text:
How to speak to advisor about hiring an unscrupulous student?
Here is the thing. I am working in an lab under a new assistant professor of HCI and our lab itself is just two years old. We had an masters student graduating earlier and I am the second masters student from the lab to have finished my dissertation. We also have an PhD Candidate working in there. So at present we are just two GRAs in the lab.
To help us out with some programming, we hired two students on an hourly basis. My advisor is not into micromanagement; hiring students and asking for an update just a week before deadline and placing a heavy trust on those students and till now it has worked fine.
I was asked to manage this student who is severely incompetent to say the least. They had developed, with 4 other students, an undergrad project which was shown to demonstrate the necessary skills, although I highly doubt that they did any work on that project. When we asked them to program an app, they could not do it so they went to another lab and made the GRAs there develop the app for them. The code was so horrible that I had to rewrite the whole program just before the deadline. I brought this to my advisor's attention and the response was they will fire both of them and asked me to stay back for one semester to help out with transition.
I am pretty good at what I do and have a stellar reputation in my department. Despite multiple requests from my advisor, I said I don't want to spend one more semester in the lab since I can earn much more by getting an industry job.
What my advisor doesn't know is that when the new student was working, instead of developing the app on the tablet, he installed games on it and kept the tablet in his home for a month. This caused some hardships to the other new hire in the lab who could not complete the programs on time. Whenever I asked for the return of the tablet, the reply was that they came to lab but nobody was there. We were actually there in the lab during the whole time it was claimed to have attempted to return it. I was busy with interviews so I never bothered to tell my advisor about this.
At end of December, out of desperation she hired the student she said she would fire and  sensing desperation they asked  for GRA, saying they are interested in having a dissertation. My advisor agreed reluctantly. I came to know about this only last week when I called to find out what they were doing in the break. They sheepishly told me that my advisor was a fool and they were not really interested in a thesis but only in getting a free ride through college though being a GRA.
I am worried they will not do any work and pay other people to write programs and a dissertation for them. One bad apple can destroy the work environment in a lab. So I finally emailed my advisor and asked if they can promise me an full time job by April, I will stay back and help  out in the research. I have also asked for an appointment to discuss an important matter of the new student.
I think my advisor has already given him the commitment, but how can I convince them to drop this student? I have worked in my lab for a year and a half. I deeply care about the lab, and I don't want that student in there. What will be best way to approach my advisor about this?
UPDATE:
I spoke with my advisor yesterday and said in no uncertain terms that they are not into  micromanagement and this student will screw up her lab after I leave, they will never realize it and the will pay somebody else to write their thesis and the advisor's career will be on the hook. I promised that if the advisor find me the best student from class, I will teach them how to do basics of programming so that there will be smooth transition once I leave. According to that new student, she asked them to meet and said that she has no funding and it will be difficult for them to do a thesis without funding and suggested  trying other departments, and asked to meet  after a further week. Kind of indirectly telling them to leave.
What I am not able to understand is when I asked my adviser yesterday it was said to me that it was never offered for the student to do a thesis with  but I am pretty sure it was agreed to work with that student when with them before the break. The new student was super confident about the fact that he will get funding for a thesis.
So can anybody please enlighten me as to why my advisor would lie to me here? Why would the advisor lie to me that they didn't offer a thesis when I see they pretty well did, I mean I am just an student, right? Are they embarrassed by their mistake and that's why they're not admitting it?

i had to rewrite the whole program just before the deadline — Don't do that!

Is she embarrassed by her mistake and that's why not admitting it? — Could be. On the other hand, maybe you're mistaken.  Or maybe it's none of your business.

@JeffE I just asked the question because i feel bad because even though i may want that guy out of lab with best of intentions ,i am getting a feeling my advisor took the bullet   because she thought i wouldn't work with that guy and she couldnt afford to leave me. She might think in future that i dont gel with other people and am not a good team player.I dont know , i just did what i thought was right.

"So can anybody please enlighten me as to why my advisor would lie to me here?" No, we can't. We don't know her and anything we could say would be pure speculation.

How do you know she lied?  Don't you think it's more likely that the person who you know is unscrupulous, and has lied to you in the past (about coming in to surrender the tablet), was lying to you?  "Because the new guy super confident about this part(that he will get funding and thesis)."  He said he was super confident.  He is an established liar.  And you suspect your advisor?

@Boncek35 how did this turn out?

It's a good question touching multiple points. Most of us have had to work with incompetents in both academia and industry.
Here is my take:

To help us out with some programming, "we" hired 2 students on an hourly
  basis.

Really, you didn't hire them. Your supervisor did. She doesn't know how to manage unmotivated people requiring close attention (and even if she did she will be too busy in the tenure ratrace for the next ~7 years), so she dumped (ahem:delegated) that responsibility on you. He messed up his first assignment and you very unwisely saved his bacon by rewriting his work before the deadline (a) don't ever do that again b) document to her before you do it, that he asked you to do it, and how much time it will take, and ask should you drop your regular work).

My advisor is not into micromanagement. She hires the students and asks for an update just a week before deadline and places heavy trust on people working for her and till now it has worked fine.

This hands-off management style works fine with motivated competent people who show initiative. You just have to make sure that's who you're hiring.

said she will fire both of them and asked me to stay back for one semester to help her out with transition.

So you got what you want. (Probably you would have gotten it sooner if you hadn't rescued him. Lesson learned). It's not your business how she handles it, it doesn't matter what her style is.

What i am not able to understand is when asked my adviser yesterday she told me that she never offered asked the guy to do thesis with her but i am pretty sure she did agree to work with that guy when she spoke to him before break.Because the new guy super confident about this part(that he will get funding and thesis).

The guy is a known liar and incompetent; most likely he's playing mind games with you and the other students (and everyone else in his life). Don't play his stupid games. Don't let him sow distrust between you and your supervisor, let alone fool you into accusing her of imaginary things. Don't even talk to him. Totally ignore him and get on with your own career. Lesson learned: there will always be people like that (until it's your company or you get the power to fire people).
Lessons learned:

Always try to insist on veto power in interviewing and hiring coworkers you will work with (and managers too if possible). If not, you have little or no power.
Learn to estimate the hidden cost of managing bad or mediocre people, and the corresponding process requirements (e.g. biweekly group meetings, written status reports). The worse they are, the more this will eat into your productivity. Also, it will annoy you. Try to timebox parts of your schedule to limit this ("red time/green time", headphones, Pomodoro, whatever).
You learned something important about yourself from this, namely that it aggravates you intensely to work with dishonest incompetent untrustworthy unmotivated people. So don't ever get into a manager or supervisor position wrt such people again. Or if you must, clearly define expectations, progress tracking, deliverables, dependencies, reviews etc. Read about different management styles and identify which ones you like/ dislike/ thrive under.
Surface problems with coworkers early, in a professional way. In this case, when he messed up his first task. Don't cover for them. (Don't throw them under the bus, necessarily, but definitely don't cover for them).
Some people specialize in mind games, and if you react that damages your image. Avoid them and don't play their stupid games. Document what they get up to. But don't let yourself be distracted or lose your composure. People like that are smart enough to manipulate, lie and cultivate perceptions and relationships, that's how they survive so long (or get promoted).
If the situation had become intolerable and she hadn't agreed to fire him, then you would have had to quit, politely explaining what he'd done (but not the stuff you merely suspect he would do) and why it was damaging her department.
You keep getting hung up on a sense of unfairness ("What if he bribes people to write his programs, dissertation?") Put that out of your mind, you can't control it. Somewhere down the line, he will get what's coming to him - whether that's next week or in ten years - you can't control the timing - this is the Zen of Working with Incompetents. Do not let him distract your mental energies.
Put him out of your mind. Eliminate all interaction with him. Don't reply to his emails or questions. Or walk out of the lab if he walks in. Buy a bottle of sparkling white wine (or whatever) and keep in the fridge. Open it after he gets fired. Shouldn't be long now. Then celebrate and get back to your work 110%.
We have to assume your supervisor duly learned her lesson about cutting corners in hiring, not writing a job ad, checking references etc. You suspect she might have taken the guy as a political favor. But if you think she didn't, offer to write the job ad for her next time.

The way you can broach the subject is exactly as you've laid it out in your comment. The student mentioned that he will take on a GRA position in the group. However, you're concerned that he is not actually qualified to do the research in the group, and that will give you an opportunity to lay out the case. You should have evidence that is stronger than hearsay, however, if you want to make a convincing case.
You might also suggest some questions that the advisor can ask the student that will prove that he is not qualified to do the research. However, if your advisor is in fact "desperate" for help, it may not be enough to sway your advisor's mind. If your school offers "provisional" contracts to new graduate students, you may want to ask her if she can make a short-term commitment before guaranteeing longer-term funding.

i have the tablet with me  showing notifications showing games have been installed during the time the tablet was with him. I dont have written proof for anything else.  I can convince her i can find an better student ,train him to replace me when i leave but i am afraid it will not convince her to rescind her offer to this new guy. I think i need a better way to handle this.

