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Is it common to cite the numbers of results a search engine yields as evidence for the prevalence of something online?
Is it common in academia to include the number of results a Google search on a keyword yields as an evidence for the prevalence of something online?
I'm not intending to base my research paper on this evidence; it is just a supporting point in a paragraph.
For example, I'm writing a research paper on Stack Exchange; one of the paragraphs is about how popular Stack Exchange is in the internet.
In one of the paragraph, I would mention that a Google search on the keyword 'Stack Exchange' yielded about 49,600,000 results, which shows how popular it is among netizens.

Are you only interested in online presence of the "something"? A Google n-grams (https://books.google.com/ngrams) result would be more robust. It covers books, and gives you year-by-year counts.

I have seen this in presentations, publications, and even job materials. And it always struck me as flippant for precisely the reasons discussed above.

This question appears to be off-topic because it is not about academia

@EnergyNumbers Questions about whether a kind of source should be used (e.g. "Can I cite Wikipedia?") seem to be on-topic, according to our history as a community.

@ff524 this is a question about research methods within a particular field, it seems to me, and those have generally been off topic. It's not applicable to academia broadly: just to web metrics. [stats.se] might conceivably take it, but my suspicion is that it's too low quality to migrate anywhere.

@EnergyNumbers I don't think the OP's research area is necessarily web metrics - he/she is asking about making a "supporting point in a paragraph" that some topic X is prevalent online, the kind of thing that could go towards motivation for any kind of research (e.g. "We address problem X, which according to the volume of Google searches has been the subject of a great deal of discussion..")

@ff524 I think you're right that the OP's research area is not web metrics. But that's the area that they've strayed into, and what they're asking about. Web metrics is not academia: it's just a research method in one corner of a discipline. Asking about research methods in one corner of a discipline is usually off-topic here.

I would regard this as data gathered by the authors. Ideally it should be presented in a table or figure, and the methodology section should note which URL was used, which keywords, which settings, what time and date, and perhaps mention a dump of the first results page in the supplement. If you have too few counts for a table, just say "we were able to observe X hits on Google as of the time of writing".

I'd rather not do this. As others have hinted, the number of search results is somewhat chaotic; and often we see that it's easy to make every query return any desired number of results by minor tweaking of the keywords &c. - Depending on the audience these numbers may be perceived as meaningful/impressive/..., but that's purely superficial and using them for this is not good practice.

Do not do this. The "approximate" number of hits Google reports is completely worthless. To see why, look at this number on both the first and the tenth page of Google hits:
First results page
Tenth results page
When I just did this, I got "approximately 9,010,000 hits" reported on the first results page... but only "approximately 48 hits" on the tenth page.
Your results will probably vary, depending on your search engine bubble (another reason why this number is useless).

EDIT: It seems like Google at least does not report the number of hits any more as they used to. Which, per my answer, was an absolutely worthless piece of "information" - the first results page would report "about" a very large number of hits, and the tenth page a much smaller number. I will  leave this answer up.
Essentially, I would recommend that if you are interested in the number of hits a search serves up, do not trust the number it self-reports without stress-testing it, e.g., by clicking through to the tenth or fiftieth page of results and seeing whether the reported number of results stays the same (or at least decreases sensibly: if there are 50 results per page, then at the end of the tenth page, you should have N-450 "more hits" if there were N "more hits" at the bottom of the first page).

FWIW... I haven't seen Google counts in a paper, but I have seen academic blogs like Language Log (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/) use them. However, they always emphasise that they used the count on the last page of the results, for the reason Stephan mentions.

I know the "bubble" affects the order in which links are presented, but would it affect the word count? (I don't know the answer, just curious.)

+1 - Even if people do this it is not justified. Another example of inappropriate analysis was Google Flu trends.

@mhwombat: good question about the filter bubble and the word count. I have no idea. How many "approximate hits" do the two links report for you?

Someone seems not to agree and downvotes. I would be interested in knowing how this answer is not helpful. Would downvoters be so kind to comment on this?

For the first link, I get: Tuairim is 8,960,000 torthaí (0.31 soicind) and the second link: Leathanach a 10 as tuairim is 9,020,000 torthaí (0.49 soicind)

Ah, but if I start on the first page, and click one by one to the last page (page 5 for me), I get: Leathanach a 5 as tuairim is 45 torthaí (0.22 soicind)

Good point, so I won't downvote, but bad answer. Question is asking for facts, not subjective advice. Also, you oversell your point: There's less hits on page 4 because Google hides "similar results", you can click the link to show them. Is the fact that many results are similar enough to cast doubt on the observation? Maybe, but the claims is "I got 9 million results" not "I got 9 million diverse results".

i get 13 million results for both... its exactly the same

I don't think such numbers would be accurate at all, altough they could probably be used as a rough, theoretical estimate.
2 reasons I can think of for why this would not be accurate at all:

Typos. Have you ever tried googling for 2 different spellings in order to figure out which is most likely the correct spelling? Unfortunately, the most used(popular) spelling is not always the correct one.
What this means is that the number of google hits is not a picture of reality, but a picture of what is in people's thoughts.
A phenomenon\activity\product being written about on the web is not equivalent to actually being used alot. What's being written on the web is primarily a picture of what's going on in people's heads, rather than what's actually around them. A new invention could be ground-breaking and get mentioned alot, even though only scientists would use it.

The question is asking about measuring "the prevalence of X online" not "the prevalence of X in reality"

I honestly haven't seen something like this in any publication. But I guess you could use it as some by-point, I would in that case provide the number of result of other popular search engines, something like: "xyz is highly sought after in the world wide webs, a simple key search 'xyz' using the most popular search engines yields impressive number of results (google: 49,600,000, bing: ..., yahoo: ..., etc.)"
Consider, however, that the search results also include ambiguous results for the provided key word(s). In your example, it is likely that that result of about 49,600,000 will include hits that contain "Stack" and "Overflow", but not the semantics that bind them into your intention. Please bear in mind that I'm aware that you are able to narrow your search down to a particular key word by using google tools, tweaks and skill, I'm merely providing an example, as depending on the "commonness" of the key word(s), the explicit narrowing down can be complex.

The popularity of a web site is only very loosely related to the number of search engine results. A better approach is to use traffic statistics, such as the web site's Alexa ranking:
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/stackoverflow.com
This places StackOverflow at rank 53, which means that only 52 sites are visited more frequently.
Either way, StackOverflow is so ubiquitous within the programming community that you probably don't need to qualify your claims of its popularity unless your paper is intended for non-programmers.

I believe the OP is not necessarily trying to claim something about the popularity of a website, but the popularity of some generic keyword/topic. (StackExchange was just an example.)

Given the way the example is phrased, I think it's reasonable to believe that there is value to the author in having the example answered.
If the intent of the question is about the popularity of a web site, this answer is still directly useful.


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Is it permitted to quote something with informal language, like an interview excerpt with 'haha', in a thesis?
One of the interview excerpt I want to quote include "haha."
Is it permitted to quote an interview excerpt with 'haha' in a thesis?
I asked because it seems like it is too informal.

Where do you want to quote it?

Why would you think you couldn't?

Consider asking people you write the excerpt for.

I want to quote it in a thesis. I asked because it is too informal.

Direct quotes are never informal.

You should consult with your advisor about conventions in your field.  I think generally, people lightly edit interviews such as these, so if the laughter isn't revelant to what the subject is saying, you can leave it out.  If it is important, you don't have to onomatopoetically transcribe it as "haha."  You can write
"[laughter]" or "[interviewee laughs]."

There is a difference between laughing and saying "haha": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClynhFKMs3c.

It is permitted to do whatever is necessary to get the information across.

@J.Zimmerman The question is whether something is permitted; my response is yes. How is it not an answer?

You might improve your response by addressing the issue of informality (it is not clear that the "haha" is necessary to get the information across).

@J.Zimmerman That's a question of whether it's advisable, not permitted.

source: Stack Exchange

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sort: votes


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Referencing others' ideas in introductions and conclusions?
Should citations be used in introductions and conclusions if they just introduce and summarize the body of the essay where all others' ideas are referenced in details?
Ideas that are not discussed in the body of the essay but belongs to others are excluded from this question.

Should citations be used in introductions and conclusions -- Yes.  But the rest of your question doesn't make sense to me.

If the same ideas are cited in the body where they are developed, I think there is no need as this is a mere repetition. However, if the introduction starts with a quote or some statistics that are not discussed in the body, of course they should be cited.

I think there is no need as this is a mere repetition — If the text is mere repetition, you should remove the duplicate text from the paper.  If the text is not mere repetition, you should cite the earlier source in both places.

If I understand your question, you're asking whether statements in an introduction or conclusion which summarise fully-referenced, more detailed statements in the body of your writing should be referenced too.
The answer is the same as for anything, regardless of where it's found in something you write:
If a statement is your own conclusion based on information you have drawn from outside sources, then as long as you note what information you got from which sources by referencing correctly within the body of the document where you explain how you came to your conclusion, you don't need to reference this conclusive or interpretive statement; it's the result of your own mental process.
On the other hand, if the statement is information from another source, you must reference it. Whether or not it's heavily summarised or you intend to expand on the statement, with references, later, the simple rule of referencing everything that did not originate with your own work still applies.
As a rule, though, I'd advise you to check with your teacher, tutor, student advisor, TA, lecturer, or whomever else applies. What I explained above is technically the right way to do it, but it wouldn't surprise me if some institutions at least aren't quite that strict.

