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How can self taught mathematicians contribute to the progression of mathematics?
I am a self taught engineer and mathematician with 20+ years of product engineering experience. I have various patents and have sat on global standards committees--mostly for occupant safety systems. I work today as an in-house consultant.  I've been able to contribute to the safety of drivers all over the world and yet when it comes to mathematics I haven't found a way to participate.
I have shared some of my ideas with professors and others in my field with masters and doctorate degrees with a positive reception and have used my math skills to great success in solving a wide range of problems. I have methods and ideas that I feel can help Americans appreciate mathematics beyond the scope of the classroom but I keep hitting the '...you must have a PhD (from an accredited college), wall'. Is there a way for people like me to contribute?

Why do you want to contribute to the progression of mathematics in America, only?

Who is telling you  that '...you must have a PhD'? I have not heard of any serious publication medium that requires a degree to publish in.

Where exactly are you running into these walls? Publishing? Conferences? Applying for adjunct or lecturer positions? Applying for research grants?

I'm a little confused about what you mean by "contribute."  Do you want to do research?  Or are your goals popularization and education?  "appreciate math beyond the scope of the classroom" sounds like the latter.  Do you want to write papers?  What kind of mathematics?  Do you want to serve on secondary education curriculum committees?  As currently phrased your question is too vague to answer.

Wow. I thank you all for the quick reply. By contribute I mean mathematical research. I do research for the modeling of mechanical assemblies and risk associated with the interfaces between them. This is typically done by what's called Failure Mode and Effects Analysis or DFMEA.

Consider these articles by Richard Lipton: https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/07/01/can-amateurs-solve-pnp/, https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/07/11/proving-a-proof-is-a-proof/

So who's stopping you from doing research?

I've edited the question to be less negative.  Perhaps it's already been answered, though.

I think we need you to further clarify what you are trying to do, and who is stopping you. Are you having trouble getting collaborators? Getting papers published? Getting financial support for your research? Getting a job that involves doing research in mathematics? What are you trying to do, exactly? If we know the specifics, we can probably reopen the question and offer a specific answer.

You may also be interested in browsing the other questions tagged [tag:independent-researcher], and in particular those that are also tagged mathematics

No one is stopping me from doing research. The issue is trying to get the research out there with the aims of giving engineers, or anyone else for that matter, methods of decision making that leads to better products. In the my field the trend is for engineers to be more administrative than creative. Many of my colleagues know my work but unless I have masters or PhD my recommendations or solutions remain a secret. I cannot share the solutions but I can share the methods I used to get to the solutions which can help engineers and others in the classroom setting and beyond.

I must have misunderstood something, because it sounds to me like you're asking "why can't I publish engineering research in math journals" to which the answer is because you publish engineering research in engineering journals.  Engineers aren't typically reading math journals, so doing math research is not a great way to reach them.

You may contribute by writing an paper solving an open mathematical problem, submitting it to a mathematical journal, and getting it published. That's the most standard, typical mathematical process of getting acceptance in the community. After you are done with your first publication, look what do you want to do next. Otherwise, I see no chance.

The field of engineering is based upon math. This is especially true in electrical and mechanical engineering. Engineering research is mostly confined to materials. Tools such as groups, graphs, calculus, probability and statistics are the mathematical tools that engineers used to make conclusions about a design, reliability and so on. All of these tools are in the realm of applied math at time, abstract algebra. So mathematics is the language between industries and disciplines.

"The issue is trying to get the research out there" - What have you tried to do, to get your research "out there"? It's still not clear what you are trying to do, and why you aren't able to do it. Are you trying to publish your research in a journal, and if so, what kind? Are you trying to engage others in a less formal way e.g. by writing a blog, and if so, who are you trying to engage? It's not clear what kind of audience you are trying to reach, and what you have tried to do to reach that audience.

I just realized something. When I invent something I get a patent and that patent goes out into the patent universe for all to see. I see now that I am mixing two processes--journals are for a specific audience and patents are for a global industry. I thank you all for your comments because now I see the error in my logic. Through my research on congruence I found the relation: |x| = tan( acos( cos( atan(x) ) ) ), which returns the unsigned value of any real x. How would I go about getting ideas like this in the hands of an organization that can put it in the mathematics universe?

"So mathematics is the language between industries and disciplines." But mathematics research does not resemble anything like engineering research. Even suggesting that it does will make you sound like a quack. Have you read the papers in the journals you are submitting to? Notably " I found the relation: |x| = tan( acos( cos( atan(x) ) ) ), which returns the unsigned value of any real x" is trivial for teaching and could be a blog post (or an undergrad homework assignment to prove), but definitely not a paper. Read the journals you want to submit to, and match the style. Or just blog.

Again I thank you all for the discussion. Your comments are helping to explain much of the correspondence I've had over the years. I have done a lot of engineering research where the outcome was an equation or algorithm for the purpose of predicting the behavior of various products and design. If I understand your comment correctly, the result of mathematical research should be within and non-trivial to the domain being researched. So although my research results in some mathematical tool, it is not considered mathematical research because the domain is engineering. Is this correct?

@CecilBrown: No, that's not really accurate. There is much active research in the area of applied mathematics, which is a sort of crossover between math and other STEM fields, including engineering. The more important issue is that the research to be published in mathematical journals needs to be considered "non-trivial." Something that could appear in a homework problem or short research project doesn't meet that qualification.

To consider voting to reopen this, I'd need to see the relevant information from the comments edited into the main question.

This post started out rough for me, mainly due to frustrating world of engineering, but this has helped me sort things out quite a bit. I have a way to use knot theory for mechanical assemblies and the journal guys pretty much said what you guys are saying here. I will seriously consider the blog option (thanks ff524 and Chris Rackauckas). But, since I am not part of Academia, is this forum the right place to get advice on the contents of my blog posts to make sure they are readable for academics and engineers alike? Or would I have to consult a local university?

@CecilBrown: We can't really help advise you on the contents of your blog on this forum directly. You could do that in chat [where these comments will shortly be moved], but not on the direct forum board.


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Should I talk about service in my job application?
I am a mathematician on the job market this year and am wondering if I should talk at all about service and other aspects of who I am other than my teaching and research. So for example, committees I've been on, leadership roles, professional development, etc. And if so, where would I put this information? My teaching statement? Cover letter?
Let's assume that I'm applying to jobs that are more focused on teaching than research. Thanks!

Yes, you should mention these.  Sorry, not sure where it would fit.

Many (if not most) academic CVs have a section labeled "Service" that lists committee memberships, reviewing experience, outreach activities, and other university and community service.  You could also reasonably include a brief "service statement", as an addendum to your teaching (or research) statement, that explains those service activities (and future goals) in more detail.
But keep in mind that you're not describing who you are as a human being, but rather who you are as a potential colleague.  The service activities you describe should have direct bearing on your suitability for a teaching job in a university mathematics department.  So coaching your daughter's robotics team could reasonably be included, but coaching her baseball team probably shouldn't.
Also remember that your service activities are almost certainly less important than your record in teaching and research.  "Service" should be the last section of your CV, and any service statement should be significantly shorter than your teaching or research statements.

If you have some experience serving on departmental or institutional committees, working with a student chapter of your professional society of even doing volunteer work at the national level as a student member of your professional society then these are things that you should probably include on your CV.
I would not list activities that aren't connected to your professional and academic career even if they do show your leadership- e.g. I wouldn't include the fact that you were the president of the campus theater group.
As a tenure track assistant professor you will most likely be expected to be involved in service at the departmental, institutional, and professional levels, but this kind of service is generally less important than teaching and research.  One way in which some assistant professors fail is by putting too much of their effort into service work at the expense of teaching and research, so you don't want to give the wrong impression about your priorities.
Some of the things that you've mentioned might be more directly relevant in terms of teaching or research.  For example, if you've participated in a "preparing future faculty" professional development program that's a positive experience to include but more as professional development in teaching and research rather than as a service activity.

You should list these activities on your CV, and perhaps briefly in your other materials.
But where these activities should be thoroughly described is in your recommendation letters. Hiring departments will not just want to see that you've been on a lot of committees: it's easy to be on a lot of commmittees without accomplishing much. (Alas, this is all too visible in my own department.) Instead, hiring departments will want to hear about the impact that your service has had on the department and on the people around you, and your recommenders are the most natural people to say this.
(Indeed, I remember last year we had one applicant who was finishing her Ph.D. at a non-elite program. Her research wasn't strong enough to get a tenure-track job at a research-oriented university (at least not without a postdoc first), but I vividly remember one of the letters which went on and on about all of the ways in which she'd made a hugely positive impact on her department as a grad student. It was quite moving really. Anyway, she got hired at an elite liberal-arts school.)
Anyway, if you are proud of your service record, make sure that it is addressed by a couple of your letter writers. (You don't need to have your service addressed by all of your writers -- indeed, it is good to have a balance of internal letters and letters from people outside your own department, and the latter will probably mostly talk about your research.)
Good luck!

