text:
How to deal with my PhD supervisors rudely critiquing all my draft papers?
I'm a PhD candidate in biology about three semesters in. I am co-advised by two young married principal investigators (PIs), who are just about to get tenure. Things were going great initially, as I completed a medium-sized project and got publishable data very early on. However, now that it has come to writing papers, I’m finding my PIs to be rude, unpleasant, and excessively hands-on.
First of all, almost every time I send something, they respond with something like: "don't send us manuscripts with errors, next time they'll be sent back to you", or: "don't waste people's time with unpolished manuscripts." Of course I do check over them obsessively before sending, but I'm only three semesters in so I'm not perfect. They also will give me comments like, "you didn't explain how you mixed this solution," so I will write, "I mixed the solution by adding XXg of XX to XX." Then they have the nerve to tell me, "you're not doing a good job, you add useless details about adding XXg of XX to XX." Really?! They also make jokes about my writing, like "impossible [to test mice immediately upon birth] unless you're a mouse midwife." I know, it's not even clever. There's also random comments like, "what are you doing here [in reference to a statement]?," "stop doing XX," "don't do that," and "wrong, read it again." They also rewrite almost everything I write. None of my writing ever makes it to the final cut.
If I'm just being a baby, totally feel free to tell me just to suck it up. I'll submit a manuscript, and a certain section gets no comments. Then, I submit the manuscript again and the previously fine section is now crap! Why was it ok before, but now it's not? They're nice to everyone's face, but they have been very rude (i.e., actual severe harassment) to at least one other person over email that I know of.
I'm middle-aged with a spouse and kids – I don't need to take crap from PIs my own age. I've had two-dozen jobs, and I've rarely been treated so rudely. Switching labs is out, because our department is super tiny. I don't want to leave because I don't have much else going for me job-wise. I don't want to confront them, because past experience has taught me that it makes them even more aggressive and rude.
Is this type of behavior normal and acceptable in a lab? Should I just grin and bear it? How do you cope with rude and demeaning PIs?

What does it matter if they are married or not? What's the point of the facts about your age and family? Why do you point out that they are "my own age"?

While so far this has been only brought up in a previous comment's "New York" joke, I think it might make a big difference here what place you are, what culture you grew up in, and what culture your PIs come from. My own experience is that a lot of a German math professor's comments on a paper would appear incredibly rude to a Canadian student, but not to another German math professor. Could you amend that information if you see the possibility it might make a difference?

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I would suggest anonymizing your account if that's your real name lest your advisors or people in your community find the somewhat rude way you've written about them

I'm not a PhD student, but in high school I had a literature/composition teacher like this. She made so many red pen marks on our essays, that the students commonly joked that she had sacrificed a goat on our homework. Her comments came across as terse, rude, and unhelpful. She gave me failing grades on every single assignment that semester. She was also the best teacher I've ever had, because that experience equipped me with technical writing skills that have proven extremely valuable since then.

@DarthFennec that is a very noble sentiment of you, but students thriving from having to adapt to a bad teacher's style does not make that teacher excellent. It would be a bit like a christian claiming that since Nero 'created' so many saints through martyrdom, he should be classed a saint himself.

@Džuris These are extremely relevant details because OP doesn't know if his PIs are feeding off each other's behavior, or if they're being rude because they are holding him to a higher standard (unfairly) due to his age.

"I don't want to confront them, because past experience has taught me that it makes them even more aggressive and rude." -- I can't shake the feeling that there is extremely vital information here that is casually omitted. Especially since you say "things were going great initially". I agree the replies sound standoffish, but the subtext here seems to be that something happened along the way to sour the relationship, and this isn't purely a 'personality' issue. At the same time, frustratingly, I know from experience that sometimes this happens, and you have no idea what the 'trigger' event was

@TasosPapastylianou Just to be clear, I didn't thrive, I floundered. I did the best I could and it was never good enough for her (except for one assignment, into which she read a bunch of subtext that I never intended and gave me an 85%, but that was a fluke). By the end of the term I felt defeated, distressed, annoyed, horrible. I didn't realize that my writing skills had dramatically improved until later years, when other teachers started giving me much higher marks and praise than I had ever gotten in the past. Obviously though, that was just my experience, your mileage may vary.

@TasosPapastylianou I completely agree with you and disagree with the direction many are taking this question (to an argument about "blunt feedback" or whatever). Either this person is a bullying victim who has been mistreated or they're exaggerating and misleading us. Certainly we aren't here to extol the values of bullying either way, e.g. in making one "tougher" or something.

Are the married PIs married to each other?

There needs to be a little bit of context in this situation...
Incoming Masters and PhD students often come in thinking that they are going to write one draft of a paper and submit it. The thinking is that writing a scientific paper is no different than writing a paper for one of their previous class assignments, and that they did well on all of those, so their writing must be impeccable... English is their first language after all...
To the contrary, I have never had either a masters student or PhD candidate who went through less than 10 revisions on their first paper before we submitted to a conference (let alone a journal). In all likelihood, this number is closer to 25. Even toward the end of their PhD, this often still involves about 5 revisions.
Everybody hates the advisor after the first few revisions (I hated mine), and does not see the point. However, I feel that if I have not taught you to write an impeccable scientific article by the end of your PhD, then I will have failed as your advisor. And in fact, everybody who completes a  PhD seems to be grateful for the struggle.
Typically, I tell students that they must "finish" a paper 2 weeks before the conference deadline. Then we do one revision every single day until the deadline. I mean no malice in the corrections. But there are some common mistakes that need to be refined and refined. Furthermore, everybody asks, "Why can't we just do one revision?"
The answer is simply that often the writing in the first few papers is too ambiguous and vague for me to infer how the rest of the paper should be written. For example, "Are you stating A or B as your hypothesis? Are you stating C or D as your takeaway from the plot you are showing?" These lead to further questions like... how did you come to that conclusion? These things cascade, and the process ends up taking several iterations, particularly at the beginning of a PhD.
With that out of the way... let's address your case...

you didn't explain how you mixed this solution

This is a legitimate point. A scientific paper must detail every minute detail in the most unambiguous way possible. If the paper is at all ambiguous, then the results cannot be reproduced, and the work is not science!

what are you doing here

This is a comment that I would write when I believe that you have not unambiguously explained your procedure. Or perhaps you added a plot, without explaining why it is relevant.

don't send us manuscripts with errors, next time they'll be sent back to you

This is a bit cheeky I think. I wouldn't write this, but I can imagine that the advisors are perceiving that you are not trying hard enough in your edits. When I make edits, there are often errors that are repeated over and over again. If I correct 2 or 3 instances, I expect you to spot this pattern and propagate the corrections to the rest of the paper. If you aren't doing that, I would get very annoyed. The reason is simply that it may take you 30 minutes to apply all of the changes I suggest. However, on my end, I will spend hours going over your paper. Literally I can be spending 2 to 3 times as long reviewing your paper as you are taking to write it. If I don't feel that you are pulling your weight, then I will let you know.

EDIT: They also rewrite almost everything I write. None of my writing ever makes it to the final cut.

Quite common for the first paper a student writes.
The final point I want to make is concerning why we do this? Why do we go through the trouble?
The most obvious answer is that if a paper is not clear, concise, and unambiguous, then the work is not reproduceable, and hence not science.
However, as you will no doubt have seen, there ARE many papers in very well respected journals that are extremely poorly written. These are the ones that you and your advisor will debate for weeks on end... I think they are doing this! I think that their results show that!
Those are bad papers. If I was reviewing them, I would reject them.
By going through this process with you in writing your paper, I am not only helping future scientists (by making your work more clear), but I am putting you in the best possible position to get your paper accepted into the conference or journal. The worst reason to get your paper rejected is because, "I could not understand what the authors are trying to accomplish", or a review which suggests a misunderstanding as to what the paper is trying to accomplish. That is just a waste and completely avoidable.
The papers that have been rejected by my group will often start with, " This paper was extremely clear and well written. However..."
EDIT:
I think that in general, it sounds like the PIs may be going a little bit too far in your case, but it is really hard to tell without knowing your research topic, the scope of the revisions, and your conversations with the PIs. So the following are some more takes on the things you wrote which I did not initially address:

"you didn't explain how you mixed this solution," so I will write, "I mixed the solution by adding XXg of XX to XX." Then they have the nerve to tell me, "you're not doing a good job, you add useless details about adding XXg of XX to XX."

