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Crackpot research paper in mathematics
How does a math journal react to a crackpot math research paper?
In mathematics (especially in Number Theory) there are many meaningless papers on the web, and possibly a ton of meaningless submissions. Also, how does a journal react when a proof of a major unsolved problems, such as the 'Riemann Hypothesis', is submitted?

As an editor, I'd immediately reject these papers. If the paper made enough sense to have an identifiable error (or small set of errors), I might point out the error(s); this is often but not always useless. If the paper was just nonsense, I'd just reject it.  (One exception: A journal promised blind refereeing, so I felt obligated to ask for a report from a referee who hadn't seen the author's name. I shouldn't have felt that way.)

As an aside, see the book Mathematical Cranks by Underwood Dudley.  Also The Trisectors by the same author.

Why should a journal not carefully vet a paper no matter whether it solves a long-standing, major problem or makes a minor contribution? If the Riemann Hypothesis is a problem for which a proof theoretically could exist, then one day the first paper must contain the proof. Disclaimer: I'm not a mathematician, I don't know this field.

@MathiasMüller: because the limit on time that the journal has to vet papers is lower than the corresponding limit on time that crackpots have to generate them. When faced with an argument that has no mathematical merit, it doesn't necessarily take careful vetting to see this. The tiny risk of missing a paper that has some merit, but fails to make it obvious, is justified by the value of redirecting resources towards submissions with obvious merit.

Also note that although what Andreas said might be taken to mean that he would immediately reject any paper claiming to prove the Riemann Hypothesis, this may not be strictly true. The way mathematics actually works, we know a lot of results in and around the Riemann Hypothesis that mean almost certainly there will never actually be a "first paper to contain the proof". What there could well be, as with Fermat's Last Theorem or the Poincaré conjecture, is a first paper to complete the proof.

Related: (How) Do journals keep kook papers from clogging up the review system?

But I say "almost" certainly: an elementary proof in a single paper is conceivable, just not likely enough to justify spending time on a potentially-unlimited quantity of utter nonsense. The fact that mathematical journals exist does not entitle me to submit 26MB of randomly-genereated ASCII text and expect a journal editor to read it carefully just in case it contains a proof of the Goldbach Conjecture.

@SteveJessop I think you are implying that bogus papers are long and difficult to comprehend. If a paper is unbearably long I believe it should be rejected based on its length, not because it claims to prove a major problem. Right?

@MathiasMüller As the author of several >100 pages papers, I disagree :) (I swear we tried to make them shorter)

@SteveJessop Sorry for the sloppiness of my comment. I meant that I'd immediately reject papers that I can see are crackpot papers. An alleged proof of the Riemann Hypothesis might not fall into that category.

Please don’t write answers in comments. It bypasses our quality measures by not having voting (both up and down) available on comments, as well as having other problems detailed on meta. Andreas, Steve -- please consider converting your comments into answers; they seem like good answers that would be well received.

@DenisNardin Yes, good papers can be long. But that is a truism and a straw man to the actual discussion (How do journals react to a bogus paper?). The comment by Andreas and answer by Dan make it clear how editors handle this has nothing to do with length, or with the nature of the problem being solved: editors use a set of heuristics to quickly determine whether a paper is meaningless.

@MathiasMüller Indeed that was what I wanted to communicate with my comment (that there are better heuristics than length to judge the quality of a paper). Sorry if it didn't come across clearly.

Have a look at the infamous "proof" that 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ... = -1/12.  The conclusion is obviously false and absurd on the face of it, and a bit of analysis shows that the result is obtained by throwing a step containing undefined behavior into the middle of it, (the same trick as the high school algebra "proofs" that show that 1 = 2 by cleverly hiding a division by 0 in a long sequence of calculations,) and yet you can still find plenty of respectable outlets claiming that this gibberish is a proven fact.

@cag51: I believe that my responses are not an answer, since they don't say how journals react to crackpot papers. Rather, they answer Matthias's separate question in comments, why journals are justified to react as they do. I appreciate that StackExchange does not actually permit helping people with ad hoc questions, and the conversation will probably get rolled up at some point :-)

@MasonWheeler: Ramanujan summation is actually a different trick from sneakily dividing by zero to get any answer you like. But sure, just saying "shove it into the zeta function" is not a proper construction and proof of the properties of Ramanujan summation.

@SteveJessop "The same trick" in the sense of "it's hiding undefined behavior in the middle of the so-called proof."  The specific piece of undefined behavior used here is different, that's true, but it's still the same trick.

@MathiasMüller In case of crackpot submissions as literally referenced by the OP, such papers often are so bad that they are "not even wrong", or the author starts by clumsily defining zero

Out of pure curiousity , does mathematics get much in the way of crankery? I know there are some fields that are utter crank magnets (physics, archeology, medicine being notable)  but math?

@Shayne A huge amount of it, especially in fields that have (apparently) not much technical backround, or that are "trendy" (i.e. they are frequently covered in pop math articles). After all it's a subject where you can literally do research using only pen and paper, the barrier to access is quite minimal.

I briefly moderated Physics space on Quora, prior to resigning in protest at the admins turning the 2mil+ member physics space into "the science place". And oh boy did we get wingnuts. One guy re-regged hundreds of accounts to spam his theory that gravity is "displaced dark matter". Lots of guys who "made a website that disproves science, one interesting whacko with his mathematically interesting but nonsensical "hypergeometric universs" and the notoriously bonkers Amed M'Bark who.. well nobody could quite work out what his theory was but boy did he like spamming it.

read that as "a website that disproves einstein". 6am pre-coffee posting makes for weird errors.

Here are the basic mechanisms that I know of, having only limited experience on an editorial board.
The first is a classic desk rejection.  This is where the editor who makes the initial assessment, just says no, without asking for referees.  This has to happen, or one gets flooded with AI generated nonsense as a joke.
Some journals insist that you list a few potential referees.  I believe that one of the reasons they do this is to see if you have interactions (even just closely reading their papers) with mathematicians.  If the author of a number theory paper list as potential referees three Fields medalists from three different areas of mathematics, probably they have no idea what they are doing.  Makes a desk reject easier.
The second is the editor asks for a quick opinion from a mathematician in vaguely the correct area, asking if the paper is worth refereeing.  You can tell if you get this type of rejection sometimes as the editor says after a few weeks something like "the feedback I have gotten are that this is out of scope for our journal." So I have heard.  From a friend.
Finally there is just sending it to one or more reviewers.  If the editor needs one referee, asks four in succession and they all say no, then the editor is likely to reject the paper.
There are problems with these methods.  Some innovative work is hard to classify, and a paper gets rejected because the editor asks all the wrong people.  I had a paper go to a topic editor, go out for review, then get assigned to another topic editor, out for several reviews.  It finally landed on the correct reviewer, but this could easily have gotten rejected.

Some journals insist that you list a few potential referees. I believe that one of the reasons they do this is to see if you have interactions with mathematicians I used to be a physicist and had my fair share of lunatics coming to me with new theories. I had two cases of people who came with an innovative approach in a rather niche area and they did not know anyone in the field. Their papers ended up being published. So I hope that this requirement can be waived (when correctly explained) because it may, in these rare cases, be a show stopper for some.

Judging a paper based on the suggested referees, rather than the content of the paper, is outright corrupt.  Do not do it.

@WoJ I got around the problem you propose by picking a few names from related papers in the same journal (actually, you might make dealing with that a separate question).

@AnonymousPhysicist Is corrupt really the right word? What does an editor personally gain from judging a paper by its suggested referees? I agree a paper should be judged by its content, but suggested referees still seems like a useful data point to contextualize the paper. If an author cannot describe how their work fits into the field at large, or name anyone who has worked on similar problems, I'd certainly look at their manuscript with a more critical eye, since the author has evidently not judged themselves in the context of the relevant body of work.

@WoJ Do you mean that they did not know anyone personally in the field, or that they did not know the name of anyone working in the field? In the latter case, even assuming that someone could make innovative research without being familiar with the past work, it can be easily fixed with a cursory literature search...

@DenisNardin: yes, I meant personally. In retrospect, I see that the intent of the request is to suggest appropriate reviewers, rather than ones that one knows personally. This indeed makes sense to check if some has an idea of who works in the field.

The list of suggested referees is just one data point an editor might use.  Another might be reasonable looking references and an intelligible abstract.  When in doubt, one should send for refereeing.

