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Advisor won't let me push back against reviewer comments
I am a PhD student at a US institution and I am trying to revise a recent paper that I have submitted, to address some comments we have had from reviewers. I am first author, with my advisor also on the paper; however, my advisor seems to be unhappy with the way I am trying to 'push back' against some of the reviewers' comments. They have told me they think I am being overly aggressive and confrontational in my responses.
To clarify, we have already made substantial changes and clarifications to the paper to address most of the reviewer comments. However, there are a handful of comments (5-10%) which I strongly feel are 'off-base' and need to be pushed back on, for the good of the paper. However, my advisor is taking a position that it is not possible for a reviewer to be wrong and that any attempt to question or push back is unacceptable and would be viewed as offensive.
I don't think I am being rude or aggressive in my responses at all - I am trying to be polite but at the same time objective and factual. I disagree strongly with some of the reviewers' comments, which come across to me in some cases as 'off-base' or even misunderstanding key points of the paper. Incorporating those changes to the paper would either add confusion, distract or in some cases may even undermine the premise of the paper (e.g. based on misunderstandings). So, I feel there is a need to be somewhat robust in our responses and defend our work. However, my advisor seems to be of the opinion that the reviewers are the ultimate authority and their feedback cannot be challenged.
We ultimately seem to have very different opinions on how reviewer responses should be handled (and I feel like this ultimately may come down to a difference of style/approach). My instinct is to stand my ground and mount a robust defense of our work, especially in cases where the comments betray some misconception or are otherwise off-base. However, my advisor seems to want to be extremely deferential to the reviewers, taking the view that their feedback can't be questioned - every comment must be reflected in a change to the paper (even if their comments miss the point or don't make sense).
This paper is very important to me and I have a lot invested in it. I am a couple of months away from defending. This paper will represent a large portion of the thesis I have been working on for the past two years. I am planning to stay in academia and this paper will form an important part of my academic portfolio. However, this situation with my advisor is getting to the point where I feel it is going to cause us to water down and significantly reduce the impact of our work, which I find difficult to accept, having put so much into it.
The situation is causing me a lot of stress and I am finding it difficult to deal with. I would really appreciate some advice/insights from experienced academics who are outside our immediate group, in terms of general thoughts and what is the best way to deal with the situation. Surely there are cases where it is justified to push back against reviewer comments? I'm totally open to the possibility that I'm the one that is in the wrong and/or have the wrong attitude, but I'd very much like to hear some other perspectives.

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You seem to be mounting a strong defence (or even a strong offence) against this reviewer (were there other easier ones or just this one for this paper), do you expect to do the same with myriad readers too?

"misunderstanding key points of the paper."
If the reviewer misunderstood key points, then likely many others would misunderstand them, too.  So you need to fix that in the paper.  By all means, explain what the reviewer misunderstood: but do that in an edit of the paper, not in a rebuttal of the review.

Yes, agreed. Keep in mind that the reviewer represents a well-informed audience member. If they don’t understand the point, the average reader will be hopelessly lost.

Thank you for your answer. However, in most cases we are doing exactly this. We have already made a lot of changes to the paper, to clarify things based on the reviewer feedback. However, there are a handful of comments (5-10%) that I strongly feel need to be pushed back on, because they are off-base and accepting them would either add confusion or undermine the premise of the paper. However, my advisor is taking a position that: the reviewers must be right. Their word is as law; every comment must be accepted, without question. To challenge them in any way is to insult them.

@Time4Tea "there are a handful of comments (5-10%) that I strongly feel need to be pushed back on" This is key information that you omitted from the OP and that's leading to skewed answers. Your OP does not at all make it sound like you addressed the vast majority of the referee's comments, hence the answers you are getting. However, if your advisor takes the attitude that every single referee comment must be accepted without question, then they are simply wrong. Fwiw I myself as a referee do not expect (and do not even want) the authors to precisely follow every single one of my comments.

@AdamPřenosil thanks for your input. I will edit the question shortly to clarify.

@Time4Tea If the comments are off-base, then the reviewer got a conclusion different from your intended one. Find why, fix it if a correction needs to be made, and include in the article why the specific concern the referee had does not apply. At the end it's not the referee that you must convince, but every single reader of your paper.

@Neinstein Not "every single reader", just an overwhelming majority.

"If the reviewer misunderstood key points, then likely many others would misunderstand them, too." <- In my limited experience, some reviewers are simply ignorant of the subject matter, regardless of the specific paper submitted, and failures of program committees/editorial boards is what gets such papers to them in the first place. In which case, that statement is untrue, since the readers would be those actually interested/background in the paper's subfield.

@einpoklum: But at least some of your readers are going to be reading because they're interested in the subfield, but not already an expert; or an expert in another subfield trying to learn the minimum of your subfield to get an advancement in their subfield.

@AlexanderThe1st True, but if someone from a different field decides to read an advanced paper in your field out of curiosity, they should not be surprised if there are aspects they do not understand. It’s fine for someone from a different (sub)field not to understand parts of an article without further reading, but it’s also perfectly fine for articles to include such parts. If a limited understanding of the field forms the basis of review comments, then it’s also fine to consider that the target audience will not misunderstand and accordingly not accommodate those comments.

@einpoklum "some reviewers are simply ignorant of the subject matter" the whole point of publishing journal papers is to cure ignorance.  If some reviewers are ignorant of the subject matters, that is likely to be even more the case for the general readership.  When we write papers the intended audience is not just the experts but all readers of the journal that might be interested in the idea.  If you write in a way that is only accessible by experts you are unnecessarily limiting the take up (and citations) of your work.  So even if you think the reviewer is ignorant, use their comments.

@DikranMarsupial: No, that's not the whole point. There are introductory/review articles, and there are articles describing new research findings. (And PhD candidates are more likely to be writing the latter rather than the former.)

@einpoklum I disagree, new research findings ought to be presented in a manner that is accessible for any reader of the journal that would be interested in it.  The point of publishing is to allow others to take up your ideas, so if you prevent that from happening by writing in an obscure manner, you are limiting the value of your work (of course in some cases the obscurity is more a feature than a bug ;o).

Basically, understand: the reviewers stand between you and the publication. After the paper is published, that's it. It's yours.
In other words, "being right" in the discussion with reviewers is not the priority. This discussion is invisible (unless you work with OpenReview). It will disappear into the depths of the past.
What will remain is the message that gets through in the paper.
As a consequence, fighting with reviewers that can prevent you from publishing is not usually a good idea, unless the reviewers are factually wrong and you know exactly how and about what to fight them.
It is more likely that your advisor has experience on the latter and a better judgement on this than you. Therefore, I would suggest that you defer to them on any point that is not crucial. Decide which points absolutely need to be upheld and make the case politely, respectfully and factually. On the rest, I suggest to compromise.
Also, it can help to try to understand why the reviewers misunderstood you. Did you perhaps not write clearly? Was your formulation ambiguous? Maybe you are indeed wrong or could be interpreted in the wrong way?
Try to play advocatus diaboli with yourself and defend the reviewer's point of view. This will give you clarity and it may also lower your resentment against getting things changed, especially if you can identify points where the reviewer may have had a point. Thus it can help you put yourself in their shoes.
That being said, reviewers of course can be wrong, but this should be your very last assumption, when all your other compromise options have failed.
Finally, your advisor seems to see this publication outlet as the outlet of choice and gives an acceptance a high priority.
In short: my recommendation is to insist/push back on the minimum: essentials and objective reviewer mistakes only, and try to understand as much as possible what the reviewers want from you and what your advisor suggests. You are almost finished: you want that paper out.

PhD students often think they have made point x clearly in the paper, but often they have only hinted at x while making some other point. I ask them to show me exactly where they have made point x and they sheepishly realize they cannot find it.

"Basically, understand: the reviewers stand between you and the publication. After the paper is published, that's it. It's yours." And it's important to realise that even if you have to compromise in a paper (often because it only covers a part of your research, you can't develop all your ideas), then going forward you can continue with your approach and ideas, not theirs. Reviewers decide what goes in the publication, and probably know better than you what can and should be published at this time in this way, but they don't rule your life.

" play advocatus diaboli " indeed - I advise my students to write papers the way a chess player plays chess.  Don't play the strongest move you can see, play the move for which your opponents response is the weakest.  Be your own "reviewer #3" before submitting the paper.  Having said which - I have had reviewers write things that are demonstrably incorrect, and I have unequivocally demonstrated it in my response, but the editor sided with the reviewer anyway due to their eminence in the field.  Humans are fallible, and peer review involves humans.

I think there are two things you get wrong:

When a reviewer misunderstands something, then many readers will too. My perspective on reviewer comments is therefore that these are simply my first readers; the place to address their misunderstandings is in the paper, because that's where it originates. Nobody is helped if you mount a strong response with the reviewers because that does not improve the paper. Your goal should be to get the best possible paper out, not to do battle with reviewers.

