text:
What should I do if someone is claiming my research on ResearchGate?
I've got a case where 90% of my academic publications are being claimed by a professor at another university with the same name on ResearchGate.  I've sent several email requests both direct and through ResearchGate messaging to ask him to remove those publications from his profile.  This has been over several months with no response.
At this point, I'm thinking of sending a registered letter to the professor and his department chair to correct what I see as academic theft through inaction.  However, I realize that ResearchGate is mostly at fault here.  There is no mechanism to dispute ownership once assigned.
Thought about doing a DMCA takedown notice of the offending pages.
What is the best way to resolve this?

given that research gate sends invitations falsely claiming to be from its users (for example a coauthor), it is likely that the professor is either ignoring your messages or that they go straight to his spam-folder. related question: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/24127/should-i-send-a-cease-and-desist-letter-to-researchgate/46604#46604

I would say ResearchGate is entirely at fault here.  Not that I'm defending them, but for some perspective: a related issue happens with Google Scholar.  Papers with similar authors and titles can get automatically conflated, and there's a paper I can't get out of my profile because I can't unmerge it from an actual paper of mine.  Google Scholar does not allow complete accuracy (and the citation data has many flaws).

@Kimball "not say ResearchGate is..."?

Make sure to call this misconduct "ResearchGateGate"!

@AndrewGrimm No, there was no typo.  I meant that, mostly likely, this is completely a result of the way ResearchGate does things and chances are that the other professor with the same name is blameless.

@Kimball -- It was confusing, because as written, the antecedent of "them" in "not that I'm defending them" is ResearchGate. Did you mean "not that I'm defending the researcher..."?

+1 x 2 for Kimball for pointing out that ResearchGate is creating the whole mess. Since you already know the name of the other researcher try calling him. The whole issue is hurting his and your standing.

I think the most important part of your question is the bit about "with the same name".
ResearchGate has very loose and rather questionable practices in how they manage their citation data, which tends to err on the side of inclusion.  Moreover, their terrible user interface makes it very easy for somebody to do things like click "add all" and end up with a whole bunch of misattributed publications.  In the little bit that I played with ResearchGate before giving it up as basically useless, it kept offering to give me authorship of papers by people with the same last name---not even the same first name.  It will also automatically add papers to your profile in some circumstances.
What I'm driving at is that, given that you and this other researcher have the same name, it's plausible that they didn't even do this intentionally and have just written off the whole ResearchGate mess.  The fact that they didn't respond to your direct email is more problematic, but again not necessarily damning---you may well be going into their "headache pile" or even their spam folder.
Given all of this, what I would suggest is a two step solution:

If you think you have standing to do so, send a DMCA takedown notice to ResearchGate: it's fast, easy, and might get the content taken down.
After that, just start ignoring the whole mess.  It's not worth your time and energy.

I fail to see how the DMCA would be applicable here. Nobody's copyright is infringed. Something has just been misattributed. That wouldn't be the first time something on the internet turns out to be factually wrong.

Wolfgang is right re: the DMCA --- it'll be good for getting rid of copyrighted content, but not for misattribution.  +1 for all the rest of the points though.

@WolfgangBangerth I've adjusted to say only to do DMCA if there is appropriate standing to do so.

As quoted directly from research gate, here is the solution

Our author match feature is designed to help you quickly confirm authorship of your publications on ResearchGate. The ease of this one-click process means mistakes can sometimes be made, so if another researcher has claimed your publication, it is usually the result of an honest mistake.
  To resolve this:
  Go to your publication’s ResearchGate page
  Click the Is this your publication? button on the right-hand side
  Tell us what’s happened in the box that appears and, if possible, include links to other places where your work is published.
  We take erroneous authorship claims very seriously and review each case manually, so please bear with us.

https://explore.researchgate.net/display/support/Authorship

The problem with this is that to do it one has to register with ResearchGate and risk the negative consequences of that.

@PeteL.Clark Is it possible to create an account just for the purpose of filing a complaint/correction, without fully registering as yourself? Or to contact them via email?

From the text mentioned in the question, I assume that the author I.e. User1653114 already has an account on research gate.. So he could simply follow the steps mentioned above and let the research gate guys fix the issue.

I think most people have come to conclude that ResearchGate is sort of a nice idea but not very useful in actual practice. I don't know anyone who really thinks it's great.
In other words, use your energies for other things -- if you claim on your CV and website that a particular paper is yours, then people will believe you. The fact that some other dude is claiming your papers on ResearchGate may be a nuisance, but it's not going to help that person either because they are clearly not written by them.

I know a head of a reputable American math department who thinks that ResearchGate is great enough so that the publications part of his webpage now directly links there.  (I tried to talk him out of it...)

@PeteL.Clark, it's good that you're not disclosing the identity of that nincompoop...

@PeteL.Clark: I'm sure they exist, but counter-examples do not negate a widely shared observation.

@WolfgangBangerth I think Pete was mostly sharing an amusing anecdote, not actually trying to offer a counterpoint to your answer.

I have seen no other way of being alerted to publications from particular groups/researchers... it's pretty awesome for staying up to date i think.  At least a few reputable prof's at my univ. have had their secretaries update all their pubs on RG - not sure that "most people" part is entirely true.

I'm pretty sure that the correct answer to any question involving ResearchGate is "just ignore it". As others have said, there is likely no malice in the other academic who has become associated with your work. There's a good chance that they're "ignoring" your email because anything about ResearchGate goes straight into the spam folder, where it (almost always) belongs.

A more physicsy way of saying this would be - just like the AdS-CFT correspondence in string theory, all academicians who have been around for sometime, are aware of the ReserachGate-SpamFolder correspondence! Classic point.

Reiterating essentially the same point made by other people: first, the person with the same name as you may have had no part whatsoever in giving the appearance that he/she is the author of your papers. Second, despite the disturbing popularity of such "metrics" (cf. @PeteLClark's comment), no sane person will trust such things... for more than one reason.
Again, at my own university, the local software akin to "ResearchGate" both ignores much of my work and "gives me credit" for random stuff that is not mine.
Just as one cannot spend one's life attempting to rebut false claims made on the internet... uh... you can't spend your life attempting to rebut false claims made on the internet. Specifically, the profit-motivated amoral people can generate crap far more efficiently than it can be cleaned up.
Yes, unfortunately, the future of academe may indeed be fatally corrupted into a "dystopia" by affection of "bosses/managers" for such "metrics". Too bad.
Bottom line: ignore it. It's a slightly-structured spam.


text:
Erratum on my bachelor Thesis
I have written a thesis for my bachelor degree and next week I have to defend it. The problem is that I found some small mistakes (not spelling mistakes, but small mistakes in equations, a wrong number in the abstract and so on) and one or two more significant problems.
Now I want to write an erratum on my thesis that handles six different of these mistakes. Is this too much? I don't want the jury to think that I was sloppy with writing the thesis or that I didn't check it before I handed it in (I did check it numerous of times).
So, is it normal that an erratum contains so much mistakes?

A thesis is generally a pretty big document, and it would not be surprising to have a number of mistakes even after several passes of editing.  If I were on your committee, I would be happy to see you submit such an erratum, because it would indicate that you are continuing to engage with the material and actually concerned about its quality, not just trying to graduate and leave.

Thank you for your answer. This is the first thesis that I also have to defend, so I was kind of worried about the mistakes that are still in it. But I think I am going to hand in an erratum now.

@Gregory, I wouldn't write a separate erratum document for this, but simply fix them in place in  the body of the thesis, unless there's some bureaucratic reason not to.

The probleem is that I have already hand in my thesis. I can not hand in another one. So, if there are any changes, the only thing I can do is write an erratum. I agree that correct the thesis itself is better, but it is too late for that.

@Gregory: that's what Bill means by bureaucratic reasons. In some other Universities you only hand a (final) draft of your thesis to the committee. The committee will make recommendations on your thesis and only after the viva, are you supposed to incorporate the changes (not just the ones you found but also the suggestions from the committee) and produce the final copy to be signed/deposited. // There are also universities where the committee first gives you some written comments before the viva, you fix the document, and then you defend. // Bureaucracy indeed!

I've seen a number of students come in to their viva with such a document in hand. It is commonly seen by academics as a bit cutesy-naive; it suggests that you have a conception of the examination process that any minor failing is going to lead to an automatic fail, and that examiners are incapable of grasping the "big picture" of your achievement. As such, it conveys a certain kind of perfectionism, precision, detail-orientation and small-picture viewpoint, which can be good in some situations, bad in others.
That said, I've never seen a bad student bring in such a document; it is always a sign of a good student. It demonstrates a certain confidence and analytical ability to find errors such as this; a weaker, less confident student wouldn't have the guts to come along and assert that they are confident in the mistakes that they have found. It therefore also communicates a kind of command of the material that suggests a high-functioning individual in the subject.
On balance, I think it is a good idea to bring it.

Why is it naive? Articles and PhD thesis include erratums when found. It would be bad to leave them unfixed, and have the next student that consults the work trip on them.