@WoJ I edited the answer to specify why I mean by interactions with mathematicians.  Just reading recent papers, meeting at a conference, or knowing a bit about them through your advisor.

@DenisNardin - I thought the point of the suggestion was that the typical crank would not have even done such a literature search ...

@davidbak Indeed, that's what I wanted to point out in my comment: I'm sure the people in the case WoJ talked about would not have had any problems suggesting names of relevant people (and indeed it seems like they misunderstood the requirement).

@NuclearHoagie Yes, corrupt in the sense of "rotten" or "immoral" is the right word.  Corrupt sometimes, but not always, means that an improper benefit is received.  So that's not a requirement for something to be corrupt.

"If an author cannot describe how their work fits into the field at large, or name anyone who has worked on similar problems,"  That's not the same as suggesting reviewers.

A famous number theorist once told me he receives approximately one submission a week claiming to prove the Riemann Hypothesis at the top journal where he is an editor. Thus the need to conscientiously and in good faith evaluate such submissions is a real drain on his time and the time of other experts in the community. It’s not an acceptable solution to reject them all without even looking at them, and neither is it acceptable to handle them all using the “usual” process.
Fortunately, if I remember correctly what he told me, he can rule out all but an extremely small percentage of those submissions as being obviously invalid (where “obviously” means he doesn’t have to spend more than 5 minutes looking at them, and can then desk-reject them with an easy conscience and even sometimes provide a bit of feedback to the authors) by applying a simple set of heuristics he developed over time. They go something like:

the paper doesn’t use standard notation or terminology, or otherwise show some obvious misunderstanding of the problem or related body of knowledge

the paper uses only properties of the Riemann zeta function that are shared by a larger class of functions, for some of which the analogue of the Riemann hypothesis is known to be false

the paper proves something that’s actually much stronger than the Riemann hypothesis, and known to be false

[etc - there are probably more subtle rules of thumb that are still considered by him very trustworthy given his expertise in the subject]

I believe other experts who are regularly asked to evaluate purported proofs of famous open problems have developed similar heuristics. See for example Scott Aaronson’s “Ten Signs a Claimed Mathematical Breakthrough is Wrong”.
The bottom line is that it is actually quite difficult to come up with a crackpot paper that doesn’t instantly fail a set of obvious sanity checks that experts will know about but the crackpots (or honest amateur mathematicians who are not complete crackpots but simply lack training in the area) don’t. The only people who actually have the ability to “fake” a proof in a way that will require significant effort to detect the fake, are experts themselves, and they usually (though not always) know better and don’t write such papers in the first place.

Thanks for dredging up Scott Aaronson’s list.   Before anyone complains, these are signs of possible nonsense.  Certainly correct mathematics has been written in Word, for example.  I have given positive referee reports on papers that did not use standard math notation and did not know how to properly use latex.  In one case, the abstract was very clear and paper discussed relevant papers that seems fit for the task at hand.  Well worth the effort to get through, and I gave the author pointers on notation familiar to mathematicians.  The author was not a mathematician.

@TerryLoring: It's just a list of signs, not a disjunction that implies crackpottery. A good heuristic merely has to be correct most of the time, so that we can combine a few good heuristics to get high confidence of correctness if all the heuristics agree.

Also, see Spotting Crankery on Math SE.

In the old days, before the four-color theorem was proved, Frank Harary (the author of a standard graph theory text) received so many alleged proofs of this theorem that he prepared form letters (the then-common purple ditto sheets): "Dear ___, Thank you for your proof of the four-color theorem. The first error is on page __. Sincerely, Frank Harary."

Your question has a somehow detailed answer in the following paper:

Wilfrid Hodges, "An Editor Recalls Some Hopeless Papers", The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 1-16, 1998, JSTOR:421003.

That paper is dedicated to the many papers the journal received refuting Cantor's proof that real numbers and natural numbers have different cardinalities. It analyses the paralogisms contained in these papers, and I think that what it says can be generalised to other situations as well.
But beware that it's not only maths that receives crackpottish submissions: each field has its targets. For instance, in physics, relativity, quantum mechanics and Newton's third law are quite a target. And the submitters may be professionals and not only amateurs. To give you an example, there is a now retired well-known researcher in my field (metrology) who about twenty years ago developed a "theory" which he thinks should substitute Einstein's general relativity. So, about twenty years ago, he started to submit his work first to physics journals, which outright rejected it, and then to conferences in his own field, hoping for acceptance from his colleagues. This caused some headaches to the organizing committees, which anyway rejected his work (as far as I know, it's not been published so far).
So, as far as I know, most editors probably simply shrug those kind of submissions off.

I just read the paper you recommend, very interesting, thank you! However, neither it nor your answer addresses the OP's question: how does a journal react to a crackpot submission. (Unless your answer is that "the editor collects such submissions and distills the lessons learned into a paper".)

@StephanKolassa It depends on what one intends by react. First, at least in my experience, it's the editor who reacts and not the journal, so the reactions are rather personal. The last line covers the reactions of the editors I'm familiar with, at least for my field. There aren't really any more details. The paper instead reports how an editor reacted by analyzing those papers. I'm not aware of different reactions, at least, from the editors I know.

@StephanKolassa: The cited paper here is extremely misleading because the author clearly is unfamiliar with formal deductive systems for basic FOL, in most of which one is permitted to give a name to a witness of an existential statement that holds in the current context (whether via ∃-elim or in the process of deriving the conditions for ∃-elim), which is why he calls a logician Beth "mad" in a cited part of Beth's paper despite it being completely correct!! Anyone can either learn a formal FOL deductive system or check with a professional logician to confirm what I say here.

In particular, Hodges writes "This last sentence is completely mad. [...] if we know that 'Some individual lives in Neasden', it makes no sense to "agree to give this individual the name 'a' " until we have picked out one such individual. But Beth has done nothing to pick out an individual". This is absolutely nonsense. Removing the ability to assign a name to an existential witness is equivalent to removing ∃-elim in many FOL deductive systems, which is what is truly mad! Beth has no reason or obligation to show how to 'pick out' an existential witness before being allowed to name it!

@user21820 I read the paper, and agree with you that that part doesn't seem to be correct. But the rest seems okay. So I'm not sure whether Hodges was showing (unintentionally) the very same fallacy that Hodges is refuting in that section.

@justhalf: The rest indeed seems okay. I don't think it was unintentional though, as I have seen this misconception regarding ∃-elim come up before from other people. I guess it goes to show that basic FOL is not as trivial as some might believe.

Ah, I mean it ironically shows the same type of mistakes he is trying to showcase. I didn't know that this mistake is quite common, though. Thanks for the insight.

@user21820 I think you're misunderstanding Hodges there. He's writing about stuff that makes no sense when taken literally. His point, as I understand it, is that it makes no sense to say "give this individual the name 'a'" when no individual is uniquely determined, rather the correct (even if interpreted quite literally) wording would be to say "let 'a' denote one such individual". (If there is one, and only one, indivdual living in Neasden, then it's of course no problem to say "this". But if there's more than one, whom does "this" refer to?)

@DanielFischer: It refers (in standard idiomatic English) to "some individual" in the preceding phrase. So, according to standard English, Hodges is wrong. However, I get your point if Hodges is really using non-standard English and complaining that "this" fails to refer (in non-English sense).

@user21820 I read that paper many years ago, so I don't enter the debate because I'd have to reread it, but about your last comment let me remark that "standard idiomatic English" is frequently understood in different ways also by "standard" native English speakers ;-)

@MassimoOrtolano: Agreed, definitely, but: (1) it is bad to call others "mad" when they use English in widely accepted ways; (2) in this special case I still think that Hodges likely in fact failed to grasp Fitch-style natural deduction. In particular, a statement Q may not be true absolutely, under assumption of Q (as Beth stated) indeed Q is true (contrary to Hodges' first claim of madness), and applying ∃-elim is in fact the way in such a system of 'picking out an individual' witness to an ∃-statement (contrary to Hodges' second claim of madness).

In fact, Hodges clearly implies that Beth is being tripped up; he writes at the end: "I think I know broadly what are the right answers to these questions, but I don't propose to argue the matter here. The conclusion I want to leave on the table is that the notion of assumptions in arguments is surrounded with serious philosophical puzzles. It can trip up a professional almost as easily as a beginner." This is really hogwash; there is no philosophical puzzle if one understands FOL properly, and Beth was not tripped up at all, but Hodges probably was. CC @DanielFischer

Not just in the conclusion, Hodges wrote earlier: "Beth's mistakes here seem to me of the same order as any made by our critics of Cantor. He gets away with it because he is a brilliant logician, he writes [sic] a convincing style and we believe his conclusions.". Nonsense; Beth (as Hodges cited) made no conceptual mistake unlike any Cantor-cranks, and doesn't use a convincing style to convince others, and logicians don't believe him just because he is persuasive... (I'm putting these quotes here for those who cannot access the paywalled article.)