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Adding scanned awards and certificates to LinkedIn profile?
I have seen two extreme kinds of LinkedIn profiles: one with very few info and the other full of not only written details but also visual.
I want to ask about your perception of the people who use the following LinkedIn feature quite passionately:
"Add or link to external documents, photos, sites, videos, and presentations."
Specifically, what do you think of profiles that display scanned awards and certificates? Is it professional?

How is this about academia? (Are you a researcher/academic applying for academic jobs?)

I'm part of this academic community. Needless to mention that I'm asking as an academic about an issue related to the online presence of academics.

From your question, none of that is clear - you need to add the relevant context (what is your current position, what kind of academic jobs are you applying for, what field are you in) to get a meaningful answer

I see what you mean, but I strongly think it is a general question seeking an answer that could apply to academics regardless of the details you mentioned. Thank you.

Something that looks professional for an undergrad looking for a graduate position might look completely unprofessional (or just weird) for a postdoc looking for a faculty position...

I appreciate your input, but I think we are quibbling over unimportant details. If I wanted to keep quibbling, I could say that some commonsensical professionalism is universal (I can see postmodernist anti-universalists frowning) and age- or position-neutral. Please, let us allow answers to mention these potential differences. If you have the authority to edit the question, please do it. Personally, I'm not convinced  I should.

@EasternRiver I think perhaps this question is best suited for Workplace.SE as Academics is not the only place that has awards and certificates.

@MichaelC. As you said, it is not the only place but one of the places. And obviously, my question concerns academics.

@EasternRiver IMO, I would think no. It's not hard for me to mock up an award for "Bestest Employee of All Time" and put it on my LinkedIn profile. Or have a certification in "Advanced Cyber-robotic Electronic Engineering" from JohnDoe Institute of Technology.

Attempting to answer this question broadly, by and large the answer is "your LinkedIn profile doesn't matter." LinkedIn is simply not that relevant to your academic life. Your CV should be up-to-date and complete, and you should be an expert in your field. Whether you keep your social media page full of details or completely empty will have a minimal effect on how you are viewed, your academic status, job applications, or any of that stuff.
Beyond the above, the same general guidelines that apply to everyone else vis-à–vis social media apply here as well. Focus on your research, it'll serve you well in the long run.

That was view too. I found it trivial, but I wanted to know other views. Thank you.


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To eventually become a mathematics lecturer in the UK, does undergraduate degree have to be from a good university?
What is the initial process to become a Mathematics's lecturer at a University in London. I want to be able to lecture in a top university in the United Kingdom such as Kings College.
What is the academic ladder that I will have to climb?
Would my undergraduate program have to be from a good university or could I graduate from a mediocre university and then enroll in a masters program at a well known university followed by a PhD?
My goal is to become a lecturer and go into research in Mathematics.

General approach for what you ask: Masters+Phd. Participate in writing research grants, publications, post-doc/industry for a few years, lecturer, bliss. However, I know that some universities internally hire for research positions after a candidate completes her PhD. So the answer may vary with university/country but this would be my general approach.

First, let me point out that a career as you describe it not entirely plannable: There are many more who want it than who get it, and even if you are talented and work hard, success is not guaranteed.
It probably won't matter where you did your undergrad once you've received your PhD, although going to different universities could be beneficial, as it would expose you to more different academic cultures etc.
Once you have received your PhD, you'll want to do a good postdoc. Going to some top university abroad, or becoming a Junior Research Fellow in Cambridge or Oxford could be good choices. Make sure that you develop contacts at your desired university.
After some postdoc experience you can apply for eg a Royal Society Research Fellowship or an EPSRC Early Career Fellowship, to be held at your desired university. During that time, try to convince the university to offer you a permament position after the fellowship ends.

This point really cannot be emphasized enough: There is NO guaranteed path to a lecturer (≈US tenure-track) position in mathematics.  There are MANY more qualified, talented, hard-working, productive, and successful mathematics PhDs than there are tenure-track faculty positions.  It's normal for top departments to receive more than 1000 applications for each faculty position.

@JeffE, 1000 applicants for each faculty position ? I think it too much. Where are those PhDs producing from ? For example, in Number Theory or Algebraic Geometry, I don't think so many applicants are there. May be I am wrong

@MAS: According to NSF (https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf21308/data-tables) over two thousand math and statistics PHDs were granted in the US in 2019; worldwide that number is probably closer to 5000.  It costs absolutely nothing to submit a PDF to a web site.  So why not apply to Oxford and Cambridge and Harvard and MIT and Stanford and Chicago and...?

@JeffE, I said little different if you look at my comment. You said 2000 math and stat PhD in 2019 in USA including all disciplines in math (e.g., algebra, number theory, geometry, PDE etc) and stat. As far as I know in my country generally faculty posts are advertised mentioning the '"specialty". So I don't think a position for number theory or algebraic geometry would have  1000 applications for one position. At least from my math career, I am aware of it. Forget about Oxford/Cambridge in my country candidates don't apply in other parts of the country with at most 50 applicants for 1 post

@JeffE, Let me clarify another aspect. If you talking about this data table002, then total number of math+stat Phds from 2014-2019 is the number 2012. So it includes all PhDs produced in 2015, 2016,2017, 2018, 2019 rather than 2019 only

Do you need to get a PhD to be a maths lecturer at King's College?
In order to answer this question,
you should take a look at the list of faculty
of the King's College London Mathematics Department.
Glancing through the list of titles ("Dr X", "Professor Y")
suggests to me that all of the academic staff have a PhD.
Do you need to get a PhD from a good university to be a maths lecturer at King's College?
In order to answer this question,
I humbly suggest that you can spend some time
to look through the education history
of some of the academic staff of King's College London.
This will give you a sense of
the type of universities which you would need to obtain your PhD from
in order to be qualified to be a lecturer at King's College.
Do you really want to do a PhD in maths?
If I read your question correctly,
you have not yet enrolled in college.
It is good that you have a high-level idea
that you want to be a maths lecturer.
However, it is hard to know whether you are capable of being a maths lecturer
and whether you would enjoy this as your job
until you have taken many undergraduate and graduate classes in mathematics.
Once you have taken such classes,
if at that point you are good at maths and enjoy it,
then it may be a good idea to apply for a PhD in maths.
My father's advice
My father got a PhD in mathematics from Berkeley
and has been employed as a maths professor for over 25 years.
When I was younger, I had wanted to be a maths professor just like him.
However, he advised me against this,
because the job market for academic math jobs is very competitive.
In other words, there are many more maths PhD graduates
who want an academic math job
than there are academic math jobs available.
As a result, if you aren't really really smart,
it may be hard to get an academic math job.
Some math PhDs may take a few post-doc appointments (which have low pay),
hoping to find a permanent academic math job,
but drop out and find some sort of regular job.
My father's advice was for me to study for a PhD in a related math-y field,
e.g. applied math, (non-theoretical) computer science, operations research.
In those fields it is easier to get an academic job.
I did follow his advice, and am studying for a PhD in operations research.
Most of the students who graduate from my department can get a tenure-track job,
or those who want to work in industry can get good jobs in Google, LinkedIn, banks, consulting, etc.
I would conclude therefore that most of the graduating PhD students in my department
are happy with their employment opportunities.
Do your research
I would encourage you to find out more about the benefits and costs
of an academic math career as you go about your undergrad studies.
For example, talk to math professors to ask them
whether they think you have the ability to be a maths lecturer.
Also, talk to some current PhD maths students
to find out how they feel about their job prospects.
As Jesus once said, "Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won't you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?"
So before you apply for a PhD,
get a sense of what type of job you could get with the PhD,
whether you want to spend 3 or more years of your life with low pay as a graduate student/post-doc in order to get the job,
and what your chances are of getting this job.
Good luck!

"Do you need to get a PhD to be a maths lecturer at King's College?" Of course the answer is yes, but...who asked that question?

Thanks for the great reply. I am currently a second year student at London Metropolitan University. The maths is pretty easy here and I try to study it to a degree of being able to teach it to others in my course which I do at the moment and I enjoy the teaching aspect but I also research into my modules too and enjoy that aspect too. Research aspect as in reading further into my modules, understanding the whys and how's of it. My goal is at the moment to study masters in mathematics at kings college. I want to know about other applied maths fields but haven't researched into them.

The OP asked "I want to be able to lecture in a Top university in the UK such as Kings College... My goal is to become a lecturer and go into research in Mathematics." I took his question a little more literally as "I want to lecture in King's College in mathematics."

