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Should I turn down PhD offer if I think I may not pass qualifying exam (risking immigration issues if I fail)?
I am done with my MS in EECS from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and I currently working full time in a good company on OPT.
I will be defending my MS Thesis in coming December. Moreover, when I contacted one of the well-renowned Professors in my department he expressed his interest in taking me as PhD student depending if his funding is approved in next few months.
Here is the issue:
My overall GPA is 3.43 and my core GP is 3.5. I had already mentioned this to the Professor, and I straight away told that after working hard I am just a solid B+ student that too when I study with friends. I sent my transcript to him thinking he would turn me down based on my GPA, but he did not.
My question is: I don't have issues with quitting the well-paying job for the PhD program. But what scares me is the oral qualifying exam. If I don't make through the exam, and they decide to kick me out, I have no options. I will no longer be enrolled in the PhD program, and cannot go back to the industry as I have used up my OPT.
My future goal is to join academia, but if I don't pass the qualifying exam, I will put my family and me in immigration issues. So, least I can do is to work in industry and give up on joining Ph.D. At least I will not put my family at HUGE risk of getting kicked out of the US after spending so much on MS program.
Please advise. The reason I ask this question is that one must aware his limitations. When I compare myself with fellow PhD classmates, they way better than me in course work. I have never met any classmate in my graduate school who are less smarter than me.

I believe OPT here is Optional Practical Training: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optional_Practical_Training

My future goal is to join academia -- Then you need a PhD. Period. If the PhD admissions committee doesn't think you will pass the qual, they won't admit you.

Thanks! Only concern is that if I have an advisor who is funding then admission is just a paperwork. Maybe I can leave a note in my formal admission packet and request the committee to scrutinize the case very strictly than simply going by the fact that I may have good recommendation from my MS thesis co-advisors and advisor ready to fund. Maybe I can discuss my concerns and weakness in my formal SOP.

Take a leap of faith, join the PhD program. I know of people who have much less gpas than you and have a PhD after their names now :)

Google "impostor syndrome"

:) Imposter syndrome is found in "High achievers". Looking at my transcript as shown in the question, I am sure I don't fall into that category.

Instead of adding extraneous text to the post asking for it not to be put on hold (that never helps), consider editing it to fix the problem that led to it being put on hold. Is there something generalizable in your scenario that you can ask about? If so, edit the question to highlight that.

For example, we can't tell you whether to accept the offer or not. Instead, maybe you can ask how a student in your scenario can minimize risk

Thanks for the inputs. I could not have put it in better than your input. Thanks alot!

Another question put on hold because people can't read "Should I do X" as "What are things to consider when deciding whether to do X"

Professors and admissions committees have a lot of experience in accepting students- they wouldn't offer you a position unless they were confident that you were capable of handling the program. It's just as bad a situation for your professor if you fail at the oral exam stage: they will be stuck in year 2 of a 5 year grant without an experienced student and no immediate replacement to carry on that work.
Two specific thoughts:

Find out who the Graduate Program Chair or the Graduate Admissions Committee Chair is for your department and ask them the same question you asked your professor. These are people with a lot of experience handling and admitting graduate students, and they can give you an impartial opinion.
See if this program has an alternative to the oral examination. My program allowed thesis-option MS students to waive the oral exam under some conditions.  In some labs it was very common for students (typically international students with weaker presentation skills) to fulfill the MS requirements and write a thesis rather than doing an oral presentation.

+1 Excellent reference to the administration. This answer prove (for me) that this question is not off-toopic.

While good knowledge is important - grades should not be a reason (in fact should not even be a part of the equation) you want/do not want to do a PhD.

Are you creative?
Are you really curious about something in nature? (need not be related to what you did for your master's) - or are you really really interested in building technologies that could lead to an interesting future for mankind?
Going back to question 2, are you curious enough to motivate yourself?
Again going back to question 2, Are you curious/interested enough to become an academic? i.e. spend long hours begging people for money so that you can satisfy your curiosity/interest and tell the world all about what you learn/invent.

If the answer to these questions is yes, you can consider a phd.
If you are trying to pursue a phd for industry (non-research)/management jobs - it is my belief that you will do well if you take up that job right now - it is easier to get, you will get valuable experience for the 4 to 5 years you will work on your thesis.
These are of course my opinions. you can ask the expert - yourself.


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How to restore trust in a toxic lab environment?
A friend of mine started working in a biology research lab where several research groups share space and lab equipment.
Recently the environment has become quite toxic as the people started to mistrust each other.
It started with people not talking to each other and instead preferring to email everyone about "How to use Equipment X". Then later "To the person who used Equipment Y before me, please ask your supervisors how to use it properly". Now everyone watches each other to guard the equipment. In spite of this chemicals and samples started to disappear from the stock and tools get contaminated over night.
As my friend is "the new guy" he is often the target of accusations.
His colleagues from his research group are trying to protect him but still something needs to be done.
Now what to do? How to get back the trust? Should the institute heads get involved?

This is something that should be sorted out by the supervisors of all the people involved, and I'm surprised that they haven't acted yet.

By the way, do you mean "toxic" just figuratively or literally too? I notice mention of chemicals and contaminated tools.

no just interpersonal.

Also, is there not a manual for said equipment anywhere?

@NZKshatriya - I was able to understand this question; but please feel free to improve the title by editing. // I don't think the way people are using the equipment is the real problem here.  The description in the question reminds me of the classic Scientific American article about antisocial behavior of mice in an extremely crowded environment.

Well there are manuals and "Best practices" documents still there are lot of different ways how to use the equipment, as the processes are non-trivial.

Institute heads seems like overkill at this point.  How about the group leaders for starters?
Your friend might find it helpful to schedule his lab time when his groupmates will be present.

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Error in transcript of records?
I'm studying in Polish language. One of my courses was named "Metody otrzymywania nanomateriałów". Which roughly translates into "Methods for obtaining nanomaterials". However in my official transcript of record, this course is named "methods of receiving nanomaterials".
Is receiving equal to obtaining?
And if no, how would recruiting stuff on the foreign university react to such error?

"methods of receiving nanomaterials" sounds like a translation error. That's how it would be perceived. That's not really the question you're asking, is it? The question you're asking is whether you should complain about the error and ask that they correct it. Personally, I think you should ask for a correction. By asking for one, you wouldn't just be helping yourself, but you might be helping future students who need the same course name translated.  That being said, there is no guarantee that you'll receive a correction, and if you don't receive one, I probably wouldn't press the issue.

You also always have the option of sending an email to the university you apply to saying "As a side note, a better translation of XX is YY." Everyone understands that translation errors happen, and in your case it's not like you're trying to hide something, or make something look better.

I agree with @WolfgangBangerth about sending an email with a correct translation. If the transcript doesn't include the original Polish name of the course, you might include that in your email too. Then the people reading your transcript and email can have some Polish-speaking person verify that your translation is correct. I assume that a typical university would have a faculty member who can speak (or at least read) Polish.

@StephanBranczyk If the situation in Poland is similar to that in Czechia, changing the translation is close to impossible and possibly illegal. I learned to live with it, for instance my official diploma supplement (printing on special paper provided by the government, with a huge stamp and several signatures) contains "Master's Thesis" at one place and "Diploma Thesis" at another place, both actually being "Master's degree project" correctly. Or, one subject's translation (as I found out just now) is completely wrong: "Research project" instead of "Winter School in Mathematical Physics."

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Citing only e-books in Bachelor thesis
I want to know, are e-books (digital version) comparable to physical books in citations? Can I use only e-books instead of real books for finding citations, notes to put in my Bachelor thesis?

It's not clear why you might think ebooks are not suitable for this purpose?

Welcome to Academia.SE. Though the answer to your question is primitive, I'll include it in the answer section nonetheless.

slightly related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/17825/12454

Yes, you can. There is absolutely no difference in the citing a digital material of the same printed book as a reference. You may cite the e-book just the way you would do with the printed book. This applies not only to your bachelor thesis but to all publishable content. Just make sure you get the edition and the page references, pp, right (if any).

Thanks for your answer, but I was thinking about using e-book that isn't printed, that is just a digital material and never will be a printed book.

There are many of such books and even journal articles that do not occur in printed matter. They can also be cited in exactly the same way. On the other hand. if the publisher of the material is unknown, i.e., you cannot find the related publisher even over the internet for the material you wish to refer, you may cite it as a web reference along with the corresponding URL.

Small addition: Not all e-books actually have pages in the traditional sense - the page numbers change as soon as you change the font size. It makes more sense to use the chapter/section number instead in such a case.

