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What should I do after advisor got upset when I expressed "belief in evolution" and then said he couldn't add me to his research team?
A bit of background: I am a graduate student working towards my Masters in physics. During this summer I signed up for some classes that are somewhat outside my main focus of study. For instance, biophysics; evolutionary physics and so on. The topics were very interestingly handled and I learned a lot. They were, however, not so big on the credit hour scale - just 2 CH each.
Fast forward to last week; I was discussing about my progress in the course with my advisor and I mentioned these classes that I took. I pointed out my interest in the subject and asked him if it would be a good idea to switch to those topics for my PhD research in the future. The conversation took an odd turn as he started to exhibit some strange aversion towards my suggestion. He got upset and all of a sudden started to talk to me about evolution. He didn't let me talk at all. To summarize what he said "I don't believe in evolution (he said this with air quotes), and I believe that God made us all. You should've consulted me before you registered for those classes. I have to ask you Renae, do you believe in evolution (air quotes again)?" He paused for a while. "Yes sir, I am afraid I do." I replied. "Well, that's that," he said, and soon the meeting came to a halt.
Now, the reason behind this question is this: On Friday morning, I got an email from him stating that he won't be able to add me to his research team this semester because all the positions were already filled. The email was brief and did not give any further (useful) information.
D'oh! I immediately gave him a call and asked about this, and he gave me the same answer as he did in his email. I haven't registered for any other classes this semester, and now it's probably too late to do so. I don't know if I could report this. His reasoning might be valid. May be his team is filled up at the moment, nevertheless I am stuck for this semester. If I report him, my chances for getting a reasonable letter of recommendation will be zero. I can't contact anybody else about this either. All my other professors are close friends with him and will surely rat me out. However, it also makes me worried that my advisor holds a completely different scientific view than I do.

Is it reasonable to be concerned about my advisor holding a completely different scientific view?
Should I report this to the authorities?
Will this affect my future studies?
Is it ok to continue in his research team, if he gives me another chance?

UPDATE -- (8th of September, Tuesday)
Sorry about the late update. I was in a bit of panic mode after this incident, and I hope you would understand. Let me answer some of the new questions and concerns that were raised in the comments. I am originally from Australia, but I am in a US university (south). I did not have any sort of argument or dispute with my advisor regarding this issue on that day, I assure you. Neither am I keeping anything out of the light here, as someone has suggested (why would I?).
Anyway, I did not go to the other professor. Instead, I talked to a friend of mine in the department who has a friend working in his team. According to her, the team only has 3 students at the moment, and it is not the usual maximum. Most other professors have more than 5 students at a time including post-doc, masters, honors and a few undergrads. I am still not sure if there's a correlation between the incidents, but I am considering alternatives. Meanwhile, I haven't told this to anyone else, not even to my friend. The minimum credit hour requirement (9CH) is the main issue now. I have to be registered for at least 9 CH per semester. By the looks of things, it seems like I'll be buying tickets back to Australia quite soon.
UPDATE -- (13th of November, Friday)
I quit grad school, and I am back in Australia. I can't believe two months have passed already.

Perhaps the professor of the evolutionary physics course would be a useful person to talk to here.

I assume you're at a public US research institution, and I must say that, if this is truly his reason for not letting you join the group, that's shocking. Certainly there's no way, in academia of all places and in physics, at that, that he has managed to avoid working with people who accept evolution.

Deciding whether or not to hire someone based on their religion (or lack thereof) is illegal in the United States, it's a protected class - you're not even legally allowed to ask the question in an interview.  I'm not sure if this extends to picking grad students, but even if it doesn't, I imagine your university guidelines have something to say about it.

Vaguely related: There's an interesting summary here of a lawsuit involving a creationist lab tech who sued university after he was terminated, allegedly for expressing the creationist viewpoint to students and publishing an article on them.

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I don't really have anything useful to suggest, but seriously, this is dumbfounding. I've certainly encountered a fair share of professors who held one prejudice or another (like christianity, atheism, vegetarianism, or avoiding sugar), but I can't imagine a situation in which they would outright dismiss someone because he did not share said prejudice. As long as it has nothing to do with the science (nor does it seriously interfere with everyday cooperation, like very bad hygiene), who cares?