You're welcome! As JeffE mentioned in his comment, it is extremely difficult to get a maths lecturer position in a good university. Take some hard graduate maths classes, and talk to maths profs/TAs, to get a better sense of what maths research is like. If your main interest/gift is teaching, there are other opportunities: 1) to be a lecturer in a teaching college, but from heresay the pay can be low, you have to teach a lot of classes, and you don't do research. 2) to be a teacher in a high school. If your main interest is math, try more applied fields: CS, operations research, statistics

If you have done good research no one cares where you first degree is from. However, bear the following points in mind
1) it is hard to move up universities
2) it is hard to do a good PhD without a good supervisor and without a good research environment
3) it is very hard to get a good postdoc if you haven't done your PhD at a top university and it is hard if you have.
If you are really good at maths, one option is to try and go beyond what is taught at your current university to leave you well prepared. Then do Part III at Cambridge, if you do well there, you will be well placed to get a good phd place.

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MLA in-text citation of documents written by an organization, like UNESCO?
Please, how should I write an MLA in-text citation of a UNESCO document?
The document in question is the UNESCO World Heritage Convention. I am using the PDF version.
The Document has no author.
The MLA recommends using a shortened version of the title of references with no authors but I don't know if this applies also to UNESCO documents.
Thanks

Hi HifaMo! You'll have to add more detail or nobody will be able to help you. Try describing the document in question (what kind of document is it? is there a document name/numbers? does it have authors? how is it published? can you provide a link to it?) and also suggest how you think it should be cited.

The document you refer to is written by an organization or a corporate author (UNESCO).  The general rule in such cases is, you treat this as an ordinary source written by an author named UNESCO.
From the Purdue Online Writing Lab, on listing work written by an organization in your works cited list:

A corporate author may include a commission, a committee, or a group that does not identify individual members on the title page. List the names of corporate authors in the place where an author’s name typically appears at the beginning of the entry.

The same general idea applies to in-text citations of sources written by an organization or corporate author:

When a source has a corporate author, it is acceptable to use the name of the corporation followed by the page number for the in-text citation. You should also use abbreviations (e.g., nat'l for national) where appropriate, so as to avoid interrupting the flow of reading with overly long parenthetical citations.

Here's an example, courtesy of Red Deer College Library:

Parenthetical Citation
(Natl. Research Council 55)
Works Cited
National Research Council. Beyond Six Billion: Forecasting the World's             Population. Washington: Natl. Acad., 2000. Print.

What if different sources by the same organization are used? If I use the above recommendation, the reader won't be able to differentiate between the different sources, because the name of the organization used in the in-text citation is shared between all the sources.

You would treat this the same way as you would multiple sources by the same author (see the OWL on the subject) - that is, use the author name and a short version of the title in the citation.


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Is it a negative that my PhD research has been in several unrelated areas?
I'm a PhD student in Computer Science. Long story short: I do not have a good relationship with my advisor. I don't trust his guidance or his ethical integrity. Therefore, I am seeking external advice for my situation.
During my PhD I got one paper accepted in a first tier conference, two papers accepted in a second tier conferences, and other papers published in workshops and minor conferences. I have one journal paper accepted.
However, not all the work is on the same topic but it is scattered among three, mostly unrelated, subjects. Now my PhD is ending.
Is it negative that my work has been on three unrelated subjects?
(I cannot find a topic that allows me to merge all my results in my PhD thesis, I have to leave out at least half of my work.)

Welcome to Academia.SE! This is a very broad question that cannot be answered in a single post. Many of the questions you're asking have been asked by others in similar situations to yours elsewhere on this site; I recommend you search the site to see what has already been addressed.

Since you are so close, my advice is to work through it with your current supervisor. It sounds like you're in a reasonable position with publications so get your PhD finished, defend it and run. Single-authored works are not necessary at your level (only relevant if you're looking to do an habilitation, but even so that would be years away). The importance of journal papers for CS is controversial (see here) but not necessary. You will need that rec. letter...

... there is always the possibility to get a PostDoc outside your department (and outside your university), and my advice would be to not cause arguments over co-authorship now. The situation you're in may not be pretty, but my advice would be to simply keep your head down until you have your PhD.

@eykanal Although the question is too broad, it is nice to see a question concerning someone who had trouble with his advisor and managed to overcome them (for publications at least). So, I think this is an continuation for multiple troubled advisor-student relationship questions and as such may help many other people. So, it will provoke some very interesting answers

@Alexandros - I hear your point. I'm concerned by the large number of questions here; answers would simply be choosing the one they want to address. If you or anyone else wants to edit the question to make it more directed, I agree with you that there is a potential good question hiding here.

I have edited my question in order to narrow it to essentially: The fact that during my phd I have worked on different subjects is that negative?

@user14038 Since you have narrowed your question so much, I am going to edit out the parts of your post that are not relevant to your remaining unsolved question(s).

@user14038 If you still want an answer to The fact that I do not have a single authored work could impact negatively on my future? I suggest you ask it in a new post. I edited this post down to the one question you listed as your primary unsolved question.

Assuming that all your papers are in CS, then the "unrelated area" moniker seems like it could be too harsh.  For a career academic, breadth is important as well as depth: in my field (mathematics), probably about half of all PhDs don't get a broad enough training to do anything but continue to work on their thesis problem.  After squeezing as much out of that as they can (usually in the context having to compete with teaching and other professional obligations), their research career dwindles, stagnates or dies.  So "unrelated areas" can be a good thing, as long as the work in each is solid.

I do not have a good relationship with my advisor. I don't trust his guidance or his ethical integrity. — So why is he still your advisor?

To the degree that you do have a PhD thesis and some other work (that, more over, has been published), I would say it is a positive thing, not a negative one. It is a good combination of "breadth and depth" as one comment has put it. The general advice I have heard many times for long-term planning, is "the ideal is to try to distinguish yourself in two fields inside a discipline. One -everybody tries that. Three -and your image starts getting blurry". Or something like that (and with the caveat that "fields inside a discipline" may not mean the same thing for different disciplines).


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Retake the math GRE... as a grad student, preparing to transfer?
I'm currently a first year PhD student at a respectable but not top-ranked math program. I'm also confident that I am among the top three first year students in my program. As an undergrad I went to a somewhat prestigious liberal arts school and was valedictorian of my graduating class. I did a little bit of research and took a fair number of upper level classes (although no grad courses) along the way.
In hindsight I can see where the problems lay with my application. As the title of this post suggests, I got a mediocre score on the math GRE. In addition to this, I was kind of a late bloomer as a mathematics student. I didn't start taking many upper level courses until my junior year. The people who wrote my recommendations were not necessarily all that famous either.
So I got into all the programs that I thought I had a good chance of getting into but none of the programs that I thought would be more of a stretch. The one I'm currently attending gave me a good fellowship and I've been doing very well here so far (passing qualifying exams, taking lots of classes and doing well in them). But I honestly feel like I'm not being challenged quite enough.
Long story short, I screwed up on the GRE when I first took it and I want to try to transfer into a top-ranked program now. I've heard plenty of times that top programs will throw out applications with low math GRE scores. But does the same standard hold for grad students applying to transfer? Will programs throw out applications from current grad students if their GRE scores are too low? To be honest I do feel a bit silly thinking about retaking it. Of course, any advice on transferring between programs in general will be greatly appreciated.

I think I will be able to get a recommendation or two from some pretty well known people this time. At my undergrad liberal arts school there weren't nearly as many well-known researchers as at my current school.

Among elite and maybe even top-20-or-so math grad schools, many use the math subject test GRE as an easy, automated filter... even while recognizing to some degree that it doesn't really test what we'd like... because even after applying that slightly unreasonable filter, there are still enough good candidates.
So, yes, if you have a really-mediocre score, there would be advantages in re-taking.
But/and, as in comments, letters of recommendation are far more important once you've gotten past some initial filtering. The letters should be from people who can be believed to understand what a serious grad program in math is about, e.g., by having gone through one themselves, and they should say that you'll excel.
Meanwhile, in contrast to undergrad institutions, there really is no notion of "transferring" to another grad program in math. Nothing gets easier. You will be expected to have excelled in the year you've spent already, which it seems you have. You'd not get to really compete directly with people with fresh B.S. degrees, since, in effect, "performance/showing-potential" is prorated on what chances you've had, how much time you've had, to demonstrate it. This is reasonable, in many regards.
In summary: yes, re-take the GRE, to overcome initial filters. After that, it's about letters of recommendation, and (for me) your personal statement. That is, explaining that you got a late start (which can easily happen to sensible people) can account for some things. True, some admissions committee people might be looking for people who've "always known" that they wanted to do mathematics, but that can't be helped.


text:
What to say about somewhat forgotten studies?
The matter of fact is, I graduated from university (physics and mathematics) more than 4 years ago. I remember myself enjoying most of the subjects, communicating with professors and study mates, researching other non-curriculum topics.
Ever since graduation I have been working in IT industry. IMHO, those are not directly correlated and most of the topics, subjects, research are forgotten now.
Q: What to could be written upon forgotten subjects/staff/research?

While you studied in the university, you had documented stuff, such as lecture notes, homework problems and solutions, exam papers, right? Retrieve them.

@scaaahu sure, I did retrieve them and they are now on my table. But it doesn't give me anything. I could, of course, open a notebook and tell a lie. But let's be honest... Those days are gone.