I can see 3 plausible explanations for this:

The PIs simply changed their minds about whether this information was relevant. People make mistakes, and opinions change...
They meant something different when they asked for "how you mixed this solution". I am not a chemist, but perhaps technique or something else matters and they wanted you to describe that???
Perhaps over the course of several revisions, this information got included earlier in the paper, in which case, you should avoid writing this info again at this specific point in the paper.

In any case, the statement "you're not doing a good job" is a bit  aggressive from my point of view. My guess is that they are getting really stressed about reviewing this paper. Perhaps they have been putting in a lot of work doing revisions and don't think you are "getting it" yet, or aren't trying hard enough. Whatever the case, they snapped at you here when they probably shouldn't have. In cases like this, you should have a sitdown meeting with them to understand why they do not think you are doing a good job. Did they sincerely mean it? And if so, how can you improve? If they really meant it, then this needs to be clarified in person.

Really?! They also make jokes about my writing, like "impossible [to test mice immediately upon birth] unless you're a mouse midwife.

Probably they are trying to show that your logic is flawed, and simply giving you a counterexample. It probably isn't meant to be funny, it probably was just the first thing that came to their mind which conclusively showed the logical error in your writing. Scientific writing needs to be extremely precise, leaving no room for doubt. If there is an easy counterexample, then the writing is not precise enough.

@fqq but it isn't false in the case of the OP, as far as I can tell, and more importantly, native speakers often assume they can write papers because they're native speakers. But scientific English is a very specific dialect and being a native speaker is in no way sufficient. Native speakers often have a harder time even since they expect this to be easy.

This answer is too generous to the PIs.  They are giving their feedback in a rude, disorganised manner when it could be done constructively.

"you didn't explain how you mixed this solution," so I will write, "I mixed the solution by adding XXg of XX to XX."  HOW you mixed the solution.  Not what you mixed.  Did you shake it, did you stir it, did you put it on an agitator and wait a day, did you add a drop of X to XX every second for an hour?  The answer is spot on for highlighting they need a sit down and chat, but OP needs to brace themselves for being told "when asked a question, answer the question that was asked, not the question you think was asked"

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I had a similar shock when I started my PhD. I am a native English speaker and a language geek to boot. My father is a professional editor and I grew up playing language games and helping him edit texts, and I consider myself a pretty good editor too. Despite all this, when I wrote my first paper as a young PhD student and sent it off to my Catalan/Spanish-native speaker adviser, he sent it back covered in corrections!
My first reaction was to scoff! What can this guy tell me about writing? I'm a native speaker! I have always been praised for my writing skills! I'm sure his corrections will be total crap. And then I sat down and started going through his corrections and damned if every single one of them wasn't correct!
A few years and a few papers later, I sent my first paper as a post-doc to my French PI. This time, I had considerably more experience, I had submitted a few papers already and my PI's English, while good, was not as good as my old PhD adviser's. And yet, once more, she sent it back to me with loads of corrections. Some of her corrections weren't in perfect English, but again, every one of them was either a clear improvement or, at worst, a reasonable suggestion.
I have never written a paper that was not significantly improved by someone else. I have also edited many papers for friends and colleagues, many of whom were far more experienced than I, and I have always been able to improve their work. It is simply very hard, if not impossible, to edit your own work as well as someone else can do it. An outsider's eye always sees things that you missed. And things that seem perfectly clear to you might not be to someone else. You know exactly what you did, so what seems crystal clear to you might be completely opaque to someone else.
All this said, I cannot judge how they treat you from what you've written. You may very well be right and they're being unreasonably harsh with you. But things like  "what are you doing here [in reference to a statement]?," "stop doing XX," "don't do that," and "wrong, read it again" seem absolutely fine to me. Don't take it personally, listen to what they're saying and learn from it! When editing, you don't have time to sit and write a long comment on everything you find. I won't write "I am sorry, but I really think that this particular point might be expressed better", I'll just say "this is wrong". And then we can go over it together and I'll point out why.
All this is to say that writing papers is an acquired skill, and nobody expects to send a paper to someone for revisions and get no revisions. So while their tone might leave something to be desired, and you might want to discuss that with them, the fact that they rewrite everything most likely means that you need to change the way you write.

I have never written a paper that was not significantly improved by someone else. I have also edited many papers for friends and colleagues, many of whom were far more experienced than I, and I have always been able to improve their work. – Take my upvote.

I used to study quite a lot of Spanish and I sometimes correct the grammar and spelling of articles written by native speakers for El País and newspapers like that on Facebook, not very often, but if there is a mistake there is a mistake, doesn't matter that it's not my first language.

IMO, unless statements such as "stop doing XX," "don't do that," and "wrong, read it again" come with a reason why that is the case, it comes across as a rude and unhelpful comment. A PhD supervisor should also teach and not just berate.

@fridaymeetssunday: The reason why a Prof would typically not include a reason is space... Think about the formatting of a conference or journal paper. My comments often flow onto the back of the paper, but there is simply not enough room to put a well-written comment in the margins of a paper. Typically, the workflow is this: I review the paper, send the revisions, student incorporates "easy" revisions, then we have a meeting to discuss which points were not clear. Repeat. If I wrote a comment like the above, and it was not clear to the student what I meant, then we would discuss in office

Comments such as "stop doing XX," probably mean that the student has done something over and over, despite having already been told by the PIs not to.

@bremen_matt just a few comments. "Prof would typically not include a reason is space" not really when in my experience a lot of reviewing is done electronically in the form of word processor comments. "probably mean that the student has done something over and over"-  there are lot of assumptions in comments and answers, and not just yours, generally painting a favourable picture of the the supervisors. In my experience, not a PI but with substantial experience  and with all sort of supervisors, these type of comments are unusual and come across as rude.

@bremen_matt it also assumes that the supervisors are all knowing entities that are never in the wrong. These are young PIs which are still learning the ropes of supervision - no harm in that. If that is indeed their style, it should be communicated to the students at the start (preferably during the interview). OP: talk to them in a conciliatory manner (they might not even be aware the comments are unhelpful). Tell them it makes you uncomfortable and ask for more feedback. Is your writing that bad? Then how it can be improved? Proper feedback is needed .Otherwise, don't take it personally.

@fridaymeetssunday who are you referring to? This answer is mine, not bremen_matt's. Who's making all of these assumptions? Of course PIs are not all knowing! But it is far more likely that a PI will be right when editing a paper than a first year PhD student who's never written a paper before. Even young PIs will, by definition, have PhD and almost certainly Post Doc experience, and will have written a few articles. As I say in my answer, I can't judge from what the OP hs told us. All I can do is point out that getting your manuscript rewritten is normal.

@terdon, this was more a comment to bremen_matt's and others' answers in the same vein - not yours. Apologies for the confusion.

First of all, almost every time I send something, they respond with something like, "don't send us manuscripts with errors, next time they'll be sent back to you" or "don't waste people's time with unpolished manuscripts."

This does seem very rude. Either they are just rude people, or your work is really so far below what they expect that they are losing patience. I suspect it's the former (but impossible to say).
I would reply one-by-one to every comment, including this one (perhaps in person). You can say bluntly that you did the best you could and would welcome specific suggestions for how to improve as a writer.

They also will give me comments like, "you didn't explain how you mixed this solution," so I will write, "I mixed the solution by adding XXg of XX to XX." Then they have the nerve to tell me, "you're not doing a good job, you add useless details about adding XXg of XX to XX." Really?! ... I'll submit a manuscript, and a certain section gets no comments. Then, I submit the manuscript again and the previously fine section is now crap! Why was it ok before, but now it's not?

Annoying, but editing is a skill that not everyone has. For the first part, they may have asked the question because they didn't understand, then agreed with your original assessment that it didn't seem appropriate to put in the paper. For the second part, they may not have read the section the first time. In both cases, I would attribute this to stupidity rather than malice.

They also make jokes about my writing, like "impossible [to test mice immediately upon birth] unless you're a mouse midwife." I know, it's not even clever. There's also random comments like, "what are you doing here [in reference to a statement]?," "stop doing XX," "don't do that," and "wrong, read it again."

This seems fine/common, I have no problem with this.

They're nice to everyone's face, but they have been very rude (i.e., actual severe harassment) to at least one other person over email that I know of.

While this may be true, I would set it aside and focus on your interactions with them. Re-litigating old cases with other actors is fruitless, even if it does suggest a pattern.

I'm middle-aged with a spouse and kids--I don't need to take crap from PIs my own age.