For starters, if you can get an email from the colleagues who "wrote" the application for him—as well as change logs for the code you had to rewrite (you were using version control for that, right?)—that would bolster your arguments immensely.

i dont have any contacts in that lab. This guy himself told me they wrote the program for him.

@Boncek35 The fact that you have the tablet showing installations .... doesn't really help here. The other student will just say he turned it in and someone else installed the software; who has the tablet now? why you do, you must have installed them.

For that matter, installing games doesn't imply running them on paid time. Unless there's an explicit rule about using only approved software, that's null evidence.

What i am not able to understand is when asked my adviser yesterday she told me that she never offered asked the guy to do thesis with her but i am pretty sure she did agree to work with that guy when she spoke to him before break.Because the new guy super confident about this part(that he will get funding and thesis).

It may very well be that everyone was completely honest. People never recall a conversation correctly, but an interpretation depending on their expectations, assumed context, cultural background, degree of politeness and many other things. A question like "Can I do a Ph.D.?" can mean a lot of different things, including "Do you give me funding?" or "Do you think I am good enough?". Also "I will see what I can do for you" can be anything between a polite refusal and an almost certain acceptance.
Your labmate might be lying, and your professor might be lying, but you don't have to assume bad faith when quite common misunderstandings suffice to explain the situation. On the other even if everyone was acting in good faith you should remember that your professor might be prone to misunderstandings. You can try to reduce such situations by e.g. summarizing the content of a discussion at the end.


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What post PhD path alternatives are there?
Progression in academia, in general, seems and feels extremely linear, i.e. you do your undergrad, then you do graduate studies, then you do a post-doc (or two, or three ... ) and eventually if you are good/persistent/well-connected/... enough you might get funded to start your own group and live the rest of your professional life in chasing grants, fighting with faculty and editors etc [yes, I am exaggerating], which I don't find particularly appealing.
Alternative to this scenario is to quit academia and go to the industry, often labeled as "selling out" by senior scientists I have personally met and discussed this subject with.
But life in general never gives a clear bisections, like you do either A or B, but there are typically a number of options to choose from. Thus I figure there should be some shades of gray in between the white and black. As a resource to other doctoral students I figured we could perhaps accumulate the possible career paths for people that have finished their PhDs, besides trying to climb up the ladder of academic ascension.
The ones I can think of are:

specialized (lab) technician: working for instance with complex instruments. I have noticed in our lab that having an experienced technician operating and maintaining the heavy instruments is invaluable for the group. Not only for the sake of projects going as smooth as possible, but also for teaching grad students how to properly use the instruments.
popular science author/editor: I have read quite a few popular science books by people with PhDs on fields that I know little about (here's a good example). Similarly, magazines such as Illustrated Science typically need a middle layer between cutting-edge science and interested (but not adequately educated) readers.
research position at industry: I am really going on a limb here, as I don't personally know anyone who is actively doing just that, but companies in several different fields actually do research; either in collaboration with universities, or in-house. I am inclined to think that such a position would include less grant-seeking, and publishing headaches (perhaps replaced with other types of headaches).
production position at industry: from what I understand this is the more typical scenario where people that go to industry after doing a PhD end up in. Based on my discussions with people (in academia) these positions typically include little to none intellectual development or acquisition of new skills. Thus not-so-desired or looked-down-upon by academics.

My question(s):

what other career paths are there, that I might have missed?
am I correct in my understand of the above 4 paths? are there any insights that you would like to add?

often labeled as "selling out" by senior scientists I have personally met and discussed this subject with. — Oh, please.  Who cares what those old farts think?

@JeffE :) seeing as they will be my future employers or committee members, as well as my primary source of information regarding career advice, I don't see how I can't care about what they think.

Get new mentors.

Anyone who uses the phrase "selling out" does not deserve to be taken seriously. Many of these people would probably not survive today's academic job market.

I'm sure it depends on the company, but a research position at industry will typically require that you continue to publish regularly. There may also be pressures to produce patents. Writing a patent description is somewhat similar to writing a journal article, I believe.

@posdef: I mentioned it somewhere else here, but by far the worst career advice about nonacademics positions I've seen has come from well-intentioned advisors and instructors. Trust your instincts, ask a lot of questions, reflect, repeat.

Selling out?  Hardly!
I am a researcher in industry, and I love it. I get to work on important problems and my work is expected to translate into real products in roughly 5-10 years.
While working on my PhD, I felt that the academic mindset was overwhelming. I have never had any intention of doing anything but research in industry, but I was certainly in the minority.
Some of my reasons for choosing my career path were/are:

Many people in academia seem to be overly focused on publishing, even before they can make reasonable and meaningful conclusions (which can contribute to a mass of conflicting literature). To me, conferences are for discussing interesting work, but publishing is for disseminating conclusions (& supporting data) that can have a meaningful impact on a field of knowledge. In industry, I have to write up reports all the time, but only the important stuff gets published.
I am a scientist, which is just the modern term for a "natural philosopher." I take my role as a philosopher very seriously, but as much as I love knowledge, I believe it is irresponsible to use other people's money to pursue research that is unlikely to benefit those people in a timely manner. Pure research is a hobby; Applied research is a job. In industry, I am free to pursue pure research when I have spare time, but I get paid to work on real problems.
In an academic setting, it is far too easy to pursue research in a very narrow field in which everybody knows everyone else. No thanks! I love that my job forces me to work outside my comfort zone, with a wide variety of people that I would never interact with in an academic setting. I have grown personally and professionally from these interactions.
Working for a company, I am usually guaranteed funding for something... but not necessarily things I think are important or interesting. As with any funding agency, I have to propose research projects that the company is willing to pay for. I have some early-stage projects that require minimal funding, but also others that require huge investments and therefore must offer much in return. However, I can also apply for funding through both private and government agencies. We often do this when we want to pursue a new area of research and/or collaborate with other organizations.  (Note that we also fund grants for others too, so some of my work involves reviewing those proposals.)

Granted, very few people can actually get a job doing research in industry. It is highly competitive, and you often need far more than just a PhD. I worked in industry for 2 years before starting my PhD, but internships can also be great experience.  (Unfortunately, most PhD programs frown on internships or other outside jobs... which is very disappointing!)  Of course, networking also helps.  I have found that most research jobs are not advertised, so you have to actually talk to people.  In my case, I asked the VP of research for some career advice and ended up with a job offer.
I hope this helps.  Doing research in industry is very different in some ways, but similar in others.

It's nice to hear a positive voice about industry research jobs, it sounds like you're in a great career. What disciplines do you see being good for industry research? After a few years, how much does the discipline of your PhD matter?

(re: disciplines & industries) I am not familiar enough with every discipline to answer this... For any given discipline, I recommend researching related industries, and vice versa.  (re: does discipline matter) After investing years in a PhD, I certainly have no interest in a position unrelated to the discipline I studied. The whole point of getting a PhD is to do research in a specific discipline (or a limited multi-disciplinary area). In general, my opinion is that any job that does not require a degree in a specific discipline should not require a degree at all.

I must say that I vividly disagree on I believe it is irresponsible to use other people's money to pursue research that is unlikely to benefit those people in a timely manner. I don't think I can express it better than the CERN Funding of basic science is important for society as a whole, but is not in the interest of any individual investor. http://public-archive.web.cern.ch/public-archive/en/About/BasicScience4-en.html

Good point. Irresponsible is a strong word and I should have been more clear. Personally, I prefer to do work that I know is actually contributing to society in some way (in terms of tangible benefits). On the other hand, I agree that funding basic science research is important. But, as that article pointed out, the next question is "How to choose what to fund, and at what level?".

I am assuming that you're talking about career paths for PhDs in STEM fields. One major area of employment that you missed is the national lab path. The lab route is, in a sense, a middle ground between industry and academia. A scientist at a national lab is engaged in basic science research. The labs do work for government organizations like DOD, DOE, DHS, all sorts of acronyms. Rather than writing grant proposals you would be writing proposals to take on projects for these agencies. Depending on your area of expertise, you may be expected to publish your results in journals, or publish results as technical reports. At Pacific Northwest National Lab, there is a fundamental sciences directorate that is committed to basic science research (chemistry, physics, engineering, biology, mathematics) that mainly publishes in journals, and there is a national security directorate that mainly publishes technical reports (often classified).
There are also many research labs that contract to the federal government such as HRL, Matrix, MITRE, and Lincoln Laboratories.
Scientists at government labs publish without the "publish or perish" atmosphere of academia. They enjoy more freedom in choosing their own career path than a researcher in industry. There is also more respect (and demand) for interdisciplinary research than in academia. Since you are competing for federal dollars, the research you do is also more likely to be used than research in academia.
For completeness -- In addition to the scientist path at research labs, many choose to go into project management. This requires a deep knowledge of the subject area, and pays better, but you might stop doing the actual research yourself.
I've done internships at Pacific Northwest and Los Alamos national labs, and my comments are based on discussions with employees at those labs.

What disadvantages are there with working at national (or supranational, such as in the EU) labs, compared to working in pure academia?

Nice, thanks for the reply. I guess national labs concept doesn't exist in the European side of the ocean as much, but it's definitely an option. I also second @gerrit's question, you have mentioned the pros but skipped the cons, it seems.