@user21820 so you are saying the guy who wrote more than one introductory textbook and a number of other books on logic "clearly is unfamiliar with formal deductive systems for basic FOL"? Whose work on logic is rather extensive, including the relationship between formal semantics and natural language? These are strong claims!

@DavidRoberts: So what? Just because a logician is familiar with one deductive system (e.g. Hilbert-style) does not mean he/she is familiar with any variant. This ignorance on the part of Hodges is precisely what made him call others "mad". I repeat what I said above; it is bad to call others "mad" when they use English in widely accepted ways; (2) Hodges likely in fact failed to grasp Fitch-style natural deduction. You haven't provided any evidence against my detailed explanation.

@user21820 I didn't claim I did! My links give some context of the subject of discussion, but are not specific enough to rebut your point. I find what you say rather striking, and leave open the option that in what is a sociological paper, the author might be departing from a strictly mathematical register. I have no skin in this game; it might well be true, what you say, even if at first thought it seems unlikely to me.

@DavidRoberts: What I say is true. I have direct first-hand evidence from personal acquaintance with professional logicians such as Stephen Simpson, who is among the many logicians that simply do not know much about Fitch-style natural deduction, not to say the specific subtype that supports exactly the intuitive reasoning that Beth correctly employs, and which Hodges incorrectly and arrogantly calls "mad". If you want to ask me for details, you are free to do so, but as far as I can tell your initial comment was not relevant to our discussion.

In contrast to Hodges, Stephen for example readily admitted that he is unfamiliar with Fitch-style systems, rather than talking nonsense like Hodges. And there are a lot of them, some much closer to ordinary mathematical intuition (that Beth uses) than others. If you don't want to ask me, you can also perform a simple google search on "natural deduction systems", which will allow you to find some starting points such as this for you to learn about them (more than Hodges).

@user21820 I cannot argue with your personal experience. But I note that Hodges goes on to say "He gets away with it because ... we believe his conclusions. Though I have him in my sights here, probably most of us have said or written equally crazy things at one time or another." Whatever you feel about the merits of this case, Hodges seems to lump himself in with Beth, as well as most other logicians! Perhaps Hodges is also thinking of Russellian ideas on denotation and description. I don't know. But thanks for the link to the notes!

I'm not a mathematician and I never saw this happen myself, but I heard from a friend that the policy of their department was that if a crackpot paper was received they gave it to a grad student to look over.  The instructions to the grad student were "Read it until you find the first error, then STOP, write a quick summary of the error, and then send it back".  I think the grad students took turns with this.
I don't remember why but apparently their department tended to be a magnet for papers about a particular topic (possibly the Riemann Hypothesis thing, maybe?  I don't remember and am not a mathematician) so any paper coming in on that topic got the above treatment.

Let's hope the grad students did get properly paid for that!

@user111388 They surely did - they got a lot of training finding errors :D

I've heard this attributed to Eric Temple Bell (in Ian Stewart: "The Problems Of Mathematics"), with reference to Fermat's Theorem.

Precisely this was (part of) my job as a TA. My thesis advisors name was quite established in number theory, attracting a steady stream of papers on the Riemann hypothesis and Collatz conjecture, among others. I got more than fair compensation, but at times I would question my sanity; finding the first error in a text that has no discernible premise, argument or conclusion can be maddening!

There is always the possibility that some gem is hidden in what otherwise seems like a crackpot submissions.  An editor has to accept the that a field can be revolutionized by a single new idea.
A good editor knows most of the ways that thinking goes astray and can categorize wrong ideas easily and tell the author where their own thinking is wrong and respond with stock responses they've already collected.  When they can't do this, either the individual is onto something new or a new path of wrong thinking has been found and the editor can update their set of premade responses.  In either of these cases, the world gains.
If you can't do this, you've succumbed to the hubris that established power often falls into and it serves no one, ultimately.  Honestly, unless it's vandalism or disrespect of the establishment, people should be worthy of responding to.
If we have a society where people are too worthless to give criticism or feedback, then a Doctor of Philosophy has to step up and understand what's going on in their society.

Sounds like you haven't dealt with crackpot papers in real life.

This is incorrect. As a grad student I was asked to do peer review for around a dozen crackpot papers, including proofs of RH etc. It's not always easy to pinpoint an error; rather, the reasoning will often be muddled and imprecise, and it won't necessarily be clear what the author is thinking or if they actually understand what they're claiming.

@MartinArgerami:  I deal with the same problem everyday:  the internet.


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Unable to find a PhD advisor: Questions about leaving the program and other options
UPDATE: Lost funding and leaving the program. I continued my search and tried to establish contact with around 10 faculty of interest. Most did not even reply to my emails. Contacted gradutate coordinator and could only receive a rejection response after then. At the end of the semester they stopped my funding. To be frank, they did not even tell me that they will discontinue my funding. I heard from friends that they received TA offers. Emalied ask for my funding status to get a reply.
All in all, I realize that this was the best thing for me, as I got rid of that toxic, unresponsive, unsupportive and uncollaborative environment. Program expects me to find an advisor, but how could I get one if I doomed to failure from the day one. It was a mistake to go there. (I dont remember my Acad SE username, thats why updated anon).

I am an international PhD student at a top 50 computer science department in the United States. Due to COVID, I had to start in Spring which was a tough time for everyone. So I thought that the situation might change in Fall. Since then I have been trying to find a PhD advisor, but I can't seem to succeed on this. I have tried to reach a wide range of professors (related to my research interests) in order not to leave any stone unturned. Probably, I contacted around 10-15 professors. Some never replied after multiple emails with a range of more than a month or so between them. Some said they were out-of-capacity. Some were always asking to be convinced, while continuously accepting other students to their lab. Some say that they don't know me. Some vaguely mentioned if an opportunity arises in the "future", but also recommended me to check with other faculty. Here they used the exact word "future" without any certain dates etc.
My GPA in the program is 4.0 and I already have some publications from my Master's in my country. Master students with much lesser qualifications than mine get research assistantships, while I can't even find an advisor. I don't have the network of researchers known to faculty which might be a reason for them to be uninterested. My country is not as developed in research as countries such as India or China with lots of international connections.
I need to find an advisor ASAP because I might get unsatisfactory progress and lose funding. To be frank, I have totally lost my hope in finding some suitable advisor. I don't even mention funding issues and having to serve as a teaching assistant during all of the PhD.
My question is should I leave the program after this semester without wasting more time and energy and getting stuck in the end? Also, if I apply to other PhD programs in the US, will I be perceived badly by the programs, since I could not get an advisor in my current institution? How are students applying from other universities considered? Another option is completely forgetting about getting a PhD.

Isn’t there a Ph.D. program supervisor/director? If yes, sit down with and  talk to them about your situation first. If you are admitted and in good standing (everything you share seems to indicate you are), the program wants you to succeed or you wouldn’t have been admitted. If  no, talk to a professor you got along with in course work. Are you even out of course work yet (my experience with CS is limited)?

Amongst the possible reasons for disinterest is: your topic; your existing publication record (yes, publications may not be at the quality the advisor expects and may turn off potential advisors). Was there any indication you picked a problematic topic/interest?

As @CaptainEmacs asks, have you strongly limited yourself, ahead of time, to certain topics? If so, it is easily possible that there are no faculty much interested in those topics, or, in fact, might consider them misguided...

What I noticed is that most profs recruit from overseas via their personal network (I asked new incoming students). So, they already have students lined up. I don't think they will take me even if I choose their topic or do whatever they want. When I arrived, 3 profs listed in my statement of purpose had already gone.

There is a program supervisor. He is providing good support. I think he does not want to accept that the profs don't want to take me as their student. Also, a PhD is a mutual relationship, I don't want any prof to accept me as their student in a half-hearted way.

"Some were always asking to be convinced" -- did you try hard to convince them? A student who desperately needs an advisor but doesn't seem particularly interested in the group's work will always lose out to students who are very keen on the group's work.