Try to read those notes written by yourself. I had similar experience. After I retired, I retrieved the notes I took 30 years ago. At first, I thought those were written by somebody else. But, I recognized my own writing. Gradually, I remembered bit by bit by following the notes I made myself. Try hard.

What do you mean by obstacle?

The great time span and black holes in my mind on that period.

I suggest you spend some time trying to figure out what the SoP is for. In the question and comment above, you seem to imply that you are planning on regurgitating topics from courses you took years ago (why would you do that in a SoP?). As also highlighted by this other question you posted today, one wonders if you truly understand what a SoP is for.

@MadJack the SoP is for the committee to evaluate my knowledge, experience, motivation, intellectual maturity and readiness. The lines are blurry and you could easily manage to put a "education" under each of them. What I do believe is that you should give at least some small info about previous academical experience because it gave me so much at that time.

@MadJack the Ebe Isaac's answer says it all :)

Why is a great time span and black holes in your mind an obstacle? Obstacle to what? It seems that there is a missing introductory paragraph to your post.

When I applied, successfully, for a PhD program my bachelor's degree was over 30 years old, and my master's over 25. To me, four years does not seem like a great time span. I didn't say anything about how much I had forgotten, just listed the fact of the degrees and when/where I studied for them.

As for how to describe the situation in your SOP: describe your studies ("As a student at blah blah university, I studied this, this, this, took these classes"—what ever level of detail is appropriate for your discipline). Say what you have been doing since then: "Since graduating, I have been working in IT industry, doing (anything somewhat relevant)". If you do anything in particular to recall your knowledge (beyond just reading notes—like taking a class, etc), mention that as well.
If I'm reading you right, you're thinking you need to describe how well you remember your studies. Don't do that. Just say what you did, say what you did in the time that passed. Whoever is reading your app will know that your undergrad work is not fresh in your mind, and there's no reason to draw more attention to it. Your SOP is not the time to be humble and completely transparent.

Revise them!

There could be possibly no other way to overcome the obstacle in your situation.
Sure you may be able to make out on what you already know and express your regret on what you forgot. But what is the end result? You don't remember what you ought to know.
Although this isn't something to be embarrassed about (as this happens to even to the best of us at some point of time), this isn't something you should ignore either.
Going through your ancient notes may bring nostalgia (personally that's why I keep them) but it's intent on effective revision depends on the quality of the notes themselves.
The Internet should be filled with tutorials and crash coursers to bring back what you once knew. It may also allow you to learn more than before too.
Forgetting doesn't necessarily mean memory erasure. Note that if you really did study your subjects with passion back then as mentioned in your post, it might not take long to remember them through revision.
Best wishes to remember your once forgotten subjects and hopefully learn new this in the process too.

If you learned these subjects 4 years ago, re-learning them now will be much easier.


text:
How to find lost test scores?
I took the GRE test in August and the test scores were sent to the respective universities before the registration opens. Now I am worried because the test scores are not attached to my profile.
Is it possible that they are in the trash bin right now? If not, should I contact the help desk or resend the scores?

Do not worry.  If ETS sent the scores, the universities have them.

If in doubt, perhaps you could ask one of the universities you have applied to; also, it couldn't hurt to contact the help desk.  I don't have personal experience with them, and thus can't say whether that would be fruitful.


text:
Why do big funders not act as publishers?
Scientific publishing absorbs a lot of money from the budgets of scientific organisations, either by publication fees or subscription fees, and many feel that the value added by the publisher is questionable (source). That money comes from funders such as NIH, NSF, the EC Framework Programme, national research councils and large charities (Wellcome, Gates). Why do such funders not close the circle and offer a not-for-profit mechanism for publication, either individually or collectively?
Many (most, I suspect) scientific societies operate journals, and some of these offer travel grants or small project grants for research with no restrictions on the submission of resulting papers to their own journals, so I don't see how it could be a conflict-of-interest thing. Some universities do the same. I also see sites like PubMed Central and EuropePMC which are funded by research funders and act as repositories for full-text publications.
There are some suggestions of a move in this direction from the mathematics and physical sciences (link), although this would be run by the academic community, not the funders.
[edit] I forgot about this when writing the question, but PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases was started using a $1.1 million grant from the Gates Foundation, so this is a relatively high-profile example of a journal that was (at launch) directly funded by a grant-funding body. And I'd also forgotten that PLoS is explicitly non-profit, although they do use the income from some journals to help support the others financially so some individual journals might run at a profit.
[edit2] I'd also somehow forgotten this announcement back in July that Wellcome was launching a journal called "Wellcome Open Access". This one will only accept submissions from Wellcome-funded researchers, but will also accept negative results, null results and data-only papers, so will arguably overlap less with traditional publishers.

Specialization?

@ff524 One possibility, but see my point about e.g. EuropePMC; they could sponsor a not-for-profit publishing house. Also funders often conduct a broad range of activities as well as funding research; Wellcome Trust owns farms, runs a museum, and like the UK research councils operates a research institute directly (the Sanger), hardly a laser-like focus on funding research.

@NajibIdrissi I agree this could be an issue, but you could probably solve it by outsourcing the editorial role (like PLoS does already). The funders would not need to have any role in the review process apart from bankrolling it.

In some cases, traditional publishers are able to use various laws to prevent what they present as an unfair competition (government-subsidized)...

@MarcGlisse could you refer us to an example?

@CapeCode This is what I originally assumed JakeBeal was referring to in point 2 in his answer. I can't think of a publishing example, but as a related example the BBC (as a publically-funded broadcaster) is prevented from competing unfairly with private companies (see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Jam). It didn't occur to me at the time of writing, but I imagine RCUK could be accused of the same by publishers if it entered the publishing market.

@MarcGlisse is almost certainly referring to LIPIcs, an open-acess publishing effort of the Lebiniz Center for Computer Science at Dagstuhl.  Dagsthul receives money from the German federal government, some of which they used to use to subsidize their publishing efforts, but the German government recently ruled that government support for academic publication was unfair competition with commercial publishers.  As a result, the cost for conferences to  publishing their proceedings through LIPIcs quadrupled.

As you note, in a major sense this is actually already done on a large scale by the NIH in the US.  The NIH requires that all publications resulting from its funding be made freely available on PubMed under an open access license within 12 months.  While PubMed Central does not do peer-review, it does provide the other half of the functions of an archival publication, in providing hosting and curation.
By doing this, the NIH is accomplishing most of the goals you mention, because there is now much less pressure to subscribe to lots of high-cost journals.  At the same time, however, this is better for the NIH than running journals itself for at least the following reasons:

Running journals does have a significant cost, even if that cost is often hidden in free society journals and overcompensated for in for-profit journals.  Forcing compliance as a byproduct of funding is probably much cheaper.
If the NIH started running journals, it would be competing with traditional journals, and thus would obtain much less coverage than it does by just forcing public deposit of their articles.
Scientific publication is highly international, and even the biggest countries are a minority of the researchers in any significant field. There may thus be significant perceived or real conflicts of interest if a major government funder is running the peer review process for other nations.

In short, it appears to be currently much more efficient to accomplish such goals by using the compulsory power of contract clauses than by investing in competition with the existing publication ecosystem.

Well, a PubMed-type model doesn't fix the problem since publishing charges are still paid (I agree the saving on subscriptions is real but many journals are moving away from a subscription model to OA fees, making this less important). Regarding your first bullet point, the article I cited provides some evidence that although details are scarce the profit margin for commercial publishers is high, so a not-for-profit journal would be cheaper to publish in. And international projects like EuropePMC could solve your third point.

I suspect you might have hit gold with point 2 though - in many countries I suspect bodies receiving funding from the public sector might get in trouble for competing directly with private publishing companies on this (under state aid laws and similar). Hadn't thought of that before. Not sure how this would apply to charities though.

@arboviral the second point highlights the diluting effect of duplicating publication venues, not an issue of unfair competition.

Ah - I misunderstood your intention. In that case I don't really see that being a major issue either; I strongly suspect a low-cost open access journal family would immediately get a lot of submissions even without being prominently attached to a high-profile funding agency. When PLoS launched they were a new name with high costs and they still took off like a rocket.

@arboviral a low-cost open access journal family would immediately get a lot of submissions It already does, there is no shortage of papers to publish. The question is how do you get the good ones. Try to tell top researchers they have to start publishing in PLoS instead of Nature or Science...

@CapeCode I know plenty of top researchers who are happy with PLoS Path, Plos Biol etc, but also I'm not proposing that the funders enforce publication in their own journals - that would of course be catastophic and strongly resisted (and rightly so).

@arboviral In which case, again, per my point #2, how large a fraction of the market could a funder journal actually capture, given that most reputable journals are still subscription-based or hybrid?  The public benefit may be much smaller than investing a similar amount of effort in things like PubMed.

@jakebeal it's possible, but honestly it's difficult to tell either way with the data we have available.

@arboviral why catastrophic? NIHR in the U.K. (The country's largest public funder of clinical trials) manadates publication in NIHR published journals. Seems to work pretty well - doesn't stop NEJM and Lancet papers as well - but pretty much every project publishes in the NIHR open access journals.

