text:
Should I cite or quote?
I seem to be in a dilemma when it comes to citation and references. I am implementing and improving an algorithm, and therefore I must state the steps of the algorithm. I would also like to use the definitions they used and there is not much room for paraphrasing. If I paraphrase it, it would be weird since the formulation is very specific. This is a general question: when implementing some algorithm in a paper, would I cite the definitions or should I quote?

The standard dichotomy of quoting vs. paraphrasing makes sense for prose (where an idea can be expressed in many ways), but generally not for mathematical equations: F = ma cannot be meaningfully paraphrased.  An algorithm straddles the boundary (which is a source of much intellectual property difficulty): in some ways, after all, an algorithm can be thought of as a rather extensive equation.
A prose-style block quote is not appropriate for an equation, and I would argue that it is likewise not appropriate for an equation.  What I instead tend to do in this circumstance is say something like, "Here is the definition of Algorithm X, as reproduced from [citation]:" and then state the definition.  If I am adjusting notation or making other such presentation changes, then I will replace "reproduced" with "adapted."  This gives the citation and makes it clear that you are using somebody else's formulation, without breaking into a prose-style quote (even better is to place it in a figure or table).
The explanation of the algorithm, on the other hand, is prose, and that you should write yourself, paraphrasing and adapting for the context in which you are discussing the algorithm, which is no doubt different than its original presentation.

Thank you for the answer, the problem with me is the method section, I am trying to define the algorithm as it goes and then I branch into my own optimization. Should I also use the statement "here is the definition of algorithm x...." each time I want to go back to the algorithm. I imagine it will be a hassle to read.

@Engin007 you only need to explain it once. If the reader forgot, they can always turn back the page.

@Engin007, go read a bunch of ACM TOMS articles until you find a style you like and replicate it for your paper.

Thank you @BillBath you have got me on the right path. I am still confused but this is only due to not knowing how to put the formulation together.


text:
Is it possible to keep publishing under my professional (maiden) name, different from my married legal name?
I have a question about my choice of name for publication.
I recently got married and legally changed my name to my husband's surname (for example's sake: from Hunter to Jones).
So, despite legally being Ms Jones now, I would quite like to use the hyphenated name Hunter-Jones in the professional context and in publications.
This is so that people realise that it is still me and so that I can somewhat keep my maiden name.
Is this possible or do I have to use my legal name professionally and when publishing?
Thank you for any help

See related http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9003/indicating-a-name-change-after-publication

Anecdotally, I know several people who use a wrong name (more precisely, a variation of their name, which they never legally carried) on their publications. The reason being that most publishers and libraries are absolutely terrible with (non-English) names.

I can't vouch for all fields, but in mathematics it is absolutely allowed, and not seen as unusual.

The idea @KonradRudolph describes isn't uncommon.  I know of an example where the author publishes using their middle name as a surname.  Unlike their true surname it's all-ASCII and easily (if badly) pronounced by speakers of most lamnguages written in the LAtin alphabet. It also happens to be a sensible surname in both English and their native language.

Please clarify what you mean by "legally changing your name".  In the US, a marriage certificate is enough for a person to have an "automatic" AKA filed on their original name, rather than a complete name change.  The government sees you as Ashley Hunter, AKA Ashley Jones.  Your maiden name is not removed from your identity.  To have your name "legally changed", causes a new birth certificate to be issued with the new name.  In this case, you are no longer the old name.  This distinction would make a big difference in the appropriate answer.

@Keeta - USA is weird once again.

Yes. You get to decide what name appears on your publications.

The same ia true for the inverse. Renowned political scientist Beate Kohler-Koch continued to write under this 'pen-name' after her divorce.

This is the correct answer.
One small comment -- be very careful on being consistent on tracking which name you use. I know people who have had (for example) plane tickets in their "professional" name, when their passport has their "official" name, and they were not allowed to fly. Similarly for checking into hotels.

This is very common for married female academics. Many use different names professionally and socially.

In the same tune as @Ric: The best is to keep one name for all of your publications.  If you introduced a middle name (like Jane Abigail Doe), keep the pattern, too; and not change once to Jane A. Doe and an other time to J. Abigail Doe, for example.
In addition, consider a free registration at Thomson Reuters's Web of Science as ResearcherID (here) or -- better and -- ORCID.  By this you may increase the visibility of your research activities, not only should your name be a more frequently one (Smith, Li, etc.); but should you change to an other research institution. See, for example, the ResearchID bag by John Kitchin below: This allows everyone to see the bibliographic references he contributed: this compilation is accessible, regardless if one has subscriber access to Web of Science, or not. Obviously, ORCID has a database that lives from your contributions.

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Thomson Reuters, nor ORCID.  And while not affiliated with Kitchin's group either, it is simply historically the first page of a PI I saw with this badge, while researching for his contributions to Emacs' org-mode.

Also log in to google scholar and update records there.

I know a number of people who, although they legally changed their name upon marriage, continue to publish under their maiden name. I consider that a valid choice.

Legally and morally there is no issue. Whether changing your name is wise depends on your subject and the databases used in that subject. For example, in mathematics publishing under different names would be no problem, as MathReviews has a database of authors both identifying name changes and different spellings and differentiating between different authors with the same name. In other subject areas changing your name means that users of a database will not find all your publications. This will even be true for the change from Hunter to Hunter-Jones, as many computers will not see any relation between the two. So think about the databases used most often in your area, and search for people who changed their name.

You can use any name you like, but consider your goal. Many professionals continue to use their maiden name, if it is established. Consider it your 'business name'.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


text:
My adviser wants to use my code for a spin-off, but I want to use it for my own company
I am a PhD Student in computer science.
During my my first 2 years I developed an algorithm that seems to work fine in a certain field of applications.
My adviser recently told me that he is starting a spin-off with a colleague of a different department and that he plans, in a couple of years to use my algorithm in it.
Now, considering that:

I am not interested in joining my adviser spin off as an employee
My advisor can understand the outcomes but not the 100% of the logic of the algorithm
In the future I want to make my own company based on that algorithm

I am quite worried.
How fair (and common) is that an advisor plans to use the code of one of his to students to make money (none of which will finish in my pockets)?
The fact that he will use my algorithms, will limit in any way me to use them in the future for the same scope (in a different field)?
May talk to him be a good way to solve this problem?
I don't know how to deal with this fact.

Get a lawyer to read your contract and figure out what rights you have with respect to the intellectual property. (Note that some universities in the US have free Student Legal Aid programs.)

@ff524: Note, however, that student legal aid programs may not include intellectual property law as part of their services,.  Example.. I'd be kind of surprised if there are any that do.

Did you publish any papers about your algorithm?

We are in process of publishing it..now it is under review.
Also the code is on GitHub

@UlderiqueDemoitre Is it a public repository? If yes, what is the license that you gave the code?

Yesm it is public, and under MIT License, so that piece of code can be reused anywhere. But this is not really my issue, because also without any code, anyone can hire a developer and make him implement the algorithm publicly available on the paper.

Your question is a legal issue. It depends on the country you are in and especially what the contract says. It surely depends on what entity pays your salary. Also, while the paternity should be yours, the intellectual property may be the (lab/uni)'s one not yours. So you could even meet issue using "your" algorithm within your future start-up.

There are two different things here: the algorithm, and a particular implementation of it in code. If the algorithm is published, either as a paper or in your PhD thesis, it is in the public domain and anybody can use the intellectual content of it in any way they want. But (in principle, and ignoring any relevant university regulations that you have already agreed to) the copyright of the code you wrote belongs to you.