Advisers are often deferential to reviewers because they have decades of experience in how the system works, and you don't. Your question comes over as saying "I don't need your advice, I know how to do this", but in reality you don't (and can't) because you do not have a long history as a reviewer, editor, or other participant in the publication process.

"Advisers are often deferential to reviewers because they have decades of experience in how the system works": Isn't it just about being friendly and grateful to a person who just put in (potentially a lot) voluntary work into commenting on your paper, leading to an improved revised paper?

To your first point - in most cases we are doing this. We have made a lot of changes to the paper, to clarify things based on the reviewer feedback. However, there are a handful of comments (5-10%) that need to be pushed back on, because they are off-base and accepting them would either add confusion or undermine the premise of the paper. However, my advisor is taking a position that: the reviewers must be right; every comment must be accepted, without question. To challenge them in any way is to insult them.

@Snijderfrey "Isn't it just about being friendly and grateful to a person who just put in voluntary work" - Unfortunately human psychology is more complicated than that. Many reviewers will not be happy with friendliness and gratefulness alone, they have the feeling that they are right and will stick to it and defend it, and will only accept if the authors acknowledge that reviewer is right and change things accordingly, regardless of whether they are really right. I'm not saying that this is good (for science), and I'm not saying they're all like this... but many are.

@Time4Tea As author, I do occasionally challenge reviewers, but I try to avoid it as far as I can. And I do it only if I have good reason to believe that the editor will agree with me, because at the end of the day the editor makes the decisions, not the reviewers, but many editors don't feel confident about the contents of papers they handle, so some (but not all) will just follow the reviewers no matter what. Also it is important whether other reviewers were more positive, potentially even regarding the issues in question.

@ChristianHennig, fair enough. Let's just say that being friendly and showing some gratitude are my reasons to write replies to reviewers the way I do. And I don't refrain at all from letting them know when I disagree, with generally positive outcomes (paper gets published).

@Time4Tea There is a difference between explaining politely to a reviewer why you don't want to do something, and "'push back' against some of the reviewers' comments." If your adviser feels that you are "being overly aggressive and confrontational in my responses", then they might just be right. If your adviser feels that way, a reviewer may too.

In support of @WolfgangBangerth : the issue here is not so much “pushing back” but doing it aggressively.  If you objective is get the paper published, you are unlikely to win over the referee or the editor if your reply is perceived to be aggressive.  Now, your reply may or may not be aggressive as a matter of fact, but if your advisor thinks it is, you have lost an important ally in the process.

See the multiple appendices of this arxiv posting and in particular Appendix 5 page 23 (admittedly an extreme case).

@Time4Tea " because they are off-base and accepting them would either add confusion or undermine the premise of the paper. " if you can't respond to their misunderstanding without adding confusion or undermining the premise, then either there is a potential problem with the premise that you should address or you don't understand the ideas (or their misunderstanding) properly, in which case it suggests your paper is not as clear as it needs to be.  It sounds like it may be useful feedback to me.

@ZeroTheHero If I still taught a CPD module on reviewing, I would be using that as an example!

I once got a referee report that said roughly "I was confused by X, and I think maybe you should do Y and Z here."
Y and Z didn't make any sense. However, I thought about the reviewer's criticism, and tried to imagine why he or she would suggest Y and Z. I decided that this part of my paper was confusing overall, and rewrote it entirely to make the argument clearer.
I then explained these changes in my response to the reviewer. The reviewer was happy, and my paper was accepted.
I'd recommend you consider doing the same: if you don't like the reviewer's suggestions, try to understand their underlying complaints and see if you can think of another way to address them.

Excellent point. I have seen writers refer to this as “understanding the note behind the note.”

You don’t have to do the suggestion. You have to clear up the misunderstanding that led to the suggestion.

They have told me they think I am being overly aggressive and confrontational in my responses.

my advisor seems to want to be extremely deferential to the reviewers, taking the view that their feedback can't be questioned

What your advisor is telling you sounds sensible. What you are inferring your advisor wants doesn't.
It doesn't seem fair that you use your assumption to guide what you do and how you think about your advisor rather than what they are actually telling you.
Some deference to reviewers is traditional because they are in fact in a decision-influencing role with respect to your paper.
I'd recommend working with your advisor to figure out how best to communicate and also to sort through what is negotiable and non-negotiable.

I would rephrase "Some deference to reviewers is traditional because they are in fact in a decision-influencing role with respect to your paper." into "Some deference to reviewers is appropriate because they have decades of experience and you don't."

@WolfgangBangerth "decades of experience" is not a prerequisite for being a paper reviewer in any of the domains I’ve worked in.

@WolfgangBangerth Surely depends on the field, but I was asked to review papers after I published my first one.  Which where the results of my master thesis, so I wasn't even a PhD student.

I can certainly understand 'some' deference to reviewers being wise and reasonable. However, total deference to them, to the extent that their word should be treated as law and it should be considered an offense to question or challenge them, in any way? This is the position my advisor seems to be taking.

You don't need to be confrontational to defend your point of view. Try seeing reviewers as your friends, not as an obstacle on the way to publication. After all, you want to publish a paper that you will be proud of even 10-20 years later, and both you and your reviewers have the same goal -- to improve the paper. Try to collaborate with them in the same way as with your co-authors. Frankly, in my career I had much more trouble convincing co-authors than convincing the reviewers. ;-)

@Time4Tea As others have pointed out, you keep relying on this "seems to be" language that lets you ascribe any motive you imagine to your advisor. You should focus instead on what they are actually telling you, not what you imagine or what "seems". Your shared goal should be to get the paper published.

Perhaps it would help if you tell us how young your advisor is. If he is very young (e.g. assistant professor on tenure track), he might still naively think that reviewers are more experienced than him. For a more senior advisor, I would really struggle to understand why he would assume that his opinion matters less than that of a random reviewer. Sounds like he has some kind of inferiority complex. Usually graduate students look up to reviewers as gods, and eminent scientists argue with them about anything, not the other way around.

@Vosoni my advisor is relatively young - on tenure track.

You see -- I could guess that.

+1 "Some deference to reviewers is traditional" also because they are offering their time and energy for free when you would not be able to afford it at their consulting rates!  A good reviewer is trying to help you, and that should not be rewarded by hostility/disrespect.  The golden rule should apply, how would you want authors to respond to your reviews?

Surely there are cases where it is justified to push back against reviewer comments?

Yes, of course. However, it makes a lot of sense to think how to to this without being too confontational. Reviewers sometimes miss a point in a paper they assess, and that may reflect in some of their comments. So how can you and the paper still benefit from that? It is certainly no help to write an "angry" reply to the reviewers, rather assume they are trying to help. Then, it is your job as an author to find that aspect in the reviewer reply which helps you to improve your paper.
There is nothing wrong to explain in the response to the reviewers that you believe a reviewer misunderstood something. At the same time, think why this has happened and what you can do from your side to avoid this from happening to other future readers. And of course revise your paper accordingly.
This way, it should be easy for you to frame your response to the reviewers in a positive way because without their comments and the thoughts they provoked, indeed your paper would be a less good paper. You can be grateful for that, can't you? This has nothing to do with being overly deferential to the reviewers. It is more about showing a positive attitude towards their comments and the effort they put into looking through the paper. Rather than saying "I am right and you are wrong", you may say "I am right and you helped me to make my point clearer. Thank you for that".

Perhaps there is a difference in perception between me and my advisor, but I really don't think I am being too confrontational or aggressive in my responses. I am being polite, objective and factually accurate. However, my advisor is taking the view that everything the reviewers have said must be right, and must be accepted, without question. To question or attempt to correct them is to insult.

@Time4Tea, assuming what you say is true, then my view is that your advisor is wrong. As a self-confident researcher, it is important to be able to judge when to defend your work, and when to accept reasonable criticism, even if it comes in the disguise of an odd reviewer comment. If it is smart to go into dispute with your advisor about this is a totally different question.

The advisor is actually the first person a PhD student should dispute with. To a grad student he is supposed to be like a punching bag to a boxer. The ability to argue and support a scientific dispute is the central skill a scientist is supposed to have, and being OK with someone having a different opinion is part of that culture. So it really makes a difference if the advisor can be argued with without feeling insulted. If he puts authority above the strength of logical argument, he is not a very good supervisor to start with. So you need to decide if it is possible to convince him.

@Vosoni right, my understanding is that as researchers, we are supposed to be able to defend our work. So ... "let me do it then!". I thought that a thesis defense is called that for a reason - not just a name. Isn't the point of a PhD program to develop strong, independent thinkers, who can conduct a scientific debate, rather than cowering subservients?

