text:
A better method than essays to measure diversity, inclusion, and equity?
I have been invited to join a scholarship/grant committee for supporting university early career researchers (ECRs). One of the aims of the panel is to implement diversity, inclusion, and equity during the selection process.
I am only aware of using an essay or biography for this evaluation. However, I personally dislike using essays/biographies because, in my opinion, they unreasonably expose the applicant's history to a person or committee who will likely become the applicant's colleague or supervisor. I would prefer a questionnaire (or similar) that focuses on facts and not narrative to evaluate the applicant's criteria in terms of diversity, inclusion, and equity.
Has anyone had experience with non-essay scoring solutions for measuring diversity, inclusion, and equity who can explain their methods and suitability?

What part of the world are you in? Practices and attitudes will vary widely.

@cag51 Would like to hear from any part of the world. What are their practices

"any part of the world" isn't very useful. In the US, there are laws about what you can ask and about the freedom to opt out.

While I understand where you're coming from, I think there is a fundamental conflict in what you're trying to achieve. One of the core goals of EDI efforts is to recognise people's individual circumstances and experiences, and judge their achievements accordingly. Any attempt to 'focus on facts' without letting people explain their personal story either (i) relies on stereotypes to assess the impact of those facts, and/or (ii) rapidly becomes worthless because there is no way to judge the sincerity of responses or differentiate between individuals.

This question focuses on DEI in selection, and there is nothing wrong with that, but I hope your committee is also thinking about how to recruit diverse candidates and how to support them once you hire them.

@Buffy Thank you Prof. I agree with you. This is a local grant and applicants are familiar to the committee. I presume we could do better rather reading their sensitive information. Hence looking for alternative methods

@avid Thank you

@DavidESpeyer Thank you


text:
How can I avoid inadvertently offending my female peers and getting into trouble for it?
Attention has been drawn recently to an incident that occurred at a scientific conference and its sequelae described in this article:

The fuss started when [Prof. X] and [Prof. Y] ended up in the same crowded elevator during a conference at a Hilton in San Francisco last month. [Prof. Y] said she offered to press the floor buttons for people in the elevator, whom she described as mostly conference attendees and all, except one other woman, white middle-aged men. Instead of saying a floor, [Prof. X] smiled and asked for the women’s lingerie department "and all his buddies laughed," [Prof. Y] wrote in a complaint, the details of which [Prof. X] disputed.
[Prof. Y] [...] then wrote to the association’s executive director, who forwarded the complaint to the group’s Committee on Professional Rights and Responsibilities, which determined that [Prof. X] had violated the conduct code.
[Prof. X] insists it never should have gotten to that point because he tried to resolve the problem informally, as the association’s conduct code recommends. After being informed that his conduct was under investigation, [Prof. X] wrote [Prof. Y] an email assuring her that "I certainly had no desire to insult women or to make you feel uncomfortable." He suggested that [Prof. Y], who was born in Romania and raised in Israel, might have misinterpreted his remark. When he was young, in the 1950s, he said, it was a "standard gag line" to ask the elevator operator for the hardware or lingerie floor as though one were in a department store.
"Like you, I am strongly opposed to the exploitation, coercion, or humiliation of women," [Prof. X] wrote. "As such evils continue, it seems to me to make sense to direct our attention to real offenses, not those that are imagined or marginal. By making a complaint to ISA that I consider frivolous — and I expect, will be judged this way by the ethics committee — you may be directing time and effort away from the real offenses that trouble us both."
[Prof. X] was told to write an "unequivocal apology" to [Prof. Y] and submit a written copy by May 15 to the association’s executive committee. The apology should focus on [Prof. X's] actions, rather than [Prof. Y's] perceptions of them, it said, adding that if he failed to comply, the executive committee would consider appropriate sanctions.

As a male member of academe, I am worried.  I feel bewildered and fear that I might also offend someone some day.
How can I avoid committing an equivalent faux pas in an academic environment, such as an international conference?

Note: this is a drastically reduced version of this original question, per meta discussion here

Note: The question is a community wiki as per the linked meta post. This automatically turns all answers into community wikis as well, but we moderators can manually make them to non-wiki answers. If you post an answer, feel free to raise a custom moderator flag to have the wiki status removed. Update: To avoid abuse of this, we will now convert all community-wiki answers to regular answers by default.

See additional meta discussion.

Comments have been moved to chat. 1) If you want to discuss whether this question should be closed or not, do it in the respective meta discussion. 2) If you wish to debate offensiveness, take it to chat. 3) If you have suggestions how to improve this specific question (that were not subject of existing meta discussions), such as the title or wording, write a comment (or suggest an edit). 4) I removed the title discussion, since it seemed to be over with everybody being happy. If not, it’s still in chat.

What's the point of discarding the names of the people involved if the pointed source has them?

@user4052054: personally I prefer to think of the case at hand anonymously, since it serves merely as an illustration of the general question being asked. Obviously that anonymity isn't real, just a fiction for the purposes of this thread, but it implies a certain distance.

For the record, I didn't close this question because it was "unclear what you're asking". I voted to close because I felt the question was too broad and not actually academia-specific. I seems more appropriate for Interpersonal.SE, or potentially Workplace.SE if you're more focused on the professionalism aspect.

To close voters (and reopen voters) please bring the discussion to meta so we can figure out what to do about the question.

The problem here stems from two sources 1) it was a bad joke in poor context and 2) as Najib pointed out the guy didn't accept responsibility for his actions.  Breaking it down:
It was a bad joke
As was pointed out in this question what exactly the joke was was unclear.  Let's go back to the original joke to see why.  According to the guy:

When [Prof. X] was young, in the 1950s, he said, it was a "standard gag line" to ask the elevator operator for the hardware or lingerie floor as though one were in a department store.

In the 1950s when elevator operators were a thing, if you asked to be taken to the hardware floor, the joke is relatively clear:

I am confused about where I am because conference centers don't have a hardware floor.

Making the same joke today would relatively clear though it have the previous humor and would add an extra potential layer of self deprecation:

I am old and senile because I don't realize elevator operators aren't a thing anymore.

If we assume he was in an elevator with all men adding to the joke that he is looking for the lingerie floor adds more possibilities to the joke:

Why is he looking for women's lingerie?  Is he suggesting he is a cross-dresser?  Is he wanting to leer at the sexy clothing?

When the person he is speaking to is a woman, it adds the possibility that the joke was actually aimed at her:

Is he suggesting he wants to buy her lingerie?

Seeing as it was a conference where women are under represented another possibility arises:

I am confused about where I am because you don't belong here.  You belong in a shopping center or some other place with a lingerie store.

Basically, because of the context and content of the joke it became unclear what the joke was.  Giving him the benefit of the doubt, he was trying to make an innocent old joke and chose poorly.  However, because of the time and place he made the joke it is also possible he was trying to demean [Prof. Y].  In the context of an academic conference where there is already a lot of sexism the women there are having to overcome, making a joke that can be interpreted as sexist is dangerous.
He didn't take accountability
Everything probably would have been fine if [Prof. X] had responded by saying, "I'm sorry, I was trying to make a joke at my own expense, but executed it poorly and it came off as if I was trying to make a joke at [Prof. Y]'s expense.  I shouldn't have made that joke, I didn't mean to imply anything at all about [Prof. Y] or the presence of women at this conference."  By insisting he did nothing wrong he failed to acknowledge how is words impacted another person specifically and a group of people generally.
Instead, while [Prof. X] did state that "I certainly had no desire to insult women or to make you feel uncomfortable" and "Like you, I am strongly opposed to the exploitation, coercion, or humiliation of women" he did not acknowledge that his statement could be interpreted as doing exactly that.  Instead he insisted that the interpretation of his joke was invalid saying "As such evils continue, it seems to me to make sense to direct our attention to real offenses, not those that are imagined or marginal" and called her complaint "frivolous".
The committee even stated that this lack of accountability was the greater crime stating "[An even] more serious violation, [than the comment in the elevator was] that [Prof. X] chose to reach out to [Prof. Y], and termed her complaint ‘frivolous.’"
How to avoid a similar problem

If you are going to make a joke, think about how it might be interpreted in the context you are in.  In particular, make sure it can't be interpreted as making fun of a group of people that has to overcome adversity to share space with you.
If you do accidentally make a bad joke that comes off the wrong way, accept the impact it had on the other person and apologize.

How many career destructions might have been prevented if only people had the ability to discern which jokes were the bad ones?

@ASimpleAlgorithm and how many more could have been prevented if people would just apologize for cracking a bad joke instead of getting indignant about someone else taking offense at it?

A simpler way to put it: in the 1950s many things were seen as funny that are considered in poor taste or actively offensive today. A good rule of thumb is to refrain from making jokes with sexual, religious, or ethnic content in public.  While the old joke wasn't all that funny, professor X would have probably gotten just a few smiles if he had asked for "auto parts" or "accounting department" instead of something with sexual connotations.

@DoktorJ Interestingly, that remains an open question. In the legal world, where the net dollar effects of different policies is felt, apologies remain a topic of contention as they can easily backfire and make things worse.

