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At good American PhD programs in the STEM fields, are there not enough American applicants, or are the international applicants simply better?
This question is specifically about funded PhD programs, not self-funded PhD / masters programs.
In funded PhD programs in the STEM areas where there is a big international student body, e.g. students from China, India, Russia, is it because these international students are just objectively better, or is it due to a consistent lack of American applicants (because perhaps they choose business schools, medical / law schools, industry over academia)?
Any data would be helpful, too.
Thanks,

Have you considered the probability that the number of international applications is large? There are millions of people living outside the US who want to study/ work in the US, and having a PhD is one way.

Around 95% of the world's population lives outside the USA so you would expect quite a lot of strong foreign candidates.

The question as stated in the title suggests a false dichotomy, that only makes sense if you assume that American STEM PhD programs would choose to admit only American students if they could.  As Morgan Rodgers points out, presumably some of the international applicants are better than some of the American applicants --- that's just common sense.

Hi @MarkMeckes, first, thank you very much for stating the common sense conclusion that some of them would be better than some of the Americans, but unfortunately your comment isn't as great as you may think it is, sorry.  I am addressing the case where there is a big international student body and am wondering if a big proportion of international candidates is objectively better than a big proportion of American candidates -- beyond common sense conclusions -- and I am wondering whether there is even a big enough pool of American applicants.

That's really my question.  Hope that clears things up for you, @MarkMeckes.

I don't know the specifics of the US, but I can give you my 2 cents about what's going on in European countries under a similar situation, which I think might probably apply.
It's not about people being better or worse, but about several factors:

Education/Attitude. In many "rich countries", the educational system has changed to a point where the knowledge about STEM subjects in primary/secondary education has become weaker, less demanding, often collaborative, and sometimes even "subjective". Parents are complaining about excessive homework, taking kids to alternative schools so they can play and spend more time with other kids and learn at their own pace, etc... Other things are valued more. You can see that the level of mathematics, physics, etc... has really declined from 50 years ago to now. My parents laughed at the STEM subjects/problems our generation studied at a certain age, and I laugh about what the current generation studies now. In the countries you mention (China, India, Russia), the rationale and culture are absolutely the opposite (as they were in "rich countries" 50 years ago): an emphasis is put in learning by the book, no matter if you like it or not, and individual ultra-high effort, because this is the path to get a better life, possible in another country, even if it's in detriment of having a healthy childhood, friendships, free time, or a proper socialization.
Expectations/Knowledge. Because of the great life they had and what they often see on the Internet, TV, etc... young people expect that life is a low-effort/high-reward business. They have been sold that anyone can be anything, and it's a matter of just "wanting it very much" (or paying very much/knowing someone to get into the club of good jobs). The aim is to become a manager or earn a lot of money. Certainly, no sane person would consider a PhD/research career as a path to achieve that and the other ones you mention make much more sense (law, business...). When I studied Computer Science 20 years ago, you needed nearly an 8 out of 10 in your SAT to get in because of the high demand (same in other engineering studies). Nowadays, there are free spots, so everyone gets in. This has happened in many technical universities because students are moving to other areas of knowledge.
Market. Here comes the market. You have two groups: (a) the local candidates, who were born having had everything, barely confronting any difficulty in their lives, and within that educational culture and expectations described above, (b) candidates from China, India, Russia, who often have had a tough life they would like to improve, with a different educational background and culture that values effort, willing to work extremely hard for a better life. STEM subjects are, in general tough and objective. A theorem, a piece of software, or an engine, simply have to work. The market prefers people from the (b) group.

Nowadays, there are free spots, so everyone gets in -- Hahahahahaha. No. Computer science is significantly more competitive than it was 20 years ago. My CS department (where I have worked for almost 20 years) gets 5-10 times as many applications as it did 20 years ago, for only twice as many spots (and only 30% more faculty).

@JeffE Probably not for CS, but the student numbers in chemistry (Germany) declined in the early nineties, i was told, by 30% or so, and are stable at a low level (practically everybody gets in) since then. The overall student number has doubled since 1990, however.

@JeffE Are you sure that your comment applies to european universities? At least the answer of Pablo is talking specifically about Europe (and I do not think is way off to be honest).

-1. Very speculative answer. The segment of people from developing countries that make it to graduate schools in Europe or America are often very privileged themselves.

@user8001  don't know much about Russia and India. I do know students in China would have to study extremely hard in order to have a chance to go abroad. Yes, there are privileged student who were able to go to Harvard or other Ivory colleges because their parents are wealthy enough to donate a lot money. They are minorities. Most Chinese students are not like that.

decent answer, @Pablo, but a bit off the mark and also patronizing and demeaning, in some sense.  if you are arguing that there aren't any hardworking American / European students in middle school, high school, and undergraduate colleges, focusing on STEM majors, that's probably not true.  They land up in medical schools, or something 'below' that, e.g., dental or pharmacy school.  I think the U.S. and Europe has plenty of talented, capable STEM students who may be urged to actively stay away from the PhD degree, but I am not sure, hence my question here.

Not every student in the U.S. and Europe wants to keep up with the Kardashians.

@user75392 Many children of my friends (Chinese) are medical doctors/lawyers. The number is much larger than 30 or 40 years ago. Most of my friends are professors/engineers because MD/JD was too hard for them at that time (40 years ago). I am talking about the US, of course.

@user75392 I have no idea how you derived those conclusions from the answer. Please re-read the answer properly, your comment, and think again about what you said.


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Can a university revoke one's degree for his minor misconduct?
I don't mean misconduct that will make him get expelled or miss his academic requirement. He will have received sanction like making an apology or suspension for a month if the university finds it out earlier. But the student now has graduated and will not be back. Can the university still do something to him?

This depends entirely on what the misconduct was and the university in question. One extreme case is Jan Hendrik Schon where he published many articles using fabricated data. The University of Konstanz revoked his degree after the subsequent investigation of academic dishonorable misconduct. For something like this, the institution that had initially conferred the degree may revoke the degree despite the individual having already graduated.
If the individual has graduated, but has not yet been issued the degree, and depending on the severity of the misconduct, the university may also withhold the degree until further notice.
Overall, it really depends on the university's judgment on how severe the misconduct was. There are no universal rules regarding how the university ought to punish a student based on the misconduct (e.g., some universities are much more strict about plagiarism or cheating than others).

This is the one known as “Baron Cut & paste”.... iirc

@SolarMike You are confusing Schoen with Guttenberg. Schoen was a physicist who did not plagiarise. Instead, he fabricated results. Guttenberg was the Cut & Paste Baron, and he was a politician.

So did not remember correctly but both good examples of bad practice...

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Do I need to re-send the same GRE test score if I want to apply for the same graduate program again?
I applied for a master program of university X two years ago and was rejected. Then I went to another master program and now I am about to finish. I want to apply for the PhD program of university X this year, and I have no plan to re-take the GRE test. I am wondering if it is need to re-send the GRE score to the same department of the same university.

If the score is recent, you won't need to retake the GRE. Ask the program if they need another official report.

Maybe, maybe not. You are going to have to ask them what they need. they may even want you to retake the test.

You'll have to ask university X, they are the ultimate and only authority when it comes to the exact application rules of university X. It would be a bad idea to base such decisions on the advise of some random people in the internet.

It depends on the university. Many of them don't retain materials from applicants whom they ultimately did not accept. However, their policies regarding GRE scores may differ.
Shoot an email to the department; they should reply within a few days.

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As a new Ph.D. student (mathematical statistics) how should I read papers for research?
My question is about how to best read mathematics papers for research.
I just passed the last qualifying exam as a Ph.D. student in mathematics (studying statistics) and I'm reaching the point where I will need to do more research, which involves reading papers. I used to write, in my own words in a journal, pre-reading thoughts (why I'm reading this paper, what I already know, etc.), a summary of the paper's contents while reading, post-reading thoughts (what I think about the ideas, how they connect to others, how this could be useful, opinions, etc.), and a list of potentially interesting bibliography entries for later reading. When reading I would essentially read linearly, making margin notes, highlighting interesting sections, and so on. Reading a single paper could take a day, going through this process.
This did well enough for my undergraduate thesis on a topic in economics. It also worked well for the paper that my adviser and I are wrapping up and submitting to journals. But I get the impression that this is not an optimal way to read papers, especially in subjects as technically intense as mathematics. (My role in the paper I co-authored with my adviser was to do simulation studies for a test statistic he and another co-author developed, which is more computational and programming intensive than mathematically intensive, and paper reading was basically to get background on the subject. This is fine for me as a starting researcher, but I don't think I will get by on this alone for a Ph.D. thesis, let alone in my later career.)
I'm shy about asking my adviser the best way to read papers, so I'd like to hear others' approach. Is my approach to paper reading a good one, or is there a better way?

"I'm shy about asking my adviser the best way to read papers, so I'd like to hear others' approach." It's great to hear a variety of approaches, but you should not be shy about asking your advisor this.  That's what they're there for, and they are better positioned to give you a useful answer than anyone else.

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/68605/19607 and https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/23268/19607

I suggest you join or start a journal club with some fellow students.  This won't completely answer your question but it would help.