@posdef Unless I misunderstand what a national lab is, national labs exist in Europe too (for example, most national meteorological offices are directly involved in research).

Some cons: because you are often dealing with government contracts, you cannot move as quickly as you can in academia. With European labs it may be less of an issue, but some of the US labs are in fairly remote locations (Los Alamos and PNNL were built for military research in WW2, so they are both out in the desert). There also aren't as many national labs as there are universities, so you have less choice of location as compared with academia.

In national labs, you're essentially in a soft-money position, so when funding dries up, so can your salary. That's not true in a university (although there are other consequences)

I think you can add:

teaching,
several kind of management jobs in the industry where your PhD can be an asset (see this question for example),
or even creating your own startup! In fact, doing your PhD, you might have come across some ideas.

research position at industry: I am really going on a limb here, as I don't personally know anyone who is actively doing just that, but companies in several different fields actually do research; either in collaboration with universities, or in-house. I am inclined to think that such a position would include less grant-seeking, and publishing headaches (perhaps replaced with other types of headaches).

Many companies have a research department. Some do quite fundamental research, but most of them are rather development-oriented. In the latter case, it is an other way to consider things: you want a product that works, even if you don't understand precisely how it works. It can be very interesting too, but it is different from academic research; you might like it or not.

One option that's not quite included is what I'll call the "we love you for your brain" option.
In certain parts of STEM (especially physics/math/computer science), you can get a certain kind of industry job not based on the subject of your research, but merely as someone with "analytical thinking" skills. Wall street 'quants' are the best example of this.
If your specialty is a different non-STEM discipline a similar phenomenon can occur. People coming out of the humanities with strong critical writing/reading skills can end up in grant-writing positions, or technical writing positions with corporations, and so on.

Related to this: Statistics/data analysis positions.

A nice piece of advice on going to industry is here How to leave academia [and go to programming, data science or quants] (at least I've found it valuable).
I guess the question is what you've learnt (some you take for granted, like ability to be manager of your own project), which kind of connections you made, what is the kind of job you would like to work, etc. Then, well, you can think about all jobs, forgetting that you were a PhD (except that additionally you can consider a very few highly academia-related, e.g. science popularization, lab technician).
And then, at least among my friends (and places I am looking by myself) is it is mostly "jobs in tech" - software engineering, web development, quants and data science. The last one seems to be one where a PhD student can have an edge (over s standard programmer) due to being immersed with different numerical tools (and general research methodology, etc). There are even some courses aimed at PhD graduates, for  example Insight Data Science Fellows Program (or BigDive, which is more general, but I wholeheartedly recommend it, as an alumnus).
In the case "what are you missing" - I wouldn't split it in 4 paths. Especially as in many places there is no clear distinction between production and R&D (it may depend more on actual company, project, people involved, your drive to learn, etc).
But clearly, you miss whole "free" part related to being a consultant, freelancer or starting your own business.

Well, as a grad student who has no interest in academia, I have my eye on industry positions. I should also mention that I am a social scientist. The typical route is to enter into a research or evaluation firm. I'm interested in pursing those jobs.
However, I've known since I started graduate school that academia was not for me, and I also acknowledge that getting a Ph.D. in social sciences doesn't necessarily mean you have developed skills that are critical for jobs outside of academia. I'm often baffled at how ignorant my peers are to the hiring environment that exists beyond the walls of academia, and the mentality is usually, "well, if academia doesn't work out then industry job will be easy to nab." Anyways, as a result of being cognizant of the demands of industry jobs, and how I can foster those skills through the projects I work on in graduate school, I've taken to developing my quant skills. I'm the go-to person for quant questions within my department and in my network of friends, some of which are in industry. I've also taken to extending these quant skills outside of my field whenever I have time. I want to work as a data scientist. However, this career path requires social scientists to learn a lot outside of what you are typically exposed to in academia. Therefore it's not uncommon for me to learn about a particular analysis in my field, and then spend the next few months playing with that analytic framework with business data, sports data, stocks, etc. I've had to learn machine learning, and find outlets to practice those skills. In addition, the same can be said for learning to program better.
My point is:
It takes considerable effort in the social sciences to develop skills that will make you not just employable outside of academia, but in demand. Fostering those skills while in graduate school, in addition to the requirements of the program, is a very important thing to do.

My very limited understanding comes as that people with psychology doctorates often become school psychologists, social workers, or counselors.

Yes, many "professional" (vs "academic") jobs in psychology require a PhD as a basic credential.

You already have some answers to your first question, but I can provide some for your second question.
Lab Technicians: I know one or two of these, and they typically don't have PhDs, so I am not sure that I would characterise this as a post-PhD career. But I am not an expert, so I might be wrong about this.
Popular Science Author: Seriously? This is way harder than becoming a tenured professor. It would probably be a lot of fun to write a book, but there is basically zero chance of making it your career.
Research Position in Industry: Absolutely a possibility. There are tons of people working in different fields of research in industry and government. Often it might be more focussed towards solving specific problems rather than blue-sky research like in academia. I've actually been working for two years in government and last year I was back in academia and I have to say that the research environment in academia was a lot less stimulating. Everybody keeps their data secret and all they care about is publications. I love teaching but at the moment I am quite glad to be out of academia again.
Production position in industry: It's hard to say what you mean here, but I guess for STEM people, software development is the most common one. There are lots of good jobs for software developers and there is a whole culture that goes with it. I know many people from academia who have gone into this area and it sounds like they often find it to be a rewarding career. As for no intellectual development or acquisition of new skills, it's quite the opposite. Most of the developers I know are encouraged to educate themselves all the time, and often they are forced to anyway because of new technology! (Of course, I am sure that it is quite possible to get a boring dead-end job in this area as well.)
As for your first paragraph, I don't think you are exaggerating.

"Everybody keeps their data secret" - I am sorry you made this experience, but it is not quite representative for all of academia in my opinion.

Here are several popular career paths. For completeness, I include yours as well.
Within academia

tenure-track professor

Essential skills: ability to attract funding, publication/citation, networking, creativity/luck, hard-working

scientist (national labs)

Essential skills: , relevant research, ability to attract funding, creativity/luck, publication/citation, networking, hard-working

non-tenure-track professor/visiting professors/scientist/postdoc

Essential skills: good relation with your boss, publication/citation, hard-working

lecturer/teaching professor

Essential skills: teaching, networking
Outside academia

journal assistant editor/popular science author/PR

Essential skills: scientific writing

Legal assistant/patent researcher

production/management at industry

Essential skills: relevant experiences and credentials

specialized (lab) technician

R&D at industry

Essential skills: relevant skills (see below)

developer

Essential skills: relevant programming skills (cf. LeetCode), experience, hard-working

data Scientist

Essential skills: relevant experience (cf. Kaggle), statistics, hard-working

quant

Essential skills: relevant experience in finance and statistics, model building, luck, hard-working

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Is it problematic to control for ethnoracial identity in analyses?
I am writing a paper and have been asked by all co-authors to control for race and ethnicity in the analyses. I’ve heard mixed reviews on this once staple practice in the field.
Does anyone have citations about this being either problematic or ok in certain circumstances? Or any other schools of thought of how to equitably account for these variables in the analyses? TIA!

Some additional information about the discipline and the nature of the problem would be useful. Race is a category that the world puts people in for their lifetime. Careful analysis usually does something with, not always. Has their been discussion in the discipline or professional meetings about what to do?

Question could do with more/better context.

Equitably accounting (for variables in analysis) will vary from causal inference to causal mechanisms approach.

You have not specified what problem you are concerned about or what aspect of the use of a race variable you think could potentially be "problematic".  You also say that you've heard mixed reviews, but you don't tell us what concerns you've heard.  This precludes us from giving advice in relation to a particular concern.  In any case, you might be interested in this related question on SE.CV (with answers that include some literature on the problem):

When is it valid to use race/ethnicity in causal inference?

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Are official transcripts required for faculty appointment?
I am curious if faculty appointees (at various levels) should request their schools to send their official transcripts to the employer to get a faculty position? Or is it only required for students?
When I finish my PhD, do I still need to request my school to send an official transcript of my PhD for starting an assistant professor position (and later on)?

If I remember correctly, I was not required to show any kind of official academic documentation, diploma or transcript.

@Bitwise you mean the HR didn't have any document from you on file? Where has it been?

@Googlebot I believe they just wanted my ID. Why would they need my diploma? I guess it is theoretically possible that someone would leave mid graduate studies, still get accepted to a good postdoc lab, get fellowships/grants and do a good enough job in order to get a faculty position, all without anyone noticing they don't have a diploma. But I haven't ever heard of such a case (it is a small country though).

I was required to bring the original of my degree plus arrange for the Registrar of the Uni. where I completed my degree to send a formal memo confirming the granting of the degree.  But no transcripts.

When I accepted my faculty position a few months ago, they asked for my dissertation approval form until my official transcript could be sent (after my start date).

