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IRB (Institutional review board) : Do journals ever check? Does anyone ever check?
I've got a project underway that involves human subjects, and I got IRB (Wikipedia Link) approval.  I'm thinking about my next project while working on this one.  I'd like to collect some exploratory data for the next one, and potentially make use of it in any resultant publications.  Nothing involves any real risks to respondents, so I feel that there are no ethical constraints binding me.
But as a practical matter, will anyone ever check that any findings were pre-approved by an IRB to be looked-for?  What might the consequences of ignoring IRB be?
This is social science.

I would assume that the journals don't care, as IRBs seem to be only an US thing. However, presumably, your university might get very upset as circumventing IRB approval might get them into legal trouble.

IRBs are most certainly not only an US thing. Every paper in a reputable psychology journal that reports on a study done with humans will need to adhere to the Declaration of Helsinki, which calls for independent ethical review - meaning an IRB.

IRB=Institutional Review Board, aka Ethical Review Board. I had to google it. People in fields relevant to the question and answerers will certainly know, but for the culture and the sake of the reader, I think good question should be self-contained.

@StephanKolassa I was not aware of that. You live and you  learn, I guess.

@Taladris You are right. I edited the question accordingly.

I'd say it's a slippery slope thing.  You might not think that this study involves no risks to the respondents, but you might be wrong, and if you're not you may be the next time.  Better be on the safe side and not get used to circumventing these regulations.

@stephankolassa Not all countries have IRB, at least not for social science research. While ethical principles always apply, not all research is conducted under their supervision. In the US, the NSF has discussed eliminating IRB oversight rules for most social science research.

OP here:  thanks all for the answers.  I'd obviously not be asking the question if it weren't such a hassle to complete, even for expedited review.  Particularly when you're not super-sure of the amount of investment warranted.

Depending on your institution, an IRB approval might be quite inclusive. At my PhD institution, IRB exemption covered an entire research project including pilot testing, the main project, and any spin-offs provided that no additional risk was involved and the number of research subjects did not exceed the original number reported in the IRB application. If your institution has similar rules, you should be able to get an exemption for a substantial research endeavor and wrap multiple sub-projects under that same banner.

@Thomas When has the NSF discussed eliminating IRB oversight rules for social science research?  Where have these discussions been recorded?  My understanding of the NSF is that IRB issues for social science research is very much alive and kicking, and I'm not aware that they will allow social scientists to work unfettered by the IRB:  http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/human.jsp

@BrianP I shouldn't imply that these discussions will lead to policy change (which has to go through DHHS rule-making, if not Congress), but here's a report on some recent discussions from an NSF co-sponsored workshop.

@Thomas This report refers to revisions around the "common rule."  But, there is nothing to suggest that the NSF has "discussed eliminating IRB oversight rules for most social science research."

@BrianP Perhaps I should have said "significantly modifying" rather than "eliminating" and "much" rather than "most".

The lawyers check when something goes wrong, that's for sure.

I have never heard of a journal checking for IRB approval. However, as @xLeitix notes, your university may care very much, since doing studies on humans without IRB approval may get it into legal issues.
And I personally know of one case where departmental colleagues initiated a scientific audit of a professor, requiring her to dig up all documentation (filled-in questionnaiers, raw data, ... and IRB approvals) for some studies they were concerned about. Everything checked out all right, but if the IRB approvals had not been there, the PI would have been in very deep doo-doo.
So: get your IRB approval, and make sure it's safe and sound, with scans and electronic backup. Keep it for the requisite number of years, even after the study has ended and been published. Inquire of your university how long that is. Given today's cost of storage, I would keep the scan around indefinitely.

I've never had a journal check, but I've published in a number of journals who require you to out and out say it's been approved by an IRB, and lying on that...is a bad idea.

To add to Stephan's answer, most university IRB's have specific protocols for exploratory research which does not involve going through the full IRB panel. Such things are variously named (with various levels of fact-checking and paper work):

Exemption from IRB.
Expedited IRB.

Here is one relevant link to get your started. Moreover, you can always file for amendments or extensions to your existing approved IRB protocol which are usually granted pretty quickly.
One of my advisers always told me to have your IRB bases covered. You never know when or if you could be scientifically audited.

These are not just for exploratory research. Most social science research qualifies for exemption, provided it meets certain criteria and involves minimal risk.

Agreed. To give one specific example, for our full 2 year project (on usable privacy and security) we had to go through the full IRB review. However, when we wanted to spin-off a part of the study to collect data for exploratory work for another study, we received an IRB exemption.

I submit to a biology education journal and they have just started requiring the IRB number or a letter from your IRB saying the project is exempt.
It's possible to get a backwards exemption if your institution is the forgiving type and your protocol is sensible... Getting signed consent and so on.

This is generally not possible with the social sciences.  Consent involves making somebody aware of their risks and benefits BEFORE participating in the research.  It is not informed consent going back to the individual AFTER they have participated in the study.

Sorry I wasn't clear - I meant using a consent form signed by the subject before they participate, even if you have no "official" study information sheet or an IRB number on the form. If you treat the subjects as if you did have an IRB in place, it makes it more likely you can get an IRB approved afterwards.
Still not as sure as getting one to begin with, of course... but sometimes a researcher does want a bit of a beta test.

Nothing involves any real risks to respondents

While potential risks count against approval, no risk doesn't imply  no need for approval.
E.g., if I'd want to measure native blood cells (no treatment but immediately dilute with physiological NaCl, place under the microscope, measure, and destroy). As for the amount, a drop from the finger-tip is more than enough.
For this*, the safest possible sample is my own: I cannot infect myself due to the contact with my own blood. Nevertheless, ethics approval does not distinguish who the human in question is, and I'm treated the same as any one else: I need approval.
There are even ethical guidelines that just plain forbid this:

1.5 No one should work with his or her own blood.

Obviously, for all experiments on students & colleagues there is always the question how to ensure that there is no pressure for them to participate. As this pressure could come from superiors, it logically has to include oneself. IMHO this alone is sufficient to require ethical approval for such experiments.
* things would be completely different if the sample were cultured or transformations were involved, etc.: there risks would increase if working with own samples.

I agree with all the posted answers that emphasize adherence to all IRB issues.  I disagree with anything that suggests it is not that important for social science researchers.  Indeed, there are some forms of social science research that is exempt (e.g., use of de-identified and publicly available data sets), but a lot of it must go through the review process.
The part of your question that has not been answered is the consequences of ignoring IRB.  Federal regulations exist with respect to IRB, so you can be sure that your institution will take it very seriously.
http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/45cfr46.html
At minimum, you can fully expect an IRB to shut down your program of research if you are in violation of IRB rules and regulations.  This is a very serious issue, and you must adhere to all aspects of IRB throughout your research.  Indeed, it can be very challenging, but the challenges will be far easier to manage than the consequences if you are in violation.
If you are in doubt about any IRB issue with your research, talk to your IRB directly.  Do not assume your research is exempt.


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Is PhD program in the US universities fully funded especially in Stem programs?
I am asking this question because I am considering applying for PhD in Electrical and electronics engineering in US.

Does this answer your question? How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in Country X?

For my university, yes, basically all the Ph.D. students have financial support. TA, RA, or fellowship.

No, there is no automatic "funding". But what is normally available to most doctoral students in STEM fields is a Teaching Assistantship or possibly a Research Assistantship, in which you spend several hours per week assisting in either a course or a lab, respectively.
These are common but not automatic. An international student might need appropriate language skills to qualify.
Also note that these are common in most STEM fields because there is a need for assistance. For example, in a Math program the TAs assist in the huge undergraduate math program. In some lab fields there is a need for a lot of lab assistants to aid with research. I don't know specifically how this applies to engineering fields, however and it would depend on the university and its overall program.
Either a TA or an RA will cover both tuition and a modest stipend for living expenses. Without either, you normally need to pay tuition, which can be very high.

PhD programs in STEM in the US are usually fully funded. Sometimes this funding comes from the university and you are expected to teach or TA a certain number of classes each year. Sometimes it comes from the faculty member you are doing research with. In either case, it is more like a job than a scholarship: You effectively earn your stipend and tuition waivers by doing work for the university or your professor.