@ASimpleAlgorithm True, but one must remember that comedy is a skill.  It takes practice, and in truth, very few people are good at it.  Those that are recognize that a good joke is one the audience deems good, not the teller.  This person specifically isolated a member of their audience for the benefit of the rest of the audience.  That alone was a jerk move.  That he did it along sex lines means it is a legally punishable jerk move in many countries.  This guy need to pay attention to what's around him, for his sake, and then tell jokes.

There is an additional aspect. Elevator operator, when it existed as a job, was a much lower skill, lower pay, job than college professor. Using a 1950's elevator operator joke in this context says that Prof X would prefer to treat Prof Y as someone whose job is to push buttons for him, rather than as a peer who is graciously assisting her fellow conference attendees.

@PatriciaShanahan That is really searching for something bad at all cost to be able to ostracize someone. I do not believe a second it was meant like that or that normal people would take it like that. If you ask someone if he knows where some room is you are not implying he is a like a servant of the venue who is there to guide people around.

@VladimirF The case you describe is equivalent to Prof X simply saying something like "Floor ten, please". Nobody would have taken offense at that. I don't know of any building guide specific jokes, but the situation in the question would be equivalent to telling one.

@PatriciaShanahan: "Floor 10 please" would not have been a joke. Prof Y literally asked what floor he was going to. The joke was not "haha you're below me", it was "haha I'm confused where I am". In no way did Prof X's joke belittle Prof Y, and there's nothing to indicate that Prof Y's gender factors into the joke at all, since it would've worked equally if everyone present were all male, all female, or X/Y's genders had been reversed. You're twisting Prof X's words in order to get the outcome you want: taking offense where none was intended or even logical.

Slight quibble with "could be interpreted as doing that". When he says, "I am strongly opposed to the exploitation, coercion, or humiliation of women", while using the defence of no intent, he suggests he's only opposed to the intentional exploitation etc. of women. He is willing to go down fighting for his right to negligently or incidentally exploit etc. women. So it's not just "could be interpreted as" that he's refusing to accept responsibility for, he's refusing to accept responsibility even if it actually did. At least, that's how it plays and why he looks so awful.

@ASimpleAlgorithm: (1) Nobody's careers are destroyed by this, even in cases where they should be, and (2) What you're asking for is impossible because any such discernment algorithm could be exploited as a plausible-deniability algorithm.

@R.. Regarding (1), I'm skeptical about such an absolute claim, but I was speaking generally about bad jokes destroying careers. Such as on twitter or other public forums. It has indeed occurred plenty times (and they quite often do apologize without success, by the way). As for (2), the problem with circular logic in advising against bad jokes was my whole point. Look at the very first line of this answer.

@ASimpleAlgorithm Regarding your response to (2), that is why I don't just say "don't make bad jokes" in my bottom advice section, I give specific things to consider that will help you tell if the joke might be offensive. If you do that (1) should be less likely to be a problem.  Most of the "bad jokes" that get people in trouble have been ones that the person knew were at least a little offensive or risque. If the joke has an innocent interpretation (like this one) people tend to be more accepting of apologies.

Two rules which would have saved him
Do not speak words which may demean or sexualize others, even as a joke.
By this, I mean it is a good idea to use neutral, sanitized language in a professional context. More casual or familiar language should only be used when the speaker is familiar with everyone in the conversation.
To wit: A hotel does not have a "women's lingerie department", so his comment was clearly not a serious response. This leads his listeners to wonder what he really meant.
It is certainly debatable whether he intended to demean or sexualize her. But his intent behind the "joke" would be irrelevant if he never said it in the first place. There is no professional reason to mention lingerie.
A simple "Floor 11, please" would have sufficed.
When in unfamiliar company, do not discuss sexual matters as a general rule, and most especially do not direct sexual remarks toward unfamiliar people.
The same rule applies when one party has power over another, e.g., supervisor/subordinate or professor/student. There are potential legal and ethical problems in this case, and it is best to avoid that quagmire entirely.

If he doesn't think his words fit the premise of your first rule then he would not be warned by the rule to "not say it in the first place". For example if he meant the joke in a self-deprecating way, with people laughing at him for shopping for his personal use. A better wording (which covers both your rules) would be to stay away from taboo subjects or statements that might be construed by others as inappropriate or demeaning.

I would expect that any reasonable person understands that mentioning lingerie is sexualizing the conversation. Directing such a comment to an out-group female passenger is sexualizing, even if he didn't want to do that. In most of the US, the choice of "lingerie" over a neutral term like "underwear" is suggestive, nevermind the questionable decision to mention undergarments in front of a stranger in a hotel.

"demean or sexualize" is far too often in the eye of the beholder to be a useful discriminator.

It's more about avoiding words which can have those connotations. There is quite a long list of words I use casually on a regular basis but never in a professional context.

@CarlWitthoft no they are not.  To be generous we could say that some people who use demeaning or sexualizing language have not taken the time to reflect on their power and privilege sufficiently to recognize the effect that it is having on others but there is little  ambiguity about what constitutes demeaning and sexualizing language.

@DoubleD As good an answer as this is, I feel that it's ever so slightly undermined by your choice of username...

I think in today's climate it's probably best not to make jokes in general at these sorts of things unless you're in familiar company, if you have to, keep them as bland and inoffensive as possible, stick with stuff that everybody has heard (and probably won't find funny). Some might find that a bit of an overreaction, but considering the consequences I don't think it's worth the risk. It's too easy to make a mistake and have the world come down on you like a ton of bricks.

@KennyPeanuts you clearly have no idea of the difference between a subjective and an objective term.  I'm not saying it's easy, but there is a difference.

@Anyon : A person does not have a way to selectively change a long-standing username just for a single question.  (I'm not saying that the username can't be changed, but expecting a person to do so, for just a single question, would be a rather huge expectation, just for a question.  I wouldn't expect a single question to be worth it.)

This answer reminds me much of a sign I see frequently at work.  It says (approximately), "Always make sure your words are soft and sweet, in case you ever have to eat them."

You simply apologize. Note that you do not apologize for your intentions or for them feeling bad (like "I'm sorry you feel that way"). You apologize for the offence you caused (whether it was your intention or not). If appropriate, you may explain what your intentions were.
Example:

You: "blah blah blah something that sounds [or is] sexist."
Another person: "That is offensive"
You: "I'm sorry I offended you. That was not my intention."
Another person : "Ok. blah blah"
(optional) You: "The comment meant blah blah blah. Thank you for bringing up that it offends people. [or something similar]"

The person who should be being focused on during the apology is the other person. Leave your intentions, that it was a mistake, etc. out until the other person feels you've adequately communicated that you think what happened was just straight-up bad. What matters here is whether you did your best to apologize and make amends if possible.

s/ I offended you// or it's a fake apology. The problem is not that you offended them (or, as implied, that they took offense). The problem is that you did something you shouldn't have. Either stop at "I'm sorry" or follow up with "I shouldn't have said that.".

How can I avoid committing an equivalent faux pas in an academic
  environment, such as an international conference?

In this particular example by being more careful. Do not make jokes with unknown people unless they are very tame jokes.
In general you can't. No matter what someone will eventually take offence at you. Sometimes with good reason, sometimes for no good reason. Don't let it bother you too much, such is life.
When it happens be honest and think if you could have done something to avoid the situation. If so apologize, no buts.
If neither did you intend offence nor could you have done anything to avoid such offence then do not apologize. Don't apologize for things outside your control.
The following decision tree shows how to deal with requests for apology. Note that the option "Explain why you should not be offended" never appears, that almost never works.

Off-topic I guess.  Refers to your last box "As ordered by X, I apologize".  There is a really great apology scene (by Robert De Niro) in the movie "The Mission" (1986).

Did you make the decision tree diagram yourself? If not, can you please post a link to where you it came from?

@DanRomik Done by myself for this specific answer.

This diagram is just bad. (1) Your decision on as to whether to apologize or not hinges on whether the other party holds power over you; as opposed to a moral consideration. So if a CEO inadvertently offends an employee of theirs, they shouldn't actually apologize? (2) Furthermore, you're saying that someone who meant to be offensive shoud apologize, but someone who didn't mean to be offensive (but is now being reprimanded by someone who has no power over them) should not apologize. I can't even begin to comprehend the logic behind that.

And then there's the implication that "fighting back" and "accepting oppression" are a binary choice, with an exceptional third option of expressing explicit reluctance (thus defeating the point of the apology). This is just causing more issues rather than fixing them.

What if given the knowledge you had at the time, more diligence would not have helped prevent the offence, but with a bit a research and understanding, the offence could have been easily avoided? Is that covered under the having more diligence clause?

@Rick Yes. Diligence implies a minimun of preparation. Getting prepared for scheduled unfamiliar situations is something under your control.

I'm having real difficulty imagining a scenario where "As ordered by X, I apologize" would be a good idea. Have you actually seen this done? Did it improve the situation?

@GeoffreyBrent Being able to face the consequences of fighting back or the consequences of accepting oppression is way better than this third option. So, yes, worst option of the three, yet better than pondering the situation without ever reaching a resolution. A mediocre plan is better than none.