I tell my students: have a question in mind when reading a paper.  Be strategic.  For example, you might have idea or problem X. Then you can go looking for idea/problem X in papers or compare and contrast the Y in papers with X.

The "it could take a day" to read a paper may mis-represent things: sure, you can "get the idea" in an hour or two... but, in mathematics, for example, if there are really new ideas there, and you're a novice, you might find yourself usefully spending months to understand the thing, and its background. The point is... context. Much more complicated than "logic", etc.

A day is not very long to read a mathematically intensive paper.  When I do a thorough peer review and read a paper in detail, it easily can take a full week of my research time, meaning something like 20-25 hours.  Sometimes more for a long and or difficult paper.

My PhD was in statistics, and I have also supervised PhD students in this field, so hopefully I can offer some useful advice.  Here are some thoughts:

Talk to your supervisor: There is no room for intellectual shyness in that relationship.  Your supervisor is not going to be upset with you for asking questions, even if it is something you think you should know how to do already.  The fact that you even think to think about this is a good sign, and your process is quite impressive.  Don't be shy.

Streamline your process: Your process sounds quite comprehensive already.  Personally, I find that writing a short summary in your own words/notation is probably the most useful exercise to understand math papers.  Some of the other stuff you're doing might be a bit excessive, especially if you're only getting through one paper a day.

Learn the maths, expand your tool-kit: In a mathematical field, in additional to understanding the specifics of the paper you're reading, you also want to use this as an opportunity to gradually expand your mathematical tool-kit.  To do this, make sure you understand the derivation/proof of each result, and if you see an unfamiliar mathematical technique, talk to your supervisor about why it works, and when you might deploy it.

Learn to "see the matrix": Think about the intuition of each method and make sure you can describe it intuitively.  When reading mathematical theorems, ask yourself lots of questions:  Do I understand this result and its relevance to the field?  How would this be applied in practice?  Do I understand the proof(s)?  Are there other ways to prove this theorem?  If there are necessary conditions for a result, do I understand why they're necessary (i.e., why does the result fail without them)?  If there are sufficient conditions for a result, do I understand why these are sufficient (i.e., why does the result hold in this case)?    Can I visualise the theorem in geometric terms or with some other visual/intuitive method?  Can I really "see" it or can I only follow the proof?

Jot down your own ideas: As you read the literature, jot down your own ideas for possible extensions and interesting questions that come out of this.  At first these might be quite ill-posed, but you can gradually refine them as you learn more.

this answer is genius. Marvelously explained. Thank you!

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How can I make sure I (a white male teaching math) am sensitive to "underprivileged" students in my class?
I teach math classes and I was speaking with the assistant chair of my department about a student who claimed that I was rude and put my students down when lecturing. (I'm a Ph.D. student.) This particular student was seeking a letter recommending tuition for my class be refunded (she dropped out) but I told the assistant chair that I do sometimes get comments like these in my evaluations. I know that I never intend to put anyone down when students ask questions in class, and I also know there are also students who feel that I'm a good instructor and like dealing with me. I get both of these types of comments in my evaluations (I'd say my evals on the whole are fine to good).
I don't want anyone to feel like I talk down to them or put them down and I mentioned this to the assistant chair. (She has only seen me lecture once and said I did a good job that one time.) She asked me to think about the gender/ethnicity of the students that say I'm "rude" or "put them down", and whether there is a pattern where female/minority students who are considered "underprivileged" in mathematics may respond differently to my style of instruction than white male or Asian-heritage students. (There is research to back this up.)
I don't have any hard data to check this for me personally but this hypothesis seems plausible. With most students I say that I'm generally direct; I try not to put the student down but I will tell them that they are incorrect and explain why. How should I adapt to make sure that "underprivileged" students don't feel put down or belittled in my class?

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First I want to say that my answer does not depend on your gender and race, which I consider irrelevant. I will answer the question in two parts, one relevant to any field, one to mathematics. I suggest changing your title to something like: "How can I show respect to students from different backgrounds?"
General Answer
Understand that your students have had different experiences, which will affect how they perceive your and others' behavior. For example, the phrase "Can I help you?" may be perceived positively by someone who is used to others' wanting to help them, but it may be perceived negatively by someone who has had that phrase used toward them in a hostile manner (e.g., by a retail worker who follows them around to make sure they don't shoplift). I would encourage you not to think that the former student is rational and the latter student is irrational. Everyone generalizes based on past experiences. I encourage you to attend any diversity training offered at your institution or read about microaggressions, phrases that might be innocently meant but negatively experienced.
Be aware that everyone, including you, has unconscious biases, picked up from the cultures you've lived on. You should be aware that most elementary school teachers, regardless of gender, call on male students more often than female students. You may find it interesting to take an Implicit Association Test, although you should be careful making inferences from it.
Encourage students to give you feedback about how to improve your teaching, especially this aspect. We have the option of adding our own questions to course evaluations. I added to mine:

What could the instructor do differently or keep doing to make the
  course feel inclusive to students with a variety of backgrounds,
  learning styles, and  mental or physical abilities? This would be a
  good place to mention any micro-aggressions.

Mathematics
This goes beyond what you asked, but I encourage you to learn about stereotype threat, a well-documented effect in which evocation of stereotypes affects students' performance on tests and other high-stake assignments. For example:

Spencer, Steele, and Diane Quinn, PhD, also found that merely telling
  women that a math test does not show gender differences improved their
  test performance. The researchers gave a math test to men and women
  after telling half the women that the test had shown gender
  differences, and telling the rest that it found none. When test
  administrators told women that that tests showed no gender
  differences, the women performed equal to men. Those who were told the
  test showed gender differences did significantly worse than men, just
  like women who were told nothing about the test. This experiment was
  conducted with women who were top performers in math, just as the
  experiments on race were conducted with strong, motivated students.

Read articles about inclusive pedagogy, especially as applied to college-level mathematics. I have been told that active learning techniques benefit all students but disproportionately those from underrepresented backgrounds.

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Many universities have some campus-wide office, whose responsibilities include advising graduate students on their teaching. If yours does, I would suggest making an appointment and raising your concerns there.
This would allow them to get into the specifics, ask you questions, and allow them to address your particular situation. They have probably seen similar situations before, and could likely offer helpful advice.

If you haven't already done this, see if you can get one of your classes filmed so that you can watch yourself. Maybe you can see some patterns about how your behavior varies with different people, or spot something you're doing that some people might consider derogatory.


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How to thank or apologize to an associate editor of a journal?
Suppose that when submitting a paper to a journal I made a mistake that resulted in some rule violation. No one detected this rule violation until the decision was announced. Once the decision was announced, the associate editor sent me an email to warn me for future submission.
I would like to reply to him/her. What should I write? An apology? A thanking?

I would simply write a brief email along the lines of "Thanks for notifying me of the mistake, I will bear that in mind for future submissions. Apologies that I didn't catch it sooner."


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Marking Modifications on a table
I took a table from a paper to show it in my thesis but have to modify the data in a cell (semantically) as well as adding new lines. is it ok to cross out old and replace with new? and refer to it in caption like "Modified and expanded"
Or what is the way to do this?

I'd avoid crossing out, since it reduces readability I'd use bold or emphasis for the new data.

@MassimoOrtolano but that is not showing the replaced data.. or is this not necessary and i can refer to the bold/italic data  as "new data or replacement"? Or should i use say bold for replaced data and italic for new (eg. text in added rows)

I would show the original table unchanged plus have a new table and refer to both in the text. Or don't show the original table at all as it sounds like you reproduced the results and just refer to changed values in the text. Or put the old values that are different in parentheses with a note in the caption and text.


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Thesis supervisor wants me to publish my work in his own conference
I am a Computer Science Master's Student, currently working on my thesis at a research institute. I have multiple supervisors: A, who was my "theoretical" supervisor when I started my thesis 5 months ago, B, who is my "technical" supervisor, and C, who is my new "theoretical" supervisor, as A is leaving the company soon.
I will finish my thesis at the end of the month. My problem is the following: A would like me to publish my work as a 6-page paper in an upcoming conference, with me as the main author, and him as a co-author. The problem is, he is the General Chair of the track where he wants me to publish. He even mentioned how I shouldn't worry about the paper not getting accepted, since he has so much power there.
I expressed my worries to him about this being unfair. I've checked the website of the conference, but I did not find any policy explicitly forbidding this practice, still, I think it is not right. When I told him about my concerns, he waived them away, saying "Everybody does it like this".
Now, I am pretty sure that neither my other supervisors, nor the leader of the research group knows about A's plans, since he only discussed this with me, and didn't CC the emails about this to the other supervisors (as he usually does, because we discuss every question about my thesis together).
My question is the following: what should I do now? Should I contact the other supervisors about this? Should I just flatly deny publishing the paper in his conference? Or should I play along?
As all of my supervisors will have an effect on my grade, I do not want to hurt anyone's feelings. I have less than a month left until my thesis defense, but the deadline for the conference application is in a week.