Agreed. Some articles exclusive to digital print do not have page numbers. I have made the necessary edit to the answer.

authors: ОРИОН НАСЛЕДИЕ


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Given a "Date Revision Due" for revised submission of a journal paper, am I required to submit before the beginning or the end of that date?
I am submitting a revised manuscript to an Elsevier journal. However, English is my second language and I am confused about the meaning of "Date Revision Due"!
The journal editorial system indicates "Sep 19, 2015" as Date Revision Due. Please tell me should I submit the revised manuscript before "Sep 18,2015 11:59 PM" or "Sep 19,2015 11:59 PM"?!
I guess the local timezone of the journal should also be considered. In addition, Can I submit the revised manuscript by automatic editorial system even if I miss this deadline?

Unlike conferences, a journal's "date due" is rarely quite so precise a moment; this is because papers are all being dealt with asynchronously, on an as-arrived basis, rather than as a massive batch of hundreds all arriving near-simultaneously as for a big engineering conference.
Most journals will be comfortable with you submitting a little late if necessary (though there are some that will automatically discard your paper if you don't hit their deadline).  Thus, rather than fretting about time-zones, I would recommend that if you are worried about a last-minute submission, you instead email the handling editor and ask for a short extension.

I requested an extension, hoping its acceptance by the handling editor. Thanks

In all cases I know, submission dates mean "on that date", not "before that date". This means it's the 19th of September, 23:59, the publisher's local time.
...and if you think it's getting tight, you should be able to nicely ask for an extension:
This is not a conference or similar, where the server will stop accepting submissions at midnight. This is usually done to limit the number of abstracts that organizers have to sift through. If your article is already accepted for publication, they won't discard it because you submitted the revision half a day late.
That said: of course asking before things go awry is always better than saying nothing and submitting late.

Date revision due means the you should submit your revised manuscript by that date and time. However in case you think you could not submit, then you can always request the editor at least 3-4 days before to make an extension for a week or two.

At the very bottom, they are doing you a favour publishing your paper. Don't make their job harder than absolutely necessary. I.e., try to submit on (or before) due date, or ask politely (with enough time beforehand!) for an extension. Or just submit your paper for the next issue (unless it is some special issue on your particular topic).

Publishers aren't "doing you a favor" when they accept a good piece of work that gets honestly peer-reviewed as being quality science.


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If a professor wants to hire a student themselves, how can they write a letter of recommendation for other universities?
Professors often write letters of recommendation for very promising undergrads for entry into PhD programs. Often these professors are interested in hiring these undergrads themselves. In fact one of the strongest statements a professor can say in such letters is "I would hire this student myself" or "I am planning to make an offer to this student" or some such statement.
This however seems to be a conflict of interest, as an unethical professor may deliberately write a lukewarm letter to reduce the candidate's chances of entry into other universities, and then offer admission to his own university. And there is no way the candidate can know that this happened.
How do professors manage these personal conflicts of interest?

I'm not sure what there is to "manage" here. The right course of action is obvious.

Are you asking from the student's or professor's perspective? It seems you write from the professor's, but please clarify for a good response.

How do professors manage these personal conflicts of interest? - By being professional.

Related: Why should a P.I be motivated to write a strong LOR even if that means losing a undergraduate from his/her lab?, Professor refusing to write recommendation letter to make student work longer

What do you mean "hire" the student?

Trying to coerce someone to stay, for employment or academia, at a place where they do not want to stay, is never a wise plan.  Even if you succeed, the employee will be disgruntled and unmotivated, never reaching full potential.  I struggle to see any professor or employer (except a very foolish one) seeing a benefit to trying.

"Often these professors are interested in hiring these undergrads themselves" Do you mean as a PhD student (PhD student's aren't "hired" in the US, but I understand they are elsewhere), or as an employee?

Perhaps it would make the letter stronger if the writer says "I would be happy to hire him here!"

@Laurel Is the new title asking for unethical tips?

@Anyon No? And even if someone did come to the question searching for that, the body of the question is very clear with what it's asking.

A good share of the world's functioning relies on people doing the right thing and behaving ethically. This is as true for the US presidency as it is for professors writing fair letters. Historically, most office holders do the right thing, and that's why things work as they do. Some, of course, don't and then things come apart a bit and we all hope that the consequences are limited.
In other words, we expect and hope for people to behave ethically because, if they don't, it is not always practically possible to put in place systems that oversee how everyone behaves -- because, if you had to create such systems for everything, you'd have more overseers than people doing the actual work.

And you'd also need overseers of overseers to make sure the overseers behave ethically...

@AlexanderWoo Precisely.

https://xkcd.com/2650/ "People lying" is a very old problem.  It's a known exploit.

Haha, can we get a citation for office holders like US presidents historically doing the right thing?

@walkar One can of course have differences in opinion about the policies of past presidents, but I think it is not unreasonable to claim that most of them have generally put the well-being of the country over personal gain.

@WolfgangBangerth I agree, I was just being pithy.

@walkar Another known bug in humanity 0.01.

For most professors there is no conflict of interests.
According to Joy's law "no matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.” At some stage of most professors' career, they learned this. Good people come, good people go, other good people come, and so on. It is not worth the trouble to try forcing people to stay if they have better prospect elsewhere.

I have had an applicant with a very strong cover letter from another potential advisor. The student eventually accepted an offer from that advisor.
Now, had the letter been lukewarm, the student would never have known, since it is confidential. But I would have seen where the student ended up, and would have known that the advisor was unethically putting their own interests ahead of the student's when writing the letter (being in a position where they would not take students they were genuinely lukewarm about). As a consequence, I would have avoided recommending them as a potential advisor to future students, since anyone who doesn't put the student's interests first would not be a good choice. I would also have been less likely to collaborate with them subsequently.
As it was, I know that this person behaved ethically, which might make me more likely to do these things. (In this particular case, however, it was someone I already knew to be ethical.)

For me, I don't think it is a conflict of interest. Let say students are all rational, so they are seeking a position in a better university compared with the current one.
Then if most members in a group can go to a better university, this can help attracting high quality applicant to join the lab in future.

As Wolfgang said, a lot of the world's functioning depends on people doing the right thing. But there is a selfish incentive if you think long term enough.
If they are a good student, then keeping them as a long term collaborator could be more valuable then trying to force them to stay with you. For one thing, if you are known as giving good reference letters and having impact with potential advisors, then that can (slightly) increase your pool of recruits. Anyone you harmed this way may meeting the person they applied to and find out about it, damaging long term relations.
If the work is similar enough, you may be able to collaborate with the student (though this is more valid for PhD student -> postdoc than undergrad -> PhD). Or they can be your advocator in this new group, again increasing your pool of potential recruits and recognition. And you can always keep them in mind as a good candidate for a future postdoc or faculty position (though faculty again is more for the PhD -> postdoc stage).
The other thing to keep in mind is that there is often an overabundance of students looking for the next step in academia. There are a lot more undergrads than PhDs, a lot more PhDs than postdocs, a lot more postdocs than faculty positions. So that suppresses the value of getting this one particular student, there may be similar options around.
If they are one of those special creme de la creme students, then they have a high chance of being able to demonstrate their ability outside of your report. Either through prior achievements(papers/talks/ect), personal impact they had on who they are applying to, or through their other references. This raises the chance of discovery while still having uncertainty on the chances of recruiting the student.

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How to Reference a Long Breakdown of a Mathematical Model from Another Thesis?
I am writing my Master's thesis, and I need to describe and break down a complex mathematical (physics-based) model. This model is absolutely central to my thesis, and all of my work essentially revolves around it. I was about 5% done the task of understanding and summarizing the model when I came across a previously written Master's thesis that used the exact same model in the exact same manner as me, and includes an incredibly detailed, yet concise step-by-step breakdown of it. It is all that author's original work.
The breakdown of the model in this previously written thesis is approximately 20 pages long, far too long for me to quote it, even in part. There's really no way for me to interpret or explain this model other than the way this author has described it. This author was pretty clearly a genius... I feel like any information I add will be superfluous; while at the same time if I were to remove or greatly modify any of the information it would be extremely detrimental to my thesis as a whole.
I feel completely stuck. This breakdown of the model is going to account for around 1/5 of the total length of my thesis, so even if I were to be able to get permission from the author/publisher to copy the information, I'd essentially be taking 20% of my thesis directly from another source. That just doesn't feel right to me.
What should I do? I'm a mere 2 months away from my defence deadline (long story short I was forced to start this new thesis topic with less than a year left in grad school, so I'm extremely far behind where I wanted to be) and this model breakdown is the only thing I have left to finish before sending in my thesis for editing.
I'm quite literally pulling my hair out over this. Any help would be appreciated.

Just cite that other work. What is the problem? Someone did the work you planned on doing, thus saving you tons of time!

(Recorded announcement) What does your advisor say?