To avoid getting yourself into a mess in the first place:

Gradually build up your awareness and understanding of diversity concerns by reading an article or book chapter once a month about gender and diversity issues in academia.
Build up your empathy: when you hear about an incident of intolerance, imagine that you work in a female-dominated field that men (including you) have had difficulty cracking into, and someone says something that draws attention to your gender minority status.

Let's imagine you've been called out for saying something sexist or intolerant.
Perhaps you showed ignorance, lack of consideration or a lapse in judgment.  Perhaps someone else showed hypersensitivity or reactivity.

It's understandable that you might feel confused, hurt, indignant.  Express these feelings in private, not in public.  Remember that email can appear deceptively private but is actually extremely public.
Allow yourself time, before responding in a public way, to think about what happened, and imagine how the other person/people might feel.  If you draft an email, don't hit "send" right away -- sleep on it; show it to someone whose opinion you value.
If anyone pushes you to apologize before you feel ready, ask for some time to reflect.  An apology that criticizes the person who felt hurt is worse than no apology at all.

Besides the situation in this question, do you think there is ever a situation where one may reply "I think you're overreacting" to a callout? Or is this unacceptable no matter what the complaint is?

@knzhou Even if they are overreacting, saying "I think you're overreacting" to somebody you don't have a trusting relationship with will typically communicate "I am not taking your concerns seriously."

@knzhou - There are lots of interpersonal situations where A has overreacted, and it is constructive for B to say so.  But I don't think that has anything to do with the lingerie in the elevator story (that mislabeling is intentional and is intended to be funny).

But I don't agree with the ideas in some of the answers. The original answer to the closed question attributed extreme malice to Prof. X. The current top answer, respectfully, frames Prof. X as an idiot. And I read your answer as saying, "if somebody is offended, you are surely in the wrong, so educate yourself and apologize." I don't think this is a productive way to address the problem. Calm, one-on-one conversation where both people treat each other as human fixes problems, while a hardline stance leads to blowups like the one we've discussing, which make nothing but lingering bitterness.

"I think you're overreacting" is virtually never going to end well. If you're right, the other person has a proven record of overreacting and is likely to react even harder against this criticism; if you're wrong, you've now added insult to injury. Either way, you haven't helped to resolve the situation. (Unless you are in a position of power over the other person, and evil, in which case saying "you're overreacting" to a legitimate complaint is an excellent  method for maintaining the oppressive status quo. Cf. Gaslight.)

@1006a - We're talking about two different things.  What I said was completely tangential to the Q&A on this page, and it was a response to what knzhou said.  Example, spouse to spouse: "You have a really good point that I should have checked in with you before making a decision about such-and-so that it would be very hard to go back on.  But we're talking about permission to go to a softball game.  Do you think you might be overreacting just a bit here?  Is there something else bothering you?"

@knzhou - I read your answer as saying, "if somebody is offended, you are surely in the wrong, so educate yourself and apologize.  Oh dear.  It looks like I wasn't clear enough in the sentence "Perhaps someone else showed hypersensitivity or reactivity."  What I meant by that was that there could be a situation where someone takes offense due to hypersensitivity, or because s/he is a reactive person.  This can happen.  The next three bullet points outline a way of dealing with this that minimizes further offense and hurt feelings.

@aparente001 Sorry, I was responding to knzhou's question, not your response; I agree, there are relationships/situations where probing a (likely) overreaction is appropriate. I took your comment to be saying that this wasn't one of those. Even with my spouse, though, I think I'd be wary of using the exact phrase "you're overreacting"—I know I'd probably just get more upset if he used it to me, especially "in the moment". I class it with phrases like "you need to calm down" and "no offense, but" that almost never have the expressly-intended effect.

@1006a - Oh, I see.  With regard to interpersonal relationships and softball games -- good advice!  I do especially hate "you need to calm down."  Here's another: "you need to take a deep breath."  Yeah, right!  I'll take a deep breath, the better to tell you where to get off!

@knzhou You've read way more into my comment than I intended. My point was NOT that I assume Prof X is evil or even in a strong position via-a-vis Prof Y, rather that the only way saying "you're overreacting" would work out well for him was if both those conditions held. At least one didn't, which is why the statement was so very bad for him.

@knzhou - Punished?  Is that what Prof. Y initially requested?

@knzhou - I'd like to request that a different location be chosen if you want to have a debate or discussion about some tangential remarks that happened to be written here below my answer.  The discussion has wandered quite far afield from the content of my answer, I think....  If you set up a chat room for this discussion, or write a question here or on Meta, or decide to use the general chat room, please do ping me.  It's not that I'm not interested in the discussion -- thanks.

@knzhou - If you want to flag to request that, you can (I don't know if a mod would do that but you're welcome to give it a try); I believe it's a pretty straightforward thing to do, if you want to try the DIY approach.  I believe you go to chat, create a room, invite 1006a and me to the room, and then ping both of us here to go there (in other words, write the ping here on this page, including a link to the room you made).  In my personal experience, leaving out that last step makes the whole thing fail (although I'm not completely sure why).  Anyway, it's up to you, I'll be happy with...

... any of those outcomes.

So I am going to do something foolish and wade into this issue.  Your specific two questions are:

How can I avoid inadvertently offending my female peers and getting into trouble for it?

and

How can I avoid committing an equivalent faux pas in an academic environment, such as an international conference?

These really are two different but similar questions.  There are also deeper dimensions to this problem, including the issue of how both professors experienced themselves.
Let us start thinking about how Professor X may have experienced the question of "what floor?"  I grew up in a place that still had one elevator operator when I was very little.  I also used to spend Saturday and Sunday morning watching old movies and old television shows from probably age 8 to 18.  I have seen more very old movies that I could probably count and I still watch them.  I watched many American and British movies and television shows.
Professor X, who is both British and 75, would have spent about half of his life not only seeing this joke live in the real world, but watching on television and movies.  This was more the case after the operators vanished.  This is because humor is about a disconnect between the speech and the environment.  I could probably find an Academy Award winning movie with that line in it.  I certainly could find principal comedians who have performed that line.
It is quite possible that the professor who said the joke was trying to make people feel more comfortable with an old silly joke.  I am bringing this up because, assuming neither the original speaker or you are a predator like Harvey Weinstein, if you do this faux pax it will likely be with positive intent or without thinking, but no ill will.
In academia, there are multiple levels to this issue.  It is possible that this professor is a predator, though there appears to be no evidence of this anywhere.  The specific problem in academia is that it is common for there to be only a handful of academics specializing in many fields.  In this case, Professor X is not only a principal academic in his field, he is faculty at two Ivy's and Oxford.  This professor is powerful.  This professor may not experience himself as powerful, but just ordinary.
Now let's look at Professor Y.  Professor Y may be too young to even know what an elevator operator is, probably never saw the mountain of movies that used it as a gag, and was American.  Professor Y may or may not know their relative power position, but believes that some consequence for the action taken should happen.  We do not know the personality of Professor Y, nor do we know their views on punishment, appropriate conduct, or Professor Y's cultural experiences.
Professor Y is also trying to act appropriately.  Not only is Professor Y offended, but feels the need to protect other female academics.  Professor Y also appears to be acting in good faith.
This is the problem with this type of situation, it is really only a problem if both parties are acting in good faith.  If Professor X was a predator, this report may have caused other reports and some of them may have caused dangerous revelations to come to light and we would not be discussing this.  Likewise, if Professor Y had a habit of being litigious it would become known within the community and she would probably begin to be ignored.  That is a problem though, still, it is what people do.
For the second question regarding an international academic conference, the simplest is don't tell jokes.  When I was an undergraduate an international student from Japan gave me a book of jokes and I didn't find many funny and I found some extremely offensive.  I didn't tell him I was offended, but I did explain that an American wouldn't find these funny.  Furthermore, humor is conditioned on the culture.  The Three Stooges wouldn't be considered funny anymore, indeed, there would probably be Twitter attacks on them.
Nonetheless, you could easily do a non-humor based faux pas in an international setting.  Cultural rules on food, clothing, body positions, and so forth are extensive and contradictory.  Americans regularly give the English their equivalent to "the bird," without meaning to or even any idea that they are.  The best solution, if you believe you have offended someone, is to flat out apologize.  You can explain you were unaware of the perceived meaning and that you will try and be careful in the future.  Unless you step on a taboo and seriously cross a line, most people will laugh it off.
Professor X crossed an American taboo and it is a new one.  I don't know the professors involved, but I would expect neither of them foresaw the results or feel they are really in the wrong.  If you break a taboo, you probably cannot fix it.  Both of them probably broke taboos, actually.
The old rules of civility, particularly English, would have both of them talk it out and try and "make nice," to use the older phrasing.  The fact she went straight to a formal complaint violates the society's actual rules, but also probably the older English norms and customs professor X values.
The most you can do is try and be civil whenever possible.  Of course, as mentioned above, Professor X was probably trying to do just that.
Now as to female academics, that is a slightly different question.  I am presuming you are in the United States.  If you are not, then nothing I said applies.
For starters, the social rules are changing very fast in the United States.  Indeed, much of the political unrest is that some parts of society have decided to hold onto older rules while other parts have tossed the older rules and have adopted new ones.  Two women could easily offend each other if their operating version of the rules are different.  In fact, I have seen that happen.  I know of two female academics that are at loggerheads over what are differences in generational perceptions of appropriateness.  There are also power issues as one is a full professor and the other an assistant professor.
Still, I would like to point out a study.