I guess my comment won't help you much, but I wanted to share it with you. Unfortunately, I had a similar situation with my advisor. He's very religious guy, and I'm an atheist. Once he asked me about my religion and I answered (told him the truth). From this time, he treats me differently. So differently, that now I consider moving to another univeristy ...

If I report him, my chances for getting a reasonable letter of recommendation will be zero. — Even if you don't report him, your chances of getting a reasonable letter of recommendation are zero.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is too localized. It is basically a "here's what happened to me, what should I do?". See also these meta discussions.

(that said, I sympathize with you.)

@reirab - I believe what happened was that a moderator excised a long, messy group of comments and put them into Chat.  But the OP said very clearly that the incident occurred in the U.S.

@user41235 - Thanks for the update.  The skepticism that you see in some new comments is due, I think, to these unusual personal beliefs being held by a physicist.  So please don't take their comments personally.

I hope it's clear how you would find someone to share your information with, in case you decide to do so.  Suppose Physics is under Arts & Sciences (or Letters & Science, etc.).  You would look on your institution's website for the name and contact information for the Dean.  If you call, it's likely the best you would get on short notice would be some sort of Assistant to the Dean -- which would be just fine.  //  Alternatively, you could lift your text from this thread and email it to the Dean.  (You might get a response from an Assistant Dean; they might want to talk to you.)

I hope you will give the system in the U.S. a chance.  The only way things will change in your department is if you bring what happened to the attention of those who can do something about it.

Crucial missing information: is this a public or a private university? Sounds like a private university with a religious ethos. Is the entire university and its board religious-ethos?

You know, not believing evolution is fine, but this person was a jerk about it. Let the higher ups know what happened.

This is more for my own curiosity than anything, but what exactly is your advisor's area of expertise?

And this is why religion should be kept away from education.......

my advisor holding a completely different scientific view - What you're describing is not scientific view. Quite the opposite, it is a metaphysical view which is entirely detached from science.

You quit gradschool because of this incident? It makes me sad that this could happen

Given that you terminated your studies, the professor can't really affect your future prospects any more -- there's no reason for you not to forward this story onto the appropriate administrative staff at the university, if for no other reason than to help the credibility of the next student who reports this kind of thing.

This is unfortunate, this is why I never mention with supervisors anything apart from the specific area of physics which we are studying, I never mention religion, politics or any other branch of science.

Late comment: I think that one of the top first reactions for people moving to the U.S. from elsewhere is shock (and dismay?) at how much religion is infused throughout our society, and to such a hardcore, severe, extent. Especially so in the U.S. south. This is a very sad story, but actually not very surprising to a native U.S. person.

Well, this is clearly not a match made in heaven.  (Sorry, I really didn't intend this as a pun.)  What a shame, you had really bad luck.
There is no need to keep this a secret from the other professors.  It is very unlikely that they are clones of this guy, even if they do have a friendship with him.
Yes, you do need to talk to the dean of graduate studies in your department and let him or her know what happened.
I don't think that particular research team would be a healthy place for you.  The guy behaved badly.  You need an advisor you can trust to act like a mensch.
In terms of the effect on your future studies -- I can't say.  If you can find another advisor you want to work with at your current institution, great; otherwise, you might want to go elsewhere.
By the way, do you mind my asking, why aren't you in a PhD program?  In physics it seems a bit unusual to be in a Master's only program.
(Just so you know, what he did was illegal in the U.S.  I'm sure the dean of graduate studies in your department will know that, and I'm not going to suggest you mention it; but I wanted you to know, so you will see this clearly as THE PROFESSOR'S problem, not yours.)
-- Edited to add: for some info about the illegality of this sort of thing, in the U.S., see the U.S. Department of Justice's intro page: http://www.justice.gov/crt/combating-religious-discrimination-and-protecting-religious-freedom-20