I don't think it is naive in terms of the scientific process, but it seems naive in terms of the examination process - it suggests that examiners aren't able to see past "silly mistakes" and get a big picture view of the depth of understanding demonstrated in the report. In terms of helping future students who read the report, it is, of course, useful (and perhaps institutions need to think about how such errata actually get into the archived copy of the report).

Whether or not there is any opportunity to submit the errata will depend largely on the rules of your institution. At some universities, there is a fixed time limit to hand in a thesis (such as 6 months after starting). In such a case, examiners may not be allowed to take into account any erratum submitted after the time limit (or else, any student who doesn't make it withon the time limit could just get around that by submitting the missing parts later as amendments). In such a case, I also wouldn't expect there to be any defined process for what the office where you hand in your thesis should do with an erratum.
Even if it is not ignored, I am not convinced preparing an erratum right after submission comes across as an invariably positive sign. In a way, it shows that you failed to finish on time and to decide at some point that some version, perfect or not, is the final one.
That notwithstanding, preparing an errata document for your Bachelor thesis might be beneficial for later steps where previous works you created during your studies might be taken into account, e.g. for Master study admissions.
In all, the number of mistakes you found is probably pretty normal. If you decide to hand in these errata in the first place, you do not need to worry that you will "reveal" how errouneous your thesis is; the degree of correctness will already have influenced your grade, while at the same time, a typical amount of minor mistakes for Bachelor theses has probably been expected and appropriately considered while grading, anyway.

I don't think this would be the case for the OP's case, that is closer to typos than missing chunks.

@Davidmh: In some universities I am familiar with, whatever has been handed in by the day of the deadline counts; anything else must not be taken into account for grading, no matter whether it's previously missing parts or just corrections for typos. Being able to prepare a document with an acceptable degree of diligence within the time limit (and scheduling one's work in a manner so this is feasible, including layouting, proofreading, etc.) is a crucial part of a Bachelor thesis, hence students who fail at that can well face some penalty for sloppy work, even if noticed later (too late).

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Why are some "online first" articles assigned to a journal issue much faster than others
While searching online, I discovered that some "online first" articles in a particular journal are assigned to an issue within few weeks. However, others in the same journal take several months or years. What is the reason behind this?

In the same journal, or different journals?  Some journals have longer backlogs than others.

Of course this varies with journal, as @NateEldredge points out. If within the same journal, does that journal try to produce curated issues on a related subtopic?

Thanks both for your comments. It is within the same journal. Well, it does not produce issues based on a specific subtopic. So, an issue contains many subtopics. Therefore, this makes me worried.

Is it possible that the journal wants to cover a broad range of topics in each issue and delayed articles are within the same sub-field?

I can't explain years, but for months: If the ones that take months appear alongside the ones that take years, then perhaps the journal is simply waiting for enough content to publish an issue.

What is a "first articles"?

Vote to close as "unclear what you're asking" because I don't understand what is "first articles".

There are several variations in process that I have seen that may be relevant here, any of which may strongly affect the time between an article going online and the time at which it formally appears in an issue:

The "online first" version of an article is often not quite the final version, and proofing and processing can proceed in any where from a day or two to multiple months, depending on the responsiveness and attentiveness of the particular set of involved authors, handling editor, and processing staff.
Some articles may be expedited to try to avoid a scoop or delayed in order to synchronize with a companion article still undergoing review and revision.
Even if an article isn't part of a dedicated special issue, the journal may choose to cluster or distribute topics and themes.
The computation of metrics like impact factor are still typically linked to formal issue rather than online first date, and a journal may play games with lead time on articles it thinks will become well cited in order to manipulate these metrics.
Finally, all of the above may be amplified by the fact that the article is already effectively published and accessible online, leading both editors and authors to be less concerned about when it is later bundled into an issue.

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

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


text:
Is it ethical to limit marks based upon past performance?
A professor has a habit of starting oral examinations by asking for or looking up grade averages and grades from other subjects and then taking them heavily into account when evaluating the student in question. For example, I was allowed to be even considered to get an A in Real Analysis III, because I got an A in Real Analysis II and had a good overall grade average.
Is it ethical or helpful to ever consider student's performance outside the course? If not, what about subjects tightly interconnected? But then, most mathematics is interconnected in one way or another...

I don't think that's fair. I think grades should be based solely on performance from that class alone. That's what you're receiving a grade for.

The answer to the letter of your question is of course that this isn't good. However, in the case at hand, the professor asks about prior grades. How was this taken "heavily into account" in deriving a final grade for the oral exam held? They told you that you qualified for an A because of prior performance, and others they didn't because they didn't have sufficiently good prior grades? Were prior grades part of an average they calculate? Or does the professor just know about prior grades?

@gnometorule Firstly, my question is broader and not limited to this anecdote. But since you ask... The exact role the prior grades played in deriving the final grade is not known to me, but I was explicitly told I qualify for an A only after the professor checked on my prior grades. The impression I got after consulting with others was that 1.) the relative improvement or lack thereof reflected hugely in the final grade (which impacted me, for example, very negatively), 2.) it influenced the kind of questions asked.

Is it ethical to limit marks based upon past performance? — Simply stated: No, of course not.

What country is this taking place in?  Classroom culture differs a lot throughout the world.  In the US, most major course practices should at least in theory be listed in the syllabus.  If this manner of assessment is not listed in the syllabus, students have a right to complain.  If it is, they have something to hold in their hand as they complain!

@PeteL.Clark This is not taking place in the US. Here, unfortunately, there are no "course practices" listed in the syllabus or anywhere else for neither this course or any other - these practices are usually communicated verbally.

I've had a half-dozen professors that made a point of not even looking at the name on an assignment/test while grading (or require it only be printed on the cover/answer sheet) so they could avoid such a bias! I've never encountered one who intentionally did the opposite!

If Math301 grade depends on Math201 and Math101 grades, then what if Math201 grade depends on Math101 as well? How do you adjust for this?

I don't think that what you have described in your answer to @gnometorule's question is exactly what the question says. It seems normal that questions in an oral exam, at least at the start of the exam, should be pitched at the right level based on knowledge of the student's performance. Usually if you answer correctly questions will get harder and vice versa. You say that you were told you qualify for an A, and also that you were penalised for not having enough relaitve improvement. This seems contradictory and like you haven't understood the whole situation.

I tried playing devil's advocate and writing an answer of why it is ethical, but every argument I came up with had major flaws. This is definitely unethical.

Do you know that prior grades were a factor in determining current grade? i.e. said Professor stated as much? If not, what makes you think it isn't for the innocent purpose of e.g. "Good job, you've come a long way since Addition 101!", or "I know you're capable of better than this, make sure you understand division for the final exam and you could still get an A overall."?

This might be ethical if just taken as a starting point in an oral exam. If a student has performed poorly in prior classes, i might start with a few questions that are easy to answer, to diminish his nervousness; if she had an A in math 101 and 201, i might start the math 301 exam with "I know you're running for an A, so let's omit the easy questions and plunge right into the hard stuff". Are you sure your professor didn't do something like this, instead of factoring your previous performance into current grades?

This professor is being intellectually lazy. It's the old "Well, he/she/it has done well in the past - they must be doing well here" - or the converse: "Hmmmm, not historically a good student. This person can't possibly have done exceptional work in my class!".

.... I passed a semester with mostly Cs because my dad died that semester.... So the fact I had that happen mid-curriculum would mean I was barred from getting better results? Seriously, I'm happy my teachers didn't have that crappy system, or I couldn't have graduated with honors..

What you describe is, in my opinion, horribly unethical!
Yes, past performance is often a predictor of present performance, but there are so many other factors involved as well.  What if a student did poorly before because of any number of reasons, but have since stepped up their work, caught up, and really mastered the material?  Or what if the student has been focusing heavily on this subject and has consequently fared more poorly in another subject?
It is manifestly stupid and counter to the entire notion of education to ignore good work by a student in one location simply because the student did bad work in another course or another time.  Ethical violations are a different matter---it is reasonable to be suspicious of a student with a history of cheating---but grading a student poorly for having the audacity to exceed expectations is a rank betrayal of the most basic responsibilities of an educator.

Never mind that sometimes people have to choose a class to focus on, if they're all time-intensive courses. Sometimes grades fall simply because they had a really unbalanced semester.

Not to mention, a 'predictor' of performance does not mean it is part of that performance.

No, I do not think that basing grades on past performance is fair. Grades should be based on the performance being graded, and it should be clear up front what exactly is being graded.
(Of course, if the syllabus explains that a grade will be based on homework and a final exam, then of course the grade would fairly be based on the final and the past performance in homework.)

One possibility for using past performance would be an oral exam. If I know the candidate sitting in front of me is very good or very weak, I might ask more targeted questions - focusing on basic definitions for a weak candidate, or on advanced understanding for a strong one, to avoid wasting everyone's time with questions that are too easy or too hard. If (!) the oral exam can then follow the natural development and the examiner adapts the difficulty of subsequent questions to the candidate's performance on earlier questions, then I'd argue that this kind of "customization" is acceptable.

This approach seems unethical for the same reason, as it seems to assume the current strength of a candidate based on prior performance. Wouldn't this be solved more conveniently by asking what is the grade you would like to receive and adjusting the difficulty accordingly? One disadvantage of this approach I see is that it could allow for an overly confident student to unnecessarily undermine his position, but it is still better than giving him no control at all make ill-founded assumptions.