Just be careful, because if neither you nor your advisor have mastered the art of the dispute, it can end in a bitter divorse. But from what you wrote, your attitude appears very reasonable to me. I had similar conflicts with my supervisor during my PhD time, and I survived. ;-)

I acted more than a hundred times either as author or as reviewer, and I also have the "Outstanding Referee" status from the American Physical Society. From my experience, I can tell you that reviewers do make mistakes. They can be less experienced than the authors (very often the case), or they can simply lack time or motivation to read the paper carefully. Therefore what the reviewers write is certainly not the law. Objectively, their opinion has approximately the same weight (in my eyes perhaps even smaller weight) than that of the authors. Assuming that we are talking about some high-quality paper with several distinguished and experienced team members on the author list, the authors have normally spent months if not years polishing every detail, and they know their topic way better than an external referee who has spent at best a few hours (often just 15 minutes) to write their report. There are, of course, quite opposite situations, but I am now talking about a healthy, mutually beneficial author-reviewer relationship. It is totally OK to point the reviewer's attention to a possible mistake or omission, as long as this is done with due respect. You should not neglect your reviewers, every point they raised should be addressed. Every change you agree with or find neutral (will do no harm) is better accepted than argued against. However, if you think the reviewer proposed something that will make your paper worse, I would argue in the reply why that shouldn't be done. In 90% of the cases the reviewer would see your point and simply agree. After all, it's a dialogue between you and the reviewers, and you typically have 2-3 rounds. If you see a way to improve the explanations so that similar misunderstandings do not occur after the paper is published, do it. However, reviewers sometimes overlook even what is explicitly written. A good review is usually seen by the authors as helpful in improving the manuscript. If that's not the case, your reviewer is probably not so good or experienced, after all.

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However, my advisor seems to want to be extremely deferential to the reviewers, taking the view that their feedback can't be questioned - every comment must be reflected in a change to the paper (even if their comments miss the point or don't make sense).

(Emphasis mine)
If (if) this is accurate, then your advisor is off base. I was going to say "wildly offbase" but that isn't true. Deference to reviewers is usually wise because although the final decision belongs to the editor, the editor almost certainly trusts the reviewers.
Even so, subservience to every whim of the reviewers is not good.  Reviewers can be unreasonable and obstreperous, too.
However:

my advisor seems to be unhappy with the way I am trying to 'push back' against some of the reviewers' comments. They have told me they think I am being overly aggressive and confrontational in my responses.

(Emphasis mine)
This, however, is not the same thing.  Please understand that this is a separate issue from excessive deference to the reviewer.
But moreover, there's a lot of reliance on "seems" in your text.  I've highlighted only half your usage.  You need to actually understand where your advisor stands on the reviewer comments.  I've submitted papers my advisor and I thought were ready at the time, and gotten them back with comments that convinced him (and me) that we had more work to do.  This may be the case; your advisor may consider the comments valid.  Or some other factors may be at play.
But you're not going to get any satisfaction or make much headway until you can rewrite it without "seems" or anything similar.

My usage of the word 'seems' stems from a desire to comment on how I see things from my perspective/point-of-view. Which is all I can really comment on. I wouldn't try to represent my point-of-view as fact. You could replace the word 'seems' with 'from my point-of-view'.

@Time4Tea You are missing the point.  You have to talk to your advisor about this until you no longer need to hedge about this.

"Reviewers can be unreasonable and obstreperous, too." Don't I know it. I had a reviewer that kept nitpicking small formatting details which were nothing to do with the content of the paper. I was happy to make some changes initially, but after the third round I was getting sick of their gripes and chose to ignore all of their formatting comments.

You already got a lot of great answers; I'd just extend them with an advise instead.
Learn to disagree with agreeing.
I actually agree with your supervisor, without knowing context. You can, and have to, always assume that the reviewer is a highly regarded expert of the specific field you are publishing in. Correspondingly, a) whatever concern they raised is valid, and b) the same doubt would likely be raised in the head of other readers - especially other experts, whose attention you want to grasp the most. Considering this, the best course is to always make corrections based on each of the reviewer's comment.
Now - the question is how to carry these corrections out.

Suppose the reviewer stated something as incorrect, while you're confident it is. Perhaps the statement is not as convincing as you thought? Include a few citation-doped sentences providing strong support for that claim.
The reviewer believes something you did shouldn't be done that way, but you disagree? Then extend the article with a paragraph as strong as you can that shows why it is actually a good approach, including why each of the specific potential issues raised by the reviewer do not apply in your case. Best if you can cite other works applying a similar approach. Do so even if your reasons seem obvious or irrelevant - it didn't seem so for at least one good reader of yours.
The reviewer marks something as irrelevant or out of the scope of the paper, but you don't think so? Seems you didn't explain well enough why it's relevant, or the flow is not correct. Add a few sentences specifically explaining the relevance, and make sure that the marked content is referred to in multiple non-unimportant places of the manuscript.
The reviewer wrote something utter nonsense or irrelevant? Figure where the reviewer got the wrong ideas from, rephrase the corresponding part, and agree that the section was phrased poorly, expressing gratitude for pointing that out.

Your supervisor is right - you should never* just disagree* with the reviewer. But that just means you shouldn't deny considering their comment. You're free to not agree
And the last but IMO most vital point: if your revision didn't convince even your own supervisor, you can safely assume it won't work on the reviewer either.

* Except very rare cases, that should never happen ideally, where the reviewer is completely and blatantly wrong, like stating that the Earth is flat.

In my experience, reviewers who are blatantly wrong are not as rare as you suggest. It depends on the impact factor of the journal, of course, but sometimes I want to bang my head against the wall when I read the reviews. I mean not only reviews of my papers, but also other reviews of the papers I review.

@Vosoni I agree and have encountered at least one such reviewer myself, not even in a low-impact journal. But even in that case, I believe this method is the safest to follow. Take action on every comment, even if the action is a simple rephrasing of one sentence, agree that something may be confusing, thank for the comment, and move on. But ideally, in such cases, the incompetence should be obvious to the editor anyway.

But why do you need the safest method? There are many ways to fight against bad reviewers. One can ask the editor to seek one more review, one can even abandon that journal and submit elsewhere. The problem here is those decisions must be taken by the supervisor, who must be daring enough and have self-confidence to protect his own viewpoint and stand on the side of his PhD student. I know a situation when a paper was rejected from a journal and after that published in "Science". Initially the authors didn't dare to submit it to "Science", but the rejection helped.

@Vosoni simply because it is the safest. You want to publish, the reviewer is between you and your goal, the best course of action is to satisfy them. I don't see a reason not to, unless the reviewer asks for such a major refractor that the publication would change significantly in a direction you're not comfortable with. But in such case it's clear that a refusal will result in a rejection, and by doing so, you already decided to submit elsewhere. I think cases where not rephrasing a few paragraphs and figures worths changing to a new journal and restarting the publication process are rare.

@Vosoni When a reviewer doesn't have a clue what they're talking about, the whole review will be blatantly wrong. That should typically be caught by the editor, but if it isn't, it is reasonable to push back against such a review. However, if 90% of the comments make perfect sense, the reviewer has demonstrated the necessary baseline understanding, and if the remaining 10% of their comments are "wrong", it must be because the paper is unclear/too verbose/overreaching/lacking relevant introduction and it's the manuscript that needs fixing, not the review.

Something to bear in mind is that different scholarly communities have different levels of tolerance for push-back in review responses. Having published in a few fields (from water resources engineering to marine biology) the difference can be quite remarkable. So until you have published enough to know the culture of your field, trust your advisor or other experienced coauthors rather than advice from people in other fields on the internet.

This happened to me recently as well. A reviewer disagrees with the fundamental approach we took and no matter how we explain our motivations to them, they cannot accept it. We started with a fairly neutral response and simply trying to convince the reviewer that our work has its own merit. And after the revised paper come back the third time, our responses become more annoyed and so are the reviewer's responses back to us. At the end of the day, the reviewer stated that they will no longer review any more versions of this paper from us.
In my experience, this process highly depends on the editor. Some editor will see that all other reviewers are happy with our revised text, but this editor will try to please all reviewers and held on to the one reviewer's decision and won't accept the paper for publication.
In general, addressing the reviewer's concerns is better than giving a rebuttal. Your advisor is likely speaking from their experience that being overly aggressive by writing rebuttals may turn the reviewers fully against you and result in what happened to me. By being as neutral as possible, you can avoid that scenario and focus on addressing the reviewer's concerns. Instead of rebuttal, you discuss the issue at hand with the reviewer. But that also means sometimes you simply cannot convince the reviewer and if the editor won't make a decision in your favor, the best course of action is to resubmit to a different journal.