He even mentioned how I shouldn't worry about the paper not getting accepted, since he has so much power there. — So it's a useless conference.  Run for the hills. — "Everybody does it like this". — No, they really don't.  Or rather, since I'm also a computer science professor: No, we really don't.

@JeffE absolutely right, even if someone does, it can be easily pointed out by other chairs, as a result that 'someone' has to suffer the consequences.

I think there would be a conflict of interest, if your co-author is also among the chair people of the conference.
Apart from that, you should not publish anything without your other supervisors acceptance and/or without informing them. That is: do not put their names on something you submit if they don't know or don't agree with being named there, AND (especially relevant in this case, it seems) do not submit something where you omit a contributing author. Author here doesn't need to be someone participating in writing a piece, but already being part of a research project.
Therefore, if you want to publish at this conference (independent of A's role in the conference), then send an email to all your supervisors and ask what they think about publishing/presenting your work there. If they don't know about A's role in said conference, and you worry about it, tell them (maybe omit A in this case, if you prefer) about the position of A in it.

Hey, thanks, so do you mean that the other supervisors have a right to know about their work being published? I honestly don't know if anyone apart from A has any idea about his plans. This might be a problem in itself, then.

They definitely have a right to know about their work being published, and it is your responsibility to make sure that everyone is informed and that everyone approves publication of the work. Have a look at "authorship guidelines"/"instructions for authors" or similar in a good journal in your field to learn more about it. It's a sensitive topic and doing it wrong can cause a lot of troubles.

The real problem here is that A can use his role as chair to ensure that your work gets accepted to the conference. In a serious scientific conference, work is supposed to be evaluated in a fair way, without conflicts of interest like this. This gives me a strong impression that the conference is not serious, and that the behavior of A is unethical.
If you trust your co-supervisors, I think it would be a good idea to ask them about their opinion on the matter, because they will probably be more able to judge the situation than we are. Depending on your relationship with them, you can try two possible approaches: (i.) directly point out your concern about A being possibly unethical (like you did here), or (ii.) be more diplomatic and ask innocently without assuming bad faith, e.g., "do you think it's OK for us to submit at this conference even though A is chair"? In addition, as they are your advisors, you should probably be getting their opinion anyways about where you publish your work.
This being said, if A uses his influence to get your paper accepted, I would say that he is the one acting unethically, not you. From what I understand, the rules of the conference allow you to submit something co-authored by A, and you have pointed out to A that you would not think it appropriate for him to use his influence to get the paper accepted. Hence, if he does it anyway, I think he should be the one to get the blame. In other words, I think the main concrete risk of this transaction for you is that you may be publishing your work at a worthless conference; in terms of ethics, I don't think you should be the one to blame if A does not handle the conflict of interest properly.


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NSF graduate research fellowship eligibility,
I've read from past questions and answers on this site, namely an answer by JeffE, that anyone with more than 12 months of full-time graduate study, MS or PhD, is considered too late of an applicant, unless there is a significant change of field.
What if my undergrad degree was not in mathematics, but I have an MS degree in math, and am looking to apply to PhD programs in math?  Would my MS degree be considered something equivalent to an undergrad / first degree in math, and thus make my application eligible for a review by the panelists?

The NSF revised the eligibility criteria in 2016. As of 2017, the only way you can have previous graduate study of more than a year or have earned a graduate degree and retain eligibility for an NSF graduate fellowship is  if you have had a two-year or longer break before November 1 of the year in which you apply.

If you have had 12 months of graduate study, then no, you are not eligible, regardless of your undergraduate degree.
Note: there are some exceptions to this (I think they have some language in there for exceptions), but I wouldn't bet on it.

There is an important exception: coming back to studies after an extended period.

Contact your NSF program director. Ultimately it will be up to him or her as to whether your situation is covered, and since there are exceptions and loopholes and ever-changing requirements, it will be best to hear it from the one that counts.


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Is it okay to switch languages in an email?
I am emailing a professor I have not met about a foreign exchange program. They teach Japanese, and I started out by writing my email in Japanese only to get halfway through and realize I would have to look several things up if I intended to continue writing it this way. I regularly email my own Japanese professors in mixed languages and I know a few classmates do as well, but we also personally know our professors due to the small classroom setting of the course.
Would it be bad/particularly unprofessional to switch to English as necessary throughout my email?
If any of you are professors, how would you feel if a student you do not know did this? I wonder if it is annoying to them..

If you give a short explanation why you switch, I would not have a problem with it, however, I grew up with one language, studied in a second, have coffee-chats in a third and work in a fourth language.

what is the goal of your email?

It would be weird to see an email in multiple languages, but it's not completely unusual or unheard of. It would certainly make me wonder what's going on if I received such an email, but it's not a breach of etiquette.
In my own personal experience, I had a lot of communications in German. In some cases, if someone was quoting something, or using terms that are hard to translate, they'd throw in the English and then keep on using German.

I made similar experiences, however, people - in this case - would often continue in English, until reaching "Mit freundlichen Grussen" (Kind regards)

I sometimes write mails in multiple languages if the name of the person I'm addressing looks like it could be from my own country. But there is always a chance that they might be children of emigrants who then might not speak the language anymore.


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Does the source of funding matter in determining academic promotion?
Follow up question to How does research funding work in determining academic promotions? since it was too broad.
Based on this answer, one needs to get funding to be promoted. Does the source of the funding make a difference, e.g. will it matter whether the money comes from a governmental funding agency versus a private foundation or a rich philanthropist or even one's own pocket?

It should be pointed out that the answer you linked to starts with "All of this is going to be very field- and country-specific."

For example, in my department (in a field less reliant on grants than some others), the promotion guidelines state, "Funding by external agencies is not a requirement at any level. However, such funding is considered a measure of stature, especially if the funding agency utilizes a peer review system for the evaluation of proposals."

@MarkMeckes is the document that details the promotion procedure publicly available? If so, can you link it? I tried searching for it based on the information given in your profile, but couldn't find it.

Sorry, that document is only posted in a password-protected part of my department's web site.  But it's of course important to remember that that document is specifically for my department.  It doesn't necessarily apply either for math departments at other universities, or for other departments at my university.  All those departments should have carefully written promotion guidelines of their own.

The point of assessing funding is not to ask, "Is this person funded today?"  Rather, it's to ask, "Will this person be funded in five, ten, and fifteen years?"
And the point of asking about funding is two-fold. Over that time period, will this person be performing high quality work that makes our department and university look better? And will this person be bringing in money that can be shared among other workers through indirect costs?
If you think about that, the various sources of funding do have different levels of attractiveness to the university/department. Someone who is independently wealthy and pays $500,000 per year to support their lab, is less attractive than someone who has an NIH grant that pays $500,000 to their lab, because the latter also pays overhead to the department and helps keep the lights on (literally).
Moreover, the independently wealthy person may lose all their money, or may simply unilaterally decide not to use it that way after three years. Same applies to a rich philanthropist (or the philanthropist may turn out to be a terrible person that the department doesn't want to be associated with).
On the other hand, a researcher who has demonstrated that they can get money from the NIH, or the NSF or another long-established government agency, this year, probably has a decent chance of getting more money from them in five and ten years.
So a source of funding that comes from a stable organization, with predictable and open funding plans, that covers overhead, would be more attractive than sources that are less stable, less open, and less predictable, and that cover less overhead.
Such stable organizations tend to be government-run (at least in North America, and I think in most of the Western world), but there are certainly private foundations that are just about as good, as far as promotion is concerned.
I don't know of an objective source that could rank the attractiveness of funding, though.

Funding from government agencies is also a strong indicator of someone's reputation in the research community, since those research proposals are typically reviewed by peers in that community.  Funding the lab yourself only indicates that you're rich; convincing NIH or NSF to fund your lab indicates that a random sample of your expert colleagues think the money will be well spent.

If the question is will it matter, then that is up to those making the judgements and no one else. If the question is can it matter, then yes, it can, but again, just as in the answer you cite it depends on many things. Probably too many for a general answer here.
Tenure is granted based on a general evaluation of the future prospects of a faculty member. In some institutions that rests primarily on research potential, but not in all. If research is the most important thing and the institution also wants its researchers to be self funded with grants that contribute to the overall mission of the place then the source of the grants is probably going to be a factor. But it won't be the only factor. Government grants and a few other may be preferred if they are renewable and if they support students and if no one complains about the "overhead" charged against the grant. But it is probably those factors, not the source per se that is most important.
A philanthropist is looking  for something in return, even if it is just prestige. But they won't be as reliable over the long term as government grants. Self funding probably doesn't count for much except in very rare cases.


text:
What is an affiliate professor?
The answer to this question seems to indicate that an affiliate professor is effectively just a member of the department for administrative purposes. If that is the case, why is George H. Miley both an affiliate professor and a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign? Presumably his status as a professor would already grant everything that is granted to an affiliate professor.
(The above links to an old webpage, but the current one seems to say something similar, he is both an affiliate & an emeritus professor.)