Or just start asking questions that are moderately difficult, then scale the difficult up or down based on the responses you get.

@mirgee I don't think there's much of an ethical problem with Stephan's method, assuming that he rapidly moves on to more advanced questions if a candidate who did badly at Widget Studies I turns out to have mastered the basics of Widget Studies II.

@mirgee Stephan's suggestion seems to basically apply a sort of binary search to speed up the exam by efficiently estimating performance and readjusting as required. This is fine as long as the examiner doesn't fall into the trap of holding exceptional students up to a higher standard than is required for full marks.

In general, what you're asking is an unethical practice. I could see some exceptions to this where such considerations would be reasonable:

You are taking a multi-semester course sequence, and the instructor is willing to base final grades on progression and improvement, rather than a strict numerical average. For instance, if you've improved from a B- to an A over the course of the year, your final grade in the second semester would be an A instead of say a B+ average.
You are being judged for something like a qualifying exam, in which performance in coursework over one's career can help to ameliorate poor performance on the exam itself.

Notice that all of the situations you describe as being ethical are ones that work in the student's favor, where the OP is describing the exact reverse.

Thanks for the answer, but just to clarify - the question was about considering performance outside currently graded "unit".

There's a problem with your first point. What if the student gets first an A followed by a B- later? If you also give an A, then it doesn't reward improvement, but if you give lower, how can you say that it is fair if it could clearly be a case of variation in performance over time? Even if performance is relatively stable, of a large class there will certainly be a few whose observed performance is unstable. So your justification is not too good. Even if the exact way improvement is taken into account is known to the students, it would be unfair.

I think this is unethical. All instructors are vulnerable to bias and subjectivity in grading and ought to do everything they can to minimize that; looking up a student's previous performance introduces a strong source of bias that was completely avoidable. An instructor who looks up a student's previous grade on an exam is going to go into the exam expecting the student to do well or poorly based on that previous grade, and people tend to be biased towards seeing what they expect to see.
I do understand why it's tempting for instructors to do this, though. I am a part-time instructor myself and have been a TA for many professors, so I see professors do things like this, and have been tempted to do it myself. Psychologically, I think the reason is that instructors are aware that grading is somewhat subjective, but that is also something that makes them uncomfortable. And they tend to feel uncomfortable if their grades look random: if people who did really well last semester do really poorly with this time, or vice versa, or if a student got an A- on one paper and a B- on the next and then an A on the next. Checking what grade a student got last semester, or on the last paper, feels like a way of double-checking your own grading, of getting a second opinion to double-check your sense of the student's performance on this particular task.
But the problem is that, far from being an effective way to deal with bias, the above procedure just magnifies its effects. The way it works in my experience is that if the student got a high grade last time, it's tempting to think, "Well, they're smart/a good student" and then give them the higher grade; if they got a low grade last time it's tempting to think "Well, even the lower grade is still better than they got the last time, so that's fine," or "This student is just lower-performing," and then give them the lower grade. And that's just not fair. But it feels secure and reassuring to an uncertain grader to know what other graders have given a person before assigning them their own grade, so unfortunately it happens.

I disagree with the notion that limiting marks based on past performance is necessarily unethical. If done without a valid reason (for example as a case of laziness on the professor's side), then it would very well be unethical, but there exist cases in which such a system is perfectly reasonable.
One reason that would justify the professor's system of grading would be one similar to the GRE's adaptive testing system.
If the professor knows that the student did poorly on his/her past course, the professor can then choose to administer an easier examination, which better distinguishes students of medium to low ability from each other. Similarly, if the student managed to obtain an A for the past course, the professor can then administer a more difficult exam to better distinguish students of relatively high ability from one another. Students who are given the "easier" exam would then not be able to achieve the maximum scores in the final grade.
This would be analogous to the GRE's system which uses the results of the first section to produce adaptively a second section which is scaled to an appropriate level of difficulty.

You're using "past" to mean "earlier in the same day".  That's not at all the sense in which the question is using "past performance".

@BenVoigt While the GRE uses it to measure performance earlier in the same day, it seems perfectly reasonable that the same logic can be applied to longer periods of time. Similar reasoning is used in AP courses, where stronger students are allowed to take more difficult exams.

"This would be analogous to the GRE's system which uses the results of the first section to produce adaptively a second section which is scaled to an appropriate level of difficulty." No, it wouldn't.  It would be analogous to having your GRE score depend on your previous coursework.  Unless the link between a course and a past course is made explicit in the course syllabus, this policy violates a basic tenet of the university culture: that the assessment in a course is based on the student's performance in that course.

So if the student did not manage an A in the past course it should be impossible to manage an A in this one?, and the next? oh and the one after that? Sorry you can never get an A again.

@Mr.Mindor Obviously a test with so many parts should have ability for recovery from a single poor showing. But this is just an example of a case where giving differential grades can be reasonable, it is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition.

A single test and an academic career are such vastly different scales, that what is reasonable for one may not even be remotely relevant to the other (as in this case). Refining a single test may be reasonable: There is no time or room to dramatically improve your ability between sections of a test and refinement allows for more detailed examination in less time/effort. Months, or even years may bridge the gap between courses, there is ample time for remediation of whatever problems lead to the poor grade.

@PeteL.Clark I don't think there is that basic tenet that assessment is based on performance in that course. Assessment is sometimes based on performance and sometimes isn't.

But even if the professor starts out with easier questions for people with poor past performance, he should make them harder and harder if he keeps getting good answers - so a formerly bad student might get an easier question at the start, but if he has learned enough to get an A, he will get to A-Level questions quickly and get an A in the end. That's how one of my profs did it and I thought it was entirely fair.

@PeteL.Clark I disagree. It may be given by a different culture, but especially with oral exams, the idea (a good one IMHO) is that you examine the things the student knows, not the things he doesn't know. We have a teacher here who has a good solution to this, he asks at the beginning what grade would you like, and he asks appropriately tough questions. Some professors overview your general performance in your records, then "pre-check" whether you fit, and based on your performance at the beginning of the exam, they make the questions tougher or simpler.

But they don't judge the grade on the previous grades, which is the unethical thing -- they only set the exam up a bit differently.

@yo': In your description of reasonable academic practices, I didn't find anything like what the OP described, namely looking up grades in past courses and telling students that they are excluded from getting the highest possible grade in the current course if their grade in another course was not sufficiently high.  In fact, what did you describe which is not in line with the idea that grades in a course should be based on the work in that course?  I didn't see anything.

This reeks of typical halfassed professory.
Instead of working to create an assessment (ie grading) method wherein he can comprehensively determine how well a student understands the topic, this professor has willingly created and accepted a sub-par assessment which requires reviewing previous performance.
"Well, the student failed my test... however, on related courses they passed. Therefore I must have a flaw in my assessment or my course, so I should let them pass because they should have understood it and my methodology can't tell me whether they did understand it."
That's what I'm reading as the inner dialogue.
However, at the same time, I love it. This is a very realistic method for complex topics which are not readily conveyed and/or the understanding of which are not readily assessed.
And then I come back to hating it again, because that's the professor's job. Professors generally don't like the course work and teaching and testing... too bad. I never liked folding shirts when I worked at a retail store, and I never liked NBC warfare training during my military service, but they were part of my job. I didn't get a pass just because I "don't like" them.
So yes, it's extraordinarily unethical!!
Not only because it's not giving you the grade you earned, good or bad, but because the professor is doing this in lieu of a portion of the job they don't like/find hard. The university (and thus, you/your creditors) is paying them for a job they're not actually doing! That's unethical; that's fraud.
But it's quite clever and realistic, so maybe... :(

It's very unethical in my opinion. I quickly explain my way of handling things when I examine students:
Questions and answers for oral and written exams are set before the exam. For each question I expect certain key-content to be mentioned. If all is mentioned, it's full score for that question, if not, the score depends with mathematical precision on the amount of content mentioned compared to the amount expected.
After an exam I publish questions and key-content. Every student can check what he did wrong and how his grade was made. I find this the only fair way: If you know what's expected, then you have full score and you have the right to know what you did wrong.

You should check your professor's grading criteria against his grading rubric - if 'prior courses' is not listed on that rubric, it's not only unethical, but duplicitous and could be brought up to the Dean if your grade or others' grades reflect poorly because of it.
If it's not on the rubric, you could still bring it up with the dean as being duplicitous, but there would be less actual evidence to bring against the professor, and since it's an oral exam, you'd be hard-pressed to provide proof without some type of recording of the exam itself.
If it's on the rubric, you could bring it up with the Dean and ask if it's really allowed for professors to do so, but if they say 'yes' then you're completely out of luck.
However, it is completely unethical regardless of what the dean says - you may have some paths of recourse for it, but regardless of whether or not those pan out, it is still unethical, and you have every right to feel it is unfair.