I'm pretty sure that your advisor didn't tell you that everything the reviewers have said must be right. This is probably only your understanding of what your advisor wants from you. Most probably the advisor told you that everything the reviewers have said must be addressed by changes in the paper. That's a completely different thing. And I agree with the latter 100%.
You do not leave reviewers comments unanswered and you do not push back. You try the hardest to understand what the reviewer meant and then make a change in the manuscript. This change might not be the thing the reviewer wanted, but you still make a change. You do not address comments by copy-pasting. The comments are for you to improve the manuscript, which means you need to be creative. An off-base comment signifies that the reviewer didn't get something right. So you need to change the text in a way that on next reading your reviewer would understand correctly.
You might think that the reviewer didn't understand because he's not an expert. That might be true. But not all your readers will be experts either. Please don't write articles that are understandable only to experts. Science is already so fragmented and specialized.
You can think of it also this way: the reviewers you got were selected by the editor. These are already the experts. If it's not understandable to them then you wrote your article for super-experts, i.e. you yourself, and maybe your advisor.
You say that you already applied 90% of the reviewers' suggestions. These were the easy ones. Now, for the next 10%, which are off-base, the uphill struggle begins. How do you apply comments that you disagree with? How do you apply comments that you don't even understand? That's precisely your task! And if you want to stay in academia you better learn that skill.
I'd say that pushing back is acceptable maybe on 0.2% of comments. Once every few papers. On very specific occasions that cannot be addressed in any different way. For instance the reviewer wants you to cite a completely irrelevant article that has nothing to do with your work (when they want you to cite something that is just tangentially relevant, then you do cite it). Then you can politely explain your decision, trying to figure out in good faith why the reviewer requested that in the first place. So the push back should actually acknowledge that you understand the request, but still disagree and cannot address it in any meaningful way.
On the other hand, you may find that even in such cases there's still something you can improve in your manuscript. Maybe you don't cite the requested paper, but you do cite a generic paper on field X and explain that your work is based in field Y that is only superficially similar to X. If the reviewer wanted you to cite something about X it might mean that such a disclaimer is actually useful.

When you're writing about complicated subjects, presenting information that is new to your audience, it's best to turn off your ego.
Words are a tool, not a product. Getting fond of particular arrangements of them is counterproductive when you're dealing with difficult material. What matters is getting the ideas across. If the reviewer doesn't understand you, although they have more experience in the field than you, that's a clear signal that you aren't writing clearly.
Your adviser seems to be treating this paper as a training exercise for you, which is entirely reasonable. Your job is to make the paper clear. It would be wise to try out the revised version on someone in your department before you send it back for re-review. Anything they don't understand is a problem you need to fix.


text:
Should I hold back some ideas for after my PhD?
I guess this a question about 'career pacing'. I am currently a first-year grad student studying for a PhD in Aerospace Engineering at a research university in the US. Even though I have only been studying this field for about 5 months, I am already starting to get quite a few ideas about interesting potential avenues for research. For example, possible numerical simulations or experiments that could be done.
I am thinking about pursuing an academic career post-PhD, so my question is: would it make sense for me to keep some of these ideas 'in reserve' for a possible post-doc or tenure track position? If I have one or more really 'great' ideas, when is the best time to pull those out of the bag? Now, during the PhD, or save them for later?
What I'm thinking is: if I pull out my best ideas now, it might be less clear whether they were really my ideas or my PI's; however, if I wait, then someone else might have similar ideas and beat me to it (i.e. publish or perish).
To look at it in another way: when is the optimal time during an academic career to fire off your 'biggest impact' ideas (if there is such a thing)? If I have more 'promising' ideas than I think I can work on during the PhD, would it make sense then to keep some in reserve?

I don't think you should.  As you gain more experience and knowledge, your ideas tend to get more interesting.  As an example, in the recent past, I have written many ideas down and never seem to go back to them.  I always pursue my latest ideas.

The point in paragraph 3 is valid, but maybe your current PI would be OK with you publishing as sole author. If that is the case, you would get the full credit for your ideas.

Other people's mileage may vary, but something it took me years to learn: never hold back on an idea. The ideas you have later will be better anyway. If you try to go back to an old one you might get it finished, but working on it won't be nearly as much fun as working on the new idea that you're excited about now. If you have a good idea and you have time, then work on it now - you're not going to regret that later.

Whatever you do, don't worry about running out of ideas. They don't stop for a very, very long time. If anything, they get better as you get more experience, and they get more refined as you grow your professional network!

I don't see a point in holding back ideas on purpose, at least not for a longer time.
If you are doing well in research, you will generally have more interesting ideas than you have time to pursue.  And you will keep having new ideas all the time. So there won't be a time when you will have ample of time, but be in desperate need of a great project.
So you should work now on the best ideas you have now: First, people will judge you by your best work and best ideas. If you work on more exciting ideas now, you will be more likely to secure good postdoc positions later. And if you have a fair advisor, they will clearly credit you with those ideas (e.g. in recommendation letters).  So you win by working on your best ideas now.  Second, your best ideas now might be outdated in a few years time, or your interests might shift, or you might have even better and more timely ideas at that time, so there is not much point in saving those ideas.  Third, someone else might have the same idea and publish a result on it in the meantime, making your ideas not new any more.  And finally, even if you don't have the time to work out all ideas fully yourself, it can make sense to share them with colleagues: Maybe they get excited by the ideas and collaborate with you on them, increasing your scientific output.
Finally, what if you will not have good ideas any more in the future? Well, then very likely your chances to secure a permanent position in research are slim, and having kept your old ideas will not save you.

This is really helpful advice, thanks. "Working now on the best ideas I have now" makes a lot of sense.

+1 Even if you have brilliant ideas now, they most likely will be obvious to anyone in your field by the time you get your doctorate.

I agree on following the good ideas now. However, my experience with good ideas is that the more interesting ones did not get outdated, rather, when I am asking around whether anyone has heard of a solution/tried approach X etc., the answer tends to be, no, but that sounds interesting; let me know when you have the solution :-)

@cbeleites But aren't those rather the ideas which have always been there, yet no one knows how to actually resolve them?

@user151413: from the feedback I got, no. Some of them turned out to be related to known problems which had totally different names in other subfields, but some of them are apparently new questions. One may say that some have become "askable" only recently, though - sometimes because other developments have paved the way.

@cbeleites Ok, if it is a big new question which the OP deems unsolvable, then it might indeed make more sense to hold it until they are tenured. ;)

When I was a graduate student, I thought I had lots of good ideas; most of them I realized after working on them for 6-12 months were not so good or led nowhere (i.e. they weren’t good at all).
In a competitive field, there is no point in holding back.  In 5 years from now the simulation you wanted to do at the start of your PhD will no longer be cutting edge or - if it’s really a good idea - someone else will have scooped you to publication.
Moreover, good ideas actually snowball.  A really good idea gets noticed and opens collaborations that bring other good ideas.  If the idea is yours, then these collaborators will recognize this as a fact through your comfort and competence with the and will attribute you proper credit.

I think the first paragraph is of major relevance. It would be the rare grad student indeed who can accurately assess the quality of their ideas four months into a PhD; learning that skill is after all one of the main goals of a PhD.

I'm not sure I'd look at it quite like that. Your dissertation has a problem to solve an/or questions to answer, so you do what's necessary to resolve that. That is the main line.
There is no reason to make your dissertation longer or more complex than it needs to be.
But, along the way you will have ideas for other related (and maybe not so related) things that you might pursue. Rather than trying to find a way to squeeze them into the dissertation, creating a hodgepodge, keep a notebook of those ideas.
Make it a formal notebook, with a new idea starting on a new page, such as a physical notebook. If you use an electronic version, keep it backed up as you may not return to some of the ideas for years.
You can keep this notebook up throughout your professional life, adding to it as ideas come to you. It is also worthwhile perusing the notebook periodically to see if you have things to add to earlier thoughts. At some point some specific thread may ripen into a paper.

With regard to your concern about who's idea something is, there is no reason you can't continue a collaboration with your PI after you graduate. Collaboration at a distance is much more possible now.

And when the notebook is full, that's when you get tenure! :)  (On a more serious note, what speaks against pursueing projects which don't make it into the dissertation?)

@user151413, actually when all the notebook ideas get checked off is when you get tenure.

Thanks. I really like your suggestion of starting a 'research ideas' notebook. I will definitely do that.

In some fields, coming up with new ideas is not hard. But then, you still have to carry the research to test these ideas, and some of them may turn out to be bad ideas or to give results that are not great, even if you though it was some good ideas. What I personally do is to keep track of all the ideas that I have over time. For example, when I read a paper and think about some new possibility, I will take some notes to remember it. Then, when I need to start some new project or give a project to a new graduate students, I will browse through my list of previous ideas to select the best one or to use this as startup point to search for more ideas.  Generally, it is better to always work on the best idea first,  because you want to publish good research.
But what is the "best" idea? Well, you can think about it from different perspectives such as the potential impact in your field, the time required to do the research (some idea may be easier than others), the risk of failure, the risk that someone else publish it before you or not, etc.    So I recommend to list your ideas and think about which one you should give the most priority first based on the different perspectives and your own goals. For example, if your goal is to publish a paper quickly because you urgently need to graduate, you may focus on some easier idea than working on the harder ideas. But if your goal is to get a paper in the top journals, then you should focus on the harder ideas that may have a bigger impact first.
Thus, to summarize, I think you should focus on your "best" idea first, where best is defined based on your goals and the different criteria to evaluate an idea (time, risk, potential, impact, ...) You don't need to hold back ideas but I recommend to keep a list of your ideas so you don't forget them. It may be useful later.