In the United States, at least, the norm is that you send official transcripts once you are offered the job.  At my university (and I believe by SACS regulation) the transcript(s)/degree(s) must be on file with the university for all faculty members, thus it is a requirement to be able to get the job.
During the application process, though, unofficial transcripts are generally sufficient, if they even ask for it.  Sending official transcripts to 100 different places in the application process would get very expensive, very quickly. For example, if they wanted from every post-secondary school I had attended, I would need to request transcripts from no less than 8 different universities, some of which would just have a course or two I took in summer programs abroad or were unrelated to my field. Even if they only needed my terminal degree, at $10/transcript, it adds up fast in addition to being a gigantic hassle for everyone involved.

It depends.
In my experience, I was required to list my degrees with where & when I obtained them. I was not required to get the official transcripts sent but I was also hired on where I completed graduate school (so they already had official transcripts on record).
My guess is that there is no single answer for ALL academic institutions across. My advice: submit the unofficial and be prepared to obtain official if needed (but you already knew that).

When I was offered a job by the same department where I had earlier gotten my PhD, the department chair told me I needed to have an official transcript sent to the university.  My response was, "Really?  Even though you gave me the degree, you need me to pay $5 to another office on the same campus to officially tell you that you did it?"  The department chair was apparently embarrassed enough by this that he spent weeks jumping through administrative hoops in order to avoid inflicting that trivial inconvenience on me.

@NajibIdrissi I actually had to do this one year.  I audited a course where I teach and took a fitness class for credit (because I'm too old for Bs and that motivated me to go) and the next year I was required to provide an official transcript =\  Thankfully where I teach we seem to be one of the few places that still provide free transcripts.

@NajibIdrissi
Thank you for your perspective but your comment "I would be surprised if what you think happened really happened" is wholly unnecessary.  I've already acknowledged that my specific experience is unlikely to be replicated but it did happen so it could happen again.  And yes, I've verified how it happened.

@NajibIdrissi Yup.  One of my students applied to the master's program in the same department where she earned her baccalaureate degree.  When she hadn't heard anything for a while I checked.  The graduate office explained that they were waiting for her undergraduate transcript.

@BobBrown  Thanks for that. That sounds very frustrating.  We're very fortunate here at my university for the way they've streamlined and prevented those occurrences.  I'm sure those things that you and Najibdrissi mention happen all the time.

@SecretAgentMan  This was one of our star students.  We all (faculty and staff both) knew her, and we knew we were going to admit her, but she had to make the request in order to have her transcript on file.  (This was a state school in the U.S.  There's a specific exception to FERPA for schools to which one has applied, but we still required that request.)


text:
Include proof in bsc thesis that I couldn't do fully myself
I'm writing my BSc thesis in computer science right now, for which I'm implementing Fast Fourier Transforms. Now a really important paper on the topic is making a proof which I think I got what they are doing, but I probably could not replicate myself. Now I was wondering if there is a go-to way to cite the proof and especially use the result of the proof, without having to re-write it all by myself because going into all of the math would be beyond the scope of my thesis since it is more about the implementation, even so confirmed by my assistant.
The way I would go about it is to describe how they proof what in words, with a citation to the paper, e.g. like that:
"In [xy], yz show that equation a can be solved by doing ..."
Any hints are appreciated.

Ask your advisor! (This is a serious advice, I do not mean to be unfriendly.)

I don't see an issue here for an undergraduate thesis. If the "important paper" is new and the work overlapped with your own, you should be able to get credit for your work independently of the other. If it is a classic paper that you should have known about, but didn't, then you may have a more serious issue and a reason to re-write.
But citing the other work, just as in your example, seems right, including the main conclusions you draw from the paper.
But the professor to whom you are responsible (maybe not just the assistant) is the best source for an answer to this question.
If there is any serious issue raised by the professor, then you need, first, to think about what if anything is unique about your solution. It may be that a relatively minor re-write will do the trick if you just stress what is new/unique about it.
I'd also suggest some perspective. The fact that, as an undergraduate, you can "follow" but not "replicate" the work in another paper may be good or bad depending on the other paper. We normally expect that students at this level are students and thus can't know or do everything. Even experts can struggle with some deep ideas and intricate proofs.
I'll note that it would be a more serious issue for a doctoral dissertation. There is a fairly recent case, two people known to me, who had their doctorates delayed for a year because they each did a piece of nearly identical work without knowledge of the other. They didn't need to re-do any work, but it took a year for the (Computer Science) community to determine that this was just parallel work and no collusion nor plagiarism was involved. Sticky, but both are now highly regarded.

Thank you for the answer. The paper I am referring to is a classic paper on the topic and it was one of the first I've read when starting, so the problem in your last example does not really apply here, thankfully.


text:
Should I put my diplomas and specializations under education or relevant skills and courses in my CV when applying to a Mphil?
Typically I would put them under the education section of my CV for my applications in the Dominican Republic, but I'm not sure if this should be the case for my graduate application.
PS: The diploma was a three month course called a "diplomado" in Spanish. The specializations are essentially the first year of a graduate course.

does it really matter all that much where you put it as long as you do put it somewhere?

Sursula, I think it matters a lot, especially with a longer CV. Education usually is on the first page, while skills are (at least in y experience), at the end.

Education because
(1) 'relevant skills' is not always a heading in CVs, while 'education' is.
(2) skills are not the papers/degrees collected. What kind of skill is BSc (or in your case diplomado) in Spanish? With skills you would probably list your speaking/writing/reading/listening skills in Spanish plus any additional skills the education gave you.


text:
A possible PhD invitation situation but no reply over time
I once interviewed with a professor for a PhD position, but was rejected due to lack of local language skills. However, the professor mentioned that he will let me know when he has another position, because he really wants me to join them.
I thought it was a polite remark at first, but I received a PhD invitation from the professor just one month after the interview. He asked “Would you still be interested to join us? possibly I may have an option for another PhD. (not sure yet, but very likely). So I officially replied that I would like to join their team, and the professor also replied that he would reply within 5-6 days depending on the situation, but it has been more than a week since the reply time.
I was thinking how should I ask the professor about the situation?
In addition, I also wondered if I was overly serious about my reply and overly polite, causing him trouble?

Don't read anything into a delay of a few days. People are busy. People are forgetful.
If you have another option, then continue to follow up with it. If you are at a decision point, then ask again about the position and your likelihood of fitting it.
On the other hand, also be sure that you keep your own best interests at the forefront. There are a few (hopefully few) situations in which a new professor has a need for a student and that need overcomes good sense.


text:
Tenure positions competitiveness among schools
Below can be categorized under career questions.
I am currently a 2nd year PhD student studying PDE at a big state University. I am extremely stressed by the competitiveness in academic careers noticing most people can only land a job after prestigious PhD program and postdoc positions (say top 10).
I am trying to figure out how competitive it is to land a tenure position job at not-top-tier Universities (tiers refer to AMS group).
Say for AMS Group II-III Universities, is it also very competitive and requiring great research work with good postdoc positions? If there's little hope in finding careers in academia, can people suggest other less competitive areas where I could land a job still doing PDEs say without switching to tech or finance (which are also very competitive)?

Note: just doing a PhD and post-doc at a top university is not enough to get a tenure track position. You will also have to have top level publications and ideally bring a grant.

I have two exercises for you: 1) Compute how many PhD graduates a single professor will 'produce' during their academic life-time in your field and compare it against how many positions will open when a professor retires. 2) Pick one of the departments you are interested in and look at the CVs and career paths of their current faculty (with particular emphasis on recent hires). This does not fully answer your question, but it's always important to set some baseline expectations. Best of luck!!

Yes, you will find competition at all of those (and other) "levels", whether by AMS or other standards. However, the nature of the competition is different. At the "lower" levels, it is likely that teaching is much more important a consideration than at the higher levels, even though those universities have a doctoral program. If it is primarily research that you want to do then you will need to deal with that.
However, you can make a career at even a Group M or B university if you are willing to teach more than research. Research is still possible and valued at such places but may have less "natural" support and you will need to seek most collaborations elsewhere unless the faculty is large.
But high levels of competition is a feature of the modern world. It may get worse, actually, if fewer young people go to university, as the recent news seems to suggest. There are still a lot of folks like yourself in the pipeline.
And, all those Group 2 and 3 schools are also producing new PhD graduates.
I was originally caught up in a very similar situation and it took a lot of effort to build an academic career.

I agree with this. For a bit of additional context, in a group M university, you can still expect that there will be 100+ applicants for any position, with at least 30-50 who would probably be great hires with good research papers and good prior teaching evaluations. The ultimate pay might be around what a high school teacher would make.

@Dawn, either you are paid terribly or your local high school teachers are far above the median. Your "ultimate" pay after several years service in the US at a Group M place might be above 200K. High school teachers (now) are lucky to earn 60K - with experience, I think. Probably you are too pessimistic on pay. But yes, a lot of applicants.

It is likely due to the fact that the public schools are unionized and the university is not. The HS teachers with graduate degrees here make similar to the private university faculty for the same years of experience, except for business school and maybe a couple of other specific departments (perhaps math is one, but I don't think so based on my conversations).


text:
What are desirable traits for a PhD advisor?
What is your advice on how to select a graduate advisor? What are the

must have,

good to have,

must avoid, and

"run, disaster ahead"?

traits in a PhD advisor? How does one get this information? It would be good if you can cite specific real world examples, especially your own experience.