Although I agree it's unethical, similar patterns are sanctionned by the academic world.
To play devil's advocate, maybe your teacher is adequatly preparing you to the way things work in higher education ?
One of the most important criteria to get funding, a bursary , a grant, a publication or even a TA job is if you had that same sort of thing granted before.
It's a vicious circle where if you've never had one of these, chances are you'll never get one and therefore probably won't have the extra "humfes" (jobs, contacts, money, opportunities) necessary to be in the top of your field.
When you think about it, it's what a cv is for. While looking at your profile, a prospective employer looks first at what you've done –IF you've done the same job you're applying for, your odds are improving.

A CV is for giving someone who's never met you a reasonable idea of your experience so that they having something on which to base their decision to even talk to you to see if you're qualified for their position. At your annual review, an employer is not going to say, "Well, you've done great work here over the last year, however I can't give you a raise because you had trouble at your previous job with another company and/or didn't have enough experience on your CV." Or, if they do, they're an idiot and you should find a better employer.

The CV situation is more analogous to saying, "You shouldn't take this course because you got a D in its prerequisite," not, "You can't get an 'A' in this class even though you've earned it because you got a poor grade in a previous course."

I also think that academia has more scope than you suggest to do extra things and build your way up even if you haven't performed strongly before.

This scenario is ambiguous.there could well be and ethical abuse that the instructor is not doing his/her job, but the use of past performance as one input in the grade decision is not inherently an ethical abuse, depending on how one understands grades.
There is not widespread agreement about what grades measure.
Depending on whom you ask, grades might measure:

how much a student learned in a course
how much a student knows at the end of the course
how much effort a student put into a course
how well students complied wth course procedures
what a student is capable of doing at the end of the course

And these comparisons could be relative to a fixed standard, or relative to other students in the class ("on a curve").
All of the above have been used in courses I have seen. I'm afraid it seems that grades in a course mean whatever the institution or instructor define them to mean. There are some practices that would be widely condemned as abusive, but grading based on total proficiency and using past achievement as part of that assessment seems to be to be within the realm of defensible practices.
If the standard is an absolute level of proficiency in a body of material, past work in the field is a helpful piece of information about a student's likely level of proficiency. In other words, if a grade in course N is intended to reflect how well a student can do tasks x and y, and tasks x and y require skills from course N-1, then it seems reasonable to use this information.
This is not how I would advocate grading, by the way, but it seems to fall within the universe of acceptable practices. If a professor believed that the only way s/he were comfortable asserting that a student attained the level of proficiency s/he believed warranted an "A" grade were if the student previously demonstrated mastery at the "A" level of prerequisite course material, and also had high overall mastery of other material as demonstrated by a high GPA, this decision strikes me as unfortunate but not unethical.
I would hope an instructor would allow other ways to demonstrate that mastery besides grades in a previous class; this example was unclear whether that was the case. When the instructor told the OP that an A was only in consideration because of past performance, I do not know if this was a general requirement, or the specifics of this case based on other assessments in this class.
If the instructor views grades as a certification to the student's future instructors, employers, clients, etc of the Instructor's assessment of the student's proficiency with course material (far from the only meaning given to grades, but one widely accepted one), then this can be justified as ONE input in the grade decision. Given the set of observations about the student (exams, projects, homework, etc), how likely is it that the student has at least (excellent/good/fair/poor) mastery of course material? If the goal is to give the hugest grade the instructor an justify with confidence level x, past performance is an I out that adds information to the decision function.
If the instructor based grades ONLY on what the OP described, that would be shirking the responsibility of the instructor. If the instructor said that the student's work in this course alone was not enough to definitively convince the instructor that the student was at an "A" level of mastery of course material, but that work combined with evidence of the student's past work raised the confidence level enough to justify certifying to future encountered of the student that the student mastered the course subject, that could be ethical.

You ask a lot of questions in the second paragraph.  But it seems to me that one could answer affirmatively to any or all of them and still not be able to justify a practice like  "I was allowed to be even considered to get an A in Real Analysis III, because I got an A in Real Analysis II and had a good overall grade average." Clearly the OP is asking an ethical question, so answering "justice is the advantage of the stronger" has been known for a while now to be a not very satisfactory reply.

This is an awful lot of words to just say "he might be speaking metaphorically".

How do you get "metaphor" from what I said?

authors: Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні


text:
Differences between “Polytechnic” and “Technology”?
Some universities are called Polytechnic and some other contain Technology in their name, for example the Valencia Polytechnic University (UPV) vs. the Technical University of Berlin (TUB).
What are the differences between them?

@Wrzlprmft- Tanks for your edition but I think you should  just edit grammatically.

The difference is that Technical is absolutely more beautiful. Just kidding, they have the same meaning.

@Rwy5: The reason for my edit is that none of the names you are giving as an example is a name used by the respective institutions, neither of which has an official English name, as far as I can tell. For example, Technical University of Valencia is as correct as Valencia Polytechnic University. At least the former is what Wikipedia is using for whatever it’s worth. (Also, Stack Exchange explicitly encourages edits beyond grammar.)

@Wrzlprmft There are examples, though.  For instance, in New York there are Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Rochester Institute of Technology and those are official names.

@JoshuaTaylor: I know and I was trying to edit some such examples in.

@Wrzlprmft Ah, I missed that (saw the later part of the comment, but missed "the reason for my edit").  For what it's worth, I think adding a reasoning example is worthy of an edit.  That's an important way to make a question more answerable.

Wikipedia has a nice summary of this distinction (or lack thereof).  In essence: the term "polytechnic" comes from the French École Polytechnique.  Thus, a university with 'Polytechnic' in its name is typically one that was influenced in its founding in some way by the French system.  Today, however, there is generally no significant difference.

Nothing. Whichever the founders liked the most.
In some cases, universities called "technical" even provide non technical degrees, but they keep the original name.


text:
Using harry potter in my Statement of Purpose
Can I use an occurrence in Harry Potter as a simile in my Statement of Purpose? I'm applying to an Ivy League university.

Please give an example of what you're suggesting.

It all depends on context. I mentioned eating gelato in my NSF Graduate Fellowship application and Ivy League PhD application and got both, but it was a very short remark and certainly not the core of any thread of the SoP. (I'm in pure maths).

Maybe in terms of bravery or over coming fears I guess.

Can you use it? Absolutely—you have the freedom to write whatever you choose in a statement of purpose.
Should you use it? Almost certainly not, unless your research topic has something to do with literature. Otherwise, you run the risk of confusing the reader (who may have no knowledge of the books or movies), unless the reference is extremely obvious, in which case it will probably come across as clichéd and stilted.

... and childish.

@paulgarrett Why childish? Maybe childlike?

aeismail, maybe the harry potter series gave h self-respect or helped h battle depression or something?

@Jack, I mean that, although some might perceive it as "childlike", many would perceive it as "childish", and it'd be undesirable to give that part of the audience a reason to react negatively. One is entitled to "stand on principle", more generally, but other peoples' reactions may not be as desired, etc. If the primary goal is eliciting a certain response ("hire me"), some risks are ill-advised.

In addition to the risk of confusing or annoying the reader, keep in mind that a statement of purpose needs to show, with evidence, your interest and preparation for graduate study.   I don't know what you have in mind, but I can't imagine how a Harry Potter reference could contribute to that.  Writing something like "I'm better at physics than Hermione is at Potions", while it might be impressive if true, isn't helpful to your application unless you provide evidence of just how good at physics you are.  Anyone can claim to be great, and most applicants will, so you have to show it is actually true: what, specifically, have you actually accomplished?
And if you have the evidence, then the reference to Hermione is superfluous; save the space for evidence of your other great qualities.

On the other hand, "I'm better at physics than Hermione is at Potions" sounds like a good line for the world's nerdiest rap battle.

Nate, I think a better comparison is physics vs astronomy, chemistry vs potions or math vs arithmancy but then again, it's hard to be better than the best :P http://harrypotter.answers.wikia.com/wiki/Hermione's_OWL_grades


text:
Is it plagiarism to use another person's unpublished thesis?
Consider a research work that is present in another person's thesis, submitted two years before at the university, but not published online anywhere. Can someone extend that work and submit it to a journal?

I have attempted to clarify your post slightly; if I have misunderstood your intent in any place, please feel free to revert.

If you use LaTeX and BibTeX, there is a @unpublished entry for this cases. But yeah, it is plagiarism if you don't cite properly work that it is not your own.

Plagiarism is not about whether anyone could find out. It is about adopting concepts and ideas from others and making them look like yours, e.g. by not being open that they were not created and discovered entirely by you.

Whether they are published or not is irrelevant. While theses are not published works, you must still cite them/indicate that you are building on their content.

Why wouldn't it be?

Is the intent of this question 'Is this plagiarism?' or 'Am I likely to get caught?'

You can work on anything you want. If you publish you must:

cite the thesis;
give an accurate account of what work was already contained in the thesis, and what you added;
if you use passages of text or images taken directly from the thesis, identify them as such (as a quotation or similar). Extensive use of such quotations or images may also require permission from the original author and/or their university, depending on who holds the copyright.

I think a good rule of thumb is asking such a question "Who should be cited for this in another publication." And make it plain and easy to understand in your work. Make it easy to credit people for their part.