The answer may depend on the field you happen to be working in. As an example, in health sciences, 5 months is an extremely short amount of time. It takes years until you have any data that's worth publishing and as a junior scientist, it is rare to publish ideas or concepts alone (ie. writing a review article, letter to the editor etc.). Those articles are usually written by senior scientists in the field who are invited by the journals to do so.
The focus of a junior scientist (at least in health sciences) is expected to be the production and publishing good data. Once you have the data, the priority is to get it peer reviewed and published asap, and when you do so, you do not want to be withholding any data for later. You do not want to make a hodgepodge as Dr. Buffy said, but in order to get a high impact paper, you want your paper to be rich in content.
A paper that is rich in content gets a lot of citations, not only for the main message that it is conveying, but for the methods employed, individual pieces of data and the occasional reference to new ideas, concepts and possible future research directions (and... you are intending to withhold this?:D). A journal's aim is to maximize its impact factor, so a rich manuscript is the most valuable for them. When you try and divide your content into sub-papers, your main manuscript loses some of its desirability for the high impact journals and the sub-papers will usually be extremely difficult to publish anywhere. Some may never even make it to any journal at all, and the process will drain a lot of time and energy from you.
You also need to take into account the human factor: by the time you successfully published 1 paper, you will be near the end of the road as a PhD student, burnt-out, emotionally drained and depleted. The ideas that once looked great will appear so far away and it is not unusual for individuals to prefer spending time with family (or just some high quality sleep) over pursuing those. I found myself handing some great projects of my own to newcomers of the lab which I never regretted. Most eventually got published and I was the severalth author, but at least they made the finish line. I guess my point is, if you discuss your great ideas with the team now instead of keeping them to yourself:

You may at least get some credit for the intellectual aspect of the work.
The ideas may have a better chance at eventually being realized and your name being associated with it.
You will get criticism, which is great. Some ideas may not be as great as you imagined they were, and may have some room for improvement.

One can't do everything on their own and 21st century science is nothing but teamwork.

Previous answers give some great advice, which is somewhat one-sided. These answers are based on the presumption of having a "fair advisor". If you were confident in that, you would have talked to them directly. But since you posted your question here, the validity of such a strong assumption is questionable.
[Speaking of one-sidedness, some participants even advocate + letting unethical behaviour stand, claiming it is for the victim's own good, which makes me suspect the class solidarity motive. It is difficult to give impartial answer to student-vs-faculty questions, because most respondents belong to one of the two groups (guess which one), but we all must at least try!]
Here are reasons why you might want to hold your idea from your PI/supervisor and some problems you may face if you don't.
Your PI may or should have plans for your PhD. Maybe they already have a great project reserved for you, and are just waiting for you to get ready for it? Sharing your idea may disincentivise your advisor from thinking hard. Pushing your idea may discourage them from caring about you. They may decide that you will be fine and it is better to "feed" other students, who are more receptive or have less on their plate. In other words, you will simply learn more by listening more and letting others speak.
Your PI's ego and favouritism. They may think it is their role to generate ideas. Or that their most senior or favourite student should do it, not you. If, in your PI's worldview, a first-year PhD student cannot propose a good idea, then it won't be a good idea or it won't be yours. No matter the reality. A spherical PI in a vacuum does not behave irrationally or immorally, but humans do.
Your PI may have plans on you and envisages you doing specific work for them. This is more relevant to postdocs, because postdocs are paid from PI's grants, which is not always the case with PhD students. Nevertheless, your PI may expect you to do the work they allocate based on seniority. Changing this expectation and proving that your time can be spent with greater use maybe worth it and is easier than fighting someone's worldview, but still a potential challenge.
PI might claim authorship even if the work is yours from cover to cover. You won't be able to protest, because you have to finish your PhD with them, then get recommendation letters etc. You may hope that they mention your leading role in the recommendation letters, but you will never know. Your claims that the idea and all the work is yours will be taken with a grain of salt: read other answers again and infer the consensus about the probability of a PhD student of 6 months coming up with a good idea. It could be the case that you generate and implement many good ideas by the time you finish (which will make your claims plausible), but it could be just one, this one.
Why would a PI do that? Don't they have myriads of their own better ideas? Well... Some don't. There are few practical upsides to being generous (and letting students take full credit for their work), as there is little danger in cutting little corners here and there. The first instinct of some high-score participants here is not to condemn PIs' unethical actions, but to highlight the importance of "having good relations with" a PI for one's own career (see the links in the 2nd paragraph).
Working on your own idea all by yourself can be a great motivating factor. You can be simply more efficient when you don't have to deal with the resistance or reluctance of others. Depending on your personality, it can be much easier to recover from wasting several weekends on a crappy idea ("embracing failure") than from the feeling of being dismissed, taken advantage of, or not given a proper credit. The latter can be more discouraging and destructive.
Previous answers pointed out that ideas expire, get published by others, are superseded by better ideas, and tend to get less exciting for you personally. Also, you will have less time and freedom as a postdoc. I agree that the optimal time for your best idea is now, the question is how. In addition to working on your idea with your PI and working on it alone, consider a third option: use your idea to establish a collaboration outside your PI's lab or your university:

Outside connections are good for your career: postdoc opportunities with that person, cross-fertilisation of research topics, independent feedback on your knowledge and skills, and a solid recommendation letter.
You PI might welcome this collaboration, provided there is no direct competition.
Even if your PI is included as a middle author, you'll find it easier to assert your primary role in the project, while others will find it easier to believe.

Thanks for your answer. This is an interesting perspective.

No matter how many ideas you have, they will only award you one PhD. The definition in most disciplines is an original contribution of knowledge (that is, your knowledge and not anyone else's). Hence, if you are sure of your facts you could certainly hold back ideas over and above "enough" if you have a good reason to do so. Many people, however, complete a PhD for personal reasons and in that case doing one's best would be the key driver.

Keep in mind: given you are similarly bright-minded as your peers (including current PostDocs and Professors) and you are accessing the same material they are, it is likely that someone else is already working on those ideas.
So ... do not hold back them!
On one hand, they can be the starting point of a path to your future career steps and those ideas can be your way out of a possible non-optimal development of your PhD: what if you feel strongly your ideas are correct, you can prove that, but your current advisor is strongly against those ideas? he may be right, but you better found out on your own if he is right or wrong... and you will need support from people in your field already investigating those ideas.
On the other hand, if you are just thinking about new possible numerical simulations or experiments that could be done, only to improve (not changing) current knowledge or getting more precise data, just piggy-back who is doing that already, experiments are something like 10% idea and 90% implementation, so proposing a new thing is worthwhile only if you can commit

your time
or
some undergraduates' time working for you

Keep up your curiosity!

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Do high-ranking US grad schools typically interview PhD applicants?
I am planning to apply for Engineering PhD programs in the US this Fall; however, I am a bit confused as to whether US Engineering grad schools typically conduct interviews for PhD applicants.
I had assumed that most of the institutions that I am interested in would be conducting interviews of PhD candidates, to help gauge the personality/cultural fit. This view was reinforced by a friend of mine who did a PhD at one of those schools a few years ago, who told me they were interviewed.
However, I have spoken to another source that I consider to be reliable (basically, someone closely connected to the faculty of that school), who has given me the impression they don't do interviews for their grad school - they base everything off of the paper application.
I was a little surprised to hear this and so I am wondering if it is typical for fairly high-ranking US grad schools not to conduct interviews? Is there a general trend, or does it vary quite a lot from school to school?
Note: I have edited the question and title to take a step back from the apparent misconception(s) I seem to have had, and ask the question I probably should have started with in the first place. Hopefully it won't affect the validity of any of the answers.

Are you physically in the US? The universities tend not to want to pay for international flights.

@Anyon I live in the US, and I would be happy to pay travel costs for any grad school that wanted to interview me or meet me in person. Also, if that is the concern, why not conduct phone interviews (or even better, Skype)?

What gives you this impression?

@TobiasKildetoft as I mentioned in the question, I have a friend who was interviewed for a particular grad school a few years back. However, I have heard from a source I consider to be reliable that they don't do grad school interviews any more. I admit, it's only 1 data point, but that's why I am asking.

That explains why you consider this a change. But nothing in the question gives any idea why you would think that they no longer conduct interviews (and your comment does not do much to enlighten us).

@TobiasKildetoft I would rather not divulge my sources. However, why does it matter what specifically gives me that impression? Why is that relevant to the question of whether the rumor is accurate and part of a wider trend?