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Are faculty hiring committees overly polite on "denial" answers
I applied to several tenure track positions this season. For some of them, I received an e-mail letting me know that I was no longer considered. That's cool and expected, since most of them were in US/Canada and I don't have any official experience working in neither...
My real question is: In some of those, they said that there were impressed by my resume/background/publications or something similar, always followed by a ", but". Are they being polite saying that? How much should I trust this kind of information?
(I could really use this kind of feedback to direct my search. It is not trivial to not over/underestimate yourself...)

Yes, in the U.S. the style is not to say anything negative, even while not giving a job offer. Thus, yes, you should not trust the specific "being nice" words, whatever they are. That is, it is not necessarily the case that the committee is "impressed" by your file, etc. Such remarks are just the meaningless sweetener before the negative operational message. It is very hard to know or learn what the committee really thought, that is, for example, how close you were to the short list, or how close to the top of the short list.

Yes, they are probably just being polite. Even if they were genuinely impressed, there is no real way to know. Also, keep in mind that "impressed by your resume" with no other details could mean "impressed by how little it qualifies you for the job". On the other hand, for many searches there are many truly impressive applications, but still some are better than others.

@paulgarrett Can you please turn your comment into an answer so that I can vote it up?

Sometimes they won't give you a definitive no just in case the people they bring on campus bomb. Restarting from existing applications is much easier than getting approval for a new search. But if you tell someone they're no longer being considered, then can't really go back to them later.

@jakebeal, thanks, but by now it looks like similar points have been made by others.

Here, for comparison, an example of dry rejection email that you'd get in Italy: Dear XXX, your titles have been evaluated to 30 marks. As per point n. 7 of the application, we remind you that only the candidates who got 45 marks over 60 are admitted to the interview. (Ciao ciao).

I remember one rejection letter ("oh we're so sorry, we'd really love to have you but") I got made me feel better than one offer I got ("alright, you can come here if you want").

@Kimball With all due respect, you are weird then :) . I say that because if they would really love to have you there that much, they would. Going for the analogy of the girl (@DanRomik), it's like she's saying "I would love to go out with out, but I won't". Doesn't change the outcome and you can't really believe it anyway... A simple "thanks, but no thanks" would be more than enough.

This sounds like a standard US rejection - they may be sending this exact same text to all other candidates that were rejected. I do not believe you can learn anything from it and it does not reflect on you specifically in any way.
You can, however, try to get feedback, but it can be quite difficult - you must realize that the chances of getting good sincere feedback are not high. It is probably best to try getting this from someone with whom you felt there was a good connection or that this person was relatively open. Probably this person would prefer to do this over phone rather than by mail. You may also want to look at this question.

I understand  that real feedback would be, in general, completely unreasonable. People might avoid giving it for legal fears even....But it is funny that so far I get either an overly polite, meaningless, answer or no answer at all. If I'm honest, I'm not sure which one is worse... Well, no answer is worse... Either way, they could as well say just "thanks for the interest but we won't be pursuing you in this process". Short, to the point, and totally true...

Are they being polite saying that? How much should I trust this kind
  of information?

Yes, in general the goal of the email is to inform you of the search results in a way that is polite and avoids any not strictly necessary emotional distress, confrontation, antagonism, and (this being the U.S.) risk of litigation. Sadly, this comes at the cost of depriving you of meaningful feedback that would actually be helpful to you. Thus the statements in the email may be completely true, or completely false, or somewhere in between... there is just no way of knowing.
Note that your problem is a common one for job applicants both within academia and outside it, especially in the U.S. where the job application process is especially fraught with potential legal consequences, and where the culture strongly favors euphemistic face-saving politeness over blunt truth-telling (at least compared to some countries I'm familiar with, though other countries are even worse in this regard). See here and here for some related discussions on Workplace.SE.

I was guessing this was litigation-motivated... Weirdly, I would expect researchers to be more familiar with rejections... But, even when you consider the fear of getting sued, this kind of statements make no sense. If you fear litigation over what you said, saying less, but enough, wouldn't be better? It would be interesting to see a checkbox on the application saying "I won't sue, don't BS me" :) (yes, dream on, I'm aware)

@FábioDias researchers are very familiar with rejections, but that is not the point. This mostly just has to do with a very strongly ingrained U.S. cultural trait of not wanting to offend, and an inflated use of superlatives and exaggerations, so that even a statement like "I was impressed with your qualifications" can be perceived as offensive by not being positive enough (you see this issue a lot in the context of letters of recommendation). The fear of litigation only makes this worse, but probably is not such a major factor.

Second, I think part of your frustration stems from a premise that employers owe you feedback as a kind of moral imperative. It may be helpful to accept that when an employer looks at you for a job, the only transaction that takes place is that you either get selected or not. At least in a U.S. context, the employer simply does not consider providing feedback to the candidate a part of the process - they have enough problems to deal with without taking on this extra burden. It is somewhat analogous to expecting a girl to explain why she's not interested in dating you. It's asking for too much.

I'd say a better analogy is a needy shopkeeper asking you why you're not buying his inventory. There could be a thousand reasons why you're not buying what he's selling and many of your reasons may have nothing to do with the shopkeeper himself or his wares.  It could just be that you saw a better item five minutes earlier or that you're having budget troubles. That being said, you do know that if you're too honest in your feedback with that shopkeeper, that person will think of your objections as the beginning of a tentative negotiation.

@danromik I might not have been clear enough then. I don't expect any feedback. Realistically, I don't expect any manifestation at all, but I do appreciate when I get any information. I just don't see the point in providing unnecessary, meaningless, information.

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Found two errors in submitted manuscript
I very recently submitted a manuscript to a journal and found that I had mislabeled y axis on three panels of a many panel figure (put relative activity (%), instead of fold change in phosphorylation). Additionally I noticed that instead of PIP2, I put PIP3 in a signaling schematic. do you think the paper will be rejected for such errors if all other things are okay?

You paper will not be rejected just because of typos and misprints.

I agree with @Alexey B. and believe that, unless the typo has a very negative effect on the logical foundations of your paper, it will not cause the rejection of your paper.
Also, usually, you can contact the support staff of your journal and ask them if they can help you fix the issue. I made a rather similar mistake in a chart in one of my papers and for that, I contacted the support staff of the journal (published by Elsevier). After discussing the matter with them, they asked for the correct version of the chart, asked the editor of the journal if a modification is allowed and modified my submission.

The correct course of action will be to e-mail the editor, outlining the typos and providing corrections. You should note that the typos have no influence on the conclusions or any other significant parts of the article.
You should do this as soon as possible, so the reviewers are also made aware of this. Assuming that your article doesn't get accepted right away with no changes required, you will have a chance to correct the errors in a later revision.
The worst thing to do would be to do nothing, or doing it too late. One thing that you do not want to do to have the article published with the errors in it. You have two options then, either ignore it and let the errors exist forever in the scientific record (worst option) or submit a correction which will be published as a separate article and will be referred to from the original article. Some publishers will actually correct the original article, but there's no guarantee this will happen. Either way, it's better to make the corrections as soon as possible. Which is now.


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Is it appropriate to make a pun that references a highly charged topic in current events, in a lecture on an unrelated subject?
For example, when discussing red-black trees in lecture, is it appropriate to use the phrase "Black Nodes Matter?"
The proof that red-black trees are balanced relies heavily on the property that each downward path originating from a node contains the same number of black nodes.  Given this, I am wondering if it is appropriate to say #BlackNodesMatter.

@Bitwise There is a meta-discussion on this question: http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3389/why-isnt-this-question-removed

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

The joke is in poor taste and inappropriate to a professional environment.
As pointed out by others, this might either be taken as moderate to serious offence in some places and just misunderstood in others, hence it is unlikely to achieve any of the intended effects. Places where most people would laugh wholeheartedly at the joke are probably places where I would not feel too comfortable staying.
While I agree that anything can theoretically be made light, this strongly depend on context and company.
As a general rule, if you feel like it is a good idea to check the appropriateness of a joke with somebody, then the joke is not appropriate.

+1, the last line is particularly important and worth noting.

@jwg Unfortunately that rule has a tendency toward "race to the bottom" type situations. Since by it's nature it moves the Overton Window every time someone uses it such that the line of acceptability can only ever move in one direction until we reach the point where the only possible humor that passes the test is the single joke  "What's green and likes camping?""A boy sprout!"