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Should I do a STEM PhD with my own funds?
I have lost my TA position in a US public university after my first year. I was not kicked out but lost my funding due to poor TA performance. I got a 4 GPA and As in all my assignments.
My family is not millionaire but my mother and grandmother offered me to pay my tuition (19k a year) plus living expenses (10k for a 9 month academic period). They have a small profitable business in Latin America. Yes I am a foreigner. They told me I MUST finish what I started; otherwise, I will not be able to do anything in the future.
But I have contacted my advisor and he told me that even though I am allowed to continue the PhD with my own funding, the graduate committee is still a little upset with me because of my poor performance.
How should I approach the committee? Will they make my studies more trouble and more difficult?
On the other hand, my advisor and many people say it is not a good idea to pay for a US PhD.
I really want to finish that program, not only for my family support and encouragement. I also like my research field, though my university is not well known and all grad students are funded by TAships. No one has an RAship in my program.
If I don't have to be a TA, will that help me produce better research?
Anyway, I do not intend to get a US tenure position anyway. I will probably end up with running the business of my mother and grand mother in my country. But I do really love science and my field.

We can't make a decision for you, we can't predict the future actions of the graduate committee, and we can't predict your future research productivity, so what exactly are you asking us?

You lost your funding because of your bad TA performance, but a PhD is all about research. I cannot understand why the committee would be upset if your research was going fine? Not being a TA will give you more time to do research.

@user18244 First year Ph.D in the US was almost certainly all coursework, no research work.

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Should I emphasize my existing PhD in my master's application?
Should the fact that I already have a PhD in another (useful) subject be downplayed on the personal statement? I'm concerned that it would make me look unfocused, but I also think I may want to emphasize it because it demonstrates prior success.
In case it's relevant, my PhD is in physics, and the Masters is in Computer Game Engineering. I am applying to a one year, full time taught Masters at a UK institution.

A person qualified in another area (such as a Phd in Physics) who wanted to learn a new topic (like computer game development) would likely be welcomed on a full-time taught masters course. Full-time taught masters courses are often designed for those who want a change in direction and have the motivation to focus for the year to achieve that goal.
There are people who want to be an astronaut, for example, who go back and learn new skills and knowledge and collect several degrees in the process.
You do have to have an interregnum in employment, as a full-time course is exactly that. A lot of daily, weekly and monthly time needs to be devoted to it to learn all that material that others will have picked up in a three year Bachelor's degree.
I teach on such a course and we have many "career change" applicants who are well qualified in other fields. It is quite normal.

One thing to consider is whether your target discipline is known to be a haven for career-changers. If it is, your Ph.D won't hurt you at all and will most likely help, as the program won't have to worry much about your academic capacity. Just about any professional or applied program fits this template.
Disciplines convinced that one must have a lifelong monastic devotion to them to study them at all will be less accommodating.

I hope you will weigh in on this related question: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/55085/what-are-some-examples-of-jealous-fields

In the US, humanities departments have a reputation for expecting extreme levels of exclusive dedication. It was certainly so for the Spanish literature and linguistics department I dropped out of way back in the day.

Depending on where you've attained your PhD, your degree would certify a level of dedication to your work regardless of the subject. This level of dedication would relate to the effort you could put to the new area too.
I presume Physics is not too far from Computer Game Engineering either. What you've learnt from the previous course could benefit you in this course.

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How to annotate/summarize research papers for long-term retrieval?
I am new to my field (cell biology / immunology) and I would like to ask about the best practice to annotate or summarize research articles and reviews for long-term retrieval. When I start reading into a new topic, I end up highlighting almost each paragraph of the paper/review. This doesn't make any sense, and it is actually making me slow and frustrated and it is holding me from reading more. Could you please share your thoughts.
Update: although two very important points of how to approach new papers and how to tag them have been addressed in the answers so far, my main concern was about the new acquired details which I can't remember a few months later. For example, I read a paper about JAK/STAT signaling two months ago, now I can't remember for example which JAK attaches to which cytokine receptor and interacts with which STAT. I need to skim through the paper again to find this piece of information. So, what I am looking for is an approach to accumulate the new knowledge and to facilitate reviewing them without the need to skim through the paper again and again. I know this will come with experience, but at the beginning there are too many new facts to keep track of.

Thank you for you feedback, I totally agree. I hope one of the moderator can transfer the question to academia.se. Please all excuse my ignorance of the different boards at stackexchange.com I am really impressed by the collaboration here.

I find it important to be as active as possible in your reading, especially for papers close to the questions you are working on. If you are only highlighting, then this is largely a passive activity, and does not help much with retention or even later rereading. If you are making notes, it is a little bit better, but still largely passive.
For important papers, I try to read the paper and then write up a quick summary for myself of the key ideas relevant to my interests: a sort of mini-review or personalized-abstract of the paper. For papers that don't contain important tools I use, but contain facts I have to cite I usually include a section that lists in what settings I would expect to cite this paper. This helps a lot at the writing stage. These little summaries of the paper are usually too rough and critical to be useful to others, so I keep them private.
I usually organize these summaries in a little personal wiki like Tiddly Wiki where I can tag and do full text search as well as include links to the original PDF of my computer. Each article gets its own tiddle and is tagged according to topic. Other useful tools are available in:
Is there any efficient non-linear note-taking software?
For some heavy papers (say important math papers) the reading has to be even more active. Usually including reproving the theorems and sometimes presenting these proofs to others in my group.

Since I read papers electronically, and save the PDFs to my drive, I put the most useful part of the paper, along with the first author's name, journal abbreviation, and year in the file name. It means I have long crazy file names but I always know why I saved that paper even if it was years ago. For example:

Chang_ChemRev_2009 - polymers  for photovoltaics - PPV on p. 5874 and figure 3.pdf

This is a useful hint, I have not thought about before. It's indeed a "crazy file names" but I am depending on a Reference Manager "Sente" which may not allow to rename the file the way you describe it (understandably), however I usually add a comment explaining the reason the I added the paper for which serve the same purpose.

I save the file separately from my reference manager, and then link the reference to the PDF.

In related news, JabRef is a reference manager that allows you to rename the paper as you wish, as long as the name contains your "canonical abbreviation" for the paper somewhere.

I tried to copy-paste the key ("most relevant") sentences from the paper in a form of list, by using just text editor (to make it searchable).
Drawbacks: 1. after 30-40 papers this text file started to be really big and difficult to search. 2. when I come back to this paper again the "important" parts are, in many cases, different from what was annotated from previous reading. 3. unable to sort the notes easily to categories. 4. in many cases even several sentences are not enough to express the finding.
Then I decided to excerpt the facts from the article pretty much the same way as they are prepared for Beilstein chemical database. I read an article briefly for the first time to roughly split it into logical pieces. Then I read it thoroughly sentence-by-sentence and make sort of reference card for every fact originally described in it (no information from references is included even though it may be relevant), although facts that go with "data not shown" count. In the reference card I have special fields to specify all available information on how particular fact was discovered including methods, experimental model etc. Every card contains reference to the original article, list of tags that can be key words or any other words that help to find it including their synonyms and abbreviations to facilitate search and grouping similar facts from different articles together. The card may also contain relevant references (if any). Tagging enables to assign the same fact to several different categories.

I'm using jabref as reference manager (I read the comment that you use Sente, which I don't know). Jabref allows me to assign a paper to different groups, and also to set up grouping in a hierarchical way.
In addition, I can put notes that are searchable (however, usually I don't do that but write them on the paper). I guess that's what I'd do with your JAK/STAT things. Sometimes I write the important stuff on a new sheet (if the margins of the paper are too small) and file that together with the paper.
I'm still going mainly with printed papers, as I can have a whole bunch of them besides each other and keep the overview which says what while writing.

My current approach consists of two parts.
First, I make use of a Reference Management Software (in my case Papers), which allows me to highlight/annotate PDFs and to write notes for each PDF.  It's easy to do a search which covers all the notes that I write, and even the internal text of the PDF.  PDFs may be tagged or assigned to multiple categories/subfolders; they can also be exported with or without annotations.
Some examples of Reference Management Software (of which I have experience with 1-4):

Papers
Mendeley
Zotero
Sente
Endnote

Second, I write a summary in a review article for each major topic that I am looking into seriously.  I previously used Microsoft Word to do this, but have since switched to LaTeX/bibtex due to the convenience of being able to handle hundreds of references (or equations).  The usefulness of a review article format is that it is easy to convert into a manuscript (keeping equations, references intact) when the time comes to write a journal paper.  Furthermore, should I need to revisit a research area that I have not touched for many years, a review article allows me to quickly refresh my memory. Having all the relevant references in a single place also helps. A side benefit is that I sometimes send my review articles to collaborators to help them get up to speed.

I started a new strategy as follow: I am reading the article, taking notes, and then generating Q&A of the most relevant facts. I am using a flash card software with spaced repetition to help me review them. By doing so, I am no longer worried about forgetting things and more concentrated on understanding things. As I read more and more, I hope to reach the stage where only the recently published idea/concept are the ones which goes into my flash cards program. I know it's a tedious workflow, but I believe it will pay off soon.