This varies wildly by country, field, and even subfield. For example, over here in theoretical physics I’ve never heard of any PhD interviews in any institution.

This may be discipline-specific within engineering. Most of the top industrial engineering programs don’t interview PhD applicants (I can only think of one exception, though there are probably others). They’ll still bring folks to campus for a visit day or weekend though after they’ve been accepted.

I doubt that there is any trend however, in any field.

Importantly, the invitation to campus (and the opportunity to talk to students) is after acceptance.

I have not seen anything to indicate that PhD programs no longer interview candidates. I was interviewed in person by many (~75%) of the schools I got into for my PhD program in 2015. I doubt this has changed in 4 years. In fact, I helped interview several candidates in 2017 and 2018 at my school. I was invited to tour and interview at several well regarded schools in my field.
Note that some schools do not interview candidates. This is especially true of lower -tier schools in my anecdotal experience. But I had colleagues who interviewed at some rather prestigious schools in Massachusetts.

Thanks for your input, this is interesting to hear. Of course, it is possible that my information is simply incorrect on the matter.

I applied to several R1 (top 25) programs for a Ph.D. in the hard sciences 20 years ago.  None of them did interviews.
This contrasted with my undergrad application experience where many (but still probably less than 50%) of good schools did have an interview.  I suspect the difference had to do with less interest in the "whole person" ideal of fluffy undergrad schools (cute personality and the like) and more interest in just getting strong candidates.  In addition, the huge percent of admits coming from overseas (mainly China) made interviews a difficult part of the process.
Probably in addition, just the logistics of departments versus undergrads.  If "Ivy" lets in 1000 kids per year, they probably can support doing interviews around the U.S. easily, using their alumni network (every one I had was local to me and via an alumni).  This is harder logistically for a department letting in ~20 kids or so.

Thanks for your input. I also did an admissions interview for my undergrad degree, which is partly why I was surprised to hear that some US grad schools don't interview PhD applicants.

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How should I refer to PIs in a statement of purpose (US)?
I am applying for PhD programs at graduate schools in the US and I am wondering how I should refer to researchers that I name in my statement of purpose? In particular, I am wondering whether to refer to people that have titles of 'Assistant Professor' or 'Associate Professor' as Prof. or Dr.? I have heard that the prefix 'Prof.' tends to be reserved for full, tenured Professors - is that true?
(note, that I have edited the question due to its similarity to this one, to focus specifically on the context of a statement of purpose for US grad schools)

Possible duplicate: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/37037/101

@MarkMeckes it is quite similar. Thanks for pointing that out. Perhaps what I will do is edit the question to be specific about prefixes used in personal statement for US grad schools.

tl;dr. In a formal situation, be formal, otherwise...
The US is pretty informal about titles (unless the professor is from a German university). So either should do in general (see below). Even an assistant professor can be referred to as "professor". It is even possible, if rare, that an Associate Professor won't actually hold a doctorate. But no one is likely to be offended.
You might, however, after a first usage, be told that some other thing is more appropriate. Then you should just do that.
My own doctoral advisor did have a Germainc type doctorate and additional beyond doctorate degrees. But he was happy enough in the US to be referred to with any reasonable designation. I also had a colleague who was at least an Associate Professor but held no doctorate. He did, however, participate in very important theoretical research - with Edsger Dijkstra, actually.
But this is how you refer to a person in person or in email and such. For a more formal designation, such as in a paper, you may need to refer to an actual title. "Associate Professor Smythe" or such. The context you give, suggests a formal title is called for - an application.

Hello Buffy, FYI: I edited my question to focus more specifically on a statement of purpose, due to its similarity to a previous question.

See my last paragraph. You are in a more formal situation, so a more formal designation is probably better. Getting it "wrong" won't have a devastating effect, however.

I have heard that the prefix 'Prof.' tends to be reserved for full, tenured Professors - is that true?

For formal writing in the US, that is false.  Assistant, Associate, and Full Professors are all titled "Prof."  This would be especially true if a student is writing.
Exceptions include:  University websites, press releases, and promotion documents.  In these cases, the exact rank is specified.
In other countries and in informal language, practices can be totally different.


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Have there been any recent studies on the effect of age on PhD success rates in the US?
I think the title is fairly self-explanatory. I am wondering if any recent studies (past 20 years or so) have been published that look at possible correlations between age and the 'success rate' of PhD candidates? I understand that 'success rate' may be somewhat subjective - I'm thinking of possible metrics such as dropout rate, years to completion, no. of papers published, impact factor 5 years after graduation.
The background to this is that I am 37 and planning to apply to Engineering PhD programs in my area this Fall. However, I had a casual conversation with someone recently who is connected to one of those schools, who commented that there might be some thinking on the part of an admissions committee that I may be 'past my peak' for their PhD program (they weren't representing it as their own personal view). However, this seems at odds with what I have read online and advice I have received from a couple of Professors that I know (not related to these schools), which indicates that more mature PhD candidates tend to do well and are quite highly regarded.
Now, I'm not trying to point fingers or accuse anyone of ageism here. For all I know, my contact's suspicion might be mistaken, or I may have misinterpreted. But, it occurs to me that it would be great if I could point to some hard data that makes a persuasive case that mature PhD candidates on average perform at least as well as fresh graduates, which might help to pre-emptively 'head off' any doubts regarding my age.

Good, specific, question! Thank you.

And to anybody thinking "close as a shopping question" - please think twice! This is a question asking for specific findings about academia. I can't think of anything more on-topic than this!

Hmmm. I would think that age is one of the least predictive variables for PhD graduation success. It would be overwhelmed by other variables. Can a 70 year old with drive be a success. Sure. To me, 37 is still a kid. Just. Do. It.

@Buffy thanks for your comment and I certainly will apply regardless. But still, I'd be interested to know if there is any concrete data that shows age is not a good predictive factor.

I have heard academics express concerns about career-changing candidates at the faculty-hiring stage. Though it tends to be more about whether they will enjoy the job enough to stick with all the nonsense we deal with, or whether will abandon us to go back to their higher-paying (and probably lower-stress) industry career. For grad-school admissions you just need to provide a story for how school fits in to your career as the next logical stage.

REVISITING GLADWELL'S HOCKEY PLAYERS: INFLUENCE OF RELATIVE AGE EFFECTS UPON EARNING THE PHD. by Kevin M. Kniffin and Andrew S. Hanks, Contemporary Economic Policy. Jan2016, Vol. 34 Issue 1, p21-36. 16p. may be of interest.

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5082/how-important-is-age-in-cs-phd-admissions

I would suspect that the reasons for lack of success would be more a function of age than age is predictive. That is, younger students may drop out because they made a mistake or just kind of limped into graduate school without knowing what they want to do; older students may drop out because of more "life happens" stuff such as illness of themselves/a spouse/a child/a parent.

"Past your peak" how exactly? Peak of what?

@JonCuster thanks for the reference. I will take a look at that.

@ElizabethHenning I took it to mean 'peak academic potential' or 'peak mental sharpness', or something along those lines. But I could have misinterpreted.

@Time4Tea It's still a weird thing to say. The relevant question for an admissions committee is whether you have what it takes to complete the PhD now, not whether you hypothetically might be or might have been more suited at some other time of your life.

I don't have exact references handy right now, but a researcher at UC Davis named Dean Simonton did some work on academic and creative output and age. The upshot is that up until actual senescence--so certainly no younger than around 70 for neurologically healthy adults--the relevant variable is "career age" (the time one has been working in a particular field) and not biological age.

Thank you for the name. That sounds interesting - I will take a look at his work.

I have never heard of any PhD programs that require age/DoB etc as part of the application. Age is not a problem, however there are many problems indirectly related to age.

Letters of recommendations (LoRs). This is one of the most important part of the application. The strength of the LoR depends on who write it, and what they write. It is much much easier if you just worked with (well-known) professors, and they can write good things about you. 20+ years after graduation, obtaining good LoRs can be a huge challenge.
Statement of purpose (SoP). A good SoP needs to show your background, and passions about the field. Your research interest cannot be too broad (but not too narrow either). It's not easy if you have worked in industry for years, which is often not related to academic research.
Research potential. That's also what you need to show in your SoP. If you have no research experience, it is easier to have an excuse when you just graduate, than when you have worked a routine job for 20+ years.
As there is US-tag, most PhD programs require GRE score. That means you need to memorize more than 3000+ words that are rarely used in everyday life. If you have a family, kids to take care of, finding a time to study them can be a huge problem.
Living expense. After many years working in industry, people are often in a senior level, that PhD stipend is just a tiny fraction of their salary in industry. It's hard to downgrade, in particular when you have a family to support.

For those reasons, you will not see many old PhD students. If somebody wants to conduct such a studies, it is extremely hard to find enough samples.
In summary, if you have good LoRs, good background, good GRE, good stories (research experience) to tell in SoP, go ahead and apply, nobody will care about your age. There are challenges with age, but age discrimination is illegal in the US and is unlikely one of them.