The situation that you describe perfectly matches the situation fifty years ago, when nothing was published online.  Now, just as then, it is entirely possible for somebody who wants to find the thesis to go to the university and look it up, or otherwise request access to the original.  It is just that now, our expectations have been raised by the ready electronic availability of material.
Thus, the situation with regards to plagiarism is the same as it has always been:

You can build on any intellectual work that has been created.
You must properly cite any work that you have built on.
You cannot claim the work of another person as your own.

That the thesis was not published online is not relevant. You can conduct follow-up research, just like you can write a follow-up to anything somebody else has published. However, you most certainly cannot pretend that something originating from this thesis is actually your work. Just that the results have not been published in a peer reviewed venue does not make the results somehow "free lunch" for somebody else to claim.

It does not matter whether the work can be found online or not. From the plagiarism tag wiki:

Plagiarism is the unethical practice of taking credit for someone
  else’s work. It is a major concern both in research, where the most
  common issue is improper use of citations (or lack thereof), and in
  coursework assignments.
Self-plagiarism refers to reusing one's own previously published work
  (or previously used coursework), without properly citing it as such.

So if you use previous work, whether available online or not, whether it's your own or someone else's work, cite it appropriately.

To clarify, taking up some work, citing it appropriately, improving it, and publishing your improvement is totally acceptable.

It is expected that any resource you use in your paper, whether published or unpublished, should be cited. For unpublished data, most journals would also expect you to take permission from the author.
Here's the policy that Nature follows with regard to citing unpublished data:

Manuscripts are sent out for review on the condition that any
  unpublished data cited within are properly credited and the
  appropriate permission has been sought. Where licenced data are cited,
  authors must include at submission a written assurance that they are
  complying with originators' data-licencing agreements. Referees are
  encouraged to be alert to the use of appropriated unpublished data
  from databases or from any other source, and to inform the editor of
  any concern they may have.

The definition of plagiarism "again":

"the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them
  off as one's own."

Until and unless you are not claiming the work as your own, you are not plagiarising. Give the credit to the original author and take his/her consent before working on it.
One of the most important things to keep in mind while writing a new thesis is to cite correctly. Don't forget secondary citation while working.
Name the original work in-text and cite the secondary source you have seen. Include only the secondary source in the reference list.

Why are secondary citations relevant in this context?

A work is published if it is given to anyone other than the author. So the mere fact it has not been published online is not to say it has not been published. So the thesis should be considered as a published work - in that sense your question is poorly framed.
You are, of course, able to cite another's work but you should not seek to pass it off as your own. You can extend it and seek publication for the extended work, but whether it will be worthy of publication will likely depend on the nature of the extension.
But an unpublished paper is a better outcome than being accused for all time of being a plagarist.

I've never seen anyone use the definition "A work is published if it is given to anyone other than the author." - can you cite support?

That's the case in law in this jurisdiction see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Penguin_Books_Ltd - for instance and note that Penguin "published" the book by handing 15 copies to one policeman.

I'm aware of the definition used for libel and obscenity cases. We're talking about academic publication. Is there any citation supporting claims of plagiary of something handed out but not published in any written/online publication or correspondence?

You think academics can get away with a different definition? Good luck with that.

Citations of specific cases of plagiarism where the item was not published in writing or online are fairly rare, and typically only when the perpetrator was in the public eye, e.g. German ministers Annette Schavan and Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg

The issue isn't whether you can get away with it, of course. It's whether it is ethical.

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


text:
"Very Similar" vs "Based On" for purpose of paper "narrative"
I was trying to solve a sub-problem as part of a greater problem for which I am writing a paper to propose a solution.
I'd been working on it for quite a while, when I had the thought that it could be transformed into a special case of one of the most famous and well researched problems in computer science.
I spent about a month doing that transformation while working on other things.
All the while though, I was thinking: "Someone else must have had this idea -- its too good not to have had." I didn't spend too much time searching for it, though, because I needed an implementation and not just an idea.
I finished up the method about a week ago, and ran it, and found it to work excellently.
Today, I finally found a paper where someone did have the idea.
Almost identical to mine (I'm really not at all displeased by this)
There are, as expected, a few differences, but nothing I can't explain in a few sentences.
So the question is, in my writeup I could say:

1a. We extend the method of X, by adding ...
1b. Our method is based on the method of X, but with the following variations...
2a. The method we propose is very similar to the method of X, except ...
2b. This method is similar to that of X, but developed independently. It has the following difference.

The options 2a/b  are what actually occurred.
However, I wonder if I should not write instead 1a, or 1b because they provide a better narrative.  I've been told paper narrative is important.
I don't like the way 2b sounds, even if it is the most truthful. It sounds like I feel I have something to prove.
Is it generally worth distorting the actual order of events, for a clean narrative?

In an ordinary scientific paper, nobody expects to get a narrative of your investigation, but rather a clear explanation of how the ideas fit together.  In fact, it has been argued that success in science is precisely defined by the separation of statements from the circumstances of their creation.
I would thus argue that you should no more feel obligated to tell a reader that you invented an idea independently than that you invented it while riding a bicycle.  You may not have started by basing your method on the other method, but now that you know it exists, you can skip all sorts of argumentation and verification by changing the way you think about your method in order to base it on the prior method and the work that has been done to establish it.
Thus, I would recommend using something like your statement 1a/1b.  That is not the history of events, but based on what you report, it appears to me to be a true and more accurate characterization of the current relationship between the concepts.  Since you discovered this prior method, you are no longer proposing a new method: instead, you are applying a slight variation on an existing method, as adapted to your circumstances, and should report that fact accordingly.


text:
If someone conducts unethical research unbeknownst to anybody, but produces positive results, what would happen to the research once discovered?
I was just wondering about this specific scenario.
Say someone was researching nature vs. nurture, but his experiments involved keeping babies in a controlled environment for the first 10 years of their life. His research is secret and he has ways to smuggle children for his research (don't ask how).
After 15 years, he publishes a paper and confirms that there is a set amount of characteristics that can be transferred via genes.
What would become of the researcher and his research? Will the researcher be jailed, but the research results recognized?

This question is about unethical research in general, not just ones involving human subjects.
P.S. No babies were harmed in the making of this post

Studies involving human subjects must be approved by an institutional review board before it is undertaken, otherwise most journals won't accept it.

@Drecate So will the world just ignore the results? Also, to others as well, this is for all unethical research in general, not just ones regarding human subjects. Will edit that to my question. Thanks!

This is an awfully specific scenario. Have you or someone you know been abducting babies? As to the results, they will be called into question due to the ethics of the study itself. Even if true, the lack of ethics used in the process is likely to stain the use drastically.

This is just a random thought of mine. All connections to the real world, if any, are coincidental. Haha. I see. Would you like to put that as an answer? @Compass

@Drecate He could publish it on arxiv. Not exactly peer reviewed but close.

There's also the question of reproducibility: where on earth will you find a second evil scientist who also happens to share research interests with the first?

Dissection was banned by Roman and Greek law, and yet some (many?) researchers performed illegal dissections. There seem to be many associated myths associated with the dissections of Leonardo da Vinci, the New York City 1788 Doctors' Riot, etc.

@JacobKrall, sadly, Auswitz, Dachau and Mauthausen-Gusen in Nazi Germany, Unit 731 and 8604 in Imperial Japan, the Kamera in the Soviet Union, and even Fort Detrick in the United States and Porton Down in the United Kingdom....

What happens in practice as opposed to theory is another discussion. In theory, the results of unethical research should be destroyed/not used. If it used, it gives an incentive for others to ignore ethics standards in their research. There is oddly enough a rather good episode of Star Trek Voyager on the topic.

Observe also that there are cases where the actions of a criminal result in data that is used by scientists without recognising that what the criminal was doing is legitimate science. For example, we use data on gunshot wounds, many of which were inflicted unlawfully. If the person who inflicted some of those wounds was trying to do science, would we exclude those cases from data used by studies into gunshot wounds, on the basis of not using illegal research? Probably not. So there's potentially a difference between using data originating from the evil researcher and using "his research".

@D'Nabre Yeah, my first thought was, "In Star Trek they always destroy the results."

Unfortunately, history has already forced this question upon us, and the answers are not entirely clear.  The Nazis inflicted widespread and breathtakingly horrifying human medical experiments on their victims during the Holocaust. These yielded quite a bit of medical data, that some want to unearth and apply today.
This has ignited quite a bit of debate on the ethics of using this most obviously and supremely unethical research.  The science may be dubious as well, given the circumstances under which it was performed.  An excellent discussion of the dilemma may be found in the article "The Ethics Of Using Medical Data From Nazi Experiments" by Baruch Cohen.  In essence, Cohen argues that in certain extreme cases it may be possible to use the data, but only when accompanied by strong condemnation of the methods and only when it concerns information that is both otherwise impossible to obtain and of life-saving importance.
Nazi medicine is an extreme case, but unfortunately by no means isolated, and the judgement of history and science on these studies contains less uniform condemnation than we might like.  The modern consensus, however, seems to be that except in very unusual circumstances, unethical studies should not be rewarded in any way by recognition.