The university will also have a claim to the code if he/she used their machines, sat on their chairs, etc, during development, as a lawyer could reasonably argue that the code would never have been created without these things. Of course in the real world you could use your own computer, but in the courtroom there's essentially no way you could come away will full rights. Also, for what it's worth, never use the in-house university legal department if you think you have a legitimate claim.

@UlderiqueDemoitre If the code is under a permissive license and the algorithm is public, then anyone who wants to can use the code under the license or the algorithm however they want to. That was the outcome guaranteed by the decision to make the algorithm public and the code available under the MIT license. Anyone can build a company around it.

To be clear: your algorithm is published in a paper, and the implementation is public and published under MIT licence? That literally means anyone can use it for any purpose.

Your question is unclear.  In one place you say your advisor plans to use the algorithm; in another place it says your advisor plans to use the code.  Which is it?  This makes a critical difference.  Please edit the question to be more precise in exactly what is going on.  Also, when you have clarifications, edit the question to add them -- don't just leave them in the comments.  We want questions to be self-contained and stand on their own, so people don't have to read the comments to understand what you are asking.

@UlderiqueDemoitre Please post additional info and clarification by editing the Question rather than pasting as comments. Do not make the reader dig through comments to discern your complete question.

It's almost certain that you can't do anything that stops or seriously impedes his efforts; it's not an uncommon situation and you're very unlikely to profit from his usage. And it's almost certain that there's nothing that will stop or seriously impede you from doing the same thing when you feel like basing a company of your own on it "in the future". One possible question might be "Will it be too late for you 'in the future'?"

After reading the question, the answers and all the comments I still don't understand what you are asking and what you are worried about. Could you rephrase the question to clarify one and for all what is all about? Are you concerned for legal issues about the use of your code? Legal issues with your algorithm (which is not the same as your code)? Other non legal issues (which?)?

If the algorithm is patented, that could stop your advisor from using it. The MIT license does not expressly grant patent rights, as far as I understand.

Actually, I do not really understand your general strategy: If the code is published under MIT license and the details of the algorithm are published, then pretty much anybody can use this code or algorithm for his/her own company (as far as I understand the license, I am not a lawyer). So it is perfectly fine for your supervisor to use this code. It is also perfectly fine for you to use this code in any company you found (again, as far as I understand the license details).
Probably, a scientific algorithm will only be a tiny part of software that you want to sell or for which you want to consult. So I would not worry too much.

In fact, my question was not really about legal procedures: I wanted to understand how common is this and if this will limit my future usage of the algorithm itself.

What do you mean by "limit" if you don't mean it legally?

Yes, you're right

As I said: I wouldn't worry too much. To make money with software, you have to have a good algorithm, but there is much more to it. The aspects of implementing, usability, testing, promoting etc. are often vastly underestimated by people in academia.

Then what is your question?

@UlderiqueDemoitre You already made the decision to give your code away when you posted it on the internet publicly under the MIT License. So any question about “limiting” its usage now is nonsensical. You may choose to keep further revisions to yourself if your legal arrangement with the university so allows. Indeed, your publishing publicly and under MIT license may or may not be a violation of your obligations to the university (I don't know) – All this should be considered before publishing, not after.

We have a couple of PhDs on rolling loan to our company (part of a knowledge transfer gov't scheme). They're incredibly smart people but utterly clueless when it comes to business realities. The truth is that even if we told the world how we do what we do, it would take years for a 20-man team to turn that process into a robust, tested, accredited piece of business software suitable for sale to Enterprises. We couldn't do what we do without the algorithms, but they're still a tiny, tiny part of the whole operation (and not even the most important).

@BasilBourque actually the "limiting" question is not now nonsensical.  Assuming the OP owns the copyright to the code base then OP is free to revoke the MIT license, and or release using multiple licenses.

@emory you can't revoke the rights you granted, unless that's specifically part of the license - and in the case of the MIT license it is not. People who obtained the code through the MIT license can continue to use it and distribute it further under that license.

@emory Please post an Answer explaining how a copyrights holder can withdraw content already published in public under the MIT license. Include citations showing how anyone having obtained such published material lose their rights to continue using and republishing that material.

@JeanHominal sorry for copy/paste error.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/135457/36855

Taking a slightly different tack from @ff524's comment on your question, I strongly recommend you consult with university legal staff. A previous advisor of mine owned a business outside of the university. He had made particular legal arrangements with the university to ensure that no IP (intellectual property) was being taken between the two businesses, and any IP that was being used was documented and accounted for. Neglecting to do this puts your advisor on the path to lawsuits, and suffice to say, "thar be dragons."
I won't even try to comment on your own liability in this situation, because I Am Not A Lawyer™. This is a legal matter; consult a legal expert.

Yes, he does need to talk to the legal staff, but he also needs to keep in mind that his personal interests may well not align with those of the university, and his own representation might well be appropriate.

"Consult with a lawyer" and "Consult with university legal staff" are two entirely different things. Let's not pretend the university is a disinterested party, or that the advice would be neutral.

@smic - Fair enough. Fact is, though, given that the university (almost certainly) has partial ownership to any relevant IP, and given that (almost certainly) he can't afford his own lawyer, I would definitely start with the university legal staff, as they do this on a regular basis and can—and frequently do—give very sound legal advice.

@smci +1, if the university has its own agenda, advice given by them can be very bad (I say this from personal experience, unfortunately).

@eykanal: not all universities have dedicated legal staff, esp. non-US, and even when they do many of them are crap. In any case, don't expect them to care about, understand, let alone advise in, the researcher's interest.

There's a three-way legal conflict here: student, advisor, university. As a student, contacting the university makes sense. You have a reasonable case to demand that you're treated at least equally. They might think of their own interest first. That is reasonable. You just want them to be fair towards everyone else.

Not even sure this is an answer.  Talking to the university is probably the last thing you want to do until you know your options.  Talking with a lawyer is expensive and just not an answer...  He is not in legal trouble, he just needs legal advise.  People other than lawyers are privy to laws in most countries and people like the OP would have a hard time finding a good copyright lawyer.

Your university will have an office that deals with the transfer of intellectual property. You need to talk to them.
You need to research your agreement as a student with your university.  In many cases, the University is the assignee of your intellectual property.  This doesn't mean that you are not the developer, and that you're not entitled to any proceeds/licensing fees/etc. that might result.  It means that your share might be predetermined by agreement, and you might not have any say as to what the university does with the intellectual property.
My suspicion is that it's likely that your adviser is not entitled to use your code without some licensing agreement with the university, though the university might choose to issue him that license at no charge as part of their spin-off agreement.
I'm not sure if your agreement with the university allows you to just pick up an algorithm that you developed as a student and use it.  You might need to license it from the university as well-- in which case, your interest involve making sure that any licensing agreement between the university and your mentor is a NON EXCLUSIVE license.
I am not a lawyer.  If this is valuable stuff, I suggest you hire one.  In any case, I strongly recommend that all this stuff gets hashed out ASAP, for the benefit of you, your mentor, and the university.  For all concerned, this needs to be bulletproof, and the software will need to be able to hold up to a licensing audit.  Nobody would like a lawyer to come in and shut down a business with a cease and desist.
If you used significant non-university resources to develop the algorithm (i.e., your own computer, a compiler you paid for, etc.) you should make a list of this and keep it handy.
This is tricky.  I suspect that if things go as routine, the university and your mentor's company might not make this bulletproof, leaving them open to legal action on your part.  Just by bringing it up, you might force them to cover their bases, and hurt your own interests.  Once again, if this is valuable, you need to hire a lawyer, and I suggest you do it BEFORE approaching the university.