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This is a startling story.  Bottom line: any physics department in which the chair makes a point of "not believing in 'evolution'" and takes a student's "belief in evolution" as relevant to her studies is almost certainly a physics department that any student is better off away from.
Scientists are not in the position of "believing" or "disbelieving" scientific theories.  That has nothing to do with the scientific method whatsoever, and anyone who thinks that personal beliefs are relevant to scientific work doesn't really know what science is.  When the chair of the physics department doesn't know what science is and thinks there are "bad classes" within his own department or university: the rot lies too close to the core.  Try a different apple.
I think the real question is how to prepare a graceful exit strategy.  Unless this is the physics department of Freddy Krueger's dreams, there are going to be a lot of other faculty who will be absolutely horrified to learn that the chair feels this way.  (In fact, their problems are probably worse than yours...)  You should contact faculty that you have a good relationship with and tell them this.  I think there is little doubt that some of them will talk to the chair about it, and if his views are as extreme and sincere as you've suggested, I suspect he will have trouble denying it with the convincing vigor that any other scientist would muster.  Whoever taught you evolutionary physics is a good place to start.  If other faculty members can corroborate your story, then they will be impressively sympathetic, and should help you land safely somewhere else.
But is it possible that your advisor the department chair will be able to convincingly deny that the conversation ever took place?  Unforunately, yes: he could be the evil genius of physics department chairs.  (I suppose it's even possible that the whole "I hate evolution" story was just a front for him to mess with you.  If so: yikes.  Just get out.)  In my opinion trying to seek restitution through formal university proceedings is not worth your time or effort: sometimes you just have to know you're in the right and move on to dealings with better people.  If you leave without being believed, make sure that you make it safely to the next stage of your life and career, and as soon as that happens, keep telling your story.  See if you can interest the university press in a physics chair who dropped you for believing in evolution.  Send an anonymous email to all the faculty and the students.  Or whatever you come up with.  The point of doing this is that something happened to you that should never have happened, and even some weird rumor that the department chair is anti-evolution will go a long way to ensuring that he will keep his anti-evolution talk to himself in the future.
Good luck.  For the love of Darwin, good luck.

Added: A few people seem to be taking issue with the first few sentences of the second paragraph of my answer.  The question was not about the philosophy and practice of science, so my answer did not dilate on that either.  So I said some things about science which are true (in the sense that they are very largely agreed upon, not necessarily in some grand epistemological sense) and didn't pause to explain or defend them.  But perhaps it will help to say a little bit more:

I did not mean that scientists have true knowledge rather than religious belief.  This is doubly wrong: on the one hand probably the majority of scientists do have religious belief, and on the other hand very few grownups who are knowledgeable about science think it is "true knowledge" in any platonic sense.  True knowledge is probably one of the idealized goals of science, but what science actually is a highly codified (even gamelike in the sharpness of its rules) method which has a proud history of being the best practical substitute for the absence of true knowledge or certainty.
Science is also a profession and a social group, with clearly defined rules.  Of course what is valuable and good is highly determined by subjective, contingent realities within the group.  But the group operates vigilantly under a better-than-all-the-alternatives set of rules which result in a continual updating, refinement and improvement of its collective paradigms and views.  Individual beliefs are not part of the game of science.  I don't mean that individual scientists don't have their own beliefs (about science, about reality, all kinds of beliefs...) but rather that the profession of science places no premium whatsoever on these individual beliefs.  If I am working on perfecting the prevalent, widely believed aether theory and you tell me about the Michelson-Morley experiment, I don't have to like it but as a scientist I am compelled to respond to it, and if it falsifies my theory then sooner or later I have to admit that.  I can't say "Your experiment is fine for you, but as for me I don't believe it.  What I believe is..." That is precisely what science is not: there is no professional currency in individual belief (on the contrary, such expressions will be viewed very negatively if they are taken seriously).
Beliefs of various kinds probably do play a role in motivating individual scientists; they certainly play a role in what scientists choose to work on.  But that's the way humans do everything.  A working scientist will all too often grow to believe something because of the favorable consequences for her professional life if she can be the one to show that belief is correct.  Pascal gave an argument why we should believe in God which was remarkable in that it did not argue that God exists but only that it is beneficial to us to believe it!  (I think this argument is very psychologically insightful.)  But again, the key part of being a scientist is that you can be a roiling bundle of hopes, dreams and self-serving beliefs -- just like everyone else -- but you can't play these cards in the game of science.  To think that you can -- i.e., to think that the scientific community is going to let you play one of those cards without pushing back with extreme negativity -- is indeed very strange.  You either don't know what science is, or you don't want the science department of which you are the chair to be players in the scientific game.
Also part of being a scientist by the way is realizing that in order to make an expert contribution you have to be rather specialized in what you truly know and care about.  Most scientists -- and in fact academics of all kinds -- have studied a small number of things deeply enough to come to respect the effort and know what true expertise means.  Amazingly enough, we can have opinions and beliefs on things that we know virtually nothing about.  But most academics that I know learn to discount their opinions and beliefs when they fall far enough outside of their expertise.  So I find it really weird to watch TV pundits declaim passionately about global warming.  My feeling is that this is a very complicated issue with a literature which is vast, recent, and almost wholly unread by me.  The scientists who are studying it are in quite good agreement, but maybe next year they'll find something really different and tell a different story.  I am going to let them handle it.  Why would I, a non-scientist, want to share my personal opinion on global warming with the world?  What value does that opinion have?
Evolution is at the other extreme.  Yes, it's "just a theory" (a maddening phrase, to be sure, but not wrong: what else could it be?).  But as scientific theories go, it is about as old, venerable and confirmed as it gets.  What kind of scientific experiment could we even conceive that could call this theory into major question?  So a scientist speaking out against evolution is, as I said, startling.  Have some respect for the game you've chosen to play.