@Murphy this is not one of the things about which I am most worried.

@Murphy tbh that triggers me to no end fam.
The rule works most of the time but not necessarily always. The gist is that if you feel something is wrong with your joke, then probably there is!

Besides for potentially offending your audience, a joke like the one you suggest can also detract from the goal of your presentation, which is presumably to inform or educate your audience.
For example, a couple of years ago I got this email, addressed to all of the authors on a paper I co-authored:

I wanted to write to say that I’m a big fan of your [REDACTED] work—it is a really cool idea that addresses a real problem, and it was great to see the work in this year’s [NAME OF CONFERENCE].  However, the actual talk as presented really bothered me, and I felt that it was important to write to you.  Based on conversations during the breaks and at the end of the day, I know that I’m not the only person who feels this way.

The email went on to say that this person, and apparently others at the conference, thought a joke that was part of the talk (which was delivered by my co-author, and which I hadn't seen before) was sexist. Personally I thought the joke was more stupid than offensive, but I was unhappy with my co-author for using it - because when people talk about my paper during the breaks at a conference, I want them to be talking about the content of the work, not a joke that the presenter made. The joke was a distraction from the real goal of the talk.
Jokes are good when they support your goal of educating the audience, but not when they distract from that goal. (And definitely not when they're offensive.)

When in doubt, joke about pop culture (sports, films, etc), that can be funny and "connect" with students.  Don't joke about things that are discriminatory, or involve harm or violation of rights.  Putting that together and thinking back to FSU's old quarterback and typical jokes at many ACC/SEC schools: joke about James Winston and his crab legs theft, funny; joke about James Winston and his alleged rape, patently offensive)

I particularly liked this answer because of the concrete example of how something similar went horribly wrong.

Do not do this. Simply pointing out how nodes are identified as black, and relating it to Black Lives Matters, isn't a joke, it's a basic observation/wordplay. Race and color do not make good wordplay.
Are you African American? If not, don't relate the color of the nodes to someone else's race. In comedy this would be called punching down (a joke at the expense of groups with less power).
-Performing comedian for 6 years.

Thanks for the "punching down" term; I've needed that in the past.

The best you're going to get out of a classroom joke like this is a light chuckle.
The worst is that you've badly offended a student.
The risk:reward ratio is pretty heavily biased toward "Just don't."

I agree with many of the previous answers, and the major issue is that it can be offensive and distracting to poke fun at a sensitive and important topic.  However, there are several other factors to keep in mind:

Whatever you say may be overanalyzed.  For example, in your red-black tree example, black nodes particularly matter since they play a special role in the proof.  By contrast, "Black Lives Matter" means they matter as much as other lives (despite not being treated as being equally important), not that they matter more than others, so the analogy isn't very compelling.  An uncharitable interpretation of your joke is that it's poking fun at or undermining BLM by comparing it to the assertion that black lives are unusually important relative to other lives.  If that were the intent, it would make the joke (even) more offensive.  Of course the purpose was presumably just to create a striking mnemonic, not to make a political statement, but when you joke about sensitive subjects you should expect to have far more read into your joke than you had intended.
It's easy for the class to spin out of control.  For example, a student may respond with "Don't red nodes matter too?  I think the only fair statement is that all nodes matter."  All that point, you really have no good response.  It's not wise to go off topic into an actual political discussion, but you're in a messy situation since that response has emphasized your joke and made it even touchier politically (ending the discussion with "all nodes matter" would not be a good idea).  If you get a follow up of this sort, I'd recommend apologizing for raising a sensitive issue and explaining that additional jokes and discussion are off topic.  In any case, the point is that class members may take the joke further than you did and in a more explicitly political direction, and you shouldn't set up such a situation unless you are prepared to deal with it.

First I would like to mention that this specific joke would be very offensive to some people in the US and I think it is a very bad idea to use it.
However, to answer the question more generally, I think the appropriateness of joking about a charged subject in a lecture is very culture-dependent. In some countries, the worst-case scenario is that such a joke would be dismissed by some students as bad taste without any serious repercussions. However, in the US, I would personally either be extremely careful what I joke about or refrain from joking altogether, since there is a low threshold for what is considered offensive and repercussions can be very serious (just to be clear - I am not passing judgement on this). This is especially true if you are a non-native in the US, as you may not even be aware of what is considered offensive (I have seen this happen several times).

@djechlin that is worst-case. "Best" case i guess would be students finding it clever and as a result listening and studying better.

Is the intention to provide an extra knowledge connection that would help students remember the material better?
It seems like it could be helpful in that regard; that'd be a primary benefit ('pro').
Pros should be weighed against cons and the net compared to alternatives.
Are you demeaning the lives of people who are killed by police brutality, or the work of those advocating on their behalf, by calling attention to that movement in this setting?  Based on the fact that you asked this question at all, it doesn't sound like you are intending to demean anyone, but whether or not people interpret it that way depends not only on intention but also on audience and context (e.g. classroom mood, what style students have come to expect from you), etc. If your audience receives a demeaning message from that line, that'd be a primary 'con.'
If you are supporting the work of those advocates by calling attention to their cause, as they seek, then your reference would be helping the #BlackLivesMatter movement (and whether this is a pro or con probably depends on how you feel about that movement).

There are almost certainly better ways to make a joke that provides an extra knowledge connection (e.g. make your own variation on this with your own punchline and an actual red-black tree). There are also much better ways to call attention to the movement. In weighing pros and cons, we should consider not only "is this good?" but also "is this the best way to achieve whatever I am trying to achieve?"

True, and not made sufficiently explicit in answer as originally posted.  Clarified.

Attaching content lessons to common phrases that the audience is already very familiar with does help the lesson stick and make it easier to remember the material later on. I disagree with your absolutist statements.

It's very likely that if you make such a pun you make it a lot harder for the audience to reason rationally about the subject that you are talking about.
Half of your audience might spent 5 minutes thinking about the political implications of your statement instead of the math you are talking about.

Well, your question almost answers itself:
Is it appropriate to make a pun that references a highly charged topic in current events, in a lecture on an unrelated subject?
"Highly charged topic" perfectly matches racial slurs and sexist jokes.  In particular "highly charged" implies several quite opposed sides with vested interest and emotions.
Which means that some people will likely get similarly offended like some would be with racials slurs or sexist jokes, and their offense is taken for the amusement values of others.
Is it appropriate?  I think that answers itself.  You probably wanted to rather ask whether it nets you sympathies.  Maybe it will.  But I'd recommend using more appropriate ways to do that.


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Applying to work where I said "no" in the past?
I'm currently applying for lecturing jobs at a couple of universities (in the US), and one of these is a place that had accepted me in its Ph.D. program a few years back, an offer which I ended up turning down to go somewhere else (this was done in a very courteous way and I do not believe I left a bad impression).

Do you think my history with the school could have an adverse effect on my current application?
If not, is there any reason to  mention somehow that I applied to their graduate program (I'm worried that if I avoid the "elephant in the room" they might become suspicious)?

Thanks everyone for your thoughtful answers! Reading them again I'm starting to wonder why I was even worried about this to begin with.I'm still very new to this community so I don't know if commenting on my own question is the best way to communicate with those who have given an answer.

There are many reasons why people choose to go to one program over the other. While there might be some thin-skinned people, I don't think that should lead you to rule out applying. Since applying to a job at a school is minimal cost to you, you should go ahead and do it.
Much more likely is that the only person who remembers is the person who would have been your POI.  I wouldn't bring it up unless someone asks.

Thank you for your insightful and quick reply! I will go ahead and send my application then.

This is the correct answer

This is not bad. I did this exact thing. Hopefully they remember the application and the good things they thought about you!
I had personally met with someone that I wanted to be my advisor for my PhD and then ended up going somewhere else for my PhD. Five years later, I explicitly asked the person I turned down to be my PhD advisor to be my Postdoc sponsor for a grant I was applying for.  I am now his postdoc. He had remembered me, and now we have a great working relationship.

As others have said, basically go for it!
I just wanted to add the following responses.

No, they gave you an offer and you weren't rude so it will only be positive if they do remember it.
Don't bring it up but if they do, use the opportunity to say that you applied previously because you believe it is a good school and still do!

There are lots of opportunities to twist any awkward questions around this into a big positive, discussing how you have developed since your PhD, what you have gained/can bring to the school, what you liked about it then and now etc.
The worst question would be why did you turn down our PhD offer X years ago, it would be very weird for them to ask this as its irrelevant really. If they did, just make sure you could say something suggesting the school is the best option for you now and at this stage of your career.

