text:
Is this statistic about how many Latinos/Hispanics have a PhD in the USA correct?
According to Ileana Freytes-Ortiz,

< 2% of people in the US have a #phd
  Of those, 6.5% are Hispanic
  By defending my PhD yesterday, I just became part of the 0.13% in the US that is #LatinoPhD

I find this statistic hard to believe, or if it is true maybe it is intentionally represented to look like a racial problem (although in my opinion Latino is not a race).
Regarding my field, almost 40% of references are from Spanish surnames, 40% Chinese, and 20% European. Based on this analogy (maybe false) I think her statement is wrong.
Is there any way or any source that can prove her claims?

It seems like it's already set here, but I think this question fits better on [Skeptics.se]

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. As far as I can see, most comments to improve the question have been addressed. If you feel anything is missing, bring it up in a clear manner with a clear suggestion how to improve the question.

"40% Spanish surnames, 40% Chinese, and 20% European" Uhhh Spain is in Europe so it is not considered a Latino country (not by most, at least). Maybe you should check the percentage of Spanish surnames from Latino countries and the one from European countries. Same for Portuguese surnames from Brazil (Latino) and from Portugal (not Latino, I think).

@walen they are not considered Hispanics by US standard?

@SSimon Latino and Hispanic are different things. If you're counting #HispanicPhDs then you might be right; if you're counting #LatinoPhDs, having a Spanish surname is not enough to tell if somebody is Latino or European. Same goes for Iliana for mixing both up!

Do you reckon all these "40% Chinese surnames" come from US PhDs? Hint: other countries exist. Importantly, Brazil is quite a powerhouse with lots of Hispanic surnames and having nothing to do with the 0.13% of the Latino PhDs in the US...

This information came from a tweet I shared to express my excitement for finishing my PhD and, in the process, increase by 1 the number of underrepresented minorities in the US with a doctoral degree. I did not expect for this tweet to get the attention it has, but I'm glad it's opened the doors for more in-depth discussions about diversity and representation in academia.
To clarify, I got my information from the following sources:

< 2% of people in the US have a #phd

–United Stated Census Bureau, Educational Attainment of the Population 18 Years and Over, by Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin: 2014

Of those, 6.5% are Hispanic

–National Science Foundation, Survey of Earned Doctorates 2016 (this number only includes Hispanic/Latinos that are also US citizens)

These were back-of-the-envelope calculations based on limited information I had at the time. I appreciate that others in this thread have provided further sources of information regarding this statistic. It seems like my back-of-the-envelope calculations were not far from the most recent figures of Hispanic/Latino representation in doctoral degrees.
My goal was not political or inflammatory in nature, I merely wanted to bring attention to the low numbers of Hispanic/Latinos with doctoral degrees, share my excitement for finishing my degree, and connect with others in a similar position. I hope this response can bring some clarity.

Thanks very much for posting, and welcome to the site!   (And congratulations on your degree!)  I'm particularly glad to learn about the NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates, which appears to be a very useful data source.

I really am very confused how everyone is projecting some sort of political meaning on the statement "I'm one of only 0.13% in the US." Mentioning race is not, in itself, political.

@AzorAhai it is if you live in coutry that race issues are political.

@SSimon It's very exhausting to be told the fact that you aren't white is political.

@SSimon Contrary to popular white opinion, publicly existing as a Hispanic person is not a political position. Neither is being proud about one’s accomplishments.

The US Census Bureau gathers data on educational attainment of people living in the US, broken down by race, sex, age, and other categories.  They specifically include "Hispanic origin" (though they do not consider this to be a "race").   The data come from the American Community Survey and are widely considered to be authoritative.
Here is their data for 2017.
If you look in Table 1, "Educational Attainment of the Population 18 Years and Over, by Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin: 2017", in the file labeled "Hispanic (of any race)", you'll find they estimate there are 235,000 people over age 18 of Hispanic origin who have a doctoral degree.
In the "All Races" file you can find that the total population over age 18 in 2017 was 246,325,000.  So of the total US adult population, about 0.095% are people of Hispanic origin with a doctoral degree; even less than Freytes-Ortiz's figure.  Also note that "Doctoral degree" may include degrees other than PhD, such as EdD, DD, etc (though not MD, DDS, JD, etc, which would be under "Professional Degrees").
This file also estimates 4,096,000 people of all races with doctoral degrees.  From this, I get that 1.6% of the adult US population has a PhD, and of those, 5.7% are of Hispanic origin.  Pretty close to Freytes-Ortiz.  She may be using data from a different year, or a different source.

An extended conversation about the terminology "Hispanic" has been moved to chat.

So, I did a run using Census data, but a few clarifications (which some people have pointed out, but just to bring it all together): Census asks separate questions about a person's race (e.g., white, black, Asian, etc) and a person's ethnicity (that they are of Hispanic/Latino origin, or not).
As someone mentioned earlier, Census does not distinguish between Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish. You can find a CPS questionnaire here. I do think it is a little strange that she alternated between words (though Census does treat them interchangeably, for whatever that's worth).
Okay, so with those caveats -- When reporting poverty by education, Census usually limits to adults over 25, presumably because many 18 year olds will receive college degrees but are to young to do have done so (for example, see Table 3 from their annual report here).
Using Census microdata from the March 2017 Current Population Survey, we find

1.88% of the population 25+ have a PhD
of these, 5.7% are Hispanic or Latino (compared to 15% of the entire population 25+)
0.7% of the Hispanic/Latino population 25+ have a PhD
0.11% of the population 25+ are both Hispanic/Latino and have a PhD.

As Nate mentioned, she could simply be using data from an earlier year or from a different source like the American Community Survey.
This is pretty consistent with my priors; however, I'm glad you're surprised -- it means your program must be doing something right in terms of engaging diverse communities. Hopefully that spreads!

Nice to find data focused on 25+, as the ACS link in the other answer only has an ethnicity breakdown for ages 18+, which isn't really relevant for a PhD.

I would like to offer two reasons your observations might not match with this data. (Which is what you seem to be implying. You are concluding political motivation - I might just conclude pride in ones accomplishments and in the rising diversity of US PhD holders.)
First, you are likely observing a particular cohort. I am assuming the percentage of Hispanic PhD graduates is going up as institutions become more supportive of diversity. So if the overall percentage is 6.5%, that likely averages some older cohorts with less than 6.5% Hispanic PhD representation and some newer cohorts with percentages above 6.5%. So you might think this number is low, but that is because you don't know as many older PhD holders.
Second, your observation of citations includes many non-US residents. This statistic is about the US. Worldwide, the proportion of PhD holders from various countries is more reflective of the number of PhD slots in those countries. Futhermore, as a side note, looking at surnames also is difficult in the case of women who have taken a spouses' name.

@SSimon Please note that under-representation relative to general population, by itself, doesn't imply anything at all about the reason for the under-representation. You seem to be reading something into the statistic about the basic ability of Latinx folks that wasn't intended by the tweet, as the tweet-er herself has said, and also isn't intended by any of the other answers here supporting the statistic.

@1006a statistically speaking, is that an alarming value for the situation of latino(hispanic) community?

@SSimon Personally, yes, I think the under-representation (and other similar statistics for other groups) is problematic and reflects systemic and historical inequities which haven't yet been adequately addressed by academia and the greater society. (I do NOT think it is due to any inherent difference in ability on the part of individual members of the various groups.) But the question of what factors account for the disproportion is really huge, and not a good topic for discussion in comments here.

Agree with @1006a but I would point out to the OP that this is something we learn from sources other than the statistics. :)


text:
How should I handle questions about family/spouse on the job market?
According to the (US-centric) "The Professor Is In." Facebook live podcast it is illegal/problematic to ask a candidate in a job interview about family - specifically, it is a problem to ask about how a spouse would react to your appointment or what a spouse would do for work if you are hired. Nevertheless, I have often been asked these types of questions!
How should I respond to these questions as an early stage career academic? Are, they, in fact, illegal?
I am interested mainly in the US context, but I would also like to know if my reaction should differ if I were interviewing in other countries. Is there an answer that is safe in all contexts?
The webinar I watched indicates that candidates should know these questions are illegal but should not complain if they want to have the best shot possible of getting the job.

You might want to clarify what jurisdiction you're in. Or perhaps you're interested in responses to this question, regardless of whether it's legal to ask or not?

@MJeffryes if it is possible I would like to collect data for USA; Australia, New Zeland, Greece, Germany, Swiss and Hong Kong... these are all places that I applied.

This is a question related to HR and Law...

@SolarMike I dont know, :( that podcast told us that it is related to law

While that question is rude and sexist, I'm curious why would it be illegal to ask? Questions about kids and stuff are to stop employers from being biased against hiring new/expecting parents.

@AzorAhai well how about not being allowed to ask sexist questions due to the legal consequences?

@AzorAhai Academic advisers for career development, in well know podcast say so!

@SolarMike What if women or POC ask it?

@SolarMike Do you mean that asking questions of women you wouldn't ask of men should be disallowed (perfectly reasonable), or just that asking what your spouse thinks should be against the rules (which is what I was trying to ask, maybe I was unclear)?