I've had really bad experiences with people who make statements like this. I hope you do not "play this card" when you have a disagreement with your advisors (or anyone else). It sounds like these advisors demean all their students -- which is not great, and you can complain about it -- but your past life experiences and age have no bearing on whether it is acceptable.

I don't want to leave because I don't have much else going for me job-wise. I don't want to confront them, because past experience has taught me that it makes them even more aggressive and rude.

There are probably certain strategies that work better than others for dealing with them. For example, you say they are nice in person -- maybe it's worth asking to go through their comments point-by-point in person rather than by mail. If you ask them to explain their corrections in excruciating detail (without being confrontational), they may think more carefully before they make excessive changes (or maybe you will learn something).

That was very helpful. I sincerely appreciate your advice.

I'll note that editing your own work is very difficult. Harder than editing that of others. It is because your mind is already primed to read and accept what you wrote, rather than what you should have written. Your eyes and mind can just dance over mistakes that are obvious to other readers.

Excellent analysis. The part about "I'm middle aged..." I completely agree with, I can completely confirm this from my time as young PI. It should not make a difference at which stage of life you are as to how the interaction with the PIs go. You are a student now; you should be treated no worse, sure, but also no better than the other students. Their text sounds snarky in writing, might lose some humour/flippancy that it would have in person, but is very far from the worst I have seen when I was a student - there is a lot of space for nastiness on top of this.

Just to make an obvious comment, "I added XXg of XX to XX" doesn't necessarily explain HOW you mixed your solution, and the mass ratio might be self evident in any case, for example if the solution was already described as "10% w/w of XX in XX". Clearly there is a possibility that the PIs are jerks, but there is also the possibility that the OP really doesn't understand how to "play this science game" yet, even if he thinks he does.

"For the second part, they may not have read the section the first time. In both cases, I would attribute this to stupidity rather than malice." That's not even stupidity. When my supervisor reads what I read, he spots errors I didn't spot. When I read things my supervisor wrote, I spot errors he didn't spot. When I read things I've given 3 people to check for mistakes, and re-read myself twice, I find errors. There's nothing wrong about not spotting an error the first time round.

I'd also add that while it may sound rude when you are used another environment, many of these comments, e.g. "stop doing that", are simply a very direct short form of comment that are normal in these circles, because a) time is short and b) in proof-reading one often directly writes down one's immediate thoughts while reading. Academia is in this regard often more blunt than feedback in industry, also because it is assumed people can separate criticism of what one is doing from criticism of who one is. This can feel off if one comes from an industry environment. [cont]

Now, some quotes are indeed a bit borderline. In particular contradictory advice is obviously not helping and threatening direct rejection instead of suggesting how to get to higher quality seems off. As for the contradictory advice, one additional innocent explanation would be that, given there are two PIs, each time another one read the text and they have a different opinion on what's important. They might also be jerks after all, but for now I would cut them some slack.

Your PIs were without questions very rude.
However, from what you are describing here:

I'll submit a manuscript, and a certain section gets no comments.
  Then, I submit the manuscript again and the previously fine section is
  now crap!
  ...
  They also rewrite almost everything I write. None of my writing ever makes it to the final cut.

That means after several attempts to help you to write the paper, your PIs concluded that it was impossible to fix your writing, and it would be better for them to write the paper themselves.
This is counterproductive, you and your PIs were wasting a lot of effort, and everybody were understandably frustrated.
I also had problem with writing during my PhD, and although my advisor told me several times that he just wanted to re-write the papers, he never really did. So you need to understand how much effort your PIs had spent on you and your paper.
Your PIs were rude, as a result of losing patience, and losing self-control.

Should I just grin and bear it? How do you cope with rude and
  demeaning PIs?

You need to address the root cause: improve your writing to meet the satisfaction of your PIs.
I'm unable to give advice on how to improve writing, but there are some good ones in my own question, you can find a bunch of others on this site or in the internet.
Your PIs re-wrote the paper, so now you have to versions: what you wrote, and what they expected you to write. You can learn from them.

This is the only existing answer that starts with your PIs are very rude. And while I agree to most of the points put forward by the most-upvoted answers, I can't really bring myself to upvote them with them fully focused on the student. All the suggestions on how to interpret advice and improve writing are spot-on, but giving a pass to bad advising because the student has much to learn... not ideal.

I disagree with your first conclusion a bit. There are good other reasons for suggesting edits on sections that one previously ignored. On first pass-throughs, an editor is looking at broad strokes. Later on, one might concentrate on only particular sections. Even later on, changes to one section might impose changes on another previously un-edited section. And finally, at the end, the paper needs to be edited for grammar, spelling, paragraph breaks, and general (low-level) flow.

The PIs are quite forward, but not particularly rude. As mentioned above, from my own experience, that there is a lot of space on the top for real rudeness. Most of the comments are concrete shortcomings, with the exception of one flippant comment. These are busy people: If they are repeatedly getting a subpar manuscript, of course, they will not spend time to use repeated extended politeness forms to address a shortcoming. They expect fast improvement from a PhD student.

I don't think you should be so eager to discount your alternatives.

Just because confronting hasn't worked before, doesn't mean you can't ever succeed in reasoning with them.
Your university surely has some sort of ombuds office or campus climate unit. In this situation they would almost certainly side with you, and if nothing else should give useful, practical advice on how to mediate the conflict.
You could quit and do a PhD in another university. Yes, it will make the application more complicated, but you can spin your experience into a strength. You will have wasted your 1.5 years, but in the grand scheme of things that's a fairly minor loss. Consider that a typical PhD takes 7 years in your field.
You could go into a different career. Grad students are usually anxious about jobs but if you figured out how to get yourself into grad school, you can surely figure out how to get yourself hired for a job that pays more than grad school.

Regardless, don't forget that you're not a slave or prisoner. You were the most promising guy out of several dozen highly qualified applicants. They wanted you to be there. It's costing the university and your PIs a lot of money to have you there. It's taking their valuable time. They have very little reason to waste your potential and failure on your part would also diminish their own prestige. So the interests are aligned in this: Everybody would be happier if you succeeded. The manner in which they have chosen to ensure your success might not be pretty, it may even be ineffective. But rest assured that in the back of their mind they want it to be effective.
In a perfect world, you would be able to just reason with them and improve matters. Morally, it is also the most correct act to step up and break the cycle of institutional abuse. However, in practice it may be very difficult to get anywhere by resisting, so I'll leave the choice up to you. If you do choose to not fight it, and instead decide to get with the program, here's some advice:

Try not to take it personally. A criticism of one sentence you wrote is not necessarily a criticism of your character. Even if the critic meant it as such, it is up to you to interpret it as merely a comment on the work discussed rather than you as a person. Nobody except a mind reader can ever know what you are truly like as a person, therefore personal criticism is ultimately kind of futile. Don't identify with your work, don't think of your draft as your baby. That's just asking for anguish when the baby gets spanked. If possible, try to pretend you didn't write the manuscript, you're just helping edit someone else's text and have no personal stake in it beyond improving it as much as possible given the circumstances.
Sending unpolished manuscripts is a bad habit. Even the nicest advisor has limited time he can devote to editing, and there is an infinite amount of editing that can be done, so you have no guarantee that the edits your advisor chooses to make will be the most useful ones. If you send an early draft and your advisor spends his time fixing some typos, you have just wasted a very valuable thing. You could have found the typos yourself, and the advisor could have instead clarified some aspect of theory that only he has the wisdom to. There are edits that your advisor can make, that would substantially improve your paper, that nobody else can (including you). You want to maximize your chances of obtaining these "profound" edits. Since every edit they make is an opportunity for such profundity, and there is a finite number of edits they can make, you want to eliminate less useful, "minor" edits from the pool. You should aim to make it impossible for an advisor to tell you something you couldn't have thought of yourself, or learned from someone else. That way everything they can possibly tell you will necessarily be useful and insightful. I don't know if this is what your advisors mean to tell you, but it is in your interest to interpret it this way regardless.
If their comments are confusing, try putting the agreement in writing as objectively and clearly as you can. Eg. "you told me to rephrase this part, but earlier you recommended the opposite...". Just typing this out can help you understand their point. If not, you can then make your case to them and ask them to clarify. Don't be confrontational or accusatory when asking for clarification - frame it as wanting to understand them better and improve yourself. And don't forget to demonstrate an effort of trying to understand their point of view.
Sometimes writing style can be a bit subjective. When the disagreement is mostly a matter of taste, it is not a bad idea to suppress your own taste and follow your advisor's taste. You'll have plenty of opportunity to "find your own voice" once you graduate. But when in doubt, you can only go so wrong if your voice is your advisor's voice. They can't criticize that too much without also criticizing themselves.
When they give negative criticism, solicit constructive feedback. For example, "I appreciate your comment that this part could use work, what do you think would be the best way to improve it?" or "I agree that extraneous details should be removed. What do you think is the most important detail about making the solution?" A neat trick is to give them a few versions of a passage and ask which one is best/worst. That way it's very hard for them to avoid giving you some kind of constructive feedback. Keep in mind that even people who suck at giving constructive advice, and only criticize, can still be tricked into being constructive by clever phrasing.
I appreciate that the wisecracks are painful to hear, but it's unlikely that you can get them to stop. Try to look at it in a positive light. It's a minor error, you can correct it and move on. You can even have a chuckle at the silly mistake you made. I'm not saying the remark you quote is fair to you, but if your goal is to not let it get to you, the way to do it is to not take yourself too seriously. Generally, if you get an actionable mean comment, remember that the best, quickest way of getting out of it is to just do what it says, and the comment will become irrelevant (beyond your hurt pride).
Don't think of it as "sucking it up". That sets up a defeatist attitude. Instead, appreciate that you're overcoming a tough challenge: That of effectively working even with difficult people. It's not about who is being a baby. It's about a bunch of people with difficult personalities who could produce something great if only you figured out a way to make it work. That way instead of ruminating about how unfair it is to be abused and have to turn the other cheek, you can instead feel proud of yourself for making the most of a difficult situation.
It's good to be confident, but don't be too eager with platitudes like "I have a family so I'm above this". The fact is that almost everyone marries and procreates at some point, it's hardly a distinction. In fact, since the typical PhD student is much younger and less experienced, but is able to handle it just as well, bringing your family into it reflects poorly on you. Again, be confident, don't let the criticism grind you down, but be cognizant of the subtle difference between confidence and pride. One will open doors wherever you go, the other is a cardinal sin.
This isn't to put you down, but the general impression I get, especially given that you're older than the typical student, is that you could use a little more assertiveness. If these people are really the same age as you, how is it that they get away with the tone they take? If you had met a random stranger on the street that was being condescending to you, how would you de-escalate and resolve that conflict? Do the same principles really not apply to your advisors?

But in general, try to maintain an attitude of making the most of the hand you're dealt and improving as a person. We can't know if your advisors really mean well and are just coming at it wrong, or if they're truly just bullies and enjoy abusing you. But the good news is, it doesn't matter. Even a negative, mean or hurtful comment meant to put you down can still be turned into something constructive that you can grow from. It doesn't make the hurtful comment right, but if you can't meaningfully redress the offense, you might as well benefit from the situation if possible. And it is often much more possible than it may seem.
Lastly, I would also strongly recommend seeing if there's some sort of counseling or support group available at your university. Try as you might, the emotional aspect of it may be very tough in isolation. If you can commiserate with people who are basically in the same boat as you, shrugging off the negativity can become much easier. And who knows, you might learn a useful trick or two from it as well.

"Sending unpolished manuscripts is a bad habit." - and it is rude to OP's supervisors. If a supervisor explains that something needs to be fixed, once, that's fair. If they continue seeing the same type of (not necessarily the particular same) mistake over and over in subsequent drafts, then of course they feel their time is being wasted.

It's mixed, which parts of their behavior are rude. But in total, they are just plain rude here, even when some parts would be okay for other persons.

Lets analyse the different parts:

don't send us manuscripts with errors, next time they'll be sent back to you

When you made a good attempt with your manuscript this is rude. Even when it would be bad, its partly their responsiblity to help you or at least point out the obvious flaws.
When they needed to point out the same mistake three times, they would be right. But the first time, they should help or at least give some rough pointers where you need to improve on.

don't waste people's time with unpolished manuscripts.

That's just rude.

I'm only 3 semesters in so I'm not perfect

You don't need to. You need to make a best-efford attempt and teaching you what you got wrong is their responsiblity, when you did your best.

impossible [to test mice immediately upon birth] unless you're a mouse midwife

If you're having a good relationship, this would probably be an acceptable attempt at pointing out some mistake with a bit of humor. Then it would even make the cricticism less harsh. But your relationship is not like this.

what are you doing here [in reference to a statement]?

Just a short way to point out a mistake. This is normally not rude for persons that have little time. They point out a flaw and it's your task to check what can be improved.

stop doing XX

This can be some short advice as well.

wrong, read it again

A bit impolite, but still pointing out that you should read the source more careful. Implies, that they think you should have read it better the first time.
In the sum it is not acceptable, and some statements are not acceptable in any case. I just wanted to point out a few statements, that are not polite, but not unusual for busy professors, even when they are much more polite persons when they have enough time.

If I'm just being a baby, totally feel free to tell me just to suck it up

It is not okay to make you feel like that. They need to get this right on the interpersonal level, independend of the quality of your work.

I'm middle-aged with a spouse and kids--I don't need to take crap from PIs my own age

Right. But you do not need to justify this with anything. You just do not need to take crap.

Is this type of behavior normal and acceptable in a lab? Should I just grin and bear it? How do you cope with rude and demeaning PIs?

No. Some people seeming rude because of their brevity happens often in labs with busy people that need to take care of many PhD candidates, but they still respect their subordinates. You do not seem to be respected and that's absolutely not okay.

They also rewrite almost everything I write. None of my writing ever makes it to the final cut.

I am not sure here. I think you should first try to understand the interpersonal problems. When you get the respect you deserve, it can be clarified if your work really misses important points all the time or not. But this cannot be clarified as long as you are not able to interact in a respectful way.
Anything they say may just be not objective because something's wrong about you, so you have no way to actually tell if their criticism is correct or not.
To build some self-esteeem, you could try to find some neutral people to review your work and tell you whats great about it. Then you will be able to trust them, when they point out flaws as well.

Your PIs are being rude and giving you non-constructive comments.
Currently, the top voted answers to this question incorrectly focus on you needing to improve your writing skills. They should be focused on your question, about your PIs' behaviors and comments. Many people give their PIs and advisors a pass because they have it in their head that graduate school should be miserable and comments made by a smart or successful PI cannot defacto be misguided. This is wrong.
You don't have to be an asshole to be a successful scientist, PI, or advisor, despite the fact that there are plenty of them with these undesirable qualities.
Do not just grin an bear it. I would suggest approaching them civilly in person to explain why you felt their comments were not constructive, and how they could be more constructive with minimal effort. Explain how this would benefit both them and you (e.g. you get more clear feedback on how to improve your writing, they don't have to endure as many mistakes in your writing).
Graduate school is all about learning how to do independent research, and everything that goes along with it. This is part of your PIs job. This shouldn't be miserable; challenging yes, miserable no (your PI especially shouldn't be adding to your misery).
Best of luck.

In Germany cases have been reported at the Max-Planck-Institutes, where PhD students are treated as working slaves by very famous Professors. Being critized and pressured, e.g. when getting pregnant during PhD and so on. Some of those PhD students then anonymously contacted journalists and the Max-Planck-Society had to take care of this issue. Some professors where put to other institutes or a sabbatical year.
So, this happens even at very prestigious institutes and you don't have to tolerate every kind of behaviour by your advisors, especially when colleagues of you suffer under the same behaviour.
One of my current colleagues left his former PhD position because of the Professor being a manipulating, sexually harassing slave driver, yet with very good publication record.
There is a german proverb: the route becomes the destination. While this is true for a PhD journey/odyssey, it's also true for your advisors. Both still have to learn a lot. Making fun of you in comments on your paper sketch is a no-go. This says more about them than your sketch.
As a sidenote, being co-advised by an apparently very ambitious non-tenured married couple looks rather suboptimal and uncommon to me. It doesn't have to be negative per se, but in your case it can even worsen the situation and pressure. No PhD student submits his first paper to a reputable peer-reviewed journal without several revisions by the advisor. So they could even divide the work load.

The MPI case was a very gruesome one, I do not think it's comparable. Note, email has a particularly bad record on getting flippancy across. Being flippant in writing is dangerous because there are no mitigating clues such as face expressions etc. to make clear how it's meant. The comments I found to indicate that the PIs are beginning to lose patience with OP because OP does not seem to get the point of right level of detail of writing after repeated rounds. Both PIs and OP have to learn, the former to have more patience, the latter to accept imperfection being pointed out.

So, are you saying the case of the infamous MPI professors apply to OP? Why? What do you take away from this anecdote? What's your suggestion?