@cag51 To some extent true, but I can't hedge all my bets on a single person who says is not sure.

Well, what I am trying to figure out is whether you already made your very best effort toward convincing them. If you really tried hard to convince them and they are still not sure, that's one situation. If you asked, they said maybe, and that was the end of it....that is a different situation.

@cag51 I don't know the other side. For me enough was enough. No regrets. As I said, while I was searching for an advisor in Spring, profs were not replying to me (implicit rejection) and was busy with recruting new students for the Fall.

In my emails, I briefly explain my previous research experince and mention about one of their paper. What might be relevant or interesting in their paper, in connection with my background. My background might not match with them, as each professor is highly specialized.

It seems that you have no particular topic preference (I am reading between the lines, I may of course be wrong). This is a turn-off for a prof. A prof will want to see enthusiasm and passion in a student for the questions they intend to study; or at least for a related question. Good marks are a secondary consideration. If you are or appear indifferent to their research topics, an advisor will not select you. It's no fun supervising an (apparently) disinterested student. Maybe you do not send a strong enough message of interest?

I doubt that switching schools will do you a lot of good. You will find the same issues at that new place. Instead, I'd recommend that you (a) think long term and (b) get flexible.
Talk to some prof who you  think would be good to work with and who hasn't already indicated they won't take any student and ask them if they have a suitable project for your dissertation.
No, it isn't exactly what you want, but it is a way to burst through. Better if it is aligned with your main interest than otherwise, but you can, if you finish the degree, return to any thread of research that interests you at some later point. It may take a while of course, but it is possible.
Insisting on a particular research direction, with no known support, is costing you.
I think you are in the dilemma of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. There are a lot of "interesting" problems out there. But you need an advisor who is also "interested" in working with you.
At the very least, switching will cost you time and might leave you in an even worse situation.

I don't think the issue is about the topic. What I noticed is that most profs mostly recruit from overseas via their personal network. So, they already have students lined up. I don't think they will take me even if I choose their topic.

I can't do a PhD for the sake of doing a PhD. As I said, I have already cast a wide net.

This is rather sad. It is too late for the OP, but I am adding an answer in case any students in a similar situation find their way to this page.
From the original post, discussion in comments, and final update, my reading of the situation is this:
The student did well in a Masters degree, gained entry to a good PhD program, and did well in their classes, but failed to make any meaningful connections with potential advisors and did not understand how to go about finding an advisor. Establishing good connections may have been made more difficult by COVID, but the student's approach to this was a poor one.
Normally, students establish connections in PhD programs like this by working with the professors in their school, whether through assigned class projects and subsequent discussions, organised lab rotations at some schools, or by asking for opportunities to do smaller research projects or other work with potential advisors before completing their classes and exams. This does not seem to have been explained to the OP and she did not manage to work it out for herself. Perhaps this was due to the distance imposed by COVID in combination with a natural reticence, or perhaps it was due to not having seen it in action due to not engaging sufficiently with peers and professors while enrolled, or due to cultural differences compared with what she was used to before beginning at the school in question.
She approached many potential advisors in her school by sending emails outlining her background and in each case mentioning one of the professor's papers. This didn't give the professors in question much to go on, particularly if they didn't know her from active engagement in her classes, seminar discussions, etc. So some of them ignored her emails because they were too busy and others tried to prompt her towards a more useful engagement by saying "convince me" or explaining that they didn't (yet) know her.
A better approach would have been to ask to meet with these professors -- preferably in person, but if COVID made that impossible, by videoconference -- to learn more about their research and engage in discussions about the research and what opportunities there might be for her to join it.
It is not clear from the discussion here whether the student's emails asked for research opportunities aligned with the professor's current research or whether they did a good job of explaining why she was interested in being part of this work (if she was) or how she was a good fit for the group -- but she reports that some professors replied "convince me", which suggests that she missed the mark on this initially, but they were open to further discussion.
The student took "convince me" as a rebuff and rather than engaging with the opportunity, approached other professors, looking for someone who would agree to take her on before she put any effort into engaging with their work (when asked in comments how she had responded, she replied, "I can't hedge all my bets on a single person who says is not sure").
Ultimately, she failed to find an advisor and left the programme.
So to any other students out there in a similar position: you will need to put significant effort into building connections with potential advisors, show genuine interest in their research, take or create opportunities to gain experience working with them if you can before approaching them as an advisor, and make it clear that you are a strong candidate, an easy person to work with, and interested in and capable of engaging with and building upon their research and ideas rather than (at one extreme) doing your own thing and ignoring their research interests or (at the other extreme) leaving everything up to them and waiting for them to tell you what you need to do at every step.

Based on my understanding, in the US, if you are a foreigner from a country known to provide sufficient funding for PhD students, supervisors are more likely to accept you quickly. However, if your country or students from your country typically lack sufficient funding, they may reject you, assuming you will face difficulties due to funding limitations. At the end, financial resources do matter.
I am speaking from experience. If you chat with foreign students from different countries at your university, you will find that what I am saying is true.

Let me extrapolate: you have no one that can vouch for you, so you are casting your net wide. You are trying to contact big names, full professors and the like, without any connections to them.
That approach is bound to fail. They are too busy, they receive too many emails, they can spend 2 minutes on you, if your needs do not align perfectly with their needs in those 2 minutes, you are ignored.
Start small. Contact assistant professor, academic involved in opensource projects related to the tools you would use for your topic, get in touch even with other PhDs and Post-Docs ... and from there try to build your little network.

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text:
Does taking a long time to graduate impact my Ms/PhD admission?
I need some advice on my career. I study in Brazil and I'm one year away from obtaining my bachelor in Mathematics. Here the duration is 4 years.
In 2016 I had to start working two jobs (unrelated to Math) to help my family and that made my 4-year journey into a 5 and a half years journey in which during the process I've failed a couple of classes due to attendance. I was able to quit the job this month and from now on I'll be able to focus only on my studies.
My question: is there still a chance for me to work on my Master's, Doctorate and so on? And also how much does the fact that it took me 5 and a half years counts? Despite not being able to attend the classes, I consider myself a good student and I know for sure I'm dedicated.

Nobody cares about how long it took you. Typically in the US an MS takes about two years, and a PhD anywhere from four to six.

" is there still a chance for me to work on my Master's, Doctorade and so on? And also how much does the fact that it took me 5 and a half years counts? " If you were asking for France, I believe that there is a good chance for a masters. Furthermore if you did your masters there, for a PhD, nobody would look at your BS degree. It may or may not impact the ability to obtain a scholarship however, but the tuition cost is really low anyway, less than 300 USD per year.

As a rule of thumb, the time you took wont matter, but the failing grade will.
However, if your goal is to get into a masters course in Brazil, many of them won't look at your undergraduate marks (I've served on graduate committees on two top brazilian math departments).
In these cases, you can be admitted by doing well on an admitting summer course, or on an admission exam (many of them nowadays use the Extramuros examination, or a local exam).
Even for institutions that will judge your undergraduate marks, it's not uncommon that a student with a failing mark get accepted. Usually they would indicate in their statement why they failed and how they did well on this course on the next time. The fact that you had to work is enough justification, if that's a localized problem and you have strong marks otherwise.
After doing well in your masters, your undergraduate marks will have a negligible impact on your PhD admission.

In principle how long you took to graduate as a bachelor should not weigh on your credentials while searching for a post-graduation position, either in Latin America or elsewhere. Most advisors will not look into these dates too carefully, as there are several reasons for which one would have graduated 1-2 years later than usual.
However you might be enquired about that by advisors worried whether you are able to finish your thesis in time. Departments are often strongly pressed to "produce" PhDs and MScs within the expected period, especially where they have student quotas and limited scholarships. This can be highly competitive in Argentina or Brazil, where completing a PhD ahead of time is a sure way of pleasing your department.
Therefore don't worry about that issue now, but make sure you convince your peers that you will meet your postgraduation demands before the deadlines.

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text:
Does cum laude mean the end of an academic career in Germany
I have recieved the grades for my PhD, and the defense is yet to be done.
I have a magna cum laude for the course work, and a cum laude for my dissertation. Do I have an academic career in Germany if I end up with a cum laude for the PhD?
Is there any way I can salvage a magna cum laude? The defense remains.
Neither of my supervisors read any of my drafts. They said that I should submit, and then gave me cum laude, which is the second-to-lowest in Germany. (There is rite, cum laude, magna cum laude, summa cum laude.)