It is quite likely the people considering your lectureship candidacy are not aware you were accepted as a Ph.D. candidate and declined eventually. Probable, even, unless it's a very small department.
So my answers are: "Naah" and "Dude, no. Don't. Seriously."


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Professor won't comment on research in his recommendation
I asked a professor who is my research co-supervisor for a recommendation letter and he said "OK I can write that you are my student and you are good, but I can't comment on your research until you complete your thesis." When I first asked him he asked me to stay and do PhD with him. Now he won't comment on my research which would really hurt my chances of being admitted. I mean when I have completed my thesis I would have missed the deadlines and would have to wait for another year (supposedly as a researcher with the same professor).
My question is, should I take his recommendation or ask someone else based on what he said?

It's very hard to discern what your question is. This isn't a forum, so we don't take posts of the form "here's a situation; discuss". Please can you turn your post into one with a specific question that could be answerable in a small number of paragraphs?

Consider editing your title to include essential information about your question.

You should ask other people for reference letters no matter what your advisor says.  Even if your advisor agrees to write about your researcher, it's always useful to have additional references available.

If you are applying for positions where you need recommendation letters, it's going to look pretty strange if you don't have one from one of your co-supervisors if it's possible to tell who they were. You don't say what degree you are currently working on, but I'm guessing it's either your undergraduate or master's degree since you appear to be applying for a PhD. I wouldn't recommend saying the following directly to this person, but refusing to write a letter of recommendation in order to try to prevent a student is highly unethical.
I recommend you talk to your other co-supervisor and see if you can get them to help you talk the recalcitrant co-supervisor into writing you a letter. It is very common for students to move from group to group and institution to institution while getting their successive degrees. In fact, most institutions in the US have a preference towards moving around like this. While losing a good student is hard, it's very inappropriate for a professor to try to prevent a student from moving on.
If the professor is having trouble coming up with things to say about your research progress, you can help him out by writing some text about what you've done so far and the good progress that you've made. Faced with some true statements about how good your research prospects are and the progress you've made to date, they may cave easily and write you the letter you need. If you show your resolve to apply elsewhere, they should hopefully give in.

Thank you for your reply. I have asked the other research supervisor and he happily agreed. This supervisor doesn't want to write about my research not that he has a problem coming up with things to write. Anyway, I will ask someone else. Thanks again for your kind reply.


text:
How to express an ongoing PhD degree in suffix
Is it correct to express PhD in brackets "(PhD)" as suffix to express the ongoing degree?

Welcome to Academia SE! Could you add a little more context to your question?

Possible duplicate of http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8984/what-should-a-proper-email-signature-look-like-for-graduate-students

Do you mean as part of your name like: "John Smith, (PhD)"? If so, the answer is no. You can't list a degree that you have not yet earned.

"John Smith (PhD student)" would be accurate, but you really don't want to do that.

Everyone (including me) is assuming that by "ongoing degree" you mean "a degree I have not obtained yet, though I plan to obtain it." If you mean something different you should clarify.

Why would you want to indicate an advanced degree? Are you hoping that it will impress people? Are you trying to find a side job while doing your PhD?

Where do you want to use such abbreviation? In your visit card? In the signature of your mails and email?

Why would you use this? Speaking with people with much higher achievements then Phd I have not seen things like John Doe (investor who has a lot of money) or Jane Roe (lead researcher from a huge company who manages hundreds of phds). If somebody would like to know who you are they would be able to find out without someone pushing it in their face.

As per the previous threads on this, it depends very strongly on the country you're in and the countries you're interacting with. The US has one format, continental Europe has another, etc.

Unless the degree has been conferred, it is not acceptable to include its designation in any manner at Oxford. This includes BA's which will in future become MA's.

No, you cannot use a title or degree that you haven't earned yet.

well, he can do whatever he wants.  call himself the Queen of England, if he wants to.  i don't think anyone will be arrested for that.

In some countries (my experience is in The Netherlands) a number of such titles such  as dr. (PhD) in this case and their international variants are protected by law, and using them without proper rights will land you in jail.

Yes, the same is true in Germany, and people did get into trouble for not applying the law properly. Even in cases where people did have a PhD of a reputable university (see e.g. http://htor.inf.ethz.ch/blog/index.php/2008/11/06/you-can-also-call-me-dr-in-germany/). The law has been changed now, but you still cannot call yourself dr. without the appropriate degree from an accredited university.

@JakobBuis Is it that harsh a crime that you will be thrown in jail? I thought maybe a fine or something lesser.

Even if it's not illegal per se (like in the US), do not expect others to react kindly to using a degree title you haven't earned.

@cpast And, even in the U.S., stating or implying that you have a degree that you don't have could probably constitute fraud in some contexts, which is indeed a crime. While it's unlikely that you'd be prosecuted in most cases, it would certainly be considered dishonest.

Speakers of some languages (think Chinese) tend to thoroughly shorten things in colloquial speech.  Thus the equivalent of "PhD student" in that language is easily shortened to something that might be translated back to English as PhD.  I've heard Chinese speakers say (in English) "he is a PhD" when they meant "he is a PhD student".  This might explain where the OP's question is coming from ...

@Coburn it is illegal, but there is no punishment, at least not by a court. You can ofcourse loose your job if you lied about your degree in an aplication procedure, or experience similar unpleasant consequences.

@Coburn: In Germany, it seems to depend on the circumstances: The respective statement from German penal code says: "The unauthorized use of (...) national or foreign (...) academic degress (...) will be punished with up to a year of imprisonment or a fine."

@fredsbend Lest I be mistaken, common knowledge needs no citation, even in formal academic papers. I suppose most academics agree this qualifies as common knowledge.

@Coburn I've rechecked and you're right. Apparently it is indeed just a fine. I would've sworn it was worse, but I guess I'm just influenced by the public outcry that usually follows.

Perhaps you may have seen someone express their student status in such a way, which may work informally depending on the context (perhaps a listing of students, which may have included undergrads and masters level students, and could thus differentiate). E.g.:
SGA Special Committee of Students named Student
-----------------------------------------------
Student Smith (PhD)
Student Garcia (MS)
Student Nahasapeemapetilon (MA)
...

And note that these examples are only appropriate in contexts where you need to communicate your state of educational attainment. Perhaps a resume, name tag at networking event, or something of that nature. It's not really appropriate socially (note the disdain in the comments), or outside of such a context.
Even in a context where you are clearly understood to be a student, it's best not just trail off with (PhD). Fully disclose your current state of education:
E.g:
Student Smith (Ph.D. expected 2020)

If you passed your comps, but did not dissertate, some may frown on this, but sometimes used to indicate one has completed all work necessary for graduation except the dissertation (and even when all hope is abandoned of ever completing):
Student Smith (ABD)

or if completion is shortly expected,
Student Smith (Ph.D. candidate)

I think the third option's classy. I'd go for that.

On a resume/CV, for instance, it's relatively common (at least here in the U.S.) for an active student to list in their education Degree Name, Expected Graduation: Month Year. This communicates that you're working on it and how far along you are while also removing any ambiguity that could make someone think you're being dishonest and claiming to already have the degree.

In my own institution and others a "Ph.D. student" is not necessarily a candidate.  There are requirements to be met, such as coursework or comprehensive exams, before one is accepted into candidacy.

I wouldn't call any of those options classy. None are dishonest or misleading, which is good, but none seem either elegant or advisable.

@BenjaminMakoHill I don't think any of us can comment on the advisability and appropriateness yet, since the OP has not provided any context.

@JamalS: I don't think that any of the options described in this answer are either advisable or appropriate in almost any context of general professional communication.

@BobBrown: Indeed, depending on the university, there can be differences, and this question serves as a useful resource for further info on that topic.

You may say you are a PhD candidate as a suffix after you finish your field exams (usually after the third year in the US.)

@fredsbend: I think the more suitable summary of that question you linked to is that in some institutions, there is a clear-cut and significant difference between PhD candidates and PhD students, whereas in other institutions, the two terms are totally synonymous and interchangeable. (And people from non-English speaking places with different education systems sometimes choose one over the other because they feel it represents their status better.)

At my university in the USA, we award the M.Phil degree to doctoral students who have completed their coursework and exams. When they submit their prospectus, their title changes to "doctoral candidate."
So they could write either:

Jane Doe, BA, M.Phil
Jane Doe, doctoral candidate

Some also use the colloquial ABD (all but dissertation) but as their advisor, I discourage this for formal settings such as their CV or  on their business cards:

Jane Doe, BA, ABD

In Brazil, it is common to see people writing "doutorando" (for PhD) and "mestrando" (for Masters) to indicate that they are in the middle of the course of their degrees. The translation for these terms would be something almost like "PhDeing" and "Meing" (none of those sound well). But this practice is not considered right, because the person has not finished anything.
Also, I agree that as a PhD student you don't really want to do that, as you have not already earned your degree. Keep up with your studies, and soon you will be able to add "PhD" with no other doubts!