Don't scientists "believe" and "disbelieve" in theories all the time? Science is rooted in belief. Even mathematics, supposedly the most rigorous of the sciences, is based on the "belief" that many of its assumptions/axioms are true (incompleteness theorems?). Although I'll assume that you're talking more along the lines of "blind faith", I think it's dishonest to say that science is not about belief, i.e. having confidence that something is true. Science is at its core does not give us absolute certainty and thus only grants us varying degrees of belief.

I am not sure that the faculty wouldn't know his opinions. There are professors who are clearly insane, but are great at research or drawing funding, and it is widely understood that you just have to work around them.  If so, a formal compliant might not be necessary, there may be someone in the faculty who is quite used to quietly cleaning up after the professor's messes.

@Anonymous: Science is not about personal beliefs, and it is certainly not about beliefs in extra-scientific entities like God (it is not antagonistic to it but rather orthogonal).  Science is not even directly about what is true or false but only about what is confirmable or falsifiable.  Similarly beliefs about mathematical axioms are at best private and personal and do not belong in mathematical work.  But it would be a more accurate sociological description to say that 99% of all working mathematicians don't know and don't care about axioms and consistency...at least not professionally.

"Science is at its core does not give us absolute certainty" Yes, of course.  (I did not mean to imply that absence of belief meant certainty!) "and thus only grants us varying degrees of belief".  I would replace the last word with "confidence".  Your use of "belief" here is not the same as mine. "I believe that God made us all" is a fine thing for a scientist to believe -- probably the majority of scientists who have lived on Earth have believed this -- but it is not a scientific statement, so bringing it up in a discussion in opposition to a scientific theory is a terrible mistake.

@gmatht: If the chair of the department is "clearly insane" then some faculty might have some inkling of this, yes. This is part of what I meant when I mentioned that to be a faculty member in this department could be worse than being a graduate student there.

@PeteL.Clark Of course it is about personal beliefs, otherwise every scientist in every field on earth would believe the same exact thing and there would be no differing. People see things differently. It's as simple as that. You don't have to venture very far to see the multitude of theories different scientists hold amongst themselves. You also seem to have contradicted the points you're trying to make with your statement "Similarly beliefs about mathematical axioms are at best private and personal and do not belong in mathematical work".