@rhialto really? I had no idea - I take it back. I would have assumed that telling senior scientists that one condition of funding was that any results had to be published in a new unproven journal with no reputation would make those grants very unpopular. Maybe the resistance would be shorter-lived than I assumed. I would expect it to be highly disruptive if a major funder introduced it though. When did NIHR start doing that?

Well, if your handing out millions of pounds of highly prestigious grants, people tend to be willing to jump through hoops. Also, the journals aren't new. Health Technology Assessment, for example, has been going almost 20 years and has an impact factor of around 5. New journals have been started in the past few years, for new programmes, and it really hasn't been a problem requiring publication in them.

This is more of an exception, but actually some funders do act as publishers. For example, the scientific journal Elife was established by Hughes Medical Institute, Max Planck Society, and Wellcome Trust. Another example is the HFSP Journal, which was established by the Human Frontier Science Program (however this journal no longer exists and recently the name was hijacked).

Some do. The National Institute for Health Research in the UK publishes a whole library of journals, covering most of its research programmes.
http://www.journalslibrary.nihr.ac.uk
If funded from a covered programme, publishing in the programme journal is essentially compulsory - some of the funds are held back 'til publication, and ultimately if a project fails to provide an adequate report the funds can be recovered from the host institution.
(Most investigators will also publish in a regular journal such as BMJ, NEJM, The Lancet etc - often more than one paper from a project)
It's thought the publication rate for patient based health research is about 50%. NIHR manages 98%

They would be biased.
If you fund research you want/need it to be successful. Success in academia is measured in (metrics based on) published articles. That is, you could manipulate your (and your competitors') success ratings by accepting more research that you yourself have funded (and less of others).

Downvotes without explanatory comments are not really meaningful.


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I'm afraid of chemicals. How do I handle my required uni biology class?
I have a freshman requirement as a science student for at least 3 core science classes, and I picked physics as often as I could. However, I must choose either chem or bio as my third. I chose bio.
The thing is, I'm deathly afraid of chemicals. I don't know when it started, but I can hardly touch household cleaning products without obsessively washing my hands afterward. I broke down crying a few times in high school bio, to my embarrassment. Oh yeah, and I'm also pretty much a hypochondriac. It's not something I can control.
I'm afraid that my grades will be hurt because of my phobia. There are several hands-on labs in the course, though I am not sure if we are working with very hazardous chemicals. The exact course name is cell and molecular biology. How should I approach the course, and does anyone have any advice for avoiding chemicals in the lab? I wish I could opt out of a class due to fear, but alas.
What should I do? Thanks in advance.

Answers in comments, tangentail suggestions, etc. have been moved to chat. Please read this FAQ before posting another comment.

Can you get a lab syllabus and post it here? We should be able to tell you exactly which chemicals you would be likely to encounter.

@Chelonian: That would go beyond the scope of this site. I also doubt that it would help.

Does wearing gloves help? (Which you should be doing anyway, in a lab.)

Do you fear chemicals in general or there is specific reason (fear of explosion, fear of eyesight loss)? For example while I do not fear working with super glue in general I fear super glue will spatter into my eye(f.e. when opening sealed lid).

To further echo one of the comments:
Seek professional help. This may be a trained psychologist, or even just a general medical practitioner, who may be able to direct you to another institution if necessary. You may have access to mental healthcare through your institution if you do not otherwise have access. Specific phobias are treatable. Formally addressing this will do two things for you:

It may or may not help you overcome your fear. This may not be necessary just because of a single bio class alone, but it sounds like your condition is limiting your life in other ways, and this just may be a good trigger for you to seek a treatment that may improve your life in general going forward.
However, even if the treatment is not successful, or takes too long to help you much with your class (treating phobias can be a long-term project, from my limited  understanding), your condition is now on record, which allows you to approach whatever office in your university is responsible for handling special needs students. They should be able to convince the teacher to find alternative ways for you to do the class without handling chemicals, but they will almost certainly not act unless you have documentation from a qualified medical professional.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

(This answer supposed the OP is an American; which turns out to be true, but they are attending school in Canada, so while the general thrust of the answer remains valid some of the US-specific aspects are obviously not immediately relevant)
Phobias can potentially fall under mental disabilities, which may then subsequently be covered and protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act (this would be determined by the particulars of your case).  I suggest contacting your university's disability office for help and guidance.

This is reasonable advice.  However, be prepared for the likelihood that they may require you to consult a professional for a formal diagnosis and accommodation plan.

@NateEldredge Yes, there may be new appointments, costs, insurance forms, etc. to deal with. Depending on the OP's access to health care (via the ACA or otherwise) this may or may not be a matter of some significance to them. I think universities these days commonly require students to have some form of insurance, and provide a way to get them enrolled in a (usually minimal) plan.  Perhaps that's legally required of them now; I'm a bit out of the loop there.

@NateEldredge In my university in Sweden, FUNKA (our special needs office) is very clear on the fact that they don't do anything without proper documentation (but then they act very forcefully).

One of the most frustrating thing about this SE site is that a majority typically assumes an American viewpoint.

@Szabolcs indeed, but many other countries have a similar office or similar help.

@Szabolcs Have other countries adopted the American system of required non-major electives? The OP's language usage and the university's elective system overwhelmingly indicate to me that they are in the US. It's always possible I'm mistaken, but it hardly seems an unreasonable deduction.

I agree that the language of the question makes it look like the asker is probably in the US. Having said that, it wouldn't hurt to add an "It sounds like you're in the US" disclaimer to your answer.

I am attending a university in Canada, though I do not want to get more specific. I am also unsure about how to navigate health care here as I am a US citizen.

@Greta That definitely changes things. There should still be a disability office, as well as an office for foreign student affairs (though if they call them such in Canada I do not know), and they should be able to help you sort these things out.  My understanding is that all international students in Canada are required to have health insurance, so you should already be covered.

@DavidRicherby Done, especially since Greta has since specified that in fact the university is not in the US.

@Greta Can you state which province? Canadian healthcare varies by province, eg in Ontario you are probably covered by UHIP (foreign university student equivalent of OHIP), which unfortunately does not cover most therapy-type mental health treatment. There may be a mental health centre on campus which does sliding scale or generally discounted billing. There are definitely disability offices in Canadian universities, I would also second talking to them as even if they can't act without a diagnosis they can probably point you in the right direction to get one, or even better, treatment.

@zibadawatimmy may I suggest rewriting this answer so that the general advice is at the forefront (talking to the university's disability office) and the US-specific information is just treated as a specific case?

@llama I'm in Quebec.

I realize that rational arguments do not help phobias. Dealing with a phobia will require therapy as suggested by the other answers.
Sometimes understanding better the things you fear can help you cope with the fear. Sometimes not. If this is a case where understanding might help, you should realize that pretty much everything is a chemical (the only tangible exception I can think of is light). You are made of many different chemicals (water, salts, sugars, fats, minerals, polypeptides, polynucleotides). Everything you touch, eat, smell, and taste is made up of chemicals. You might argue: "Sure, but those are natural chemicals. I have a fear of artificial chemicals." My response to this is that natural and artificial have no clear definitions. Many chemicals made industrially can be found in nature and in living things. Many natural compounds (including things you can find in the woods, such as mushrooms) can be as hazardous as any cleaning agents that you have. The most toxic compound (in nanograms of toxin per kilogram of body weight), botulinum toxin, is natural.
An important guideline in toxicology is: the dose makes the poison. For instance, carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulfide are well-known to be "toxic chemicals" and exposure can be fatal. However, your body produces both of these chemicals in small quantities as a normal part of metabolism. Despite its toxicity in relatively large doses, your body produces hydrogen sulfide to send signals and it plays an important role in blood flow. Your body is perfectly capable of detoxifying small amounts of many "toxic" compounds and does this all the time as a normal part of metabolism.
Since you are interested in science, I heartily recommend that you study chemistry and toxicology. This will allow you to better understand the risks and nuances of toxic substances.

Sorry but this seems completely unhelpful. We all know that people use the word "chemical" in an informal, imprecise way; drawing attention to this is pointless. Telling somebody that their fear is irrational does nothing to help them. Your answer just comes across as "The way you use the word 'chemical' is wrong. Your fear is wrong. Learn to stop being wrong."

Sometimes understanding better the things that you fear can help you cope with the fear. Sometimes not. I realize that it doesn't work for all fears and for all people. As I stated in my first line, therapy is probably more likely to be successful for a severe phobia. I've edited the post to make my intention clearer.

I second @DavidRicherby's comment. If it's indeed a phobia, it can't be cured by rational understanding.

And I'll second WaterMolecule's. A standard treatment for phobias is exposure therapy, where the patient deliberately confronts their fear. Making a point to learn about the subject of the phobia is one way of doing so.  And as the OP expressed specific concern about hazardous chemicals, learning which chemicals are not hazardous, and the situations in which others are and aren't, can help to address the part of the fear that is rational. (For however much an anecdote is worth, learning as much as I could about the topic is exactly how I got my fear of spiders under control.)

I will also second WaterMolecule's answer.