Is his affiliate status in a different department?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/25785/17254

In the example you give (https://grainger.illinois.edu/about/directory/faculty/ghmiley), the person is "professor emeritus" in one department, and "department affiliate emeritus" in another.
I can't speak to that university in particular, but in certain universities, a professor in a given department can only take on graduate students from that department.  Affiliate status with another department allows a professor to take on students graduate students from that department as well.


text:
Has the rate of papers uploaded to arXiv changed due to Covid-19?
I'm wondering how much Covid-19 affected scientific productivity, if it affected productivity negatively at all (c.f. Newton actually did a lot of his most important work while the University of Cambridge was closed due to plague).
I'm using the rate at which papers are published on arXiv as a proxy for "scientific productivity", fully aware that it is not a perfect proxy and probably lags actual productivity by quite a bit. If country-specific statistics are available, e.g. "The number of publications by authors from Italy changed by __% on 9 March 2020, the date the lockdown started", that's even better.

Do you assume all researchers are at home or still at work? Can they / did they take material home? Is it possible for them to work effectively at home? Are you assuming they will get more work done at home? no students to distract them, based on your point about Newton...

@SolarMike are you assuming all these things about the question that aren't actually in it?

No I clearly asked if you were making those assumptions...

@SolarMike my interpretation is Allure is asking an empirical question that does not require assuming anything. It sounds like you’re trying to come up with a theoretical model to answer the question by pure reason/theoretical analysis, and want to know what assumptions you should make, but I don’t think that’s what’s being asked for.

I think too short time has passed to have some statistics. Speaking for myself, I had to put on hold at least one ongoing manuscript because I had to stop the experimental activity. For another manuscript, nothing has changed because the experimental results were already completed. For third manuscript, which I planned to start writing at the beginning of March, I  instead postponed the start at the beginning of April because I'm now too busy organizing the online lectures, and I'll probably submit it with fewer experimental results.

I downvoted this because the best answer can be found on ArXiv.org, not here.

@DanRomik I asked what assumptions were being made... I did not and still don't feel the need to ask the question that the OP asked.

Research takes time. This has been three months now, with much general disruption. Why do you think there would be any effect over such a period?

@Buffy are you assuming that I think there would have been an effect? I'm asking if there has been an effect. If there is no effect then that's an answer too, and if there is an effect it could be either way (i.e. more papers or fewer papers are both possible).

But the effect may just be chaotic. It is what I'd predict anyway. Start the research now and in a year or so you will have an answer. Perhaps. Or maybe five years as Andy Putman suggests.

@Buffy in that case the answer is there is no answer yet.

Correct. I don't think there is a meaningful answer yet. But the same is true of many things at the moment. But I'm guessing this was just curiosity on your part, not a question leading to some action item.

@Buffy I gotta say, I find it annoying when people assume things in the question that aren't there. Plus, if I had asked this question intending to do something with the answer, I should also be able to tell what action if any to take.

Yes, and for the same reason I find the question annoying. I don't see this site as a place to satisfy our curiosity only. Hmmm. I'm wondering how many academics have cats v dogs? I prefer questions with some substance, actually.

@Buffy we should probably discuss that on the meta.

I'll watch for a question there.

@Buffy on reflection I am not keen to start a discussion on the meta. If you do, however, I will participate.

How on Earth is this opinion-based? It's asking for data, not an explanation of the data. Voting to reopen.

Three months on, it seems clear the answer is yes - but the submissions are increasing. June submissions outnumbered May submissions by almost 3000, and it's the largest ever recorded as well. Voting to reopen (again) so it can be added as an answer.

ArXiv posts its monthly submission statistics here. It's noisy data even in the absence of viruses, so I can't tell if there's an effect yet or not. Then again, I'm no statistician. Extrapolating the March data as of today (March 19th), it's at least set to be larger than the February number of submissions, as is typical for March submissions.
However, even if the number of monthly arXiv submissions is to be considered a good proxy, it will likely lag by more time than we have seen so far. Yes, closures, adapting to online classes, and changed schedules will delay new experiments and other activities. However, finishing writing up manuscripts already in the pipeline, or analyzing already collected data are still productive tasks that will lead to new submissions for quite a while. Not to mention people such as myself, who can continue our theoretical/numerical work from home.

Rough estimation using arXiv statistics: 8938 articles in March (as of March, 22) so about 12,594 for the whole month. About the same as March 2019 (12,654). Of course, March submissions are the results of months of research, so it doesn't mean anything.

I think it will be interesting to study this 5 years from now, but right now is way too soon.  At least in math, people don’t post papers at a steady, constant rate.  I personally post around 3 papers per year, and most of those represent work that is at least a year old (often much longer than that) by the time I get around to writing it up.  Given what I’ve got partially written right now, I suspect that I will post about the same number (or even a little more) this year, bit that’s just part of the ebb and flow of research.  What is harder to predict is the effect of all this chaos on the production of new math, which won’t be visible for several years.

More than math, many experimental fields will be affected, all those in which labs have been shut down.

That’s absolutely the case.  I feel terrible for my colleagues who can’t event comfort themselves with their work in these dark days.

I think your assumption that scientific productivity can be measured by arXiv uploads is flawed. Surely it can measure that the usual workflow has been changed - but especially for short periods of time, productivity cannot be measured by number of papers.
Taking myself as an example. I am using my time at home to do research tasks I have put off for too long. Cleaning up a large code base. Revisiting some old results. These are not tasks that results directly in arXiv uploads, but tasks which are needed in the long run. What I hear from my colleagues, is that they are doing similar things - if not completely worn down by teaching and supervising remotely, of course.


text:
Is it OK to review a paper which builds on my work?
Suppose I've written a paper which someone else (who I do not know) has built on. The new work is intimately related to mine; it would not have existed without my paper. I'm now asked to review the paper. Should I:

Accept because I am an expert on my own work, making me very qualified to review the paper; or
Decline because of conflict of interest - the paper cites my work so I could be biased towards accepting it since it boosts my citation metrics, plus I'm obviously flattered someone thinks my ideas are interesting enough to work on and I'd hate to discourage them with rejection?

Definitely disclose the fact to the editor.

You were probably chosen to be reviewer because it is built on your work and therefore have intensive background knowledge on this topic. As long as you have not worked and do not intend to work on something really similar during the review process you do not have a conflict of interest.
You should of course try to be objective. Giving a rejection does not have to discourage the authors if you give constructive feedback and make it clear that you find their direction promising.
If you feel like you might not be able to be unbiased you can talk to the editor about it.

"You should of course try to be objective." This should be bold. You should not be too harsh on them because they're "playing in your sandbox" but you also should not be too light on them because you perhaps want to collaborate with them in the future or you want to justify how important your niche is.

I'll just note that when your work is especially esoteric the number of available reviewers is very small. A journal editor or program committee will be hard pressed to find people who aren't referenced in the paper at all. When I completed my doctorate (mathematics) there were only about five people in the world who could easily digest it. Some of them had students working in related areas and so I got asked to review their work fairly often. It isn't a problem. Rejoice that your work inspired someone else. +1.

As others have said, the editor very likely knows the situation.  Review the paper -- you are well-suited to do so.  If you feel compelled to mention it, do it in the "confidential to editor" area to maintain the anonymity of the review.
That said, if you've never been in this situation before, be very careful to make your review fair.  Lose any hidden agenda.  Review the work the author is submitting, and not the work you wish the author had done.  Limit your context to information that is available in your field, and not bring up stuff that your favorite colleague is about to include in an abstract for next years Big Conference.  If the data presented make a previous paper you've published look a bit questionable, that doesn't make the manuscript bad.

I advise bringing this to the attention of the editor. Let them know that the paper they have asked you to review cites your own publications and that the potential conflict of interest exists. Whether you ultimately accept or reject the paper there could be the appearance that you were not an impartial reviewer - acceptance could be seen as being influenced by the citations and rejection could be seen as being influenced by competition in your field.
It could be that your field is relatively small and the editor has passed the paper to you as a subject matter expert.

As both Mick and Claude said, the editor is probably already aware of the citation and selected you as a reviewer because you're an expert. By informing the editor, you get rid of the "probably". The editor definitely gets an expert review and is definitely aware of the potential conflict of interest. This puts them in the best possible position to make the final decision.

Review it and when you submit your review to the editor - make sure you make your position clear :
1 Paper is fine, and note it refers to a previous publication of mine
2 Paper needs work, and note it refers to a previous publication of mine
3 rejected for X reasons...

And, of course, the “It refers to a previous publication of mine” part goes in the confidential comments to the editor, not the review for the authors!

Yes, you should review it (assuming you have time) because your expertise makes you an ideal reviewer. You were almost certainly invited to review the paper because of this, and the editor will be aware of your situation.
For venues I've reviewed for, a disqualifying conflict of interest is typically any of:

you have a family relationship with one of the authors;
you've worked with one of the authors or been in the same department as them within the last couplefew years;
you've been in a student–advisor relationship with one of them, in the last several years;
you're in a competing group.

None of those seems to apply in this case.
You are aware that you have some bias with respect to this paper, and this should be enough to keep it under control. Remember that you won't be the only reviewer of the paper, and the other reviewers will provide balance if, e.g., you think the paper is fascinating because of your close connection to the subject but everyone else thinks it's dull.
If you're still worried, you can always discuss it with the editor who invited you.