+1 for this answer for the last sentence: "Once again, if this is valuable, you need to hire a lawyer, and I suggest you do it BEFORE approaching the university" -- preparing yourself before alerting them that they need to protect their own interests might give you the advantage you need to make sure you still end up with the right to use your own code.

@DoktorJ, & ScottSeidman: The time to be thinking about the legal issues was prior to submitting a paper (with algorithm) for publication and making the code publicly available. Once the code is publicly available with a specific license (e.g. MIT), a considerable amount of the legal situation is already defined. There is, of course, the issue as to any preexisting agreement with the university and if the person who made the code available under the MIT license had the right to do so (likely they did). However, if there were such agreement, the principals should already be aware of it.

Ah I missed the comment where he clarified that it was MIT licensed. That said, being so, he shouldn't have to worry about his own ability to use it -- the same MIT license that lets his advisor use the code will also let him use it (this is of course a generalization, but you get the idea)

If you look at it from purely economic perspective, you have two viable choices here:

To start a company as fast as possible and beat your advisor to it.
Innovate and improve your algorithm over the next two years so the current version becomes obsolete and then use the new version for your business.

Do not waste time and money on legal squabbles. Even if you patented your algorithm or published it under proprietary license, it still wouldn't be worth fighting a legal battle with your advisor for it. Why? Because if there is really any value in it, 10 more companies will gracefully clone your algorithm and flood the market leaving you and your advisor behind. On top of that, suing someone over software patent infringement rarely pays off. This wikipedia page can give you a sense of what it's been like.

I think this is the most practical answer.  Beat them to the punch. If your personal financial status is like most graduate students, you don't have the money for a legal battle.  To avoid future ownership issues, use the algorithm as published in the paper, re-code it from scratch on your own time off-campus, and use a computer that is not owned by the university.

And document this entire process in case someone tries to bring it up later.

@Jesuisme This assumes that the publication of the algorithm and release of code were OK in terms of prior obligations to the university.  If there is any grey area at all, then the university's first step may well be a lawsuit alleging the opposite, which a startup probably would not have the time or resources to fight effectively.

@AndrásSalamon I agree it is a possibility.  I'm not a lawyer and I can only speak from my experience in the US. The university would be required to send notice of infringement before starting a suit.  And in most cases, after receiving the notice of infringement, a licensing agreement is reached.  From the start, the right way to do this would have been to license the algorithm according to the school's policies. But the OP is in a situation where the most profitable option (given they want to start a company with the algorithm) is to do it first.

Depending on the University's standard licensing agreements, OP may not have the rights to use his or her own code any more.

Taking another angle based on your comments, having released the code under an MIT licence means that anyone can utilise it for commercial or non-commercial uses (see this other stackexchange question). However, they must include proper attribution and inclusion of your license in any distribution.
Namely, there shouldn't be any ambiguity over the creation of the algorithm and your name should be included in their company's distribution (as included in the license). If this wasn't the case, that would be a legal issue. If you were to implement it separately to your advisor in years to come, you'd have as much right to it as them, as long as you didn't infringe on any of their implementations.

My reply is based on the premise that the results of scientific research work should be made available, without restriction, to all of humankind, and thus no one - neither your advisor nor yourself - should be able to benefit financially from monopolizing such an algorithm or restricting its use.
That is not to say that you, or him, or your university, should not start companies which do commercial work based on that research (*) - but certainly don't base them on restricting access to knowledge and insight. You could further improve your algorithm; you could develop useful products based on it; you could offer services involving it; and so on.
As for your questions:

How fair is for an advisor to use his student's code to make money (none of which will finish in the student's pockets)?

If that code is publicly accessible - as fair as it is to "make money" in general. That's doubly true if the algorithm was the result of funded research (which, if you're a Ph.D. candidate, is most probably the case). However, if most of the effort towards making that money was actually producing that code, then it becomes less fair - but then it's more likely that it's not fair for any of you to make money (since you're probably doing it by patenting or close-sourcing etc.)

How common is for an advisor to use his student's code to make money (none of which will finish in the student's pockets)?

It happens occasionally, in my experience anyway. That's not nearly the worst thing advisors do to their advisees.

The fact that he will use my algorithms, will limit in any way me to use them in the future for the same scope (in a different field)?

It shouldn't - but just check the licensing. You should do well to publish the code someplace like on GitHub or BitBucket and with a nonrestrictive license; then if a bunch of people are using it, the cat will be out of the bag and even if someone has some legal argument to make against the public use of this code they'll likely not try to pursue it anyway. Set your code free!

May talk to him be a good way to solve this problem?

The thing is, the question of whether there's a problem at all, and if so, what the problem actually is, is not clearly and consensually resolved, and people who don't agree on nature and the very existence of a problem are unlikely to "solve" it.

(*) - That's another question on which I have strong views which are beyond the scope of this question.

+1 for arguing about funded PhDs, most of them do have clauses about the availability of produced work.

@grochmal: I was only referring to the morality rather than the legal obligation, but that's a valid point as well, I guess.

File a patent first, and then submit your paper for review.
If your algorithm is published before the patent filing, you can't patent the code and use it for profit; this is the case unless your algorithm has been public for less than 12 months.  In the USA, there is a 12 month grace period between public disclosures and patent filings. I believe, but do not quote me on this, that the EU has no grace period post public disclosures.
I had a professor publically disclose a material/scheme/application that myself and a few others conceived.  The intellectual property was lost because of this motion.

The EU case is mostly irrelevant, as there are no patents on algorithms & software in the EU (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_European_Patent_Convention). While such patents have been issued anyway in the past (typically in connection to some claims about hardware), this is a very brittle business, so probably nothing that a private person would want to file.

Filing patents take too much time and money for most graduate students.  And you'd have to ask an IP attorney if the algorithm is patentable given that it's already published under an MIT License.

Furthermore, the OP is probably regarded as a University employee and with that a portion of the intellectual property of his work belongs to the university as well. At least that's the case in Europe...

@Dux This kind of thing really does't generalise across jurisdictions.  For example in the UK students are not generally considered employees, principally because the main sources of funding aren't considered to be a salary. Of course the UK won't count as Europe much longer, but that's a different issue.

How can he file a patent on something that's already been published?   AIUI patents can only be filed on things that specifically have not been previously disclosed.

This depends completely on the laws your university operates under. In some legislations it is the default that it is the university that owns any legal rights, but in some others it's not true but rather the teacher / researcher who owns those rights exclusively. The fact that the code has already been published could be more of a worry in the case the local laws are so restrictive that the researcher or groups are not in power to make those calls on their own.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Is it normal for professors to not have families or not spend time with their families over the holidays, due to pressure of work?
My sister is a professor.  I was visiting her over Thanksgiving break and my father (who is also a professor) told me not to hang out with her because she had a grant proposal due.  Is this normal for professors or is it just my family?
This happens almost every time we have a family reunion, and my father never wants me to talk to my sister because she always has some sort of deadline.  It gives me serious doubts about going into academia.

Sure, it's normal. It's also normal for professors to have families and spend time with family over the holidays. Some professors (like my advisor) even invite their PhD students (who might be mainly international students) over to spend Thanksgiving  with them and their family. Different people take a different approach to work-life balance. It's not clear what kind of answer you're looking for here.

Yes, its common.

(The first answer to this question might answer your question, if you're looking for hard numbers.)