I got the highest possible score on the verbal portion of the GRE without memorizing a single word. A vocabulary that would be unusual in the early 20's is easy to obtain by reading for another 30 years with a wide range of interests. See my answer to a similar question for more on PhD studies as a mature student.

Thanks for your answer. It's possible the person I was speaking to was alluding more to some of these practical obstacles, as opposed to age in itself being a problem. Thankfully, I believe I can address most, if not all, of these.

@PatriciaShanahan thanks for the link to your other answer - that is really interesting and motivating. Regarding the GRE, I got a fairly high score (but not perfect) on the verbal, with not a lot of study. Funnily enough, for an Engineer, I seem to be struggling more with the quantitative section - the time limit is so frigging tight!

@Time4Tea Despite a bachelor's degree in mathematics, I needed quite a bit of practice on the quantitative section to get fast enough.

@PatriciaShanahan ok, thanks for sharing. That makes me feel a bit better :-)


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Including tests done at a commercial lab in a manuscript
In the course of an experimental study, I sent a few samples for testing at a commercial lab. By commercial, I mean that they provide standardized testing services for a fee, and are not engaged in research or development. These tests are a paid service rather than a collaboration.
The tests are routine engineering tests, generally used to qualify materials. I would like to include some of these test results in an upcoming manuscript, which contains several other experiments done at my institute. What is the appropriate procedure for using these results?
I'm considering:
(a) Include them with the other experimental procedures, specifying the standard that was followed for the tests. This would include all the details needed to reproduce the tests, without mentioning the specific lab where they were carried out.
(b) In addition to (a), mention the lab in the acknowledgements. I doubt this will benefit the lab in any way, but if its more ethically appropriate, I'd pick it. This is also what we'd do for tests done at another research/academic lab.
(c) Mention in the 'Methods' section itself that these tests were carried out at a commercial facility. This seems a bit jarring and awkward to me, and I've not seen it anywhere (yet).
Better suggestions are most welcome, examples (if available) would be great.

In your paper, you need to describe all the methods you used. One of the methods you used was to send samples for processing at a commercial lab. This is very common, I'm surprised you haven't encountered it before.
While you do not need to lay out all of their SOPs and specific sources of their reagents, you at minimum need to state the commercial lab you sent the samples to (typically by name, city, and country and any appropriate intermediate stages like US state) and the tests they performed. Also good to include some of the methodological details they used if they are not completely standard as these may change.
No need to put them in an acknowledgment.

Glad I asked! For my understanding, what is the rationale for mentioning lab location/specifics, given that these such are meant to be location/operator independent?

@AppliedAcademic Because they're not independent. It's also typical to mention manufacturers/sources of ingredients used in experiments, etc. Basically, if you didn't personally verify that a certain reagent is what you say it is, you point to the responsible party who did. When you send something to an outside lab, you can't vouch for what they send back but they can. It lets someone reading your paper replicate your result by going to the same lab, or decide how much they want to trust your results based on who you've sent the work to.

Same goes for, say, authors of statistics software you use to analyze data.

Makes sense, thanks!

Unless it's absolutely critical, providing vendor info for the lab, and then citing their certifications, is enough.  That's what standards are for.

@ScottSeidman Disagree with that in general - you should provide enough information to reproduce. Standards are often not, and change over time.

@BryanKrause They may change over time, but one can always see what they were at any given time, especially with proper citation.  There are hundreds of thousands of published case studies where laboratory values are given, with no methods offered, other than a vague assumption that the clinical labs have been certified to relevant clinical standards.  Because of these standards, a red blood cell count is a red blood cell count regardless if it was done by a tech looking through a microscope or a Coulter-counter, and urine pH is urine pH, whether done by a tech with a dipstick or a pH meter.

@ScottSeidman For most of the laboratory measurements used in my field there is no such level of standard. Anything outside actual clinically-used diagnostics. Your best bet would be to ask for the company's SOPs at the time, which they may have access to, but also may not be easily available if the company has closed/purchased/changed names. And, no, I disagree, a "red blood cell count" is not a "red blood cell count" regardless. Sample preparation and storage and everything else can have impacts on lab results.

@BryanKrause -- I'd rather avoid hypotheticals.  Many researches do laboratory testing that one simply cannot do in a commercial lab.  Since this OP is specifically reporting "routine engineering tests", there are very likely very sound standards from ISO, ASE, ASTM, ....  Prep and storage are issues, but once in a certified lab, all handling and storage will comply with ISO 15189.  If any of the pre-lab prep is important, that would go in any pub, but is outside the scope of the question.  As an aside, testing to an FDA-recognized standard is sufficient for premarket clearance applications

@ScottSeidman As I wrote in my answer, "Also good to include some of the methodological details they used if they are not completely standard as these may change."

Also, unless I'm missing something, these standards say nothing about how tests are actually performed.

Testing standards are usually extremely specific about methods.  While you can't see the standards, see https://www.admet.com/testing-applications/testing-standards/ and look at the titles.  Sorry I'm perpetuating over this, but engineers live and die by standards.  With respect to FDA, and other regulatory agencies, you can properly use standards and get your premarket devices through the process in finite time and costs, or subject yourself to unnecessary surprises and very expensive delays.  Teaching proper use of standards is required for accreditation of engineering departments.

@ScottSeidman Most people doing biomedical research are not submitting to FDA or any regulatory agency and are not engineers. I know OP is likely not in those research fields, but the title of their question is more general, so I provided a more general answer. If, indeed, there are processing steps that vary, my answer points out that they need to explain this in their methods rather than just referring to the commercial lab doing the test.

I recommend citing the lab as a vendor, and then listing and citing any quality assurance standards the lab complies to, such as ISO9001 (or ISO 15189, for clinical labs).  This way, you're off the hook entirely for describing the commercial lab's methods.

All of what you describe seems completely appropriate. In the methods section you should probably say why you use the lab. Independent tests according to a well-defined standard can be a plus in your methodology, lessening any hint of bias.
For the second point, I think it is more of an etiquette concern than, strictly, an ethical one, since the lab gets paid and isn't a "research  collaborator". But, it is good to do in any case.


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Is there a known relation between course pass rate and student feedback?
I analysed the relation between the feedback scores of my courses given by students against the average grades of the students in these courses. I found a moderate correlation (Pearson r) of 0.595. i.e. if the grades are better the students tend to give better evaluations of my teaching.
While I kind of expected something along these lines I then correlated the pass rate (= students with a positive final mark divided by the number of students) of the courses and mean student feedback and found a striking correlation of 0.898 (note that for Pearson r 0.0 would be no relation and 1.0 would be a perfect relation).
At the time I grade the exam I do not know the students’ feedback and at the time the students give the feedback they have not written their final exam yet but they have the results of the midterm exam and several marked assignments/papers (the combination of both usually being a pretty good predictor of the final exam and grade).
My analysis is based on a relatively low number of 10 courses (amounting to about 610 hours of class room presence).
Therefore my questions are:

Is there a known relation between pass rate and student feedback?
E.g. a publication that analysis this on a larger scale? Or are my
results just an odd outlier?
If this holds true would it not question the meaningfulness of
feedback scores as making a course easier gives better feedback
(tenure decisions etc)?

Is there a correlation between the grade you awarded and the grades the students think they deserved?

@SolarMike Difficult to say as I do not know what the students think that they deserve ... Some of the failing ones did definitly agree at the exam review but others didnt

I also have issues with student's comments - some good students never bother, while other students make more noise and don't always state the truth.

Seems like there wouldn't be enough variance in pass rates of similar-enough classes to do an analysis

Seems pretty obvious. People doing well feel good. People who feel good are more likely to be positive. Teaching, grading isn't very special here.


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Whether to tell my PhD advisor about transfer
Similar questions have been asked but my specific concerns have not be addressed.
Like many others, I'm currently in the first year of a PhD program (A) in US and resolve to transfer (reapply) to other programs because of unmatched research agenda here. Last year I was also admitted to another program (B) and, after communicating with the target professor there, I decide to reapply to that. For the re-application this year, logistics are simple because I could retrieve all the materials from last year and I've found potential reasons to convince. Of course, there is no guarantee: I could probably end up being rejected by B. If that happens, I will decide to try again next year.
Now the problem comes. I really hesitate to tell my advisor at this time (before my first attempt). If he knows and I get rejected this year, I might end up nowhere at all. Even if he lets me stay, I think it's hard to tell about the second attempt next year without irritating him.
As in the first year of PhD I focus on coursework and get less involved with his research projects, I do not use his recommendation letter for my first attempt of transfer. That way, it seems safe to tell him only if I get accepted at my first attempt. If rejected, I will simply ignore this attempt and only tell him about my second one next year (also I will need his letter then). What's your advice?