Files J, Mayer A, Hayes S, et al. Speaker Introductions at Internal Medicine Grand Rounds: Forms of Address Reveal Gender Bias. Journal Of Women's Health . May 2017;26(5):413-419.

Now, as a disclosure, I find this paper problematic on methodological and statistical grounds.  There are three specific issues that should have been addressed in the editorial process, in my opinion.
The first is that there is a disclosure issue.  Incomplete disclosures are not unique to this paper and plague many fields, but I find them troubling.  The second is that the inference may suffer from Yule's paradox and so either the inferences should have been greatly restricted or cautioned, or not done at all.  The third is that they had data that they didn't use, most likely for reasons of cost, time and the fact they likely didn't know it would matter, but which could have flipped the inferences to the other direction.
With those disclosures, let me provide descriptive information from the article which bears on this discussion.
The paper is from data collected from video recordings of internal medicine grand rounds.  The speakers were physician and researcher peers with MD, PhD and MD/PhD qualifications.
In professional dyads, women introduced other women as doctor 97.8% of the time.  Men introduced other men 72.4% of the time.  I bring this up because I would be willing to bet that the same female physicians don't stop at stop signs 97.8% of the time.  That is an incredible level of social conformity for any group.  It implies it is very important to the group.  Being called "doctor" and calling someone "doctor" is quite important to women.
Men, overall, only introduced a person as "doctor" 65.6% of the time with women doing so 96.2% of the time.  Men introduced women as doctor 49.2% of the time.
There is a lot more going on here, but if you drop the inference of implicit discrimination, it still says a lot about the four sex groupings.
For women, explicit signs of respect are important and the joke could have been interpreted as that she was less than he was.  You never joke downward.  If you are powerful, relative to another group, you don't tell jokes about that group.  With women, the fact that they are engaging in a behavior at such a high rate says it is important to them.
For men, on the other hand, being introduced as "doctor" is not of particular importance.  One could infer, at least enough to investigate whether it is true, that men have other sources of power in addition to their degrees.  As such, the title means less.  Since it means less, they use it less.  You could actually argue that in a meeting filled only with doctors, the title could be dropped entirely.  That the formality is present implies that someone with power or a group with power feels that it should still be used at a high rate.
I am interested in this line of research for a couple of reasons so you will understand the advice I am going to give you.
The first is that I am rarely addressed as either "doctor," or "professor."  I noticed this very early on, while other people are always addressed by title or with the title preceding the name.  Because I am curious, I have been counting this and I have been addressed by title six times in the last four years.
The reason I noticed it was it is disconcerting sometimes for me to be addressed as "mister," by individuals who seem to have forgotten that I am a "doctor."  However, as I have performed research in two completely different academic fields, I viewed this as a research question.  "What triggers people to use titles?"  It may help you here.
It also isn't that I am doing minor work.  I just submitted a paper to a conference with the conjecture that there is an entire branch of stochastic calculus that nobody noticed.  If correct, its effects could impact things ranging from particle physics to the social sciences.  Still, I would be willing to bet money that if the paper is accepted, I will be introduced using my first name in its diminutive form "Dave."
Because my first research field was in industrial psychology and we performed field observations of seventy-seven teams in the field over a period of many years, I became proficient and tracking who spoke to whom, the nature of the content and word use and word choice.  So I started, informally and without an IRB as I am not publishing, paying attention to academic language use.  I saw some professors addressed as professor one hundred percent of the time.  It was the personality characteristics.  They were so formal as people, even when not working, I couldn't imagine addressing them by name without a title.  Others, like me, were so laid back that they were rarely addressed by title by anyone.
To avoid offending anyone, female or male, listen to them.  I did observe that several female colleagues expressed views that formal shows of respect were important to them.  Although they didn't say it in those words, if you listen, you will hear it.  Sometimes the best way to find out what matters is to shut up.  Consider this my permission to you to shut up.
You should avoid jokes in general with colleagues that are not your friend.  I have a fellow academic who is female that I usually stop by and say good morning every day.  Her office is on the way to my office.  However, on the day after Donald Trump was elected, I told her that I would have to stop going to her office starting January 20th.  With the new rules of appropriate behavior, I expected her to come by my office and to bring coffee.  She would also have to say good morning to me before I would say good morning to her given her reduced status for the next four years.
With good friends, you can usually joke.  Still, you should be careful.  Jokes are associated with pain and sometimes that pain is personal.
The best way to avoid offending anyone is to remain in a formal emotional stance until you know how they want to be treated.
You are going to offend people in life, see the advice above.  Spend time being considerate, listening and showing respect.  Then they will forgive you when you remind them that despite their doctorate, they should be bringing you coffee now that we have new rules.  With some friends and in some environments, that joke will fly.  In others, it will not.  If they know you care and respect them, people will forgive you your faux pas.

It is obvious that these two colleagues don't know each other very well.
Jokes about emotionally sensitive topics are never appropriate with an unknown audience.  Politics, religion, and sex are some of the most emotionally sensitive topics.
If you know your audience extremely well, you can craft a joke that has the desired effect leveraging these strong emotional cues.  Until you have that kind of intimate knowledge of your audience, odds are you will upset them.  Occasionally you can avoid the fallout of dealing with an emotionally sensitive topic by effectively lambasting all members ("A priest, a Rabbi, and a Minister") but to do so, you need to clarify a scenario that's clearly fictional ("walk into a bar").
Not knowing these ground rules for comedy is a sign that [Prof. X] isn't a funny person, and is pantomiming other people that are deemed funny.  This joke seems to be one in the vein of Groucho Marx, an incredibly funny person; except, that when Groucho said it to a complete unknown person in a hospital, he rephrased it as "Men's Kidneys, Please."  In a department store, his joke might have worked, but I doubt he could frame the context to make it work.
Now, his inability to properly apologize has been covered well.  Exceptionally well in Najib's answer, so I won't cover it in detail here.
So, you have a person that doesn't joke well and doesn't apologize well.  It is hard to tell a person that they don't do something well, as most people tend not to receive information about their shortcomings well.
Ideally [Prof X] would take a class or read a book in the art of apologizing; but, it seems that he would see such a thing as patronizing, and decline.  Perhaps he would consider otherwise if the request was framed in the light of the damage his poor apology has caused; but, odds are more likely he'll rationalize that this wouldn't be a problem if [Prof Y] just didn't make such a big deal of it.
After all, [Prof X] will eventually make a second misstep, we are all human and non-perfect, and if he was more skilled in apologizing; it would help the world view him as vulnerably non-perfect, but sincere and kind hearted.  Such a combination is even better for one's career than perfect, because people strongly identify with those who are flawed outside of their area of competence.

This situation looks complicated and bewildering in large part because it has already gone several rounds before you even reached it. Your goal should not be to avoid any and all possible uncomfortable incidents, but to avoid them going many rounds and becoming complicated and bewildering.

How can I avoid committing an equivalent faux pas in an academic
  environment, such as an international conference?

I'm going to assume you mean equivalent to what you quote, and therefore Prof X's denial that this is exactly what really happened is irrelevant to the question. However it is worth bearing in mind that just because someone remembers something a bit differently from you certainly doesn't mean they've invented their own reaction to whatever it was that happened.
You cannot avoid ever making the faux pas of a comment that affects someone differently from how you wanted it to. Even worse, the effect which you desired from an action (including speech) is not the end of your responsibility for that action.
It might happen, it might not, but you must not fall into the trap of thinking it never will. You especially must not fall into the trap that Prof X. gives every appearance of having fallen into, of thinking that if my intentions are good then I will cause no harm. My intentions are good. Therefore, if someone claims I have caused harm then they are either making it up or otherwise being unreasonable. The harm is not my fault. All parts of the syllogism are wrong in their way.
What you can do, is mentally prepare for what happens when some incident like this does occur:

If you are a white middle-aged man, be aware of when you are surrounded almost (but not entirely) by other white middle-aged men, and try to develop some awareness of the range of effects of being in a small minority in such a group. Often it doesn't matter at all. Occasionally it will be extremely intimidating to face a group of like-thinking people (because all laughing at this remark), especially like-thinking white middle-aged men, when you are not one. What are likely to be the most memorable examples of Prof Y's previous experiences involving groups of men laughing at something which makes her uncomfortable? Probably not the positive ones, if indeed any of them have been positive. So, what effect did that group have, on the impact of Prof X's remark?
If you can, read the room. If everyone in the room except one person is laughing because of something you just said to that person (or about them), then regardless of what it was you said and what you meant by it, you might like to consider their point of view immediately, rather than waiting for it to be presented to you in writing by a disciplinary committee.
When someone says that you caused them harm (including humiliation), start by saying (or at least thinking, if you're not quite ready to say it yet) "oh no, that's terrible, I'm sorry", rather than saying "well, self-evidently it cannot be my fault, so let's try to get to the bottom of what's wrong with you, how you came to the absurd conclusion that you've suffered harm, and why you should shut up about it ASAP".
Applying that principle to the case at hand: don't use someone's upbringing (or nationality, race, gender, religion, etc) as an explanation of why they might have failed properly to grasp the normative opinion of the majority of white, middle-aged men in the room. See also: effects of being a group dominated by that demographic.
Maybe don't mention underthings to women you don't really know. But bear in mind that making a specific list of things to avoid cannot possibly succeed, because the issue is not whether that particular joke about the lingerie department is or is not on a list of "jokes I'm entitled to make at academic conferences". The issue is the belief in one's entitlement.