FWIW this is not academia specific - it also happens in industry among engineers and programmers. Some kinds of work (especially heavily mental work) never leave you even if you've left the office. If you spend a lot of your time thinking about something you'll find yourself thinking about it even if you don't want to. For example in your sleep.

My sister is a musician. I was visiting her over Thanksgiving break and my father (who is also a musician told me not to hang out with her because she had a concert due. Is this normal for musicians or is it just my family? ...  It gives me serious doubts about going into music.

Yes, this happens in any profession where there are specific deadlines for work and where it is expected that work will be completed by the individual in their own time.  Lawyers, accountants, architects and many others experience this.  Likewise most people who are self-employed will find themselves in this position frequently.
Of course, one can argue that maybe your sister could have managed her time and workload better so as to be available for Thanksgiving.

@ÉbeIsaac I don't think common is normal

I'm not sure about, are you realy interested in is it normal or not? Since the answer is ofcause it is normal, but to me it looks like you didn't wanted to know it is "normal" and most comments/answers are aware of that and making fun of you. So would you clarify: You really want to know this is normal or unnormal behaving? Or you were more interested in an answer about this is the usual case or it isnt?

You might consider asking your sister, if you can get permission to talk to her.

What’s definitely not normal is your father not wanting you to talk to your sister.

Well quite, you might consider that your sister is a university professor and can manage her own schedule without her father's help.

FYI: How much time do professors have to do research on their own?

...my father ... told me not to... How old are you? We can guess about your sister's age, but your age might have different bounds.

If you replace "professors" with "people" the question would still work but all of a sudden be off-topic here. Are you sure you're asking what you want to ask? We all have lives and sometimes we're too busy to meet people, regardless of our actual occupation.

To me it sounds very harsh of your father to tell you not to talk with her; it's harsh on you but it's probably even harsher on your sister. Does she know that your father discourages you from talking with her and what does she say/think about that?

Has your sister ever asked you not to talk to her because she's working on a deadline? Or has this information only come through your father? If so, why is your father speaking for her, and does she know/approve of what he's saying? The seeming lack of direct communication here is worrying. Does your father not believe that your sister can decide for herself (and communicate to you) whether or not she wants to spend time with you? And since you seem to be getting this info from your father rather than her, do you think your sister is capable of deciding/communicating this for herself?

It gives me serious doubts about going into academia.

Let me try to put your mind at ease about this by first of all answering a slightly different question from the one you asked: it is very, very, very normal for academics to have families, and to spend a very good amount of time with their families over the holidays and at many other times.
Put differently: there are some valid reasons why a person may not want to go into academia, but this isn't one of them.
Now, getting back to your actual question: is it normal for people in academia to work too hard, at the expense of time with their families? Well, it is indeed somewhat common, at least in the U.S. But this is by no means unique to academia; it is also common in the U.S. for people in many other industries and occupations to work too hard. The fact remains that there are many many people, both in academia and outside it, who manage to lead a very successful and productive professional life while maintaining a healthy balance between their personal and professional lives. Your sister's situation sounds rather extreme and unhealthy to me. Deadlines are a common (though not universal) feature of academic life, but usually one knows a long time in advance that a deadline is approaching, and for most people it is not too difficult to plan ahead and finish a project sufficiently in advance of a deadline to make allowance for things like holidays, family reunions, or any other commitments or plans. If your sister isn't doing this, I can think of several possible explanations:

Your sister is a young researcher who still hasn't polished her skills of managing a complex schedule. She will improve with time.
Your sister is the kind of person who is most productive under the pressure of a deadline. She may also improve with time as she finds that such things interfere with her personal life, or she may remain like this indefinitely.
Your sister has poor relations with you and/or other members of your family, and simply prefers to do work (or to pretend to do work) during family gatherings.

While some of these possibilities are indeed troubling, and you have my sympathy for the frustration that this is causing you, they are unique to your particular family situation and are by no means indicative of a general trend in academia. As I said, academia is a big place and you will certainly find in it all sorts of people leading all sorts of lifestyles, both healthy and unhealthy. If you are considering going into academia, I would advise you to make the choice based on whether you feel that this is the right decision for you given the lifestyle that you plan to live, and to not consider the examples of your sister and your father to be representative of anything.

Could it also be pressure from the father? Perhaps she doesn't need to spend that time working be he feels she won't be successful if she doesn't.

The extent to which academics lead deadline-driven lives varies tremendously.  It differs between fields (even otherwise similar fields; for example, theoretical computer science tends to have far more paper submission deadlines than pure mathematics does), between types of institutions (such as research universities vs. liberal arts colleges), between career paths (such as running a research group that requires substantial ongoing funding vs. doing individual research on a theoretical topic), etc.  There's also a large factor of personal taste: some people thrive on deadlines, while others try hard to avoid them.
It's also worth noting that deadlines often repeat in cycles.  For example, yearly conferences typically have submission deadlines at the same time of year, as do certain funding opportunities.  Which conferences or funding opportunities are most important/relevant vary between people, so two professors could have completely different schedules of deadlines throughout the year.  It's possible that your visits with your sister happen to line up with a pattern of deadlines that matter to her.  That would be unfortunate, but not necessarily representative of the rest of her time.  In my experience deadlines are not particularly likely to coincide with holidays.
If you are curious you could always ask your sister (or, for that matter, your father).  For example, "I noticed that you often have deadlines around Thanksgiving.  That sounds pretty stressful - is this typical for how you spend your time?  What's your job like on a day to day basis?"

I used to work as a union rep for an institution which employed a lot of academics. I had trouble getting many of them to actually take much of their holiday allowance for family time simply because they were too engrossed in their work. Success in academia requires a rare level of dedication - that may be what's at work here.

No, it's not normal. Is your sister a property of your father? Your sister telling you "sorry brother, I have this awful deadline, how about we spend some time two weeks later?" is perfectly normal. Your father deciding when you are allowed to talk to your own, grown-up sister is not normal.
And it's not about having time, it's about controlling your family.

+1 The question has ample information, like "my father... told me not to hang out with her ... and my father never wants me to talk to my sister" That is clearly sounds controlling, and it doesn't sound normal, unless the sister professor happens to be a teenager or is for some reason afraid to talk to her little brother, or the brother won't take no for an answer & re-schedule visiting his sister later.

-1. Judging situation and dynamics of the OP's family is not the purpose of the question, and therefore any advice is likely to lack critical a lot of information.

@Xen2050: it could be controlling, but it’s easy enough to imagine other explanations too — e.g. the OP is a bit tactless and doesn’t notice when their sister wants time to herself to work, but the sister is too polite/shy to tell OP “stop bothering me”, so the father is the one who passes on the request.  We have a one-paragraph account of one person’s side of the story.  It’s really not enough to judge what’s going on.

You are right about us not knowing what's behind the scene. So if it's about controlling, it has little to do with academia as such and OP doesn't have to be afraid of it. If it is about academia and lack of time though, it may mean that this area's Academia od this family's field of research really limits one's personal time.