@AzorAhai not sure where you are, but many societies have been and still are, working to reduce discrimination so asking a question that might imply your appointment depends on the opinion of your husband seems to be a step back towards the darkness ...

@SolarMike I live in the US, so unfortunately, we're going the other way.

@AzorAhai Is what would your husband think illegal or not in US?

@SSimon it is not illegal, but it tells you something about sexual orientation which is illegal to discriminate on.

@ssimon I would direct you to strongbad's answer, it's to the best of my knowledge, correct about the US.

Martial status is protected in some areas and young couples are expected to have kids and start a family which is why the question has problems

I dont understand close votes? why is too broad?

@AzorAhai Do you really think that having young children is the only thing you can be discriminated against for?

@MassimoOrtolano I actually put in comment the countries I need to know

@MassimoOrtolano only 5 tags. should it be all coutries?

@SSimon I think it would be better to focus on a single country if you're interested in the legal aspect (since there are many different answers), or you could ask about how to respond to the question, ignoring the legal aspect, and that would be more applicable to any country.

@MJeffryes so I need to ask the same question several times if I want to know about legal system of different coutries? I am not allow to have other options

@SSimon Essentially, yes. The Stack Exchange system works best for questions which are quite tightly focused. Legal questions really do have to be confined to a single location, since the answers are so specific to jurisdiction. Aside from this, a legal question is less relevant to the scope of this site. I think your question would provoke the most interesting and useful answers if it focused on how to handle getting such questions in an interview (that's just my personal opinion, and I don't have reopen vote privileges).

@MJeffryes you can comment on metta this https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4191/my-question-is-marked-put-on-hold-because-to-broad-why?noredirect=1#comment12734_4191

@SSimon I tried to focus this to get it reopened. Please let me know if you disagree with my changes!

This is an only somewhat related question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19615/should-one-disclose-his-her-family-information-in-an-academic-job-interview

I would also keep a careful and immediate note of any possibly illegal questions as soon as you leave the interview.

I have thought a lot about this topic. I am a married woman with a kid who had attended the big professional conference while 7 1/2 months pregnant. Most of my interviewers knew this information about me, so was often asked these questions on the job market. [1] I also mistakenly revealed the information a couple of times because I wanted to know about workplace culture. In the end, I got 0% of the jobs where the department knew I had a kid and 100% where they didn't. (Not statistically significant because of low sample size, but still...) Ever since that experience, I have paid special attention to articles on this topic.
I would abide by a few principles:
1) Provide as little information as possible. Anything you reveal may be held against you. If at all possible, provide a deflective, non-answer answer (including a joke). Frankly, any member of the search committee who is aware of the laws/cares about the discrimination will probably be grateful to you for avoiding this complication to the hiring process. Finally, even if you have a "good answer" like "my spouse would be happy to move," the committee may still decide not to believe you and penalize you for a two-body problem.[2]
2) Be collegial. A great deal of weight is placed on collegiality once you have made it to the stage of a flyout. This is why you should not just say "That's illegal." or respond in a way that might be confrontational (especially if you are a woman or person of color). In my case, I found that people who asked these illegal questions were using them as a lead in to sell you on aspects of the university such as great child care, fun couples activities in town, etc. When the asker (possibly incorrectly) thinks they are helping you, they take umbrage at a confrontational response.
3) If the information is already out there, give them the answer they want to hear. First, assume anything that they can Google is "out there." This includes wedding announcements, gift registries for babies, etc. After you account for the information that is part of the "public record", I think you are under no obligation to be actually honest about details. You should spin your situation to your heart's desire. They should not be using this information, so it should not matter, right?
4) Pivot back to job-relevant topics as fast as possible. Any time you spend discussing personal matters like this could probably be better spent positioning yourself as the most qualified applicant who would be the biggest asset to the department. So move back to these topics as fast as possible.
Some examples:
"Do you have children?" "Some days I feel I have 60 children! I can't tell if my undergrads are 19 are 9 most days. I often find that they don't listen well to directions... [here is one way I have handled that in my teaching]"
"How is your new baby sleeping through the night?" is "Great! They are such a good sleeper and I am back to full-time productive research!" (HA!)
"Are you married? What would your spouse do if you moved here? The university career services office is happy to help with spousal relocation." "It is great that the university is able to offer that type of support for new faculty. Are the students in the department also able to take advantage of career services? What are the placement rates like for new graduates from the department?"
[1] It was clearly something that the committees discussed about me. I had a prep call with a faculty member in advance of my first flyout. The conversation started with the person asking me what my daughter was going to be for Halloween. I had never met her and she did totally different work so did not attend the professional conference where I had been pregnant.
[2] Important study related to this topic (paywalled): journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0003122417739294  This finds that hiring committees often use information about marital status to make problematic assumptions about female candidates and illegally use that info in their decision making. The examples (the researcher was allowed to sit in on real hiring meetings at an R1 university) were incredibly egregious, including not offering the job to a top candidate because, even though she insisted her husband was happy to move, they didn't believe her.

I think this is the most balanced and informative answer.

Very sadly, the right answer is sometimes just to lie. This is a great answer. It's not so long ago, in fact it is still true today in some places, that women remove their engagement ring when interviewing for jobs for fear of the employer deciding they must be about to have children.

Other answers have addressed the legality issue, but there’s still the question of

How should I respond to these questions as an early stage career academic?

I’ll throw out one suggestion that, while obvious, doesn’t seem to have been offered by anyone, which is to answer the question honestly. Depending on what the honest answer is, this may well be the optimal way to handle the situation. For example:

“How would your spouse react if you received an offer from us?”
“[He/she] would be delighted, like me! We are both excited about the possibility of moving to [name of city].”

And to be clear, I’m not making light of the fact that questions of this sort are highly problematic and something an interviewer shouldn’t ask, that creates an opportunity for abuse/discrimination, and that could land them in legal hot water. Ideally we would have the luxury of being able to stand up and resist any unethical behavior we encounter. But in an interview setting, if answering the question honestly actually would not be detrimental to your application, this may not be the best time or place to start fighting these sorts of injustices. The world will not necessarily become a better place if you make a martyr of yourself and sacrifice a good professional opportunity to teach someone a lesson about employment law.
Anyway, offering a straightforward answer may or may not be the best strategy in any given situation, but it’s certainly one option that’s worth considering.
Good luck with your interviews!

While this approach might be best of you personally, it still contributes to making it harder for people who might be discriminated against.

@JessicaB indeed. And OP not getting a job would contribute to making it harder for OP and his/her family to feed themselves. It would also contribute to making it harder for the students who would have been taught by OP if OP has gotten the job to get a high quality education (hence my assertion that “The world will not necessarily become a better place if you make a martyr of yourself”). Are you sure the concern you pointed out is more compelling than these opposing ones? I certainly don’t feel it’s my place to tell OP which one outweighs the other, even if I thought I knew, which I don’t.

Do you think that someone who has a kid should answer the question honestly or deflect? I would say deflect if possible, if their priority is being offered the job (rather than only working for “woke” departments)...

@NajibIdrissi no, I’m saying “have principles, but recognize that the world is a complicated place, and decide for yourself what is the right time and place to defend those principles and at what cost, instead of blindly following the advice of a bunch of (mostly) anonymous social justice warriors who will not have to live with the consequences of your decision.”

@Dawn there are indeed situations where deflection would appear to be a more advisable strategy - I can’t comment on whether the specific situation of being a parent qualifies as one, but the personal experience you tell about in your answer certainly suggests it may be. It is truly unfortunate that job candidates have to face such dilemmas, whether they are at risk of discrimination due to their personal situation or are simply outraged at this unethical practice on the part of employers.

@NajibIdrissi no, actually I am myself a big fan of social justice, believe it or not, and don't think it's a silly concept at all. Based on your writing here and on other answers (which I generally find very sensible) I think our politics have a lot in common. But I do have some criticism for people who share my enthusiasm for social justice but express that enthusiasm in what I perceive to be a misguided and overly zealous way, and "social justice warrior" (along with the rest of what I wrote) seemed like a concise way to express that criticism.

This isn't the only good answer, but it's an option that needs to be pointed out. The blog cited above danced around advising it directly, but clearly didn't rule it out. The job hunt is an absurdly competitive and lopsided power situation. You need to use every question to your favor. Spouses may be the #1 excuse for turning down an offer and that's probably all they cared about.

@ASimpleAlgorithm is it really so much competitive? or is it excuse for people?

Since you mentioned that you're also interested in Australia: strictly speaking, it isn't necessarily illegal to ask such questions here, but in general it's highly inadvisable. Discriminating on the basis of marital status is illegal, so why ask for information which you cannot legally use in the recruitment process?
Ask A Manager has some good advice on how to respond in this situation:

So how do you handle it if an interviewer asks you one of these
  questions? Educating the interviewer on employment law probably isn’t
  going to endear you to them. Instead, figure out what the question is
  getting at, and answer that instead. If you think an interviewer is
  concerned that you’ll leave the job when your husband gets
  transferred, speak directly to that: “I can commit to the job for at
  least several years.” If you think they’re concerned that parenthood
  will get in the way of your job performance: “There’s nothing that
  would interfere with my ability to work the hours needed and get the
  job done.”