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How to react when professor wrongly corrects you in public?
I recently defended my master thesis.
One thing only went wrong: I said a certain method was rather new (which it was!) and the most senior professor in the room (my supervisor was not there, he had an unexpected meeting) contradicted me, telling me that it was old and had been done in the lab for ages.
Honestly, I just gave in. He seemed so sure and I did not dare contradict him.
However I was sure before and of course I have since checked, the method is indeed new, the professor was just plain wrong.
What should I have done in the situation?

I'm not a fan of that style but it wouldn't be unheard of for someone to say something like that on purpose (knowing full well that their statement is wrong) to get you to defend your background knowledge.

BTW, "unexpected meetings" of advisor during a student's thesis defense are nonsense. Although, hopefully, most thesis defenses are pro-forma, the advisor needs to be there to be sure that nothing goes wrong unexpectedly. No one would quibble if someone says they're doing to their student's defense. Jeez. Sounds bogus...

Cannot change that now, can I?

I agree with @paul garrett: the person in this situation who most unambiguously behaved poorly is your thesis advisor.  Why not give the most senior professor in the room the benefit of the doubt that his feedback was sincere but mistaken?  As to what you should have done: you passed your thesis defense and you looked into the feedback you got, so....great.  Congratulations on your degree.

I suppose it's not impossible that it was some kind of test, although I've never experienced or heard of such a thing. It seems much more likely to me that the professor genuinely thought that the new method was the same as the existing one, most likely due to misunderstanding the description of the new technique. This is something I have experienced, on a regular basis. It's easy to deal with if you can spot the misunderstanding and correct it, but if you're not that lucky it's always tricky.

Any chance you could share and find out which method you were referring to in comparison to which method the Prof. may have been referring to? I'm intrigued to know!

The method was CRISPR/Cas, he seemed to think he has been doing that for more than 10 years.

I know less than nothing about the topic, but a quick search shows that the CRISPR part of CRISPR/Cas goes back almost 30 years, and the cas part was identified almost 15 years ago. Perhaps that's what he was referring to, and not the joint Doudna/Charpentier work that is from only 3 or 4 years ago. That is, maybe the senior prof hasn't actually read your thesis, but recognized the names of the parts of the method as not new, and didn't understand from your defense that the work combining them was new. I don't have a new answer to add, so I'm upvoting the "be gracious and move on" answers.

That does not answer my quiestion, but it would give an explanation

FWIW I had a similar thing happen during an oral exam at undergrad level, and I handled it there and then with a quick comment to the effect that since it wasn't really the subject under discussion I'd be happy to talk to the questioner afterwards. Their statement was exactly of the form "I disagree with this vaguely relevant aside", not at all to do with the work I'd done. Albeit my supervisor was present, and according to them I got bonus marks from the other examiners for swiftly handling a derail and getting back on track :) Afterwards... leave it. You can't improve the situation.

the most senior professor in the room contradicted me

This may happen due to any reason.

(my supervisor was not there, he had an unexpected meeting)

Probably, your supervisor was clear about his decision regarding you and the rest was just a formality (which actually happens in some cultures). So he chose to skip that ceremony (and attend that unexpected meeting) because he knew his decision would matter alone.

What should I have done in the situation?

Assuming that your supervisor had a green signal in his mind for you (which, of course, you can guess from the situation), you should have done nothing but tried to pass on with any reasonable negotiations.
Even if the above assumptions are wrong, you should have still done the same, because, considering your this statement:

I said a certain method was rather new (which it was!)

Especially, which it was! part, nothing can go wrong.
Of course, the reasonable negotiations would involve, you trying to defend that with solid arguments and references, while at the same time humble enough to listen to his criticism and show respect to get along.

"Probably, your supervisor was clear about his decision regarding you and the rest was just a formality (which actually happens in some cultures). So he chose to skip that ceremony (and attend that unexpected meeting) because he knew his decision would matter alone." - The role of the supervisor at the defense is generally not to make a decision about whether to pass the student, but rather to support the student.

Did you pass your thesis defense? If so, it's all water under the bridge.
If it is eating you up inside, you could send a polite note to the senior professor (cc:ing your advisor) thanking them for the question and that now that you've had a chance to re-check things, that you are ever more certain that your method is different from the suggested prior method because of x, y, and z; but perhaps you misunderstood his question and there was another earlier method he was referring to, and if so -- could he please send the reference? (tip of the hat to @gnometorule)
If you go this route, I would frame it as a letter of thanks, appreciation, scholarly inquiry, and to keep the tone as non-accusatory as possible. As @guifa notes, some jerks professors view thesis defenses as a type of hazing -- a no-holds-barred opportunity to test your mettle; and what happens in defense should stay in defense. You do not want to drag this out. It can easily blow back in your face or the face of your advisor if the senior faculty member has a thin skin (which unfortunately many academics seem to have).
Again, if you have your Masters, then I would just be happy with that and just make rude gestures towards that senior faculty member from the safety and privacy of your own home. And don't ever do this when you become that person in a position of power.

You changed the question slightly from the initial posting from [what to do after the fact] to [what you should have done at the moment]. As note above, all questions at thesis defenses are fair -- even ones that are built on false  or falsified premises. It is, after all, a "defense" and as a scientist you should be able to defend yourself from both truthful and false/falsified statements without having to resort to ad hominem counter-attacks. You respond based on your training and experience what you believe to be correct. And obviously given that you passed the defense, the examiners thought that you gave satisfactory responses on the whole. As Queen Elsa teaches us, let it go.

Yes, I passed. And It is not about what I should be doing now, that cake is eaten - but what should I have done in the situation? I do not really think it was a ruse, he sounded extremely sure.

Valjean, experienced people know how to sound sure... even when they are just bluffing. This kind of (all-too-typical) noise and hazing is less disturbing than the fact that your advisor found a reason not to be in attendance.

I do not think he "found" a reason, the guy is notoriously scatterbrained and well known for it. On top of it, he does not have a secretary and is notoriously difficult to reach (rarely in office, does not read emails) so it is quite realistic he forgot.

@Valjean: Ask for a reference, and not just as a snide remark because it could, still, be quite possible that he was right, not plain wrong, or mock-confrontational: if your method, say, is new but in spirit similar to an existing one, maybe it was an off-hand remark to that sort. In any case, I'd say something like "Very interesting...I honestly believed this method to be novel. Could you give me some reference so I can read up on the prior work you refer to - now or per email later?"

"it could, still, be quite possible that he was right." Indeed. In my own field, I've seen a several papers claiming to have discovered something new that had been published in a standard textbook back in the 1940s or 50s. I guess most grad students just don't read 60-year-old textbooks! There's rarely anything to be gained by telling the re-discoverer about it, unless you enjoy trying to win an argument for its own sake.

No, but this is like THE one new discovery/invention everybody talks about in the field. I think I can mention that here: CRISPR/Cas9

Yeah well this particular thing he was calling old was hailed "breakthrough of the year" by science last year - my subject being biology, science is one of the most important papers there.

I guess you are talking about CRISPR/Cas9 as a method of genome editing, which has been around for about 4 years now, but got a lot more popular last year. In a way he's right too. The original publication is from 2012. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/337/6096/816 And the general study of CRISPR/Cas systems in nature has also been around for a while before the use for genome editing/silencing started.

exactly what I meant by rather new, I said in the defense when the professor said it was new that it was from 2012 ( I knew the exact year) and he insisted it was a lot older.

@Valjean: The knowledge about CRISP/Cas in nature is older. Although I would not go with "a lot older". So maybe the two of you based your determination of this on different understandings of the scope of the topic is what I meant to say.

yes, possible that was the problem. Yet I still dispute his claim of "having used that system for much longer in the lab". He would hardly have used it himself, especially as I know he is no bacteriologist.

What's not relevant or fair at a defence, though, are irrelevant questions. It's likely unfair, for example, to expect a biology student to show the maths behind Raleigh Scattering and how that impacts on the light available for photosynthesis, even if their research is on photosynthesis. Unless their research is actually on spectral responses of photosynthesis, and even then I'd be dubious. Questions can easily be the examiners trying to derail a discussion into something they find interesting rather than what's actually relevant to the research undertaken.

Forget about it and go on with your day.

The question was "What should I have done in the situation?" This seems to be an answer to a different question "What should I do about it now, after the defense?"

No, this answer definitely suits the original question as well.  Which is, in fact, what the original poster appears to have done.

Second great one-liner in the academics.SE site, but unfortunately, SE dynamics wish for the explanation on why the one-liner would be appropriated to the matter at hand, thus the low vote count.