Is your profile (papers) otherwise good and do you get support from them? It's imo unlikely anyone cares.

"cum laude" is generally not the lowest in Germany ("rite" exists), but it's not good either. I know that some job openings have a dissertation with at least "magna" as an explicit requirement. The details will depend on your field and could change within years, as universities are in an ongoing process of becoming more internationalized, leading to a greater role of publications instead of the PhD grade.

You won't know until you enter the job market. But if your dissertation is the best work you ever do, then you have a problem in academia. The arrows should point up, not down.

I struggled a lot with the dissertation. There was no support. Both supervisors did not read drafts, and just evaluated the final draft. Of course it had shortcomings.

What's up with grade inflation?  I thought cum laude was exceptionally hard to get.

@gerrit Perhaps another country. In Germany, "cum laude" is traditionally the third-best of four possible grades and indicates a rather mediocre thesis.

Can you improve your grade in defense?

This was at least partially addressed here.

Which field are you in?

And keep in mind that "academic career" is about research, and this is judged by the quality of your thesis, not of your coursework.  These can be quite different things.

Well, yes, but also no.
Permanent academic positions that are not professorships are relatively rare in Germany. Since most researchers want to eventually have a permanent position, it is in the interest of all long-term researchers to eventually become "berufungsfähig" (suitable for becoming a tenured associate or full professor).
The vast majority of the universities are public in Germany, and hence the laws of the respective state regulate hiring in the universities. All(?) "Landeshochschulgesetze" (law on higher education) list mandatory requirements for candidates for professor positions.
For instance, the respective law of the state of North-Rhine Westfalia (that has the largest population) states as a requirement:

besondere Befähigung zu wissenschaftlicher Arbeit, die in der Regel durch die Qualität einer Promotion nachgewiesen wird;

In English, this means that the candidate must show a substantial/remarkable/special ability to research work, which is normally indicated by the quality of the PhD. Given that PhDs are thesis-only in Germany (while the defense may also include more general questions about the field of work), this means that the PhD thesis should be particularly good and have a corresponding grade. The state of Lower Saxony has in their law that the PhD should be above average, and given that there are four passing grades, "cum laude" is probably below average.
Now what does should mean concretely? It means that if a hiring committee wants to hire somebody with a bad PhD thesis, they risk the overall hiring process being delayed or even canceled. There may be objections, candidates not snatching the precious professorship may sue, or the respective ministry of education may intervene or simply refuse to send the offer letter to the successful candidate. There have surely been cases of pea counting as far as the formalities of candidates to be hired are concerned in the past, and this adds to the risk. Hiring committees and universities will probably take the risk if there is a very good and demonstratable reason for why the candidate is excellent despite a bad PhD thesis, depending on their legal interpretation of the should and how much they are willing to risk it. In any case, certainly, those candidates with a good PhD thesis have a substantial head-start, and it's quite hard to catch up for candidates with a grade lower than "Magna Cum Laude".
Having said this, there are also other permanent academic positions, such as in Fraunhofer or Max Planck institutes that may or may not have similar requirement. So a Cum Laude may not be a big deal if they want you for a different reason.

Thank you so much for that detailed answer. I have 1.3 in my course work. Is there anyway I can get a magna through my defense. Neither of my professors ever read a draft. They said submit and I did, now this.

@user78397 I overlooked that you have course work in your PhD studies. This is rather unusual. Please see your PhD regulations to determine how the final grade is derived - there are substantial differences between the departments and universities in this respect. For instance, getting a Summa cum Laude may require a higher number of reviewers than other grades. Most likely the coursework grade doesn't matter, but for certainty, reading the regulations is a necessity.

@DCTLib These days, course work is becoming more and more usual. However, it will usually not enter the grade, it will just be a prerequisite to have obtained a certain number of ECTS points.

I don't know the specifics of Germany, but in general an academic career doesn't depend that much on the PhD, let alone on the level of honor given to the degree.
If you apply for postdoc positions at the international level, people are unlikely to even look at the level of honor because these differ a lot by country so they do not provide a standard objective indication. Traditionally the publication track record is considered more important, and of course how well your profile fits the specifics of the job.
If you get a postdoc position and do a good job during the postdoc, nobody will care about the PhD level of honor.

"I don't know the specifics of Germany" Then it's, unfortunately, essentially a non-answer, since Germany tends to have very custom/archaic rules in this department.

@lighthousekeeper I think I interpreted the question as "does cum laude in Germany mean the end of one's academic career?" as opposed to "can one have an academic career in Germany with cum laude?". I realize now that I was probably wrong indeed.

so does it mean that I cannot find a job or post doc in Germany with this grade?

In Germany it depends on the field. I heard that in management/ business administration the thesis grade is still the dominant hiring criterion. In economics, publications in top journals and your home institution are important.

@user78397 What is your field, if I may ask?

Political Science

"If you get a postdoc position and do a good job during the postdoc, nobody will care about the PhD level of honor." - The problem is not at the postdoc level, it is when trying to snatch a professorship later. Then the PhD grade will suddenly become important again despite the postdoc performance being more recent.

@DCTLib not internationally, but as I said above I probably misinterpreted the question. Btw I think you should write that as an answer.

@Erwan: Well, the question was explicitly about an academic career in Germany in particular (third sentence). Oh, and I wrote this into an answer already.

@DCTLib I know, I upvoted it :) I think I had written the comment before you wrote it, but maybe I'm mistaken about this as well!


text:
Suggesting my own paper when serving as a peer reviewer
I am reviewing a survey paper in a good journal, where the paper missed important papers in the field including my previously published articles. I plan to suggest a rejection due to this serious lack, but I want also to encourage the authors to resubmit it again by pointing out the weaknesses of their paper.
In addition, I want to recommend them to cite some papers (since it is a survey paper) including my own. I don't know whether this is ethical (because I am one of the authors and it is clear that I found them interesting).

Since you say it's a survey paper and you plan on recommending rejection I think this isn't a duplicate. Yet there are a few related questions: 1) Is asking an author I'm reviewing to cite me a conflict of interest?, 2) Suggesting connection to one's own paper in a referee report, 3) Is it a common practice for reviewers to recommend their own papers in the review?

@corey979 And this is specifically a survey paper. If you're asked to review a survey, it's because you're an expert in the field being surveyed, so something has gone wrong if you're not mentioned.

My personal rule for this is that I go ahead and suggest the paper in my review, and in the "Notes to the Program Chair/Editor" I disclose that I am suggesting a paper of my own.
That way, I am covered on both fronts: I am suggesting papers that are relevant to the authors and I let the Editor decide whether it is a fair suggestion.

It is absolutely fair to expect the authors of survey and review papers to conduct a proper literature search of the field. Then they can either limit their scope in a way that excludes certain papers, or be prepared to respond to questions why they didn't reference them. Note that if the scope is limited they might be justified in leaving out your papers, but they should make it clear what their intended scope is.
Suggesting one's own papers during peer review is fine, assuming they're actually related, and not just an attempt to fish for citations. Austin Henley's recommendation to be upfront to the editor about which papers are yours is helpful here. You also want to be careful not to write a report that comes across as petty, e.g., "You didn't cite my paper X? Reject it is." Instead, I generally prefer phrasing my objections as questions: "Could the authors clarify why they didn't consider (list of papers)?" rather than demands: "The authors should cite these papers otherwise the manuscript can't be accepted".
This way it's up to the authors to convince me that what they're doing is reasonable. It's possible they have good reasons after all - maybe there is a sentence mentioning their scope that I somehow missed? If they can't provide a good reason, it is still a friendlier message, and allows them an easy way out. (The tactic is even more useful for technical issues, where it lets one avoid "the referee is wrong" responses.)

I generally hate the "cite this" remarks of the reviewers, they are also mostly fully obvious in breaking the review blindness.
That one time when I absolutely had to highlight my own paper in the review (I was not aware of other research doing things exactly as I needed to make the point), I briefly restated the claim ("you state confidence of 90% with technique A, but there was research that did it with 99% confidence with technique B") and then went on to say that the reference is available to the editor.
In the confidential notice to editor I stated the full citation, mentioned that it is obviously co-authored by me, and that I leave it to their judgement whether to communicate this citation to the authors.
Probably not the best way to boost my citation count, but definitely ethically clean.

I don't really agree with you. Citations are not only used to mention the source of information but also to a wide view of the state-of-the-art and similar work. If the paper (especially survey papers) addresses a problem/research topic and does not mention similar work, reviewers would take the responsibility for drawing the authors' attention to the missed papers. Here, I am not talking about one specific paper, but a collection of papers that address the same problem.