+1 while this question is more suitable for SE Clinical Psychatry,  my uninformed guess is that the family is at least disfunctional (apologies if there is a culture where a father decides if two grown up siblings can talk to each other)

The answer depends on the referential for normality. This behavior is both about dedication and deadlines. @Anonymous Mathematician was precise about deadlines. Deadlines might be about outer pressure.  I will add a word about dedication.
It is not uncommon among other professions (musicians, chess players, philosophers, some religious persons are common examples) where some practitioners (not all) have a strong inner drive to progress, up to very extreme forms. I tend to believe that those professions are biased toward very dedicated persons. So the "normal behavior" might be different. I have a mathematician friend who, on vacations by other friends, spent whole days at home working on a book. Sometimes, he does not eat, unless somebody cooks for him. Not he cannot cook, nor exploits others. He is concentrated on something "more important", and will not complain. One of my close colleague, who I respect a lot, recently complained that another colleague  "never works nor answers" between friday evening and monday morning.
If you want to understand that, there are interesting books about the psychology of research and discovery. Scholars might be triggered by forces not quite understandable by others.
Yet, it seems that this situation hurts your feelings. I do understand the situation, I occasionally hurt feelings in my family with the same pattern. May I suggest you to ask your sister for a specific time where you could hang out with her when she is out of pressure?

This is very much culture dependent.
In European science system, it is common to require from a scientist to change a position (PhD, then post docs) every few years, with another position often available only in another city or another country. This may be problematic for the family: even if another side is willing just passively follow together, the researcher salary may not be high enough to get a residence permit (cannot support dependents).
Also, the chances of success strongly depend on achievements during the current limited time position, so the pressure is immense even without the head of laboratory doing anything special.
As a result, a scientist probably should be a kind of monk. My family, both scientists, lived de facto separated for many years before I ultimately decided to drop the researcher carrier and go into industry. It was possible to get the next position for me but again in another country.
From the other side, the European professor position is a very high position that is free from any limitations. However this position is so difficult to get that I advice not to count for that at all. Some countries have the highly limited number of permanent positions below professor, but the main strategy is always to keep the majority of researchers on a few year self-terminating contracts.


text:
Should I send reminder to a professor in a school I applied to, for an introduction email I sent two weeks ago?
I have applied to 4 PhD applications in Computer Science and I have sent an introduction email to a professor in each of the schools I have applied to. In this email I first introduced myself and then mentioned one of their papers I'm interested in, and at the end asked them for any time they can give me to meet them in person and talk to them about my future plans.
But, I just heard from one professor and the rest have not replied my email after two weeks. How could I write an email to remind them about my old email I sent them?
I googled and did not find a concise answer. Any help is appreciated.

yeah, I got the same question as yours. I have just received a reply from my professor after more than 5 days I sent out the email. so I upVote your question, I hope it will help.

Thank you :) I couldn't find any good answer out here. I hope I could find one here..

Why did you ask to meet with them in person if you are not already at the school?  Are you going on a grad school visit?  If it's a grad school visit after you've been admitted, they are much more likely to be willing to meet with you.

@Kimball - No, it's not grad school visit. I asked them to meet in person because all the time if professors are interested in you, they want to know more about you and ask for interviews, and since I'm very near to these grad schools I asked for meeting them in person, if possible.

As a busy professor myself, I personally appreciate getting a reminder email. I fully intend to reply to every email I get from a prospective student, even if only to say "Sorry, your research interests do not seem to be a good match for the work we are doing in my group." But in practice, life gets busy. I'm traveling. Or I'm booked solid with meetings and so I don't have time to immediate answer the 50 or so daily emails requiring responses. And so some emails fall through the cracks. Thus I appreciate receiving a single reminder email. Such emails help me do something I want to do: namely, be the kind of person who gives every serious inquiry the courtesy of a response. (A second reminder email is not necessary. If I haven't replied the first two times, there is likely a reason.)
As for what to write, anything short and sweet and non-accusatory should be fine. Personally, I prefer the polite fiction that perhaps I did not receive the original email. You know it's not true, I know you know it's not true, but in phrasing your note this way we agree to mutually overlook these facts. I'd suggest something very simple, such as the following.

Dear Prof. X,
I wrote you a letter a few weeks ago, but given the uncertainties of
  email I do not know whether you received it. Thus I am resending my
  note just in case.
With my best regards, Joe
[and then append the earlier letter here]

Generally speaking, I would recommend that you don't.
I think it is perfectly fine to send such an e-mail in the first place, but you should remember that these professors don't owe you a response. Admissions (at least in the US, in mathematics -- I would guess CS is the same) are typically handled by a committee, and many professors might prefer to wait until the committee has decided whom to admit before trying to recruit prospective graduate students.
However, you might send similar e-mails to other professors in the same departments. At least in my field, it is a good idea to study at a department where there are several professors with whom you would interact scientifically.
In the fall, such e-mails are more likely to get a response, since professors are trying to encourage strong students to apply. As it is now, since you have applied already, I would recommend waiting for an official response and following up if you are accepted.

First of all, most academics are busy people who do need to research on the top of the all the other duties they have at the university. So, some academics do reply late or even don't reply if their answer is no. Therefore, here for you it is important to get their attention and have an answer from them (either yes or no) before you send more emails/reminders with the possibility of no response.
The best bet to get the attention of a busy academic is send an email to the secretary of the research group, the academic is working for. In the email tell the secretary what is the best way of communicating with the academic, as you sent him/her an email and he/she did not reply to you.

Thank you for your answer. I may do this, but I asked how I could write a reminder email to a professor. Can you please suggest one reminder email?

@margol Ok updating my answer to be more clear :-)

Not all research groups have secretaries. Not all academics are parts of bigger research groups; some have just themselves and their students.

@BillBarth Not all students want to get their Ph.Ds in  the average universities. Most high rank universities that I studies/been to have number of secretaries for their research groups.

Who said anything about average? It think it varies a lot from university to university and department to department. Also, from my experience, if they're that big, they also have websites where they post openings (RA-ships) for students and probably will not respond if they don't have openings.

@Bill Barth - I do agree with you. Could you please help me and tell me how I could write a reminder email?


text:
How to proceed when a mathematical result contradicts existing literature?
An author has proven an interesting mathematical result, but notices that this result contradicts existing literature.
Does the author have to find an explicit error or counter-example to the existing literature before considering submission? Can she submit the proven result to a journal, if she cannot find an error in her own proof?

Isn't that the whole point of like...academia and science in general?

It would be a good idea to first ask peers/colleagues to look at the proof, before sending it to a journal. Especially if the existing literature is widely accepted, chances are high that there is an error that the author simply can't find on her own. It is, of course, still possible that the literature is wrong, but better save than sorry I'd say.

If I understand correctly, you have two contradictory proofs (one yours, one in the literature) and you cannot find an error in either one. I am not a mathematician, but it sounds as if at the moment you do not have a result. Either proof could be the one with the error (though perhaps not with equal probability...), and you need to determine which is which before you can draw your conclusions.

An additional way to check for errors (yours, or the existing paper) would be to send your work to the author of the existing paper.

Possible duplicate of I believe I have solved a famous open problem. How do I convince people in the field that I am not a crank?

Question should clarify: Is this a concrete situation, or only a hypothetical?

@StephanKolassa: can you explain why this should be a duplicate? The questions seem totally different to me.

@yupsi: I believe that the answers to the linked question fully address the present question. Feel free to disagree and vote to leave open, that's how the system should work :-)

I recall an anecdote from the field, when a "Journal of manifolds" (totally made up) had a special subseries on k-smooth n-manifolds. They reveived two papers quite at the same time. One proved that k-smooth n-manifolds are fluffy. The other proved that k-smooth n-manifolds are definitely not fluffy. Both were published with an editorial that "Journal of manifolds" ceases to invite papers on k-smooth n-manifolds. Punchline: if you proof something has a property and at the same time does not have it, this very something is an empty set.

@Daniel R. Collins This is a concrete situation.

This https://mathoverflow.net/questions/234492/what-is-the-mistake-in-the-proof-of-the-homotopy-hypothesis-by-kapranov-and-voev discussion on MathOverflow seems relevant.