In this case, that might translate to something like "I don't have any restrictions that would prevent me from moving for this job."
There may be legitimate reasons to ask about family status later in the process - e.g. an enlightened university may have programs to help with the impact of relocation on spouses and family. But that should be left until after the decision is made on who to hire.
Edit to add:
Personally, I think there's a strong argument that applicants should have the right to lie when asked questions with no legitimate purpose in the hiring process. At least one country legally recognises this principle: in Germany, if the employer does ask an inadmissible question in a job interview, the applicant is legally permitted to lie (Recht zur Lüge) and the employer cannot use this lie as grounds for a claim against them.

This is a great answer. After quickly answering in this manner, I would try to steer the interview back to the relevant research- or teaching-related topics at hand.

I think this misses the point of the employment laws. You must be considered equally even if there are factors the employer might not like. By implying you are not pregnant, it still provides information that can be used against someone who is.

@JessicaB if you disagree with Geoffrey’s advice of deflecting the question while providing reassuring information to the interviewer, what would you advise OP to do instead? It sounds like you would recommend to OP to simply refuse to answer the question out of solidarity with all those pregnant (or otherwise at risk of discrimination) job candidates out there. Why not state that explicitly if that’s the case? If you truly believe OP has a moral duty to act against their (and their family’s, and future students’) own interests, please tell us.

@JessicaB I believe this answer implies that you should provide the same answer regardless of whether or not you are pregnant. The idea, I believe, is to give a non-answer answer. It sounds like you have answered but actually reveals nothing.

@Dawn Giving the answers here if you know you are pregnant is lying.

@DanRomik Notice my answer is that the candidate refuse to answer the question.

@JessicaB Do you seriously believe mothers can’t work the hours needed and get the job done?

@JessicaB OP didn't ask about pregnancy at all. Both the questions specified are about spouses, not pregnancy.

@JessicaB but for what it's worth, I think there's a strong argument that applicants should have the right to lie when asked questions with no legitimate purpose in the hiring process. At least one country (Germany) legally recognises that right to lie.

@JessicaB good point, sorry I missed that earlier.

@Dawn Do you suggest working while giving birth?

@sgf Of course one is unlikely to work WHILE giving birth (although I did send a few emails), but I suppose we might have different definitions of "the hours needed to get the job done." I taught and gave birth in the same semester, and I think most departments could make something work so a pregnant candidate can do what NEEDS to be done, even if it might require a bit of flexibility or creative thinking.

@Dawn Sure. But it's "work the hours needed and get the job done". I can, for example, easily work the hours needed with severe sleep deprivation. I'm not sure about actually getting the work done, and stating that it won't "interfere with my ability to get the work done" is definitely lying.

@sgf I got pretty good teaching evals, so I think I was able to get the job done. It did not interfere, which means to "prevent from doing properly" not "prevent from doing easily." :)

@Dawn But you only got your teaching evals after you taught, right? You need to be pretty confident to claim that sort of thing beforehand.

Yes, I am confident in my abilities. In any case, overconfidence is not the same as lying, which is the accusation here.

@GeoffreyBrent this should be answer!!!! add it please, recoursfull

@SSimon I'm not quite sure what you're asking me to do here - this is already an answer. If you want to accept it as the answer, you're the only one who can do that.

@GeoffreyBrent the comment, you didnt add in answer, I am afraid that mod will erase discussion below your answer.

@SSimon ah, gotcha. Added. (Assuming you meant the bit about "right to lie"?)

I could be wrong, but I don't believe any question is illegal to ask at an interview (at least in the US and UK), rather it is illegal to discriminate based on certain characteristics. If you ask a question about a protected characteristic, then in the case of a discrimination law suit, the university will be forced to prove that that information was not used. Hence most employers say don't ask about anything that is not relevant. What your family thinks about your job appointment is not relevant to the hiring process and protected characteristics like marital status, plans for children, sexual orientation, and age may be revealed during such questions.
The problem in academia is that we often mix our professional and social lives. Someone on the search main drive you around the neighborhood (e.g., on the way to dinner) and mention schools and nurseries. This is generally a no-no, but the search committee is trying to sell the school and determine if you would be a good colleague.
So to answer your question about how to respond, make sure you demonstrate you will be a good colleague, but be careful about revealing sensitive information (e.g., strong religious and political beliefs, maternity/paternity leave plans, etc). You should assume that potential colleagues are asking in good faith (e.g., if you are planning on having kids you probably want to know about the university nursery or if you are Jewish you may want to know about local temples). I would not suggest reacting to a sensitive question with anything like "you cannot ask me that", as no one wants to work with someone like that.

The question would be bad in any area where martial status is protected  item of information (which is becoming more common) since any answer will reveal the that information to the employer. Also with how easy it is to assume that a young married couple will have kids it leads to other issues as well.

And important study related to this topic (paywalled): http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0003122417739294

This finds that hiring committees often use information about marital status to make problematic assumptions about female candidates and illegally use that info in their decision making. It is not the asking that is illegal, it is the use of the info ( in the US). It would certainly be against university policies to ask, and that is what was meant on the podcast, I believe.

@NajibIdrissi can you add that as an answer for the faculty position and explain why should be direct? Becuase moderators of that webinar podcast explicitly say, you should know it is illegal but do not complain or be kneejerk! I think you comment reflect their real mind

I'm pretty sure it is an illegal question in the UK.

@JessicaB why members voted for close? Is this retaliation for gender bias?

In the UK the question is not sensu stricto illegal, but it is likely to be strong evidence that the recruitment process was bias, which is illegal. It is almost certainly against the universities HR rules. When people say "you cannot ask that" they are not quite right. Clearly the question can be asked, because someone asked it! But it does open up the university to a discrimination claim. I would at the least inform the HR department at the Uni that the question was asked.

@IanSudbery actually people, moderator say that you cannot tell "you cannot ask that" bcs will be seen as kneejerking. and it is not good impression. however, they dont have right to ask you that

Austria: definitely forbidden to even ask these kinds of questions, you are not allowed to ask about family plans, kids, pregnancies,...

@Noldig can you vote to reopen so you can add this as an answer, this is interesting to know!

@Noldig "Forbidden to ask" No, the situation in Austria is much closer to what StrongBad writes - If you ask such a question, the interviewee has the right to refuse to answer, and the right to lie, and if they give you an answer and later sue you for not taking them, you're going to have to prove that you didn't do it on basis of that answer.

@NajibIdrissi write an answer, it will be helpful for ppl applying in france

@IanSudbery For the UK: "You must not ask candidates about ‘protected characteristics’ or whether they:
are married, single or in a civil partnership
have children or plan to have children"

@Anush can you provide a link to the law (not just a government webpage) since I do not see anything in the Equality Act 2010 about illegal questions.

@StrongBad I only had the government webpage to go on https://www.gov.uk/employer-preventing-discrimination/recruitment.  We may need a lawyer to give a definitive answer.  It may be that this is an interpretation the courts have already made.

@StrongBad Actually ... it's not a criminal offence and there is no strict liability so it's always a question of evidential strength in any case.  So the concept of "illegality" is not really an accurate one for this sort of question in any case. What it really means is, is this likely to be strong evidence in court against you if sued for discrimination?

@Anush which is exactly what I, and i believe Ian, were trying to say.

According to the UK .Gov website, in the UK they must not even ask whether you have a husband.
There are many advise articles available with suggestions for how to deal with such questions if they do arise. Most of these are along the lines of

I don't see that that is relevant to my ability to do this job.

It's possibly worth saying that the process of an academic interview in the UK is very very different to that in the US. There is a clear distinction between the formal events and any informal activities.

I think that a man could possibly answer this way without repercussions (maybe), but a woman who answered this way would be dinged and it would negatively impact her likelihood of getting the job. The woman faces a double-bind which includes an emphasis on collegiality...

Furthermore, even information discussed during the informal activities can be used in a discriminatory way....

@Dawn Not getting a job for that sort of answer is not at all reasonable.

Right, but that’s why they call it discrimination not logic.

@Dawn I think a woman could also possibly answer this way without repercussions (maybe). The occurrence between those maybes is probably different though.

@sgf Fair enough! I am trying to imply that women tend to be dinged more for “collegiality infractions.”

@Dawn And I think you're absolutely right.

I think your answer is implying that asking is illegal. If that is the case, I think it would be best to link to the relevant law, which would probably be in the Equality Act 2010, but I don't see anything there about illegal questions only illegal discrimination.

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text:
Do scientists using user facilities (such as Advanced Light Sources) have to travel frequently?
I recently met an experimental physicist who does his measurements using the X-ray beam-line at a national lab. Since the university he works at is not too close to the facility, I wonder how much travel do people in this and related fields of research have to do for taking measurements on their samples.
Also, do people have any personal opinions about how strenuous the constant travelling can be?

The question might also be extended to ask about academics whose milieus apparently require as-frequent-as-possible travel to conferences... which can be as much a career-breaker/maker as doing the actual work...