@Mindwin Seems to me that sometimes, the best thing to do about an unfortunate "SE dymanics wish" is to forget about it and go one with your day. ;-)

@JesseWilliams no, this answer doesn't suit the original question at all; it is dismissive and unhelpful interpreted as such; and no, the OP clearly didn't "forget about it and go on with eir day" then or now-- the OP is instead pondering how ey could have most constructively behaved if ey had to do it over again, presumably with the goal of cultivating skills with which to respond most constructively when faced with similar situations in the future.   I find this to be a laudable goal and a great question since I place a high value on such skills and wish to cultivate them in myself.

Generally, when faced with questions or comments like this one, you need to respond in a way that is open to the possibility that the professor is right, but that nonetheless demonstrates your belief in your own position. Don't give ground too easily, but don't get too entrenched either, since you need to be open to new information.
How you do this depends on how specific the professor's comment is:

If it was just a vague contradiction - "That's not new, it's been around for ages" - then you need to probe for more information. "That's interesting, I've not come across any previous use of this method - could you tell me more about where it's been used?".
If prof responds in detail ("It was done by Professor X in paper Y") and paper Y is not one you've come across, then your response is similar. "That's really interesting, I will look into that. Perhaps we can discuss this further after the talk." Or you might be able to second-guess the method used even if you don't know paper Y. "If they used method Z, then it's related, but our is different because..."
If paper Y is one that you are familiar with, then you have something concrete you can discuss. "That's certainly an important method, and provided inspiration for our work [if it did], but I referred to our method as new because it has these important advances/differences..."

However rude the professor is with their comment, it may still be a valid point, so try not to take it personally. Ignore the tone and just respond to the substance as politely and scientifically as you can.
Finally, it's easy to say all this in hindsight, but when it's early in your career and you're faced with an imposing figure contradicting you, it is only natural to give ground under pressure, and the fact that you successfully defended your thesis shows that you coped well with the overall situation!

Honestly.....it was the first: "That is not new, we have been doing that here for ages". I know that to be wrong, but asking him where it was used as you suggest would seem rather rude to me.

I don't think it needs to be rude. You just need to adopt an attitude of "I'm intrigued to know more because I wasn't aware of this". It's just scientific curiosity, so long as you don't imply with your tone of voice that you mistrust his information.

knowing full well that he could not possibly give a satisfactory answer (because he was plain wrong)? sighs......maybe I am too much into "never confront a monarch in public"

I agree that it's not easy, and your response was a very natural one. But I think that pursuing a discussion is the response that is truest to the spirit of a thesis defense, and to scientific discourse in general. And a professor would not have reached their position if they weren't able to handle someone disagreeing with them.

This seems like the best answer that actually addresses what should have been done in the moment.

Option A -  Argue about it in front of an audience and focus attention away from your real presentation.  Focusing on proving the senior professor wrong in front of an audience is not going get you anywhere.
Option B - Let it go.  Go research it again thoroughly on your own. If you think it's a new approach, gather your research papers that support your claim.  After you do your specific research, kindly ask the senior professor for examples of clarity on his comment.  (Don't go in his office and slam a paper in his face proving he is wrong.)   Go see him in person.  Don't send an email because emails have no vocal tone to them.

Overall, I bet that it is not a 100% black or white issue.  Perhaps the professor or you are thinking of a "similar" method or a method that goes under a different name.   You may call it binary and he calls it base-2.
It's no big deal.  Some people just like to speak up and make comments no matter what the situation.  The senior professor probably won't even remember what he said after one week.  Nevertheless, it is a good learning experience.  You get to practice how to deal with confrontations that you were not prepared for.

People (including professors) make mistakes. I have been mistaken myself in similar situations as you described, and would not attribute any kind of malice to the professor's remark during your defense. As @RoboKaren pointed out, you got your degree, and it is mostly water under the bridge now.
In case it irks you a lot, I would recommend not to send an email to the professor, but to talk to him personally, maybe phrasing it as a misunderstanding regarding the scope of the method. An email might come off as somewhat aggressive.

I completely agree here. If you (@Valjean) get any chance to just casually "out of interest" talk with the Professor about the method in question again and possibly learn that (a) either he misunderstood which method you were referring to or maybe (b) it actually had been published long ago (things get republished in science all the time), it may make you feel better about the whole thing.

"Honestly, I just gave in. He seemed so sure and I did not dare contradict him."
You have answered your own question - you shouldn't have done this. If you were sure of yourself and your facts then you wouldn't have given in and you would have contradicted him. You are allowed to disagree with "senior professors" - they make mistakes too. That you did not suggests to me that you weren't sure of yourself or the facts.
Part of these occasions is to test whether you have the self-confidence to know your discipline, know when you are right and to argue your case.
Of course, if you were wrong...

I agree with @Rob Jeffries. One purpose of a thesis is to state your case against argument so that you are on an equal basis. The prof was just doing his job. In your position I would have asked him to clarify his statement and to justify it, just as you need to for yours -- from an equal basis.

I wouldn't blame the OP for not being sure he is right, as sure as you are that your method is new, it's easy to think "this professor has a lot of experience, maybe he knows something I don't" when you're being directly contradicted

Two actions should be taken:
A-  Forget about it.  Say Thank You and move on during the meeting.
B-  Make very well sure that you're right and he's wrong before just assuming you're right.  I've seen (and refereed) many cases where someone just knows something is novel when its not.  This can happen for many reasons.  Keep in mind that this person has been around longer than you have, may well have a wider understanding of the literature than you have, or have an inkling that something that has historically been presented in a slightly different way is exactly what you're talking about but is a little difficult to make the jump.

While I believe user2390246's answer should be the preferred way to handle this kind of situation, I think the safest path would be to acknowledge the contradiction and quickly move on.

That's interesting, I've not come across any previous use of this method, but I'd love to know more. Could we discuss this afterwards?

If they decide to press the issue, user2390246's answer has the details how to handle that, but I'd be willing to bet they won't.
If they agree, then obviously do approach the professor sometime later (preferably in person, during their office hours, after double checking your facts).
It should be noted that this only works if the method isn't central to your thesis and the contradiction doesn't directly threaten the validity of your results. If that is the case, then you have no choice but to push back.

When people disagree about facts, the only useful procedure to solve the disagreement is to appeal to an outside source that is accepted by both parties.
Typically this is not feasible to do in the middle of a presentation, either because such an accepted outside source is not available, or even if it was (say through an internet connection that is active on the spot), it will take away time that is scheduled otherwise. To the degree therefore that rebutting the claim is not essential and/or critical for the purpose at hand, you, as the presenter (and so the one with the higher stakes in the situation), should wisely let it pass.
But it would be a peaceful way to go about the world if you contacted the other party afterwards, by say, an e-mail that would supplant the necessary information about the matter. It is not about you triumphing over him or truth triumphing over falsehood, -it is about helping another person to not make the same mistake again.

This was your defense.  You should expect senior faculty to give you challenges and questions like this, because they want to test the limits of your knowledge and usually won't be satisfied until they've gone beyond them.  How far can they go before they reach "I don't know?"  When you get there, do you have what sounds like a reasonable strategy for how you would find out or resolve a question?
When you get a challenging question like that, the first thing to do is listen and make sure you really understand what the question is asking.  Reflect it back to the asker to be sure and to demonstrate you've got it.  Then, figure out if the challenge/question is something that is core to your thesis, or a side/auxiliary point.  If your main claimed contribution is this allegedly novel method, and the method not being novel would mean you don't have a contribution left, that's a core issue.  If you just used the method and the results of it are what's important, and you only mentioned in passing that the method is relatively new, then it doesn't matter so much.  Consider saying what you know and offering to continue the conversation "offline" or afterward, when you can find out more details about the citation.   With other sorts of non-core questions e.g. about your method or result you can use a response like "I'll have to look that up and get back to you on that."  This helps keep the conversation focused on the core elements of your thesis.
More important for the defense, consider and respond to how it would affect your work if the questioner's point is accurate.
For example,

As far as what I found < maybe add, and this is what I did to look >, I believe the method is relatively new.  If it's actually been used for a while, that increases my confidence in the reliability of the results it produces and could help make the conclusions even stronger.  Thank you for letting me know about this and I'd be glad to continue the conversation afterward to discuss more details."

If he takes you up on the offer to get more details, try to get pointers to authors or papers where you can check.  Claims of novelty are much easier to disprove than to support, conclusively.  You may still be right, but you're not going to prove that in the moment of the defense presentation nor do you necessarily need to.  You need to show how you respond to this potential new information and what knowledge you assert in your response, including some analysis of how that (counterfactual or not) would affect your thesis.
Finally, if you already passed the defense, you can just view the professor's challenge as part of the challenge of a defense, and congratulations on having passed through that process successfully.


text:
How can I thank/acknowledge people during a short presentation?
In a paper, there is an Acknowledgements section, in which I can thank everyone that helped me along the way. But what do I do in a 15-minute presentation (e.g. in a non-archival conference)? I do want to thank the people that helped me, both for my and for their benefit (in case they may be sitting in the audience, or viewing the talk later in video).
How can I thank/acknowledge people during a short presentation?