Interesting viewpoint, considering the circumstances under which nearly all scientific progress has been made. Planetary physics was condemned as heretical, but early medical discoveries necessitated means we would today abhor. How should we view, say, the stem-cell debate or the unfortunate circumstances of early HIV/AIDS research? Should we ignore knowledge, and mandate the scientific community, like a judge to a jury, to "disregard that last data" on the grounds that it disagrees with us, though perhaps not with actual observations of the world?

@zxq9 "Don't reward unethical behavior" is worlds away from "disregard that last data."  After all, there is usually an ethical way to investigate the same underlying questions.

Very informative links that show extreme cases of my question. Tagged as answer.

This is a great answer, but for the most part Nazi war criminals were prosecuted when found (Mengele notably escaped). By contrast, their Japanese counterparts, were able to negotiate immunity from prosecution in exchange for full disclosure of their research. WW2 demonstrates that either direction is possible, both for the research and researcher.

It's not just history, we're trying to wade through these ethical quandaries right now with things like the behavioral effects of Facebook's social experiments.

@afrazier: isn't the Facebook case basically about the disparity between what's considered ethical when gathering marketing data (almost anything) and what's considered ethical when conducting psychology experiments (almost nothing without informed consent)? It's easy to say "don't use Facebook's research" since it shouldn't be all that difficult for Facebook to conduct similar research ethically. Therefore spurning it has a clear motivational effect on the researcher: if you want scientific recognition do ethical research. Since the OP's mad scientist has been jailed, that's dealt with ;-)

It's not just about rewarding in terms of present career. It's about not encouraging clandestine work that may come in use later. If you do research and know that the results would be destroyed, this may create a smaller incentive to carry it out for such a mad scientist than the threat of being imprisoned.

The problem here is that ethics change with time, location, education and religion.
Piotr Migdal in his answer points out that unethical research would never be validated; then I would rebut "What about animal dissection?"
It has been banned as unethical by many countries, but many papers still use findings from it.
The same is for much research by Nazis; they are highly unethical NOW, but at the time, for a large number of scientist it was ethical; the well-known Bayer at the time "engaged in human experimentation on Auschwitz prisoners, often with fatal results."
Some researchers at "IG Farben" even got a (still valid) Nobel prize "for the discovery of the antibacterial effects of prontosil" and many more.
So I would say that actually ethical studies may be based easily on unethical papers, if those papers are valid.
And new unethical papers will need more time to be recognized (and probably the author will be imprisoned) but this is because it will be harder to fact-check the experiment in an ethical way.

Ethics also vary with location.

It's much less extreme, but psychology is a field full of examples of important studies that would be unethical today - from tests that gave children lifelong phobias, to reckless brain surgery on psychiatric inmates, via all sorts of traumatising, painful or frightening scenarios, electric shocks, untested drugs...

Many of these experiments were considered ethical/legal at that times. It is different from things that were and are unethical (and different from ones that were unethical but now are ethical - a rarer case, mostly due to religious restrictions).

I disagree that these experiments were considered ethical at that time and location. The reason why people so abhor by Nazi Germany is precisely that a country with a rich heritage of culture, philosophy,  (including philosophy of ethics) went so completely over to the dark side. If, say, Mongolians (Ghenghis Khan period) had done the same, people might find it repulsive, but possibly consistent with culture and ethics. People like Mengele could get away with these experiments. The litmus test is whether he could have gone around and tell people publicly about his experiments.

There is a situation in which the exact situation described in the title regularly happened and (most likely) still happens: military research.
There are multiple example of knowledge acquired by the military of several nations and regimes during secret and ethically problematic (euphemism intended) investigations and experiments.
Some of the results from these are a part of our everyday life: aviation (and transportation in general), nuclear fission, some aspects of medicine and surgery, telecommunication, geolocalization, etc.
It seems like the results of these experiments are not disregarded, although contradictory to the example you mentioned, most can also be investigated and validated with ethical approaches.

Supplementing jakebeal's great answer on current research (not - digging old).

...but the research results recognized?

It seems "unlikely", perhaps unless the result is so evident, one cannot ignore it.
First, most journals have statements disallowing publishing unethical research. And without journal publication it is hard to get academic credit.
Second, if you managed to publish it somewhere, I bet that the reaction to its ethics will influence the evaluation of its scientific value. (Look at the reaction to any research results related to emotionally-charged topics. In this case it would be harder, because the reaction would be almost all-negative.)
Third, many people can think that if you are OK with one breach of ethics, you may be OK with breach of scientific procedures, or any other fraud (to support one's view of world, for fame, etc...).

After 15 years, he publishes a paper and confirms that there is a set amount of characteristics that can be transferred via genes.

I bet:

if you show that some traits are genetic, it won't be recognized (claiming that you are a racist),
if you show that certain genes are responsible for certain traits, this result may be recognized (as it is easy to test it, and in more ethical way).

My personal stance is that all data should be used. (All in all, we use historical data from wars and atrocities, rather than forgetting the history; we can't change the past, but we can change the future.) However, creating lack of incentives to pursue highly unethical research might be worth it.

Am I getting downvotes for not providing value or for the very emotionally-induced oversensitivity I was talking about? In particular, what is wrong with  my points 1-3?

"Third, many people can think that if you are OK with one breach of ethics, you may be OK with breach of scientific procedures". It depends on your character: a common trope in fictions (TV, movies, comics,...) is the scientific that sacrifices/ignores its ethic in his quest for knowledge. People may acknowledge that you are a "pure" scientist.

(not a downvoter), but I think it unlikely that the results are discarded. Maybe they'd be banned in the blatant situation in the question. But considering more everyday ethics, for example Germany has far more restrictive rules about stem cell research (AFAIK it is basically forbidden to produce embryonic stem cells) than, say, the UK. Nevertheless, I don't see any evidence that results obtained by research on embryonic stem cells somewhere else in the world is ignored in Germany.

@cbeleites I meant situation where you are unable to publish it anywhere. Sure, if something is OK in China but not in most of world, then a research track likely won't be ignored. But without being able to publish it may be difficult to build reputation (sic), interest, credibility etc. And (as you know) research is rarely done by "one paper". There are examples of other findings, where people had problems to publish (even for not ethically-related things) and it delayed spread of some idea by decades (most notably: Bell inequality); a single paper may be not enough to start.

I think Jacob Krall's comment is worthy of an answer:

here's also the question of reproducibility: where on earth will you
  find a second evil scientist who also happens to share research
  interests with the first?

Setting aside any legal consequences that may happen to the researcher, any study that doesn't have reproducible results is not going to alter the opinions of many. If the results are interesting enough, perhaps someone will find a way of testing it legally (perhaps with non-human subjects?), and so an and so forth, just like any other study.
There have been quite a few "studies" performed that would be illegal under today's law, yet the results from them have not been discarded. I see no difference in this case (with regards to the research).

To get some perspective, what if this doesn't happen in academia but in "real life"? If the person "conducting unethical research" is a police officer searching your home without a warrant, and the "positive result" is that he or she finds conclusive evidence that you committed a crime?
In that case, the rule is that this "positive result" cannot be used in any way whatsoever. Not only can the conclusive evidence not be used in court, it cannot even be used as a reason to investigate you further.
That seems to be the correct way to handle the situation in academia as well: The results of unethical research should be completely ignored, so there is no motivation to conduct unethical research at all.

3 problems. The things that apply in your legal system are not universal. Argument by analogy is usually considered fallacious. And whether other academics use one's research is only one of several possible motivations; so ignoring unethical research does not remove all motivations (some pharmaceutical and tobacco companies have paid some researchers very well for unethical research).

This analogy is absurd.


text:
Submitted to arXiv with a different title. How to make Google understand this is the same paper?
After having a paper published, I submitted the preprint to arXiv, but with a different title.
Now, Google Scholar has identified the arXiv version as another paper, and by merging the two articles using the merge button, I cannot make the arXiv version appear next to the published paper when someone searches for it.
I guess that Google looks for the title of a paper (in the PDF, not the file name), and decides if this is the same paper. Anyway, is there any way to make Google Scholar understand that the arXiv version is the same paper and show the PDF in the search results?

Why did you change the title? Is it just to clarify it's a "preprint"?

I submitted the preprint to arXiv, but with a different title — Don't do that.

Is there a specific reason why you require the arXiv preprint to have a different title to the published version? Ideally after publication you should update the arXiv to be as close as possible (including the title) to the published version. Journals often change the title regardless of the authors' wishes, but making two versions of the same piece with different titles will not only confuse Google, it will confuse every reader that sees both and is forced to disentangle their relationship.

How do you plan to convince all the researchers in your field that it's the same paper? How many of them are going to think, "Oooh, a new paper by user24369 et al. That looks interesting... Damnit! I already read it. Thanks for wasting my time!"

@E.P. I completely agree that this is confusing.  But the opposite can be equally confusing.  I know one case where a paper exists in three different versions all with the same title and authors: an early arXiv, which apparently never made it to publication; the published, significantly changed version; and the “actual preprint” corresponding roughly to the published version.

@xebtl That's another flavor of "don't do it". Clearly, the best solution is to only have equivalent (up to layout) versions with the same title (and other metadata). Where that does leave us w.r.t. error-fixing/errata (which seems to be next to impossible with conferences/journals), I don't know.