@paulgarrett I think that's been addressed at least partly in How much travel is too much travel?

You could imagine cases where the scientist just sends instructions as to how the experiment is to be done, and the actual work is carried out by technical staff at the facility itself (likely paid from the scientist's grant), who then send back the results and data.  In that case the scientist might not need to visit the facility at all, or only occasionally.

@NateEldredge You could imagine, yes, but that would be a rather rare case.

IMHO it is not the amount of travel that is stressful. If everything is well-planned it is great. However, I sometimes had to travel on short notice which interfered with my remaining life. I did trips literally across half the world for some research which was a great experience. But some stuff should have been planned better...

I did my PhD in experimental nuclear structure physics, in a similar situation to the one you've described here. Within a month of starting my PhD, I was sent to the IFIN-HH lab in Romania for a week or so, to help a collaborator with their experiment. A few months later, I traveled to the experiment which provided my PhD data at Argonne National Laboratory in the US. This level of travel kept up for the 3.5 years of my PhD, to Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France and Romania, all on multiple occasions, although it tail off a bit towards the end when I was writing up my thesis. I have to admit, the travelling did get a little tiring, but I generally enjoyed the experience.
So not only are you attending your own experiment(s), but also those of collaborators from both your own institute and others. I was ok with this as I wasn't in a long-term relationship (well, I eventually was for a while, but with a PhD student on the same course), and didn't have children, so had few commitments which required my regular presence.
Really what a person looking at this level of travel needs to decide is if they actually want to travel this much, and if their commitments can handle them not being at home for days or weeks at a time, on a regular basis. (Admittedly, this is much more thought than I put into it at the time!)

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A predatory journal has a copy of our confidential abstract, what should I do?
Our group submitted an article to a prestigious journal and while under review, we received an email from a most probably "predatory" journal, basically saying that your article can be published immediately after you pay the fee.
What makes me worry is that they somehow know the topic and abstract. Should I contact our current journal and mention it?
I suspect one reviewer leaked the article. Unfortunately, I am afraid it might negatively affect our current submission. None of the authors leaked the article online.

Has your article been posted as a preprint anywhere?

No, it has never appeared in any form online. Also before we were rejected from another journal and after that we changed the abstract. This “predatory” journal has an updated abstract.

Just because it’s easy to miss this possibility of an easy answer (as to what happened): Have you tried searching the Internet for your paper’s title?

Yes, I just tried. No results

Some journals will automatically upload a preprint to a website called Research Square if you check (and maybe if you neglect to uncheck) the appropriate box during submission. It seems unlikely to me, but is it all possible that something like that might have happened? See: https://www.editage.com/insights/what-is-the-research-square-option-when-submitting-to-a-journal-under-springer

Is the abstract they have word-for-word the one you submitted to the real journal? If it differs, you might be able to identify when they got it if you've got backups or version control on your old drafts.  (Option B: Plot a heist to get it back. :-) )

This seems like they've made an unauthorized copy of your work and done so for commercial purposes (trying to sell space in their journal).  So to this non-lawyer, it appears to be a copyright violation.  You could try sending them a cease and desist.  (Or ask on Law.SE)

I realize this is also a fairly "silly" question, but are you also absolutely certain that your submission was sent to the journal you expected as well? It's not impossible that you or your coauthor who filled out the web forms accidentally ended up on the wrong website one way or another. Hell, there could be malicious actors out there trying to impersonate well-known journals.

Assuming there's nothing wrong on your end (e.g. a computer virus), this is extremely unusual. There's something wrong with the process (a hacker?), or perhaps an editor/reviewer is in breach of peer review confidentiality guidelines. Both are serious. I'd definitely want to investigate this as the editor or the publisher.
If I were you, I'd contact the journal. It's not likely to negatively affect your submission - the issue is completely unrelated to the merits of your paper, after all.

You could thank the journal for their interest and ask how they learned of your paper. You probably won't learn anything. You already understand that a submission to a predatory journal is poor practice.
You could inform the editor of the journal you submitted to that somehow a predatory journal has learned of your paper and has made an offer that you won't be accepting. Just indicate that you thought the editor should know.  If the editor is ethical and competent, I doubt that it will affect your submission. Don't make accusations of leaks by reviewers.
I don't however, see a need to contact the current editor.

Thank you, we will probably leave it like this without contacting the current editor. I wasn’t trying to directly accuse the reviewers, it just doesn’t seem to be another way that another journal knows the abstract. Maybe its due to lack of submission experience, i don’t know how it is possible without reviewers being involved.

Perhaps one of your co-authors had a conversation with someone outside your group about your work and that other person is the problem. Lots of possibilities.


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When citing from a foreign language and including a translation - what is correct?
Which version is correct (using APA7)?:

"Die Sonne ist hell. [The sun is bright]" (Müller, 2010, S. 1)
"Die Sonne ist hell." [The sun is bright] (Müller, 2010, S. 1)

So - brackets inside of the quotation marks or afterwards?

The way in which you have ask your question indicates that you are interested in the form of the in-text citation rather than in the form of the reference in the bibliography. However, I think you have got the style wrong.
My understanding is that the translated title should not be indicated in the body of the text; it should appear only in the bibliography/reference section. The in-text citation, on the assumption that you want to mention the title of the book in the body of your paper, should read:

"Die Sonne is hell" (Müller, 2010, p. 1)

Note also that I have changed Seite 1 to page 1 because for this question about referencing to make sense in the form you have given, you must surely be asking about publishing in an English language journal.
The referencing in the bibliography would include the translated title, have no quotation marks unless a journal-specific style required it, and would appear as:

Müller, J. (2010). Die Sonne ist hell [The sun is bright]. Place of publication: Publisher.

Correction and additional information: @Andreas_Blass, in his comment, makes the observation that it is more likely you are asking about simply including a foreign language quotation (reading "Die Sonne ist hell") in your text, than citing a work called "Die Sonne ist hell". In that case, as mentioned here (and the same in APA 7th edition), the quotation marks should appear only around the foreign language part. So,

"Die Sonne ist hell" [The sun is bright] (Müller, 2010, p. 1).

Note that you will still want to have page 1, rather than Seite 1.

Is it obvious that "Die Sonne ist hell" is the title of the cited work? I assumed it was just information provided in the body of the work.

You are quite possible correct. Thank you. I have added to the answer.


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What are the ramifications of eLife's new publication policy?
In January 2023, eLife changed its model of publishing.
The main point:
"There is no accept/reject decision after peer review: rather, every article we review is published on the eLife website as a Reviewed Preprint that includes an eLife assessment, public reviews, and a response from the authors (if available)."
eLife is a very good journal, but I am not sure if I should publish with it now. People may consider it just another preprint server, and may not take papers there seriously. Also, the impact factor of the journal may decline quickly. (Yes, I am aware that IF has its flaws, but still a widely used indicator to judge a paper quickly.)
What are the ramifications of eLife's new publication policy?

This is too broad. Please define what you want to achieve by publishing in eLife and we might be able to answer whether those goals are affected by the change in publication model.

@user2705196 -- I think this may be usefully framed as a "what are the ramifications of eLife's new publication policy" question.

@LenLab is there a prereview for suitability, or do they publish every paper they receive??

@ScottSeidman they still select manuscripts before sending them to reviewers, like other publishers.

Welcome to the wonderful world of peer review, where everyone knows something is wrong, but whenever someone attempts to modify the process, there is a backlash from someone else ...

@LenLab They claim they will send as many papers as possible to review, and will chose papers on the basis of whether they have the ability to review them, not the quality of the paper. Whether that is true or not remains to be seen.

I really want to see some discussion on this question. Why should every question fit so squarely in a box or will be closed? This is a really useful question and many of us who are considering submission to eLife want to hear arguments for or against this from our colleagues.


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Feeling inadequate as a PhD student
I just started a STEM PhD before last christmas and whilst things are going okay, I still feel like I'm not good enough and don't deserve the opportunity. I guess it's some form of imposter syndrome but it's driving me to become irrationally attached to my work because I lack confidence that it's good enough to impress my supervisor.
I consistently overwork myself and as a result my personal life is suffering- I even feel bad about taking weekends off. None of what I do feels like it's good enough and I constantly feel like a failure- I have a presentation in the next few weeks to present my project progress and I'm dreading it.
How do I ditch this mentality?

Is there an "imposter syndrome" tag on this site?

Apart from the answers you'll get here, it's well worth reading those to one of the most upvoted questions on this site, How to effectively deal with Imposter Syndrome and feelings of inadequacy: “I've somehow convinced everyone that I'm actually good at this”.

@cheersmate In the past I think it's mostly fallen under the umbrella of the emotional-responses tag: "On emotional issues such as guilt, discouragement, jealousy, anxiety or feelings of inadequacy affecting academics and researchers."

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/2219/49043 (our most up-voted question).

Welcome to Academia!

This sounds like every PhD ever. Just sayin'. But definitely reach out to the university's counselling service if you're at all anxious.

A picture is worth a thousand words..