I wonder who is still left that has expertise in the relevant topics if everyone from the same department, and everyone from competing groups is excluded. Or is "competing group" defined in a rather narrow sense there, not as any other group that independently works on the same topics, but specifically as another group that has the explicit intention of outdoing the original author?

No need to worry about a conflict of interest simply because your work was cited — as noted earlier, it's almost certain that either the author or the editor identified you as a reviewer because you had published in the field. That's how we find reviewers!


text:
What does the status "Waiting for reviewer assignment" mean?
I submitted my revised manuscript to a mathematical journal since 12-04-2017. The status is "Waiting for reviewer assignment" since 24-4-2017. What does it mean? Have the reviewers started working on my manuscript yet?.

I don't understand what is 'unclear' here. It means that the reviewers have not been assigned yet. The invitations have been sent (probably in multiple rounds), but the reviewers have not yet agreed to review the manuscript.

It typically means that the paper has been received, has been put in the work queue of the editor, but the editor has not assigned reviewers. Or (in one system I know of), that the editor has not assigned the necessary number of reviewers. That could be because the system requires four reviewers, but the editor has only gotten the commitment from three people to review the paper. (Which the editor may deem enough, and so the status will never change until the three reviews have been received.) Or that the editor has asked four people, but only three have accepted. (Which again, the editor may deem sufficient.) Or that the paper has been put in the editor's queue but he has not done anything with it so far.
In other words, the status may mean that the editor is asleep at the wheel, or it may not. You can't draw any inferences just from the status.


text:
Where to buy non-kindle-format (epub,azw) e-books which look like the printed books?
If I want to buy e-copy of academic books, most of the publishers (Oxford, Cambridge, etc.) direct to amazon store or allow epub version. However, I do not want the e-pub or other formats (e.g. azw) as the ebook in this format does not have the actual pagination and format of the printed copy.
So, is there a store or place where I can buy the e-copy of the book (preferably in pdf format) which actually looks like the printed copy (having the actual page numbers and format/style of the printed copy)?
I am aware that some of the kindle books do come with both "locations" and "actual page numbers" to avoid the above problem. However, this is feature is not available for the majority of the books (as I open the sample version and check). Also, I miss the style/formatting of the printed book.

I have the same problem. For Springer, I usually buy at its website, where you can find the PDF version. For Oxford and Cambridge, when I cannot find a decent Kindle version, I usually buy at ebooks.
However, for ebooks.com:

The number of available titles is limited, and I couldn't find titles that according to the publishers should be available as e-books.
The PDF is DRM-protected, which is an annoyance.

(+1) Thank you! Having published a book, I have several hardcopies, but have wanted a pdf version for ease of searching. All I could find was the epub, which I despise. Now I just have to decide whether or not to cough up $140 for my own book.

Massimo -- thanks for the suggestion about ebooks. When i googled for ebooks in general, I did come across this store. The PDF being DRM protected is a problem since I use Linux and it is not straightforward to use Adobe Digital here :(

@Varun With Calibre, which is also available for Linux, you can easily remove it ;-)

Lovely! Let me try that. Thanks!

@Varun After the Calibre installation, there is a plug in you have to add. Once you added it, it removes automatically the DRM whenever you load a book in Calibre.


text:
What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing a postdoc in France and UK/USA?
I am concluding my Ph.D. in the UK, and currently I have two postdoc offers one from the US and one from France. I am not a British/EU citizen and would like to take on an academic path preferably in an English speaking institute. Both projects that I managed to get a postdoc offer for are very interesting, and the PI's are well-known academic in the field.
Given that becoming an academic in France requires fluency in French, I was wondering what would be a wise choice here? What are the general qualities that are important for a lectureship position? I am under the impression that for STEM fields, USA is a no brainer, but acquiring a visa might be difficult for me!
Any advice is really appreciated.

The less you move, the easier it should be, so one supervisor/advisor knows the "next" and can do strong recommendations (including the informal ones). So I'd say, personally, go for the one where you aim to stay, so the next transition is easier.

"becoming an academic in France requires fluency in Frence," you've got a temporary position (postdoc), not a permanent position, so you needn't be fluent.

@NajibIdrissi The question (according to the title) is about a postdoc position, not about an academic position.

@NajibIdrissi The OP wants an academic career. They seem to think that a postdoc in France is a barrier to that career, because a lectureship in France requires fluency in French, but the two are disconnected, as per my comment: there's no need for fluency during a postdoc.

@NajibIdrissi That might be your opinion, it isn't the opinion I've formed.

@NajibIdrissi Yes, indeed, but we disagree on them.

I would say prestige-wise, the actual supervisor is more important than the location: A well known supervisor in France will be just as good for you as a well known supervisor in the US, there are just more of them in the US. Of course, you'd choose an unknown at Princeton over an unknown in Grenoble, but you said both are well known.  And all this only works if you are trying to stay in the same field when you move on, if you want to move on then prestige of institutions counts more.
Research in the US is likely to be better funded than in France, and you'll likely have more chance to interact with other top researchers other than people in your own group.
There will be far more opportunity for faculty positions, long-term, in the states than in France.
On the flip side, employment conditions will be better in France: max working times and compulsory breaks are observed: everyone takes a proper lunch and is home in time for tea, and it would be almost impossible to sack you. For the breaks and work/life balance, its is possible find this in the US, but you have to be selective about the culture of the group you join. Unfortunately no amount of selectivity can mean that the boss can't just sack you if they don't like you in the US.

My point was that there is likely to be a higher density of people you want to interact with at a top US institution.

@IanSudbery Thank you very much Ian for your thorough and helpful comment (as always!)

For better or worse, US institutions are usually considered more prestigious, so that argues in favour of the US. Also salary, taxes, language, your future plans all seem to point toward the US.

Thank you for bringing up the role of supervisor. How important is the role and significance of supervisor for future success in Academia? My PhD supervisor once told me your first post-doc pretty much determines your future career? I am sure this is very true, but how important is this?

@sander: Thank you for your comment. It is always really helpful to have the opinion of someone who has been on the same road and now is an academic!


text:
One of my co-authors is an "IEEE Life Member" can I add this to my IEEE transaction manuscript?
I just finished a Transaction Manuscript, and one of the co-authors is a "Life member IEEE". Initially, I inserted "Senior Member IEEE" just after his name in the manuscript, but he pointed out to me that he is a life member. So my question is, can I remove the "Senior Member IEEE" and insert "Life Member IEEE" even though I haven't seen any paper having "Life member IEEE"?

Do you have any reason to believe that your coauthor is lying to you?

Search for the latest papers by Professor Anthony Ephremides.  You will see he is a 'Life Fellow, IEEE' or 'Life Member, IEEE'

@JeffE no, I have no feeling he is lying, he is my co-mentor, and up till now, I never knew you could add that in a paper. I thought after Senior Member, then next thing that goes into the paper is Fellow. But with Prof. Santa Claus' comment, I can see that it is possible to put that on a paper.

Being a new graduate student, I never knew that you could add "life*" to the paper. I felt you can only add member, senior member, follow. After googling, for a while, I found out that one can add life member, life fellow, or life senior member to an author's name.


text:
How to choose and validate interdisciplinary research methodology?
How to formalize the following research consideration towards research methodology selection and validation?
That is, I consider to establish and validate interdisciplinary foundations for a discipline A using foundations of discipline B, and formally validate if it makes sense.
Hypothesis: is it possible to model, analyze and solve problems regarding end to end software application lifecycle management (aka DevOps) based on foundations of system engineering, specifically logistics engineering?
Example case study: assess component flow from positions of optimization methods for material flow.
Now which methodology is in place to proceed with evaluation and validation of the hypothesis so that findings would be broader than just "I used method X of 10 possible for a specific software application of myriad possible and it was a 13% gain, maybe due to some luck or an error in the whole setup or my bias"?
That is practical experiments would validate research, but after gathering practical experiences in a series of projects I am looking first towards creating theoretical and analytical foundations in this direction to design more large scale experiments and have some scientific output as well.
In case this is an existing field of interdisciplinary research to your knowledge please point to it as well in your answer.


text:
Which scientific discipline studies topics?
In my understanding, the common understanding of the word "topic" is as defined in the Wiktionary:

Subject; theme; a category or general area of interest.

Now which discipline deals with this and related effects, for example how to determine topicality of a message in a given context?
First, I thought it could be linguistics, but this discipline has got their own notion of topic, either they work on a single-sentence level:

In linguistics, the topic, or theme, of a sentence is what is being
  talked about.

Sociology could be one consideration. The word “topic” has the ability to shift, what could be considered a “theme” is dynamic, and evolves with societies definition of what it means. Philosophy could also be a major player because you’re concerned with the question of what it means to be a topic, and that sounds like the realm of philosophical thought. To me it sounds more like a question best suited for the social sciences as opposed to the hard sciences.