Okay, I was kind of hoping for a response along those lines... Now, should I just cite the author once at the beginning of the section describing the model, explicitly stating that the work is essentially exclusively his? Should I keep inserting the same reference over and over? Both? As I mentioned, this section is going to be ~20 pages long, and the format is largely like this:     "The XXXX model is described using (Formula on a new line). XXXX Component of this formula is described as (Formula on a new line). This quantity is explained by (Formula on a new line)."

You can say that "In this work we make extensive use of description of model BLAH in [citation]. We shall use (CC num) to denote to the equation (num) in the [citation]." where CC is the acronym of the author's name in BLAH (or other mnenomic that is easy for your readers to remember). If you use (La)TeX, you can even automate generation of such equation numbers.

Thank you for the suggestion, Boris. Just to ensure that I am understanding you correctly, do you mean that I should number the equations in my thesis based on the numbering in his thesis, or I should just include his initials in the brackets where I am numbering the the equations based on the numbering in my thesis? For example, if the author's initials are ABC and I am referencing equation 2.2.2 from his thesis, but it's equation 1.1.1 in my thesis, should it be formatted (ABC 1.1.1) or (ABC 2.2.2)? I've never heard of this method of referencing before.

It sounds to me like your thesis just got about 15% shorter.
Rather than developing the material yourself, you need to instead put a review of the key results of the prior work as they relate to the rest of your thesis.  Presumably you needed to do this analysis because you were going to put its results to use elsewhere.  Well, you no longer need to do the analysis.  Instead, you can cite the other paper and explicitly say that you're going to review the key results that your work builds upon, e.g.,

A detailed analysis of the X algorithm has already been conducted in [cite].  Further parts of this thesis build upon some of the results of that analysis, which we summarize here for the convenience of the reader.

Then you put in your paraphrased summary of the results you will use and the important intuitions with respect to the rest of your work.  You almost certainly do not need a reader to be familiar with every detail of the other proofs.  Likely some of their lemmas/sub-results don't need to be stated and there may be side-results / corollaries that are irrelevant to your use of the materials as well.  As such, your summary should be able to be much more terse than the original, and can be completely in your own words.  Renumbering and re-organizing material is OK as well.  You also don't need to put citations in everywhere continuously: as long as you write the prose in your own words and make it clear up front that everything in that collection of material is a summary of the material you are citing, the attribution should be quite clear to a reader.


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What is a Scientific approach to Law and Epistemology?
In an extended discussion in Law SE chat, there was a description of the legal approach to epistemology, namely one that is dependent upon the findings of the various actors of the criminal justice system: police, defendants and plaintiffs, judges, lawyers, and juries. The specific quote that I wanted to touch upon was:

It means that science and law fundamentally (and, one could argue, incompatibly) disagree on the nature of truth. In science, no group exists that can declare something "fact". In law, that's what juries and/or judges do. Asking scientific questions about something science considers impossible is akin to asking what color the most magical unicorns are. - cHao

But despite this, I know that there is a distinct gap in my knowledge of both realms to conclusively address the issue.

How would you test it? It is fundamental that juries decide what is fact from disputed evidence (juries have nothing to do when the parties agree what the facts are). How do you set up your double blind experiment when there is no way of telling objectively who the guilty and not guilty defendants are? - Dale M

Taking a research-approach to the question, I posited a rough sketch of how I would've approached the topic.

@DaleM complete taking a guess here, a control (12 jurors) and different experimental groups consisting of different sizes. A known “case” where it is known with a p value of <0.05 that the defendant is X (can be real or imagined). The prosecution (study confederate) would present evidence systematically and equally to all groups but without knowing actual case X. Based on experimental results, determine optimal jury size. - Me

So I ask:

Why is there a fundamental gap between law and science?
Can the two ever be 'merged' or 'reconciled'?
How would both realms work if they adopted attributes from either realm?

Perhaps religion can be the go-between...

Religion as in different belief systems, or as a legal/social construct i.e. a body of individuals consisting of an organization?

I disagree that scientists cannot declare something "fact." Do you have evidence to support this?

Courts have to make a definite decision (that can only be appealed so often) about what the law is in every given case. The law reduces uncertainty.
Scientific progress builds on fallibility, at least in the empirical sciences. The final proof is always elusive, postponed indefinitely. And because every provisional answer invites new questions, science produces uncertainty.
Both systems can, fundamentally, not be reconciled, because they operate according to different logics.

What did you mean by uncertainty? I read it as the degree of which people can recognize that the decision was from a legitimate source.

What I mean is that the accused cannot be found guilty  with p <0.05. The judgement must be either/or.

Why couldn't you find someone guilty with P<0.5? In absent of experimental data, wouldn't the hypothesis not be rejected?

Because the notion of "guilty" in law is NOT "did the thing they were accused of" but rather "has to go to jail and or pay a fine".  You might be able to say someone killed someone else with p>.95, but a person cannot go to jail with p>.95; they either go to jail or not.

@AlexanderWoo I don’t think I got that right. The scope of the question is one’s confidence that someone is guilty or not. In absence of a “smoking gun” couldn’t everything be characterized as probability and confidence?

@FrankFYC - you didn't understand me.  There are two concepts here, legal-guilty and real-guilty.  Definition of legal-guilty: person is obliged to go to jail.  Definition of real-guilty: person actually did the crime they are charged with.  The point is that legal-guilty cannot have a p-value, even if real-guilty does.  At best, you might try to define legal-guilty as "real-guilty with p-value >0.95".  But, as you see, this already creates a divergence between the two concepts.

I will describe a situation in legal practice and then say something about it.  This is a rather specialized area of the law.  It's the only one that I know a lot about.
When a parent of a special learner believes that his child's school district has not been playing according to Hoyle, i.e. has not been faithfully following IDEA 2004 ("The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act"), he may request an impartial hearing.
If he lives in a "two tier" state, such as New York, there is a fast, streamlined procedure for appealing the decision to the State Review Office (SRO).
The SRO appeal system functions somewhat as a way of auditing the hearing decisions.
One can make all kinds of statistical observations about the frequency with which the SRO has overturned hearing decisions.
This is an example of a scholarly approach to the law.  Someone who does this comprehensively and well is Perry Zirkel.  He also compares results and approaches from one state to another.  Perhaps it would be helpful for you to take a look at his work, so you can see what's possible.

Law is based upon natural language which is inherently ambiguous, thus, reasoning is based upon personal interpretation and is indefinitive.
Science is rooted in logic which strives to be unambiguous, thus, reasoning is based upon agreed-up rules and is definitive.
Science would fail if it were reliant on natural language and personal interpretation. Law might-well become more definitive if it adopted attributes from science, but this will never happen. Partly because law cannot be codified in logic, at least, not yet. Partly because codification would require significant resources. Partly because the law functions, whereas any future system is untested; if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Partly because ...

"law cannot be codified in logic, at least, not yet." You need to state what you mean by law here, there are certainly many logics of norms, including legal norms. From the more philosophical side, the area and class of logics is called Deontic Logic (as in, you can have a deontic logic), elsewhere it's simply called normative or legal reasoning. Many modern deontic logics work very much like a jurist would understand the law modulo interpretation - an argument is made for a conclusion by applying rules and facts, all counter-arguments are sought, counter-counter-arguments, and so on.

This is touched upon by the following answer: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/102130/22768

That link is bizarre "maybe it's reasonable but it's not logic" is incorrect regarding contradiction in law. If a formalism lacks explosion then it cannot be classical logic, but it can be a non-classical logic such as non-monotonic logic (which bans contradiction) or, controversially, paraconsistent logic (which bans explosion). Many logics specifically handle law's contradictory nature. Hence, I think the answer needs some clarification. That aside, I'm not sure if (currently) lacking a formal logic makes something non-scientific, it just pushes it outside of formal science.

The claim "maybe it's reasonable but it's not logic" relates to a particular class of logic, which is distinct from the class of logic that you're referring to. A formal logic certainly isn't necessary and my answer is incredibly superficial. That said, I think it touches upon a key point: law is indefinitive; science is definitive. Of course, that's rather a sweeping claim and you can pick away at it. But, I'm posting to the Internet, whilst working, on the weekend; I'm not trying to compose a conclusive argument.

US law appears to not accept standard logic and rejects ex falso quodlibet in particular. You cannot argue that

The US constitution demands separation of church and state
The Alabama constitution (or whatever) requires elected officials to be Christian

and therefore

My client is not guilty of this traffic violation.

Laws "in the books" that are in direct contradiction with higher laws cannot be challenged unless it's by an event directly related to them. Maybe that's reasonable but it's not logic.