@terdon: the "what others know" circles on the right give quite a lot of credit. They should at least have different sizes (by, say, three orders of magnitude :))

Many universities have a "counseling" office that can help with such things. But, I agree that it is probably imposter syndrome as you have moved to a situation in which your peers are more skilled than in the past. You probably stood out from the crowd in the past and now you don't, most likely.
But you have affirmation, just by being where you are, that you are worth it.
It is hard during a pandemic, but developing some social relationships with your peers can help. When I was a doctoral student, some of us played paddleball, rode bikes, played softball, etc. just to help keep our sanity.
But if the pressures are mostly internal, you can also set limits that seem artificial. For example, exercise for an hour before lunch every day. Get some aerobic exercise for a few hours every week end - on schedule.
You may find that these breaks aren't unproductive to your work, actually. Your brain will continue processing "stuff" even when you aren't staring at a computer screen. In fact, too-long hours can be counterproductive, producing blocks.
Give yourself a break, but also try to talk to a professional.

The short answer is: hard as it may seem, remember that we have all been there. You will be shocked to think back in a few years how little you knew at the very beginning. It's normal. You will catch on. Just keep in mind that your supervisor gave you the opportunity, so they think you are capable of succeeding.
As for overworking: it seems to me to have a root in perfectionism. I like the idea of countering perfectionism with perfectionism: once you realize that the situation is not sustainable, you know that it isn't ideal, and you need to change something to stay productive in the long run. It seems you have already figured that out. I recommend doing some reading on productivity (I really benefitted from reading How to be a happy academic by Clark and Sousa). Start by implementing small changes right now, e.g., take an hour every day for playing your favorite instrument, make a strict rule not to work on Sundays, tell people close to you about this so they assist you with it, etc.
For more theory on how to stay sane in life in general, you may want to reflect on the eight ways to well-being.
Finally, if you compare yourself to others, don't just look at the "rock stars" for which everything seems to work out easily. More common are situations like in this question, or in this question.

Agree with the perfectionism, it is a killer. But about hard work, I think if you ever want to work hard and long in your life the PhD and post-doc time might be the best moment for that.

@lalala Of course. When you love what you do, you can put in a lot. But even then you shouldn't overdo it, otherwise you can still burn out pretty rapidly. Also, and this is also highlighted in the book I mentioned, you need time breaks to maintain your creativity.

I agree with everything Buffy said: this is very common for graduate students and that therapy can help a lot.
I want to add something which is difficult to carefully state but which I think is also important.  I have no doubt that you belong in your graduate program (the experts on who to accept to that graduate program chose you!), and no doubt that you can get a PhD.  But there's an entirely separate question here which is whether you're happy and whether graduate school is a good situation for you to thrive.  Being a PhD student is a job, and if you're unhappy in a job you might try finding ways to make yourself more happy in it, but you might also consider whether there are other jobs you'd like more. Academia is very challenging from a time-management point of view, and a lot of other jobs make it a lot easier to not feel guilty about not working on the weekend.  Which is all to say, you deserve to be happy as well as successful, and you should also give yourself permission to ask whether you'd be happier in a job that had more structure.  Therapy is also a good way to approach this kind of question of whether the reasons you're unhappy in your job are about your approach to the job or about the job itself.

What @Buffy said!
Try not to worry about trying to impress your supervisor.  A supervisor should view a PhD student as a colleague in training and they want to help you to realise your potential. There will come a time when you will impress your supervisor, but it is likely to be later in the project when you know more about your particular topic than they do, because you have studied it in detail and they haven't.  This is part of the progression, just like an apprentice cabinet maker or any other profession.
Overworking leads to doing less work of lower quality because you will be tired.  Treat resting and enjoying your leisure activities as essential preparation for work*?

may contain trace amounts of hypocrisy ... or perhaps not trace at all.  This is much easier said than done, but try to get into the habit early because it gets progressively harder to break as you get older and tireder.

What is your goal? What is your objective?
If you don't have a clear goal, you will end up measuring yourself against others. And that is a slippery slope.
So make clear achievable goals, and work towards them.
If you end up having to work the whole weekend, it means your goal was too ambitious. And you need to set yourself more time, or reduce the target. Learn from experience to estimate tasks.
It doesn't matter how smart or experienced you are; at the end of the day it boils down to performing a large volume of work. And there is no shortcut. There are no Mozarts in PhD land. Nobody gets to rattle off a symphony.
Just make sure that your effort is well aligned. Before starting out on a large task, talk with others more experienced than yourself, and sanity check you are aiming in the right direction before you put a huge amount of energy through it.


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Research Plan that works?
I could not find any guidelines on how to plan¹ and conduct a research project. Because it seems like when I have just a goal, i.e., a specific hypothesis to check, and passion in the beginning, the passion go away in a while, and without a specific plan and deadlines, I start digging into every little problem or new field of study and often reformulating the initial hypothesis accordingly. In the end, I just have a bunch of partially read papers and not-working or partially working tests or proof-of-concept code that gives me some insight into how things work (if I was lucky enough), but does not lead to any publishable results.
Why can’t I just “focus on checking a single hypothesis”? Well, because in most cases first implementation does not seem to work at all, so what I do is just keep reading stuff and testing subroutines or sub-hypotheses – and never end up in having an entire thing working.
(I'm a grad student only, so I do learn a lot of stuff still)
tl;tr: is there any “GTD: researchers guide”?

¹ not pro forma, but rather to keep on track

At least for me, writing a research plan was very useful for my actual research. I found this article helpful: http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2002_07_26/nodoi.4611149009600202486
The book "A PhD is not enough" has some good advice for writing research plans as well.
The introductory chapters to the book "An Introduction to Scientific Research" by E. Bright Wilson will probably be helpful to you too. Specifically the advice on literature searches is good. Start with general accounts (encyclopedias or survey articles), and then move to research papers. Advice from experts in your field is usually (but not always) helpful. Applying new methods to old problems can be fruitful, although in the long run it is better to be problem oriented; ie to aim to attack specific problems by whatever means necessary.
Polya has several books on problem solving that are quite good, but fairly general. "How to Solve It" is definitely worth reading, and "On Mathematical Discovery" is very interesting as well. You should definitely look at the first chapter of "Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning"---it's short and free on archive.org.
Another general piece of advice when carrying out your plan is to try to make a minimum working example/prototype. Avoid prematurely optimizing and instead cut the shortest path towards something that works. (Think like this: to get to high ground, always walk in the steepest direction; to prioritize the steps in your plan, look for the fuzziest parts, or the parts that would kill your argument.)
You'll probably waste a lot of time and explore a lot of dead ends, although later on that experience might prove useful.
If you feel aimless, try to discipline yourself to use a notebook and state your hypothesis explicitly, then record the essential facts of your plan to test your hypothesis/solve your problem etc. It's important to record your intentions and try to make your hypotheses explicit, so that you don't keep exploring the same dead end. Pretend you're doing lab work, even if you're not.
Anyway, these are a few things that I found helpful from time to time. Good luck! Keep at it :)

Also, collaborating with others, making a reading group, etc. can help with motivation.

Some good advice is in The Craft of Research by Booth, Colomb and Williams, though oriented more towards Social Science and Humanities.

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How do I write the methodology part of a paper if I use commercial software?
I research the aerodynamics of an air vehicle. I use commercial fluid-dynamics software (we have a commercial license). However, I noticed that most papers dealing similar research use homemade software and write about it in the methods section of their papers.
Should I describe how I operate the commercial software in the methods section of my paper? If not, how should I organize this part of my paper? What aspects should I cover in my paper?

Not how you operate the software, but how you model the flow, separation, turbulence losses etc

Do you really mean "commercial"?

@aparente001 yes it's a commercial software called STAR-CCM+

@PureLine - Okay, great, you could also talk about the considerations that led you to choose that package over some others, what made the routines you chose an appropriate choice for your problem, and give a brief description of the algorithm(s).  Also, what you put in your comment below Dan's answer looks good.

Since my background is also CFD, maybe I can help.
It is really important to mention what type of scheme you are using and what is the commercial software. Is it based on the finite volume method or finite element method? Is it a cell-centered or vertex-centered scheme? What is the order of convergence of the method you are using, are they first, second or third order in space? Which transient time-stepping scheme are you using? What is the order of convergence of that scheme? Is it implicit, explicit? Etc.
In the end, the commercial software is just the implementation of a numerical scheme that you are using to solve the Navier-Stokes equation. It is important that you highlight the equations you are solving, the type of turbulence modeling you might be using and also the properties and details of the underlying numerical scheme. Then, even if you are using a commercial software package, people will have sufficient details to understand the context of your numerical resolution.
Also, please do not forget to carry out grid-independence studies!

Great answer.  I would also talk about why you chose the particular routine, and give a bit of an explanation of the routine's algorithm.  Also you can talk about choice of parameter values and how you settled on the final values you chose.

thanks for your detailed answer, but based on your answer, there will be another problem. Since it's a commercial software, here it is STAR-CCM+, it may would not give you all the information of its implementation. As to STAR-CCM+, the fundamental theory is even incomplete in its manual. Consequently, some underlying details you have mentioned, such as cell-centered or vertex-centered, is hard to presented in my paper. My new question is whether it's proper to neglect the information that I  could get from the official manual ?