As Stephan and posdef already wrote, a (short or long) acknowledgement page at the end of the talk is the standard you see on conferences/talks.
However I saw a few, who had a short acknowledgement as one of the first slides or at the start of the chapters of their hour long talk.
This was quite interesting, since you directly saw, who was responsible for the work and the presenter (in this case the group leader/professor) didn't sound like he did all the work.
Also, you can end on your summary page. The end of the talk is often times the most interesting and memorable part, which is why the summary in the end is quite an intriguing point. And the summary will stay to start the discussion and give the hearer again an overview of your talk.

I believe the reason for having the acknowledgement slide in the beginning is due to how you want to end a presentation: you want to end it at the most interesting part, which shouldn't be the acknowledgements. This goes in line with the "thanks for listening"-slide which adds nothing to the presentation. This, however, does not qualify for why the ack. slide should be up front. One way of finishing the presentation would be Conclusions, then quick acknowledgements, and then display the conclusions again, as these are the important message you want to send.

As a variant on this, consider putting the acknowledgements as the next-to-last slide, with an automatic timer that switches it over to a summary. End the talk at the acknowledgements slide, but the summary appears after a reasonable time and stays up during questions.

I do it as the first slide so that I always have enough time for it.

What about the title page? Co-authors are usually listed there, that's a good start for a list of acknowledgements.

@MarcGlisse Depends on the University/filed. In chemistry afaik it's normally only the presenting author on the first page. Esp. so, if a professor presents the work of his group.

You can put such acknowledgements on the very last slide, which will stay up while you field questions after your presentation (unless you need to flip back to a specific slide to answer a question).
Don't recite every single name in a presentation. Just end your talk like this:

Finally, I'd like to thank everyone who has helped me in this project.

Then look expectantly at the session chair, who should lead the applause and ask for questions, while everyone who is interested can read your acknowledgements on the slide.

Actually I don't like this at all. The last slide is much better used to provide an overview of the talk and topic to elicit questions and give the audience a summary. A list of collaborators is boring and useless to an audience.

@dsfgsho That is what can come in the slide before the acknowledgements. When discussion starts, just flip back to it.

In addition to the other answers: don't forget to put your funders on your acknowledgements slides!

It's common practise to have an Acknowledgements slide, at the very end, before you take any questions.
I disagree with Stephan about the certainty with which he recommends clumping up everyone. While it is rather cumbersome and time-consuming to list everyone, you could single out a couple of people, especially if you have done collaborative work, where some people ran samples, did analysis etc for you.
I mean something along the lines of (the stuff in parentheses are spoken, not written out):

Acknowledgements
Your supervisors group
Steve Smith (for his work on 2D gels)
Barbara McDonald (for her help in data analysis)
Colleagues at the group
Other group
Zack Muckerberg (for ...)
Muckerberg's boss (for the possibility to collaborate)
Other collaborators

Something I see very frequently is an acknowledgements slide that consists of, for instance, a group photo (if the people you want to acknowledge are in your research group). Then particular faces may be circled/labeled. Decent way of showing "hey, these people!" without necessarily having just a list.


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Is it possible to do a Postdoc without travelling?
I am soon to finish my PhD and would love to do postdoctoral research (UK). However, for reasons I shan't go into, it is not viable for me to travel outside of my city and so I am unable to attend conferences/workshops/etc.
Is it feasible for me to obtain a postdoc position? Or do postdoc responsibilities necessarily entail travelling?

I know you said you don't want to share your reasons, but it may well be that people's willingness to accommodate you will depend on the reason.  For instance, if you have a medical condition that makes it impossible for you to travel, you may have a fairly easy time getting conference organizers to let you present by videoconference.  (In some jurisdictions, they may even be legally obligated to do so.)  If your reason were "I can't get decent sushi outside London, so I'm never leaving", then maybe not so much.

Also, for pete's sake, say what field you're in!  You'll get totally different answers depending on what it is.

This is somewhat field dependent, but your academic career could be much more challenging if your disability or other circumstances prevent you from traveling. You may need to travel to job interviews at the very least. Not attending conferences to present your research will reduce the visibility of your work, and so you will struggle to get your ideas well known in your field. This could reduce your job prospects. You will need to have your research products well-advertised on the web in order to have any name recognition. Your research may also have to be more ground-breaking in order to garner recognition.
If, for example, you work in Computer Science, conference publications are typically the most prestigious, so the inability to travel to present your work may mean that it is not published.
I don't mean to be too discouraging, but I think you should reevaluate whether or not you can make 1 or 2 trips per year in order to present your work. It may do wonders for how hard your career is otherwise.
On the plus side, you might also try talking to some conference organizers before you submit your work about presenting your results via video conference. I was at a workshop this week where a presenter couldn't make it due to a last-minute problem with his flight, and he gave a great presentation via Google Hangouts. He wasn't there to network, but at least his presentation happened. If your reasons for not traveling are due to disability (including mental disabilities like social anxiety, agoraphobia, etc.), the country where the conference happens may require that they try to accommodate your needs.

Well, research isn't a solo effort, and having a coauthor from your lab present your results at conferences might be sufficient, though not optimal.

Touching on the conference side, you can try to organise one. It is a lot of effort, though, and the viability it depends why you are unable to travel.

@Peteris, I disagree when it comes to future employment. If the coauthor does all the presenting, then the coauthor will get the vast majority of the name recognition, and they be there at the conference to network about assistant professor (or the like) positions. This is pretty critical for postdocs.

It seems your main challenges will be:

Getting some institute/person to hire you as a researcher despite this handicap (that is, assuming you're not hiding your situation).
Getting to know and form relationships with people in your field.
Collaborating with people without meeting them (unless they travel to where you are).
Finding potential positions for after your your post-docs without having "shown your face" there, or to the people there.

In some fields these may be insurmountable. In most other fields their combination will make it extremely difficult - in my opinion - to be a successful researcher. So there's the question of whether you're interested in having what will quite possibly be a mediocre-at-best stint as a researcher.
An exception to the above would be if you're in a group where there's good division of labor, with other people doing a lot of traveling, but also being gracious enough to make the connection between yourself and researchers/interested parties elsewhere so that you're at least partially present. In that case I suppose it's half-manageable.
I can't speak to what primary researchers, or research groups/departments, will require of you; traveling may or may not be a strict requirement and it may or may not depend on the field of study and the country in which you work.


text:
Is it appropriate to email an eminent researcher in your field?
Sometimes, I feel to contact some of the eminent researchers in my field for any of the following reasons:

Appreciating their research publication (recent times). They publish in top conferences, which are usually not hosted in my country or nearby.
Requesting comments on some of my research hypothesis
Sometimes just because I am a die hard fan of them. For example, probably the only reason I continued with research in Computer Science was due to Don Knuth.
Sometimes, to know what they think on some specific research area that has propagated due to there work. (Probably looks like some journalistic work)
For knowing how did they tackle the pressures or certain situation during their PhD or research. (Yes, it's vague but these questions come to mind and probably should be answered by oneself or personal interaction, but adding it for the sake of completion)

Since, most of them are located outside my country, I can't visit or phone them. So, how are such emails perceived. Is it appropriate to send such emails, given that they are expected to have very busy schedule and it would probably waste their time?
Though I have mentioned my field as Computer Science, the question should be applicable to all the fields.

A polite e-mail can't hurt.  Whether you get an answer probably depends on many factors.

Of course, Knuth is a bad example, since he does not read email. Of course that page does note two resticted purpose email address that will be read, but there is zero chance he would reply to any of the above sent to them.

You may be interested in this blog post: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/12/10/how-to-get-george-bush-or-the-ceo-of-google-on-the-phone/

@KevinCathcart yeah, I knew that. Hence saving money and waiting for a good opportunity to meet him in person :)

Many of the criteria you list don't require a famous correspondent. You can learn also learn a great deal from the people in their area who are experts but non preeminent.