@henning I don't make suggestions as no one knows the real situation of OP's group described shortly in the question. Apparently, one of his colleagues faces the same behaviour... But someone reading this question, facing a similar situation and having much ruder advisors should be aware that advisors/professors are no holy cows and their behaviour can be reproven by a higher/external instance. For me it's not about comparability, as the transitions from rude speech to manipulating of PhD students are apparently floating and unfortunately I have heard such stories often enough.

@user48953094 Manipulativeness is something entirely different than rudeness. There are rude, but unmanipulative people. There are manipulative, but ostensibly perfectly well-mannered, people. And there are rude and manipulative people. Let's not confound this. Of course, criticism can be used to manipulate and to unsettle people, which is a form of gaslighting. However, the present case just appears to me just to be one of the supervisors getting impatient from slow progress. Academics have the pre-assumption (from grad level onwards) of perceptiveness and quick uptake.

The PIs' comments on the OP's writing are not constructive. If the OP's university has some kind of writing lab or writing center [1], they may have people who are trained in helping you identify and use best practices for scientific writing.
Writing centers can be tremendously helpful. I trained to work in such a writing center around the time I defended my PhD. This was shortly before I submitted my final chapter to my PI. Two previous chapters had a combined 45 drafts. After reading the final chapter, my PI asked who had helped me with it and that the style was much improved - and this was just with me taking the training for a writing center (~20 hrs), not having actually worked with someone on it. While at the lab, I assisted several PhD candidates on both publications and theses, up to 5 hours a week for 10 weeks.
[1] http://writingcenter.oregonstate.edu/

Frankly, your writing needs to improve AND your PhD advisors are jerks.
Incoming graduate students are incapable of writing acceptable (let alone good) scientific papers (and that's not their fault). Part of the PhD experience is to learn to write well, satisfying the rigorous standards of scientific communication. Teaching this is part of a PhD advisor's job.
HOWEVER, in your case, two things stand out:

Your advisors' rudeness
Your advisors verbally abusing another co-worker while being nice in person (thereby constituting a pattern of behavior)

The 2nd point specifically rings alarm bells for me. People who are nice upfront and rude behind the safety of their computer are passive-aggressive bullies (I'm speaking from experience with people like these, including my ex).

If I'm just being a baby, totally feel free to tell me just to suck it up.

No you're not being a baby. People should have the right to be treated with dignity.

I'm middle-aged with a spouse and kids – I don't need to take crap from PIs my own age.

You may receive flak for this statement but I agree with you on this one: PhD wages are peanuts. You don't get paid enough to take this sort of crap and frankly, at one point you are too old for this.
However, your situation as described, means that you don't have a lot of options other than continuing on in this lab. I suggest:

Politely point out the fact that their rudeness affects you personally and hampers your efforts to improve. Keep the tone non-accusatory.
Clench your teeth, put in the effort and write better. Most universities have writing services where they impart training on manuscript preparation.
Confide in your spouse and attend counselling services.
Maintain a record (electronic and/or written) on the abusive behaviour. This may come in handy should you one day decide to file a report with the school's disciplinary/mediation committee.
Keep your communications with them polite, but curt and professional. Never share information about your personal life with them because people like these are vultures and won't shy away from using your emotions and personal circumstances as leverage in the future.

Your supervisors are not yet experienced enough to understand that it is unprofessional to talk in insulting way, subtle insulting including. The criticism should address very exact technical or scientific aspects, argument the reasons why should be done a different way, be communicated in emotion-free way and in general concentrate on making science, not on power games and ego grooming. Also, the feedback must include all issues that should be fixed, minimizing the number of rewrites this way.
Some of the comments look like warnings that your skills or level of trying is unacceptably low. Unless this is exactly that is intended to be communicated, such a trash talking is also unacceptable.
I think it would be appropriate to talk about these problems with them first. The insult may not be deliberate: some people just play the manner of some movie hero they like yet not in place. If the conversation does not work, ask somebody higher in the hierarchy to change the supervision, explaining the reason.
From the other side, it is normal to rewrite the scientific work multiple times, and even redo the experiments. This does not show by itself that your skills are low or you are not making any progress. Even professors, heads of department, do this quite often because it is very unusual to get the manuscript accepted on the first submission, without even minor requests for correction. Hence you really should not be insulted by proposals to make multiple changes, and multiple times, and more than you think would be enough. It is not "redoing" the work, it is just making a step forward towards the finished work.
However if the language is uncivil, that's another story. There is no any need for researchers to insult one another, regardless of the ranks.

My advice is just to flex a little spine.  Some people only respect you if peck back.  Don't whine.  And don't go postal.  But definitely push back.  Hard.  Let them have something to stress about.  Put the bear on their shoulders.
The situation sounds really bad given (a) two advisors and (b) married to each other, thus a conflict of interest and (c) relatively junior/young [older profs are WAY more likely to be kinder/gentler].  Also, I would assume they are probably giving conflicting edits.
You've had different jobs and done work in industry. Follow the directions to authors and what you see in papers and just write them as you think best.  My very first paper, my PI said "this will get outright rejected, if not held up for a year of revisions".  I said, send it in and let's see.  It was accepted without any revisions (and at a good journal).  PI was dumbfounded as he'd had 100+ papers and never had just "accepted".  And even a few hundred as a subeditor without seeing this.  He didn't know how to respond (no response needed, wait for galleys).  He never screwed with me again on papers and we just submitted exactly what I wrote (and every other of the handful of first author papers I did flowed through).  The point of this is not just "yeah me", but that these little tinpot dictators aren't always as on the ball as they think they are.  Do your own thing.  Even if it goes wrong, better to hang with your own rope than someone else's.  It sucks to have issues when you wanted to do something different in the beginning yourself.  Be independent.
If you just can't get stuff done with these people, than switch advisors (talk to the department, they will likely take care of you).  Sure, give them a talk first, but make it a bit of a "my way or nothing" since you have nothing to lose and are already ready to bail.
Unfortunately bailing from academia entirely is also an option.  There is a lot of BS in academia and it can be a drag if you've been a functioning adult not a delayed adolescent (perhaps in ways/settings that the professors don't even have).  But I would try to make the thing work.  Adapt and overcome and be a bit of a guerilla fighter.

The question said "two young married principal investigators (PIs)," and you said "given (a) two advisors and (b) married to each other". Did I mis-read the question or you did?

The post does not say that they are married to each other, but that seems to be the implication, otherwise why mention it.  Perhaps this ambiguity of expression is an indicator of part of the underlying problem.

Maybe you are a good writer, but the default case is that the advisors usually do improve students' manuscripts a lot. I was a very good writer as a PhD student (I got almost all my papers accepted right away), but still could learn at my postdoc stage to become even better (I got one paper "drowning" in red ink by my postdoc PI, even being after many years of experience). One can always learn, just ignoring the advisors because one doesn't like their form is not a useful advice.


text:
How is the "special aptitude for in-depth independent scientific work" proven if the professor candidate does not have a doctorate?
My PhD is almost finished (writing last paper of the cumulative dissertation) and I have applied for a full W2 professorship at a German university of applied sciences .
I have been invited by the appointment committee to give a lecture. However, I was informed that I would only be shortlisted if I can demonstrate a “special aptitude for in-depth independent scientific work” (German: “besondere Befähigung zu vertiefter selbstständiger wissenschaftlicher Arbeit”). It is required by all German higher education laws (e.g. §25 NHG).
The request was made by HR relayed through the committee as far as I can tell.
(I am a German citizen, so this is not visa-related.)
How do I show this without a doctorate? My list of publications is comparatively extensive for a doctoral candidate.

Can you ask their advice?

@Buffy I will try to discuss the matter beforehand with the head of the appointment committee. Nevertheless, it is certainly good to not only know his individual opinion on the matter.

Just to make sure there is no misunderstanding: you are close to handing in your PhD thesis (not habilitation) and apply for a full professorship (not Junior prof.)? If so: did you do extensive research and for some reason did not bother to hand in the thesis? Is there any particularly outstanding piece of research work of yours? If so, that may be the answer wrt. your application. If not, it may be worth while to consider whether you are abused in a rigged up application procedure (they know whom they want and invite "clearly impossible" candidates to fuflil formal requirements).

@cbeleitessupportsMonica You're right: My PhD is "almost" finished (writing last paper of the cumulative dissertation) and I have applied for a full professorship. Somehwat shocked by my boldness.You're last sentence brings up an interesting point I... Hmm...