A Phd Student is a research Scholar . I propose he can write .
Phd(Sch).. Where SCh is a suffix , same is recommended in a smaller font.


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Is it appropriate to ask colleagues opinions when reviewing a paper?
Several times my supervisor has asked me for my opinion on papers he is reviewing. I find this helpful as it encourages me to read things I otherwise would not, helps me understand how to review articles, and can lead to interesting discussions. Presumably my supervisor also finds it useful to have a second opinion or sometimes to act as a sanity check.
Recently I was wondering is this entirely appropriate. Not least because all the manuscripts for review have confidential for review only in bold at the top.
So my question is what are the legal/ethical issues with asking a student/colleague/supervisor's (depending on your position) opinion on a paper you are reviewing?
Note I'm not saying that they write the review just that you get them to read the manuscript and ask their opinion on certain points.

I think it makes a large difference whether it is an advisor talking with their graduate student, or whether it is a professor at one institution asking a colleague at another institution. The latter would be very unusual - if I couldn't referee a paper without asking someone else, I would decline to referee it.

possible duplicate of Are reviewers allowed to discuss their review with each other?

Since it is "for review" I would say that sharing "for review only" is appropriate as it ought to produce a better review. And I suspect that your advisor may be doing this in part for the learning experience it gives you, and not because he/she thinks a good review is impossible without your input.

@Parsa The linked question is about discussing with another assigned reviewer, which has different ethical and practical implications from discussing with another person who isn't an assigned reviewer.

@ff524 but as I read some papers about the ethics of peer review, there is no exception whether two people are reviewers of the same paper and journal, they are colleagues and friends or they are just people with similar research interests. The review process should remain secure and can only be discussed with the journal's editor; despite some cases that the editor allows the reviewers extra freedom for discussion and etc. This is something that only happens between an editor and the person he chooses for paper review.

@Parsa that could be an answer to this question, but it's still a different question. Also, the answers to the linked question cite the need for several independent reviews as a main reason for saying it isn't allowed, and that reason doesn't apply here.

If you can't talk about reviews, how do you learn how to review well? (Maybe that's one reason for why so many reviews seem to be bad.)

I think that this practice violates the usual "confidentiality agreement" that presents (formally, or customary) in a review process. However, I would agree that this is a common practice, and for some people it is just hard to work on their own, although technically you are supposed to give your own opinion on a paper you review.
I would say that if you really need to show the paper you review to someone else, you should check the following boxes:
make sure the person understands that they are looking on a paper under review, and agrees to maintain the confidentiality, i.e.: not to talk about the ideas from the paper with someone else, not to produce own work based on these results until they are made public, etc.
 The actual material paper, and the file, do not change hands: do not send the pdf manuscript to your colleagues, do not leave the printed paper with them for a while.
 Ask specific question(s) about the paper, for which you need second advice, not just a general opinion. Remember, that you should review the manuscript yourself. Definitely do not use the second opinion to shake some work off your shoulders and go.

the phrase "check the following boxes" was not meant literally, was it?

@CGCampbell What I meant is that is good to follow (1) (2) and (3). Sorry if I used a wrong phrase for it.

The first two points are important if the paper is not publicly available yet; what if the manuscript has been posted on arXiv for instance? The only confidential thing you have to reaveal is then your identity as the referee, and possibly the name of the journal.

@Ri49 I assume that the paper is not made public yet, of course. If it is published on arXiv, why not simply ask someone's an opinion on this new interesting arXiv paper?

You might want to ask whether his opinion about publication in the particular journal, which pretty much gives everything away. Plus, it's not always very discreet to push the discussion on a given paper and it might very well become obvious that you are involved with the paper at some level.

The safest course of action would be to ask the editor: "My colleague Edna Krabapple has relevant expertise that would help me understand the paper and write a better report.  May I share and discuss the manuscript with her?"
If the editor says no, you'd be justified in replying "Since I don't have the expertise to fully understand the paper on my own, I must decline the invitation to review."

Isn't it less black and white? (I.e. someone's opinion may help.) If without a consultation I would not be able to review a paper, I would (and should) just decline reviewing.

I'm not saying that you must decline reviewing if the editor says no, just that you could (and that fact may make it more likely that the editor says yes). I agree that if you know up front that you can't review the paper without help, you should decline, but sometimes it is only after accepting the invitation that you discover a difficult passage.

This varies by field. In computer science, the members of the "program committee" of a conference are each responsible for reviewing some number of the submissions. However, they also have the power to unilaterally select sub-reviewers (sometimes more than one per paper) to provide input. How this is actually handled varies by venue, but sometimes can be as informal as sending an email to a colleague or graduate student asking them to take a look at the paper and provide input to the committee.

they also have the power to unilaterally select sub-reviewers — Even this practice varies by sub-discipline.  Some conferences have enormous program committees, with few papers assigned to each member, and insist that committee members review their own papers.  Other conferences have smaller PCs and allow external reviewers.  But even in the latter case, if an advisor is asked to review a paper by a PC member, the advisor isn't supposed to reveal this fact to their students.

Conference subreviewers are a completely different situation. The situation there is completely analogous to a journal editor unilaterally deciding to appoint a reviewer; it is not at all the same thing as a reviewer unilaterally deciding to appoint somebody else to look at the paper. There is absolutely no expectation that a paper submitted to a CS conference will be seen only by that conference's PC.

Well, it differs from the situation with a journal editor in that it is also quite common that the PC member is the reviewer for a paper, and the queries to sub-reviewers can be quite informal.

Normally "no". The issues range from privacy to priority to... If you feel like somebody else would be able to provide some valuable opinion you cannot provide yourself, you can always recommend the editor to consult that person before making the final decision on whatever particular issue you think he can help with.
The only exception I would make is when everybody already knows everything anyway (like when the copy of the same paper is on the arXiv and has been discussed in the relevant expert circles a few times already). Then it becomes a purely "tricky legal issue" with all common sense moral considerations removed and I usually just decide what to do on a case by case basis.

I am neather a reviewer of journal nor a professor at the university who has published various papers; but I as the question seemed so interesting, I searched over the net and found some references in which your question is exactly answered. Moreover, our own logic can also judge about the ethics of such question. As it is written in this webpage:

Confidentiality. Material under review should not be shared or discussed with anyone outside the review process unless necessary and approved by the editor. [...] Material submitted for peer-review is a privileged communication that should be treated in confidence, taking care to guard the author’s identity and work. Reviewers should not retain copies of submitted manuscripts and should not use the knowledge of their content for any purpose unrelated to the peer review process.
  Although it is expected that the editor and reviewers will have access to the material submitted, authors have a reasonable expectation that the review process will remain strictly confidential. If a reviewer is unsure about the policies for enlisting the help of others in the review process, he or she should ask the editor.

As it is written in the text, papers under review should never be shared or discussed with anyone unless approved by the editor. When we go to the logic of this, it is obvious that the reviewer should never discuss the paper with anyone. That is because the paper, the methodology, the outputs and the review process should be confidential. This is because it may happen that when the reviewer discusses the paper with a person who is not responsible with the review process, the chance that the innovative idea of the author be stolen and even submitted to another journal. Moreover, when the reviewer has access to the author by any mean and has the chance to ask his questions or ask the author to make some vague parts more clear; there is no need to talk about the paper with anybody else. Even, if there some minor questions exist for the reviewer, he can ask the editor or discuss with him about the topic.
In this link, the reviewer is also informed about the things he should pay attention to after reviewing a paper.

[...] Because most reviewers prefer to read hard copies rather than electronic text, the reviewer will probably have a paper copy of the manuscript. This should be destroyed immediately in a way that ensures confidentiality. The reviewer should keep a copy of the review itself until she/he is certain that the review has been received by the journal office and that the editor has no questions. This review should be kept safe and confidential until it can be destroyed (the reviewer will not need it; if the journal sends a revised manuscript for re-review, it will also send copies of the initial review).

When it goes to after review process, the text says that the reviewer even should destroy any hard copies of the manuscript after he finishes the review process and mentions that in the re-review process, journal will send him copies of the initial review too.
By reading this, we understand that the reviewer has not only the right to talk about the paper to a third person who is not responsible for the review of the paper, but also he has to destroy anything that may conflict the right of the author for being the review process confidential. In the next page of that document we read:

[...] Even after the paper is published, information on the review process should remain confidential. The reviewer should not reveal the identities of reviewers to the authors. This is especially important when there were differences of opinion between reviewers or when contentious issues
  were raised during the review process. Some authors remain angry about events that occurred during a review even after the paper is published.