Understanding is an important adjunct

I think Ray's comment brings up a good point. Exposure therapy is proven effective. However, that proof holds for professional therapy of phobias. If this is a real medical phobia, see the accepted answer Seek professional help.  Do not attempt exposure therapy on your own; it can backfire.

Talk to your professor
As the other answers have said, professional help is important for your overall quality of life.  But it's also a long term solution, and you also have to deal with your labs this semester.  Talk to your professor about how you can be successful in your current labs while you seek professional help.
Be prepared for your professor to be dismissive of your concerns
While there are many wonderful and empathetic professors out there, not all of them are such, and there's no guarantee that you have one of the good ones.  An unfortunately large percentage of the population is dismissive of any emotional stresses that they do not personally feel.  As an experienced biologist or chemist, your professor is probably very comfortable with dealing with hazardous chemicals, and may not remember that not everyone feels the same way.  On the other hand, they're also a teacher who has likely dealt with all manner of students in the past, and may very well have helped other students with similar phobias to yours in the past.
Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
Focus on your reactions to your fear, not the fear itself
The truth of the matter is that many of the chemicals used in labs are hazardous when mishandled.  A healthy respect for chemicals is something that most professors are going to want to encourage, not discourage.  The problem lies not with your fears, but in how your phobia causes you to react - shaking, holding your breath, making mistakes, etc.
Frame this as a safety issue (which it is) - your phobia makes it unsafe for you to handle chemicals.  This moves the discussion away from "how are you mastering your phobia" and "is your fear rational" (which are issues for you and your professional help) and into the realm of "How will you participate in labs safely while you are mastering your phobia."  Don't let your professor side track you into a discussion of the whys and hows of your phobia.  Focus on the practical effects that your phobia causes, and how those make it dangerous for you to work in the lab.
Also, lab safety is a serious concern, and gives you grounds to escalate the issue if your professor tries to dismiss your concerns.  (Not that you wouldn't have grounds anyways, but lab safety gets a lot more respect than mental health, and your escalation is more likely to be taken seriously)
Consider solutions ahead of time
Before you talk to your professor, brainstorm for ways that you might be able to make the class manageable.  Maybe you get a lab partner (or two, if the labs are designed for two bodies) who can managed the chemicals while you make observations from a safer distance.  Maybe you act as an observer to all the students doing labs, and don't participate yourself.  Try and come up with as many possible solutions as you can, and consider how effective you think each one would be, and why.
This will help prepare you to discuss these solutions with your professor, and find one that's workable.

If you do manage to find professional help before the beginning of classes, talk to them about how to best approach your professor - they'll probably have better advice for you than some random person on the internet.
On the flip side, your school probably has some resources to help you find the professional help you need.  Your chemistry and bio departments may even have experience with very similar phobias to what you currently face.

@CJ59 And to further that point, you should also get an actual recorded diagnosis from a medical professional before documenting anything with the school's office. It's not really fair the to make the professor or the school to act as a judge on the legitimacy of a student's medical problems.

@CJ59 I would have to say that a professor wanting the student to take this through the correct channels is fine, but that being dismissive is not. Simply tell the student that there is a process for such issues and ask them to use it. Tell them where to find the disability office. If they want to know why you don't deal with it directly you can tell them it is for uniformity and to give their peers some assurance that variation in requirements are not being handed out willy nilly. Done and dusted without being "dismissive".

First of all, you should look for professional help. If this phobia affects your life, and it sounds like it does, you should try to work on it. For most phobias, there are very good behaviour therapy approaches available which help you dealing with your phobia. Please look for a therapist!
One practical thing you can do is writing an e-mail to the course instructor asking what kind of chemicals you are about to use within the course and check out how dangerous they are.

I'd suggest talking to the instructor/professor up-front rather than an email, it's more believable and evokes more empathy IMO.

I think the other answers have largely covered it, but let me put it all together. I see three main paths forward:
1. Complete the course.

Some combination of therapy and gloves might help you to get through it
Consider e-mailing the instructor to better understand what is required
Perhaps your lab partner would be willing to take the lead in handling the chemicals.

2. Consider a different course. It's not clear if you have any other options.

A dean would likely approve doing a higher-level course instead of the intro course (e.g., physical chemistry instead of chem, or anatomy instead of bio) even without mentioning your phobia. But, these courses are at a higher level and might not be appropriate for you.
At many universities, geology, astronomy, or computer science can fulfill a science requirement, so make sure you're correct that it has to be 2 of bio/chem/physics.

3. Seek an accommodation for your phobia.

If you register your phobia with the disability resource office, your university will have to give you more leeway
They may be willing to let you do the analysis without actually being present for the labs; or, they may offer dispensation from the requirement to do chem/bio instead of physics

if he's afraid at the level of phobia of handing the stuff he's likely to see in an introductory course, I seriously doubt he'll fare much better in the advanced courses which typically require the introductory course to have been completed anyway.

As an example, physical chemistry uses very few chemicals; it's mostly spectroscopy, that kind of thing. It's true that physical chemistry usually requires gen chem (and a lot of higher math) -- which is why I noted that such courses may or may not be appropriate, depending on OP's major and background.

I've had physical chemistry classes, and they still required the handling of chemicals. Not to cause reactions per se, but creating titers and sampling them. If he's phobic about chemicals in general, that'd likely trigger him too.

The other answers are mostly great and I would suggest trying what you can from them - especially seeking professional help with your phobia and documentation of it for accommodations.
With that said, one element of a "chemical" phobia is often an understanding that there are a lot of active substances of unknown identity present in what we generally think of as "chemicals" (cleaning products, products and byproducts of industrial processes, etc.) and legitimate concern about an overwhemling range of possibilities of what effects they might have on your body. A low-level chem or bio class probably doesn't have a lot of situations where you have to handle such things (and hopefully you can get accommodations so that you don't have to), but what it does give you is an opportunity to learn about these substances, and (as opposed to commercial cleaning products) to know exactly what you're handling and to have a chance to learn what is and isn't known about how it reacts and what safety concerns there may be around it. This might be an opportunity for you turn take some control, through knowledge, over your phobia, especially if you make a plan to do research (thinking well-cited Wikipedia articles, science texts, and peer-reviewed science papers, not random websites) outside class to get a better understanding for yourself.

As other already say, go to see a doctor for help.
Meanwhile you can try eleventh commandment of work in laboratories: Thou shalt not work without proper protection.
Wear protective gear - lab coat, goggles, mask and nonpowdered nitril gloves. If you aren't sure you can stack them. We do use this trick to be sure our hands won't be contaminated when working with nasty stuff.
If you are not given such, you can buy gloves in drug store and all the gear can be bough in dedicated stores. If don't know how to find it, you can ask any M.D.

@Marzipanherz That was just a sigh about people overcautious about, usually minor, threat while happily ignoring quite serious one. Pesticides vs. GMO, nuclear vs. fossil powerplants...

@Marzipanherz not really. He likely has worse stuff in his kitchen at home than he's ever going to encounter in an entry level course like he's signed up for. The problem is making phobic people realise that without extending their phobia to things like laundry detergent and lime juice.

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


text:
Does APA style use parentheses to differentiate between names for works versus names for authors?
I am in the process of conforming a paper to the APA style guide. However, I recently came across submission guidelines for an academic journal, and the following distinction stood out to me:

If you want to refer to the paper use 'Appiah 1986' (without
brackets): 'Appiah (1986)' refers to the philosopher - it means
'Appiah (in his 1986 paper)'.

I have two questions about this:

Does this convention conform to any widely recognized style guides, or is it likely specific to that journal?
Does the APA style guide draw a similar distinction between referring to a work (parentheses excluded) versus referring to an author with respect to a work (parentheses included)? So, for example, which of the two conforms to APA? (i) "In one form or another, the argument is to be found in Fine 2002" versus (ii) "In one form or another, the argument is to be found in Fine (2002)"

I haven't been able to find a clear answer to these questions.
Thanks in advance!

Which journal? .

This: https://academic.oup.com/analysis/pages/General_Instructions
I just noticed that they mention The Chicago Manual of Style, but I'm still wondering about the APA style guide, because that's the style that I'm currently using.

Oh I was confused because I thought you were saying this journal does use APA, but it doesn't?

No, I'm not sure what style the journal uses. But their distinction made sense to me when I saw it, and I started using it in papers until I recently switched over to APA. What I'm trying to figure out is whether the APA style also recognizes the distinction, or not, so that I know how to revise my papers accordingly.

This distinction makes sense. The point is that it should be possible to delete whatever is in parentheses and the sentence should still make sense. The parenthetical part is just extra information to allow someone to find the source.
So

The first person to prove this was Smith (2005)

passes the test: the main sentence is "The first person to prove this was Smith," and if someone wants to check this they should look at the 2005 paper. However,

The first paper to prove this was Smith (2005)

doesn't make sense without the "2005" ("Smith" is not a paper, but "Smith 2005" is). So you shouldn't put "2005" in parentheses.

Both are fine, they fit into the sentence slightly differently so it is often used together to make the text smoother and less repetitive.

