignored, or explained away, but eventually the weight of anomolies becomes so heavy that the models on which the whole paradigm collapses and you have a scientific revolution, or paradigm-shift. The things that survive this shift will continue to form the foundations on which the new sandcastle is built, and overtime will be compressed to form sandstone.
As well as happening at a macro-level (relativity replacing newtonian physics for eg), it also happens at a micro-level. If a paper is published proposing X and providing an experiment that supports it, rather than trying to replicate those results, someone will say "well, if X is true, then perhaps Y is also true", and they will conduct an experiment assuming X is true. If those results are positive, they lend support to X, if they fail, then the probably don't in one go disprove X, but they might start to add question marks to it. If there are enough such results, people will start looking round for other theories to based their investigations on. This usually doesn't happen in a big bang (like it would do at the macro-level), but mostly just people drifting away from believe X - its not demosntrated false, it just that those that don't base their science on it tend to be more successful.
One downside of this process is that it is slow, and at any one time only those with a deep knowledge of the whole field will really have a good idea of what the field believes to be true or not at any given time. In fact, at any given time it would be very hard for someone to say "here is a list of things that people in field A believe to be definately true". We will only really know what was a good call and what not decades or even centuries into the future.
This is of course no good when your results are needed for practical purposes (like treating diseaes). A couple of things to observe here is that even if we can't say for certain that X is true, if you had to bet your life on X or not X, you'd be better off betting on X, even if you only have a qualified belief in it being true. The second is that the medical and health fields are fields were replications really do happen. There are often multiple clinical trials into the effect of a particular exposure or class of drugs. These are generally collected together in meta-analyses which collate all to evidence for a single question to see what the evidence is in aggregate.

For better or worse, something often misunderstood by non-scientists is just how much easier it is to do science showing whether a treatment works than to figure out how it works. Another reason that medicine and basic science tend to use different approaches to replication.

Thanks for the interesting POV. I didn't know anything about the Kuhnian POV.

@BryanKrause That's definitely true and it's largely due IMO because you have (a) strict regulations for researching and marketing new treatments or medical devices and (b) the prospect of huge lawsuits if something goes horribly wrong due to negligence, incompetence or sheer fraud.

@LorenzoDonatisupportUkraine No, it's because it's a simple experiment to say does X change Y. You give X, you measure Y. Mechanism is far more difficult to assess, and many tests of mechanism are inconclusive, you might be measuring a separate correlate rather than something in the causal chain, and so most subsequent experiments will not try to exactly test the same thing again, there are just too many potential facets and targets.

@LorenzoDonatisupportUkraine Every child knows that if they throw a ball up it falls down again, but figuring out How Gravity Works is complicated. But you can still do a lot of useful stuff only with the partial result that stuff that goes up comes back down.

@user3067860 Sorry, but I don't get your point here. I didn't question the usefulness of any kind of experiments (even partial or minor ones). I just questioned whether or not an experiment could be considered valid if its results are not verified independently.

@LorenzoDonatisupportUkraine That's in re: this current side topic about medical studies. In math you can prove something, e.g. we can prove that sqrt(2) is an irrational number. People don't necessarily need to re-do that over and over. In medicine things are very hard to prove but since the result is the important part you can do larger/repeated studies and come up with ideas about how things are without knowing why they are that way. Like throwing the ball up a bunch of times, measuring how hard you throw it, how high it goes, and how long it takes to come down.

@user3067860 Yep, I know that. In some comment I think I have also stated that math is no experimental science, so "experiments" are not its realm. I'm well aware of the difficulties of non-hard science like medicine (compared e.g. with physics or chemistry) where the systems are so complex that you don't even have a mathematical model to base your experiment on. However statistical methods are employed and also sound experimental practices (like double-blind testing). So, all these limits notwithstanding, you still can replicate an experiment.

@user3067860 Of course what you can "prove" (in a statistical meaning) is that a drug can (say) be used to treat some disease with some percentage of success (reproducibly). And then you must assess whether or not that percentage is high enough to be significant, also considering side effects.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


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What author changes are acceptable after paper acceptance in the camera-ready
In a conference in the CS field, what sort of changes are acceptable from an author of a paper in the camera-ready version over the submitted version?
Can the author add few new related findings?

You can probably add a few new results, BUT...
You need to honor page limits, of course, and...
You need to warn the program chair that you have done this. Note that your "few revisions or additions" haven't been reviewed and the chair might have an issue with it if s/he has and doubts.

I can't speak for all parts of CS, but I have seen authors improving theoretical results, fixing bugs (both bugs discovered by the reviewers and bugs not discovered by the reviewers), changing the presentation (both following reviewers' requests or not), and adapting experimental results to the latest version of a tool, and I have done so myself, and nobody has ever complained about it.
On the other hand, if you have any reason to believe that the reviewers would have preferred the submitted version to the updated version, or would have rejected the paper if they had seen your changes, you should probably not change it.