@Anonymous: I wasn't able to follow your comment; what I said does not lead to the response you suggest.  Again I think you are using the term "belief" for something like "scientific hypothesis" or "scientific theory", which is not at all what I intend.  And I see no contradiction with what I said about mathematics.  The comments section of this answer is really not the place for a discussion on the philosophy of science or mathematics.  If you are interested in learning more about the latter, please feel free to contact me privately, using your real name.

@Pete: Well, to the extent that "belief" has religious overtones and is incompatible with "scientific hypothesis" and "scientific theory" as you are saying, you should be very concerned about OP's usage of "belief in evolution".

@Ben Voigt: The phrase "belief in evolution" appears only in the OP's message as a quote from the faculty member.  So I don't see your point.  If you're suggesting that the OP should have, in the middle of a grilling in which she was repeatedly and pointedly not allowed to speak freely, should have answered not "Yes" but "Rather than answer your question I'd like to point out that it evinces a fallacious understanding of the meaning and purpose of science..." then I don't know what to say to that.

I find even the moderate amount of pushback I'm getting disheartening.  I see an increasing trend in American society -- which I would be happy to laugh at as dopey if it weren't so insidious -- that an individual's personal belief or disbelief in a scientific theory has some public importance or value.  Let's take a less thoroughly confirmed theory than evolution: global warming.  People are often asked whether they believe in it.  But if I have not read, engaged and analyzed the scientific literature on global warming -- and I haven't -- who cares whether I personally believe it or not?

@PeteL.Clark Science is not about personal beliefs - true, but scientists still have them :)

@PeteL.Clark You should take a look at philosophy of science. Science at best gives you a framework (paradigma) in which you can do research which applies within that paradigma. The paradigma you choose is purely based on personal beliefs. Irrational personal believes are the very basis of science. Mind you, that's in no way a problem, but it's definitely an important thing to understand when you engage in any kind of conversation about faith (another paradigma with a similar set up with a different set of methodologies, assumptions and rules).

PS. I know little about how universities work in the US, but if I understand correctly that the OP wanted to move his research towards evolutionary physics and wanted to do this within the bounds of the research team of the professor I can imagine the professor feeling uncomfortable about this.

@DavidMulder: "You should take a look at philosophy of science." I have done reading in this area.  "The paradigma you choose is purely based on personal beliefs. Irrational personal believes are the very basis of science."  There may be some philosophers of science who argue that: if so, please provide a citation.  It is quite misleading to take that as a given...and of course not quite clear what it means.

In some sense personal beliefs are the basis of everything in science just as in some sense atomic particles are the basis of everything in law.  That does not imply that a discussion of atomic particles would be an appropriate part of a legal argument or decision.  The point is that appeals to one's personal beliefs are not an accepted part of the scientific method.

For your latter comment, your understanding does not seem correct: the OP is currently a master's student, and she wrote: "I pointed out my interest in the subject and asked him if it would be a good idea to switch to those topics for my PhD research in the future."  In other words, the OP was trying to get some advice for her future after she completes her present degree program.  Even removing the imposition of the professor's own religious beliefs on the OP, dropping someone from your team because they may not spend the rest of their life exactly as you want is quite obnoxious.

@Pete: Your hypothetical phrasing is completely unrealistic.  But something like "Believe" isn't the word I would use.  I do think it's a fascinating scientific theory and I'd like to use my doctoral studies to see where the evidence leads. would have been a correct answer, suitable for someone whose interest in evolution is rational, not emotional.

@BenVoight: "suitable for someone whose interest in evolution is rational, not emotional".  Contemplating doing a PhD in evolutionary physics is an "emotional" interest in evolution?  Oy.  Like the vast majority of educated people in the world, presumably in addition to her academic interests, the OP's honest answer to this non-scientific question is "Yes."  So in a stressful situation she answered the question.  It is clear to me that you are not willing to sympathize with her.  I am in real life a thesis advisor, and I have all kinds of sympathy for her.  I think we should leave it at that.

Please take extended discussion to [chat].

Joined just to upvote this answer. Second paragraph, and whole debate about "believing (or not) in theory" is so true, and way too many people misunderstand scientific method and confuse it with "believing" in some theory, and allowing for "not-believing" as alternative with equal footing. Scientific method is not about believing - it is about having a theory which is open to being disproved by newly found, currently unknown facts. Religion beliefs are closed to such treatment.