What is the field/country?  Does graduate mean PhD?

Graduate means PhD. Engineering or data analytics in US based university

I think it heavily depends on if you want to continue in academia after, or want to go to the industry.

I am open to either

First, do not judge by first impressions as these can be very wrong.  Second, you should feel comfortable talking to the person.  This person is helping you develop into a researcher, you should not feel nervous knocking on their door and going to speak to them about some problem.

There is a meta question concerning this and, in general, the concept of "opinion based" answers. I've discussed it there (with an opinion, of course): https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5394/75368

You need three broad pieces of information, and all of them can be hard to get for one reason or another.
First, you need someone compatible with your learning style.  The problem is, you may not know your learning style, even into your twenties.  And assuming you do, there's little more anyone here can say except, "Try to match it."  (How do you find out?  Ask members of this person's research group.)
Second, you need someone who isn't outright abusive.  Abuse can take many forms, by the way, it's not always as clear cut as demanding sexual favors or demanding unpaid work outside the university.  It can be ongoing neglect.  It can be habitually throwing you under the bus at group meetings.  It can be constant disrespect in front of peers.  It can be transparently treating you as a game piece on the way to their next goal.  It can be abusing your trust or confidence.   It can be credit stealing or playing games with authorship.  It can be fobbing lecture duty off on their grad students.  It can be a lot of different things.
You would think that would be easy to detect, but it isn't always.
I was hypervigilant for this, and still got trapped.  (I theorize now, because everyone else was keeping their heads down, trying to get out.  But I'll never know.)
Third, you need someone who has demonstrated that they can regularly move students through the process to either a master's degree or a PhD.  This, you at least have a chance at.  If you see someone who has a regular stream of graduates, that's a good sign.  If you don't, that's a bad sign.  A new-ish faculty member with two graduated PhDs and three in the pipeline is very different from someone who's been there 15-20 years with only two graduated PhDs.  If possible, you want to look at the ratio of successful candidates to candidates.  In some departments that will not be easy to get.

This is excellent cautionary advice. For the last item, I'd suggest looking at the eventual positions of graduates, rather than just the number or ratio of completed PhDs. Part of the role of the PhD advisor is not just to help their students get the degree, but start their academic career: to help them find the right kind of research topics, write the kind of papers that other people will read, build a professional network, etc. Just pushing their students out of the nest with a PhD isn't useful.

@anomaly: Indeed, if people feel the urge to quit the field directly after a PhD on a regular basis (i.e. all of them) that is a big red warning flag.

I just want to reinforce the last point about the number of graduated PhDs. I happened to be my supervisor's first PhD for Chemical Engineering and was so unbelievably overwhelmed with setting up/managing the lab, mentoring 8 of her MSc students, writing (literally) hundreds of thousands of lines of Standard Operating Procedures for the equipment that she was purchasing that, when my PhD ended, I had virtually nothing written for my thesis. In the end, I never submitted despite all that work and guess what - I don't exist on her staff page any more. I was the first of 3 that have been removed

At least in the US, often you can get info on your first point because you can take courses/do readings/do lab rotations with various faculty before you decide.

As counterpoint to "Third" - somebody has to be an advisor's first student.

@NateEldredge Well, yes, that's why you look at stats differently depending on the length of service.  Yes, someone has to go first, but it is a gamble not unlike choosing a home contractor from Yelp who has only three reviews vs one with hundreds.

The "First" point needs to be clarified. There is no information added about "learning style". At worst learning style refers to things like auditory, kinesthetic, and visual which not only is unsupported by research but even counter to optimal conditions for learning. A more forgiving interpretation that I would support would be a hands-on advisor versus someone who allows immense freedom, but that is not clear from "compatible learning style". Perhaps something else entirely is meant.

Advisors remove failed PhD students from their webpages, or move them to the MSc section, not mentioning that the MSc was a mere "consolation degree"

@anomaly I disagree strongly with the suggestion that it's a red flag if students don't continue in academia. Statistically, most PhD graduates will have to leave academia sooner or later. A good advisor is one who recognises that there is a world outside academia, and supports their students to discover and pursue whichever career path suits their circumstances best.

I like most of what Anonymous said in their answer, but I think there is even more.
In addition to Anonymous' points:

Try to match what you care about. Some professors value deep contributions to science more than publishability, some value having many publications in good venues, some care most that you have a good PhD experience. None of those is inherently bad, as long as you are on the same page.
Related, but not the same: try to match your level of ambitions. Some professors want all their students to not only meet the graduation requirements, but excel (typically, but not only, these are professors that are still building their careers). If you are on a tenure track, a student that barely meets graduation requirements may already be a personal disaster for the prof. Again, it's important to be on the same page. As a sidenote, most people would probably be in "I want to excel" bucket here, but do some soul searching - how will you feel if your advisor asks you to revise and revise a paper until it's finally ready for some A* venue, even at the cost of your free time and graduation plans?
Match for your preferred management style. Do you want a lot of help, or a lot of freedom? What kind of help do you expect (Defining research questions and methods? Coding? Writing?). How often do you want to meet?
Do you want to work in a large group with lots of collaborations, or would you prefer being the only student of this professor? Both have advantages and disadvantages - in a large group there are lots of opportunities for peer learning and joint work, but naturally the time your prof will have for you specifically decreases the more students they work with.
What feedback style do you prefer? Do you want somebody who is brutally honest, or somebody who tries to see the bright side even when your work isn't quite up to standards yet?
Align not only on what research problems should be addressed in your PhD, but also on methodology. What this means specifically may be different from discipline to discipline, but you should not only discuss what goals your PhD should have, but also what the activities to reach this goal will look like. You don't want, e.g., go into your PhD assuming you will build lots of tools when your professor only cares about empirical studies.
I am sure there are more things I am not thinking of right now ...

All that is to say, there are many, many things to consider, and much of that is hard to find out in advance. The best strategy is to (a) look very carefully at what your advisor has been publishing recently (assume that you will have to write papers similar to these), (b) try to talk to current or previous students of this advisor, and (c) remain flexible. At the end of the day your advisor will have characteristics that you don't love (just as you will not be the "perfect" student for your advisor). Ideally, both sides make small compromises on the way to a successful graduation.
P.S.: because of the need to make small compromises I would not recommend being "hypervigilant" (as Anonymous says in their answer) - be critical when selecting your advisor, but once there I would give them the benefit of doubt. Constantly being on the lookout for issues and escalating each disagreement is a difficult way to actually finish - in a 5-year close collaboration, you will get into arguments and you will see things differently at some point. Your advisor is also human, they will make mistakes, choose their words poorly, or have bad days. Resolving these conflicts constructively is a superpower, not only in academia but also in any other professional endeavour.

Try to talk to the grad students and post-docs who are currently in the department. Find out what they think of the other profs besides their own. Do ask them about their own but find out what the cross views are. See if you can get some views from people not directly affected by the prof you are thinking about.
Also, get them to "dish" on the other grad students and post-docs and such. You will be working nearby most of them for much of your degree. You are going to want to know which ones are helpful and which ones you need to avoid if possible.
For example, if you are looking at a prof doing XYZ, and the department also does PDQ that is quite far from XYZ, wander over to the PDQ students and ask them "What do you think of the other profs?" For me it was physics. And the department had a big particle physics group and a big laser physics group. The laser physics group was more than happy to "dish" on the profs in the particle physics group. They got a little more quiet when it came to their own profs.
Find out where students of this prof have wound up after graduating. I went through physics. There is a magazine called Physics Today that lists recent grads and where they got jobs. Check out the equiv for your subject area. Find where various profs got their students jobs. Or post docs or whatever. (Your uni library will most likely have some guidance on this question.)
So one prof when I was a PhD candidate graduated three people with PhDs during the last few years of my grad work. Two got post docs at major labs, CERN for one and FermiLab for the other. The third student got a post doc at a major US university. If you were doing particle physics experimental, that would probably be a big bright glowing indicator of promise.
A prof in another area (laser physics) also graduated three students. One became a high school teacher, one got a job at Ontario Science Centre. And the third was not listed as having a job. So you would have a different set of evaluations for that prof.

Thanks. This is really useful

First, do not judge by first impressions as these can be very wrong.
Second, you should feel comfortable talking to the person.  This person is helping you develop into a researcher, you should not feel nervous knocking on their door and going to speak to them about some problem.
Third, you might want to check if the supervisor has a good track record with training students who go on to get permanent jobs in academia, rather than people who perhaps make it as far as postdoc and then no further than that.  Some other people are suggesting that if the supervisor gets a lot of people to postdoc level than they are a good supervisor, but I think you should look longer term than that, as getting a postdoc is not as difficult as it used to be.

I disagree with the suggestion for looking at how many students make it to permenant jobs. Given that faculty numbers are more or less steady state in most disciplines in most places, then it follows that since each faculty member only needs to reproduce themeselves, the average faculty member will only ever train one student who will go on to get a permenant job in academia. While a few faculty have records of training many future professors, the number is so small you would be detrementally restricting your options.