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Which is more important in academic promotion: getting funding, or its secondary effects?
Follow up question to How does research funding work in determining academic promotions? since it was too broad.
Take two equally talented researchers, Alice & Bob. Alice has acquired a large amount of funding, while Bob has not. How large is the effect of the grant itself compared to secondary effects in determining who gets promoted, such as the fact that Alice is likely to be more productive thanks to having the funding, for example due to being able to hire more postdocs and PhD students?
In other words, can Bob compensate for not having acquired the funding by working harder (writing just as many research papers, attracting self-funded PhD students, etc)?

I think that this really is very department dependent so it’s hard to say. My department places some weight on grants but more on their end results but other weigh decisionsdifferetly

@BenLinowitz No I don't actually. I'm now wonder though, why would the answer be different? Is it because faculty at small liberal arts colleges are less expected to acquire grants, so their key metrics are different?

@Allure - Health science/biology labs often cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to run. A department with many such labs probably needs to be more funding-conscious than one that mainly has, say, liberal arts or math researchers.

This will definitely vary between institutions, and maybe even within them.

This is probably country specific as well.  Universities in certain countries place more emphasis on grants/funding, which can only be obtained 'easily' if the applicants have good publications.  Hence, if you have lots of grants, you get promoted.

I think this is largely moot. Alice will only achieve that large amount of funding by being productive. If Bob is sufficiently productive, and in a place where external funding is important, then he will likely attract such funding since he would be foolish not to seek it. In that sense, productivity trumps funding.
But, again, the world of academia is very diverse. Some places external funding is an extremely important factor (maybe THE factor) in getting tenure. Other places not so much. But in research universities you need to be productive and to help others (students) be productive.
And it may be much more important what a lab overall is able to produce, not just the PI.

It does not make sense to look at individual factors like this. A job interview is not a list of targets that one has to be compared with, and if one candidate scores higher on average than the next then they get the job. There is a myriad of factors into play. Some of them are quantifiable, most are not. Some of them are not even written anywhere, or conscious. Some of them depend on who exactly belongs to the committee, their state of mind at the time, and so on. It is extremely rare to be able to say "candidate X got the job over candidate Y because of this factor".

How large is the effect of the grant itself compared to secondary effects in determining who gets promoted, such as the fact that Alice is likely to be more productive thanks to having the funding, for example due to being able to hire more postdocs and PhD students?

What a strange question. The department is not going to hire someone and pay them for decades just so that they can get some overhead from someone's grant for the next few years. Yes, what you call the "side effects" of the grant (most people would call that the grant's purpose) is more important than the grant itself.

In other words, can Bob compensate for not having acquired the funding by writing just as many research papers or attracting self-funded PhD students, etc?

You don't get a job because you wrote as many papers as someone else. Writing a single, extremely influential paper can land you a job when writing ten average papers will get you squat.
Supervising students does not get you a job. Except in some fields that use students as cannon fodder for menial tasks, supervising a student is pretty much a net drain on your productivity. However, never having supervised students can be held against you during a job interview for senior positions; let's say that it's a necessary but not sufficient condition.
But yes, "Bob" (not sure why this hypothetical person has to be named, and gendered differently to boot) can "compensate" less funding by performing better on research. Academia has not yet reached the point where a researcher's main job is to attract funding. We are not startups. Research and teaching are still the goals.

Thanks for answer. Re Alice & Bob, they're common placeholder names in the sciences. My understanding for why they're used is because 1) they correspond to the first two letters of the alphabet, and 2) it makes the English easy since one can refer to them as "him" and "her". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob

That was indeed the most important point of my answer, and I am glad that you decided to focus on that. In any case, something being common is not really a justification for anything.

You do not have to be so hostile. I am referring to Alice & Bob because you expressed doubt about it. In the rest of your answer you sound pretty confident.

Well, you have not answered why the hypothetical persons have to be named and gendered. I'm a computer scientist, I know about the whole family. It doesn't mean I like it or I should avoid calling it out. And I notice you are still focusing on an extremely narrow, barely relevant part of my answer. Perhaps you do not like it.

Well, they're written the way they are because it's convenient for me to write them the way they are. If you dislike the names & gender, and can write the question in the OP smoothly without using them, feel free to edit it.

Two active funding streams are pretty much a gate for tenure in at least one division of my university. Top of the flowchart.

compared to secondary effects in determining who gets promoted

What has not been discussed as yet is the ability to translate and produce with the grant. Some people are more successful with grants than others, however the ability to translate those grants into meaningful and productive scholarship is another set of skills that has not been highlighted as yet. Yes Alice can expand and hence theoretically be more productive than Bob. However, Bob's approach without grants may be more productive with more citations and presentations too.
But yes as mentioned by Scott Seidman in the comments, grant funding is privileged and noted in the tenure process and in some divisions/departments/colleges has a strong influence in promotion.

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


text:
How to address bad research experience
I want to apply to CS PhD programs this year. Just a litte background: I did my BS and (non thesis) MS in EE/ECE at the same school. During my BS I did two semesters of undergrad research that went fine and gave me valuable experience.
During the second (last) semester of my MS I took on for-credit research with a professor. We got all the forms settled and decided on a project. However, after a certain point (me reading papers to catch up on the work) he stopped responding completely. I sent him emails frequently asking for resources to start my project (required some simulation resources at the least), but he never responded. I also tried to catch him at his office whenever I was free during the semester but completely failed. At the end of the semester I was awarded a B. Should I even address this on my application? Would it look bad to not include this experience at all?
The other weird caveat is that this is the only B throughout both of my degrees, so it is pretty noticeable.

Can you explore with the department office why he might have dropped out on you? That might be valuable to know.

I might be able to, but they wont know anything. He never officially dropped out. He just completely ignored everything about my project until the end of the semester when he gave me a grade. Also, I have been out of school for almost a year at this point. I am assuming he just had higher priorities to deal with, but it really makes my situation more difficult.

Actually, he may also have been dealing with illness or family issues.

That’s also possible, but he never reached out to me. Also, I basically gained nothing from the experience. Is it best to just ignore it? Or should I reach out to him again?

It will presumably be on your transcript.

Yeah it is on my transcript, which is the main issue.

If I had no further information about what happened and it was me, I'd not mention it on application materials. That is, not try to explain it away. List it as a research experience on a CV, without other explanation. I'm assuming the grade you got is on a transcript. So, it isn't something you are hiding, but just not emphasizing.
If you are asked about it, you can honestly say that you don't understand the grade and that your supervisor stopped replying to your updates. You don't know why that was. Things happen. They aren't your fault. If the experience itself was valuable in setting your thinking then it was a net plus in spite of the mediocre grade. You can say those kinds of things.
But, as I mentioned in a comment, it would be good to also know why it occurred. I think I'd refrain from explaining it in written materials in any case, but you would have some additional background if the issue comes up.

I responded to the other response on this thread if you would like to check it out

I'm sorry that this happened, your professor was out of line to stop responding to emails when you were signed up for research credit, and to give you a B when this was out of your control.
On the other hand, even with this context, it does not necessarily make you look good. The issue is that people might wonder "why did this professor not want to work with this student?" and might wonder if there was some reason that you were a bad student. Of course, it would not be true, but it would unfortunately be hard to prove that you did everything you could to complete the research.
So I would do as Buffy says and not emphasize it, but have a prepared response / explanation.
Besides this, you seem to have email documentation that the professor started ignoring you, and there is a chance you could escalate this to the department chair. You should not propose that the grade be changed to an A, of course, as you did not do the work, but you could ask to have the grade removed. You could explain the situation and show the emails that were not responded to.
This would have been much more likely to work if you did it right after the grade was assigned or during the semester, so no guarantees, but it could be worth a shot. I think that overall given that you don't have any other B's, removing the B would be helpful.

So I actually emailed the prof as per Buffy’s advice. He said he was “busy with his PhD students and projects and didn’t have time to sync up”. Do you think this is the correct course of action based on that?

@masterdz522 Sorry I didn't see this at the time. But yes, I think that email is more evidence that you weren't really given a fair shot, and I would say this is the correct course of action.


text:
Historical accuracy of trends/number of publications on keywords using Google Scholar?
Following this question on SE Academia: Easy way to see historical trend in keywords in publications?, I'm using Google Scholar and the linked script (https://github.com/Pold87/academic-keyword-occurrence) to get the number of publications on a certain keyword.
For the record, I was using the tool to get some statistical data for the popularity of the keyword "inter(-)organis(z)ational trust" (multiple spellings) (this should not matter for the the actual question though).
I found that there are very few to no publications at all on this topic between the 1940s and 1985. I'm wondering if this is (was) actually the case OR if this is just because there's no data on Google Scholar that dates back to that era, i.e. there were indeed publications on that topic but none of them got into Google Scholar because no-one cares about those publications now.
TL;DR
So my question is whether you think the part of publications before 1985 that is not on Google Scholar is really "negligible" and the numbers on Google Scholar are representative (historically accurate) for the period of time between 1940 and today.
FYI, I attached a plot of the numbers from GS:

EDIT:
If not GS, do you think the data on Constellate (https://constellate.org) is attendible (or is there literally any service you know of that fits this purpose)?