Linguistics/Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, and perhaps others.


text:
Are the criteria of faculty positions different in the US and UK?
I am from Eastern Europe with a strong research record. This year, I applied for similar professor positions in the US and UK. From 5 applications in the US universities, I was invited for interviews for 3 positions. I got one offer and one is still pending.
However, all 4 applications I submitted to the UK universities were unsuccessful. The last position was relisted after my rejection, which means they had not received strong applications.
I prefer to move to the UK since I still do not need a work permit. I am now confused if the standards and criteria for recruiting a faculty member is this much different in the US and UK. The 9 positions I applied for were all similar, full professor in the same field in mid-level universities.

I have the impression that "full professor" in the UK system is a more senior and prestigious position.  In the US, the vast majority of tenured faculty eventually become full professor, typically by about 15-20 years past the PhD.  I have heard that in the UK it is more rare.

@NateEldredge I agree with your general impression, but it should be "rare" in the UK. When comparing similar departments in the US and the UK, you do not see fewer professors in the latter (at least, I have not noticed such a thing).

The criteria are mostly the same; however, US probably have more money to spend.

The criteria for faculty positions (not standards but rather what kinds of qualities they look for) certainly differ a lot between the University of Michigan and Denison University!  (Both in the US)

@AlexanderWoo The criteria varies from position to position, department to department due to the institutional strategic plan. But if two universities are similar (say research universities), how and why should the criteria for the faculty appointment be generally different? In all research universities I know, the first criterion is research achievements and fundings unless the position is mostly teaching.

@DmitrySavostyanov You mean there are more positions in the US and then less competitive? Faculty positions in the US universities are more competitive because of the immigration laws. The US faculty positions are more often open to non-residents.

@Googlebot From what I see, immigration laws in the UK and US are fairly similar, give or take.

@Googlebot: 1) Denison is not a research university.  2) Even for positions where research is the first criterion, there are a variety of ways of measuring research.  Some departments may judge by the quality of your best paper.  Another may judge by the number of papers above a certain threshold.  Some may just count all papers, or total number of pages.  Different departments may weight different subfields differently.  Different departments may weight differently your papers outside your main subfield or main line of research.  Some judge more based on your plans or on accomplishments.

It might be that due to Brexit they are not very keen to hire EU people. My embassy circulated a document citing informal reports of this happening behind the scenes.

@AlexanderWoo: Number of pages... seriously? I guess I could get that position :)

There are several levels to answer your question.
There is a large variation in quality in both US and UK institution, from world best to the end of the spectrum. We do not know - and you can only rely on available university ranking - if both US and UK institutions you applied to  lie in the same range.
Now, statistics. You said you applied to 5 jobs in US and got invited to 3 interviews. Applied to 4 UK jobs and got 0 interviews. If we use the hypothesis that US and UK institution quality is the same, then your average success rate is 3/9=33%, and the chance to get 0 interviews instead of the (less than) 2 you would expect could be entirely due to randomness. I see no reason to think of biases to start with.
You do mention that one UK position has been reopened, which means that they thought you did not meet their requirements. Which leads to the requirements issue: I would find it unlikely that all 9 institutions are looking for somebody with the same profile. Perhaps some institution care more about teaching, others about the ability to get grants, other about seniority in the field, etc.etc.
Last, you say "I prefer to move to the UK since I still do not need a work permit". US institutions are eager to sponsonr visas for people they wish to hire - and the government makes it easy to issue visa to academics at any level; you certainly need not worry for a full professor position. And with academic visa you can get a green card in a short as a year. They'll probably pay for relocation as well.
Moral: I am not aware nor is reasonable without data to say that there are fundamental differences in general criteria for hiring faculty between US and USA. There are certainly large variations at both university and department-level strategies. Visa is not a problem at all.

It's extremely easy for US institution to issue visas in academia at all levels -- Not as easy as it used to be.  And, to be precise, universities cannot issue visas at all.  Only the US government can do that.  But the university can apply for an appropriate work visa on your behalf, typically successfully.

@Hosea: I've known of several cases in which the visa application took long enough that the position had to begin in a later academic term than expected, and at least one in which the job candidate eventually withdrew because the process was taking so long.

Not to imply that those cases are typical.  But it can happen.

@MarkMeckes thanks for correcting me on who issues the visa. I think your remark can potentially scare the OP off the offer. I have seen at least a hundred position being issued with no visa delays. Would assume that the chances of significant delay would be below 1%, and probably happen mostly for citizen of countries considered at risk, not Europe.

This is the correct answer. Yes, there could be systematic differences in hiring strategy between UK and US, but they must be much smaller than the differences between universities within one country. And certainly the signal-to-noise-ratio on the measurement is bad.

The two systems are different. Professor in the UK is the most senior academic position, while, as far as I understand things, it is a fairly junior post in the USA. The application systems and standards are also different and the sort of rhetoric you would use would also differ. A CV and covering letter/supporting statement in the UK will need to be worded differently from one for the US. The UK is hyper-aware of metrics and evaluation systems like the REF, so you need to show that you have a certain number of publications, in journals of a certain type, and you also need to show impact beyond academia. I'm from the UK, so know more about that than the US system.

In US a professor is not junior. Simply, the word "professor" does not qualify your seniority. US jobs are Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Full Professor. It is not entirely clear how to map more senior positions between UK and US, see this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_ranks

"Full professor" is just a nickname. My actual job title is "Professor".

@famargar, that link does provide a mapping: UK Reader ~ US Full Professor, UK Senior Lecturer ~ US Associate Professor, and UK Lecturer ~ US Assistant Professor.

The mapping suggested above doesn't sound quite right: there are Professors in the UK as well, which would map to the (full) Professor positions across the pond. UK Reader is more like Associate Professor, and Senior Lecturer is (at least here at U of Edinburgh) at the same seniority level as Reader, except more teaching-oriented, and with no path up to Professor. From Senior Lecturer you would need to become Reader before being eligible for a promotion to Professor.

@user2768 indeed I read the link I posted :) While the hierarchy is properly represented in that link, the actual facts of being a junior faculty is not represented in the hierarchy IMHO. Example: an assistant professor in US is expected to start her career say in a science field with typically a start-up money in the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars. A UK lecturer in the same field will start with tens of thousands, or maybe less, or often exactly zero research money. This reflects in differing levels of indepencence at the lowest point in the academic ladder.

@famargar: thanks for clarifying, I was confused by "[i]t is not entirely clear how to map more senior positions between UK and US," given that you linked to a mapping.

@user2768 you are right - my comment wasn't clear. Unfortunately I cannot edit it anymore.


text:
If I ask a question that turns out to be something basic I'm missing can it damage my reputation?
I'm a PhD student and I'm getting started in the field I want to work on after I finish my PhD. There were some very important works done by a very experienced researcher and collaborators that I've been trying to understand for a while. In fact there was claim in the beginning of one of the papers that was central to all that followed but I wasn't able to understand why such a claim is true.
Some weeks ago that experienced researcher gave a talk on the subject and he stated the same claim that's on the papers. Still, I didn't have the courage to ask about it because I really don't know yet whether it is something extremely basic that I'm missing or if it's really non-trivial.
I was thinking about sending an e-mail asking about it. But can that damage my reputation? I mean, if it is something really basic and obvious, and I'm missing it, won't it damage my reputation with him if I ask it? The reason I'm worried is that I really hope to be able to collaborate with him one day.

Difficult to know. Some people will belittle you for asking allegedly obvious stuff but which, in reality, is entirely nonobvious. Some people will claim wrong things with assurance because nobody probed it properly. Sometimes, people will give deep reasons or intuitions for this. Some stuff could asked without consequences - perhaps ask some friend  you know and trust first and see whether this is common knowledge. You have to check with how many "trivial" question you can get away. If you do not ask, you will not know, neither whether it's trivial, nor whether you get away with it.

There's a quote I like, which is very relevant to your question: "When you finish your undergrad, you think you know everything.
When you finish your masters, you think you know enough to know what you don't know.
When you finish your PhD, you realise you really don't know anything
When you finish your postdoc, you realise nobody else does either.".

@TasosPapastylianou: And when you get tenure, you realise nobody is ever going to know anything, so you can just as well spend your time on meetings and other managemant stuff now. :-)

Have you ever read the kid's story of the emperor with no clothes? Sometimes, "experienced researchers" talk nonsense, just like everyone else. If you don't understand, then ask!

My god, how has the system failed if people ask these kind of questions. I'm sorry but this is beyond disheartening. Absolutely nobody should be worried to repercussions, let alone asking a question...

Some say "better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt." I say, "That's a brilliant plan for those who insist on remaining fools".

@TasosPapastylianou One of those quotes that I have lived.

@TheVal totally agree. In my career I've always been the one asking the "stupid" questions that my colleagues have been too afraid to ask. I hate to think how many people have simply blundered along in life, not knowing the answers to things because they didn't want to be the ones to ask, for the fear of appearing ignorant. Asking questions is how one learns things!

@TasosPapastylianou indeed! As Einstein said: “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.”

You're trying to maintain (your perception of) other's perceptions. Why not just accept your place? You don't understand it because your intellect won't allow you to yet. Just ask, then you'll know.