@cbleites: Note that this is about a university of applied sciences (Fachhochschule), which do not require your academic career to have progessed beyond a PhD. However, amongst others, they require five years of job experience applying science, of which three years have to be outside of universities (details may vary; I haven’t checked all sixteen state laws on this). It is possible that Doc Brown fulfils this criterion, e.g., by having worked as a researcher in industry before their PhD. (If not, what you saying about a rigged application applies.)

Check the records of people who have similar jobs to the position for which you have applied.  If it's a job in applied sciences, then publications/conference proceedings are much more important than the PhD.

@Wrzlprmft: maybe I misread, but I was under the impression that the question somehow was opened to FH and university. (Even universities do not strictly require habilitation for full professorships, also there "or equivalent" is possible at least in the Länder where I have been.)

@DocBrown: "Somehwat shocked by my boldness." I don't think this is necessarily very bold. After all, there is no restriction that PhDs need to be done directly after Master/Diplom. Particularly at FHs (uni. of applied sciences) I'd expect it to be quite common that people decide to do a thesis at some point where they find that they have established themselves in industrial research.

With your PhD thesis close to handing in, and in particular a cumulative PhD thesis together with "list of publications is comparatively extensive for a doctoral candidate" they may say that you have already shown the qualification, and that they expect you to finish before starting the professorship.
I don't know about FHs (universities of applied science), but at universities the procedure will usually take many months, so I'd say this expectation can be quite realistic.
More generally speaking, FHs (and technical/applied departments at universities) want to have professors with industry experience. In that context, experience of e.g. many years as a group leader in industrial R&D that did not end up in a formal thesis can easily be at least equivalent to the amount of research required for a PhD thesis or a habilitation.
Again, in these fields it is maybe more common than in more theoretical fields that the decision of doing a PhD thesis is not made directly afer Diplom/Master but after a professional career is well established and the candidate finds themselve doing & liking research.
Last and hopefully least, there is the rather unpleasant possibility that the application procedure is rigged up to comply with formal procedural requirements but make sure an already known favorite candidate gets the call: in that case, "clearly impossible" candidates may be encouraged to apply rather than telling them that their application is hopeless and they shouldn't waste their time.

That being said, I don't see particular red flags in the described situation: as OP does not yet fulfil the criterion that would automatically put a check-mark to the aptitude for independent scientific work (doctorate) saying they need to show it in some other manner is probably the normal formal way of HR burocracy.
Recommendation: talk to the committee/HR, saying that as you have not yet finished your PhD (but are close to handing in) and seeing that whether you should list your publications? Should say that the PhD certificate will be handed in once you have it? Or something else?
I don't know for sure, but I almost expect that the committee will have to certify that you have the required aptitude rather than you declaring anything.

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text:
Do I need to cite someone repeatedly?
I am using a quotation in my text which I am citing appropriately the first time. Do I need to cite again when using some text or, a concept, or even a word of the quotation later in the text?
For example:

Smith (2015, p.15) states that: ‘the weather is going the be good today’.
  […]
  We do not need an umbrella today as the weather is going to be ‘good today’, so rain is not expected.

As you see, I am using punctuation, but I am not citing again. Is that appropriate?

You must cite every time you use the words or ideas of another.

you have the right idea, that according to Smith ("Abbreviated Grammar" 2015, p15) "it's appropriate to abbreviate, as long as the intention remains clear." Further, (Smith) it's "ok to abbreviate citations as well, to increase readability."

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text:
Double or single quotation marks non-obvious citation in citation?
My university’s guidelines about say that quotations in text should appear in single quotation marsks whereas when the writer quotes something in that paper and I am using it, I must use double quotation marks.
Now what confuses me is that I am quoting some bits from a paper about someone’s lectures, and the author of the paper gives a footnote saying the text is edited and annotated, but he doesn’t make clear which bits he annotates or he has edited himself, although this might sound simple it is a bit confusing.
Where should I use which quotation marks?

I edited your text to make it understandable, in particular using terms such as single and double quotation marks. Can you please check whether everything is still according to your intentions?

The rule you are referring is probably a convoluted way of saying that:

In general you should use single quotation marks.
When the text you are quoting contains quotation markes, you should turn them into double quotation marks – no matter what they were before. (This is probably unless when the quotation marks appear in a quotation in the text you are quoting, in which case things get ugly.)

So, suppose the book you want to quote is one of the following:

Prof. Smith said “Hello” to the students.
  Prof. Smith said ‘Hello’ to the students.

Then your quotation you should quote it as follows:

The book mentions: ‘Prof. Smith said “Hello” to the students.’

Or (though I would advise against using such a construction at all):

The book quotes the Professor: ‘“Hello”’

If the text you are quoting does not clarify whether something is a quote or not, this is not your problem (except that it may render it unreliable as a source of information). However, you might want to mention in general that you are quoting from a book which states that it has edited the quotes within in it.

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text:
Is it appropriate for an undergrad student to ask a professor to sign a non-disclosure agreement?
Allow me to first give some context.  A friend and I have been discussing a business idea involving a technical device that I need some guidance on how to perfect.  My friend just told me he is taking a class with a professor that founded a company with a device similar, but distinctly different from mine, and I would love to talk to him about this during his office hours.  If he is willing to share I would like to ask about how his device works.  I would also like to ask him how to do a few of the things I am struggling with.  Before I tell him all the details of my idea, I would like to somehow protect my idea, since I do not know this professor at all.
So, I am asking all the academics out there, how would you feel if a student asked you to sign a non-disclosure agreement given these circumstances?

Are you trying to ask your professor to give you free technical advice?

I'm having trouble understanding why the professor would want to do this: for the pleasure of helping a student turn a profit accompanied by the guarantee that he gets nothing in return?  What if I ask you to help me clean my car provided you sign an agreement not to talk about whatever you find under the seats: are you interested?

I disagree with the downvotes. I think this is a perfectly reasonable question, where the answer happens to be "it is a very bad idea".

I think this is one of the questions where the best way to answer it is with a counter-question: "If you were the professor, would you agree to this?"

If your idea is so good why don't you just patent it?

@Bakuriu you can't patent an idea. Patents also cost a lot of money if you are going to do it right.

@Bakuriu Patents can also take a lot of time to be granted and can be expensive to defend. Depending on the design, a patent is often a good idea just to add that extra little bit of protection, but "just" patenting an idea and then freely discussing the details of it would be foolish. Better to protect the idea in all possible ways, rather than relying on a single, proven-to-be-unreliable method.

@Bakuriu The problem with "if your idea is so good" is that people with ideas think they are much more valuable than they really are.  Ideas are cheap.  Execution is valuable.  If your success depends mainly on the secrecy of your idea, it's doomed from the start.

@PeteL.Clark Now I'm almost intrigued enough about what's under the seats to offer to wash your car. But I'm worried that you might be bluffing to get free car washes from gullible people like me.  And your car is a long way away.

@mikeazo - That's a partial truth.  You can protect your idea for a limited time by filing a provisional patent application.  You're then obliged to actually create a working implementation of your idea and complete the regular patent application process.  So while you can't directly patent an idea, you can use patents to protect your idea for a limited time.

Are you asking the professor to sign a mutual NDA? If not, why would the professor sign something that gives you rights (or at a minimum, potential legal complications) with nothing in return?

Until you have a working device, you're just an "idea guy/gal". And nobody like "idea guys/gals". If you lack the know-how to achieve your idea, you really have no business trying to get the knowledge from others without compensating them.

Even if your idea does have some value, you have to understand that from someone else's point of vew, the most reasonable and pragmatic assumption to make is that the idea is worthless.

This sounds silly. You want to have someone who has a similar device and is thus a competitor or potential competitor to sign an NDA and then provide unpaid advice on how to improve your device? Good luck with that.

@djechlin: There is education and there is giving out business advice.  And there is giving out business advice and there is giving out business advice with the written guarantee that one cannot profit from it.  These are three different things.  Note finally that the OP said that the professor was not his professor (he did not even say whether he was enrolled at the professor's university), and I am starting to lose count of how far we are away from a professor's job responsibilities.

"[B]ut I disagree with the insinuation that the student (OP) should just assume university professors are unhelpful and uninterested until it's a formal responsibility or to their material benefit." I did not insinuate that!  I am a professor who spends many hours a week helping students, far beyond any formal responsibilities and rarely to never to my material benefit.   But teachers are not required to use their technical expertise to help students in any way they can.  (No one is.)  If a friend of one of my students asked me to do their taxes, I would say no.  The OP's request is similar.