In summary tiny offence + powerful ego = big offence. It is not easy to control your own ego, but it's easier than avoiding even tiny offences for the 40 years or more of your expected career.

As a male member of academe, I am worried. I feel bewildered and fear
  that I might also offend someone some day.

You have offended people in the past and will do so again. Worrying about it is fine.
Bewilderment will be somewhat diminished by actively trying to identify when it has happened, and when it is happening. For example, can you think of a time in the past where someone has said to you, "I find that offensive", or "I'm hurt that you said that"? How do you think they felt? How did it make you feel? Did you think as you said it that what you said was inoffensive? Did you still think that after hearing them? Are there jokes that you have told in the past but now consider offensive or otherwise inappropriate? Etc, etc. Try to spend your time thinking about this rather than worrying too much about incidents you weren't present at :-) This isn't especially complicated, it's just difficult not to be defensive, especially if you are afraid.

If you've ever had someone say to you "I'm hurt that you said that", then you roll in very different circles to me. In general, feminists don't strike up conversation about why they object to something you said; they just try to destroy your entire life as recourse #1, exactly as Prof Y did to Prof X here. I agree with much of the advice here - yes, it's predictable that any reference to "underthings" will make you a target - but this answer is written as if there's a world in which offended feminists actually explain to you why they are upset by things, and that's not a world I've ever seen.

@MarkAmery: pretty much all the women I know well enough to speak about feminism with, are feminists to one degree or another. I suspect many of the ones who've never told me so are too. So yes I write as if that world exists, because I live in it. Granted, "I'm hurt that you said that" is a phrase way more likely to come up in a personal relationship than at work, but from the POV of self-examination I'm not saying the questioner should only consider examples from work. If the questioner (or you) has no such examles to work with from any context then, OK, that part is fruitless.

So we could reframe the question as "are there any characteristics or behaviours that distinguish the group of men whom at least some women try to correct when they cause gender-related offence, and who therefore have examples they can reflect on to avoid the incidents the questioner wishes to avoid, from the group of men whom no woman does this to and instead either do nothing or try to destroy their life? And is there anything I can do to join the first group rather than the second?".

In any case Prof Y did not try to destroy Prof X's life: she reported him to an authority who directed him to apologise. Perhaps considering even a minor complaint to be life-destroying is one of those distinguishing characteristics. I'm not sure, but I get the impression from the Washington Post column that it's Prof X who publicised the issue by writing an "email to colleagues" about it. So if the goal is to avoid the international fallout of the embarrassing incident, rather than avoiding the embarrassing incident itself, then we could add "don't destroy your own entire life" to the list...

Your point about the degree of harm is well-taken; I don't know what damage Prof X's career and personal life have suffered from this case, but to claim his life was destroyed is likely hyperbolic. (It was a case of commenting after too many beers, for which I apologise.) As to the rest: yeah, there seems to be a divide in experience. Of the feminists who've yelled at me, refused to speak to me, or sought to poison relationships between me and friends, not one has articulated what I had done to upset them; the women I talk seriously about gender issues with are all more-or-less anti-feminists.

So if we really could put the world to rights between the two of us, which we probably can't, then a question to look at is why you only talk feminism with anti-feminists whereas I (almost) only talk feminism with feminists, and whether or not that affects how the feminists we encounter at work relate to us. Frankly the causation could be in either direction, but culture wars and echo-chambers being what they are, I would suggest that one way to reduce the likelihood of causing gender-based offence is to discuss feminism with feminists.

... by which I mean, the listening part of that reduces the likelihood of causing offence in future. The speaking part might offend the person you're speaking to. But it's not easy advice to follow if the questioner is an anti-feminist himself, just as I would find it difficult to discuss Trump with Trump supporters in my own social circle, if I wanted to better understand what they find offensive. There just aren't any: there aren't even all that many Tory supporters, although I manage to find a few.

Nah, on that last point at least I'm sure you're wrong - nobody in academia (or indeed in any walk of life where their peers are mostly graduates), no matter how right-wing they are, is going to have trouble finding some serious feminists in their social circle, even if they're not close friends. The trick is not to find them - it's to manage to "discuss feminism" with them without turning them hostile. Enough failed attempts and friends lost without any insight gained for it, and one tends to give up and stop poking the hornet's nest.

Yeah, so "supporting the main thesis and goal of feminism" might make that part easier. But one can argue that this isn't as such a choice. And even if the questioner does that, there are many other issues than gender on which we have the potential to cause offence.

Every time you say something, there is a risk. Topics that are especially risky are sex/sexuality, race, class, and the like. When it comes to these topics, it is always wise to make sure you're absolutely confident that the individuals in your current vicinity are okay with your conversation, or especially humor. Oh, and on humor, my opinion is that humor (even beyond the discussion about offending someone), should be for the other person. When your are making a joke, are you making sure that the other person you are saying it to will laugh? Or are you just trying to make yourself laugh? Whenever there is some issue of someone making an offensive joke and then going "aw come on it was just a joke," it always seems to stem from the person making fun and then expecting that everyone else be amused by what they think is funny. When you tell a joke for someone else, like to cheering them up or just lighten a moment, make sure the joke is actually for them, since this will help you consider what their actual sense of humor is. Keep in mind also that people have vastly different experiences. Individuals such as women currently face many issues, and it's not that these are new by any means. We are just in a society where they are more empowered than ever to talk about oppression they've been dealing with since written history.

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How should a graduate admissions committee view (possibly false) accusations against an applicant?
My question is about a situation that nobody wants to see but might have already happened in history (I have heard of this only from some second-hand sources). I ask this because there are people in here who are serving or have served on a graduate school admissions committee and would like to hear their thoughts.
Suppose during the admissions process a department secretary or a professor on the committee receives some emails accusing an applicant of academic misconduct. In most cases, such letters could be forged by the writer (out of jealousy or enmity) and they probably don't come from official email addresses especially when then information is fake.
I wonder in practice how such letters will be regarded in the admission process. Should the committee inform the applicant of this and let them explain it or contact the institute of the applicant to verify or disprove the claims?

It will depend on the individuals in the committee, and possibly on the rules they have to stick to (although it is unlikely that the rules are specific enough to include this issue). To make a long story short: there is no answer because it is opinion-based (and I flagged it as such).

@JeffE Thanks! No, just a mistake. I have edited it.

If I were the head of the grad admissions committee (which I have been in the past) and either an anonymous or signed but unofficial email came to me or a faculty member, I would:
1) if the email is from an email address that is reply-able (or from a person who is googleable), I would write to them and request they make an official statement. I would also double check whether the email is actually the one from the person it denotes.
2) if the email is anonymous or the email address doesn’t match, I would instruct faculty to ignore it.
3) however, in either case it’s my responsibility to inform the graduate school that we’ve received derogatory information of unknown provenance. The grad school will likely tell us to ignore it but I need to cover my ass.
In reality, I’ve reviewed well over a thousand files in my decade plus of teaching at the graduate level and haven’t yet received one of these notes. Most faculty if they have something to say, are not shy about writing it in the main letter themselves (whether in coded form or outright).

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Is it appropriate to ask professors at which schools their recommendation letters have more power?
Usually in United States, three letters of recommendation are required by graduate schools but some applicants might ask more than more than three professors (say five) for letters. In this situation, there might be an issue of choosing whose-letter-to-which-school.
I wonder whether it is appropriate to ask each referee at which schools or departments they are relatively more well-known (having connections or interactions with professors in there) so that their letters are more powerful in there.
If it is not appropriate to do so, are there any efficient ways for students to determine to which schools should they send a certain professor's letter?
I am a little awkward with my grammar in this question (including the title). Please feel free to edit my question if you are a native speaker of English. Thank you very much!

Schools? Probably not. Departments? Most surely.

Don't worry, your English is perfectly understandable.

@MadJack Usually we mean departments (since graduate committee of  departments are decision makers)

@MadJack: For most people, who have settled on a single field, schools and departments are in one-to-one correspondence.

I would ask your references for "coaching help" with your letters and being strategic with who writes your letters to which schools. As part of the coaching, there are two questions I would ask:

"Do you (the letter writer) any connections to or experience with the programs I am applying to?". For example, did they attend a program? Do they collaborate with faculty in that program? Does your program regularly send students to a program?
"What are you thoughts about the programs?" This allows you to make sure your reference is on good terms with the programs you are applying to. For example, if the graduate admission chair is feuding with you letter writer, this might be (unfairly) held against you.

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Is it appropriate to compare myself with other students in my statement of purpose for U.S. graduate school application?
In my statement of purpose(for U.S. math graduate school), I said something like: "compared with my classmates, I believe I am more capable of ..."
One of my professors pointed out it should be my referee's job to compare you with others and I should stay modest. So I am a little confused in here. Is it appropriate for applicants to compare themselves with their peer in the statement of purpose?