You need to learn to have a thick skin.  All experienced researchers have a thick skin (in my experience).  They try out new ideas, and some of these ideas may turn out to be 'dumb'.   End of the day: water off a duck's back.

The only way I can imagine basic questions becoming a negative, is if it becomes a continuous pattern in your area of expertise. Add to that, most fields have become so diverse and interdisciplinary that it is highly likely that you will lack a lot of information, even on basic concepts unless you specialize in them. Most people who use quantum chemistry won't be able to discuss the numerical methods used for example. (You don't need them as a user.) It is nice to try an learn/know "everything" but alas, it is a futile endeavour... (You might want to read Goethe's Faust I)

Related: How to ask dumb questions

No such thing as a stupid question!

Advice for life: Ask a stupid question and feel stupid for five minutes. Don't ask a stupid question and remain stupid for the rest of your life.

Ask a question as if you're writing a publication.
One way to show you're not "dumb and lazy" is to at last tackle the "lazy" tag by showing you've tried, quote the things you've researched which inform your understanding. You may well answer your original question in building up these arguments. As answers below have said, consider yourself as asking the question on behalf of others. So, you're assembling a background for someone so the question is a standalone work. Ensure it's skimmable - it opens with a summary of the question and then a "here's my attempt to understand" below.

The claim must have a reference and must cite some work. It cannot possibly be coming out of thin air. Have you already done the literature review on the topic?

No, asking reasonable questions won't damage your reputation -- and even a few unreasonable ones won't do any real damage, especially as a young grad student.
Still, I recommend that you start by asking your advisor, or someone else at your host institution, rather than jumping straight to asking this expert. If this is a basic result that everyone in your subfield knows, then helping you understand it is part of your host institution's responsibility. If no one at your institution can help, then the claim is probably sufficiently non-obvious that asking the expert is altogether appropriate.

I would also add that the standards for asking a question on the spot are lower than asking a question by email a few weeks after a talk.  So if you're embarrassed to ask a question in real-time in person, I would think you'd need be quite a bit more confident to ask the question by email afterwards, especially days or weeks later.

I think most of the most "embarassing" questions I've seen asked, both in being very basic, and in being unreasonable, have been asked by people who are far from young (or grad students).

This is only anecdotal, but it applied over my quite long "career" as a student (undergraduate through doctorate). I was always happy to interrupt a lecture (small classes) to ask questions. Some of them were because the instructor had made a mistake in a proof (math). Some were just because I didn't catch the flow from one step to the next.
My fellow students thought I was much smarter than I actually was because of this. I don't know what the faculty thought, but I never got "put down" for my interruptions.
Sometimes a question that you have actually needs to be asked, and others in the class have the same question or difficulty, but aren't brave enough to bring it up. So, by asking questions you can also help others to learn.
As a kid, I was always asking my mother "why...?". She was less appreciative of my actions, I think.
There is an apocryphal story of a professor of math who made the statement in the middle of a proof that "such and such follows trivially". A student questioned it. The prof went into abstract mode, making small marks on the board and muttering a bit. He then wandered down to his office, with students following, and started pulling books off the shelf and looking things up. After half an hour or so, he returned to the classroom, students still following, and announced "yes, it is trivial".

Why don't we question the veracity of that apocryphal story more? =P

@user21820, many graduate students swear that it happened a their own university in the year just before they arrived.

Lol I give up. Otherwise those graduate students are going to send their gods after me.

Many stories termed in deprecatory manner as "urban legends" are simply archetypes of events that happened in slightly varied form and with slightly differing parameters to different people. The "it's trivial" story is very similar to my experiences as math student - not precisely in that form, as details change, but sufficiently close to make me nod vigorously in recognition.

Your anecdotal story matches mine: I've always asked "why?" and I've always increased my understanding as a result. From my studies to my work in industry; the question "why?" has propelled me far. After all, isn't that why I'm here: to learn?

@user21820 The person who told it to me is reliable. Since a reliable person would not make a claim unless it was true or verified by a reliable person, by induction we can conclude that there is a chain of reliable people going to a first hand witness.

@Acccumulation, would that be Euclid? Moses?

I heard a version of that as a joke around 1990: "OK, after working on it for a few days, I agree it is trivial".

@Acccumulation: That's not induction. That's just acccumulation of anecdotes. =P

@Acccumulation You must make the additional assumptions that there are a finite number of reliable people, and that causality forms an acyclic graph; otherwise, it doesn't quite follow.

@Acccumulation there are reliable persons that prove themselves unreliable after a certain time. But their message still carry their (expected) reliability at the time ...
"After half an hour or so" : then it was really trivial :D

There is the "philosophically obvious" answer, namely, that if the big-shot is upset with your asking any sort of (sincere) question, you'd really not want to be involved with them.
So, srsly, ask.
Or, if you want to go on some sort of long march through a desert, ... don't ask...
That's the real choice, I think.

If it's obvious, you may not have to go as far as to ask him.

@MadPhysicist, I tell my students (not only my Ph.D. students) that I especially like questions which turn out to be "easy", because (then) I can answer them instantly, with no effort. In contrast, my own PhD advisor did often publicly yell at grad students for asking (bad?) questions, thus powerfully inhibiting question-asking. Not so easy for kids to know whether a higher-level question is dumb or not. Indeed, knowing that is substantial meta-knowledge...

Totally agreed. I'm not in academia, but I've always had an aggressive question-asking policy. The only thing that's changed with increasing experience is selecting the right audience better.

@MadPhysicist, ah, yeah, the audience. Also a thing that is tough for beginners to gauge...

Asking easy questions doesn't portray you as dumb. What mostly annoys people is when you take a habit of asking easy questions instead of spending 10 minutes looking the answer up online or in a book. To make it short, don't ask other people what you could have asked Google.
Lectures and talks are different still. The audience is expected to follow the train of thought, and if you can't, you're just wasting your own time staying there. If a fair share of the audience doesn't follow, they are also wasting the time of the lecturer. If you're expected to follow, it's best to ask any question right away, no matter how basic, to get back on track.
Clarifications after a lecture don't have the urgency of a question during a lecture, so the usual advice applies: ask about things you can't easily look up yourself.

Your second paragraph puts a lot of burden on students and suggests that the lecturer is perfect in their presentation. And the last sentence seems inconsistent with the rest of the paragraph.

@Buffy What exactly is "a lot of burden"? The expectation that the students can follow?

More the "wasting time" comments. Both of them.

@Buffy If I sit on a lecture I can't follow, I'll be reading a book on the topic anyway for preparation. What do I get from the lecture then?

My suggestion is to ask questions early. It's better to look uninformed as a neophyte than look uninformed after you've been in the field a few years.
When you are a new PhD student, faculty don't expect you to have much knowledge or experience. They likely won't think less of you for asking questions about basic things and will usually be very willing to help. When you are talking with a colleague outside your field, they won't be surprised by basic questions and will also typically be generous with their time to help you understand.
However, if you've been working in a field for years and then reveal that you don't understand the fundamentals of that field, this may indeed reflect poorly on you. People may have less patience to explain something to you if they feel like you should have already learned it.
For example, I am happy to explain enhanced sampling techniques to new graduate students in molecular simulation. However, I recently came across a graduate student who was 5 years into PhD research based entirely on molecular simulation. They asked some questions that revealed that they had little knowledge of enhanced sampling. After probing farther, I found that they had almost no knowledge at all of enhanced sampling and had never used any of the techniques after 5 years in the field. This demonstrated to me that something went terribly wrong in their graduate education. I try to be understanding, but it reflects poorly on both them and their advisor.

Since this point has not been explicitly brought up I will say asking "basic" questions has a hidden benefit. There may be many others with the exact same thoughts who will be grateful you've asked the question.
I am in industry, not academia, but on many occasions I have asked these "stupid" questions in a public forum. Never has anyone thought less of me for asking them and I have on occasion had individuals afterwards inform me they were afraid to ask the same question but glad I did in their stead. Knowledge is something to be openly spread and socialized, not some exclusive resource reserved for those willing to dive into the esoteric.

I have meet one manager in industry who yelled at anyone who asked any question. High turnover and rework rate there.

On a slight corollary. I was asked to be an "audience" member for someone practicing a PhD viva. He got about three minutes into it, and had made a basic error in his assumptions - I asked a pointed question and he stood there like a gaffed fish not realising we were in the same field.
It took him six months to patch over that error and another three rewriting it. The error came from something that his supervisor had glossed over and gotten wrong and he hadn't bothered to follow up and query.
You MUST ask. if you are not sure — ask.... If you want ask without asking - say that you are not sure how X works and Y follows from X - could the expert please help you work though it to understand properly. Some questions can be asked like that some can't - but regardless if you don't know - ask now.

Asking questions is almost never wrong.
What would be more harmful is other people realizing you don´t understand a subject while you have been pretending that you do.

The standard ethics norm in academia is that an author of a paper must answer all questions related to the paper and should be grateful to everybody who asks questions. Thus there are no "naïve" questions. In your particular example clearly you found a problem with the paper: it contains a statement which is not completely justified.