Here are some of my strayed thoughts.
Think from return of investments, of yours and your idol's
If you ever perceived that your e-mail would be a "waste of their time," then why send it? I feel that most eminent researchers have a trait of "ignore everyone and head for their goal;" getting acknowledgement and acceptance is probably not their primary concern. A specific e-mail describing how their work has inspired your study/project is probably fine, but I wouldn't go so far to expect they would reply and give specific comments on your hypotheses.
From your point of view, instead of using the energy and bandwidth to send the e-mails, there are a lot more you can do:
There are many ways to show your appreciation
First, they would probably like to see their work being formally cited and, more importantly, applied to the field or crossed into other fields. Each idea geminated from their work is an appreciation by itself, and in the mean time you can also enhance your publication and research paradigm. The plus is: if you have done enough of it, the big shot may actually contact you and give comments.
Second, you can help preaching the researcher's ideas and agenda. You can write blogs, answer other people questions, use their works in your journal clubs or lectures, etc. to subtly introduce the researcher's teaching to the public. Better yet, refine the researcher's ideas, and incorporate into yours. Become a spiritual successor with your own unique approach. And let your career be inspired by the researcher.
You can learn from someone without establishing communication
For some more senior researchers, look for their auto-biography, biography, interviews, and documentaries that feature them. I will probably never be able to talk to Itzhak Perlman, but I learned a lot about him through books, websites, documentaries, and musics that he plays. (And actually, he has a Youtube channel as well, but I am suffering from too much fanboy shyness to write any comment.)
For younger researchers, try look for their blogs, Youtube channels, open courses, or even biographies of their mentors. All these may help you become more familiar with them.
Another way is to indirectly know them. Most of these researchers would have a lot of students or proteges, who may be closer to your rank and more likely to communicate with you. You may build a relationship with them, and learn a thing or two about their interaction with their mentor.
Try technology
For their new publications... nowadays most online journals allow leaving comments online. You may try to say a nice thing or two there. If they write a blog, that's even easier. Some researchers maintain a LinkedIn page or a Twitter account, try connect with them and follow them. Hope for the best.
Use other famous people as leverage
If you really want to communicate with them, also try using other organizations. For instance, you can write to some online radio station and suggest an interview topic and some guests, which of course will include your idolized researcher. You can also write to some prominent podcast hosts and give them a couple reason to invite so and so for an interview. Make good use of crowdsourcing, invite your peers and friends to support your petition.
Some heroes/heroines are better left a bit mysterious
This is sad but occasionally painfully true. Some famous people are better left not known at personal level. They could be immensely arrogant, they may not have a nanogram of social skill, they may be a jerk... Unless I have reconstructed a pretty concrete and reliable image about the researcher from different sources, I would probably want to keep them as what they are in my mind, and as an inspiration for my work.

While many of these topics are excellent points to start a 1-1 conversation, I seriously doubt whether you'd get much of a response over email. This is not to say that they wouldn't appreciate your praise, but that there may not be anything to reply to in particular.
I suspect an email will get a better response if you have specific questions about research content: ideally, a question related to something in a recent paper that isn't entirely obvious. For example, in my field it's sometimes the case that someone sketches a proof idea in a conference paper without a full version, and fleshing this out requires some clarification from the authors.
Of course, you can always add in a question from your list as extra cargo. Then it's a little more likely that someone will reply.
More generally, think about it this way: if you never met someone before, and they came up to you and asked you questions that might be construed as personal (especially 5), or that require you to come up with opinions on the fly (2,4), you might hesitate to respond. The same thing, but without the pressure to say something, will happen over email.

In a nutshell: Sending a polite email on an appropriate topic is pretty much always acceptable.  However, don’t automatically expect an answer.

The second part is important.  The eminent researcher is probably a busy person, and you have no particular moral claim on their time and attention.  Don’t make it sound like you feel entitled to their assistance — “Hey Mr. Tao!  I need to understand the Green–Tao theorem for my masters thesis.  Please can you explain it to me in simple terms?  P.S. my thesis is due next Tuesday.”  And don’t be disappointed if they don’t reply.
That said, don’t despair either — don’t feel “oh, it’s not worth writing because they’ll never reply to a nobody like me”!  Some may well be too busy or dismissive, but many are also genuinely kind people, and very generous with their help.  Others (I have a specific rather famous person in mind here) are simply incorrigible curiosity-hounds, and will happily get caught up for hours by an intriguing problem from a random stranger when they’re supposed to be grading final exams.  So they may well reply — just don’t presume it.

On the other hand: what’s an appropriate topic?

Questions about their research can be fine, provided you’ve done your homework.  For instance, I had a question on mathoverflow recently which looked like it might have been answered by a particular researcher, but nobody could find the specific paper, and it was possibly unpublished.  Writing to ask e.g. “Do you recall which of your papers on $\tau$-categories might contain or imply a result something like […]?” is certainly OK.
Questions about practical matters that may be their responsibility are good — at worst they can always hand it off to someone else.  “I’m applying to your department’s PhD programme, and it wasn’t clear to me from the website if students are expected to have a potential advisor in advance.  If so, are you potentially accepting new students at the moment?  I am very interested in your work because…”
Plain fan mail is OK, as long as it’s sincere and you’re not trying to get something for it!  Nobody’s going to mind hearing “Please excuse my writing out of the blue; I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your talk at such-and-such conference.  As a non-specialist, I really appreciate the effort you put into making it accessible to a wide audience.”  However, if this is followed up by “Incidentally, I am applying for a job at such-and-such department.  Do you have any insider advice you can share?” then the initial compliments will look a lot less sincere.  Don’t do this!
Possibly questions about your own research.  The two big questions here are: again, have you done your homework; and is there a good reason why you’re asking them, not someone else?  Asking “I read your paper, and had an idea of how to generalise Theorem 5.3, by such-and-such approach.  Do you know if somebody is already working on this question, or is it open?” should be fine.  Asking “I had such-and-such new idea in your field.  Can you spare the time to give me feedback?” makes you sound a bit like a crank — for this, you should be running it by a colleague first, or a colleague-of-a-colleague, or if you don’t know anyone close to the field yet, try and find someone less famous and with at least some specific connection to you (e.g. geographically closer) that you can write to first.

What’s not appropriate:

Asking for significant favours (unless you have a personal connection of some sort).
Asking them to explain their research to you because you don’t want to read their papers.  (That’s what helpful strangers in internet forums are for!)
Personal questions (unless you’re a serious journalist writing e.g. a book on drug use among academics; but in that case you should know about how to get in touch with sources appropriately already).

We can be exahustive here.
If they feel like writing that kind of things to strangers then they most likely have a blog that you can follow, that saves a lot of time for them, by broadcasting. If they do, you can write comments in the blog, that could be appropriate and extend posts and discussion, which is good for them (a chance to clarify something), for you (getting answers, yay!) and for anyone that reads the post and then the comments (and doesn't need to ask the same again...).
If they don't feel like writing that kind of things to strangers  then most probably they won't reply. In that case you will be wasting their time (that's bad) and your time (that's worse; selfsteem, please :P ). Thus that's probably not very wise.
If you have questions not covered in the aforementioned blogs, you can ask here, to a crowd of anonymous people. There are many people giving great answers (really, I know my profile is the closest one in distance, but you should check somewhere else). I know we are not so famous and important and wise and everything, but we try to do our best and even if we can understand that you may prefer the advise of other people, we still have a little heart and that hurts. :(
:P Personally, I think it is normal to feel admiration for people that basically are, in some aspect or another, what you want to be and struggle to be in the future. It is probably useful and interesting to get some insight from them, and understand their perspective (personal and professional) on many questions, if you are going to idealize someone and have an idol, probably a rock star is a worse option than a researcher, but I'm not sure whether idealizing and idolizing researchers is any good anyway...
This answer may be biased because I tend to underestimate the relevance of mentoring and I consider more important talent and hard work. I'm also to some extent opposite to you, I admire and appreciate some people, but I'm more introverted, so my natural reaction is thinking to myself: "Stay quiet and don't bother them, you despicable maggot!" (This is clearly worse than idolizing them).
As a final advise, keep your extroversion, it's good for you. That means you will have plenty of things to speak about when you go to a conference and chances to do so. You will love conferences, so focus on publishing to go there (you should focus on publishing anyway). If you like visiting places then that's another big plus.
So work hard and remember, we (a bunch of anonymous people) will always be here whenever you need us, remember us when you get to be famous. Also, write a blog.


text:
How to find response time for a given journal in engineering?
I would like to find journals response times? A google search does not give any good results. May be I am using wrong key words.
I am open to find particular subset of journal response times too. Any pointers about this is welcome. this answer gives a list of backlog for mathematical journals. Are there any such other list? How can I find them?
Thanks for comment.
Actually I would like to learn "From submission until a decision". I know "Total time from submission to publication" can take a lot of time.

What do you mean by "response time"?  Total time from submission to publication?  From submission until a decision?  (Incidentally, the variance in these times can be enormous even at a single journal, so the average is just a rough guide.)

@AnonymousMathematician thanks, I edited question

Some journals insert the submission date and acceptance date in a footnote on the first page of the article.  For those, it would be easy to look through the latest issue and see what is typical.