I guess the answer is culture-dependent. At least in my epsilon-vicinity such comparison would be unusual and a bit pretentious unless it is really well supported with evidence (prizes? awards? scholarships? 1st places?)

@DmitrySavostyanov Thank you! I will edit it to make it more specific

This would be a bad idea and will likely have the opposite effect you want it to have.  Especially in mathematics, people are turned off by bullshit.
Let me relate an actual exchange I heard a few years ago between two rather famous mathematicians:
Person 1: "I have an amazing theorem to tell you about!"
Person 2: "Slow down.  You tell me the theorem, and I'll tell you if it's amazing."
This illustrates I think an important principal of social interactions in academia (and probably elsewhere too, though I gather that eg in politics and business this is not true).  Namely, people are very unimpressed and skeptical when someone comes out and says how great they are.  What you have to do is tell them factual things that force them to draw the conclusion for themselves that you are great.
In other words, the old adage about writing holds: show, don't tell.

Yes, it would be arrogant to compare yourself to others, and it's not informative. What exactly are you trying to accomplish?
If you're just trying to say "I'm good at math" then you shouldn't- an admissions committee will look at your transcript and make their own judgments. You're not competing against your classmates for admission to graduate school, you're competing against the best students from every school. Everyone who applies is going to be better than 90% of their classmates. Saying that you're better than your classmates just does not accomplish anything.
If you're trying to say "I want to get a math degree because that's what I'm good at" then don't say that either. It's a lame reason to go to graduate school. Ideally you want to be able to say that you're personally invested in getting a PhD. If you really can't come up with a better reason then at the very minimum you should be able to say something like "I want to pursue research-oriented jobs that require a PhD", or "I really liked my topology class and I want to do topology that nobody has ever done before".


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Is It Common For People To Write Literature Reviews On A Topic For Someone Else?
I am working as a research assistant for a professor and I was hired to write a literature review on a rather broad topic that is well outside of my knowledge domain. I am concerned that i'll most likely create a bad product because I don't have a crystal clear idea as to what it is I am intending to search for, I only have an approximate idea. It seems sort of strange that I would be hired to write a LR on a topic for somebody else and I am wondering if this is a common occurrence? Do professors typically hire students write the literature reviews for them?

I don't know how common/typical it is, but it seems to be certainly part of a job description for a RA, especially if your implication is that you are a doctoral student.
One reason for it is just part of your training and when it comes time to do your own dissertation the practice would help.
But additionally, if the professor is exploring some new research direction it would be helpful to them to have help in assuring that they don't miss something important.
And anyone starting out in a new research area will have the same dilemma as yourself. It is hard to know where to look initially. You need to review a lot of papers and chase a lot of references. That is the nature of the task.
If it were crystal clear it probably wouldn't be necessary.
It is good that  you are humble at the start. I'd guess that the professor knows that it isn't easy and that the initial product might require refinement. Just be honest along the way about what you have "covered" and any gaps you think might still exist.

I have hired a master's student to work with me on a literature review in the past on a topic that she initially knew little about. I cannot assume that your professor's situation was the same as mine, but in my case, my purpose was to use her services to do a lot of the legwork in the mechanics of identifying literature and related resources. When it came to the actual reading an meaningful analysis of the articles, I did almost all of that myself. The student saved me a huge amount of time; I could not have produced the eventual reviews in the time I did without her help.
On her part, she learnt a lot about new topics and she eventually coauthored on a very highly cited article. So, I believe that intellectually, the experience was very helpful for her as well. (Even now that she has since become a professor, that remains by far her more highly cited work.)
So, there is one anecdote at least of how such an experience might be valuable to both the research assistant and the professor.

I have not done so, but I have asked masters students hired as RAs to do so, for grants. Results have varied between good and useless. (I wound up entirely rewriting one, cursing the whole time at their failure to synthesize the results from findings). Regardless, a lot got done that I didn't have to do, and could build on. The best part produced was the annotated bibliography--abstract, link, and their comments on each book/article/paper.
Google Scholar is your ace. Google the topic, google the names of the people involved. Copy-paste the abstracts into a word document, rewrite them in consistent tense and structure so it presents a summary of the articles. Read the conclusion for articles with 'teaser' abstracts and add that to the summary. Make sure each summary includes the research question/hypothesis, the methods used, and the findings. Keep an exact bibliography, and a file with all the articles used. Do this for a page, present the result to the professor, get feedback, continue.

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What publication type should I use to communicate and explain obscure effects that arise when taking certain types of measurements?
During my PhD studies I characterized certain device. I followed the theory outlined in several handbooks.
But then, I started obtaining weird results and had to do a lot of research of my own to understand them. It turns out that nearly everything in the handbooks is an approximation (often without saying so). It took me a lot of time to find various 1970-80s papers that describe some obscure effects that can arise in an experimental setup.
So I want to write something that summarizes those numerous effects. I haven't discovered anything, and my measurements are confidential, but I want others to be able to easily find explanation to their weird results.
What type of journal/magazine submission should I write? Or should I not write at all, and just leave it for others to educate themselves the hard way?

In science, most things are approximations. What is the length of the coastline of Maine?

@Buffy its coastline is impossible to properly determine, if you treat it like a fractal, but circa 5632 km if one uses a map. But I know it just because I've read a book about fractals. My life would be hard if I encountered a "coastline paradox" IRL and had to discover fractal maths all by myself.

Why are your measurements confidential?

In my area, I've seen papers that outline deficiencies with models and even proofs.  These issues serve as a motivation for these papers.    IMO, these papers are valuable, and hence highly cited, especially if the research area is topical.

If you are looking for a journal to publish in, Reviews of Scientific Instruments might be appropriate.

You did not specify your discipline (though it sounds like something in physics or chemistry). My own disciplines span business and computer science, but the closest to what you seem to be describing might be published in what we call a "methods article" or a "methodological contribution". Such articles contribute to research methodology (such as measurements) without making a substantive scientific knowledge contribution. Most of our leading journals explicitly acknowledge this type of article (as long as it is clearly identified as such in the cover letter and introduction) since substantive knowledge depends on reliable methods in any field of knowledge. In most major disciplines, there are some journals entirely devoted to publishing such articles. You might find some appropriate journals in your own discipline by searching for something like "[your discipline] methodology journal".
Generally, a valuable (or publishable) methods article must show why the methodological insight makes a difference for researchers in the course of their regular substantive knowledge development. That is, it should point out meaningful (not trivial) errors that might be made when your insight is not taken into consideration. Then it should show practically how researchers can apply your improved method in their own work. Almost always, there should be an empirical example that demonstrates the application of the method on real data. Ideally, the example should run at least two methods: the commonly applied method (for which you demonstrate the serious problems) and then your new method (for which you demonstrate the meaningful improvement).


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Should I review a paper as an undergraduate?
I recently received an invitation to review a paper for publication in an MDPI journal. This is the first time I am being invited to review. I do feel qualified to do it since I have several publications relevant to this topic. However, in the invitation e-mail, I am greeted as Dr.- which reveals to me they are under the impression I hold a PhD, when in fact I am still an undergraduate. Should I decline and correct them or should I accept the invitation? My advisor feels it would be good for my CV but I have qualms about capitalising on a misunderstanding.

@Wetenschaap thanks for pointing that out...I did research on those matters when my advisor suggested we publish there. It seemed to me that it is relevant to the journal also and I've gathered that there are ones more reputable than others and the journals I am involved with seem to fall on the more reputable side...I dont know if the situation is dire enough for just MDPI to be a stain but I dont have the best insight.

You have several publication related to the topic.
You were selected as potential referee for your work not for your title.
One can eventually discuss the correctness of the journal (though, why the journal should know if your contributions were made by a student or a doctor?) but you can certainly accept the task if you feel that you can review the paper.
(Note that this shall be done by every referee no matter of experience).
Your supervisor is right. Eventually, you can ask her/him if you feel too soft or too harsh on some points, or whenever you feel unsure. A common behaviour of young scientists is to overestimate minor details, or asking for citation of whatever contribution they have made so far, etc. The supervisor can likely find some minutes to go through your report.
Often, while taking the final responsibility of the report, supervisors assign part of the review of proceedings or papers to suitable students in their group as a way to make them familiar with an academic research aspect. This time, you were directly invited. So have a look at the manuscript. If you have something reasonable to say, go ahead.
Edit:Thanks to the comment by Wettenschaap I am not so sure my answer still applies. While I can repeat every single word as far your concern (being just a student) is considered, I am not sure if it is worth putting time and energies in reviewing for a journal of that publisher. However, you won't be oblige to put your referee activity in a CV, or you can mention it without giving much details. So you can still do the task and get the related experience. If so, do it seriously.

Clear up the misconception about your degree. If you do the review you can probably wait until you submit it, but don't neglect to do so.