So the reviewer is also responsible for other reviewers of the paper as the high levels of angriness may still exist because of the review process.

If a reviewer anticipates being in a situation where the paper will be discussed, the reviewer should read the final published version of the paper.

The point the review process should always be confidential is that much important that the reviewer even should pay attention to the discussions he has and should never talk about the content of the manuscripts. He is only allowed to talk and discuss about the published paper's content.

Just to add evidence of a slightly different policy (used by the RSC):

6.0 Suggestions of Alternative Referees
The Editor welcomes suggestions of alternative referees competent to deal with particular subject areas. Such suggestions are particularly helpful in cases where referees consider themselves ill-equipped (in terms of specialist knowledge) to deal with a specific paper, and in highly specialized or new areas of research where only a limited number of experts may be available. If, in such a case, the alternative and the original referee work in the same institution, the manuscript may be passed on directly after informing the Editor.

In other words, there's no way around reading the policy of the journal in question.
And, by the way, when my supervisor asks for my opinion about a manuscript (or a part of the manuscript) I assume that he did inform the editor.

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) provides Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers which can be thought of as best practice. These include:

respect the confidentiality of peer review and not reveal any details of a manuscript or its
review, during or after the peer-review process, beyond those that are released by the
journal
not involve anyone else in the review of a manuscript, including junior researchers they are
mentoring, without first obtaining permission from the journal; the names of any individuals
who have helped them with the review should be included with the returned review so that
they are associated with the manuscript in the journal’s records and can also receive due
credit for their efforts.
keep all manuscript and review details confidential.


text:
Which tense to use?
So I'm writing a paper and I want to define the experimental process. I have two challenges. Firstly, when I define the experimental process, I want to write it in a way that is independent of the execution. A generic process definition. So, which tense should I use? Past doesn't sound right, because it's actually a blueprint for an experiment and not something that was already done. I was thinking present simple?
Second, I want to state that the experimental process was executed three times. What noun should I use? I'm using the "instances" word, e.g., "Three instances of the experimental process were performed across three days". Is this an OK choice? I want to stress that the same experiment was completed three times, once each day and not that one experiment lasted for 3 days.
Thanks for the advice!

Seems reasonable. To be sure, take a few obviously good-written papers from your field and check what they did. Or ask your supervisor.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Potential supervisor asked for description of previous projects
As above, I emailed a potential PhD supervisor and he has asked me to send him a CV and a description of some previous projects I've worked on.
I am wondering how long/detailed should this be, and what exactly is he trying to find out? So that I can try and tailor it to that.
The programme I am applying to is also a MS+PhD in a different subject to my undergrad ( moving from mech eng -> comp sci/robotics ), so a lot of my projects aren't totally relevant, should I still list them?


text:
What are the potential consequences of responding in kind to a rude lecturer?
What are the potential consequences, if any, of being rude and abrasive with the lecturer of a course I am taking? Could I face disciplinary action? Could it affect the way my work is evaluated? Is there a serious risk of me alienating myself with other people at uni, if the lecturer speaks badly of me?

Context.
I wrote to the lecturer and course responsible for a course which I am attending. The email I wrote contained a simple request, presented with common courtesy: could you help me determine whether I am eligible to take the exam in your course? The answer to this question would depend on the quality of the work I have submitted, feedback on which I have not received from our class instructor since I could not attend some classes due to scheduling problems with my part-time job. This I explained to the lecturer in my mail, in which I also added that feedback on said work was not present on the course website either, as is usually the case, and that I would've asked the instructor, except you have not presented us with any contact information for him (and during the classes which I did attend, I did not think of asking the instructor for such info, since I expected it to be on the course website if need be).
To my surprise, I received a rudely brief reply. I was merely told that this is my own problem, as I have decided to not show up for classes, regardless of what reason I may have, and that I should find a way to sort it out with the instructor.
I have some previous experience with this lecturer from another course, and as my perception of him is that of a lazy, unprofessional and unambitious external lecturer who probably only is in his current position due to the unfamiliarity which the administration and other key professors in my department have of the content he teaches, I couldn't stop myself from responding rudely. My reply was short, but it did contain sentences such as "let's hope the instructor has more of a clue of what's going on in this course than you apparently do" and "since my request bothered you so much, perhaps you should learn to use the basic functionalities of the course website. It's actually fairly simple stuff, but if you can't figure it out, I'm sure the office ladies in the administration can clue you in". I also said that I would make sure his rudeness would be reflected in my course evaluation.
Note.
I am not asking whether he really was being rude here, or whether my response was appropiate. The question(s) is(are) as stated above. Your opinion on my behavior or his is irrelevant.

"Your opinion on my behavior or his is irrelevant." You are asking about the consequences of your behavior, but our opinions on your behavior are irrelevant?  Well, that makes it easy: I have voted to close.

Vote to close as "unclear what you're asking". I read the question twice. I could not get what happened. What was the reason you want to take the exam in another professor's class? Because you missed the exam in the class you enrolled? If your e-mail was unclear like this question, no wonder the other professor would give you a rude reply. I guess the best you can do is to talk to the professor to sort out the problem.

Your response was very rude. I strongly suggest that in a professional/academic setting you should never be rude regardless of how rude you think someone was to you.

@scaaahu - apparently, there are two people involved in the teaching of this course, the "lecturer" and the "course responsible."  I am familiar with this use of the word "responsible" because I lived in France for several years, and it's quite common in French institutes where English is the official language.  I would guess we can take these two roles to be similar to "TA" and "professor."  Or something along those lines.

In reality, lecturers are generally crazily busy people who get more than a hundred emails a day. That tends to make them slightly brusque with people who try to create extra work for them, in particular extra work that by all rights should be the responsibility of the person writing to them rather than their responsibility. In this situation, you decided to prioritise a part-time job over your classes, and are trying to get the lecturer to fix this for you after the fact. It was inappropriate, and an issue between you and the instructor, not the lecturer. He's simply telling you this.

" Your opinion on my behavior or his is irrelevant.": Probably you should try to be more polite in general. Since you are asking for help, let us decide what's relevant and what's not.

... Could he have been more helpful about it? Maybe, but people tend to more inclined to help people who help themselves. In this case, you've caused the instructor trouble by not attending classes, and then gone over his head to bother the lecturer, rather than simply ask the instructor about it. That doesn't make you sound like someone who should be at the front of the (size-limited) helpee queue.

... In any case, he did help you - he gave you a pointer as to the next step you should take (talk to the instructor). Reacting rudely to that just makes you look bad - an apology would not be inappropriate at this point. That said, most sensible lecturers will just ignore you rather than retaliating, since they're busy people and it's much easier to wait for life to teach you a lesson than waste the time doing it themselves. Time is their key resource - they're not going to squander it on someone who treats them rudely.

@aparente001 If the Op had said "I wrote to the lecturer and the instructor responsible for the course which I am attending" instead of "I wrote to the lecturer and course responsible for a course which I am attending", I would have understood it.

Voting to close as too broad, because the list of potential consequences is very long (and on top also depends on a lot of factors such as the academic culture).

@scaaahu - I had the inside track.  My spouse adopted this anomalous use of "responsible" and continued to use it even after we left France.

No, we cannot answer the question without evaluating your behavior first. Your behavior was, simply said, stupid. Let's go item by item:
1) Are you enrolled in the distance-learning program? If not, then lecturer perhaps has the right to request that you attend all of his classes, unless there are valid and provable reasons (e.g. medical). In that case, scheduling conflicts mean that either you drop your part time job or you drop the course. I, as a lecturer, am extremely annoyed when someone presents part time job as a reason not to attend class, since the government in my country pays about 5000 EUR a year for his education. Being "free" for the students it does not mean that nobody pays, taxpayers do.
2) On your comment that the lecturer has his position only because no one else is familiar with the subject he teaches. Well, this is perhaps the reason why they tolerate him, and you should acknowledge this: the school thinks that this subject is important part of the curriculum and perhaps the lecturers familiar with the subject are difficult to find. This is one more reason not to annoy him, because he is clearly valuable to the school, although you may think otherwise.
3) Your comment was rude, because of the items 1) and 2) (especially due to 1). Perhaps everything you were asking him was clearly explained during the lectures you were not present at. Lecturers in higher educations have relatively large freedom of modifying and adapting their course as they see fit, even beyond the "official" requirements that are set on the web page. It would be perfectly normal if the university in general requires students to be present at the lectures, but the individual lecturers are less strict -- but then suddenly, due to low attendance, at a start of the next year, decide to enforce the rules.
Now on to your answer. What can happen in this case? Any lecturer has the freedom to ask you anything related to his course during the exam. Yes, he may ask you questions from the lectures you have been absent from, and then give you bad grade if you struggle with them. It is very rare that lecturers would go for any kind of the administrative action against the student, because their freedoms in lecturing and exams allow them to pursue more efficient means of retaliation, if they want to.
So you could only hope that he is 1) forgetful and will not remember the incident or 2) he is above the average professional and will examine you without prejudice even if he remember the way how you treated him.
And please note, it is very difficult to claim a prejudice and report him to administration - he has the right to ask you the questions from the lectures you missed - some will even argue that it is understandable to check whether you master the matter that you did not hear during the lectures, and assume that you know the rest.