I would send an email, or ideally go down the hall, and ask someone who has published in the journal how long it took.

This is better than nothing, but one data point can sometimes be very misleading.


text:
Is it possible to download paper from academia.edu without being registered there?
Based answers to Is Academia.edu useful? it seems that there are some legitimate reason why many people would prefer not to have academia.edu account.
On the other hand, it might happen that you see a paper there which is interesting for you and which might be difficult to obtain in a different way.
I have noticed that when I find some paper on academia.edu using Google Scholar, I will also have a direct link to download. To give one random example, when searching for ultrafilter site:academia.edu you can see that I get direct download link to this paper. (The link contains the string "expires", so it is probably only temporary.)  On the other hand, when I try to find the same paper on academia.edu and try to download it, I am asked to login/sign up.
Is there some way to get the url for download from academia.edu website without being logged in? (This could be useful if neither Google Scholar nor some other searches give me a direct download link to the article.)
EDIT: To clarify (since I received an answer copying parts of the above paper). When I made this post, I was able to download it via the direct download link I have mentioned above. And this particular paper is also available on another website. So this is not a request for a paper. (Requesting papers would clearly be an incorrect use of academia.SE.) It is a question whether the annoying restriction to be registered before downloading something from academia.edu can be somehow bypassed. I have simply chosen a random paper as an illustration.

Google Scholar provides the direct link http://www.academia.edu/download/37277308/Introduction_to_the_Keisler_Order.pdf. It seems like there are two identifying elements: the code 37277308 and the filename Introduction_to_the_Keisler_Order. Both appear in the source of the article page on academia.edu even when you are not logged in, for instance here:
  registrationParams: {
    doc_id: 37277308,
    splash: true,
    redirect: "https://www.academia.edu/11902653/Introduction_to_the_Keisler_Order?auto=download",
  }

So in theory it should be possible to recover the direct link by piecing them together. I don't know if there is software already available, but it does definitely seem possible to write, for instance, a Greasemonkey script that adds direct download links to these pages.
Of course, all of this depends on the specific format of academia.edu's webpages and direct download links, which are subject to change at any time. In particular, if they find out that many people are using them, I suppose they will quickly change the format to pull the plug and force people to login.

Thanks for your effort. Maybe I am missing something, but the link from your post http://www.academia.edu/download/37277308/Introduction_to_the_Keisler_Order.pdf returns Page Not Found. (At least for me.)

@Martin Hmm - interesting. It seems that there is some sort of referrer check; clicking on the same link from scholar.google.com downloads it, but copying the link target and pasting it doesn't work.

I did not think of that. Using wget --referer http://scholar.google.com "http://www.academia.edu/download/37277308/Introduction_to_the_Keisler_Order.pdf" indeed worked.

@Martin Do you know whether your solution still works? I tried the one explained by the answer, but it didn't work.

@m0_as When I tried the wget command from my previous comment, it worked.

use inspect element (ctrl + shift + i). find (ctrl + f) the link with this word  >>amazonaws.com<< . you need to copy the link from 'http' to 'pdf'  >>http......................pdf<< , then paste it in new tab or download manager

Is there in fact a difference between inspect element and view source? However, I have tired Inspect element a few times on this page, but I did not find any occurrence of the string "amazonaws". (I did it in Google Chrome, if that matters.)

It does not have to be amazonaws, just search for "pdf".

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава

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


text:
Advice for interacting with students reported for cheating on their midterms
We (professors + TAs) are reporting a few students for cheating on their midterms to the head of undergraduate studies.  We had been monitoring their activities pretty closely, since we noticed they had been cheating throughout the semester on their weekly quizzes but felt that evidence was not compelling enough (e.g., 15 minutes, few questions).  But with their recent cheating activity on an hour-long exam, we are confident in what we are reporting to the University.
In the event that they are allowed back into lectures for the remainder of this semester, how do we interact with these cheating students?  Should we ignore them?  I expect there to be some friction between them and us, and I wish to not be too distracted from teaching the rest of the class of students that have been working diligently and honestly.

Treat them exactly in the same professional manner you would treat any other student. Catching someone cheating is a professional matter, not a personal matter, and while it might affect your attitude towards the person, that should (generally speaking) be irrelevant in the classroom in any case.

Just treat them the same as all the others during lectures.
If they want to meet you outside lectures to discuss the issue then you have two options : one: say that the issue is with the Head and the result / decision will be communicated to them, or have a discussion but I would not do this as it could affect the decision process.

At most universities, instructors are expected to report all suspected incidents of academic misconduct.  But they do not decide the matter.  If the student contacts you, that is what you say:  You were expected to make the report so you did, but you don't decide the matter.  That is all you say.
If there's a finding of misconduct you will be notified.  The usual penalty for a first offense is they get a zero on the assignment.  And that's the end of your involvement.  You do not alter your behavior toward the student in any other way and you do not discuss the situation with other faculty except possibly any co-instructors or your chair.


text:
Making corrections to PhD application after submitting it
I am currently finishing up my applications for PhD programs (in the humanities) and, in working on a draft of my statement of purpose for one school that I have not yet turned in, I noticed an error. It is a typo of sorts, the omission of a verb which renders a sentence "nonsensical." The intention of the sentence is still clear but it is quite noticeable. Think something along the lines of "Excited by the interdisciplinary dialogue at Harvard." as the uncorrected sentence, missing an "I am" at the beginning.
The problem is, I have already submitted this mistake in my statement of purpose for four or five other schools. A friend, who submitted corrections to his applications when he was applying, says that it would be no problem to contact the department/admissions administrative secretary with a corrected PDF. I am afraid of making it worse by submitting corrections, but also would love to fix it if I could.
Any thoughts on what I should do? I am kicking myself for not noticing it... what's really annoying, is that I noticed and fixed it in two applications, but must have reverted to a previous draft for the rest of the schools.
All advice/reassurance/chastisement is appreciated, especially if you have experience with such a blunder yourself.

This is not a material error. I wouldn't worry about it. We get much more egregious errors such as uploading the wrong statement (such as for another school) or misspelling the name of the core faculty member you wanted to work with, etc.
You'd think those types of mistakes would be killer, but they really aren't. We realize students are under stress and that application management systems are cumbersome. We're all human in the end.
What's most important is the qualifications of the applicant as a whole.

"You'd think those types of mistakes would be killer, but they really aren't." I would imagine we'd have to take the universality of this statement with a grain of salt...?

I’ve done grad admissions for over a dozen years at two different R1 institutions and must have now read well over 2000 applications. Minor errors are not something that I’ve ever seen seriously raised at admissions meetings.

@RoboKaren It wouldn’t be raised at admissions meetings if it led to being excluded in the preselection. I agree that OP’s mistake probably wouldn’t qualify for this but a consistent disregard for common rules of spelling (or other sloppiness) would lead some people to immediately filter out an application without even reading through it.

@RoboKaren Thank you so much for your comment. I appreciate someone on "the inside" with understanding. Heck, it might not even be noticed, given the awesome capacity of the human brain to read what is meant even through weird errors... Also thanks to the others who commented. I'm taking this as a moment to more thoroughly read through my statement and writing sample once more, and get a fresh pair of eyes on them, before I send them to the last few schools. Thankfully I don't think this is a pervasive problem in my writing. Happy New Year and many thanks for the input.

If the applicant is consistently sloppy, then yes, that would be grounds for exclusion. But one or two errors in an otherwise strong portfolio?  You have to remember the statement is just one component of analysis, we also look at letters as well as the coursework, writing sample, research portfolio, etc.

The answer to your question will probably depend on the department, more so than on the field. Asking if you can replace your essay will probably not hurt your application, but your request is unlikely to be met.
At my institution, for instance, PhD applications are handled first by a few staff members, who will make sure all materials are complete and assign your application to one of the faculty members who you have mentioned in your application and/or who are in the admissions committee. If the secretary has already forwarded your application, then there is nothing the applicant could do to correct it. If it has not been forwarded, there is also nothing you can do about it as the staff members are advised to not accept any separate materials other than letters of recommendation, especially by email, except under very special circumstances (a typo is not one). In this case, your email will probably be ignored or responded with a friendly "there's nothing we can do about it", which will not impact your application in any way, but will entrust another task to the staff members, who are already very loaded.
However, do not send your updated statement on first contact.  First make sure that they will accept it (call/email them), and only then send your updated statement. I believe my university provides a specific url for the applicant to upload additional documents.
I am not in the humanities, though.