Both commenters are right, my focus was on research papers.


text:
professor pushing me to get result when nothing is right!
Background
My professor assigned me a project as part of a course. The project is part of another student's thesis and has several flaws. I explained the problems of the project to my professor. However, the professor seems to believe that I just don't understand the project and don't know how to code.
The professor now sent the other student on a work trip for seven or eight months, starting in 10 days.
In the meantime, the professor asked me to fix the project and produce the results.
Unfortunately, the project is so flawed that I can't produce results with it. I believe that it's the other student's responsibility to fix the project. S/he also knows the project and it's issues much better than I do.
The professor still doesn't consider my concerns and just pushes me to finish the project. He wants to grade the course based on a publishable paper from this flawed project. (My other classmates already have required information to design a controller, and assigning this flawed project and grading like this is not fair.) Meanwhile, the professor does not even want to talk about a topic for my own thesis. I feel taken advantage of and don't know what to do.
Questions
What can I do to convince the professor that I should no longer waste time on another student's broken project but rather start my own? Would it be okay to refuse to work on this project?

Hi, can you include a question in your post? It's hard to give a good answer to 'this is my situation; what should I do?'.

hi it is already there. did you get it?

Better, but it's still very hard to understand what the problem is, in particular without reading the other question first, which you linked to.

I tried to improve the structure and tease out actionable and generalizable questions; feel free to revert.

What do you ask here that you did not ask, and get answered, in the question you link to?

@SolarMike imho this is a better version of the previous question: it points to the real issue with the advisor and I guess it's more likely to be useful to other people.

@Erwan So the answer by Cag51 seems to cover the situation... all answers seem to boil down to "contact the professor"...

@nikki: you didn't mention at which level you and the other student are? And why the other student can leave without finishing the project?

@SolarMike according to the OP's description, it looks to me like this professor is abusing their power (failing or passing OP) to fix a broken research project with another student. So I interpret this as a  conflict with possible unethical behavior.

The case as I understand it is:
(1) You are taking a course and the assessment is based on      producing a publishable paper based on a pre-assigned topic.
(2) The topic assigned to you is not your research interest and appears to be broken, whereas other classmates have been assigned more appropriate topics.
(3) You feel that you are forcibly being roped in to fix someone else's problem.
Point (1) means the professor has the right to set assessments as per his judgement. There's nothing you can challenge here. No, you can't refuse to work on it (unless you forego the grade).
Point (2) is unfortunate, but it's inevitable that some inequality will exist between students. You can voice your objections, as you have already, but it's entirely the prerogative of the professor to act upon them. I would suggest making a calm and composed case mentioning only the perceived differences in difficulty of your project vs other projects. Don't talk about what flaws the project has. It might be a good opportunity for you to try correcting them. Maybe you were assigned this because you have a particular aptitude. Don't fight it before trying everything at your disposal.
Point (3) is a serious charge amounting to ethical misconduct. If true, this should be reported and escalated to the relevant authority. However, keep in mind that this is your interpretation only, possibly subject to bias. If you choose to act upon this, do think long and hard first, being as objective as possible.

What can I do to convince the professor that I should no longer waste time on another student's broken project but rather start my own? Would it be okay to refuse to work on this project?

Write a report detailing the flaws in the project. The report should be written like a scientific document: use neutral tone, analyze objectively the goals and means of the project. For each issue the report should propose a possible solution (e.g. find other data, redo an experiment, etc.), including an estimation of how much time and effort it would require; this way you show why you think it's not feasible without making it a matter of opinion or skill (btw the document should make it clear that you know what you are talking about, obviously).
Send this document by email to your professor, ask for their advice related to the issues you mention. At this stage the professor will realize that you are serious with these issues and they must make an decision: either they reevaluate the project and your involvement in it, or face a possible conflict which might put them in an uncomfortable situation in the institution.
If they don't answer or not in a satisfactory way, then you have to bring the issue to the director of studies or whoever is in charge in the institution.

Remarks:

Why does the other student leave in the middle of the project? And why can't they work remotely on it?
Don't try to protect your relationship with this professor at all cost. Assuming you explained things clearly to them, it seems that there is something unprofessional going on here.

what does it mean remotely?  When I asked him, we need him prof. Professor told me he will help you on skype. I have also another student will help you with coding. He started a work, who knows the work better than someone who already started? he thinks that I am talking about learning the stuff and difficulty of learning his work.

@nikki: working remotely means that this other student would keep working on the project with you even though they are not physically present (using skype, email, github, etc.). It's unclear to me why your advisor insists that you must work on this project but lets the other student get away with it.

because he wants to put him in another project. These are funding sources.

So he doesn't consider this project important enough to be carried out by the person most qualified to do it, apparently. As I said my answer, I suggest that you write down in very clear terms what you can achieve and cannot achieve on this; otherwise he's setting you up for failure.

I really do not know, what would be the right action. I am very new to research. It is my second semester of my master.

@nikki if you know any other person (PhD student, postdoc, professor) that you trust, you could ask for their advice. otherwise if communication with this professor is really not good, I think you should talk to your director of studies. this is why it's important to write down exactly what the problem is and to make sure your advisor understands the problem: this way you cover yourself, he cannot accuse you later of not doing the work if you give him a clear description of the problem.

should I include inappropriate data that prof and his student gave me in previous course project? and explain why they were wrong?

The goal of the document would be to analyze the issues in the project you were assigned, not to blame anybody for it. So if the data from the previous course is relevant to explain the issues, then yes, otherwise no.

in the previous course based on the wrong experiment I implemented something. Now experiments are right but data that we are getting is wrong and this is due to design

Sorry I can't give you reliable answers not knowing the details, you will have to decide by yourself or (better) ask somebody closer for advice.


text:
Is master in physics at Germany well respected in US?
As a physics major in US, my PhD application is screwed up this year and neither did I found a decent job. So I'm thinking of applying for a two years master program in German, which provides more time in research (so that I have chance to collect better letters) while does not charge for tuition. Specifically I am interested in the program at Technical University of Munich and Ludwig Maximilian U, in area of theoretical/computational condensed matter physics and possibly computational material science. However I'm wondering does a master degree bring any negative effect in my future application for PhD in US? I heard people mentioned that US schools don't like master students quite much and see it as an incompetence somehow. So in general, is German a good destination? What are some other pros and cons you might already know? Thanks.

The reputation of university or institute is more important than where it located.

Both of the universities you list are good with excellent reputations among the German universities. Furthermore, the German university system is well understood to provide a rigorous and high quality education.
So yes, do it -- it will make your future applications look better for sure. Furthermore, most graduate committees do value people studying abroad for a while since it shows dedication and ambition in an applicant.
There is of course no guarantee that you will be admitted in the future. But I can't think of a reason why it would not make your future applications look better.

Those Universities - especially LMU - are European Ivy Leagues when it comes to physics. LMU has a very strong program on theoretical physics, so if you didn't get accepted in phd programs in US I kind doubt you will get into the master's program at LMU

This is more comment, rather than an answer. It is also your opinion, so... you could just downvote the question

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text:
Dealing with loneliness as a professor
How do professors deal with loneliness?  I feel that professors, specifically in the STEM fields, have to constantly project an image of seriousness to the public - an image that math and science are no. 1 in their lives.  Any projection of any other feelings is discouraged, e.g. feelings of romance.
Professors earn a special social status in society, for better or worse, and this means that they are more intensely scrutinized and they have to adhere to extra morally restrictive standards.  If one lands up in a small college town as a professor, there is virtually nobody that's a suitable dating partner or a suitable friend - other than one's colleagues.  The college town will comprise mostly of students.
Am I on point with my assessment of the life of a professor in the STEM fields?  If so, how does a professor deal with a relatively lonelier lifestyle than non-academics?  The acquired social status of being an academic and scientific leader seems to come with an enormous cost.

Related: Should a young professor avoid using dating apps?

"Am I on point with my assessment of the life of a professor in the STEM fields?"
No, you are not.

That question is based on a false premise if I have ever seen one. Just because you are expected to not date your students or be the most drunk person at a college party does not mean that you have to "adhere to extra morally restrictive standards". Just be a grown-up, and you'll be fine.

professors, specifically in the STEM fields, have to constantly project an image of seriousness to the public — Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!  No.

that they are more intensely scrutinized That's a joke right?