And are you talking about top conferences? Because the rules sometimes vary between the conferences levels.

I'm talking about (among others) the top conferences in my research area.


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Who get rebuttal in conference submission?
When a conference has a date for Rebuttal, does this mean they send the reviews to all submitted papers including accepted papers? Or is it just sent to borderline/rejected papers?

The answer will depend on the conference, but reviews are typically sent to all authors, to give all authors an equal opportunity to respond. At this stage, reviewers might not have seen other reviews, hence, no decisions will have made.

Usually accept/reject decisions are made after the rebuttal phase. All authors get to see the preliminary reviews and respond to them — answer questions or clarify any confusion or errors in reviews. Often it’s pretty clear to authors whether the reviews are favourable or not, even if no official decision has been made yet.

If there is a 500 words limit then what to do? in my case, I can't answer 20 comments in 500 words.


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How to find collaborators?
Answers to my previous question made me believe that doing research almost exclusively in collaboration is (also) fine.
But how do I find collaborators. It is easy to find researchers active in a particular field. Given that I am a first year graduate student how do I persuade them to work with me?
Update.
There was a very similar question already. There are two parts in this question (the same as in mine): how to find and how to attract.
With the first part the answer is more or less clear.
As for the second part, the suggested answer assumes that the seeker has some "idea". This seems to be somewhat opposite to conclusions reached
in this discussion: it is hard to have an original idea while being a beginner.

Related, maybe duplicate: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/90100/how-can-one-best-seek-out-collaborators-in-obscure-topics-as-a-young-researcher?rq=1.  And the answer is the same: through your advisor.

Updated the question.

Short answer: develop a track record first. Develop expertise in the subject matter of your interest, do some good research, give good talks on it at conferences. The first step is to choose a good thesis advisor and solicit their help and advice on all of this.

Excuse me, but what you are suggesting is not totally realistic.

Develop expertise in the subject matter of your interest
Let's assume that a seeker is reasonably professional in ones field of interest.
give good talks on it at conferences
How does one get accepted to a conference and gets funding?
do some good research
Isn't it the ultimate goal of the whole play?
The first step is to choose a good thesis advisor and solicit their help and advice on all of this
Coming up with the rules to accomplish this task what partially why I have asked the question I mention.

It is common for good researchers to have more ideas than they can possibly pursue alone and would be happy to work with a junior person willing to do the heavy lifting while they do the guiding etc. And this is a really valuable way for a junior researcher to learn how to do good research. Try establishing a relationship with people in your field of interest and just be open about your long-term hopes.

@GlossyRetirement: Are you asking how to find a good thesis advisor? That is an excellent question, and certainly one that's on-topic for this site.  As far as "How does one get accepted to a conference and gets funding?", customs vary by field, but a good thesis advisor will be be able to help you.

I don't know your exact situation, but what I would tell first-year Ph.D. students in my own discipline is: worry about finding a good thesis advisor first, cultivating a good relationship and following their advice second, and only then about finding collaborators outside your university. In particular, once you've done some good work under your advisor, persuading others to work with you becomes easier.

Unfortunately, this will only apply to students and beginning faculty at larger institutions. Places with quite a few faculty members and, maybe with quite a few students as well.
But, at such a place, if you look around, you will probably find that there is a lot of collaboration already going on. You want to get connected to some of that in an area that interests you, at least a bit.
At some such places, senior faculty hold weekly seminars that aren't formal, but meet regularly. They will consist of the senior person, a few other faculty of various ranks, and a few students, usually advisees of some of those faculty. They are often organized around the main research interest of the senior person who organized and maintain it. People contribute ideas and discuss papers. Sometimes a member will be asked to make a presentation to the group (say half a dozen or ten) about some paper or some idea of interest. The key is people connected to ideas and to each other.
If you don't find such groups already formed, they may just be too small, with two or three faculty meeting in an office, or even at the coffee table, to discuss what they are working on and asking for advice.
If you don't find even that, it might be possible for you to form such a group, though in this case mostly students. Suppose you can find three or four other students with similar interests. Perhaps you've met them in class. Form a group yourself and go as a group to some faculty member and ask if s/he will "sponsor" you, by taking over the mentorship of your group. Perhaps they can give you some problem of interest for you to study together. Note that nothing formal needs to come from such a group, though it is great if it does. Think of it more as "expanding horizons" than as "goal directed". Before you start on anything serious, make sure you have worked out authorship issues. Don't neglect to be generous in that. In an ideal situation, these people can have a long term research relationship lasting beyond degrees.

If it is impossible to develop local relationships, then it is much harder. Being very social at conferences is a good way. Ask a lot of questions. Have coffee with a lot of people. Collect and distribute a lot of business cards, etc. The actual work of collaboration is a bit easier now with computer communication, but forming a compatible group is still quite difficult.