Choose someone who has the reputation for being a good mentor, providing well for their group, and for creating a healthy working environment. Graduate research is highly uncertain and can be extremely stressful. So, a constructive environment and stable support are very important. Your graduate advisor can also serve as a mentor and champion throughout your career.

As it asked for a comment on the downvote: No ChatGPT, please.

I did not use ChatGPT. I am a professor and am giving my honest advice.

This answer should be considered together with the other answers on this page. Based on my own experience as a PhD student in an engineering field, here are some of the most important traits that a PhD supervisor should have:
1. Collaborates at a higher rate with their PhD students than with colleagues at their own level.
This, in my opinion, is by far the most important metric. What this trait means is that the PhD supervisor is able to consistently publish work with their own PhD students rather than with other professors or postdocs at their level. I've found that PhD supervisors who mostly publish with colleagues and not PhD students are often difficult to work with (e.g. does not provide reasonable guidance and/or micromanages you).
A possible reason for this is that, when working with colleagues, PhD supervisors tend to suppress their unproductive qualities (such as micromanagement), since they do not wield the same power over their colleagues as they do over their PhD students. Therefore, they are "forced" to compromise with their colleagues to work more towards their and their colleagues' common objective of doing good work.
However, when working with PhD students, their unproductive qualities often show up more, which could lead to a difficult time for the PhD student. That is, with PhD students, they let their unproductive qualities stand in the way of doing good work with their PhD students. The truth is, even with PhD students, some compromise is required in order to do good work, and micromanagement will work against this.
To determine whether a potential PhD supervisor collaborates at a higher rate with PhD students, check their Google Scholar profile to make sure that they publish mostly with PhD students rather than colleagues at their same level. That is, the proportion of papers co-authored with students should be high compared to the proportion of papers co-authored with colleagues at the same level. This supports their competency at mentoring PhD students. You can use an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of this, and, ideally, the proportion of papers published with PhD students should be at least 50-60%.
2. Once it has been established that the potential PhD supervisor publishes consistently with PhD students rather than colleagues, make sure that the difference in quality between papers co-authored with PhD students and papers co-authored with colleagues is not substantial.
If the difference in quality is significant, then it could mean that the potential PhD supervisor cannot properly mentor a PhD student, since they are not able to train them to be able to publish papers of the same quality as the ones that they publish with their colleagues.
Of course, some difference in quality is expected when a PhD student is just starting their degree, but by the end of their degree, the papers that they publish with their PhD supervisor should not be that different, in terms of quality, compared to the papers published with the PhD supervisor's colleagues.
Again, this can be checked from the potential PhD supervisor's Google scholar.
3. Number of PhD students graduated every year.
A good PhD supervisor consistently graduates 1-2 PhD students every year. Of course, this depends on whether the PhD supervisor is in the earlier or later stages of their career.
4. Most number of PhD students concurrently supervised.
A good PhD supervisor should be able to handle a large number (at least 3) of PhD students concurrently. If not, then it could mean that the PhD supervisor has poor people management or time management skills. Of course, this is not a general rule, and exceptions exist.
5. Where their PhD graduates end up.
A good PhD supervisor graduates students who end up working in jobs that you eventually want to pursue. However, in my experience, I've also found that, regardless of where you, the PhD student, wants to end up, where the PhD supervisor's graduates end up can tell a lot about the PhD supervisor.
For example, if most of their graduates end up in industry jobs, then there is not much to say about the PhD supervisor, since it could be the case that they did good research with their PhD student, but the PhD student chose to pursue an industry job.
On the other hand, if their graduates end up in academic jobs (e.g. postdoc or professorship at a university), then one could argue that a necessary condition for this to happen was that the PhD supervisor had to have done good work with their PhD student for the PhD student to get an academic job.
6. Participates in co-supervision as little as possible compared to sole supervision of PhD students.
A good PhD supervisor should be able to supervise PhD students themselves, and not rely on the support of another PhD supervisor to co-supervise a PhD student. Of course, exceptions exist. However, if the PhD supervisor graduates a majority of their PhD students via co-supervision with another PhD supervisor, then it may suggest that the PhD supervisor is not able to properly mentor a PhD student alone, and they may be difficult to work with.
Also, in my experience, co-supervision is difficult to get right, since each co-supervisor can decide to provide as little guidance as possible since they assume that the other co-supervisor will pick up the rest of the work. However, if both co-supervisors do this, then you, the PhD student, will not receive enough guidance and will suffer in the end. Therefore, avoid co-supervision if possible.
7. Diversity of papers.
Although this is not absolutely necessary, it is good to see that a PhD supervisor is able to publish papers of different kinds (e.g. papers with empirical data vs. papers with theoretical derivations). This suggests that they are flexible and are able to contribute to their area using different kinds of skills that you, the PhD student, should be able to learn from them.
8. Last, but certainly not least: when making a decision on who to choose as your PhD supervisor, don't let your emotions fool you.
A potential PhD supervisor who is a good teacher or has a friendly personality may be a terrible PhD supervisor. Therefore, don't rely on the strength of your social connection to a person as a good metric to evaluate their suitability as a PhD supervisor. Instead, use the objective metrics I mentioned above.

In addition to what I wrote above, here are some pieces of general advice:
Tenure-track vs. tenured professor
If a potential supervisor has not been tenured yet (e.g. assistant professors), then they often have more motivation to perform high-quality research than supervisors who are already tenured (e.g. associate professors and above). Moreover, supervisors who have not been tenured yet are often younger, and so are more likely to be more familiar with the latest technologies/research than older tenured supervisors, who have no incentive, other than personal interest, to stay up-to-date.


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My paper got accepted at all three journals I sent it to. How can I publish it at only one of them without being unethical?
I have submitted my review paper for publication to more than two journals. I was unaware of the consequences. The paper got accepted at al three journals. They asked for payment and copyright etc. I haven't processed anything as I only want to publish it in one journal only. I also became aware that it's unethical. So far, I only have the acceptance emails, but no further processing has been done by me. What can I do now to publish my paper? I think that one of the three journals is best one and I want to publish my paper there. What do I have to do so that I'm not being unethical nor breaking any rules?

related, possible duplicate: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21742/is-it-ethical-to-withdraw-a-paper-after-acceptance-in-order-to-resubmit-to-a-bet

why did you submit to three papers in first place?
why do you use your real name?
did you claim at submission each one was the only submission?

related, possible duplicate: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/6100/why-should-the-scientific-community-avoid-double-submissions

I suspect this might be relevant: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/2158/64

"What can I do now to publish my paper?" if you act unethically, then you would be better off thinking of those that you have treated unethically, rather than considering only yourself.  You ought to email the editors of the three journals explaining the circumstances and apologising.  Hopefully at least one of them will still be willing to publish the paper, and then you can make a choice without further ethical issues,

To expand on @JoelReyesNoche’s comment: There are a few things about your situation that are unlikely unless you have been submitting to predatory publishers: 1) All three journals accepted the paper about the same time. 2) All journals are pay-to-publish. 3) All three journals accepted your manuscript (assuming that you have little publishing experience and no proper mentoring on this). 4) You have not previously wondered what to do about peer-review comments from one journal when improving the manuscript for another.

"They asked for payment" What? The only situation in which I would pay someone to take things I produced from me is when I need a garbage disposal. Of course, if your work is of that quality, then I have nothing to say, but otherwise my recommendation would be to withdraw from all three and to submit to some decent place. And don't worry about the ethics: anything short of outright murder would be super-duper ethical with respect to such scoundrels.

I suspect that inexperience generally, but specifically inexperience with predatory journals that deliberately do not ask about duplicate submissions ,is the problem. It's easy to fall into the trap of saying off the cuff that the OP behaved unethically but that viewpoint is only reached when you have experience with ethical, non-predatory journals. And as for not submitting anything to a journal that wants money ... well, all of the PLOS journals, and, I think, all the BMC journals, require payment and they're generally well regarded

Please don't downvote this question just because you disagree with OP's behavior. This looks like a perfectly legitimate question to me, and having it here is helpful for future visitors, so that they don't repeat the same mistake. Punishing openness with downvotes only encourages more lies.

To get to a stage where your paper has been accepted, multiple people from each journal have spent their time and effort to assess your paper (editors, reviewers) - while in the case of the reviewers not even getting payed for their efforts. By submitting the paper to three journals at the same time, you have basically wasted the time of all people involved in the submission process of two of the journals. The proper way to do it (for the future) is to submit to your first choice, and then if you don't get accepted send it to the next one in line. This is a more time-consuming process but the morally and ethically correct one (see also the answers to this question).
As this train has already left the station (and you already behaved unethically by wasting peoples' time and resources) you should try to do damage control and inform the other two journals as politely as possible that you have to decline the offer. Don't try to make up lies (like you don't have funding anymore) as the editor of one journal might be well aware of what articles are published in the other, related ones and will probably see that your article will be published there.
You could try to be brutally honest and tell the other two journals what you did and that you are very sorry, but being an unexperienced academic you did not know better and will not do so again in the future.