There was this guy who used to frequent strip clubs, draw nude women, play drums, and be an overall easygoing person. Also a Nobel laureate.

Your question is similar to point 2 of this question: Asian male scientists who are perceived as unattractive and boring and have trouble balancing a life in science with a social life outside of academia.

As the comments have established, we don't really agree with the assertions about how professors have to present themselves. Could you back your assertions up? Why do you think that this is the case?

My advisor is a fun guy with a great sense of humor, and I found a state university professor from the same school on a dating site. She was smiling in all her photos and generally having a good time. If that helps kill the false premise.

Consider dating younger women. Possibly students who are not under your authority of course. Like students in different faculties. 2. I don't feel that professors earn any special status in societies in the West. Since they are under paid, they're looked down upon by many. Unless, possibly if you are really in the top 5 universities or so.

You can be a rock star professor if you want to. In fact I sometimes think the world would be a better place with a few more of those.

I’m afraid you are misinformed. Professors (including in STEM) are ordinary humans and are entitled to the same set of feelings, emotions and lifestyle choices as other people are accorded by the rest of society. They certainly might suffer from loneliness, and deal with it in the same way that any other person might.  But what you wrote about “Any projection of any other feelings is discouraged, e.g. feelings of romance”? Respectfullly, that notion is simply nonsense, and to the extent that it is a belief some people hold, it needs to die a swift, painless death.
As for the peculiarities of the situation a professor might end up in of being a professional, highly educated single person of a certain age range living in a small college town where there aren’t many other single people of the same age range and interests who may be suitable dating partners: well, again, that situation is by no means unique to college professors. Many people live in small towns with limited dating options. Somehow they manage, and for those who find this really intolerable, there’s always the option of trying to get a job in a bigger city or near one.

In my youth, I thought that there was a tendency for mathematicians to be more solitary than others, by nature of the profession, but now I sometimes think it's not solitary enough for me (meetings, committees, students, ...).

A few years ago, while shopping at a supermarket, I bumped into a student of mine. He was aghast.
The next week he came to my office to take the exam, and we had the following piece of conversation:

Me: Hey, you're the one I met a the supermarket!
Student: Yes, at the beginning I was shocked, but then I thought: "They have
  to eat too!"
Me: Thank you for recognizing our human nature!

So, let me tell you a secret, but please don't tell it around! Professors are human beings: they have friends and families; they love and hate; they have hobbies; they play games, sports and instruments; they go to the cinema, theaters and restaurants; and they don't do the professors 24/7.
Overall, professors are no lonelier than any other human being.

"Thank you for recognizing our human nature" <- this sounds somehow... professor-ish :-)

Is this a true story?  I find it hard to imagine a student would actually react this way.  But that may be because I'm Dutch.

@gerrit Yes it is! Along the years I made some funny encounters around the city with the students, but I think that this one shows better how much certain students think that professors are aliens from outer space.

Good try but we all know "The Faculty" aren't human...

Similar encounter at a pub. Very awkward. Students were counting how many beers I was drinking (2) and I think snipping secretly photos as proof. Lots of giggling next day in class.

Same experience here. I don’t know why the fact that professors also shop for groceries comes as such a surprise to students, but... it just does.

@DanRomik and Massimo - I remember having a similar reaction to your students, when I bumped into my child's doctor in the grocery store.  There is something about a doctor that does feel non-ordinary person.

Read Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and cut with that nonsense that a professor (or even a Nobel laureate) has to be lone and deadly serious.

That is, at best, a special case. For every Feynman, there is a Dirac for a counterexample :)

@TheDarkSide I disagree. Feynman was a bit unconventional, but he was much closer to a normal human being, and to a normal physicist, than Dirac was. Note that after all it’s Dirac, not Feynman, whose biography is titled “The Strangest Man”.

@DanRomik - With all due respect to you, and to Feynman (I am obviously very, very fond of his approach to Physics), you are right when you say F was much closer to "normal" than D. He had the same instincts that normal people would have - everyone likes popularity and being viewed as unconventional. If you think a little more about it, all of F's Physics aside, that larger-than-life Feynman caricature was actually a carefully constructed image. Beyond a stage, it has a snowball effect, and that explains your last sentence. That's my opinion, please feel free to disagree. :)


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How do selection committees ensure that they won't steal an applicant's ideas as presented in his/her research statement?
Academic job applications usually require the submission of a research statement, which describes not only the applicant's research experience, but also future direction of their work. As such, it may contain some novel ideas.
Considering that a research statement is not a publication, and therefore, can't be cited, how does a selection committee ensure that nothing in an applicant's research statement (especially those of unsuccessful applicants) will be stolen by anyone in the selection committee who reads it?
I mean, since the applicant's submitted documents are probably only known to the selection committee and the applicant him/herself, isn't it easy for anyone in the committee to copy those ideas without being found out?
A related question, if a member in the committee identifies an interesting and promising idea of an unsuccessful applicant, and is keen to pursue the idea, what should the committee member do? How do you give credit to the unsuccessful applicant when the research statement is the only document where the idea is described?
To be clear, my concern is more on the committee, not how I can prevent the committee from stealing my idea. One day I might be sitting as a selection committee member myself, and I'd like to know what I should do in this situation.
This question is related to Research statement ideas got used by interviewing committee, but looking from the perspective of the committee.

Isn't it like most ethical issues in academia?  Nothing prevents a person from breaking the rules, but there would be dire consequences if they were found out.

@Nate: Yes, I think so.  Moreover, like most of these issues: if we actually trust academics to behave ethically, the system works great.  If we don't, then it is very difficult to imagine how to modify it so as to correct for this unethical behavior.

Maybe my view of academia is too rosy, but assuming that a selection committee will first reject you and then steal your excellent ideas seems unlikely enough that no specific counter-measures are necessary.

More generally, I think many people spend way too much time worrying who might all steal their ideas (reviewers, advisors, colleagues, selection committees, etc). In the end, if you never tell anybody about your research, how will you ever get feedback or collaborations?

I think people in this site don't pay proper attention to this kind of "security problems".  Bank and email accounts, houses, cars and laptops are well protected with keys and passwords, but a successful track in publications can lead to think that everything is "rosy" (as @xLeitix pointed). E.g. I've seen two organizations applying for funding for a project, failing and then one of the organizations applying again (without the other, same project) for funding at a different place. I've seen many more examples and I'm sure all who have been long enough in academia have seen their own share.

@PeteL.Clark " if we actually trust academics to behave ethically, the system works great" you mean that the system works great in our imagination, right?

I've seen two organizations applying for funding for a project, failing and then one of the organizations applying again (without the other, same project) for funding at a different place. — I'm not sure this is the best example. I've seen a similar situation, where there was nothing unethical going on at all. One of the organizations just decided not to pursue the project further.

@JeffE that could be the case, but it wasn't, the organization that was left aside was mostly responsible for the authorship of the proposal and was left aside with no notice or question. I'm sure there are many villages in the world were you can leave your house open and trust on ethics, but that doesn't make "ethics" a good security system. Anything that is not public and transparent is a potential source of corruption (academia, politics…) and it will be an actual source of corruption in some cases (due to statistics). Academia could and should be more transparent, that'd only be good.

@Trylks: I have never had anyone steal my ideas, and I am having trouble thinking of anyone that I know personally in my field who had their ideas stolen.  So I don't think it's my imagination that academics behave ethically in this matter the overwhelming majority of the time.  It may be my delusion, or a limitation of my own experience, but I tend to agree with xLeitix that people (especially, some poeple on this site) seem overly concerned that this will happen.

But I agree completely with (and practice) the remedy in your answer: if you make your work very public, then any theft would also be public.  You can in the full light of day steal someone's wallet, but I don't see how you can successfully steal someone's ideas in a similarly well-lighted situation.  You might be able to publish them, but that does not in itself gain you credit in the community.  In a functional academic community (such exist outside of my imagination) you will in fact lose substantial credit in the long run by doing this, which deters most people who have something to lose.

@PeteL.Clark I think the concern is normal, as leaving the house open. I'm aware there are villages where this is the norm, but I'd not be surprised if newcomers were puzzled by this practice. The point is: security cameras (publishing) work better than locks (keeping private), so I'd say that should be the common advice instead of simply "don't worry", because, not to worry, a "camera" (usually not stated) would be the way to go...

@NateEldredge, in the case of research statement, how to find out?