This may not be the answer you're looking for, but one solution would be to update the arXiv paper so that its title agrees with the published paper.  (You can change an arXiv paper's title by submitting a revision.)  Maybe you prefer the title from the arXiv, but using different titles causes enough hassle and confusion that I can't really believe it's worthwhile.
It's not just a matter of convincing Google Scholar.  If they supply a link to a paper with a different title, some users will assume it's an error without looking closely enough to detect that it's really the same paper.  The same issue will occur whenever anyone runs across the arXiv paper, since the first heuristic most people use to decide whether two papers are the same is comparing the title and authors.
If you really want to use a different title, you should take every opportunity to clarify the relationship between the papers.  For example, the arXiv abstract page and the first page of the article should explicitly state that it's the same as the published paper (and give the citation).  But even if you do that, readers will be confused and perhaps a little annoyed.  They'll naturally wonder why it has a different title if it's the same paper otherwise, and they may wonder what else you have changed compared with the published version.  If there are nontrivial changes, then you should warn the reader, while if there aren't, then it's not good to let readers wonder about that.

+1 for updating arXiv, that is what I wanted to suggest.  It would be interesting for @user24369 to explain why they changed the title in the first place.

In my experience, when you use 'merge', Scholar will not return multiple listings in the main result.  Instead, it asks you which version is the 'better' version and shows that version preferentially.  If a person clicks on the 'all N versions' button, however, the alternate version should appear in that list.
If you want to have a more explicit statement of the two articles and their relationship, you cannot force the search engine to do it for you---and even if you could, it wouldn't necessarily remain that way next year, since Google is always tweaking their systems.  Instead, you should put this on your personal webpage, which (if hosted by your institution) will likely end up high in Scholar's returns in any case.


text:
Is it legal to post accepted manuscript to GitHub Pages if embargo has ended for personal website?
I have published my article with Taylor & Francis. For the respective journal, there is no embargo period concerning the publication of the accepted manuscript on the author's personal website - I can do so directly after the article has been published (i.e., now).
I have set up a personal website using GitHub Pages. I would like to post the accepted manuscript there. However, to do so, I need to upload the manuscript to a public GitHub repository - and this seems to be different to a personal website (the embargo period for social networks such as Researchgate etc. has not ended yet).
Can I use GitHub Pages to legally post my accepted manuscript even if it means to upload the manuscript to a public GitHub repository?

It is unlikely to be a legal (criminal) issue , but perhaps a contractural one. Ask the publisher since they hold the copyright now.

I already asked them but they did not really reply to my question. I'll probably have to ask them again.

You're basically asking what the definitions of "personal website" and "social network" are in the agreement (contract) you have with the publisher. We don't have your contract and aren't legal experts to interpret the wording the way a lawyer might. It's possible there is legal ambiguity and you'd want to weigh your legal risks against the benefits, which also isn't really something we can do here. Asking the journal is a good idea, but they don't necessarily need to give you an honest answer: they aren't acting as your legal representation.

Thanks for pointing out that I should not rely solely on the journal's response.

If you are a student, you can get a GitHub Pro account for free, which allows you to host GitHub Pages from private repositories

That's a great tip, thank you very much.

@GoodDeeds Not only if OP is a student, but also if they are an "educator, faculty member, or researcher."

I'd honestly just go ahead and do it. Taylor & Francis are not going to sue you. If it is against their policy (and I highly doubt it, since GitHub is a personal website, see e.g. https://jo276.github.io/) they'd first send you a takedown request. You can remove your paper then.

@FedericoPoloni Thanks, that's good to know.

@Allure There is a subtle point: the problem is not github.io, but the fact that the only way to upload the papers on github.io is including them in a public github repository such as this one for your example site.

@FedericoPoloni you could argue that that public GitHub repository is a personal website however. The same logic applies in any case, Taylor & Francis are not going to sue you for putting your files in that public GitHub repository.

@Allure Why not make your comments an answer?

@GoodDeeds the question asks "is it legal?" and my comment doesn't address that question.

Thank you all for these suggestions. I took the safe way and uploaded it on a personal website outside of GitHub.

This is more advice than an answer and you will need to get the definitive answer from the publisher, but my guess is that they won't permit posting the published version other than on a personal site, since things like GitHub have too much visibility.
Posting a preprint might be possible according to the terms, and some publishers actually publish finished work on places like arXiv.
But the advice is to tread carefully here. They own the copyright now.

After several emails, the publisher has not been able (or willing) to answer this question. I will give up for the moment and think about hosting my own webpage. Thanks for the advice!


text:
Previous research group didn’t include me as author for my work
I worked at a university the UK, at the end of 2010s and left on good terms with the research group. Thought boss was a nice guy and was appreciative of being able to use him as a referee. Just yesterday I happened to come across an article published 8 years ago with his, his boss’ and other researchers’ names on, which is mainly on the work I conducted over the 2 years I’ve worked for him. He gave authorship to students who contributed to a minority of the results in the paper, but completely missed me out. Some of the work done by someone else was on bacterial mutants I produced. That was 2 years of my life including many weekends and evenings. I can’t believe he did this to me. The paper reads like he copied my lab book. I always thought it was a shame the work never got published and had to explain to some interviewers for jobs why. All the time my boss and his group were taking credit for 2 years of my work. I might have missed out on jobs or a PhD position because I had nothing to show for the work I did there, and I still don’t as I can’t be referenced for my own research and can’t state the article is of my experiments. I have contacted my previous boss, now working elsewhere. I don’t hold up hope he’ll respond, let alone admit it’s my work. Unfortunately I had to leave my lab books at the university when my contract finished. I have contacted them to ask if I can come in to photograph the pages. No one had a clue and kept passing me on. I don’t hold out hope that they’ll let me see my lab books. Anyone had experience of this or have any advice please?

What does "midlands university" mean?

What outcome do you expect when the work was published 10 years ago?  Even if (against all odds) your name is added to the paper retroactively, it will be done with a correction notice.  How does this help you?

The paper with your work was published 8 years ago but you were working there at the end of the 2010s i.e. 3-4 years ago? That doesn't make sense.

The paper was published some years after I left. I worked there for 2 years. Zerothehero because they outcasted me out of authorship for my own work, while they took the credit, I should just forget about it? Have you worked in science  and experienced the life toll it takes?

@Whatamess with due respect, you should not presume I am unaware of your plight.  However if what you want is a form of revenge, that’s not going to materially improve or reverse your current situation.

@astronat the end of the 2010’s would be 13-14 years ago.

@Whatamess I mean: sure you get a paper and then at an interview people ask why your name was added to the author list on the online version 8 years after publication… not sure what you get out of that but I’m not in a position to make an assessment of your detailed situation.

@ZeroTheHero So what? If the OP has been treated very unfairly, then it's perfectly legitimate that they want this to be on the record, regardless of whether they incur some practical benefit from this. (Also, the 2010's are the period from 2010 to 2019.)

I’m not looking for revenge (and that’s rather odd to paint me as the villain when I wasn’t the one who did anything wrong). I would like credit for my work. I thought this forum was about advice on plagiarism? That’s why I posted here.

@Whatamess I can only wish you luck.  You don’t have that many cards since you don’t have documentation.

@AdamPřenosil the problem here is that this very rarely works.  Cases where former students retroactively get authorship after they left a group are exceedingly rare (I can’t think of one) despite the claims of students.  If proceedings had been started before the student had left, then maybe but so long after the fact such allegations are very difficult to prove.

The article was published years after I left. I was research staff. As for documentation, the lab books are supposed to kept at the university, so I’ll have to keep pushing for them. Unless they destroyed the books and then the article would have to be rescinded without proof of the work.

@ZeroTheHero As far as I am concerned: who cares? If someone did this to me (assuming for the purposes of this comment that someone really did steal the credit for 2 years' worth of OP's work), then I would be very happy to drag their name through the mud and make them answer some very uncomfortable questions, regardless of whether or not this would result in some sort of authorship change.

@AdamPřenosil see my answer.

Err, in common English language understanding, the 2010s are 2010, 2011, 2012,..., 2019.

@GoodDeeds https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1176702 2nd and 3rd answer for a list of universities located in the midlands region

In your field, would collecting data be something that received authorship? In my field (social sciences) it would not. I had friends who recruited survey participants for a whole summer and thus was just a job, not an authorship opportunity…

Since you are alleging serious academic misconduct, you should contact:
(1) the person who is responsible -- you already did this and do not expect an answer, but you need give your boss time to respond,
and then
(2) the institution where both of you worked -- this would also give them an incentive to secure your lab books
(3) the outlet where the paper was published
(4) the institution where the alleged offender works now, if it is an academic institution.
Normal academic standard is that the university assesses your claim first based on believability and then starts an investigation. Presumably, they do not have a bias against you, but these investigations can take a long time. Be careful to not overstate your case as any untruth can backfire against you. Be also careful about public statements without advice from someone who knows UK libel law.

Thanks for the detailed advice Astronat. I understand I need to be patient and I really would like to rectify this amicably. It’ll be great if they add me as an author and I’ll move on, I don’t want to have write any formal letters.