In addition, the person has possibly lied to the typical clause that no paper under consideration elsewhere is to be submitted. It could be that the journals are predatory because they have a short response time, because otherwise journal reaction times differ widely. In this case the fraudsters would have been defrauded.

@ThomasSchwarz and in that case all three will probably try to publish the paper regardless and pressure OP to pay the charges. They don't really care about multiple submissions as long as they make good money.

I agree with the answer by @Sursula but I think that there is a pitfall with some journals that is just waiting to trap the unwary or  inexperienced. I regularly submit to several journals where the succession of informative responses from the editorial desk is along the lines of:

received
on editor's desk
under review
1 of 3 reviews received
awaiting editor's decision ...

The pitfall is that some of those same journals  ask "Is your paper currently under review by another journal?"
You can see where this is going ... If one is inexperienced, one might think that the journal means what it asks, in which case one would quite reasonably reply "NO" until a notification of the kind at point 3 above has been received. But of course, what these journals actually mean by their question is, "Have you submitted your paper to another journal without a decision having yet been made?" .
It only happens with a few journals, but they do bear some responsibility for problems.


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Is my topic of research internship going to affect my choice of future field?
I am currently pursuing a physics major and am in my second year at university. Currently, I am working on a project with a professor from a different university on quantum matter wave scattering, who is an engineer. But I want to specialize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics for my Ph.D. I am concerned about how the chosen topic may impact my Ph.D. application in Theoretical/Mathematical Physics.
Could the nature of my current project affect my application negatively? And is the professor being an engineer going to affect the application? He has some paper on Nature though, on quantum mechanics related topics (but all of them are application based).

Ummmm… a professor doing research on quantum scattering is dismissed as a mere ‘engineer’??? Wow, just wow.

You don't say where you are, but in the US, at least, it should have no effect. Any research experience is valuable and here it is possible, even typical, to make quite large changes when entering a doctoral program.
But I doubt that many places would treat any undergraduate research in a related field as a negative. And certainly not a one-way gate closing off all other paths. If you do well, it is much more likely to be a plus than anything.

Yes I was talking about US specifically. Thank you.

Same in Europe.


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Would it be ok to mention in the post-doctoral application that my co-author is also applying for one of the two positions?
I have been applying for some post-doctoral position in mathematics. Recently, I have came across two post-doctoral positions in the same department and in same research projects. On similar areas, I have worked with another person who is also a PhD student. We decided both to apply for the positions.
We have to send applications individually as it is.

Should we mention in our cover letter that another applicant(co-author name) is also applying for the position and we can collaborate together if we get selected.

Is it bad Idea or good Idea?
I appreciate your advice.

It's hard to say and dependents on so many factors, honestly. I could see arguments going both ways. Can they infer from your previous collaborations that you already worked together?

Just a curiosity: why would you want to mention it? I don't see how it could benefit the CV in any way

@Pronte, since there are two positions in the same project, the hiring authority is probably looking for two persons who will work as a team. It might create a chance to select both of us, as we are already working on such topics as a team. This was intuition behind the question

It would be OK, but there is no reason to do it. It will be obvious to anyone evaluating your application(s) with a glance at your CV.
Since such things are evaluated by individuals it is impossible to say what the effect would be so pretty hard to say good or bad idea. I think I'd rather not do this if it were me.
Of course, if asked, say that you are aware.

I agree with you. Thanks

I'm not sure it would be obvious for what the the question is mentioning as the reason. It could be obvious they have worked together in a lab, or both on a list of coauthors.  it doesn't mean they are explicitly excited or want to with together.


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spending time to get into top school PhD vs getting done with PhD
I have a funded PhD offer from a R1 university in texas but its ranked in the 180s based on USNews, the advisor and myself click very well, he is nice, open-minded, and a young motivated and driven advisor always searching for new collaborations and the research area is in my area of interest. His background is in the sciences and I want to focus on engineering which isn't an issue as there are professors in other depts that I could collaborate with. Finally I will be his only student, he occasionally has undergraduates and his last PhD student will be graduating by the time I get in.
My research focus is in neuroengineering and rehabilitation for movement related disorders - focusing on restoration of grasping and posture. The main difference from top universities is the prestige, level of work (more translational and more grants), will have a better contact base when starting off, many professors working in the area.
Due to having a low uGPA from India ~ 55%, which is why I applied to mostly masters programs despite having around 2 years of research experience during my undergrad. I feel like I was lucky that the prof had an interest in my profile and asked me to switch to PhD and then I got it (as mentioned in the 1st para). I have also got an MS offer from a 40s ranked university based on USNews with funding only for stipend (would most probably have to take loan for tuition).
In the hypothetical situation that I take the MS offer I would have to apply for PhDs at the end of my 1st year @ around sept/oct of 2021 and I feel that I would only have a slightly better chance to get into top universities with professors that do amazing work in my area of interest like northwestern, ucsb, rice, university of chicago, and upenn. But at the same time I feel that my horribly low GPA in undergrad will hold me back as I would have to get exceptional grades and do good research; good research seems like an impossible goal in 8 months. Though I may be able to get something useful at the end of my masters but most probably not within 2 semesters. If this scenario of getting into the universities mentioned seems impossible at this point, another option would be to apply to these universities the next year 2022. When I would have finished my masters, but would have to use another extra year working in a research lab and then join the university for PhD.
My question has two parts:
1. The likelihood of getting into the mentioned universities for PhD after 1 year of masters and after 2 years of masters.
2. Is it worth using the 2-3 years to just work towards doing a PhD at these top schools with amazing professors or should I go ahead with PhD straight away and probably think about post-doc with those professors. I just feel that I may miss out on the environment and opportunities that I may get as a student.
Please do not take into consideration about what I want to do in the future like industry, academia etc. as I am set on doing research with these intellectual people and am driven to produce and make an impact on both human knowledge and the patient population (i know this seems like a child's fantasy but this is something that I like to think about) at the end of the day I may go into industry as I am a high-maintanenece person or I may chose to stay in academia as the gratification may overwhelm my needs.

@CJR Makes sense. Which has more value though, a top-tier PhD or a top-tier Post-Doc? But  the drawback with ditching is the recommendation and it is quite bad from an ethical standpoint. Also I have funding assured only for a year. But, I heard from past students that they usually fund PhDs on a year-by-year basis based on the performance and contribution. The advisor is also waiting for multiple pending grants to be approved.

There’s a professor that I’m hoping to work with in the future at an Ivy League school. However, he didn’t do his PhD at an Ivy League nor did he get his first position at an Ivy League. That tells me that he was able to get so much value by not focusing on being Ivy League that he eventually just found himself there.

I think you are vastly overestimating the value of ratings from a popular magazine as they apply to doctoral education and vastly underestimating the quality of doctoral education at any R1 in Texas.
Frankly the real difference, in an individual field between a school rated 180 and one rated, say, 40 is likely to be a mix of random and the value of a given helpful advisor.
Frankly, I think you would be wasting your time to do much of anything but take what looks like a very nice offer. You'd be halfway through a doctorate at the Texas place before you had a chance to start if you go another route. If you read a lot of questions on this site you'd notice how lucky you would be to have found a good and supportive advisor. Many are not so lucky. Who can say whether you'd have a better time of it if you look elsewhere?
And it is you that makes your career, not the journalist/researchers at US News rating places on general criteria.

The texas university is university of houston and the other one is case western university. Do you have any comments on them? Also thanks for your opinion. You mentioned that not many people are lucky to find a good sup, but isn't it quite easy to find a "good" sup by having a couple talks with the sup and talking to current and alumni grad students from the sup's lab? I understand that the ranking is based on a number of factors but there has got to be some clear difference between a university in the top 50 vs one >150 that is a fact, but I agree that it's up to myself about how I perform.

Houston is a fine place, at least in my field. The rankings are very general and have only partial validity. They aren't specifically based on doctoral education and they are even less valid for individual fields.

People generally tell me to look at the advisors reputation in the field and his drive. Apart from the h-factor and co-authors are there any other ways to find out his reputability? I find that most young profs have a h-factor <20 and the best ones that have b/w 52-59 are either retired or are involved less in research. Is the grad school ranking in usnews a better indicator of ranking since UH shows up as 69 and CWRU shows up to be 16 in my field?

I think you are still focused on the wrong things. Your career will be good or bad depending on what you do. An advisor can get you started, but you don't inherit their reputation. At most it is a help in getting your first job, but it isn't determinative.

I am a first year PhD at UofH. I had these questions as well when staring out my applications. I had a list of 10 universities that I wanted to apply to. The lowest ranked school was UH. Do you know why I had UH on the list? Because there was a professor that I wanted to work with who was doing research in exactly what I wanted. Do you know how many schools I ended up applying to? One. I asked people around me and other PhD students on what they thought. Number one quality they emphasized was student-advisor relationship and research interests. That sold it to me.
What @Buffy said is on point.

I feel that there is a misunderstanding here. I have had talks with researchers (who could be potential advisors) from Cleveland clinic, UofPittsburgh, UofChicago, Northwestern and UofMichigan and with their lab members. They are all interested in me joining their lab after I finish masters. But I want to know if it is worth spending the 2 years to do research in their labs for PhD or if I will make the most out of starting the potential PhD right now.