@Pete L. Clark: I salute you, Sir, on this forthright, concise, and eloquent post. I could not agree more.

IMHO, you should feel lucky about knowing that the rapport with you and this person is incompatible at such an early stage. Occurrence of such an event at a much later time may have caused devastating results.
Is seems like @aparente001's procedure seems appropriate. Also take notice to @Dan's advice; reacting too vigorously may spoil you career within the campus (unless you have plans for a different institution). But all solutions suggest you to move to another advisor -- one who might be more in sync with your ideals, or at least one who won't enforce his ideals.

I really sympathize with your situation. This is the kind of case that gives academia a bad name and highlights the inherent power imbalance between professors and students. Academia has devised all kinds of tricks and checks and balances to mitigate this imbalance and the conflicts it leads to, but unfortunately the system still leaves plenty of room for these types of abuses, and no one has a magic bullet to prevent them or necessarily even to address them when they occur.
About your questions, I'll answer the easy ones first:
1) The bigger reason to be concerned is that your professor is a bigot who abuses his authority, not so much that he has a different scientific view than yours. If he were a devout creationist but did not act vindictively against people not sharing his views, and could work with you in a professional manner on a topic that was unrelated to the conflict in your worldviews, I would say there would be no cause for concern and you could be perfectly happy working with him. Alas, that is not the case.
4) I agree with @aparente001's answer that given what happened, you should make every effort to find a different advisor to work with. You should accept an option to work with this person only as a last resort. The way he behaved is unacceptable and would be a big warning sign that even if you tried to work with him, something is very likely to go wrong and lead to further disappointment and heartache.
2) and 3) These are really tough questions. If you can substantiate that the conversation you had with the professor took place in the way you described it, and if you can show a connection between that conversation and the email you received, then the professor has indeed behaved unethically and illegally (in the U.S.) and you have every cause to report him. Those are big if's however; he may very well deny that he acted the way you say he did, or admit to the conversation but find a plausible explanation for not offering you a place on his group unrelated to the conversation. (Indeed, to be fair I must leave him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he might even be telling the truth. I wasn't there and don't know what happened.) You may end up being dragged into a costly and time-consuming dispute that could have a seriously negative effect on your career, mental health and finances. The possibility that this battle will hurt your future studies and/or career is very real unfortunately. Or you may end up winning, and gain - what? Agreement from the professor to work with you, when we already kind of see that's not a good idea? An apology? Financial compensation? You need to ask yourself what you hope to achieve by filing a complaint, and how likely you are to achieve it, and what cost you are willing to pay as a result. Only you can answer those questions I'm afraid. Note that I am not a lawyer; you may want to consult a lawyer regarding your legal case for a religious discrimination lawsuit or complaint.
The one thing I'll add is that it may be worth telling about what happened to the department chair or graduate program chair, without filing a complaint. Stick to a purely factual description of what happened and leave them to draw their own conclusions. It may help them deal with the person if a similar situation arises in the future, or perhaps you will discover that you are not the first person he did this to and this will bolster your case. However, even this step carries some risks so please consider very carefully whether you want to have this discussion. If you have reasonable financial means, consider even seeing a lawyer just to have a short consultation and know about your rights and options available to you.

Oh boy! I forgot to mention this in my question... He is the chair of the program. Looks like I am in a lot of trouble. Panic attack is beginning to kicking in.

Speak to a different admin then. One nice thing about PhD programs (at least in the US--based on your quandary, I'm assuming this situation can only happen here) is there are usually multiple professors in admin roles. Usually there's a chair, a director of graduate studies, maybe a director of admissions, etc. Talk to one of them instead. To hold those positions, they generally have been around a bit and thus may be able to offer advice

@user41235, that does complicate things, but please try not to panic. What I said still applies partially. He still has someone who is his superior, most likely a dean, who would be the appropriate person to go to with a complaint or an FYI. If your college is a serious university, there would likely be other resources such as an ombudsman, ethics committee, and the graduate student union.