In fact, the OP's request is arguably worse, and you said it well yourself in your answer.  The request conveys: "I view you as a potential adversary and take that seriously enough to get formal protection from you.  Now, can you help me out of the goodness of your heart?"

I don't understand most of the current answers, which mostly assume you want technical advice without paying for it, but requiring an NDA. If this is indeed what you want, I agree it's a bad idea.
However.
You write that this professor has already gone into business. This implies that he has a certain basic understanding of how business works. He probably has signed his fair share of NDAs, as well as requiring others to sign his.
It appears perfectly reasonable for you (or your friend) to set up a short meeting with this professor, say of 30 minutes or so. Quickly present your idea in a rather general manner, in an "elevator pitch" - at least outlining what problem you want to solve. Think beforehand how much you are comfortable revealing. Tell him that you'd like his advice, and be frank that you are not comfortable giving full details without protection for your intellectual property. (I'd also look for protection if I knew this professor, not only if he were unknown.)
Have a proposal ready for possible next steps, which would include him signing an NDA and his investing a little time for a discussion. Ask him explicitly what he'd expect from you in return for investing his time. Professors are busy people, and more so if they run a company on the side.
You may actually have a good chance that he'd be happy to mentor you to a limited extent pro bono - most academics are idealists at heart, otherwise they would be in industry from the very beginning. However, if you want more in-depth advice, be prepared to offer hourly rates, possibly conditional on your idea getting off the ground.
Always keep in mind that professors are busy, just as are other businesspeople. Don't come with a mindset that you are entitled to advice, but ask politely, and things may go well. If this professor is active in a similar line of business as you are, this may be a very good opportunity - he may have contacts in the industry and/or to funders that may very well be invaluable.

I like this answer.   I would add that it also sounds like the NDA should be mutual -- meaning don't be surprised if the professor asks you to sign his NDA and/or non-compete regarding his own commercialized intellectual property that you are asking about.

I think the correct answer is a combination of this answer and Dirk's.  There's no academic issue here, it's a purely business one.  And in business it's not at all a "bad idea" to require anyone you discuss your IP with to sign an NDA.  It's perhaps a bad idea for the professor to agree unconditionally or to give away technical advice for free/without at least insisting upon a mutual NDA.  But attempting to get expert technical advice for free isn't a bad idea; it's actually very good business sense and extremely beneficial if you can make it happen.

@alfeema I of course understand both the reason and necessity - as well as that funding from commercial interests is necessary (or a necessary evil), and why even a student may think ahead to commercial applications of his studies...  Still the idea of both students and professors demanding non-disclosure and non-compete agreements from each other, does to me seem to go against the idea of academia and higher learning - to teach, to nurture, and to advance the knowledge of human kind (and thus better our lives).

@alfreema every NDA should be mutual, with every clause applying equally to both parties.  I wouldn't sign one that wasn't.

@aroth I don't agree that there is no academic issue here. If I were to join a business venture with a student I was teaching, I would at the very least need to report it to my boss so they can check whether any precautions need to be taken, eg having someone check over the marking of that student.

I would advise pointing out as early as possible in the process that you would require an NDA to be signed. I imagine this could be completely off-limits to some people (it would be to me), and I wouldn't enjoy wasting time for meetings etc if it turns out later that I'll come to nothing because I'm not willing to sign an NDA.

Let's see: you want the professor to freely give out their trade secrets on their real device, so that you can build a potentially competing device; and you want the professor to sign an NDA on your non-existent device, so that they can give you free technical advice on it?
I think that's going to get you a "ha ha ha ... no".
I also think you need to adjust your expectations.
To understand why NDAs are annoying to academics, and to find a better alternative, do check out the Professional Academic Alternative to Non-Disclosure Agreements PAANDA; here's a snippet:

... academics regularly extend and expect to receive a professional confidentiality during peer review of unpublished research and grant proposals.
  I am more than happy to extend the same professional confidentiality to you ...

"you want the professor to freely give out their trade secrets on their real device" - the OP wants to ask "how the device works". This does not, to me, imply that he wants the professor to divulge trade secrets. You are attacking something the OP never wrote. -1.

The answer is a bit condescending, but the essence is true: The OP wants a free favor from an unknown person. Not only presenting nothing in return, but also mistrusting him and requiring him to sign something which will probably have negative consequences for his own business...

@Falco I prefer firm but just :P I didn't get the condescending feel, IMHO.

Change the "ha ha ha" for "blank stare", and the "no" for "turns around and leaves wordlessly" (or "throws you out of the office", as it may be).

The main point for having NDAs in place is NOT that you don't trust the person. Sure, it offers you some protection, but ultimately there is always a way around it. The main point is that an NDA makes sure that whatever you tell the person does not legally end up as "publically disclosed", which would end your possibility to patent it. But if the OP is a student at the same university, there probably is a confidentiality agreement in place already, but he would have to check.

Gerhard's point is very true, at least with U.S. patent law (and I'd guess also the patent laws of most other countries.) While I was a part-time grad student and working full-time, I've entered NDAs with professors for exactly that reason (not to solicit their advice, though; just because it allowed me to "kill two birds with one stone" by using some research I eventually needed to do for work anyway to fulfill a course research paper requirement.)

My interpretation of the situation is this:
This is not an academic issue since you are approaching somebody who leads some business with some business-related issue.
The fact that that somebody is also a professor and that somebody who you know has a class with this professor seems unrelated. So my advice would be:
Handle this as if it were a business meeting and not an academic meeting.

I treat the markdown syntax like LaTeX syntax and if I remember correctly, it is Lamport himself who says that often the solution to some typesetting problem is to use some environment for something else. How would you emphasize a block that contains the gist of the answer?

@FedericoPoloni I don't really see an issue with it.

Well, an issue is that it makes people think it's a quote. I scrolled up and used ctrl+f to check if you were quoting another answer/comment.

It doesn't just make people think it's a quote. It literally tells the machine it's a quote, too.

Dirk, if you are TeX-affine, you know about logical markup. > is logical markup for quotes. I'd recommend using italics (enclose the text within asterisks "*"), which is not logical markup per se, but follows typographic conventions for emphasis.

I asked a question on meta about this issue: http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2200/adding-emphasis-with-blockquotes

As a result of the meta question, especially the answer by @Wrzlprmft, I changed the blockquotes the boldface.

Weird - I realized my initial comment that prompted the discussion on the quotes is no longer here. Sorry for the added trouble; this was not intentional: maybe I (or some mod) clicked on "delete this comment" inadvertently.

You should decide:
A: Do you want a favor from a friend?
Then it should be friendly, no strings attached. He is doing you a free favor on his time without any benefit for himself
B: Do you want a professional service from a business partner?
Then you get your NDA, but you should also offer reasonable compensation for his time and help.
Why should he give you free advice and help without knowing you, without any benefit? Furthermore you are designing a potential competing product to his own business - and an NDA may negate him ideas for his own business which he may find himself, but if you present them first he cannot use them later on. So he gains nothing from your meeting, but has to invest time and risk.

In addition to EnergyNumbers' answer, even if you got him to sign, it would be pretty much useless. An NDA only offers legal protection. This means that it is only useful if he steals your idea AND you realise it AND you have some evidence AND you are willing to pay for lawyers and possibly go to court AND convince the court that it was indeed your brilliant idea, and not the professor's work in his area of expertise.
Which means that if he wanted to steal your idea, NDA or not, he would, and he would get away with it.
Now, he knows ethically, he is not supposed to disclose trade secrets; and if he is an ethical person, he won't. And if he is not, see above: NDA is useless here.

This is a very pessimistic point of view that I do not share. I agree that enforcing an NDA would be a hassle, especially for a student with limited funds, but if the professor were found in violation of an NDA, the consequences to him may well be serious. Possibly serious enough to make him consider his options carefully. NDAs are common not only among large corporations with deep pockets, but also among starving startups.

"AND convince the court that it was indeed your brilliant idea" This is another reason why documentation is important. If you have documentation of your ideas predating any meeting with the professor, it won't be terribly difficult to convince the court it was your idea. I also disagree about it only being useful if he attempts to steal your idea. It establishes a formal, up-front agreement of what each party expects from their mutual disclosures, which is itself helpful in preventing disputes arising from misunderstandings. This helps each party to protect their IP and limit liability.

You also need to consider that you need to keep your own trade secrets secret, which is what an NDA achieves. You can lose trade secret status by disclosing it to the professor without an NDA, whether the professor tells anyone or not, so if anyone else steals your "trade secret" you may find that it isn't a trade secret anymore.