Google Scholar is essentially a byproduct of Google Search. It picks up everything in the web crawl that looks like a scholarly paper, and indexes it. There isn't much manual curation, and unlike most publications databases it doesn't start by working from a list of publications it thinks it should have.
(If you are Scopus, you index the Journal of X by starting at Volume 1 and recording all the papers. If you are Google Scholar, you do it by collating all the papers from X that turned up in the search, relying on them being online to avoid gaps. It does then deduce the existence of other papers it finds in the citations - but only by title/author etc.)
This means that Google Scholar is very good at picking up modern material that is on the web, wherever it might be hosted, but very bad at identifying material that is not on the web, or only referred to in a static list somewhere. More and more older material is trickling online, ending up in the big waves of digitisations or on repositories or wherever... but there's still a long way to go. And of course, a lot of the older material is not well-digitised - it may be in flat non-OCRed PDFs, if at all. So it will be invisible to in-text keyword searching, which is what you're wanting to do.
It's striking that your numbers start to rise properly in the mid-1990s. This is the point at which journals started to routinely publish online, and it becomes more likely there would be a full-text readable version for the crawler to pick up. Prior to that, you're maybe going to be trying to match your keywords against just the title, or maybe an abstract at best - so of course you get fewer hits compared to the period when you can match full text.
(It might be worth benchmarking your search against some other terms - run it for "deflation" or "deforestation" or "fishing rights" or whatever. I have a suspicion you'll see a similar sort of curve...)
Lastly, you ask about Constellate. This is derived from the old JSTOR Data for Research service, and is mostly made up from records in JSTOR and Portico; this means there will be some very substantial gaps depending on which publishers they have signed up to their service. That is likely to skew the results one way or another, but whether it's going to be an issue for your topic, I don't know.

Thanks! Do you know of any service that is reliable in terms of historical data that I could use? Oh and would you say the data from say 2010-today is attendible, i.e the slope is representative?

@j3141592653589793238 I don't think anyone has a comprehensive and fully-representative set of publications for full-text searching going back to the 1940s. (You can usually get some of those things at once, but not all). If you are willing to pass on full-text and rely on appearances in the title/abstract/keywords, then this would probably be something people normally use Scopus or Web of Science for.


text:
Can an unsuccessful grade appeal hurt an academic career?
Background:
After an academic dismissal from an undergraduate program, I have been working towards improving my GPA (as well as my own academic habits) at a community college, in hopes that after receiving an associates degree, I can move forward with to earn a bachelors and hopefully enter a graduate program. I know that I still have a ways to go before I am prepared enough to re-enter a university, but I feel that it's something within my grasp.
Grades for the fall semester were posted today, and in two out of the three classes I took this semester, I got an 'A'. This is a pleasant surprise, since I have had to miss a few classes and was worried about my performance on assignments overall. However, I got an 'F' in my third class. This makes me a little distraught as well as confused. I know my shortcomings, and I believe that I should receive the grade I deserve, regardless of the extenuating circumstances that tend to pop up in my life. I've earned my fair share of poor grades - 'F's included, and I have never disagreed with it because it reflected the work (or lack thereof) I put in.
That being said, I am uncertain that my performance deserves an 'F'. I don't think that I should be getting an 'A' or a 'B,' and even a 'C' seems excessive if I did not meet what is required, but the failing grade doesn't sit right with me. I am considering emailing my professor, and if it comes to it, following the procedures for a grade appeal, but that makes me more worried than another 'F' on my transcript.
The Question:
Is going through a grade appeal, or even just emailing the professor to inquire about how the score was reached, worth it? I'm worried that the mere mention of being incorrectly graded will hurt my future. If I try for an appealed grade and fail, will that be reflected on my transcript? Given my already rocky academic history, I'm worried that I will come off as indignant and that I do not possess the skills required of me.
In the broadest terms and applying to students of any level (ranging from undergraduate to graduate to everything else): Can a grade appeal that is not granted affect a person's transcript, reputation and/or perception throughout their academic career?

If you do lots of grade appeals, it will be remembered and may be reflected in any references that are wrote for you.    I would not expect one unsuccessful grade appeal to have any effect provided you go about it in a nice way.

Can a grade appeal that is not granted affect a person's transcript,
  reputation and/or perception throughout their academic career?

I have never heard of a school that lists grade appeals on a student's transcript, and to me that sounds about as logical as listing on your transcript that you wore the wrong shirt color. But that doesn't prove that such a school doesn't exist, so only a professor or staff member at your school can give an authoritative answer to that question. Why don't you ask them?
As for affecting your reputation or people's perception of you: well, any interaction we have with other people has some potential to affect our reputation or people's perception of us, so the literal answer to your question is "yes." It's reasonable to worry about that a little bit, but on the other hand if we all spent too much time worrying about such things, we'd never get very much done. In your case, what I suggest is that you go to your professor (or email him) and explain that you are surprised by your grade and would like to understand why you got an F, among other reasons so that you can learn from the experience and do better next time. Ask if you can review your final exam and possibly go over it with him to understand what you got wrong. Don't sound like you are assuming that you deserve a better grade or that the F grade couldn't possibly be correct, since that could come across as entitled, arrogant, and possibly delusional. If you ask the question in such a way, I don't see how you can possibly leave a bad impression with the professor -- this is a reasonable request that most professors hear all the time and are usually happy to help with.

+1; approaching the professor in a non confrontational way is the best opening.

Of course emailing the professor is worth it!
Mistakes happen. Talking to the professor seems like the first step. In my experience, professors are happy to help students understand their grades.
If it wasn't a mistake, you still need to know why you got a bad grade so that you can learn. What is interesting though is that you are shocked by your grade. Did you not get any feedback or any grades throughout the semester? Did the professor give you a syllabus with information about how grades are calculated?
If you think there was a mistake, then talking to the professor should remedy that (bring any evidence you have, such as all your graded homeworks, quizes, and exams). If that doesn't work, then each university has their own appeal process and you should look into that and find someone to talk to (e.g., the chair of the department or the dean of students).

The class was a session IV class, which only means it was an 8 week course that relied on being an online and in-class learning experience. However, we didn't get the syllabus until almost half way through the course. A lot of other things worked against the class. The books for the course weren't in the bookstore for some time, the professor was unprepared for most of the course (it wasn't his fault; he was asked to teach the course last minute, was told at first it was a normal sociology course so he prepared for that, but it was a social problems course which requires different material) …

(pt 2) and he did not have access to post quizzes and other material until later on. There was just a lot of mismanagement that happened, mostly thanks to it being a community college in a state not known for fabulous education spending. IT issues happened, and in all three of my classes. This is not to be an excuse, just explain that there was little feedback available for course work.

@Shmoo It sounds as though the class was in trouble from the start. If you hit that again, consider dropping the class before it can affect your GPA.

@PatriciaShanahan I'll keep that in mind come January. I should get in the habit of hedging my bets when it comes to courses and drop ones that seem to be heading south sooner.

@Shmoo That sounds like a bit of a mess! I would definitely try talking to the professor though and share all your concerns, including everything you mentioned in the comments.

@Shmoo, if it was a bad as you said, I think you should be asking for your money back, and for the grade to be wiped from your record.

You should ask your undergraduate office about this; I suspect the answer will be that the appeals process won't be reflected anywhere, since this is not an academic integrity issue.

Take the list of problems to the dean and ask that your F be converted to a W (withdrawn).
I made this request once, on behalf of a young man in my community who was having severe personal and family problems, landed in jail (long story), and flunked all his classes for that semester.  I did this so that once the young man got to a better place in his life, he would be able to try again with school if he wanted to.  Naturally, the young man wrote a letter authorizing me to work with the dean on his behalf.
Your justification for the request would be quite different from the one I presented on the young man's behalf, but it would be quite justified.
Leave out all the stuff from your first paragraph.  It's not relevant to this request.  Just say that you found the course frustrating due to all the problems that you outlined, and were dismayed to find that your gpa and transcript suffered as a result of many things that were beyond your control.
Rationale for my answer: the department and the community college are responsible for the quality of the teaching.  If you wanted to be really assertive about this (which I don't recommend in this case), you could even ask for a partial tuition refund.
Community colleges are a wonderful institution.  But sometimes they need a little nudge towards getting better organized.
What you will be showing by advocating for yourself in this way: that you care about your education.  That is nothing to be embarrassed about.


text:
Breadth or depth in math graduate school?
I'm a recently admitted in a masters program in mathematics. My question is about "strategy" of learning. Should I focus on learning many things or should I pick an research area and start learning only stuff about that area? This is a problem because some scholars told me that if I want to get hired in academia, I must start publishing as early as possible so I better start to deepen my knowledge in certain area. However, actually I have not decided with area I fit the most, and I think that broadness is useful as well, because diversity is a necesity for creativity, just as professional musicians doesn't just hear say classical music, but rock music, or latin music to get inspiration, I think that mathematicians must not just read about their own area, but related areas as well.
In your experience, which "strategy of learning" is better for a begginer in graduate school? I must say that I have freedom for choose courses.