No, because the structure remains the same, so no reason to differentiate. I think the first version is also not used in APA, the second version is what is used commonly (year between brackets).


text:
Which style guides, if any, recommend using "ms" to cite unpublished manuscripts?
I've come across papers in which an author cites an unpublished manuscript by listing the author's name followed by "ms" enclosed in parentheses. So, for example:

As Surname (ms) points out, this view faces a dilemma.
Surname, N. (ms). "Title." Unpublished manuscript, December 15, 2015.

I've seen this in papers that otherwise conform to the APA style guide. However, this specific convention doesn't conform to the APA style guide, which recommends enclosing the date that the work was completed in parentheses or, if the date is unavailable, enclosing "n.d." in parentheses:

As Surname (2015) points out, this view faces a dilemma.

or

As Surname (n.d.) points out, this view faces a dilemma.

So my question is: which style guides, if any, recommend using "ms" in this way? And what is the APA's rationale behind including a date when the work is unpublished? Isn't there a risk that it could mislead the reader into thinking that the work has been published?

Unpublished manuscript does not tell much. What would be the document you have in mind? In a paper we might be forced to rely on private correspondence, private communication etc. In a CV I won't put any unpublished manuscript but only those submitted or to be printed. In the last case citing the journal.


text:
About writing to editor of a journal to identify serious mistake in a published article
I am reading a paper published in a SCI-core journal.
After a very careful and tedious evaluation, I have come to the conclusion that the authors have made serious mistakes.
Should I write to the editor of the journal about it so that other people do not waste their time on this paper and may learn a thing or two about it? How can we do that?

Nops I did not read it earlier. Thanks for notifying me. If you share it as an answer, I will accept it

Most wrong papers will not ever be used for anything.  Is there reason to think other people will make use of this paper?

Assuming you are have carefully checked that there really are serious errors, the best course of action would be to contact the authors of the paper first. Maybe they can explain subtle details, not clearly described in the paper, that explain everything. Of course it is important to be nice: It is very well possible that everything appeared to be correct with the knowledge at the time the paper was published. Or that it is you who misinterpreted the methods (possibly because the paper was a little vague). And even if there are errors: nobody is perfect. So please be nice.
It is possible that the authors wish to collaborate with you to correct the errors, leading to a shared publication: a win-win situation. I have seen this happen more than once.
If this does not work for some reason you can consider contacting the editor, who may or may not be interested in correcting the errors. That will be up to the editor.
Depending on your specific case, it may also be possible to do some experiments yourself and publish your findings, referencing the paper with the errors and correcting them.
However, if the errors are minor, the result is "unimportant", or you are not too sure that there really is a mistake that needs correcting, you could also decide to simply ignore the paper. There are plenty of bad and/or unimportant papers out there and frankly, they do not deserve the attention even if it is to correct mistakes.
Note: I have partly copied from my own answer to a different, related question.

You begin your (good) answer by assuming 100% certainty.  I suppose that can actually happen once in a while.  In practice, and especially in my own experience, one can only be "mostly sure."  Most of the times I've been mostly sure of an error there actually was an error of some kind, but I think it would be more realistic to proceed from the premise of less than complete certainty.  If you have a serious concern that there is a serious error but are not completely sure, whether it is appropriate to ignore it really depends on the situation (I think).

You are right. I did not mean the 100% so literally but just wanted to emphasise that OP should check, and double check that there really is an error before taking action. I have edited my answer.

If Sjaffry follows this advice, it would be interesting to know the results achieved and time spent on this course of action. Hopefully, see you in a few months!

To elaborate on @anpami's sensible answer: in most fields of science we have a rotten publishing system which rarely corrects errors. Depending on the field, you can expect 20-80% of published papers to be false, only a small fraction of which are ever corrected. In a publish or perish world, authors and editors have strong incentives not to correct mistakes.
Correcting mistakes via the journal that publishes them is very slow and time-consuming: by the time a correction appears (if ever) most of the damage will be done. So you should look for other routes in order to quickly broadcast your opinon on that article.
The venue to do that depends on your field. PubPeer would be a possibility. In physics or mathematics you could write a comment as an Arxiv preprint. If the paper in question is on Biorxiv, you can directly write your comment there.

I agree that anpami and you correctly identify an existing problem in the publishing system, but the question was "should I write to the editor". The choice then is (1) No, and be part of the problem, or (2) Yes, and be part of the solution. I am not against leaving comments on a website, but it is much more polite (and useful) to contact the authors of the paper first, and then contact the journal together.

I agree with the arXiv suggestion, along with contacting the authors. In one occurrence, I spotted the same mathematical error in three independent papers and managed to publish my analysis of why the error was made and what was its impact, but this does not often happen.

@Louic : I do not know what the solution is, but trying to correct wrong papers one by one via journals is hopeless. (Too much work by orders of magnitude.) You do not reform a rotten system by following its rules, but by exerting external pressure.

I doubt that 20%-80% of published papers are false in any field.  They might contain errors but this does not make them false: the proof of a theorem might be flawed, but it doesn’t mean the theorem does not hold.

@ZeroTheHero: Then have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis . In some fields, only a minority of studies can be replicated, therefore the rest are wrong. And bear in mind that a replicable study can still be wrong in many other ways.

@ Mazurka Fahr: Thank you for sharing your experience. This reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Bik , whose occupation is to detect photo manipulations in articles. As far as I understand, only a fraction of detected manipulations lead to corrections in journals.

@SylvainRibault I do not want to be overly strict about language but not being able to reproduce a result is not the same as suggesting the result is false.  Moreover, as the wiki article points out, this is “ affects the social sciences and medicine most severely”.  I get what you mean in the broad sense but suggesting a result is false because it cannot be reproduced is a bit of a stretch, unless you want to claim that medicine is equivalent to “most fields in science” (at least in the sense of the more “traditional” sciences v.g. physics, chemistry, geology etc,)

@MazurkaFahr it is NOT the job of the editor to verify the results: if anything it is unlikely to be technically possible.  As an extreme example, the editors of Phys.Rev. Letters cannot possibly reproduce results from LIGO or CERN.  Their job, however, is to make sure that the manuscript is properly vetted and assess the validity of any objection pre or post-publication.  Certainly they should make efforts to correct errors once these are brought to their attention, possibly by contacting again referees or assessors in the light of new information.

@ZeroTheHero : I focused on irreproducibility because we have data on the proportion of irreproducible papers in some fields. Other types of works have their own ways of being false. The career and publishing systems are however pretty much the same in most fields (with exceptions such as mathematics), and existing incentives do not encourage the production of good quality, reliable science.

@SylvainRibault For my part I do not wish to debate the quality of the work - I stand with you in observing the “Zeno-like” incremental nature of very many papers.  This does not make them false.  Moreover, while I decry the lack of reproducibility in some fields, and I look upon these works as likely to be subject to revisions, that does not make them false either although again no doubt some are likely pure fabrication (v.g. some recently retracted COVID studies).

Editors may be reluctant to publish your letter. In that case, PubPeer - which offers the possibility to write publicly available (critical) comments on research papers - may offer a good alternative.

I very much disagree with this answer. It the responsibility of a scientist to correct mistakes, regardless of who made them and why. If the errors are serious, something should be done about it to prevent others to continue building on this erroneous information. See also my related answer here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/98833/do-i-point-to-mistakes-in-a-paper-if-i-cannot-contact-the-authors/98834#98834

You are depicting how the ideal situation should be, Louic. But in reality, editors are not always eager to publish critical comments or even to issue retractions. That's why PubPeer exists (and other similar platforms, e.g. Retraction Watch's blog).

That does not mean he should not write to the editor, although it would be preferable to contact the authors of the paper first. They may be very much interested in correcting the errors.

@anpami Do you have empirical evidence to your claim that editors are not always eager?

I think the best thing to do is contact the authors. I expect that you'd want to be contacted if there was a potential issue with one of your papers! If they don't get back to you within about a week, it might make sense to contact the editor.
If you contact the authors, you may find that situation is not as bad as it seems:

Perhaps the paper's conclusions are correct, it's just that an implementation detail in the paper is wrong.
Maybe it just doesn't generalize to your use case e.g. due to differences in data preprocessing.

Remember, most papers are reviewed by the authors and their colleagues many times, in addition to being reviewed by editors and external reviewers. As a result, I think it's important to be respectful and report your findings in a clear and constructive way. If your findings have not been reviewed yet, you're asking the authors of the original paper to review your findings.
Finally, it may make sense to publish a paper or corrigendum on your conflicting results. This might be a substantial contribution to your field. You could also post a preprint on your preliminary results, e.g. to the arXiv, to raise awareness.