That depends on what you want to do after a PhD. If it is academia, then you must try and get into the best school you have because that has the biggest influence on you getting a job in academia. But if you want to get into industry, then it's more personal such as research topics and industry connections, location, etc...

At the moment I want to get into industry or better yet work towards commercialization after PhD but my interest could change to academia. So overall I should look for a professor with interesting research topics, grants, good industry connection and location; these aspects are generally true for the top few schools in the area as they have a large number of industrial and hospital connections, great alumni network, grants from private and govt org's. There are in rare cases, excellent professors from "low" ranked uni's like your advisor. I feel like everyone keeps shying away from this fact.


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China Postdoctoral system application processing time
how much time does it take for China postdoctoral system once we submit the application in system online?

The answer depends on various factors, your field, research interests and  nationality/political background. The CCP owns the final decision. No one can give you a definitive answer.


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Can a prof affect my admission to a highly reputed department even though I don't have the perfect background for that department?
I am a prospective PhD applicant at a highly reputed department of an Ivy college. I have been in touch with one of the top profs in the department for the last one year and he has been supportive of me. Even though I was rejected last year, he offered me an internship but due to the pandemic it was scrapped.
Now I mailed him highlighting what I have been upto and he mailed me and the grad committee head prof that I would be an idea student in his group and if the head could help me with my application.
I don't have the perfect background for the department but I have an ideal background for his research group.
I am assuming this is a very positive sign... am I reading too much into it?
Edit: He cc'ed the admissions committee head as well as the head of grad admin

If he emailed you back, cc’ing the head of the admissions committee, that he considers you a great fit for his group, then of course that can impact your chances of admission. The commission just needs to get to see your application before it matters. In the fields I’m familiar with, there are steps prior to that which are handled by non-academic admins (e.g., minimum GRE, your college grades, ...) to narrow the total number of applications down to a level the admissions committee can reasonably handle.

This would definitely help your chances, and in any case you should apply to preserve the relationship since this prof has gone to bat for you.
I would not see this as a guarantee, however, and I would continue to apply to other schools. I'm not 100% clear on the timeline, but it seems like this prof has already been unsuccessful in securing your admission once, so they may just not have enough power to get you admitted. It could be the case that admission decisions (especially at Ivy leagues) are done with more consideration for the student's impact on the department rather than on a specific research group. Also the politics here could be more complex than meets the eye.


text:
PhD without having enough background
I'm a master degree graduate student from a school of engineers in computer science. I'm so passionated by researches and continuous learning, and i want to do a PhD
However, my master course wasn't too specialized, and thus i don't consider myself having enough knowledge in the field that i want to persue researches in as a PhD
I'm thinking about doing a new Master more specialized in the field that i want to study. Do you think it's necessary to do that or i can enrol in a PhD and discover the field more once enrolled ?
Thanks.

Where do you plan to study? Which country?

you probably need to name your research field.  Otherwise, it's difficult or impossible to judge whether you can pick up a research field.  For example, I check whether a student has the necessary or close enough background before I accept him/her as a PhD student.

@Buffy i've been studying in Algeria, and now willing to study in Europ, probably in France.

@Prof.SantaClaus i want to persue studies in embedded systems, and everything related to that (Robotics, AI)

@Mssm that's close enough I think.  Have you taken any hardware subjects?  Embedded system is a huge area.  I'm sure there are sub-areas that overlap with CS.  You should be able to pick up these without having to complete another degree.  Only you can judge.

@Prof.SantaClaus i was studying embedded system subject, it contained mainly, micro controllers programming using C/C++, and Raspberry PI technology also, and it involved connecting sensors and actuators (motors for example), but for me it was not that sufficient to place myself as a PhD candidate, at least, in my opinion. What do you think ?

@Prof.SantaClaus i also had a subject on electronics, but it was mainly theoritical, and it wasn't that fruitfull

@Mssm Wow, you cannot do electronics in theory.  That's no good.  It's like a programming language in theory.  What you've described regarding embedded systems is typical of an undergraduate degree.  That should get you some background.  As for others, you will need to learn what to skills you need to carry out your project.  This forum has many questions about doing research and learning what you need to be successful.

@Prof.SantaClaus thank you for your opinion, yes i agree i need to learn more. But tell me, do you think i can do that during the first weeks / months of a PhD or should i be ready before starting the PhD ?

@Mssm Your supervisor(s) should help with that.  What you need to learn is very much dependent on the project.  There is simply too much information in any area.  So you need supervisors who can tell you necessary topics or what to focus on. Otherwise, you'll never finish.

Hahaha true fact, thank you very much for your help @Prof.SantaClaus


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Which is a better combination for PhD recommendation letters?
My field is language-related and I have been conducting research in it with two professors in the past couple of years. Is it better for me to request recommendation letters from these two professors for my PhD application or should I rely on a more diverse approach? For instance, combining letters from one of these professors with those coming from professors who taught me during the MA years (which, by the way, I graduated from several years ago) or maybe even my MA thesis advisor. I should also mention that it is not very likely for me to apply to universities in the US.

How many letters do you get?

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/156001/who-to-ask-for-letters-of-recommendations/156003#156003

Generally, doctoral programs are designed to produce researchers and academics in a given field. Given this, I suggest that you request letters of recommendation from the faculty members who can best speak to your ability to produce high-quality research. It sounds like you've been working with two professors who might be able to do that.
There are some caveats, though. You want the best possible letters of recommendation you can get. If these two professors with whom you have conducted research are willing to provide excellent LORs, then I'd suggest that you ask them for LORs. But if your relationship with them is strained or if you under-performed while working with them, then perhaps you'll have to look elsewhere.
I'm uncertain why a more "diverse approach" would be advantageous to you. Your LORs should speak to your ability to excel in a PhD program, your capacities for research and original thinking, the likelihood that you'll contribute to the department, and other qualifications.

Thank you for the informative response. I assume by "look elsewhere" you mean I should necessarily find another person who can attest to my research abilities, right? My relationship with one of the professors I have done research with may become strained in the near future as our ideas of good collaboration are gradually diverging. I have, for instance, turned down one of his proposed projects as I thought it was not worthwhile. I am considering turning down another of his, IMO, mediocre ideas as well. So, he may either refuse to give me a letter or may not write a stellar one.

What if worst comes to worst really and s/he refuses or I decide that I do not trust this professor with a letter. If I don't have access to anyone else who can genuinely vouch for my research abilities except for the other professor and I am forced to rely on others (e.g., my MA professors), do you think this may hurt may chances?

If you do not trust the professor to write you an LOR, then you should not ask him/her for it. You mentioned working with two professors. Perhaps ask the other professor for an LOR?


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What documents to include when contacting a potential PhD supervisor? The recommendations differ
I am in the process of applying to PhD positions in educational sciences in the US and UK. However, I have come across two distinct recommendations regarding what to include in my email when contacting potential supervisors. Some mention that only a CV is enough, while others mentions attaching SoPs (or even proposals in the case of UK universities). I am having a problem deciding which is the best route. How should I proceed?
A related question is that in my field, PhD admissions and funding are usually decided by search committees/admissions panels. So is it better to maybe contact the program director instead of a potential supervisor?

I think the procedures are different enough that one size doesn't fit all. US and UK might require different approaches.

Well, what are you contacting them for?

@Buffy What about the US specifically as you are there. Do you have any thoughts on this issue?

@AzorAhai-him- I want to know whether they are accepting new PhD students for the next year and maybe set up a Skype meeting with them if they are interested. In some educational departments, having an advisor on your side may be beneficial based on my research (although I wonder if contacting the department head/program director could also have its own merits). Moreover, I do not want to blindly apply to different universities due to the costs.

In the US (maybe elsewhere) it depends on the circumstances. If it is a blind email, make it short and sweet asking only if they are likely to take on students, giving a very short statement of your interests and offer to provide whatever additional information they would like to see. If you flood them, you are likely to get trash canned.
If they have put out a call or otherwise indicated they are seeking candidates you can say more. Their "call" probably indicates what to include, but a short CV (indicating it is abridged) and a short statement of purpose, keyed to their interest would be fine.
But, in the US, in most fields, it isn't necessary to have an advisor "lined up" for admissions. It is preferable to do so after you have a bit of first hand experience with them. If you only hold a BA/BS then there is plenty of time to get a dissertation advisor, since the early work is mostly courses.

Short - that! For cold contact, keep it abstract length; they should be able to read in one glance. I do read CVs, but this is not typical. +1

@CaptainEmacs, one short paragraph. Three sentences. Something like that. But make me want to ping you back if you look good.

I guess you mean something like that: "Proved Riemann hypothesis using homotopy theory and conformal transformations. Fermat follows almost trivially after simple identification of categorical structures, might have implication for string theory. Seek PhD position in your group." :-P

@CaptainEmacs, yep. I think that would be plenty. Four Color Theorem is a corollary.

I think combinatorial theorems are not compressible, so this would make me suspicious. ;-)