I think this depends a lot on your own personal goals and interests as well as your abilities.

My goal is to be a researcher.

What country is this?  Graduate education differs substantially around the world.

The next Terry Tao or the next me?  If the next Terry Tao, how realistic is this?  If it turns out you can't get a job that gives you enough time (whatever that means for you) for research, would you jump off a bridge, or do you have secondary goals you might want to consider?  Do the areas you are interested in require knowledge of a wider or narrower range of mathematics?

Deep enough to prove something; broad enough to set the new results in proper context.

@JeffE: That's an appropriate goal by the end of a PhD in math.  For a masters (in a US-like system) I would set the sights lower: enough depth in core areas that a PhD admission committee is convinced you are adequately prepared.

Breadth for masters students.

" just as professional musicians doesn't just hear say classical music, but rock music, or latin music to get inspiration" -- I had to focus very precisely on exactly what was needed in order to get through a rigorous music degree.  I had little time for experimenting or shilly-shallying.

Please see this answer

This isn't a question with a correct answer.  I think most people who've been around math departments for a while have seen students go way too far to one side of this or another: students who think they know the first week of their Ph.D. the only field of math in which they want to work, and students who seem to constantly be learning new things, but never seem to settle down and concentrate on something.  Lots of different strategies can work, and there's a lot of luck in how these things work out.
If you plan to do a Ph.D. in the US, then I would think about things this way: while you're doing your masters, you should be figuring out where you want to do your Ph.D. and preparing yourself for that.  If you plan on going to another school, there's not too much point in specializing before you get there, since don't know what advisors will be available there.  Taking some advanced courses, and choosing a brand area is fine, but you can feel comfortable trying to get a broad base.
You can reasonably expect to have 5 years to finish your Ph.D. after you arrive at the school where you will do so (so after you finish your master's degree, if you plan on moving).  If this is the case, then, I would worry if:

at the end of your first year, you don't know what broad area of math you'd like to work in (number theory, PDE's, etc.).
at the end of your second year, you don't know who your advisor will be.
at the end of your third year, you don't know what the underlying objects in your thesis will be and how to work with them
at the end of your fourth year, you don't know the statement of the main theorem of your thesis

You shouldn't take this as gospel (at some schools expect students to finish in 6 year, so you can sneak an extra year in there somewhere), and of course, being worried doesn't mean that things can't be fixed, but what you can relax if you haven't done yet.

I like this answer but I'd wish to see some tie-in with strategy for exam prep.  Apparently OP's department is not very structured, so OP will have to do some self-structuring.


text:
Called for a final interview with the university president after a notice of someone else getting hired for the position. Why?
Two months ago I was notified that I did not receive a full-time position. I was also informed of who was hired and why. Two weeks ago I was called for a final interview with the president of the university. I think this is odd. Does anybody have any ideas of why I would be invited for a final interview when the decision about who is being hired has already been made?
The chair of the department in the USA institution is the one who notified me, and everyone else, about who is receiving the position and why.
Any chance this might be a fake interview so the university can say they followed protocol? Does this happen in academia?

What exactly did they tell you about this interview?

Fascinating question. Good luck, and please let us know what happened!

"I was also informed of who was hired and why" - That is rather unusual. Did they say why they told you this?

A country tag would be helpful. @J.Mini, afaik, this would be the norm in Sweden.

Just a tip: if you are using your real name to post - don't...

Can you not just ask?

Another possibility than those mentioned by Anton Menshov is that there is another position that might be open. In such a case it might be quite different from the one you applied for, especially if you have some special skills. It might be one that the president has the authority to fill without a search.
Follow it up. It might be a unique opportunity.

Absolutely could happen. Something similar happened to me. They called me to recommend me to apply to a related position at a different university - which I got.

Shouldn't they at least mention the reason for the interview? It seems strange not to do so and keep the OP in the dark.

@camden_kid perhaps they cannot or do not want to put the reason in writting

The possibilities would vary from

the miscommunications between university administration and the department and/or HR employee making an appointment by mistake

to

the chance that the person who was initially offered a position ended up rejecting it for some reason. And you [and potentially several other runner-ups] are being called up for the next interview round.

Can you ask about it? Sure. Can you simply go for an interview and find out about the situation there? Definitely, especially if it is a video interview or an interview that does not involve traveling. Both strategies are viable and have their advantages and benefits.

If you are asked to attend for a final interview, presumably there is some position on offer that they think you might be suitable for (unless this is an administrative mistake).  This can occur when another candidate was initially selected for the position but then can't take the position for some reason.  It can also occur if they hire a candidate or the position you previously interviewed for, but then identify another position where they think you might be suitable.  In any case, you can certainly contact the adminsitration and they will be able to tell you what you are interviewing for, so that you can prepare adequately.

I was on the hiring committee for a university position a couple years ago. People withdraw from offers fairly often and for a number of reasons. We had a woman that was our top candidate who we offered the position to. In her last interview, after accepting the position I might add, she said she could only work here if we found a position to hire her husband for as well. We refused and she withdrew her acceptance. It was late enough that we couldn't contact the runners up had to start the faculty search again the next year.
Accepting on the condition that your spouse is hired is fairly common in academia as we have a few couples hired in our department for just that reason. They likely have the same position or a very similar one available that they are offering you.

My situation was similar.  I applied for a position at a university.  I was told that they liked me but decided to go with another candidate.
A while later, they reached out to me again and told me that the other candidate was not working out and they would like to extend an offer to me.  It had been sufficiently long that I had forgotten a lot about them - so I requested another interview.  After talking with them, I decided to take the position.
They did not tell me who the other candidate was, but considering the university's transparency ... you can look up on their website who has been hired to what position ... I could have figured it out had I been motivated.
I have no idea if my situation is the same as yours, but it seems likely.  Regardless if you are curious why not ask the President at the interview.  I think the President should be happy to explain the unique circumstances that caused the University to give your application a second chance.  However, if the President bristles at that question, this would be to me a strong hint that the opportunity is not good.

I suspect they could trying to comply with HR rules where it might be required that 3 candidates are actually interviewed for every position offered.  If they interview you they can tick the boxes to say they followed the HR  process.
Alternatively maybe the other person offered the job did not take up the position so they're still looking.

Summary of all the answers:

Another position opened. There's a separate role, and they think you'd be a good fit from the first interview.
First candidate did not work out. Despite the interview going well, the new candidate wasn't able to do the role, or had some fatal character flaw that made them unworkable.
First candidate resigned. The job environment wasn't suitable for them and they decided to pursue another opportunity.
First candidate wanted extra accommodation. For example, hiring their spouse. Whatever they asked for wasn't possible to accommodate and was brought up last minute.
Appointment by mistake. For example, there was a communication issue between departments, they overlooked a key piece of information, or the full hiring process wasn't followed.

You definitely would not be unreasonable to ask the reason of what happened, as there are lots of possibilities. Do drop back to let us know as I'm sure we are all curious.

Some time ago, I was offered a job by a multinational engineering company.  I had done a phone interview and attended a set of in person interviews and tests.
Two weeks later, they called me again and asked me if I would be interested in taking an initial phone interview.  I asked them why this was, given that I had already been offered a post - this was something of a surprise to the lady on the phone and she said she would look into it and get back to me.
She never got back to me, and I never heard anything further about the job offer.
I took this to be a useful red flag about this workplace and moved on.
In short, it probably doesn't hurt to ask - at the very least it means you can turn up to your interview appropriately prepared.

This is the opposite situation - the employer told the OP that they were not selected for the position they applied for, but is now inviting them to another interview. Your situation clearly indicates the employer made a mistake - they made an offer and then did not know they had done so - whereas in OP's situation there is nothing indicating the employer has made any mistake.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


text:
How can I add an article to my Scopus id, that is already associated with another author's profile id
One of my articles shows on other author's Scopus id. How can I claim that article for my Scopus id?

Go to your profile page.

Click on "Edit profile".

You will be redirected to the "Author Feedback Wizard", where one category is called "Review documents".

Scroll down and click on "Search missing documents".

Find your paper and confirm - if you cannot find it, perhaps make sure that the publication is indeed eligible to be indexed in Scopus.