I'm going to go against the grain of most of the answers and say in my experience "yes, asking dumb questions CAN hurt your reputation". As much as everybody wants to say people aren't judged for bad questions, they are. Now most people aren't insanely judgmental, so they will likely forgive one or two obvious questions, and likely their impression of you will be the summation of their interactions with you. If you pair that one dumb question with 6 insightful questions that show you do understand highly difficult subjects/topics they will think you're knowledgable/smart. And if you ask 6 obvious questions and no insightful questions it will imply you don't have any high level understanding (with high probability). And if you have 4-5 obvious questions, and maybe 1-2 high level questions it might suggest you have some insight but not complete understanding.
As for my practical recommendation, give it your best effort to try to make sense and due your due diligence before asking a question just to be sure you're not just being careless, but after that just ask because there's no real point trying to hide your knowledge/intelligence level. Eventually it's going to be figured out over a long time of interacting with people. So just try your best and then over time people will likely understand your true talent and knowledge level anyway. Hope that helps! Goodluck

There are a lot of good answers here, but I wanted to add some information that might be helpful.
As a professor, when I'm giving a seminar, teaching a class, or even talking to one of my students I have to make a guess about the knowledge of the audience. If I guess that the audience has very basic knowledge then I waste a lot of time talking about things that they know already. If I assume that they are experts, then they might not understand anything that I'm saying. So, I do my best to estimate the the level of the audience, but feedback can substantially improve the quality of communication.
The audience does a speaker a great service by asking clarifying questions during a talk (or class or conversation) because it is impossible for the speaker to know that the audience does and doesn't know. Rather than seeming dumb, the person asking a question shows that they are engaged and interested in the content. That's far better than remaining silent and missing the point and leaving the speaker wondering whether or not they are understood.
I specify clarifying questions because it is not helpful or recommended to ask a question which is only tangentially related to the material (but that is not what the OP was about).

The purpose of giving a talk or a lecture is to transfer knowledge/understanding from one brain to another (hopefully more than one).  If asking questions leads to better transfer, then the speaker/lecturer ought to be grateful that someone asked.  The transfer is more effective if both transmitter and receiver take an active part.
I've always taken the approach that there is no such thing as a stupid question*, if only because I don't want to do anything to stop people asking me questions if they don't understand something.  If the audience are not going to ask questions or interact, then they may as well be watching a video of my talk.
*there really isn't.  I was asked once whether it mattered which order the statements in a computer program were written down.  Now to me (as I understand computer architecture) the answer is obvious, but it made it very clear that the student didn't understand something fundamental about programming, and asking the question meant they got their mental model of programming rapidly improved.  Kudos to the student!

Emailing a question is very unlikely to damage your reputation. If it's truly as basic as you think, he will probably assume you are someone from an unrelated field or an undergrad. That's if he even reads your email. As a student, I also often indulged into all manner of fantasies about all the very positive and very negative consequences my emails might have, only to discover that 99% of them have no consequence at all, because the recipient doesn't read them. Your average professor logs into their mailbox and stares down a 4 digit unread mail count, if an email is not to their liking, they will just ignore it.
As for asking questions generally, people tend to overestimate how simple and stupid their question is. Even very basic questions can be valuable because they highlight some fundamental aspect that the speaker failed to communicate well. I have often wrestled with my embarrassment to ask "stupid" questions, only to have other people later thank me for asking them because they were confused about the same thing.
Out of context, if you ask an extremely stupid question in a very focused meeting (so not a place where undergrads and laypeople can attend) where everyone knows you, you might raise an eyebrow or two. But only the one time. If you make a habit of asking questions, people will just think of you as "the guy who ask questions" and nobody will care that here and there you ask one that was a bit superficial. Of course you don't want to ask 100 questions such that all 100 are totally naive. So it's a good idea to do your homework, make sure you pay attention to the talk/paper so that you don't miss something that was already clearly stated, and make sure you at least spend a moment thinking about an answer. It also helps to phrase the question in such a way as to emphasize why it matters. Even extremely simple matters are worth explaining in depth if they are critical to the point being made. If you do these things, far less than 100% of your questions will be truly stupid, and nobody will be counting the handful of ones that are.

Most likely you should not be worried.  But as always there are exceptions to this general rule -- if your question is about something truly basic in the field, yeah it's going to raise some eyebrows and may cause some lasting damage.  For example, if you are in a math PhD and can't follow a basic epsilon delta proof of the limit, it's certainly not going to look great since that is something anybody with basic experience in intermediate math should know like the back of their hand.
It's sort of like the imposter syndrome.  The vast majority of the time feeling like an imposter is all in your head, but there's certainly (rare) examples of people who got in over their head and the feeling is reality.

Ask it and damage your reputation?
Don't ask it and damage your understanding?
Which is more important to you? Which should be more important to you?

follow-up comment: OP, you are a student, you can do the dummiest thing in the world that would reduce your reputation by a factor 1000 and no one will remember you in 3 months from now, because your reputation is 0.

Personal experience here:

it took me 6-9 months to barely understand the main assumption and claim from my supervisor works;
it took me 1-1.5 year to understand the advisor was "wrong", or at least that the claim was central but not necessarily true in all cases, plus the work following from the assumption/claim was a kind of dead branch (the advisor was scooping up all the low-hanging fruits, only "menial" tasks were left to do for PhDs and PostDocs);
it took me 6 years into the PhD to finally give up on my PhD with my advisor, because by following my way, a way perpendicular to advisor's claim and assumptions, I found out plenty of positions in the Academia, including one that liked me so much to hire me as an Assistant Professor and to support for my defense with said supervisor.

What did I earn by asking the advisor "why do you make that claim?" after 2 months of working in that group?
I got an unsatisfactory answer, and I embarked in a long bibliographic journey where it turned out that the central claim was just the approximation of some results from someone else 30 years before.
(spoiler: even with such a slow PhD, I then went on having a decent career in the academia, until I found a better life/balance work in the industry. That's also the reason I stick so long with the first advisor: very liveable place, plenty of life opportunities besides work AKA research and academic life)
So go ahead, ask the question, but be ready to find yourself the rationale behind that claim, because it is a central piece of your advisor work, and you need to understand it even without having the possibility of talking directly with your advisor.

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." - Mark Twain
That said, if you never ask you will remain a fool forever.

You don't have to remain a fool forever if you know how to read. Books don't get offended even if you keep staring at the first page of the introduction for 10 minutes. They also won't tell anyone you did.

But if you are a fool then what's the problem? If you're not a fool then you will have learnt something. This answer presumes that OP is a fool, which is quite unlikely. More likely is that they're the type of person who likes to question things - which is a fine way to be!


text:
What position and affiliation to fill in a conference application in a situation like this?
I'm going to apply for participation in a conference that happens in July. In the application they ask for my position and affiliation. The important point is that right now I'm a PhD student at a university and by July I'm going to be a postdoc in another university.
In that regard, I'm not sure how to fill the information. The reason I feel this is relevant is twofold: (1) I think they are more likely to accept the application from a postdoc than a PhD student, (2) the university I'm in right now is not very known in the field, whereas the one I'm going to is, and maybe this also impacts the application being accepted.
In that case:

Should I just fill my current position and affiliation, and in the "additional comments" field explain that by the time of the conference I'll be in another position somewhere else

Or should I just fill the position and affiliation I'll have by the time the conference takes place?

As a general norm, it is expected that in most applications, one provides the information pertaining to current state (unless explicitly asked for a possible future state), for the simple reason that we do not know for certain that the future event will happen.

The information will likely be used to label your badge at the conference, not to make decisions about acceptance.
I think it isn't very important; if it were me, I'd just put down my current information. Though you've been hired to a post doc, you haven't actually started it yet, so to me it seems like the risk of advertising yourself as having an affiliation you don't really have yet is greater than the hardly existent benefit.
If you're presenting, you can note your current affiliation at the time of presentation on your poster or slides. I am recalling I've also seen people scribble alternate details on their conference badges - my first thought when encountering someone who's scribbled on a ", PhD! :)" after their name would be to say "congratulations!" as it likely indicates they've graduated recently, some time between registration and the actual conference.
Alternatively, you could simply ask them. State your situation simply: that you're currently a graduate student at X and at the time of the conference you'll be a post doc at Y, and ask which is more appropriate to give. Shouldn't be more than two sentences.


text:
Should I include teaching experience in my CV for a postdoc position?
I'm finishing a PhD in theoretical Physics and I'm going to apply to a postdoc position in Europe. In that case, should I include teaching experience in my CV? Indeed, during my masters and my PhD I have helped in teaching quite a few undergraduate courses, mostly in mathematical methods for Physicists. The way it works here is that there is a professor who teaches two classes a week and a grad student who teaches one. I think I have something around six semesters total doing this.
Now I'm unsure whether I should include it or not. On the one hand it seems not much relevant, as a postdoc position is for research work. On the other hand it seems like it adds some value, but I'm not sure.
So, should I include teaching experience in a CV for a postdoc position or not?

Of course you should.  It illustrates that you have experience at preparing material for presentation, at communicating science, and that you can interact with others.  All of these are very valuable research skills.