The first thing is to contact the authors and politely ask for clarifications.  It could be a “simple” oversight at any point in the process.
If you are not satisfied with the answer, then the next step would be prepare a Comment describing the issue and submit this to the same journal for publication.  Presumably if your objections are prima faciae valid the editor would then contact the authors of the original paper for a reply, and the Comment plus rebuttal would then be published side by side if this clarifies the published paper.
The last option would be to publish this comment on arXiv or any such platforms.  In particular if the original erroneous manuscript was published on arXiv then sending the comment there would be the natural thing to do.  Doing this escalates the dispute to the public level and is often seen as agressive, especially if you have not tried to reach out to the authors first.

authors: Xi'an ні війні


text:
PhD vs EngD - Perception
I'm currently undertaking a part time BEng in Digital Embedded Systems Design and Development whilst working as a Control Systems Engineer. When I graduate I plan on doing an MEng in Space Systems Engineering.
After this, I want to move on to some sort of doctoral study. I have yet to decide whether or not I want to do an EngD or a PhD.
Whilst I understand that, on-paper at least, they are equally placed I'm wondering if the EngD option will be seen as less of an achievement due to the taught component and lesser research amount.
Is there any truth to this?

Note on duplication: This question is mainly surrounding the perception, both industrially and academically, of these two degrees.

@RichardErickson I know the difference between the two degrees, I'm mostly asking about perception. I don't believe that question addresses this aspect it's mostly on the technicalities of postniminals

Probably depends a lot on where you live.

@mathreadler the UK

Well, probably most of the people outside the UK do not even know what an EngD is (I'm one of them), so I'd say that probably a PhD is generally perceived more favourably.

There exist technical doctor degrees also outside the UK but they are less known than PhD. Many simply tell their students to say they are PhDs after graduation when technically speaking it may, or may not be closer to an EngD ( I actually don't know ).

I think the pragmatic answer is that for somebody who understands the difference, they don't care (or they may slightly favour the EngD in a few cases), and for people who don't understand the difference, just say you have "a doctorate". This isn't a consideration that should dominate over, well, just about any other factor, when deciding where to apply.


text:
Structuring Dissertation as Thesis Rather than "Standard" Bachelor's Structure
I'm in the process of developing a quantum random number generator utilising novel mechanisms that haven't yet been implemented in commercial products in an effort to achieve better randomness and a higher bitrate. This is for my Bachelor of Engineering degree in the UK.
My university doesn't stipulate any particular format, and since it's just a BEng (not an MEng) doesn't require a literature review. However, since I intend on pursuing a PhD immediately following the completion of my BEng, I feel it would be beneficial to structure the dissertation as a mini-thesis broken into relevant chapters with names that I find appropriate rather than using the more standard dissertation template simply using stock headings (research, evaluation, etc.). I'm also planning on doing a literature review.
Do you think this is appropriate or could it backfire?
If it's relevant, I'll be using Latex book rather than article, to give you an idea of the formatting.

A brief conversation with the faculty person advising you on this project would be in order. Maybe you are unaware of requirements on content or style or some such. Presumably this will be the person, or one of the people, evaluating your work to decide if it satisfies the degree requirements. So chat with them about form and content.

LaTex is irrelevant for the question. But there is no reason not to do it your way provided that there aren't rules that prevent it. But your advisor is the best guide here.
In fact, since you intend to move to doctoral studies the experience would probably be worth any additional effort.
But you need to get some assurance that you won't get late push-back on it from anyone. Again, your advisor, or other faculty should be able to give the best advice.

I did think it would be largely irrelevant, I mainly included it so that it would be obvious the sort of format changes I'm talking about. Thanks for your advice.


text:
Second try for PhD after failing comprehensive exam
Two years ago I failed my comprehensive exam at the US PhD program, although my advisor was happy with my results. Then, I started to work at one of the top companies, but, I have never ever given up my desire to finish a PhD.
I want to apply to PhD programs again. How should I address the issue of failing my comprehensive exams? Basically how to convince them that you are able to finish their program.

What is the comps and what are the big4 companies?  And no life is wasted without a phd..

Comps are the qualifying exams at the end of the first year. Big4 companies are the consulting firms like KPMG, Deloitte PwC.

@user111388: Actually, comps may come later than the end of the first year. In math there are several topics covered, for example, and it may take more than a year to get the needed courses behind you. (US perspective)

I have edited your question to make it a bit more formal. Please rollback if you think it is conveying something different.

What is the question?

@AzorAhai-him- the question is how to get back on track? How to address the issue of failing the exams in your statement of purpose. Basically how to convince them that you are able to finish their program.

@Mattheus I edited your question to  put in an answerable question. Please feel free to edit. However, you might explain why you failed your quals. In my field, you don't really fail unless you don't try. So I'm not sure how you could fail and have your advisor be happy.

@Mattheus I don't think you need to address failing your quals the first time in your statement of purpose.  You want to convince your letter writers you will be able to finish, so it would be good to have a discussion with them.

It certainly is possible; I too have anecdotal experience.
There's really two main items at question here.

Why did you fail your qualifying exams the first time?
What will you get out of completing a PhD?

My experiences are as follows -
First, I failed because I took them too early and was not professional about my studies as I should have been, plain and simple. At that point, I was locked into a rigid timeline for a retake which I attempted to negotiate with the department. They pushed back and I passed 2/3 retakes, but that was not enough. I did great research, my advisor totally had my back (and is still incredibly disappointed with the department and the handling of my situation), the only reason I didn't continue was because I did not pass the qualifiers.
Based on the fact that you are at a 'Big 4' consulting firm, you probably  have a good career ahead of you. I was in industry for a while before returning to academia after undergrad, so I totally understand that academia provides truly unique opportunities. For me, it allowed me to re-orient myself from a management career track to a technical career track. And in the process, I fell in love with the process of finding research problems and having the freedom to really dig in and become an expert. Academia is really the only way for me to pursue the topic that I want to pursue, and to continue to develop myself as an independent researcher.
You really need to think hard about both of these questions. I did, and I knew that I wanted to continue. I worked hard to develop a relationship with another PI. And honestly, I'm working on problems which are more interesting to me in a niche field that is on the cusp of some very interesting results at the intersection of theoretical results and application.
There was another member of my cohort who didn't pass the qualifiers in the same round. They already had a master's, and decided that getting a PhD just wasn't in the cards for them.

On the practical side of things, you're giving up 3-5 years of, I am guessing, a 6-figure salary with good retirement package. That's a LOT of money, not to mention bonuses, raises, etc.. On the other hand, the golden handcuffs are likely not too tight on you yet, so now would be the time to take them off without too much pain.
In the end, this all really falls on you and how much you want to get the PhD - at this point, I would say it's not just want, it's how much you need to get it, for personal or professional reasons. There's plenty of ways to work on interesting projects doing what you want to do without a PhD. My biggest recommendation: exhaust those options before jumping back in.

Yes, it is possible to do this.
First, there are lots of reasons for failing qualifying/comprehensive exams, one of which is just burn-out.
It is even possible to move to a higher ranked institution when you do so and to be successful there. (Yes, I have anecdotal evidence.)
But, to do so requires an advocate who can assure the new institution that you have what it takes for success; knowledge, drive, skills. Your current advisor might be the person to do this for you but they will be putting their own reputation on the line to some extent so they need to be sure and you need to be sure that you will do what it takes to succeed. They will need to use already existing professional relationships to get another institution to give you the chance you want. This will probably limit the places you could move to in order to make it happen.
Another faculty member, not your advisor, might also be able to do this for you if you have a good relationship along with their respect.

Dear Dr. Buffy, may I please contact you? May be couple of your advices will help me get back on the track.

No, sorry. Work with your advisor. Keep up that contact.

Thanks, did not mean to ask you for anything. Sorry for misunderstanding.

No reason to be sorry. My anonymity is important to me here. That is all. And good luck.


text:
What is a "pedagogical reflection" in a teaching statement?
I am in the process of applying for an academic position in Europe. They have asked for a short pedagogical reflection in teaching statement, but I do not understand that. In the college that I am working now they have designed an online questionnaire to get students' feedback. The report is not available for public and it is in fact an internal report. Can I just copy that tables including the results? If so, how can the hiring committee validate that reports and results? Or they just rely on what I have written?

I would guess that they are asking more about your teaching philosophy than about feedback per se. Stating that you get good student feedback is fine, but I'd think they want more.
How do you interact with students? What sorts of exercises do you use? What is your grading philosophy (perhaps)? What do you expect outside of class? How do you manage questions in lecture? What sorts of materials do you provide?
But the above are just elements of a general teaching philosophy. For some universities teaching is a much more important element of the job than in others. Perhaps that is the case here.

Good answer, only want to add: there are lots of resources for writing teaching statements. Here's one.

Think about how you teach. Are the classes you run Socratic (you ask questions, trying to force the answers to the points you want to make)? Do you pick up a piece of chaulk when you walk in the door, and then write on the board for 55 minutes? Can every test question be found in a chapter you assigned for reading (or in the stuff you wrote on the board)? Do you value "the points I made in class" or a more general understanding of the subject? Do you believe in closed or open book tests? Caveat: I'm not a teacher

Pedagogical reflection means to critically review your teaching methods in order to improve upon them. What worked? What didn't? How can you improve?
Here's link to a recent paper from the Journal of Effective Teaching in Higher Education (vol. 4(1)) by Emily E. Virtue, "Pedagogical Reflection: Demonstrating the Value of Introspection."
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36021/jethe.v4i1.213
Note: This was found via a Google search using the phrase 'pedagogical reflection'