Although you might not be able to know if Star CCM+ is node or cell centered (which I doubt, that information must exist somewhere, maybe you can call a representative), you can know all the rest of the information. What is your time stepping scheme? What is your spatial discretization scheme? All those schemes have a name and you can look up the corresponding litterature on them. What process are you using the solve the Navier-Stokes equations? PISO, SIMPLE, SIMPLEC, etc. All that information must be present in the paper, in my opinion you cannot neglect that and refer to the manual.

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What to do when you found something new, but don’t have motive/application to justify it?
Last year one of my TAs (a Ph.D. scholar) gave a problem to my undergraduate class, I found the problem very interesting and devoted a lot of time to it. Eventually, I developed a model with my TA along the line of the problem and wrote a paper on it. We believe the model will provide a new dimension to the concerned topic.
Now the paper has been rejected twice by two reputed journals. Along with some minor issues (that can be easily rectified), they’ve pointed out a lack of motive/ applicability in the real world as the major issue. Now I can’t decide what steps I should take; these are some alternatives that I can think of:

Leave that problem statement.
Wait for some solid motive. But till when?
Go with some minor journal or conference.
Other steps that I am not aware of.

The problem statement is in computer science. Apart from this, I am working on another problem statement and due to stillness in this problem, my time and attention are being divided unnecessarily.
What steps can I take?

Maybe publish in an undergraduate research journal? See a list here: https://www.cur.org/resources/students/undergraduate_journals/

This is hard to answer without more information about the actual problem, but in general it is all about finding the correct publication venue. It does not necessarily mean a venue with lower impact, but one with another focus.
If you really can not think about any practical application, it might still solve an interesting problem and might find an application in other areas.
For example, it might be the case that you found a new method to formulate process scheduling as a graph problem that you can solve in an interesting way. The resulting schedules might not be better than the state of the art scheduling algorithms, so you get rejected by journals about process scheduling. Still it is an interesting graph problem so it might be better suited for journals with the focus on  graph theory.
But the most important aspect in this context is to tailor the paper to the publication venue. If you now try to submit to the graph theory journal do not write "This paper presents a method to improve process scheduling" but "This paper presents an efficient method to solve the minimum dominating set problem under the constraint .... It has, for example, application in the area of process scheduling".

But the OP claims that there is no motive/applicability at all, regardless of the venue. Then... I do not want to be the bearer of bad news...

@Miguel You could say that research without direct applicability should not be published, but then whole research areas would have to be closed.

@koalo I get the gist about what you want to talk about. So is there directory or something from where we can find journals and their areas??

@thepurpleowl No, that is a major difficulty! There is for example the IEEE Publication Recommender, but it only works for IEEE journals and you still have to figure out if the journal is a good match.

@koalo No, I don't accept the premise. In fact I want the OP to arrive to the opposite conclusion: there is a motivation/context for every line of research, but we have to work harder to find it and describe it in the paper. It is the authors' job, not the reviewers'.

@Miguel Yes, if you put it that way I fully agree! Still, it is very diverse what is accepted as motivation. While some reviewers will only accept a motivation along the lines "I can prove that this results in an economic growth of 110% in the next 5 years." others are pleased for example if the problem sounds interesting or hard to solve.

@koalo IMHO the key word is context: this problem sounds interesting because there are other similar works from outstanding researchers. It is interesting because it has been hard to solve for me... no, it is not enough.

@Miguel I agree! That is a very important aspect that I have not covered in my answer. A "free floating" publication without any anchoring in related work has a very hard time to get accepted. So one aspect of tailoring to the correct publication venue includes making connections to related work published in this context.


text:
If the professor is teaching in a way that I don't like, what should I do?
It is a required course. I major in stat/math. The professor only writes down his notes on the blackboard, never explains intuitions of the theorems, never starts with easy/simple examples, never explains why the material is important etc.

Do your best to get through the class. Don't take that professor in the future if there is someone else teaching the same class. What kind of answer are you looking for here?

I'm confused by the tags.  Is this a graduate or undergraduate class?

First step: Ask questions in class.  "What is the intuition behind this theorem?"  "What is a simple example of this?"

Perhaps less so in math than physics, I find that appeals to, or requests for, 'intuition' are fraught with difficulty because intuition is a personal thing - what is 'intuitive' to me is often different than what is intuitive to somebody else. (This crops up violently in physics when students hit quantum mechanics - their Newtonian intuition is no longer valid and they can't stand it). But, interactions in class, in office hours, or with other students are the obvious paths towards clarification of problems.

Majority rules; how fellow students perceive the lectures?

@NateEldredge This is a good answer.

why is my question downvoted????????? Cant understand..

"This question has been flagged as: off-topic: Questions about problems facing undergraduate students are off-topic unless they can also apply to graduate or post-graduate academicians as described in What topics can I ask about here?"

Please do not deface your question. See this help page for instruction how to delete your account.

In their own training, few professors have taken classes in pedagogy or didactics. That means they learn how to "teach" by doing it, and some of them do so quite badly. So you need to stop the professor after class, and - nicely! - ask if he/she couldn't help you out by providing more simple/easy examples next class.  See if that works. If it does, move on to the next issue bothering you: the importance of the material. And so forth.  Try to help your professor to become a better teacher without making him/her defensive!  I've taught (including statistics) at colleges and universities for 30 years, and I know there's a lot of lousy teaching - and touchy egos - out there...

Besides for lack of training, there is also the fact that in many departments, as long as your teaching is acceptable, there is little to no external incentive to invest time and energy into improving its quality (not including the intrinsic desire to be effective in the things that you do).


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My results are different from my original poster title now. How I should prepare the poster?
I am a graduate student in an interdisciplinary psychological field. With the help of a paper I have read today, I have realized that a result of mine is now invalid: I missed a covariate in my analysis and when I include it, my result is non-significant. Fortunately it was not that much about the main point of my conclusion, but the non-significant term happens to be in my abstract title (and my abstract is printed on the abstract book of the conference now!).
I told this to my advisor and he said: “you cannot control every single thing, it is not that important”. But I have controlled it and it did affect my results, and I actually had that particular covariate in my analysis while I was writing the abstract and my advisor told me to exclude it.
I do not know what to do now. I cannot pretend like the result is still there; that conference is very important in my field and I do not want to regret it later. I do not think that it is ethical. I cannot pretend like I did not know that particular covariate is actually important for my analysis, because I have read the paper! I do not know what to do if someone asks me: “why you did not include this covariate?” I do not know whether it is okay to change the title and exclude some results from the poster, even when the abstract (in the abstract book) says another thing.
What should I do? I am very confused and hopeless.

I think the title should be changed. As it stands, I expected a wording or otherwise superficial presentation issue.

Of course you shouldn't pretend that the result is still significant, when you know now that it isn't. As you have noted, that would certainly be unethical.
Prepare your poster using the results that you believe are correct now. If anyone asks about the difference between the poster and the abstract, just explain what happened. (You aren't the first to make a mistake and catch it later, nor will you be the last.)  You can also email the conference organizers to find out if they can update the poster title and abstract (online at least).
Occasional mistakes are common in science, as in everything else; don't stress about it too much, just learn from it for the future. It's great that you caught it now, before your poster presentation, so that you can correct it.

No reason to be confused and hopeless. Your question shows integrity and an ethical mindset, so ... own it. After all, science corrects itself and scientists should do so too. And you're right, integrity and trust are too important -- so never try to cover up mistakes.
I highly recommend Sternberg's "Psychology 101 1/2" here:

There is no room in your career for cover-ups. As a lawyer who defended clients accused of various misappropriations once said, it is usually not the original offense but the cover-up that does people in. No one will live a life free of mistakes. You are far better off facing up to these mistakes than trying to cover for them. At times, you may need to issue an erratum to an article you publish, or admit to a serious mistake in your handling of other people, or worse. Covering up is, in my experience, always a mistake.

and later:

My experience in academia is that one can get by just fine being honest. There will be times when it may be embarrassing to be honest, as when you have screwed up. [...] In my experience, it is almost always the cover-up, not the original mistaken act itself, that really cooks people's gooses!

The only thing that still bugs me about your question is the role of your supervisor. If he told you to exclude the covariate and sees excluding it as a non-issue, does he have a different agenda or a conflict of interest? For example, does the marginal point in your findings invalidate major points in his? Is it important for him to ignore that covariate or doesn't he care either way? If the former, then this would be a different problem and then it's not what you do regarding the conference, but what you do regarding your supervisor. If the later, correct the mistake (like @ff524 said, contact the organizers).


text:
Is it appropriate to email some new information to my recommendation-letter writers on Thanksgiving if the deadline is a few days later?
I just found out one of my grad school electronic applications is having problem with a third party letter service company. So I have to ask the letter  writers themselves to upload the recommendation letters. The deadline is the first day after returning from Thanksgiving so I am thinking to email them today (Thanksgiving) would that be inappropriate? (But if I do, of course I will say Happy Thanksgiving but sorry to bother you....etc)

Is the return day Friday (tomorrow) or Monday?

the returning day is Monday

A professor who does not want to take action on any email received on Thanksgiving day shouldn't be checking it, anyway...