Also, I have to disagree with @DanRomik's deathly spiral theory. Most issues like this can get resolved in pretty mundane ways. Avoid immediately   jumping to worst-case scenarios and claiming ethics violations and the like. The easiest way to put this in the past is to circumvent the issue, not blow it up further. Speak to the dean, go through the proper channels, and so on and it will probably work out. It'll just be a pain in the ass.

You should know also that most US institutions have strict policies against retaliation (and there may be state and federal whistleblower laws which apply). If you complain against him, even if he is the department or program chair, he will be strictly forbidden from retaliating against you in any way. That does not mean he won't, but he would have to be pretty crazy and/or stupid to do so. With that said, the fact that he is the chair does raise the stakes and (in my very humble and unscientific opinion) means you are more at risk if you should choose to complain.

Great write-up in (1).  In (2) and (3), Dan, I realize you've got great intentions, but if the OP is in the U.S., you have serious inaccuracies here.  Costly?  No.  There is no cost involved in filing an OCR complaint.  Time consuming?  Well, you've already written the draft of a complaint.  I suppose, in a way, one could say time consuming in the sense that OCR can be slow in processing a complaint (slow as in, for example, several months).  They process complaints first-come-first-served, with no triaging.  When they receive a lot of complaints, they can get a bit backlogged....

... Dragged into something?  No.  If you file an OCR complaint, you may withdraw it at any time.  "The possibility that this battle will hurt your future studies and/or career is very real unfortunately."  Well, no, because OCR takes retaliation very seriously.  Financial compensation?  No.  There is no financial compensation with OCR complaints.  Here's the thinking.  The federal government set up the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights and its investigative and other powers as a way of enforcing our laws against discrimination of various types.

Goals? That would take careful thought. It would not be unreasonable, for example, to ask that he be removed from the chairmanship. But really, at this point, it is premature to start articulating specific goals, because we don't know what would happen in response to an internal complaint. It is important to note that if you were to file a complaint at this point, without going to administration, OCR would toss your complaint out on its ear. In an OCR complaint, you would have to show that you made a good faith attempt to resolve the problem internally (internal to the university)...

@aparente001 I don't think failing to write a positive letter of recommendation would be construed as 'retaliation,' though it certainly is a very possible (and likely) outcome of filing a complaint against the professor. Also, asking him to step down without any actual evidence that his not hiring the student is related to the incident in question is indeed unreasonable.

... OCR started publishing its decisions online a few years ago.  I suspect that if you were to glance through them, you would find that universities very rarely figure in those decisions.  University administrators are smarter about staying out of this kind of trouble than K-12 educational institutions.  I would be extremely surprised if this problem weren't resolved post haste if you brought it to an upper administrator's attention.  -- Oh, I forgot to say, it is helpful to do lots of documenting as you go, just in case; email works fine for this.  You can even email someone your...

...understanding of a verbal conversation you had with him, as documentation.  A note about OCR complaints: you have six months to file.  So, no hurry in deciding.

@reirab - We need to distinguish between making an internal complaint and filing an OCR complaint.  The government expects, that if a professor has discriminated unlawfully against a student, the student's first obligation is to make an internal complaint.  It is only if the institution fails to resolve the problem promptly and fairly that an OCR complaint becomes appropriate.  In which type of complaint are you imagining a possible effect on the letter of recommendation?

@aparente001, you may be right; I was speaking in generalities and know nothing about OCR. However, I'm actually familiar with a case of a colleague trying to undo some harm done to him by his department. His efforts have in fact been costly and time consuming, and that's what I had in mind when I wrote those words. And I agree with you the risk of direct, blatant retaliation is small; but there are more indirect, vague ways in which OP's career or course of studies could be harmed if she starts waging this kind of battle. I advise at least some measure of caution prior to taking any action.

And let me reiterate my suggestion for OP to consult a lawyer, since we are discussing a pretty delicate legal question with potentially serious consequences for her life and career. The colleague I mentioned hired one, and although it was the reason for the "costly", it did wonders for his peace of mind.