You could also try to link your profile to your ORCID, to see if that helps.


text:
Can a company employee become an associate editor of a scientific journal?
I am wondering whether a company employee can take a role of associate editor of a scientific journal. Let's take the following example.
Suppose I am a university professor, and my role is teaching and guiding students and doing research. At the same time, I am also taking a role as an associate editor of a scientific journal (SCI with good IF).
If I quit my job at the university and moved to a company/industry and my main role changed from teaching and research to focus on company products (of course science based products), then can I still continue my role as an associate editor of that journal?
My question is, how do researchers look at this?

I think the first question should be, how would the company and the journal look at this? If you do some of your work as an editor during normal working hours, the company might be unhappy. If you are completely unavailable except for some evenings and weekends, the journal likely won't be happy.

@mlk I think you greatly overestimate the responsiveness that journals expect.

Many top journals in my applied CS field have associate editors and even editors-in-chief employed by Big Tech (Microsoft, Google, etc.), so the answer is evidently "yes".

@mlk Company employees work 8h/d, five days a week. Typical professors (my own anecdotal evidence ;) ) twelve to fourteen, including Saturdays.

@Karl I wasn't referring to the number of hours, but to the specific hours. Being in academia myself, I too tend to underestimate the value of being able to arrange a call or meeting during normal office hours.

@mlk But office hours are irrelevant for a journal with authors all over the world. Most of your fellow editors won't be in the same time zone, either. And most people with higher academic grades have a lot of flexibility in their working time, also in industry.

I am a researcher at a company and also an associate editor at two journals.
If a company supports research in any meaningful way, it will generally recognize the value of professional service (including editing journals, reviewing manuscripts, and organizing conferences) as part of scientific participation. You might be able to make your work as an editor part of your official job tasks, or you might need to do it "off the clock" - that will depend on both the company and the amount to time expected to be needed. In general, however, most companies will support volunteer professional service at least as far as not obstructing you.
If you would be paid for your work rather than being a volunteer, however, that would likely be significantly more complicated. Most researchers at companies are full-time salaried employees, and employment contracts often require that one get explicit permission and go through a conflict of interest process before accepting any second source of income.
Bottom line: volunteering is easy, getting paid is hard.

Yes, it is volunteering.. getting NO paid... I think, as long as the main role is research, it is quite acceptable by everyone including the Publisher as well as other Editorial members of the Journal... But how it will be treated when the main role won't be research but to focus on producing good products of the company? Let's assume I will continue research outside of working hours and publish few collaborative and/or own papers every year..

@Kay Ask before you join the company. Most reasonable companies won't mind. You will need to determine, however,  whether they would prefer for you to declare your affiliation as the company or as an independent researcher.

Yes
There's nothing fundamentally against a non-university professor becoming an editor of a scientific journal. Such editors need to be experts in their field, and there are plenty of experts that aren't affiliated with a university. For example, Five IBM fellows have won the Nobel Prize. Surely they'd be suitable to edit a journal in their field (and most journals would be ecstatic to have them), even though IBM is not a university.

You have not specified your field so I assume that this is a field where editors do not get a salary from the journals they are editors for. In this case, I know many people who are affiliated with a company but who also are associate editors in one or more research journals. Companies also do some decent R&D, but this has to be agreed upon with the HR or superior to make sure that it is fine. The people I know handle papers outside their work office hours.

As an example, the International Journal of Forecasting has among its editors Domenico Giannone from Amazon and John Guerard from McKinley Capital Management. (Also a couple of people from central banks, probably not what you have in mind, though again, non-university.)
It all depends on the field, and on the journal. If you are an acknowledged expert in your field and based on this are invited to join an editorial board, then your expertise will not suddenly disappear when you leave academia. If your field is applied, then editorial members from outside academia may even be sought after to bring a little balance and diversity to editorial decisions.
Of course, if your position outside academia means that you do less research, then your expertise may indeed become dated. If you have gone five years without publishing, then you may not be invited back in the next turnover of the editorial board. Then again, your editorial work may be enough to keep your knowledge up to date.

I am an associate editor of a well-respected journal (arguably the top journal in my field, which is a branch of CS/math/engineering). I have never worked for a university, and have published very few research papers, though I do conference talks every once in a while.
The companies I have worked for have been happy about my editor position, because it gives the company some visibility and credibility, and helps to maintain connections with academia. There has never been any mention of conflict of interest.
The journal and conference organisers are happy because I provide useful insights into interesting industrial problems and the real-world relevance of research.
The journal doesn't pay me, but I don't think there would be a problem even if they did.


text:
Is it okay to submit the revised manuscript well before the due date?
Recently I received comments from two reviewers on my submitted manuscript as major revision. Both the reviewers have given a few major comments along with some minor comments. The major comments are something like this:

It is essential to analyse.
Please add some more explanation on this.
Please discuss with xyz method and check the difference in the results.
Why didn't you do it?

The due date is 45 days.
I finished the first 3 major comments in a week. However, I have planned to work on comment number 4 as my future research. I had also mentioned it in the manuscript before submission. But still one reviewer commented as "Why didn't you do it?" So I have explained little more about it (why am I skipping it here) in the revised manuscript.
Now my question is, can I submit the revised manuscript now? Isn't it very early i.e. 38 days earlier than the due date?
If yes, will it give a bad impression that I have another 6 weeks, still I am skipping comment number 4?
Note: The reviewer has not told me work on comment number 4. I am also not interested in including it in this manuscript.

If it is possible to work on point 4 and not too hard, why don't you do it?. Because of this reason one of our group papers got rejected, although it was a valid approach(we wanted to extend the analysis in another paper, while the reviewer considered that the paper is poor without this analysis).

Yes, it is fine to submit revisions early.
The timescale doesn't really come into it. Either the revised paper is good enough for publication, or it is not. The logistics of when you carry out the work and how long it takes are entirely up to you. The important thing is that, in your covering letter, you explain in detail why you have chosen not to follow recommendation 4.
In fact, submitting the revisions early could even benefit you. It will mean that the paper is fresh in the editor's mind, which could mean they are able to make an informed decision more quickly.
Note that if you did want to do number 4, but 45 days was not long enough, it would be very reasonable to contact the editor to explain this and ask for an extension.
(NB I don't quite understand what point 4 is asking, so it's possible there is some subtlety I am missing. This is Okay!! Why didn't you do it? What is "this"/"it" and what is meant by it being "okay"? I presume these are not the exact words that the reviewer used.)

Yes, you are right. Reviewer has not commented exactly that, but the meaning was same. Thank you very much.

The editor might very much appreciate the early return. Editors often must nag late responders.. You will  take one worry off his or her plate early.

You don't necessarily have to reply to the reviewer's comments by making revisions directly in your paper. You can always make a rebuttal to the comment in the covering letter, as long as your response is justified. Of course, if the reviewer is pointing out significant flaws in your experiment or discussion then this will not be sufficient.
In the end, it is the editor's decision. If they are satisfied that you have addressed the other comments and that it is suitable to address comment 4 in future work, then the sooner the revised manuscript is submitted, the better.


text:
Is asking questions with very short answers on major exams recommended?
As a part of TA work, I need to give questions for major exams. I need to evaluate the answer sheets of students later.
Let us consider the following simple examples of questions:
1)  Briefly describe natural numbers.
The answer to this question is not unique. It depends totally on the student's perspective on natural numbers. And the answer is generally long.
2) How many natural numbers are there in total? Is 6.6 a natural number?
The answer to this question is too short (Infinite, No). The answer does not depend on the student's perspective on natural numbers. It tests the knowledge of students regarding natural numbers.
I want to give questions of second type, which can test the student's knowledge and intelligence in detail and avoids long answers, ambiguous answers, long evaluation time, partial marking, unnecessary bargaining for marks by students, etc.
But some of my colleagues and faculty are saying that it is similar to multiple choice questions and fill in the blank questions, which are not recommended for major exams, which need long answers. I am confused, but strongly want to give answers of type 2 (single line answers).
Assume that there is no copying during exams.

I think you are mixing up several different ideas and suggesting a false dichotomy. There are at least two orthogonal axes here: short vs long question, and descriptive vs practical/computational question.