Email is not real time communication.  You are not taking up anyone's Thanksgiving time by sending them an email on Thanksgiving.  I would send the email ASAP and let them decide when to deal with it.  The more time they have before the deadline, the better.

Asking is always possible.
Expecting any response or action ... well, that, as they say, is another story.

As long as its not inappropriate, I want to at least tell them now rather than on Monday and say the deadline is "TODAY" - I think that may be worse, right?

Today is the only potentially problematic day. You can mail them today or Friday without harm since either way they will have the whole weekend and Monday to respond. They are all inclined to be charitable towards you, so I don't think it matters whether you do it today or tomorrow.

I am sorry but is today ok? (you said today is potentially problematic but said I can mail today without harm so I am a bit confused)

If someone was the kind of person to get offended easily, then today has a slim potential for being bad, but all your recommenders are friendly to you, so I'm sure it'll be fine.


text:
How much will a poor first semester affect my grad school chances?
I'm studying Computer Science with a double major in Math at a public university. I hope to attend a private school like Vanderbilt (Nashville, USA) to pursue an MS or PhD. My GPA is still above a 3.0, however:

I have received a U (unsatisfied, incorrectly submitted work) as a final grade in a single credit course that is part of an honors college program during my first semester in college.
I also had one terrible score (D) in a 200 level maths course during the same semester.

Will these early blemishes on my transcript affect my chances of getting into graduate school?

Is the course relevant/important to your major?

@JoshVo it should be noted that U doesn't necessarily imply a pass/fail grading scheme: GCSEs in UK secondary education are graded from A* through G as passing grades and U as a fail (at least when I took them). It wouldn't surprise me if universities existed with a related marking system

If a student did poorly in their first semester of college, but did well afterwards, admissions committees will conclude that the student learned from what ever problems they had the first semester, and will be unlikely to perform poorly again.  However, if they can choose a student with a perfect record, they will.  On the whole, first semester grades are of little importance except at the most selective institutions.
If you explain in your application what went wrong, why it will never happen again, and how it made you a better applicant, it may strengthen your application.
(us perspective)

Indeed, at some institutions, first semester (or even first year) grades can be retroactively rewritten.  "Freshman forgiveness" one place called it.  If you got a bad grade (I forget the precise language) in your Freshman year you could retake that course, and your grade the second time around would become your official grade, and the first grade gets expunged from your record.

Wow. Congrats on pursuing such a challenging major
How relevant is that math course to your major? Is it one of the requirements? A lot of good advisors/faculty members understand that freshman year is only a summer from high school (think about it) so hopefully the graduate school will be understanding. Nobody is rarely ever perfect from the start- college is a learning process!
I'll be honest. I got straight C's my freshman and sophomore year. But I got lucky, went to classes, and got my sh*t together! My professors recognized that even though I did poorly early on, that I had potential, and gave me research projects (she pulled me out at the end of class- thought I was in trouble)
Eventually, I got a project with NASA and it proved to graduate school that I was ready for research by the time I was applying.
So from my experience, no, it does not matter too much your freshman year. But make sure you have something to prove that you are academically strong enough now!


text:
Should I mention my goal of expanding my family business in my MS statement of purpose?
I am applying for MS in Industrial Engineering. Do you think it is safe to mention that I have a family business which I would like to expand with the aid of IE? Or will it be useless for their purposes since they may perceive me as a rich kid with back up who does not genuinely have the want and need to study?

Whether your family is rich or not should have nothing to do with the admission.

@scaaahu while it should have nothing to do with admission, most schools would be happy to trade a spot on an MS program for a new building.

@StrongBad I agree. Your comment is correct in practice while mine is correct only in theory.

@scaaahu you sure they won't think I am undeserving?

I am not entirely sure. I think your passion about IE and MS degree should be one of the major points in the SoP. However, if mentioning your family business can help to explain why you're interested in IE and MS, then you should say it.

In my opinion, having a clear reason for going to graduate school can only help your application.  Many people apply to graduate programs simply because it is the next thing after undergraduate.  For you, there is a clear motivation and a source of focus.
With regards to this particular reason, it is not clear to me whether it would be good for a Ph.D., because of the research component.  A master's degree, however, is designed to give you knowledge and skills that can be applied outside of academia, however, and so your motivation of applying this to a particular business is a good match (the fact that it is a family business I think should not particularly matter).

user27227, it seems like a safe thing to do and this answer seems spot-on to me. The concerns will be first about your preparation and ability to succeed in the program, and having somewhat immediate practical application for the knowledge should be seen as a bonus for you. Besides, as StrongBad pointed out above, if you expand the business enough to become a donor, perhaps the university will get a new building out of it, and the mere thought of that should put your app at the front of the line. ;-)


text:
How to cite page from section-page number style document?
I've come across a problem during my bachelor thesis.
I'd like to cite a single page in a document, but it uses the "section-page" style of numbering pages of the document. It appear like I'm referencing pages 7 to 23, even it is just a single page. (I am using ISO 690)

What's the proper way to cite such page? Thank you.

Verbatim, of course.

It might look at first like you are citing pages 7 to 23, but anyone who actually goes to look up the reference will immediately figure out what you meant (noting that the source doesn't have a page 7 or a page 23 but does have a page 7-23). If they don't read the original source, it doesn't matter.

You can write "page 7-23", so that the singular word "page" gives the reader a clue.  A range of pages would be "pages 7–23".
Alternatively, I would have no objection to "Section 7, page 23", though apparently JeffE wouldn't approve of that.

It appear like I'm referencing pages 7 to 23

A different symbol should be used in the two cases: when referencing page 7-23, the symbol between the two numbers should be a hyphen; when referencing from page 7 to page 23, it should be an en dash, which is slightly longer than the hyphen.
So, use the appropriate symbol.

This will not work, because people constantly confuse hyphen, en dash, and em dash.  Better to use a colon, e.g., 7:23.

You are right, but the problem is when I am trying to add page into citation in MS Word, I can't type hyphen in there, but just en dash.

@jakebeal: It's a possibility, but if you're writing for a publisher which requires a dash and you use a colon, it is likely that the proofreader will change it anyway (though these days proofreading seems an art on the verge of extinction). And since we are in academia, it is probably better to teach people the correct usage of the different symbols, so that in the future they won't confuse them ;-)

@sealer: Mmm... I rarely use MS Word, but I think you can type a hyphen (see e.g. this article).

@MassimoOrtolano Good point, but this is not working when adding page reference in citation, but thanks

@jakebeal Nope.  Cite the page number using precisely the same symbols used in the work itself.  (And pray that work itself doesn't use en-dashes.)


text:
Does filing a patent application require disclosure in the paper publication process?
Suppose a patent has been filed (or is in process of being filed) over the same research that is described in a paper.
Does filing a patent application require disclosure in the paper publication process?
If so, what would be the expected format of disclosure during the paper publication process, regarding the patent pending status?

From legal point of you, you always fill first, publish later. Beyond that you dont have much restriction. Patenting does not influence your copyrights, those are two totally different IPs. From best practice/ethical point of view, I have seen literally dozens of papers of high profile authors where I knew they patented the process, and it wasn't mentioned even in half sentence in the paper - and yet to see a paper that explicitly mentions a submitted patent. The requirements of patenting and publishing are very different, as well as the content of the patent vs paper.

Cleaning up obsolete comments related to previous, closed version of this question...

This related question asks whether obtaining a patent first for results, will it make it more difficult to publish the same results.

The answer to this depends on the state of the filing and the particulars of the publication venue.

If you haven't filed anything yet, you definitely aren't required to disclose, and more than you are required to cite a paper that hasn't been submitted yet.  After all, any number of things might prevent the filing from happening.  Also, if you disclose before filing, it could screw up your patent.
If you have filed, then it depends on whether the venue requires you to disclose a conflict of interest.  For example, PLoS ONE is very picky about conflict disclosure, but most IEEE venues do not care.  A patent filing (preliminary or full), is reasonable to treat as a conflict of interest.

If you're not sure, though, then the people handling your patent will almost certainly be willing to help you figure out the right way to handle it.  In my experience, the IP offices of many institutions are very happy when researchers are actually willing to engage with them and will be very helpful to you.

Thanks @jakebeal. I am, however, not certain why does a patent application constitue a conflict of interest. What would be a concrete basis for that claim? I assume it would just be logical to note the patent application within the article (e.g. a patent pending notice), so as to not lead people to be infringing the patent if later granted.

@matt Patents generally involve financial interests, which are often perceived as inducing bias in research.  See, for example, the many concerns over drug studies. The PLoS ONE policy on competing interests has some nice explanations.


text:
Is it bad etiquette to contact a named reviewer?
A named reviewer has made some suggestions, which I'm exploring, and I'd like to ask for input on a particular point. I have exchanged emails with this person before asking for input on the same work. Would it be appropriate to email directly to ask?