I want to expand on the point about information given  in lectures a bit.  In my experience the lecture material was more important than self studies.  You're always going to be able to check a textbook in your spare time; that information won't change.  Lecturers on the other hand generally have information that extends well beyond the textbook.  I've learned many helpful tips for how to approach problems and how to consider situations that textbooks would never cover just by attending lectures.

What are the potential consequences, if any, of being rude and abrasive with the lecturer of a course I am taking? Could I face disciplinary action? Could it affect the way my work is evaluated? Is there a serious risk of me alienating myself with other people at uni, if the lecturer speaks badly of me?

I think the likely consequence of the email style you described would be:
1: People might tolerate a brilliant jerk like a necessary but bitter pill.
2: If you are an ordinary jerk, the reaction is likely to be disdain and avoidance.
2a: Except that some iconoclasts and fellow jerks may be drawn to you.
2b: And except that somewhere along the way a masochist will probably attach him or herself to you and then you'll be set up for life in a mutually destructive relationship.
Enjoy!

Haha, a short version of my response and quite to the point! +1

"Your opinion ... is irrelevant" - well, following your response strategy of responding to rudeness with same-level rudeness, a potential valid answer would be "Your question ... is irrelevant". In fact, one of the responders above seems to think so, indeed.
Quite apart from that, if actual aspects of the OP's personality shines through in these posts (which, of course, I cannot judge, email/blogs are notoriously unforgiving at casting hard shadows rather than giving a fully-fleshed soft-contoured picture of a person), then lecturers are well advised to avoid having anything to do with a student that acts like that.
This can mean that they may, where they have the freedom, avoid working with the OP (e.g. avoiding accepting the OP for projects), give the OP only minimal required contact time, not have the quick helpful chat in the corridor that other students may enjoy.
Some may be tempted to put a record in the OP's file, but I would say this is atypical, as it requires a vengeful personality coupled with extra work, so I consider it very unlikely. However, the OP may have just reduced the number of possible recommendation letter writers from people who know them by two. And yes, sometimes people with a bit curt (and frankly, the response looks curt, as the one of a very busy person - it is not the OP's job to evaluate whether they are busy! - but not really rude; they tell the OP what the OP's responsibility is, rather than their own) responses write good recommendations.
All in all, the consequences of this are unpleasant, but may be manageable in the protectedness of the academic environment, but I think, as a bottom line it provides a lesson for OP to control their retorts: something like that in a job context, and they are preparing their way out.
As a manager, I have tolerated rude and exceedingly self-confident people in my group, but only if they were outstandingly brilliant (of course, conditioned on whether the strategies to make sure they were able to work in the team worked). However, there is absolutely no excuse for rudeness if they were not.


text:
Professor got me involved into working with him, but the experience was poor. How can I avoid him without facing negative consequences?
I am an undergraduate, #1 in my year in terms of GPA, and one of my professors asked me if I was interested to help him with a research competition. The goal was to publish a paper and hopefully win a reward.
Fast forward this professor is treating me like a slave (expecting email replies within 6 hours), his team is not interested at all (very slow, not working at all on the paper) and last time I talked to him he told me "maybe we won't make it in time for the competition". This is after I have spend 2 months working day and night on this.
I have passed his course so I am not scared of a bad grade. We have another 2 months for the competition.
He is also trying to "force" me do my thesis with him, something after everything that happened, I will never do.
I am very polite and he doesn't know I feel this way.
My goal is to end this ASAP and avoid him badmouthing me to other professors. Maybe he will submit a mediocre paper, maybe not, I really have no idea. Seems like he doesn't care at all about this competition and his goal was to make me work with him.

Of course, he wanted you to work with him on his research, and my guess would be that he talked up the competition for your benefit, not his, since students seem to care more about those kinds of things.

"this professor is treating me like a slave (expecting email replies within 6 hours)" Sorry, but this made me smile.

I would say there is no way to totally prevent badmouthing happening. You can adopt an extremely wise strategy to get yourself out of that shet, but, you know, he can (if he wants, of course) use the fact that you quit before you should to condemn you (I hope this will not happen.). So I think what you want is to be honest to him about how you felt. Try not to talk to him in a tone that judges; try to first report or state what you saw neutrally and then tell him how these led to your decision. If you can do this in a mature, unemotional, analytical way, and if he is at least a reasonable person, then I think you guys can break up peacefully. Be careful that you don't give him an impression that you did the decision majorly out of emotion; this would lead him to consider you an unprofessional "employee" (if this is the case, who knows what implications he can come up with to harm you; you want to minimize the potential negative consequences.) .
If you did the above, then simply walk away and pay no mind to the consequences.


text:
How to tell supervisor that you first want to do something else before accepting his offer?
My supervisor (in a big German company) has offered me a master's thesis and a PhD position in his company.
Before I would like to start the PhD there, I would like to do some other internships to get more experience in different fields and write my master's thesis somewhere else. It's not that I do not like the topics in the company, but I want to find out what it's like to work in different companies and fields. How can I tell him about this without giving him the feeling that I do not like the work and would like to come back probably?

Since when do companies offer academic degrees?

@Ink blot A company cannot offer PhDs, but it can offer a position where the goal is to produce research that counts for a PhD. For awarding the PhD, a university needs to be involved.

correct, it is in cooperation with a university and a Prof. of this university, but the research takes place in the company.

Understand the specifics first: To make an informed decision, you clearly need to understand the specifics of the position you've been offered: Can the start of work be deferred? If yes, how long? Does the company have such openings frequently or is it an unique opportunity? I suggest to ask these questions to your potential supervisor first, before making an announcement  that you might later regret.
Honest communication: Tell him exactly what motivates you to defer your potential start of work. There is a non-zero risk that he will still be disappointed, but this risk cannot be avoided, no matter how good your communication skills are. Also, be prepared to negotiate the date when you're ready to start work in his company.


text:
Is it ethical to withdraw paper that received poor reviews in first phase of reviewing and resubmit it without significant revisions?
Many conferences in my field use two-phase reviewing: in the first phase, 2-3 reviewers review the paper; their reviews are made available to the authors; the authors are given a chance to respond; and then in the second phase, the reviewers read the authors' response and the program chairs might optionally solicit additional reviews.
If a paper receives poor reviews after the first phase, so that it looks like the paper is likely to be rejected, is it ethical to withdraw the paper and submit it elsewhere, without making significant changes?
I read Ethical implications of withdrawing a paper during the rebuttal phase and submitting it somewhere else, which asks about a similar question, but I am interested in the specific case where the authors were well-intended (they submitted to the first conference with the legitimate hope it would be accepted) but do not plan to make significant revisions before re-submitting -- a case that is not covered by the answers there.  For instance, it is not uncommon to submit to a selective conference in hopes that it will be accepted, discover that the reviewers don't consider it strong enough for publication there, and then consider submitting to a less selective conference.  (So it's not that the paper is flawed, but it isn't strong enough in its current form.)

It depends on the nature of the feedback.
Clear no: If the reviewers noted severe shortcomings such as objective technical flaws or omissions of significant related work, not addressing the feedback seems a clear-cut ethical violation, as the authors would now misrepresent the soundness/novelty of their work despite their better knowledge.
Gray area: If the reviewers struggled to understand the paper due to presentation issues, one might argue that not addressing this feedback would lead to a wasteful use of a scarce community resource (reviewer time).
Clear yes: A type of feedback that would not require addressing is non-actionable, subjective feedback ("Your technique only does X, but I would prefer to see a technique that does Y").

But the time already spent by the reviewers is a sunk cost.  If you are pretty sure you won't be able to make the paper acceptable, won't you actually be saving the reviewers' time by not making them look at it again?  Of course you can, and should, still take the feedback into account when revising the paper to submit it somewhere else.