@OlegLobachev Other outcomes are possible. I once submitted a paper to a conference proving that no widget can cromulate. My co-author and I soon received an email from the programme committee saying, more or less, "Well, this is interesting. This other guy has submitted a paper proving that widgets can cromulate." The end result was a joint paper submitted to a later conference saying that widgets can only cromulate in the specific way that guy had shown.

@GEdgar : unlike recent fields like computer science, in mathematics it can happen that the original authors have died centuries (or millennia) ago.

kantadaou, cc: @Daniel R. Collins : then rewrite it as an actual scenario. Remove the "Imagine someone has proven..."

Related:  @YuvalFilmus's answer to "Why is writing down mathematical proofs more fault-proof than writing computer code?" at CS.ComputerScience.

Certainly the fact that there is a contradiction with previous literature must be prominently advertised; to do otherwise would be scientific misconduct. I would not be confident in publishing such a paper unless I found the mistake in the other paper, or could give a counterexample showing they are wrong.
After having carefully worked out the other paper and my own paper, and asked any experts with whom I have an established connection, I might contact the authors of the contradicting paper (if they are still active). After their response, or lack thereof, I would consider publishing a preprint and after that submitting to a journal. The journal is the slowest and most uncertain way of finding out where the problem is.

In response to your parenthetical statement: Surely it suffices that the authors of the contradicting paper are still active.

@Peter You should never trust a vampire, not even when they publish mathematics. (edited)

Forgetting the issue of publication, when two mathematicians find contradictory results, I think they have the collective intellectual duty to try to figure out what is going on.  Generally this should mean that one of the purported proofs is wrong; however, it could also be that an even earlier result (used by one or the other contradictory proofs) was incorrect; conceivably, it could even mean that a contradiction has been found in whatever foundations of mathematics were being used, but we probably shouldn't take this possibility too seriously.
Generally speaking, I would say the burden of figuring out the root of the problem lies with the author of the most recent result (were it only because the others of the other result might be retired or dead).  So you can't just go ahead and say "I proved not-X" when X appears in the literature, you need to analyse why and where the proof of X is wrong.
There are exceptions, however.  One extreme example would be that if you can find a numerical counterexample to Fermat's Last Theorem (that anybody can check with a computer), you don't need to explain where Wiles's proof was wrong (or even understand it).  More generally, if your proof of not-X is conceptually much simpler and/or much shorter than the proof of X found in the literature, I would say that this is a valid reason to shift the burden of finding an error to the authors of the latter.
One valid reason (at least, valid from the point of view of intellectual honesty: it might be another matter to actually convince anyone) not to analyse the proof of X for error is if you don't understand the techniques used therein.  If they are too complicated, this might fall under the "your proof is much more simple" category mentioned above.  But a genuinely problematic situation might arise if two mathematicians from completely different domains were to prove contradictory results, neither being able to understand the intricacies of the other's proof; third parties would then need to get involved to resolve the contradiction.
But in any case, any contradictory result you are aware of should be explicitly mentioned in a publication, and whatever reason you have not to analyse their proof in search of the error should be explained.

however, it could also be that an even earlier result (used by one or the other contradictory proofs) was incorrect Happened to me once :-) So, yeah, brace yourself for some digging!

Let me just note that Voevodsky (2002 Fields Medal) describes such a situation that he experienced himself (http://www.math.ias.edu/~vladimir/Site3/Univalent_Foundations_files/2014_IAS.pdf):

In October, 1998, Carlos Simpson submitted
  to the arXiv preprint server a paper called
  “Homotopy types of strict 3-groupoids”. It
  claimed to provide an argument that implied
  that the main result of the “∞-groupoids”
  paper, which M. Kapranov and I had published
  in 1989, can not be true.
  However, Kapranov and I had considered a
  similar critique ourselves and had convinced
  each other that it did not apply. I was sure
  that we were right until the Fall of 2013 (!!).
  I can see two factors that contributed to this outrageous situation:

Simpson claimed to have constructed a counterexample, but he was not able to show
  where in our paper the mistake was. Because of this, it was not clear whether we made
  a mistake somewhere in our paper or he made a mistake somewhere in his
  counterexample.
Mathematical research currently relies on a complex system of mutual trust based on
  reputations. By the time Simpson’s paper appeared, both Kapranov and I had strong
  reputations. Simpson’s paper created doubts in our result, which led to it being unused
  by other researchers, but no one came forward and challenged us on it.

EDIT (01/01/2018): Let me add another (IMHO, relevant and interesting) example. Asher Peres wrote (https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0205076):
" Early in 1981, the editor of Foundations of Physics asked me to be
a referee for a manuscript by Nick Herbert, with title “FLASH —A superluminal communicator based
upon a new kind of measurement.” It was obvious to me that the paper could not be correct, because it
violated the special theory of relativity. However I was sure this was also obvious to the author. Anyway,
nothing in the argument had any relation to relativity, so that the error had to be elsewhere...
I recommended to the editor of Foundations of Physics that this paper be published [5]. I wrote
that it was obviously wrong, but I expected that it would elicit considerable interest and that finding
the error would lead to significant progress in our understanding of physics. Soon afterwards, Wootters
and Zurek [1] and Dieks [2] published, almost simultaneously, their versions of the no-cloning theorem...
There was another referee, GianCarlo Ghirardi, who recommended to reject Herbert’s paper. His
anonymous referee’s report contained an argument which was a special case of the theorem in references
[1, 2]. Perhaps Ghirardi thought that his objections were so obvious that they did not deserve to be
published in the form of an article (he did publish them the following year [7])."

Why the hell does this answer get 22 upvotes when it basically says, in much less clear words, what I was saying from the beginning? Hmm.

@DanielGoldman: I don't quite understand your comment at two levels. First, as far as I can see, I gave this example before you mentioned it here "from the beginning". Second, the situation that you complain of may be, amusingly, a demonstration of the same reputation factor that is discussed here: people upvote "much less clear words"  than yours just because they were written by Voevodsky :-)

@akheteli, I meant I said, from the beginning of the answer, that a conflict with existing literature should not prevent someone from publishing. But now that I read the "answer" again, you never actually answered the question. But yes; reputation is interesting on this site, especially in that answers tend to get pounded once they go negative.

@DanielGoldman : The example from my "answer" is called "very interesting" in your answer. So maybe the specific and relevant example was more interesting for other people than general reasoning.

But it's not an answer. It's support for an answer, but you did not actually answer the question, which makes your reputation on this answer even more interesting.

@DanielGoldman : "But it's not an answer." This is just your opinion. According to https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer , "Any answer that gets the asker going in the right direction is helpful". I believe this specific example does get "the asker going in the right direction", although I offer Voevodsky's words, not mine.

I cannot determine, from your answer alone, what your suggestion is. Are you suggesting that this was an extreme case? Are you suggesting that he publish the result? You don't even suggest that the OP makes sure that the result is valid by dong any due diligence. But again, that is the nature of SE.

@DanielGoldman :Look, other people made all kinds of suggestions here, I am not sure I can add any new one, and it is not important which suggestions I agree or disagree with. I just added an example that is relevant and interesting. I guess it supports some of the suggestions and does not support some other suggestions. Everybody is free to make their own conclusions based on this example, and you are free to criticize or downvote my answer.

@DanielGoldman Without access to the entirety of the papers in question, there is no universal answer other than "it depends". This isn't useful, and SE doesn't want questions so specific the answers are only relevant to the OP.  Because of this, information on how these dependencies have played out before in the past is useful for helping the OP or anyone else decide how to proceed. And the overarching theme of the Voevodsky situation was: math is really, really, really hard.  So hard we're not all that sure if we're even doing it right. Finding the exact logical error can be extreme.