Additional info:

I'm in a social science discipline, where it's not uncommon for students to change advisors halfway and/or simultaneously work with multiple professors within the same program. But I still resolve to transfer because there's no other professor in my field within program A.
I will be funded through my current advisor's project funding from next spring semester.
The target professor at program B knows my current advisor, but when I talked to him about my intention to transfer he didn't discourage me, which is why I feel it a decent step to take.

You might want to add a few details about your situation: e.g. your academic field and whether your funding is coming directly from your advisor.  In particular, in some fields and for some funding sources a student would never get their funding cut just for applying to other programs, but in other situations this would be a larger concern.

Also: some academic fields are much smaller and/or more tightly knit than others.  In some fields it is quite likely that the information that you have applied to program (B) will get back to your advisor at program (A).

@PeteL.Clark added some additional info

Since you've already reapplied, you're best off waiting until you've heard from the other university. There's no point in poisoning your existing relationship, which would have been the net result of telling your advisor you've applied somewhere else, and then not gotten in.
However, have you had an open discussion with your advisor about why you want to transfer? Perhaps there's something that can be done to improve the situation—maybe a co-advising situation, or a transfer to another group at your current institution?

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


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Submitting a journal article on a study that extends another while an article on the initial study is under a conference review
I am seeking advice on how to handle submitting a new article that builds upon and extends a study that is currently under review at a conference on Human-Computer Interaction. I will be somehow specific so that some of you will better understand how my two articles differ.
Background:

I conducted an initial study using virtual reality (VR) to investigate a specific effect. This study is currently under review for a conference.
I have since conducted a follow-up study replicating the experiment in a desktop setting (without VR). The goal was to examine whether the effect observed in the VR study persists in a non-immersive environment.
The desktop study used the same methods as the VR study, with the main difference being that it used a desktop setup instead of VR.
I currently have two datasets, and I am considering whether my second article should present the two experiments separately and then a joint analysis comparing their results. In any case, I would need to use the data from both studies, which would make it difficult to self-cite in the third person without indicating that I am that author.

My question:

I would like to submit the desktop study as a new article, as it extends the findings of the initial VR study. However, I am unsure if I need to refer to the initial VR study, which is currently under review and has not yet been published.
Would it be acceptable to submit the desktop study without mentioning the article on the initial VR study? The VR study may not yet be accepted when the new article is reviewed.
If I need to refer to the VR study, how should I handle it, given that it has not yet been published? I want to avoid reviewers needing to read both articles to judge the new submission.

I would appreciate any guidance from those with experience navigating similar situations.

Do preprints exist in your field and does the conference you submitted to allow submitted work to be available as a preprint?

@BryanKrause Thanks for the suggestion - I'll inquire about it. Would I be able to cite it as a preprint if that's the case?

Yes, you can cite the preprint. If the initial study is published before the second one is you can update the citation; if not, that's fine, your preprint can be edited to link to the final publication version when appropriate. Either way, at least reviewers can see the work you're citing for purposes of review of the second paper.

@BryanKrause thank you!

Math and Computer Science professor here. The situation you describe is very common, because of the fast pace that research moves and the slow pace of publishing. I myself have had this situation numerous times.
Computer scientists often communicate via preprint. The preprint server arXiv has a whole section for research on human-computer interaction. The general idea is to upload the first paper to arXiv (this can be done when it's ready to submit, or while it's under review) and then have the second paper cite the first paper according to arXiv identifier. Here's a recent example of mine that shows how I cite arXiv preprints.
If the second paper builds on the first paper heavily, then a good referee on the second paper might want to read the first paper, to be sure there are no issues that percolate into the second paper. Having it on arXiv gives them that option.
The only downside is if you submit to a double-blind journal. I've done that five times or so. In such cases, you can either cite the preliminary version without giving away that you're the author ("we build on White's methodology in [7]"), or you can say in the body of the paper that this work builds on previous work of the author, and can include a blinded version of the first paper (which is currently under review elsewhere) in case the referee wants to see it. Like "this research builds on the author's earlier work 'VR stuff is awesome', which found that ..." I did that once, and by the time the second paper was accepted, the first had also been accepted and I was able to update the bibliography to cite it.
Lastly, consider whether readers of the first paper would also be interested to know that there is a follow-up. If so, when you get the first paper back from the referees, you can update it to include a citation to the second. The referees of the first paper should not object, because the first does not rely on the second, but your readers will appreciate the improved picture of the literature.

Thank you for your thorough answer! If I may ask another question, I'm concerned that my second article might get accepted and published before my first article, which is under review at the moment. I imagine the first article would be rather unpublishable if the first would expand its findings. Would it be wise to wait for a notification from the first conference? Thank you.

That's not much of a concern in practice in preprint fields, because editors and referees understand the variability in referee times. It might matter if it was several years later. Since the first article is already under review, submitting the second is no problem.


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Should I be honest about my past history of attending a Master degree in the past?
I am planning to attend a PhD program in the future. Should I be honest that I have some experience of attending a full-time Master degree in the past for three years? I had a somewhat rocky relationship with the thesis supervisor resulting in me being kicked out from the program. I am a bit worried that revealing this might be not too beneficial for me during the application process. Can I pretend that I did something else during the three years? In reality, I did some work in a part-time manner while attending my old program (self-employed).

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/42606/can-i-hide-the-fact-that-i-dropped-a-phd-program-when-i-apply-for-another-phd
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27015/do-i-have-to-submit-transcripts-from-school-i-transferred-out-of-for-grad-applic https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/42217/reflecting-bad-experience-with-previous-graduate-program-in-statement-of-purpose https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/94913/applying-for-a-phd-program-after-withdrawing-from-another-one

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/65901/applying-to-grad-school-need-to-indicate-history-in-previous-not-so-good-schoo https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/115184/must-i-admit-having-started-but-not-finished-an-ms-when-applying-for-a-competi https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/107351/what-would-be-the-possible-consequence-of-concealing-an-incomplete-degree

If nobody asks you, of course, do not mention your Master's program.
However if you are asked (or if you have to fill out a form about your previous education), you must absolutely not be dishonest!! If for some reason they found out, you could be executed (is this the right word?) from.the program immediately.
When asked why you did leave the other program, be diplomatically. Do not badmouth your previous supervisor. Say something like "it wasn't a good fit".
Moreover, did you really think in a forum full of academics like this one (some registered under their name!) somebody would really encourage you to commit fraud?!

I think the word you're looking for is "dismissed" or "expelled".

Ah right, thank you!

Consider the worst case scenario under each action: telling them and not telling them.
Under the first it might be a bit harder to get accepted and your search might take longer. You have more to explain about how you will be a success.
Under the second, you are found out and expelled and blacklisted for dishonesty. Academia is a kind of a small place in each discipline.
The best scenario for both is about the same.


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I wanted to apply PhD in Clinical Psychology, but my research activities and research interests are a bit different
A bit background about myself after finishing my bachelor degree in Psychology from a private university in a developing country. I worked at my family business for a couple of years before realizing that I wanted to become a clinical psychology scientist and part-time practitioner.
Research activities in clinical psychology field in my country is sadly not too active and rigorous compared to other branch of psychology. Most of the lecturers in clincial psychology are much interested to become a practitioner, thus research activities was so low in the clinical psychology field. However, luckily, by the time I became interested in the clinical psychology research, a suicide prevention (SP) organization with quite high research activity was founded and I became a part-time researcher for the organization.
Currently, I am planning to apply for a PhD program in Clinical Psychology in the West (specifically USA or Canada, because UK, Australia, and New Zealand PhD Clinical Psych programs rejects bachelor holders from non-English speaking countries, I cannot speak German or other European native language, so I will not apply there) because the reason mentioned above. However, my biggest problem is that I wanted to do research in marital and sexuality issues, but most of my research experience is heavily related to suicide topics. What should I do?
The good news is recently a lecturer from a different from mine graduated from a PhD Clinical Psychology abroad and she seems to have certain interest in marital issues topics. Should I approach her to gain up experience in conducting research in that topics? However, I am rather difficult position because I have to balance my obligation in my family business and SP organization. Also, she seems to be very busy and she said that it would be rather difficult to accomodate my research project.

I don't know anything about your own educational system and I can't speak for "the West" in general, but in the US you shouldn't have any particular difficulty, other things being equal. In fact, having some research experience in the general psychology area would likely be treated as a plus no matter what the focus.
In the US, it is possible, in general to be accepted into doctoral programs with only an undergraduate education and very little if any research experience. You also don't, in general, need to specify a specialty on entry, but choose one during the first years. Such programs normally have some course work to fill in gaps.
The path, for the US, actually, is to apply to programs that interest  you, or, at least, contact departments at such institutions and discuss your qualifications and interests.
The European system is different, and I'll let other speak about it. But I will guess that the research process isn't vastly different between the experience you have and the degree you seek. That is an important asset. That process can be widely applied and tailored to specific areas.