@Whatamess Thomas Schwarz wrote this answer (I just edited it to remove the confusion about what you meant by "midlands university"). If you like the answer you can accept it by clicking the tick.

The first thing is to contact the lead author but do not expect much.  Expect even less if you think there will be noticeable consequences to the PI.  (This is just a historical fact, not a statement on the validity of the claim.)
You need to be absolutely sure of your facts and timelines, and this will be difficult as you no longer have your lab book.  It is easy to claim someone else collected new data (even possibly on a better instrument) and you have limited ways of refuting this claim; in case of any hint of a doubt, expect the institution to rule in favour of the PI.  Moreover, collecting data may not be enough (depending on the data) to warrant co-authorship (historical cases of such situations are known).
If possible, keep all the correspondence (email or otherwise) between all parties involved in this case.  If anything, it will demonstrate initial good will on your part to resolve the issue amicably.  However, plagiarism is very difficult to prove so the most likely outcome is that nothing will change.

You write that you "always thought it was a shame the work never got published", yet you don't describe yourself as having taken any steps  to try to get it published. No conversations with the rest of the team about the value of the work. No suggestion that you would write up a draft yourself. And now, you discover that it was published but without your name. Is it unfair? Yes, probably. What should you do?
My advice would be ... move on.
Consider for a moment your chances of doing either of the following:

Making life uncomfortable for the authors on the list. Chance: very very small. Why? Because as university employees, they will be able to shuffle a lot of the heartache of any accusation that you make off onto in-house lawyers.

Having your name appear on the paper? Chance: Zero. Why? Because the chance of having the journal recognize your claim to authorship is very small, and even if it were recognized, your name will be added as an "also ran" in an online correction. Sure, you might belatedly be able to claim some kudos from the citations, but that itself is conditional on the preceding probabilities.

Life is short; too short to waste. And I predict that you will find it even shorter and more wasted if you spend your time nurturing your resentment over having missed authorship on a single publication, no matter much time you worked in a lab on it (8 years ago).


text:
Does winning an external PhD fellowship improve my chances while being waitlisted at a university?
I was waitlisted by my top choice (got into 2nd choice, though), and somehow I received an interview for an external PhD fellowship (something like NSF, which is not linked to the program or school that I applied to). The results of the fellowship will be out before April. So my question is, should I inform the admission committee about this, and would winning the fellowship help me get off the waitlist? Does anyone have a similar experience?

Maybe wait til you've got an offer of the fellowship in hand before you try to use it as leverage...

Yes, it's possible that an external fellowship can help you get admitted.  I got an NSF fellowship while I was applying, and one school mentioned this to me in their acceptance letter (in fact, that's how I found out I got the NSF! that school found out before I did).  I don't if I was on the waitlist before this, but it seemed clear that affected their decision.
However, it really depends on the department and the situation: are you on the waitlist because they don't want to admit more than X students, or they because can't fund more than X students?  That said, I agree with astronat's comment, and wait to find out if you get the fellowship or not, assuming you don't have to reply to your 2nd choice before that.  Then you could check in with your top choice, and mention this fellowship.

Thanks for the comments:) I have also heard that people were moved from the waitlist after receiving fellowships, some finger crossed

Yes, you should inform the committee, but it is unlikely to have an immediate effect. In particular, if others, not on the waitlist, have been given offers, none of those will be withdrawn for this reason. But it is likely that not all offers will be accepted and so it might put you in a better position on the waitlist and increase the likelihood of an offer in the next round.
I think most people would see withdrawing an offer for person A because of some change in person B's situation would be unethical.
So, you remain on the waitlist most likely, but in a better position. That is a positive with no downside.

However, the chair of admission told me that the waitlist is unranked, so I am not sure if winning a fellowship will help put me in a better position, since there is actually not a "position" for we on the waitlist

Eventually they have to make decisions, of course.


text:
Opinion on phd situation
To keep the long story short, I did not have the research environment I was looking for in my phd (Canada) all the first 2,5 years making me demotivated, anxious and depressed.
I had started working with my supervisor from France virtually and finally met her in person. The experience has been incredible. She organizes next meetings, introduces me to people, and people here are very approachable, there are frequent seminars to go to. I talked to a few students of hers and they are progressing well, learning a lot of things. Im only here for 4 months and I am aware I can continue to collaborate by distance after.
I am primarily funded through the provincial government and only a small part comes from my main supervisor at the home institution in Canada. My funding from govt stays as long as I am registered at my home institution. If I do a transfer to my visiting institution, it complicates things (ie, need to secure new source of funding ).
I understand that most likely a transfer means re-applying.

Apart from the appel au concours de doctorat, where else can I look for funding? I know there's CIFRE. But haven't found much info. Are those university wide call for phd funding competitive?
Would it be rude to ask if my supervisor in French institution would be willing to take me in officially as a PhD student?

Thank you in advance for any pointers!

Can you keep collaborating with the French supervisor remotely? it sounds like that way you would get the best of both worlds (not having to deal with the stress of finding funding and transferring, while still getting good supervision and scientific stimulation). Either way, you should keep both supervisors in the loop from the beginning.

As far as I have seen during my PhD in France, funding is closely linked to the PI and his/her lab. So every attempt to secure new funding would probably go through your French supervisor.
There are two main funding sources for PhD students - 1) scholarships awarded by the university after a competitive admission procedure and 2) grants awarded by major research agencies (NIH, ANR, DFG, ERC ... ). There might be lesser known possibilities which are more specific to certain subjects through foundations or similiar entities.
For the concours de doctorat your future lab is associated with a graduate school that has a limited number of scholarships to award each year and students of all labs of the graduate school apply for those rare contracts. So you bet it's competitive. Often there is a preselection based on your academic achievements and a project proposal and a second round where you will be invited to present you, your research experience and your dissertation project.
I do not remember exact figures, but during my application there were about 200 applicants of which about 50 were invited to present for a total of 12 scholarships.
Maybe you should have a look into cotutelle which is a shared PhD between two institutions, although I do not know, whether in your situation it is still possible to set it up.
However, I think you should definitely discuss any possibilities with your French advisor. Changing institutions might be difficult (you would probably have to restart your PhD) but there might be possibilities to extend the collaboration. Someone more experienced in "academic politics" might have better or more detailed advice.


text:
Remote work employment opportunities for someone with chronic health problems
I have a PhD in physics, and my career path of choice has always been in physics. Unfortunately, I have been struck with a series of chronic health problems which have caused me to be fired and homebound much of the time. However, as physics research is mostly a mental activity, I am still able to work remotely from home, provided I am also given flexible hours. The problem is, despite my continuing ability to continue working from home despite my chronic health problems, no employer so far has been willing to hire and pay me. The resulting financial problems have forced me to leave my chosen career path for the past few years, which only makes me look worse and worse on my CV, when coupled with being fired.
Do you know of any organization or employer willing to hire researchers remotely? Thanks.

From your question it is unclear to me whether you are looking for an academic or industrial position. If it is the latter, this should be migrated to workplace.SE (http://workplace.stackexchange.com).

There may be some universities focused on distance learning, like Open University, considering it's distance learning, at an arbitrary distance, this means there should be no limitations wrt the country either (except for bureaucracy). I'd focus on this kind of universities to search for possibilities, they may be the most likely option. Other than that, some projects may need lots of people analyzing data, (like LHC and some astronomy projects), there could be opportunities there as well. I don't know if any of those possibilities is any likely, though.

As you are asking this on academia.SE, I am assuming that you are looking for an academic job as opposed to working in industry. In that case, I am afraid your assumption

However, as physics research is mostly a mental activity, I am still able to work remotely from home

may not be true for higher (post-graduate) academic jobs. I would say, being a postdoc or higher in physics is to a large extend a social activity, as much of your job will consist of teaching, training the next generation of researchers, and networking. In general, all researchers after a certain stage find that they spend preciously little of their time on actual research (which you may be able to do from home, depending on your concrete subfield). Most of the time is actually spent on activities that require physical presence, at least some percentage of the time.
That being said, many research labs are quite flexible in terms of working hours and (partial) home office. In my lab, for instance, I would not assume that anybody would take issue with an employee working about 50% of the time from home (under the assumption that one would actually work at home, of course). However, the remaining 50% would probably require physical presence, simply because the tasks would require it.

I would argue that programming is also a social activity, yet a fair share of programmers do the social part over IP. Side note: The Most Important Social Network: GitHub. That said, from my personal experience it is much easier to do well-defined work remotely than a creative one (somehow brainstorming, and serendipity in general, requires a lot of unfiltered noise (e.g. a random comment on a new paper said during a lunch break)).

@PiotrMigdal I am not necessarily disagreeing, but I am not sure how this is relevant to my answer.

In your answer you put emphasis on the social part and imply that it is incompatible with remote work (and using it as a justification why in academia they may be unwilling to hire anyone remotely). I show example, how it is not necessarily the case.

If you are in US, you can apply for disability. You can also get plenty of tax rebates. I am not sure, if full time employees can work remotely all the time but contractors can, for sure work. I am sure there would be companies out there hiring contractors for short projects and letting them work remotely. You can work on one short project after the other.
Also, if you know computer programming, you can work as a software freelancer. There are plenty of freelancer jobs available.