@NateEldredge The ethical violation doesn't arise from the withdrawing, but from the unwillingness to address the feedback (as far as the feedback is actionable). It's actually the same situation as if the authors just waited for the paper to be rejected and then resubmitted without addressing the feedback (which I would consider unethical as well).

Okay, I see what you're saying.  But I think I would only say that the authors have an obligation to seriously consider the feedback, and decide for themselves to what extent it ought to be addressed.  It is after all their paper, not the reviewers'.

@NateEldredge "It's their paper, not the reviewer's" - yes, but it's the reviewer's time that is being wasted. I quite agree with the current answer, though, good classification. +1

The only way I can conceive of an ethical concern is if, somehow, a reviewer gets some "ownership rights" by doing the review. Everyone is a free actor. No one is constrained. The paper is, in my view, completely under control of its authors. By what ethical principle have their rights been lost and given to another? Plato to Kant and beyond. Don't try to make up "ethical principles" as you go along because something "offends you" or you feel slighted. The reviewers weren't coerced. The editor isn't coerced. Why believe that the author should be coerced?

@Buffy The relevant category of ethics would be professional ethics. In the case of computer science, a relevant document is the ACM code of ethics. In the "clear no" cases from my answer, re-submitting the paper without changes would violate the principle "1.3 Be honest and trustworthy".

Hmmm. How is it being dishonest? Is it accompanied with a statement that all reviewer concerns have been addressed? You are stretching it. Really, really stretching it.

@Buffy See the two cases in my answer. If the reviewers make the authors aware of a flaw in a proof or of critical omissions of related work, re-submitting without fixing is dishonest.

There is absolutely no ethical concern or constraint at all here. The reviews you get in academia for such works are a gift to the community and to you. You have complete control over the paper until you give up your rights to it. The reviewers aren't paid by the conferences (or journals). If I as a reviewer help you improve a paper you have submitted to conference A and it later appears at conference B instead, everyone has gained. And you aren't bound to take my advice. There is no contract to that effect. If I review your paper, I get no rights to take over its content or ideas.
Moreover, it may be that the paper without change is actually appropriate elsewhere and the reviews were colored to some extent by the nature of the conference.
Most academic conferences aren't held as profit making concerns and nearly everyone involved is a volunteer (some support staff may be paid). It is a service we do th the idea of scholarship itself, nothing more.
If I give you a gift, it is yours to use as you like or not and welcome. You have taken nothing that wasn't given freely.
Over the course of your life you have gotten a lot of advice. Some of it you even solicited. But much of it you probably ignored. It was advice, nothing more. Use it if it is valuable.

While there are no ethical concerns, there are some practical ones. The sets of reviewers in the various CS conferences overlap somewhat. And if you got particular reviewer for one, there is a non-zero chance the same person will come up again, especially for topics with few available reviewers.

Of course the work of the referees is not "free", it was paid by their home institutions which consider this activity a part of researcher's job. But it's actually irrelevant who is paying as long as it's not the authors. Wasting resources you've paid for may still have ethical concerns, but wasting resources resources you've got for free - definitely does.

@Kostya_I, in forty years of teaching, I never had a contract that suggested I was paid for reviewing. And do you suggest that every author has to agree with reviews received? If you give me a shirt for my birthday and I decide not to wear it, is there an ethical concern?

so, in these 40 years of teaching, you never wrote a review in your office during your work hours, only in your spare time? And if you did, it would be considered a breach of job description and you could be fired for that? Of course not. When reviewers "voluntarily donate their time", they in practice donate their work time, paid by employers.

@Kostya_I, Neither did I have a designated work schedule other than meeting classes. I did plenty of things in my office during what you might think of as work hours. I also did plenty of things on what you might think of as my "personal" time. I was a professional, not a wage-slave.

As for your analogies, you have a "gift" analogy, that uses someone else's resources but is unsolicited, and "advice" analogy that is solicited but typically requires no resources. But in the refereeing situation, it's both. By submitting to a conference, you solicit referee report and thereby commit not to waste resources put into it.

If you like analogies, suppose you have a non-native English speaking friend who asks you to check language in their paper. After you do it (for free!) they decide not to correct the mistakes you have pointed out. I doubt you would be happy about the situation, and willing to do it for the same friend the second time.

@Kostya_I, actually "gift" was in no way an analogy. It was a statement of fact in this situation. If you try to help me with my language skills there is no contract and I'm free to reject your suggestions (analogy, for example). But there is no contract that you need to help me in future. Certainly you are perfectly able to decide not to do so. Not being happy is your right. Not taking your advice is my right.

DV because reviews aren't gifts. They may impose an obligation, namely whenever they point out serious flaws. (Gifts, by definition, impose no obligation.) Sweeping known flaws under the rug contradicts sound science, contributes to "publish or perish" culture, and is therefore "unethical" (in the loose sense of the word often adopted on this site).

@henning, you are incorrect on every count. Reviewing is a service and it gives early knowledge to the reviewer. It imposes no obligation. "Known flaws" can be nothing more than disagreement. The author owns the paper until copyright is yielded. Moreover "poor reviews" (OP's words) don't necessarily imply flaws. And when they do, they may not be correctable in the time available for a conference.

I am a reviewer for a top-tier conference in my field to which thousands of submissions are received every year. It is NOT ethical to resubmit without revisions when you know from the reviewers that the manuscript has flaws and needs further work. The review burden is really heavy on us and we do it for "free", not as a gift to you as @Buffy said, but for our hope to "help improve science". If you take the reviewers' advice, ignore it, and submit the same manuscript somewhere else, you have (1) wasted reviewers' time and added an unnecessary burden to their already hectic life, (2) betrayed your conscience as a scientist whose main goal should be to build and improve upon our current knowledge. I have noticed, in many cases, all it takes for the authors to improve their paper is to spend a few hours of work to improve their benchmarking and analysis. Yet, they opt for resubmission of the same manuscript to a lower-tier conference. That is not helpful to scientific community and certainly not helpful to you as a person to grow as a scientist and reach higher. I suggest you reading this post in reddit for getting the perspective of a reviewer (I am not the author of this post): https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/fkgfax/d_confessions_from_an_icml_reviewer/.
Even if you choose to withdraw (which I can understand), please do consider the reviews and improve your paper. Don't follow the "publish or perish" culture that is poisoning the academia right now and always submit your work when, to the best of your knowledge, it is complete.

Hmm. It's not "ethical" because it makes you very angry? Interesting standard, that. You seem to presume that by reviewing you gain an ownership position.

I'll note two additional things. First, a reviewer works for the editor or conference chair. Second, the authors have offered something of value - a potential paper to be published. I think you have the responsibility exactly backwards here. If you don't like the process you can withdraw, of course.

@Buffy: I am not sure what in my post made you assume I was angry (projections maybe?). I made some parts bold for people who want to get the gist of my post without reading everything in detail (I appreciate when people do that too). As for the rest of my comment, I am simply trying to encourage people to devote themselves to high quality scientific work rather than simply publishing. That is exactly why I decided to offer my time for free as a reviewer to begin with. The incentive for reviewing is not like "give and take", but like "I am helping you to do better, so please try your best!"

You seem to assume that authors prefer to publish low quality work (..."publish or perish"...). I think that is anything but true. Your answer also seems to imply that submitting to a journal puts you in a trap that you can only escape by submission to someone unknown who may not (a) understand things as well as you do and (b) in the extreme case may not have your best interest at heart. I repeat, strongly, there is no ethical constraint on withdrawing and submitting elsewhere. Everyone is free to act as they see fit.

@Buffy Having been quite disappointed lately with the quality of submissions of a conference I used to very much like, I must agree with the responder here. I do not think that authors actively "prefer" to publish low quality work, but that their priority has moved away from publishing high quality work; it has become an afterthought. They want to publish somehow, with whatever ideas/results they somehow cobble together, and the reviewer gets an uninspiring and sloppy paper to review; at least the authors could attempt to incorporate their advice. It's a matter of courtesy if nothing else.

@CaptainEmacs, I recall a number of questions on this site where an author is dismayed by bad advice from reviewers and how to respond to it. There is no indication in the question that the authors here are being sloppy or have a "publish or perish" attitude. Please don't assume otherwise with no evidence. In the current case, it could also be that the authors just "aimed too high" and now realize that.

@Buffy I quite agree that reviewers can be blinkered, one-sided, self-serving etc. This is not the case that needs "ethics approval". The thing that worries me about OP's question is "without making significant changes". If there is a substantial weakness, it needs to be addressed. Also lower-tier conferences have a right to get good-quality papers - maybe the topic is less popular, or it has fewer technical requirements, etc. but substantial flaws should be eliminated. If OP believes that the reviews are not substantiated or the request for changes out of scope for OP's work, that's different

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