You need to get it out of your head that research should be done in private and then revealed to the world as a perfect, singular entity, rather than what we all know it to really be - a collaborative and uncertain wander through the unknown. The whole point of peer review is to improve the quality of the research, not as a barrier to publishing at all, so embrace your peers :)

The question is about the etiquette of directly contacting a reviewer, not keeping research private.

If the reviewer has given you their name, then that is their choice. In my experience journals give the reviewers the option of anonymity. If they've chosen to reveal their name then I think there is no issue with you contacting them directly. Especially if you've discussed the work with them previously.
When you resubmit the paper, with the changes, perhaps you could then include this persons name in the list of people not suitable for reviewing the paper (Assuming that this journal asks you to submit names of suitable, and not suitable, reviewers).

Better to do this through your editor, to avoid any appearance of impropriety.

I usually give my name when doing peer reviews, but I would not want to be directly contacted.  Individual reviewers have no control over the editor's decisions or opinions, and you might be misled into following a reviewer's opinion that the editor feels is incorrect or minor.  It also might give the impression of trying to influence a reviewer directly, which would be improper.
Work through the editor.


text:
How to improve chances of acceptance of a paper with an atypical structure?
I am working on a manuscript for publication in a chemistry journal. I find that my approach to the problem is very different to previous work on the matter. I find very hard to fit its argumentative line into the common scheme: Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, Acknowledgements, References.
I am scared that my paper will be automatically rejected if it doesn't follow conventional sectioning. Is this an issue?
What should I do to increase chances of acceptance of my paper?
I can only think of the following alternatives, but I am not experienced and I am unsure of which is the best way to go:

Force the standard sectioning at any cost of the argumentative line?
Use many paragraph in the introduction to describe the sectioning?
Just use my criteria and structure the paper in the way I think it is better?

My thesis is that previous work did not consider some peculiarities and because of that their results aren't reliable. I need to prove the existence of these peculiarities and argue that my approach is better in these cases. Only experts in method X itself know that method X fails in some cases, and most researchers just apply method X assuming that its results are very good, so I feel myself in the need to show believers in method X that the method fails in certain cases (I'm not an experienced published author, so maybe my ideas are wrong about the need to convince others).
Finally, as there is not a method Y that works for all cases, I used results of many methods for each case and made a deep analysis considering the strengths and weakness of each method. Due to this, and the particularities of each case, I used a different method for each case. Even if I list methods for each case, I would have trouble fitting this into a Methods section early in the paper.
Due to the peculiarities I mentioned, I analyzed secondary properties as well. This gave rise to a lot of methods and situations that are hard to describe. I performed many calculations with a variety of objectives (first showing the existence of the peculiarities, and then calculating a useful value), and as many of the readers are not experts in the method itself, I think I need to provide a lot of background information before describing the methods themselves.
Note: The reason I chose a journal in which I know that most readers aren't aware of these kinds of situations, is that the properties calculated are of their main/exclusive interest. In other fields these kinds of things are well known and this work does not provide any insight on them. I'm just trying to correct previous values reported in one field, by applying well known facts from another field.

Hi, and welcome to Academia.SE!  Unfortunately, I'm having some difficulty following your question.  Can you please try to shorten and focus it a bit, and also say what field you are working in (publication conventions vary radically from field to field)?

@jakebeal I hope that the changes done have made the question clearer and more useful.

Most people use this structure because it works. Are you sure it isn't suitable for this?

@FábioDias Thanks for reply. I am pretty sure. I can expand on why I think so. I can edit the answer including all the details that I removed (with the first edition) about why I think so, if you consider that this can be helpful.

There are two entirely separate issues here:

Does the journal require a particular format?
What's the appropriate narrative with which to present your work?

Some journals require a strict organization of sections, while others merely suggest it.  If it just suggests, you can do what you think best. If a journal requires a certain organization, though, you need to follow that organization.  If it doesn't make sense for your narrative, then you might pervert the organization to better serve your narrative: for example, this paper of mine is about a methodology, so the method effectively is the result, and a rather large discussion of methods lives in the results section.
Another option is to make heavy use of supplementary information.  For example, many high-impact journals require strict adherence to a format and also have tight length limitations.  Supplementary information for such papers is often far longer than the papers themselves, and you can readily tuck in a pointer to a thorough explanation of methods by a reference to one of your supplementary documents.

I struggled with this very issue for my first couple of papers. I'll bet it's the middle part (Methods, Results, Discussion) that you feel doesn't fit the paper you're trying to write. That may because your view of the type of thing that goes into those sections is too narrow.
First, it may help to approach the writing a bit differently. Forget about the sectioning for the moment, and just write, in any order. Make the points you want to make. Add in the arguments or experimental results that you need to support those points. As you're writing, you realise that there are things your reader needs to know in order to understand your paper, so write that as well.
Now you can start to think about the order that the information should be presented in. So rearrange what you've written into logical paragraphs, and put them in a sensible order.
As you're doing this, a natural structure for your paper should emerge. There's stuff that the reader needs to know in order to understand your paper. That goes at the beginning, in the introduction. You'll also want a short summary of your main points. This will go in the conclusion. You might want to suggest areas for future research.
You may not need any acknowledgements in your paper. Ask your supervisor. You obviously need references.
The abstract is a summary of what the paper is about. I tend to write the abstract last, because it's only then that I know exactly what the "story" the paper is trying to tell is!
But it's the middle part (Methods, Results, Discussion) where the structure can be a bit confusing, especially if your paper isn't about a typical chemistry experiment. This seems to be the area where there's the most difference in structure between papers. For example, the results and discussion of those results might be combined into a single section, typically called "Results" or "Results and discussion".
So let's think of those sections a little more generally. You need to explain how you approached the problem. If your paper is an argument for something, then you need to explain your underlying assumptions, and how you reached the conclusions you reached. This is the sort of thing that goes into the "Methods" section -- although you may want to give this section a different title.
For an argument paper, it might be difficult to separate the "Results" from the "Discussion". So perhaps those sections could be combined into one section that presents your argument. Look for some papers that present arguments, you'll get ideas on structure.

Thank you for reply! The issue is with sec. "Methods". My problem is that the paper is a deep discussion of each case of a series of compounds, so for each molecule I use different methods. Also, there are a lot of different methods for proving a common propriety and a lot more (tens) to try/show the influence of this properties in many others magnitudes. An additional problem is that most of readers of the field aren't familiar with the theoretical point, so I can't just say "For proving X I used the methods.." because 'X' and 'methods' aren't  commonly known in the field.

In summary, there are almost two hundred of methods used, many of them can be grouped and just cited but I still need to tell something about at least 15-20 (those that its results were analyzed and compared deeply), so I feel that would be a very long list of saying "For X1 I used Y1,Y2,.., For X2 I used Y3,Y16,...." But it will be lost the reasoning of why each method in each case (most time method Y5 was used due to result of methods Y7 and Y9 for example), so it only would be a large, confusing and non useful section.
Should I still try to retain this structure?

I feel much more natural listing only main used methods and include new methods as they have sense to get into scene. Is it a really bad idea?
I already wrote the manuscript, but I am thinking that maybe it is better to rewrite it.

I would suggest that you pick a small number of cases where Method X doesn't work.  You can allude to there being many other cases (in other words, you may mention that there are many other cases, but don't list them in this first paper).  Think hard about why the readers of Journal A will care that Method X fails on these particular examples.
Once you have selected the cases to include, and have identified the relevance to this audience, you will be able to pull out some of the material you have already written, to put into an article for Journal A.
If this is published and well received, you may be able to publish more examples in a series of future articles; an opportunity to present your complete compendium may also present itself at some point in the future; but my proposal is based on the motto, "Start somewhere."
For this (possibly first in a series) article for Journal A, Jake's suggestions are very good, i.e. find out if it's required to follow the common scheme (Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, Acknowledgements, References); if so, create some sub-headings under "Methods" for the necessary background information.

TL, DR; Follow the norms of your discipline.
You have already considered the fact that if you do not follow the standard format used in your discipline, your paper will automatically gets rejected. Keep that thought and revise your manuscript accordingly.

I find that my approach to the problem is very different to previous
  work on the matter. I find very hard to fit its argumentative line
  into the common scheme

No, that sounds lazy. You are comparing apples to oranges. First, you can write your paper the way you want it and then you can rewrite it, following the standard format used in your discipline. Only then you can really compare which of the two formats suits your content better. Writing what comes natural (because it is easier) does not make your paper better. It makes it unstructured and hard to follow by the corresponding experts. And that usually leads to rejection. Also, the argument "I find very hard to..." is self-evident. Yes, writing papers is hard. Writing good or seminal papers is even harder.
In our first papers, some of us thought that we should write our paper exactly the way we wanted and came naturally to us. Guess what? Our initial manuscripts sucked. And then we improved and our papers got better. How? By reading good, seminal papers and following the example of prominent people and how they structured and organized their papers. You do not have to learn this by the rejection of your manuscript. This will be one of the many papers you will probably write in your life. Learning to write according to the norms of your discipline is inevitable (for your following papers) and is a skill that you should learn and practice sooner rather than later. And you should start with your current paper.