Agreed. We don’t usually allow files to be swapped out post deadline as that would be a huge administrative headache. The only exception I’ve seen is allowing late letters to be snuck in, but we’ve been cracking down on even that.


text:
What if I get B's in my first semester in graduate school (engineering program)?
Why is getting A's so important?
What if I did not have the background to pursue graduate education but nonetheless I decided to enroll in a graduate program?
I am in graduate school. I got straight A's at my local university (undergrad studies) and was admitted to the graduate program in engineering by one of the Big Ten universities. I am working diligently and extremely hard, and I have come to realize that the preparation in math and engineering from my undergrad institution was not even close to the preparation that students at my current institution have received.
I neither come from a research background nor have a strong mathematical background, but I am responsible and can learn the material so I know I am smart. However, my previous engineering school could have done better at training us as engineers, I would say that our engineering classes did not developed our problem solving skills and/or analytical thinking which is something I tried to learn on my own. I did what I could to learn what I believe had to be taught to me, which is why I was accepted into my current institution.
But it is so frustrating to feel the difference in knowledge and problem solving skills that other students seem to have just because they were instructed better. Currently I am getting B's for my graduate classes, and it is my first semester. So I would like to know, do grades really matter? Should I drop out after all of this hard work? What about the ones like me who want to have a better future and pursue grad school but did not have all the opportunities and sufficient preparation but can still do good, maybe not getting straight A's right from the beginning but definitely later (which is what I am aiming for and I know I can do it). However it is a bit discouraging, when all I find on the internet is "B's are like C's in graduate school" that statement seems to be unfair for people like me who work hard on school and research.

Judge yourself against yourself, not against others. // Keep up the good work!

What is a Big Ten university?

You know what: The fact is, if you get Bs... you get Bs. You could have done better, but that is something everybody tells themselves at many points in their life. Anything besides the fact I just stated is just perception. Your perception of your self-worth. Other people's perception of what a B means at the moment you get it and 10 years later. (Hint: 10 years later I would perceive it as not much different to an A. A lot of water has flown down the river.)

http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=469

Ultimately, your grades as a graduate student matter very little, except for:

A handful of employers who have GPA requirements for graduate programs;
Fellowship programs, which may require a GPA minimum;
The academic regulations, which may also specify a GPA minimum to continue in good standing.

However, it should also be noted that most graduate courses are based on the premise that a grade lower than B is a failing grade. Therefore, it's better to get A's than B's in graduate classes. But, at the end of the day, having B's is probably not going to impede your career much—especially once you enter the working world.

(off topic) Can grades exist in a two-state equilibrium? A schrodinger grade would mean that a grade can be either an A or not A, until you look at one's grade that is.


text:
Is it ethical (or legal, if applicable) to say you have a degree in X if your degree was in "X and Y" (single major)?
There are departments in many schools that offer "hybrid" majors, such as:

Computer Science and Engineering
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Materials Science and Engineering
Molecular and Cellular Biology
Nutritional Science and Toxicology

etc.
Let us say you earn a degree in the respective area of one of these majors.
For example, let's say you earned an M.S. in Computer Science and Engineering.
Continuing with this example, let's say that down the road, you are asked to certify that you have the degree in one of the majors (say, an M.S. in Computer Engineering).
Are you ethically/legally/etc. (as the case may be) allowed to claim that you have such a degree? Or are you only entitled to claim that you have exactly the degree written on your diploma/transcript and nothing else, even if it seems like a subset of what is written?
Notes:

If the answer differs between the Bachelor's, Master's, or Doctorate degrees, please explain each one.
If the answer is different for different majors, please explain how/why. And if the answer is different in different situations -- e.g. if it is different in different countries -- please explain how and give typical examples for each case, keeping in mind #3 below.
Obviously, in some cases, you may even be technically allowed to falsely claim you have a degree. I am ignoring such cases here; for the purposes of this question, assume I am only talking about cases where it is indeed not okay (either legally or ethically) to falsely claim you have a degree.

In a legal context, you should ask a lawyer.  In an informal context, you should either report the name of your degree verbatim, or make a good-faith judgement based on the actual content of your degree program.

My degrees are mostly in the joint subject of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Past undergraduate, however, I pretty much exclusively studied in the computer science side of the department. Thus, I find it appropriate and accurate to describe myself either as having EECS degrees or CS degrees, but would not claim to have EE education past undergraduate. Likewise, my CS education included enough hardware and systems education that I am comfortable saying I received CE education.
I think a similar analysis can be applied to any composite major. Most people and institutions understand that department names vary across institutions, so as long as you do not attempt to deceive about the skills you gave, it should be OK.

I'm not sure why you describe most of those as "hybrid" majors; what they seem to have in common is that they have the word "and" in their names.  The answer is that it depends both on the degree and the context of the question.
The difficulty is that names of departments vary wildly without a whole lot of meaning.  For example, the distinction between "Computer Science" and "Computer Engineering" gets handled different ways---some schools have two separate majors, while some call them both "Computer Science" and have a computer engineering track.  A degree called "Computer Science and Engineering" is yet another program covering some piece of the same area.  What it's appropriate to represent it as would depend on exactly what was covered by your course work.
Similarly, a degree in "Electrical Engineering and Computer Science" is not simultaneously a degree in "Electrical Engineering" and also a degree in "Computer Science".  Depending on the program (and, likely, the specific courses taken), it might be essentially one or the other, or it might involve learning some of both but missing some topics that most electrical engineers would so and also some topics that most computer scientists would see.  So if someone is hiring electrical engineers, it's probably not a good idea to just describe an EECS degree as equivalent without some explanation.  (Though that explanation might be, "at my school this was an EE degree" or "I took the EE focus, so it's basically an EE degree".)
Put differently: if someone asks what your degree is for a professional purpose, they're probably not deeply interested in the precise name of the program.  What they're interested in is what you learned in it, and that's the question you should be trying to answer.


text:
Is it possible to learn some basic mathematics using an app?
I am interested in developing an app for students that are starting a grade career involving mathematics. It is a real problem that they start with almost no knowgladge of basic mathematics and there is no time to teach it in the curricular courses. Is it possible to help they learn some basic properties of operations with real numbers like product, sums and exponents using an app? They are really confused about which operations are "allowed" and which are not. For example when is it correct to cancel two "x" or some doubts that involve operator's precedence. I know that behind this, there is a lack of understanding about the meaning of the equations they write. Do you think is it possible to impart this knowgladge with an app? Do you know any existing app that aims to do this? (i could not find, but I am not good at research).  Sorry for my bad english.

Consider asking this at Mathematics Educators Stack Exchange.

Later asked at Mathematics Educators Stack Exchange as I suggested.


text:
Pros and cons of having a Ph.D. advisor who is (possibly) younger than me
I applied for a Ph.D. position.
A new assistant professor who would join that university next year reached me and asked whether I wanted to work with him. I have been working for two years since my Master graduation. I think his direction suits my interest.
He began his Ph.D. right after undergraduate study so I guess he is probably at my age, 27 or 28, even younger. If we are both 40s, I might be ok with that.

Are you looking for someone to tell you how to feel, or...?

No, I just ask others how to feel. I feel exactly what I am feeling.

Right now the question is too broad and will generate opinion based answers. Better would be to ask if some of the concerns you have are valid.

What are you worried about exactly?

Swallow your pride. There is always someone much better than you at something and that's okay because it gives you opportunity to learn. If you would rather work with another professor for a legitimate reason then do that. But don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Your question is unclear - you mention “he is at my age, 27 or 28” then you say you are in your 40’s ... Teachers come across students of all abilities including those who are smarter in particular areas ... they still help them.

@neuranna Your edit introduce two problems. (1) As Solar Mike pointed out, what is the OP's age? The OP never said he is in his 40's in his original post. (2) The current version changes the merits of the original question. I understand your intention was to make it less opinion based. But, this edit brought in some confusion. To the OP, please look at the edit and do some edits if needed.

@SolarMike I roll back part of the original post. Hope this would make things a little bit clearer. To the OP, please look at the current version. Please edit it if it is not what you want to ask. Thanks.

There is no question.

@Mark There was a question in the original post. Someone edited it out. Now, it becomes no question. I did not want to start an edit war, so I just brought part of the original post back. Hopefully the OP will edit his post to make it clear when he comes back.

There is a Chinese proverb

學無前後，達者為先

One of the English translations I like is from the page

In Learning, there's no first or last;
When one learns and progresses fast,
Then the last shall become the first --
She would be my Teacher at last.

And another translation from the page

In learning there’s no first or last, but whoever becomes enlightened and understands relevant subjects first is the frontrunner in the field. (Paul D. Young)

As you get older, it is basically dead certain that you will at some point be reporting to someone who is much younger than you are.  Think about why that has to be true.  If you're still stuck, ask yourself how old you think your supervisor will be when you're in your 60s.  You need to get over it.

I think the research interests and experience of a supervisor is more important than their age (and sex, race, etc).