Actually, @zibadawatimmy, the answer I gave is universal: check your work for errors, have others do the same, submit for peer review if no errors are found. Don't just submit it without double checking for errors, but if nobody can find any, then your paper is just as solid as anyone else's, even if it is published.

As a reviewer, I would definitely recommend rejecting such a paper.
I can certainly imagine that there will be such cases where there is an interesting conversation in the community to be held. However, this conversation does not need to happen via journal articles. The appropriate course of action would be to first discuss such a situation with a few experts. If none of them can resolve the situation, post the article on the arXiv and draw attention to via conference presentations, etc.
If an apparent contradiction receives significant attention and yet is not resolved, then publishing an article describing the conundrum might make sense. This article would be very different from the one described by the OP though.

Thank you for your answer. I agree with discussing the result with other experts before submitting and if possible 'advertise' it to get opinions. Follow up question : would you reject it immediately or would you try to understand the error ? I ask this to understand whether submitting the paper is or not a good way to get new opinions on the proof.

If I were the referee I might try to understand the error, but I’d definitely be annoyed at the author for trying to make me do their work for them.

If the contradiction is genuine, there is no reason to reject the paper outright. Starting with this as your first thought seems exceedingly premature!

@WolfgangBangerth Well, in that case the original paper the question was about completely disappears and is replaced by a "ZFC is inconsistent" paper (or whatever other foundations are used).

@arno: I don't think the question was about this kind of problem. I read it as about a paper that states a theorem that is either wrong, or for which the pre-conditions have not been stated sufficiently rigorously (thereby suggesting that the theorem covers cases for which it is not correct).

This approach to publication would seem to bias the literature toward initial results.  There's no reason that the literature should advocate one side of a controversy over the other due to happenstance of publication order.

@Nat But we're talking about mathematics, not the sciences. All results in mathematics are supposed to be final, in the sense that once one has proven something to be true, it is true.

@DavidRicherby In any field, if a result is proved true, it is true. Otherwise, it is not really proved true. It doesn't follow that everything believed proved true is true - not even that everything accepted as proved true in the hallowed pages of mathematical journals. Or are you suggesting that the mathematical literature does not, and never could, contain any errors whatsoever?

@DavidRicherby Stuff doesn't tend to be that straightforward.  For example, P=NP's been proven/disproven quite a bit; such proofs often draw tons of scrutiny since it's such a well-known and important question, though it's pretty easy to imagine how similar work on more esoteric questions that few people even know about wouldn't get the same attention and get published without objection.

@Nat No, P=NP has never been proven or disproven. People have put forward all kinds of arguments but, so far, all of them have been found to be wrong, so none of them is a proof.

@cfr "In any field, if a result is proved true, it is true." That statement is vacuous when applied to fields other than mathematics. For example, experimental scientists don't prove things: they show that things are consistent with hypotheses as far as can be ascertained from the conditions observed. For example, Newton didn't prove his laws of motion; he showed that they are an accurate model of the situations he could observe. It later turned out that they aren't an accurate model of some situations he didn't observe (those involving velocities close to the speed of light).

@DavidRicherby It is not vacuous when applied to all other fields. Logic (which is part of philosophy, as well as being part of mathematics), computer science, physics (e.g. ideal gas laws) etc. all have proofs. It is also debatable whether all proofs are deductive, as I suspect you're assuming. In any case, so what? I don't see the relevance of this to the point I was making.

@cfr Because some philosophers, some physicists, some computer scientists and so on do mathematics. The property of proof being absolute except for errors is still unique to mathematics, regardless of whether that mathematics is done by somebody who calls themself a mathematician, a philosopher or something else. And, no, I'm not suggesting the mathematical literature contains no errors. That's why is said "proof is supposed to be final".

@DavidRicherby So logic isn't part of philosophy? Logicians are really doing mathematics? Try telling Russell, Whitehead, Frege .... Of course, there's a proof published in a computer science journal may be mathematics. But why think that means it is not computer science? A token can be an instance of many types. But, as I say, this has no relevance to the point I made anyway.

@cfr Of course logic is part of philosophy. But it's mathematics. Look, I write papers about theoretical computer science. It's absolutely mathematics. My papers are all written in the English language. Do you suppose I should say, "This is not English -- this is mathematics! Actually, no, it's computer science!" No. I'm a computer scientist who writes in English. And what I do is mathematics. There are also philosophers, physicists and people in all kinds of other fields who write in English and do mathematics.

@cfr So what is the point you're trying to make? To me, it seems to be that all of these people who are writing down mathematical proofs but work in philosophy departments or physics departments or wherever are not doing mathematics. I completely disagree with that.

"As a reviewer, I would definitely recommend rejecting such a paper." Well then, you should be fired.

@DavidRicherby RE: "But we're talking about mathematics, not the sciences. All results in mathematics are supposed to be final, in the sense that once one has proven something to be true, it is true.", this misconception came up in a HNQ post that was addressed in this answer.  In the comment chatroom, YuvalFilmus noted, "Unfortunately peer review isn't as rigorous as one might think.".  I guess that this is one of those things that isn't really obvious at first.

@Nat Please read what I wrote. I wrote, and you quoted, "supposed to be final". It was precisely because mistakes exist that I wrote "supposed to be final" rather than "is final." I have published mistakes that peer reviewers (and co-authors) didn't spot. I am well aware of these phenomena.

@DavidRicherby Ah, okay, I think that I may've misunderstood the point that you were trying to make in the original comment.  Could you clarify?

@Nat You said that requiring a burden of proof for mathematics papers that contradict earlier papers biases towards initial results. My point is that, barring mistakes, the concept of "initial results" is meaningless in mathematics: there are simply "results" and "non-results". It's not like experimental sciences where you might have an initial result based on a small sample that's later contradicted by a result based on a larger sample.

To publish a contradictory result (in maths, as opposed to natural science) without further explanation would be to say "there is an error in one of these proofs but I don't know in which". Unless the issue at stake is of very great importance that is probably not a statement that is interesting enough to publish. I would say you should be able to point out an error, a counter-example or a hidden assumption in the original work.
Where there is no straight-forward mistake in either proof a hidden assumption should be considered possible and may be of real importance. An example is Von Neumann's purported proof that the results of quantum mechanics could not be produced by a hidden variable theory. This was contradicted by the development by Bohm of his pilot wave theory (a hidden variable theory that does just that). It was then realised that Von Neumann's proof, while not containing an explicit error, applied only to local hidden variable theories, and the pilot wave theory is non-local. This is an important distinction that (whether Von Neumann himself understood it or not) had not been generally appreciated.
This was a case of a physical theory providing a counter-example to a mathematical result about physical theories, thereby revealing a hidden assumption.
In pure mathematics it would be very unusual to publish a contradictory result with no attempt to resolve the paradox. Even in the rare instance you are suggesting the axiomatic basis of the field may need to be revised, you would be expected to have an opinion on the correct resolution. (The history of set theory provides examples of this type).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_variable_theory#Bohm.27s_hidden_variable_theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Mathematical_formulation_of_quantum_mechanics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradoxes_of_set_theory

That's a great example. The graph of Bell's inequality looks like the graph of a hidden variable problem that I am familiar with so I immediately knew it was wrong but not why.