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How long do I have to wait for my offer letter?
It's been nearly two months (next week it'll be 2 months) since I got an email from the Doctoral School at a UK university telling me that I got the place and funding. After 4 weeks of waiting, I emailed them to ask when the letter would be sent out but they gave me no specific answer. Also by chance I learned that someone already received their letter nearly 4 weeks ago. I'm very worried and just wondering how long everyone had to wait to get their offer letters. And should I contact them again about it?

This is too variable to be useful. Your situation is too unique to get any useful answer here. They will do what they do. But in general, if there is a problem you are more likely to hear about it earlier than later. If you have other alternatives to consider then, yes, contact them. But if you can afford to wait then there isn't much downside. Keep pursuing other options, of course.

Pick up the telephone. Repeat several times to several people if first call does not get an answer.
Get this resolved within a week.  Have them send the letter express mail.  No more sitting and pining.  If you haven't resolved it by week end, you need to move on and look for a different gig.

Have them send the letter express mail. — In the US, acceptance/funding letters are usually sent by email, but they still have the same legal weight as paper.  Is that not also true in the UK?

But can they really revoke the offer once they said they would send it to me?

@JeffE: I'm not sure about this. But they specifically told me in the email that they would send a separate, official offer letter by email so I imagine the email telling me that I got the place and funding was only an informal notification.


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I regret declining a PhD offer and accepting another PhD offer. What should I do?
I got offers from school A and B, both of the schools are in the States. I made my decision in mid-April and deferred my offer for one-year master program in the UK. I turned down PhD offer from school A and accepted another offer from school B. But I feel very regretful now.
I know this is not ethically correct but I don't want to feel regretful for the rest of my life.
Should I ask school A to accept me one more time or reapply? Applying to other schools will violate the deferring rules of School B, but I hope it would not be a big issue if I have valid reasons.
Could I get any advice about this situation?

I feel very regretful now.  ... Should I ask school A to accept me one more time or reapply?

If you prefer School A to School B, then I doubt anyone will begrudge you a new application to School A.  Since you have taken a deferred entry at School B, the inconvenience to them of having you leave is less than if you had started your program.  If you decide to re-apply to School A then you will need to decide whether you want to quit School B first, or hold on to it as a fall-back.  In the latter case, you will also need to decide if you will disclose your new application to School B.
I can't speak for others, but if I were your proposed supervisor, and you had not started your candidature yet, I would have no problem with you coming to see me and telling me that you want to apply to another school.  Even if you wanted to do this, but keep your existing deferment as a fall-back, that would be fine with me.  (We deal with ranked preferences all the time in student admissions, job applicants, etc.)  I would appreciate you being up-front about this, and talking to me about it.  It is an inconvenience to lose a student that has been admitted, but it is not a big inconvenience, and it is far preferable to having a student trying to grind through an arduous PhD program in a school where they are not happy even before they start!
Now, having said this, obviously that puts you on the radar as someone who might not enjoy it here if you end up in the fall-back position of attending School B.  If worst comes to worst, and you are rejected by School A, after disclosing your application to School B, you might have to have a talk with them about whether you still want to be there.  Nevertheless, you can cross that bridge if and when you come to it.

Applying to other schools might violate the deferring rules of School B.

It "might".  But here's a pro tip --- PhD students are expected to be able to find documents and read them, so exercise those skills to go ahead and read the rules and see if this does violate the rules.  (I doubt it would; there would almost certainly be legal issues relating to restraint-of-trade if a university had rules preventing you from applying elsewhere.)


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How to prepare a ten-minute presentation for a PhD interview?
I've got an interview for a Ph.D. position and I need to give a ten-minute presentation for my recent research. I have completed two projects and right now I am doing another research which has a close correlation to the advertised position. These three projects have no correlation. I would like to present the last project I am working on, but unfortunately, I have a few results to exhibit. So I do not know how to present an unfinished project. Should I follow the outline like background, purpose, methods, and results? And any tips or advice for the interview?

Not a direct answer to the title question. Select one of the "finished" projects. Mention tge the others two, inviting everyone of the host group to ask you for details.

What field is this?

The position is about pancreatic cancer. My current research focuses on the genome-wide methylation for pancreatic cancer.

Ten minutes is like "no time at all". You can do very little. However, it is likely that the hiring committee is much more interested in what you will do in the future, related to their general concerns, than what you have done in the past.
So, I'd suggest you mention, briefly, the past results but stress the work in progress and the possible benefits if it pays off. The committee can explore your past work in publications, of course, but the work in progress and contemplated, needs to come from you. Look to the future, not the past.

"What you're thinking you're becoming."  Be confident and honest.
Present the current project you are working on and be upfront, transparent, and honest; mention how you just started on the current project and present it in a way that shows your planning and execution plan: how you start it, how you research for it, how you implement it, and how you execute it.  Use this as an opportunity to paint a good picture for them to see how your work flow is.  Showing them insight to how you set goals will help.