NDAs on ideas are generally useless, because ideas are worthless. Until the idea becomes a product or service, it has no value.

This is exactly my view on NDAs - basically unenforceable. It mostly comes down to trust - if you don't trust the individual without an NDA then the NDA will make no difference. If you trust the person, then why bother with the NDA. However, in some cases I do agree with @reirab that it can be useful as a symbolic gesture and can help prevent misunderstandings about the status of a business relationship. But no-one should even believe that an NDA will actually protect their idea.  Even patents are fairly unenforceable for many small businesses due to the costs involved.

@gnasher729, you make a good point about keeping trade secrets out of the public domain, but just remember that an NDA does not keep your trade secrets secret. An NDA does not stop the professor telling anyone the secrets, or using the secrets. It is simply an agreement that if he/she does, then the OP has the option to take it to court and try to win damages, by which point it is probably too late anyway. That is, if the OP had the funds for this action, and can actually prove the breach of contract. Bottom line, never rely on an NDA if you don't trust the other person without one.

@zelanix I think what gnasher meant by "keeping your trade secrets" is that they still legally count as trade secrets, that is, you haven't publicly disclosed them. Public disclosure can prevent you from being able to patent the idea later. However, disclosure under NDA does not have such an effect. This is actually a very valid point. The other party leaking the idea wouldn't cause you to lose the ability to patent if they had signed an agreement not to disclose, since you had no intent to make a public disclosure. The NDA could also be evidence of priority.

@reirab, yes, I agree, because secrets once disclosed to anyone are technically in the public domain (prior art) and as you mention, this could affect the ability to patent. But it is still important to appreciate that this is what you are using the NDA for, and that it doesn't actually protect anything. Too many people think that an NDA will actually stop people disclosing information.

OP states that where as the devices are similar, they are also distinctly different, which leads me to believe that we could be talking about the possibility of something component based. With this in mind I assuming the OP has a scenario where he has an idea for a device made up of components A+B where A is something original from him and B is something that he is struggling to perfect. The professor has a device made up of components B+C where B (and possibly C though this doesn't matter to much) is something the original from the professor. The difference between the two devices is component A and C (this makes the devices distinctly different, and non competing) with component B being the subject of OP's question.
If this is the case then an NDA may very well be useful not just to the OP, but to the professor as well. It could allow both parties to discuss their components without legally allowing either of them to steal each others ideas. This could help to reassure the professor and encourage him to be more open when discussing his device with you. (Agreed NDA's can be costly to take through the courts but they will, most of the time, be even more costly to the losing side if it was to get that far, thus a moderately significant deterrent to either parties.)
It may also be worth considering a licensing agreement between yourself and the professor in the future which would allow you to legally use his component in your device for a fee based on the license terms if anything has been patented.

In a typical licensing agreement, the licensor grants the licensee the
  right to produce and sell goods, apply a brand name or trademark, or
  use patented technology owned by the licensor.

(http://www.inc.com/encyclopedia/licensing-agreements.html)
Mentioning this could also help to convince the professor to discuss his device with you in greater detail; mutual gains and all that?

Speaking as a former professor, I think this is fine.  However, no one likes these kind of things sprung on them.  I would recommend bringing the NDA up before the meeting.  In the email/phone call you have with the professor requesting the meeting mention you would like an NDA.  E.g. "As you've done similar work in the past, I'd love to hear your thoughts on certain aspects of this process.  If this is something that interests you, would you be willing to sign an NDA?"  You know... be forthright and nice about it.

My friend just told me he is taking a class with a professor that
  founded a company with a device similar, but distinctly different from
  mine, and I would love to talk to him about this during his office
  hours.

NDAs have their use and their place, but don't take it personally if this person categorically refuses to sign your NDA.
The more a person is an expert in an area, the more he's likely to have consulting jobs/advisory roles with companies in that same technical area. Also, the more a person is an expert in an area, the more he has heard similar ideas to your idea, or the more he will work with others with similar ideas.
So for an expert, signing an NDA related to his field of expertise usually has not upside whatsoever (unless he's getting paid for it), since through no fault of his own, it may limit the kind of paying projects he'll be able to accept in the future, or it may increase his potential legal exposure.
I speak from experience here. I am not a Professor, but I am a technical expert in my field. And I have no problem signing an NDA if it's about molecular biology for instance (since molecular biology is a field I know little about), but if it's something that is too close to the kind of work I am doing, or too close to the kind of work I may doing in the future, I'll stop the person right there.
Like I said, NDAs have their use and their place. But if you're about to approach a possible competitor of yours to tell him your entire idea. Then please don't. Don't do it for your sake (in case he's not trustworthy), but also don't do it for his sake as well. By not telling him your idea, then you can never accuse him of having betrayed your confidence or having stolen your secret sauce.
Instead, patent your idea, protect your idea, or get it started on your own. Once your idea is patented, or once your idea is publicly out there already, then you can go to him. Or if you want to go to him before that happens, then go to him with cash in hand and pay him for his advice. Paying him for his advice is the only other way he may be willing to sign that NDA for you.

I think asking the professor to sign an NDA is fine, using the approach written by Stephan.
However, I think a better solution would be to have a meeting to determine whether the professor has the expertise needed, then offer to hire the professor as a consultant if she's willing.
Tell the professor up front that the meeting is about consulting on a project for your business.  During the meeting, keep the discussion focused on questions about the professor's knowledge and experiences.
If the professor is interested, a NDA would be the next step.  After the NDA is properly executed, get all the project specifications and pitfalls (even potential pitfalls) out on the table so the professor can make an informed decision about doing the work.
Your consulting contract should include a clause for what happens if the work is not completed, a detailed specification of what is to be delivered, the terms for payment, and an assignment of intellectual property (that is, any work the professor does belongs to your company).  If you don't have cash to pay for the services, consider offering equity.
Please keep in mind that a NDA is a good start, but it isn't a cure-all.  You still have to know if someone breaches it and you have to pay the legal fees to enforce it.
BTW, you can always go out and learn enough to make a prototype, then HIRE an expert to be your Chief Scientist if you still need them later.
Edit:
The OP hasn't formed a company and isn't sure about how to proceed.  This answer would only apply in the case that a company exists and the development direction is relatively clear.

Curious -- why the downvote?

I believe the downvotes stem from this answer treating the professor as though he's interviewing for a position. The OP clearly stated that they are reaching out to the professor, who is an expert, to learn something new, but are looking for confidentiality. Also, the OP mentioned that they're just bandying around an idea at this point; there's no company for which the professor could consult. The behavior you advocate in this answer is pretty presumptive on the part of the student given the situation described.

@eykanal Thanks for the clarification.  You're right -- the OP is just toying with the idea.  This advice would be better suited for someone who had already formed a company.

authors: Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні

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


text:
What is a referee in the manuscript submission process?

Please submit, with the manuscript, the names, addresses (including
  countries), and e-mail addresses of five potential referees who are
  outside the authors' institutions and must not have conflict of
  interest with the authors.

Do you think I should name 5 researchers from a similar area that are not affiliated with my university and co-authors? Is this what referees are?

why is this downvoted?

Yes.
A "referee" in an academic context is

An expert who judges the manuscript of an article or book to decide if
  it should be published.

You should make sure to find established researchers who are capable of judging your manuscript and who do not have conflicts of interest (e.g., frequent collaborators).
This canonical question may be helpful: What does the typical workflow of a journal look like?. Or the peer-review tag (although peer review is somewhat more general than manuscript refereeing).

Thank you very much, @stephan is it by conflict of interest also count "frequent communication and discussion"

The question usually is whether a referee could stand to gain personally (financially or non-financially) by judging your manuscript better than it deserves. Frequent communication and discussion does not seem to be enough for that, but if the referee also collaborates with you or your supervisor, it might cross the line. Conflicts of interest are a somewhat subjective topic. We have an entire tag [tag:conflict-of-interest]; it may be helpful to browse the questions so tagged.

Thank you, @Stephan one more sub question, if referees are also cited in the paper ( becuase they have already done research that was important to cite) that can be also conflict of interest or maybe advantage for submitter? Since reviewer tend to be more subjective toward their works, or that should not be a problem

You are completely right. Ideally, your referees should work on sufficiently similar topics that they understand what you are doing (so you will likely cite them), but on the other hand, they will be more favorably disposed towards a manuscript that cites them and pushed up their citation count. There is some tension here, and no clear demarcation. I gave a couple of thoughts on this here, from the perspective of "citation padding", i.e., adding extraneous citations.