It is doubtless different in mathematics, but philosophers took several centuries before they nailed the problem with the ontological argument (for God's existence). People could show that something was wrong somewhere, but only with the development of predicate logic at the beginning of last century was it possible to say exactly what. This is not a case of only have two proofs of conflicting results, since people could show that the ontological argument itself was flawed. That was surely worth saying, even though the tools weren't available to nail the problem down.

We had a similar situation once we were trying to solve an interesting problem in Thermodynamics of interfaces. While all earlier reports claimed a specific quantity to be always negative, we consistently received a positive value.
We were skeptical and began to look critically at our work and also the earlier works. Such a situation in principle says something new is found which contradicts other. Most of the times you have to place your scientific arguments not just by stating why you are correct but also by at least speculation why others could have been wrong. (Please, keep in mind that others were well-renowned scientists who did good science. But we all make mistakes and most often correct them).
Why is it good to speculate what could be wrong in literature?

Provides a stronger proof and explicitly claims other people are wrong.
Shows authors knowledge that he had understood others work before he claims something about it. Particularly helpful if your speculations are more logical and scientifically sound. Even a marginally acceptable argument, if valid, is sufficient enough to convince referees and readers.
Attracts more readers, often speculating other works requires citing them. Having cross-reference to earlier works is hugely a good practice. Attracts also the scientists whose theory you refute.

By the way, in our work, we were happy to find a flaw in literature. We are now planning to prove our theory using multiple methods (theory, simulation, and experiment) before we begin writing about it. (That is why I do not provide details in this answer)

The higher problem with math, as opposed to non-deductive sciences, is that all the given information is explicit in the paper. If the authors of paper A find a contradictory paper B, then they must be able to show a specific logical error in one paper or the other. Not doing so is therefore a failure on their part.

The question is about mathematics, not about science.

@Arno I understand your point. But as stated in previous comment by Daniel. R. Collins, the problem requires strongly to find a flaw in previous works, as the results in a mathematical paper provide all information explicitly.  Which means you don't have to speculate but can rather provide solid proof of flaw if you are able to find one. And I definitely recommend doing so for the same reasons stated above in my answer.

As a practitioner of mathematics, I find this to be a good and useful answer, and I disagree with the first two comments (mathematics is a science; the "non-deductive" sciences are not void of "deduction"). Also, the comment of @fedja to the answer of Gro-Tsen shows that instead of the logical error being in one or the other paper, it might be in an earlier paper.

Been there, done that.
During my MSc thesis I found that some (quite perplex and rare) thing from a book did not work as described there. (To be fair, the book definitions were not wrong, but ambiguous, however, the examples clearly showed the intended approach.) The way I did it (slightly, but decisively different), it worked. I was very cautious (being a student) in formulating the thesis. But it worked out and I got my best grade on it.
Putting the careful formulations aside, the thesis was like "they try to do XYZ in a abc way. It fails, here is a counterexample. If you change XYZ to XYZT, it works, have a look." In my eyes it was and still is a rock-solid research result. That's how science is made.
PS: Oh, and this happened in Germany, so a MSc is not a sign of a failed PhD, but rather the standard degree.

Is the book or the thesis available online?

Yes. I was not going to rub the issue in the faces of the book authors', even if they are absent from here, hence the rather non-descript formulation in my answer. But at least my thesis is online.

Given that your thesis disproved their result some time ago, surely they (as members of the mathematical community as a whole) must be aware of this result?

The initial result was sort of marginal, the book was ~20 years old at the moment of writing the thesis. I would not be so sure, they are aware of me disproving them. I have seen a somewhat similar correction years after my thesis, and I am quite sure it was an independent discovery. So yes, the community is aware of the result. No, the community might not be aware, I was first. I have a priority time stamp on the thesis, which is heart-warming, but not much more. The thesis is also in German, this does not really help.

Why the downvotes?

Presumably because thepost doesn't seem to answer the questions, which are "Does the author have to find an explicit error or counter-example to the existing literature before considering submission? Can she submit the proven result to a journal, if she cannot find an error in her own proof?"

Sometimes, on further examination of the contradiction, one finds that both cases are true but that these cases are subtly different. The von Neumann proof above is an example. A trivial (formal because I don't remember an actual) example would if one result used an axiom system "A" with a seemingly simple extension "y" and the other used system "A" with the seeming equivalent extension "z" so that A+x gives results different from A+y whereas x and y may yield the same results if using B in stead of A.
This is probably covered above in the post about some not so obvious result used by both papers being questionable.

TL/DR: Peer reviewed literature is not doctrine. That a result contradicts "accepted truth" does not mean that it should not be published. All that matters is that the result be properly checked for errors. If there are no apparent errors, then let the academic community decide why there are two seemingly correct yet conflicting results.
If you find a result that contradicts existing thought, publish it. Whether or not a result contradicts standing thought should not affect its acceptance or rejection. Only the quality of the argument should have an impact. I say "should not" because it is sadly not always the case.
If you are not certain as to whether or not your conclusion is correct, find someone with whom you could discuss the matter and see if they agree. If you can find someone prominent with whom you can co-publish, and who can add to the argument to make it more robust, then you might want to look into that.
Automatically Wrong
There seems to be a bit of a suggestion that if it contradicts existing literature, it must be wrong. Now, I suppose in mathematics, it is usually relatively "simple" to verify a proof, but even then there can be errors. Make sure you know what you're talking about. Get some feedback. But do not assume that you are wrong because the current literature is against you. If this contradiction were in science rather than mathematics, even more the reason to not assume that you must be wrong.
Much of published literature, at least in science, overrides past literature. In science, we only assume that a theory is true, until we find evidence which contradicts it (Further discussion on the nature of science). Mathematical theory can be such evidence.
Again, if your thesis is well thought out, properly explained, and an expert in the field cannot find an error with your work, there is no reason to assume that your answer is wrong. Just because an existing answer is accepted by academia should not dissuade you.
Conflict Resolution
There has been a suggestion that before publishing the paper, it should be determined which position is correct. However, that might not be possible, or neither party may have an answer. Publishing a result, so long as it is not apparently flawed, allows the community of experts to become aware of the potential alternative and work on explaining the conflict. As a professor recently said, the main way in which experts in a field communicate is through peer review. To refrain from publishing because the question of whose position is correct has not been resolved would in some ways be withholding potentially useful information from the academic community.
Doctrine
David Richerby made an interesting case. He suggested that because the other theorem has already been accepted, it should now take additional effort to overturn it. However, there is nothing that seems to be wrong with either theorem (at least according to the OP). David's suggestion means that if the OP's proof were conceived and received first, and it were the other result that was later identified, somehow the burden of proof would switch and now it would require exceptional levels of justification to get that result published. In other words, the order in which the result was produced is the only thing that is changing, and yet somehow that change takes the OP's result from requiring extraordinary proof to requiring ordinary proof and takes the currently established result and demands that now it would need extraordinary proof.
When a result carries more weight, simply because it is already established as being "true" by a group of people, that result becomes doctrine. That is not how academia works. That is not how research works. The validity of a result, and the level of justification needed, is determined only by the result. So long as there are no apparent flaws, and the result has been reasonably checked for flaws, as all results for publication need to be, then the answer is obvious: publish and let the academic community work on resolving the conflict.
Dan Fox linked to a very interesting example. "In 1991, Kapranov and Voevodsky published a proof of a now famously false result." In 1998, someone came up with a contradictory result, but could not find the error in the original proof. Ignoring what would have been the apparent consensus advice of SE Academia, the result was published anyway. It was not until 2013 that an error was found in the original proof, and it might have taken a lot longer had Simpson not pushed the issue by publishing his own result.

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