I am greeted as Dr.- which reveals to me they are under the impression I hold a PhD, when in fact I am still an undergraduate

What probably happened is that the editor(s) searched the literature for related papers, and then assumed all the authors have PhD degrees. After all that's most probable title for the authors. "Prof" is the other title, but there are a lot of authors who are not professors. They could have researched you in more detail, but with a hundred reviewer every day and not every author being easily Googleable (in my experience, this is especially the case for Chinese authors) this assumption saves a lot of time.
I'm with your advisor here. If you are qualified to review, you should, and you can put it on your CV. Wetenschaap mentioned in a comment that you might not want to put anything MDPI-related in your CV, but it really shouldn't cause much harm if at all, because you are doing reviewing which everyone agrees is something that needs to be done.


text:
Can you recommend an excellent book or article about how to critique a journal article?
I am a novice researcher.
I received an article to review, and I don't know very well how to critique such an article.
Can you recommend an excellent book (or other source of information) about how to critique a journal article?
Any recommendations are highly appreciated!

I'd be surprised if it exists. The potential audience is too small. Find info with a web search. Someone has probably blogged it.

The general procedure is simply to assess whether the paper is novel, correct, and well written. Since you’ve read many papers, the assumption is that you already essentially know how to assess these things.

It would help if you would add a discipline.  Still a quick Google search found https://authorservices.wiley.com/Reviewers/journal-reviewers/how-to-perform-a-peer-review/step-by-step-guide-to-reviewing-a-manuscript.html

I hope my edit still captures your intent here. If not, you can roll it back to your original.

Welcome to Academia SE! This site works differently from other online Q&A sites. This particular question might be off-topic because it asks for opinions on a preference for recommendations; it is not a fact-based question. See https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic for details: "broad, open-ended, or primarily opinion-based questions, which are not a good fit for the Stack Exchange format in general". You might want to ask a question like this on ResearchGate or Quora. Feel free to ask other questions with more objective answers.

Not a book, but an article:
"Ten Simple Rules for Reviewers" by Philip E. Bourne and Alon Korngreen (PLoS Computational Biology vol. 2, issue 9, e110, September 2006)
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.0020110

Do Not Accept a Review Assignment unless You Can Accomplish the Task in the Requested Timeframe—Learn to Say No
Avoid Conflict of Interest
Write Reviews You Would Be Satisfied with as an Author
As a Reviewer You Are Part of the Authoring Process
Be Sure to Enjoy and to Learn from the Reviewing Process
Develop a Method of Reviewing That Works for You
Spend Your Precious Time on Papers Worthy of a Good Review
Maintain the Anonymity of the Review Process if the Journal Requires It
Write Clearly, Succinctly, and in a Neutral Tone, but Be Decisive
Make Use of the “Comments to Editors”

Not a book, but a blog post
Tips and advice when you review a scientific paper
Gives quite a few tips on reviewing a paper.


text:
Is there a way to find review articles by the keyword?
When I search for papers using some keywords in academic databases (like Google Scholar), there are lots of papers, but I would like to read literature reviews first because I’m new in that area. (By literature reviews, I mean article-length papers that analyze existing work on a specific topic.)
So I think it would be helpful for me if there were a way to find literature reviews using the keyword or using the paper’s title. I want to categorize papers I’ve found by its document type (research, survey, review, etc).
What I've tried is using a specific academic database (ScienceDirect), which provides an advanced search, in which one can filter the paper by its type (original research article, review article, short survey, etc) – but I feel some limitations of this method.
I think I can also do this by adding the word review to my keywords for searching or by reading a paper’s abstract, number of references and guessing whether it is review article or not.
Is there a more efficient way to find review articles by the keyword?
(My research area is computer science.)
UPDATE
"feel some limitations" in my post, I'm not sure but it seems that ScienceDirect only searches for literatures that belongs to ElseVier company. I think It doesn't cover the journal articles well, comparing to e.g) Google Scholar so I said I feel some limitations of it

The question is really important! The way I used was to pay attention to those papers that cite others most, like 100-150 references.

Why do you "feel some limitations of this method" when using ScienceDirect (or Web of Science)? To me, they are the obvious choice for these types of searches, since Google Scholar doesn't offer such targetted search options.

One way of finding authoritative reviews in your field is to see them cited in paper. Find some recent papers that are relevant to your field and see who they cite, particularly in the introduction. There is a good chance that there are review papers in there.

@fileunderwater  The obvious limitation of ScienceDirect is that it doesn't cover the literature as well as Google Scholar (at least in computer science).

@JeffE If that is what's intended by the OP, it should be included in the question. "Cover well" is also slightly ambiguous; google scholar might have a larger coverage, but it doesn't e.g. have the same level of quality control (since it's automatically generated and not curated), which is arguable an aspect of "cover well".

@fileunderwater yes, as JeffE mentioned, it seems that ScienceDirect only offers the literature that published to ElseVier's journal (as far as I know. am I right?). that's the reason why I said I feel some limitations of it. (I edited my post more precisely)

@huammmm1 You should use Scopus (the Elsevier version) or Web of Knowledge (Thomson-Reuters), which both are citation databases have good coverage of journals in general (but they are subscription services). ScienceDirect is as you point out a platform for Elsevier journals in particular.

@fileunderwater Google Scholar arguably has a better level of quality control than either Scopus or Web of Knowledge, because it generally orders papers by textual relevance or citation frequency, rather than according to where (or whether) the paper (or the papers that cite it) has been published.  Also, it's free.

@JeffE Well, then we disagree about what quality control means. To me, sorting algorithms and cost are not aspects of quality control. Don't get me wrong, I love Google Scholar, but it is what it is; wide coverage, good algorithms to find relevant papers and free. The other databases has curated, double-checked data and advanced search options.

@fileunderwater I'd prefer that your "curation" get out of the way, thank you very much.  If a paper is relevant and highly cited, I don't care if it's been curated; on the other hand, if a paper is neither relevant nor highly cited, I don't care if it's been curated.  And data (presumably author names, publication names and dates, etc.) I can — indeed, I must — verify for myself.

Google Scholar does not offer as concise query commands, as for example, Scopus and ProQuest.  Note that there is a bug in Scopus.  When I use commands such as the following, they don't work unless, I add an extra space " ", at the end of each line.  Here is one of my Scopus queries, which shows you an example, of exactly what you are looking for.  The keyword fields are ar:artical, cp:conference contribution, comp:computer science.
(
    (
        ( DOCTYPE(ar) AND PUBYEAR AFT 2008 ) OR
        ( DOCTYPE(cp) AND PUBYEAR AFT 2010 )
    ) AND

    TITLE-ABS-KEY
        (
            "design science" and "literature review"
        ) AND

    (
        SUBJAREA(COMP)
    ) AND

    LANGUAGE(English)

)

To me, using academic citation databases (such as Scopus or Web of Knowledge) is the obvious choice for these types of searches, since they have option for filtering on article type (which Google Scholar doesn't have). You haven't explained why you "... feel some limitations.." when using ScienceDirect, so it is hard to know exactly what you feel is lacking. If your issue is that it is a closed subscription platform, you can also use PubMed, which can also filter search results on article type (as review[Publication Type] in advanced search or by clicking on "Review" in the left panel when viewing search results). The main issue with PubMed is that it has a smaller coverage than the other databases, at least in some fields of science.

I think PubMed comprises biomedical literature but the OP's field is computer science.

@scaaahu I realize that, but the overall question is phrased in general terms, except for the last parenthesis.

There are a couple of methods to do this. I detail all 4 methods here
https://medium.com/a-academic-librarians-thoughts-on-open-access/4-ways-to-find-review-papers-systematic-reviews-meta-analysis-and-other-rich-sources-of-82898aebb6e7

Use built-in filters that exist in databases like Pubmed, Scopus, Web of Science. However these tend to have somewhat selective in coverage, and as I write this in 2020, Microsoft Academic (Microsoft's answer to Google and almost as large), has a autogenerated vocab that includes labels for "Review Articles", Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis which can be used for filtering.

Do a keyword search and hope to match title, abstracts etc. This is the main method used for Google Scholar. As noted this can be quite inaccurate beyond the first few results, because Google Scholar has limited search synatx to do field searching.

Advanced boolean searching - using a complicated and advanced boolean search query on a syntax capable search engine, one can create a search with high precision and high recall to find such articles. I detail a method here.

Using bibliometric citation mapping to identify review papers - The idea here is that if intutively if you see a lot of papers that you are interested in are cited by this one paper, it is likely this paper could be a review paper (and even if not it is probably relevant). Tools like CoCites exploit this to try to detect such papers.