Academics are presented with confidential material all the time. We review manuscripts and grants and we are expected to not steal those ideas. A research statement is very similar to a grant proposal. When we are given applications to review we are reminded that they are confidential and should not be circulated. This is the same as when reviewing a grant. While many funding agencies and publishers have clear statements that reviewers must agree to, departments generally do not produce such guidelines. That said, a department would likely come down very hard on an individual who did not respect the confidentiality of an applicant.
With that out of the way, it is often that a reviewer has similar ideas as an applicant. On the face of it, it may appear that the reviewer has stolen the idea from a proposal, when in fact it was an independent idea that the reviewer had already had. One question is should reviewers decline to review based on a conflict of interest when the proposed work is similar to their current/future work. In my opinion, they should not since they are in the best position to review the work and the similarity is likely the reason they have been asked to review. This then does leave the burden on the reviewers to be able to document that the research agenda is in fact their own and not stolen from the confidential proposal.
The final issue is to document anything that is unique to your proposal. Saying you want to study topic X does not make it yours. Saying you want to study topic X with method Y, isn't much better. If the proposal says I want to study topic X with novel method Y because of reason Z, then the linking of X, Y, and Z might be important. If you document this, then at least if someone studies X with Y, you can get the credit for coming up with the brilliant idea of using method Y on problem X. In some ways realising that problem X can be solved with method Y is more important than actually solving the problem.

Thank you for the answer. Do you mind explaining more what you mean by documenting?

Also, do you mind elaborating more on "department would likely come down very hard on an individual who did not respect the confidentiality of an applicant"? How to find out?

Best way to prevent ideas from being stolen (IMHO): write them up and make them public. You don't need to publish them in a top journal or conference, simply write them up (as the research statement is probably already written) and put them on arxiv, figshare or whatever suits you (I think we need a list for these services). Short and simple.
I was told once that one difference between science and engineering is exactly that. The engineer will have an idea and protect it by not telling anybody and patenting it. The scientist will protect the idea (the authorship of the idea) by publishing it and telling everybody. I don't fully agree due to the characteristics of software engineering, open source and copyright, but I think it serves to illustrate the point.
Sure publishing on a journal or conference requires telling some people before that (the reviewers) and not all ideas are suitable to be published in such places (any reputed venue will reject most of the submissions, there are usually associated costs, etc.) There is the risk of reviewers stealing some ideas (not in a completely straightforward way, to abide the rules) and I think the main reason why there is arxiv is exactly that.
Publishing online is free and immediate. It won't give you much impact and it won't count for some metrics, but it will provide testimony that you had that idea at that time (even if more people could have had the same idea in an independent way, as @StrongBad pointed). Then you should find a venue that accepts what you already published in this manner, not all venues will do so and depending on your area most venues may reject such papers, but the fact that most people do something doesn't mean that thing is right.
Finally, the problem (IMHO) is that we are giving great value to something as intangible as ideas, because they are important and have great impact on the progress of society and the career of those who are responsible for those ideas. However, as a society, we are not really prepared to handle intangible things properly, there are attempts to improve that, but all of them are still falling short in some aspects.

Where did you get the idea that arXiv is there to prevent reviewers from stealing ideas?

Honestly, I don't know, but it seems perfectly suited for that.

And how did you get from that to thinking that this was the main purpose?

It's an archive of pre-prints, if printed papers can be accessed (specially with the current convergence towards open access, which should have been the norm from the start) what is the point of pre-prints? Pre-print leads to pre-edition, pre-reviewer, etc. Additionally, the name, an archive evokes something to keep the proofs (as when the police archives a case), openness is better evoked by portals, gates, indexes, etc. The name suggests it's not for accessing but keeping papers, actually "pre-papers". What other purpose (main or not) could it possibly have?

It has the purpose of making research papers available to the entire research community as soon as they are ready and without being behind any paywalls. Without the arXiv, papers in math, for example, would end up not being available until usually at least six months later (sometimes much longer). Sure, it also serves as a means to establish precedent, but that is in no way the main contribution of it.

@TobiasKildetoft even if it isn't the main contribution of it, it seems to be the main and possibly best suited way to achieve that, AFAIK.

I am not disputing that the best way to establish precedent is using the arXiv. I am just saying that this is a positive side effect of the main purpose of the arXiv, rather than actually the main purpose (as a side note, I think that if I saw a research statement on the arXiv, I would most likely consider the person who put it there overly paranoid).

I agree other services (e.g. figshare) may be better suited for anything besides papers. Even a blogging platform could be nice if there were trustworthy time-stamped diffs (at least as posts here…), unfortunately I couldn't find any. WRT paranoia, if this is something that can award a job, I think it can be plagiarized. How could that be detected if it is not public? Not too long ago a political party plagiarized  the program of another party in the EU elections… If that happens for stuff that is public, what could happen for everything that is not? I don't wanna know.

Publishing on the arXiv won't protect the research idea. People can still come up with similar ideas, it if they claim that they had not seen your work, there is no responsibility for them to even mention your work.

I agree with @Trylks and a great service for this is likely ResearchGate, as it generates DOIs for documents.


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License issue: publishing an image of famous person in the scientific paper
A scientific paper to be published contains an image of someone famous. An image is just picked from the Internet.
My questions:

Is it a violation to publish such image without permission?
From whom a researcher needs to seek the right to this image: the famous individual or photographer?
Suppose the image is eventually published in the paper without permission while the journal did not ask for permissions.  When the paper is published the author grants the journal rights to publish this work. To best of my understanding, legally the author is not the owner of his paper anymore.  The paper is published under Creative Commons license. In such a case, who is legally responsible for the violation: the author or the journal? Who can be potentially sued?

Thanks!
Two follow-ups:
1) How can I know which image I can use without a permission? For example, an image in Wikipedia can be used? I know that  I can buy from stock images, but there is only limited number of images there.
2) For obtaining the permission, how I can know from whom to ask? For example, an image appear in some news article. But they could also obtain a permission to it.

Why would you need to publish it? Except it is a well-known test image. Well, I admit that Lena Söderberg is somewhat famous, but it's a special case! ;)

It's an experiment in psychology and the image was used as a stimulus in the experiment...

For the first follow-up: about reusing a Wikipedia image from Wikimedia Commons please see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia , but beware that some Wikipedia images aren't in Commons because they aren't free and used only under fair use. You can tell by clicking on the image and looking at the description page.

Yes, thanks. I have already figured that out. There are different types of wikicommon licences (with attribution, without attribution etc).

Assuming the photograph is still under copyright, yes.

The copyright owner of the photograph. This will usually be the photographer.

You are probably liable, but they would probably complain directly to the journal who would then shout at you. Under a Creative Commons license, you are still the author and "owner", even if you have given permission to people to use it under the license.
(I say "probably" - it does occasionally happen that you transfer rights to the publisher, who then release it under a CC license with themselves as the owner, but this is pretty rare.)

Short answer: yes, you do need to get permission, and you can't just say "I found it on the internet and it's the journal's problem for not checking".

Thank you a lot for your answer! I added to follow-up questions to my  question above.

@student I suppose you should rather post those questions in a new thread rather than adding them to your question after it has already gotten several answers.

You can't "license" something that you don't already have rights to. If it is under copyright you need to ask. Most likely you will get permission for an academic paper, but not for a commercial work (a book). If a book, the publisher will have a fund to pay royalties to the copyright holder if necessary. They may even have a source for a royalty free image of the same person. Ask.
On the other hand, even if you are liable under the law, the publisher has deeper pockets and so would most likely be the primary target of any lawsuit, but you would also be named.
However, you might also be able to find a different image of the person in question for which you can get rights more easily. Tread carefully here. Some rights owners are very adamant about their rights and in most places the law is on their side. If a photographer makes a living off of their images they will likely have an issue that must be resolved.
There are some exceptions (fair use). But the journal publisher will know about that if you raise the issue with them.

Thank you a lot for your answer! I added to follow-up questions to my  question above.

This may not apply to your situation, but if the 'famous' person is a scientist there may be ways to get a picture, although perhaps not the picture. (This probably should have been figured out earlier - next time!).
The American Institute of Physics has the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, where they offer some 30,000 photos. Licensing fees for publication seem quite reasonable for journal usage ($35 or less), if they hold the copyright (otherwise you have to contact the entity holding the copyright directly).
Other societies may have similar archives, so check with them.
For now, you need to find the copyright holder and negotiate with them.