You're starting from the wrong point if you ask whether short questions/answers are good or bad. Instead, start by asking yourself (i) what you want to students to demonstrate in the exam, (ii) what you want students to learn during an exam. (I personally like to ask questions where I hope that students come out of the exam and say "Oh, I don't think I really thought about it this way. I learned something new today.")
When you have answers to these two questions, you can set about writing your questions. In some cases, you will want to test factual knowledge, and for those there are often short questions with short answers like the ones you show in your post. But oftentimes, you will also want to test understanding, for example by asking for counter-examples to a statement that at face value sounds reasonable, along with an explanation of why the statement was wrong, or by posing an "Explain to me why..." question. And then you may also want to test process abilities, like "Show that solutions of the Laplace equation are unique". In both of these latter two categories, many questions will have long answers, and so they will be more work to grade, but they have their value.
So what I would suggest is to not start with "Should I ask questions with short answers?" but with "What is it I want to achieve with this exam?".


text:
How to say good-bye to an unhelpful and undisciplined professor?
DISCLAIMER: the following story does not necessarily correspond to the facts in reality. In particular, it does not necessarily correspond to the author of this post and his/her supervisor.
I joined my advisor's lab as a PhD student. I developed my own new direction for my lab, which is recognized by the community. We have presented papers at the top conference in my area. My advisor had never presented their before.
Professor: little scientific contribution
In the publications we have written together, I have been the first author and can claim 98% of the scientific contributions. The other 2% is for my advisor's very minor suggestions. Most of the time, after the paper is accepted, the finalization process is 100% on me.
When we have other co-authors, my advisor tries to appear to input more and implies that I have been told to do something (for example, "as we discussed earlier"). My advisor often implies to me that the others are unhelpful to my work, and seems to prefer working in isolation with me.
My advisor has recognized my contribution, saying "your work" as in "sorry for talking about your work" in internal meetings. However, my advisor also seemed to insinuate that I am the one being overly protective about my originality, saying on several occasions in a jocular tone "No problem. I can be the first author."
Professor: little scientific discipline
My advisor asked me once to add someone who did not contribute at all as a coauthor. On several occasions, he/she suggested me to submit the same paper to multiple conferences, and to spam low-quality conferences with my publications. Now that he has seen the benefits of my way of quality-thresholding, he started to educate me to have a high standard.
Professor: the good side
My advisor has a pleasant personality, enjoys a good reputation among certain communities in our university, and has encouraged me when I fail. Our working relationship is a really, really patient one, and my advisor can leave me alone for several months without pushing. This is not sarcasm but the biggest help that I was given. I have been able to take a larger-than-usual number of vacation days, and have found that my advisor never crosses the line in communication.
Student: helpless
I have been very exhausted writing papers and am suffering mental problems from having to fight on the frontiers of science with little help. I am just always stressed.  I find it difficult to smile or even to concentrate, and have nightmares every few days.
At the graduation stage, my advisor continues to talking about the "next paper", and talks about doing post-docs, without agreeing on my graduation date.  He/she intentionally delayed some of these administrative procedures. Frankly I feel too disgusted to continue this "co-authorship".
I feel less confident about complaining to the university, because (1) I do not speak the local language; (2) I find it difficult to be sociable because of my health issues; (3) I am from a third-world country, which could bias people's judgement; (4) I rely on him/her to organizing the defense; and (5) what should I complain about?
Questions
Generally, how does a Ph.D. student. who has progressed well, safely and permanently leave an unhelpful and undisciplined professor, to avoid being intentionally delayed in the graduation process, and to roll on with the rest of his/her life?
What are the general limits of a student's rights in the process of getting his/her Ph.D.? Can he/she submit the thesis and demand to defend, without respecting his/her advisor's suggestions to stay longer as a Ph.D. student or a post-doc?

What country is this school in? Also, if you are close to done with your degree, you might want to just tough it out. Find another prof you can talk to about the issues, but it sounds like you have some nice publications that should allow you to finish relatively soon. Moving somewhere else might set you back several years.

Can you please try to refine this question down to something more answerable and more generalizable?  If would help if you could remove a lot of the detail and focus on the particular elements that you think are most important in defining your question.

If you're so close to finishing, why not finish with this supervisor and get a post doc elsewhere?

Also, check employment law in your country. In the UK you are allowed to terminate an employment contract as long as you give the specified amount of notice (for example 30 days). Being offered a post doc to help pay your living cost should be seen as a benefit, not a hindrance.

@BillBarth: I choose to be as anonymous as possible. "Moving somewhere else might set you back several years" Indeed.

@jakebeal: I will edit the post to refine the question(s) soon. Thanks already for the suggestions and edits.

@Rikki it is my plan to finish soon without doing a post-doc with my current advisor. This may not be easy because I feel that he is making all efforts to make me stay to "finish my work". Our working mode is like a black-box, meaning that he handles a lot of administrative stuff for me. I only have partial information regarding my rights.

I think you're well within your rights to find out your rights. Go speak to the postgraduate administrative office about your situation.

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/45882/64

Related questions.

My friend, I would suggest that you start by seeing a medical professional, and the dean of students in your department or university.  If it is difficult for you to describe your situation in a conversation, then write a short statement and start the conversation by giving the statement to the person.  There are multiple aspects to your situation, but I want to make sure you understand that a university has a responsibility to support its students, and the job of a medical professional is to care for patients.  If your university has an office for students with disabilities, you could talk to them as well.  I think that your level of distress is making it more difficult for you to deal with your academic stress.
Now, about your academic situation.  Your advisor is not everything you would have liked to have as an advisor.  But please try to focus on the positives about him and your relationship for now, and postpone processing the negatives until later.  Supporting your parents is your top priority right now, and you will start to feel better when you are able to begin helping them.  Wanting to care for elderly, infirm parents is a basic human drive.
Here is a proposed text for when you go see the dean of students.  If
necessary, you can have this translated to the local language.

I am
giving you a written statement about my situation because it is
difficult for me to begin a conversation about my problem.
My parents
are alone and in poor health, and I feel an urgent need to finish my
PhD and leave [name of city or country where you are] to go care for
them.
This worry is making me so distressed that life has become very
difficult for me here.
I believe that I am ready to graduate, having
completed my PhD research and published several papers about my work.
I don't know how to convince my advisor that it is time for him to
schedule my defense.
Is there someone in the university who can help
me communicate my situation to my advisor?  I am finding it
increasingly difficult to carry on ordinary conversations because of the high level of distress I feel.

This is a simplification of everything that's going on with you at present -- but that's okay.
For the medical professional, you can also list your symptoms, for example: thoughts of suicide, frequent nightmares, difficulty concentrating, difficulty smiling or talking to people -- and anything else that may be going on.
For these conversations, you must set aside the feelings of despair, while you are having the conversation.  It should be as though you were there negotiating for a friend or acquaintance, not about yourself.  Make sure that you don't get discouraged if the first person you speak with does nothing to help you -- just try someone else.
If you need to show your statement to a receptionist or secretary, that's okay.  You owe it to your parents to get the help you need.

I see the lightness of humanity from your actions and words. I cannot risk my degree to complain unless it is extremely necessary. It is vital not only to myself. I am in the shadow for too long and I don't trust someone in the university will just play the role of justice. I am saving every penny for my family and I do not have money for the psychologist. I don't trust them either. My parents are too poor to take any bad news. I have stopped talking to them. I am in a dead lock and starting to write another paper. I am communicating to no one except the people here. Please, let my post live.

@anonymous, you don't need to make a complaint, you only need to ask for help with communicating.  You are in a tunnel that makes communication more difficult. - - - At this point, I am not suggesting that you see a psychologist for treatment; and in fact, I think it might be better to start with a simple MD, such as a family practitioner or internist. - - - Just go show the text to someone, as though you were reporting about someone else's problem (not your own).

The short answer is: Graduate and look for your next lab/job.
Of course, due to the circumstances this is challenging. From my own experience, your situation is not at all uncommon to emerge during a PhD. Feeling like your supervisor takes credit, when all the work is done by you, feeling neglected in terms of supervision. I'd say this rings a bell with many, many PhD students out there. It seems like situations like this are just part of growing up in the academic sense.
On the other hand, you sound like you have already been quite successful on the scientific side, with some high-profile output. Your publications in first-tier locations should help you get you a postdoc relatively easily (in case you want to stay in academia, that is).
Moreover, your supervisor seems willing to give you more financial support. If he keeps talking about the "next paper", this means that he approves of your work. After all, he benefits a lot from it, too. You have some leverage there.
My suggestion is: graduate and get out of there. To do so, you need a plan. You need to 1) get clear picture of what will go into your thesis, and set up a concrete schedule for writing it, 2) make up your mind what kind of career you want to pursue (academia, industry, something else), 3) start networking for your next job NOW. 1) is definitely the highest priority, but 2 and 3 shouldn't be neglected either.
Once you made up your mind, talk to your supervisor about how and when you're planning to graduate, and how much financial support you need to complete. I'm sure he will be supportive of your plans.

Thank you for the suggestions. They are really really helpful. I am not sure whether this is "not uncommon": an adviser violated scientific ethics by jailing the real contributer, putting his/her name in without contributions, and trying to cover it up. I fear very much that if I complain, the officer may say the same, "it is not uncommon", and then convert the problem to my side.