You can simply search for "review*" as a required keyword in the title, abstract or keywords in a subscription scholarly database. There are three important aspects to my answer:

Search for "review*" as a required keyword: In addition to all your keywords of interest, you should connect them to "AND review*". This will get you all articles related to your topic that also mention something about "review". A literature review might be called "a literature review", "a systematic review", "reviews the literature", or other related terms, so "review*" (don't forget the "*") would be needed to capture all these.
Search in the title, abstract or keywords: Do not do a full text search, or else you will return far too many irrelevant results, since most articles probably mention "review*" somewhere. However, I expect that the vast majority of literature reviews would mention that keyword in their abstracts, if not in their title or keyword list. Such a search would return some articles that are not standalone literature reviews, but you always want a search strategy that returns a little too much, and then you can manually filter the results. That way, you don't miss anything.
Search a subscription scholarly database, not Google Scholar: Google Scholar is great for many things (I use it almost every day), but absolutely not for this kind of search. Google Scholar does not allow you to search only in the title, abstract or keywords. It only allows title searches, or abstract searches for articles in the last 12 months (or something like that). I believe that this is because publishers allow Google to index their texts only on the condition that it is not allowed to be as useful as paid subscription databases. So, it can only return thousands of results for this kind of search; you can't use it for the higher precision strategy I describe here.


text:
Getting stuck in a rut while writing a thesis
I'm to write my MSc thesis soon, and am a bit worried that I will get stuck in a rut. By that I mean that I will have very little variety in my daily (work) life, and that it will not only be stressful, but also that I will sort of stare myself blind on the same problems every day.
Any advice? Do I even need to worry about this?
EDIT:
I probably didn't explain myself very well, because everyone seems to have misunderstood my question (don't get me wrong, I really appreciate the feedback, it's useful nonetheless).
I'll be working on the same problems for about 6 months. I'll probably get so tired of it. I'm wondering what I can do to avoid that making me crazy. RasterImage mentioned changing the work environment once in a while, that might do some good.

"I'll probably get so tired of it." - Can I ask why you expect this?

My adviser said to just "Get er done". I found that the biggest hurdle, as you alluded to, was how do I make real progress. Here are some ideas:

Decide on the sections of the thesis. (This may already be predetermined by your department.)
Write an outline of the thesis.
Get a template for the thesis.
Look at how others from your department organized/formatted their thesis.
Write an outline for each section of thesis.
Pour your knowledge into the thesis without worrying about sentence structure, spelling, thought flow, grammar, etc.
Use Mind-mapping tools to get your thoughts in writing.
Set small intermediate goals. (i.e. I am going to write the description of x result in 30 minutes.)
Make a game out of it. (i.e. I got x words written yesterday, today I am going to write x + y words.)
Listen to music that has no lyrics.
Get a good night's rest. (I know this can be hard, but it does help.)
Change your work environment every now and then.
If you don't feel like writing on a certain day:

Refactor what you have already written.
Create a graph of your results.
Take a break. (Many times I was able to clear my head while walking away from the computer.)

Most of all keep in mind that what you write down is probably going to be modified, changed, added to, moved, or removed many times.  Celebrate your successes, and let your failures educate you.
I had the same anxieties that you are having when I was writing my thesis. Many of my peers had the same struggles well. I would say this is a normal part of the process.

You may have only received 1 upvote for this, but just so you know, i printed it out and stuck it on my wall because it's really really good advice. At least I think so :)

The biggest factor is to find a way of working that suits you.  So when you read advice (and there's lots around including here), filter it through your own experiences.  When writing my PhD thesis I found a few things helpful that could apply to you.  They're meant to be indicative rather than strict advice.

A morning routine so that I got down to work consistently. Knowing when your day is planned to end can help as well (don't stop if it's flowing unless you have to).
Starting the day by writing, because I find doing figures easier and more pleasant.
Keeping a notebook (a real one made of paper) to note figures/sections/tables that I thought of, rather than getting distracted by starting them straight away.
Falling back to figures, formatting, LaTeX tweaking when the writing wasn't flowing that day.
Not feeling too guilty if I had a day that just wasn't going anywhere much

Something that happened too late for me but some of my friends did and found beneficial was to have a writing retreat for a few hours or a day, when they got together and structured some of the difficult bits in a supportive environment.  Here it helps to have friends who know your work just enough that you can explain it to them.

This makes it sound like you do need to worry, which you don't, at least not at first.  Being aware of the possibility of it being difficult is a good thing.


text:
What does “Awaiting Reviewer Scores” mean within the context of a prosemanager submission system?
I submitted a paper to Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems that uses the prosemanager submission system. The manuscript status has changed from "Awaiting Reviewer Assign" to "Awaiting Reviews(8 outstanding)".
And now "Awaiting Reviews(8 outstanding)" changes continuously to "Awaiting Reviews(7 outstanding)", "Awaiting Reviews(6 outstanding)", ..., "Awaiting Reviews(4 outstanding)" with time.
What does this change mean? What is the flow chart of the different statuses for a manuscript for this "Awaiting Reviews"?

I imagine it was waiting for 8 reviewers to respond, then 7, then 6, then...


text:
How do I cite an article which has been accepted pending revisions, but the revisions aren't accepted yet?
I have an article accepted in a journal, providing I make certain revisions.  I have now made the revisions and sent them off, but am awaiting the journal's confirmation that the reviewers are satisfied.  How do I reference my own paper in this limbo situation?  'Accepted'?  'In press' seems a bit ahead of myself.  But 'In prep' seems to not do it justice, as it has been accepted.  Does anyone use 'under revision'?
It is likely the case that by the time I finish the piece in which I cite myself, the situation will be clearer.  But for this point in time (and for ongoing conference presentations) it would be good to know what the style is here.

Has the journal really told you that your paper is accepted, pending revisions? This may be a case of "Academia varies", but in my field, journals are very careful to call the paper "rejected, but will accept a revised version" or something along those lines. They'll only call it "accepted" if the revisions are really just correcting typos, in which case it won't go back to reviewers afterwards.

"In revision" might be a good option for some venues, say when referring to the work in a presentation.

I like this one, because it indicates the manuscript is closer to publication than simply "unpublished" or "submitted", without actually stating a venue that may or may not eventually occur.

The most closest thing you could refer to would be to consider your article as unpublished or submitted for publication.
In APA style:

Authors. Manuscript Title. Manuscript submitted for publication

In IEEE style

Authors, “Title of paper,” unpublished

So, at this stage, I can't differentiate between an article which has been accepted pending revisions, and one which has not been accepted at all (and may even be rejected)?  Also, would you mention the journal at this stage?

This is the method of citation prescribed in the most journals. In Elsevier, you could only cite unpublished articles that are accepted for publication (as In press). But, of course it wouldn't hurt to specify where you've submitted in the references section. After all, references are used to help the reader to access the relevant material. Have you considered uploading a pre-print in arXiv and then referring to it, @dmt?

I often cite papers as

Mary Smith, Semi-automatic arithmetic quasi-algebras, to appear in Journal of Algebra.

You will need to decide based on the specifics of your situation whether "to appear in" is actually accurate.
If there is some chance that your paper might still be rejected, this is probably not a good idea. But if it has indeed been accepted, it is probably fine. (Your description makes it sound like both of these are true, which I find rather contradictory!)
Note: I am in mathematics, where there is no official style that must be adhered to. Also, most papers are on the arXiv, so it's more likely that I would actually cite them as

Mary Smith, Semi-automatic arithmetic quasi-algebras, to appear in Journal of Algebra. arXiv:1601:56789.

Accepted subject to revision is not the same as accepted.  It's not yet confirmed as to appear.  I think this is a misleading answer....  The arXiv approach is another matter, but it still wouldn't be appropriate to mention the journal if it is pending revision.

IMHO, the best strategy is to upload the preprint version to an open archive such as arXiv or archives-ouvertes. Almost every journal accepts this (check sherpa.ac.uk/romeo in case of doubts).
This way, your work is accessible to everyone instantly and freely, nobody can steal your work and, more importantly in your case, you can cite it. Just mention Preprint and provide an url or, nicer, a clickable link. You can also mention Submitted to ... for example.
Of course you can upload the author version or even the publisher's version if allowed (check the above link to know), once the article has been reviewed and accepted.

Each journal has its own rules about citations/references. You may find an "author guide" in the journal's website and look for your case.


text:
Combating the pressure to publish
How can a researcher (be it professor or student) combat the pressure to get published? I know that the academics these days are extremely competitive. I feel that many research work now-a-days are driven to get published (It is not a fact just my feeling. I may or may not be right). Not all research work can produce successful results. You either succeed or learn that your approach/method/theory doesn't work (see this).
Also, consistent and frequent publications lead to a successful career even though the research itself may not have much impact in a practical situation (See this).
Is research not about the search for truth anymore? Has it been reduced to number of publications and impact factor?  Is it possible for anyone to have a successful research career and at the same time publish(only those that they think are worth publishing) less often?
Edit: I have found a brutally honest answer in another part of this community.(see JeffE's answer)

"It is not a fact just my feeling." -- No, it's really a fact.

"Not all research work can produce successful results." - this depends on how you define "success". Often, you don't get the results you hoped for but may still be able to write up anything you have learned.

Welcome to Academia SE. Unfortunately, there are some problems with your question: 1) It asks many different questions at once. 2) All of these questions are themselves very broad and opinion-based for this format. – If you can, please [edit] your question to meet our requirements, ideally without invalidating the existing answer.

In mathematics, it is possible to have a successful career while publishing rather few papers, but they need to be very good and important papers. In my own field, set theory, an example is Jack Silver. MathSciNet lists only 11 publications by him, starting in 1970, but these include five extremely important advances, which have become fundamental for much of contemporary set theory.  Although 11 looks like a small number in this context, 5 is very impressive.

In theoretical physics, Peter Higgs have also a small number of publications for high energy physics, with gaps for many years. In fact, looking at history, many well known physicists have done their PhD with 1-2 or none publications. Today, such physicists would have real problems in getting a postdoc position.