There is something the OP can do that will not cost a thing, and that is to call the Department of Justice (see my comment in response to @DavidZ).  I expect they will answer questions by phone there, the same as OCR does.  But I still think Step 1 is to contact an administrator in the university.  I give it more than a 99% likelihood that the chair's superiors will help the OP find another advisor, and tell the chair to straighten out and fly right, very quickly.  They may also remove him from the chairmanship without the OP even asking for that.

@aparente001 I do not think any department in the US can safely remove this professor from a position (including chairmanship) lightly. The professor can then turn around and sue the university, claiming that his email to the student was unrelated to the creationism thing and alleging that he (the professor) was removed from his position for his own religious beliefs. It's not a straightforward matter.

The conversations might get uncomfortable enough that he might want out.  Time will tell!  At any rate, the ideal outcome would be that he would think things over and realize that tolerance and mutual respect of individuals' freedom of thought are of paramount importance.  I'm sure everyone reading this thread is hoping that's how things will go.

aparente001, I really like your attitude of giving people the benefit of the doubt and assuming that they are fundamentally fair and kind until proven otherwise. That is my philosophy as well. However, my experience in university administration (I am a professor and department chair) shows that some professors can be indeed very difficult, and the reality of the academic world means that, as @ff524 said, when they abuse their authority they are extremely difficult to remove. Unfortunately in the case at hand I strongly doubt that the OP's advisor would prove to be as reasonable as you hope.

Console yourself that you are in good company - the best in fact. Darwin himself had to put up with this sort of nonsense from the moment of publishing his greatest work until the day he died. Secondly thank your lucky stars you don't appear to be studying in a society where your ideas would be so unacceptable that you would be martyred for them.
You have had a lucky escape from someone who is so convinced of their own rightness that it surely spreads to all aspects of their life. Any new ideas that you might have had that were not already part of this person's orthodoxy would be quickly stamped on. People who live in the past are often motivated by fear. Fear of losing face or fear of having their precious beliefs shattered. Fear exerts a stronger force than any other emotion in all but the greatest of heroes.

Secondly thank your lucky stars you weren't born in a time or society where your ideas would be so unacceptable that you would be martyred for them. — Being that this is a site accessed from all over the world, I'd use caution here.

@MadJack - I see that you have some support for your comment. Maybe I have misunderstood what it is about. Could you perhaps be more explicit? Thanks.

I think he is pointing out that such "times and societies" exist in our world in the present day, and that you were making an assumption here about when/where the OP was born which was potentially incorrect.

@wim - Good points. I've amended my answer.

It's quite amazing how quick people are to jump on the "sounds illegal" bandwagon.  It's not, for reasons which I will explain, and the other experienced users here are fully familiar with.
There's a huge difference between "I'm focused on the research we discussed when you became my advisor -- and by the way I have an opinion about evolution vs creation" and "I spent my summer classes on evolutionary physics, which I didn't tell you about and are outside the focus area we discussed, and I'm now choosing to make that my topic".  Absolutely HUGE.
The critical point here is that the PhD advisor-advisee relationship is quite unlike any other employment relationship.  You have proposed to make this topic your research direction for a PhD, a career in which you and your advisor are expected to publish together.  A faculty member is entirely within his rights to refuse to attach his name to an argument which he doesn't find convincing, and your advisor is being upfront with you that he will not pursue topics in your new direction.  Very few people have any influence over the research area a tenured professor chooses to pursue, let alone the ability to command him to change/expand it, and you are not his funding agency.
It would be a completely different matter if you have found a professor who is willing to be your PhD supervisor in evolutionary physics, and the department chair was interfering with that arrangement on the basis of your beliefs.  But nothing you have said suggests this is happening here.
Now, it seems that you think that employment in his research group, doing work unrelated to the topic of dispute, should be unaffected.  But step back and consider what you've expressed to him: You've chosen a research field which has zero overlap with his interests, and probably got defensive about it during your conversation, which he perceives as an indication that you are no longer considering other topics.  So the chance you will end up as his advisee for a doctorate is indistinguishable from zero, and any training you receive in his lab is a complete waste.  He's much better off spending that slot on someone who is considering collaborating with him for a longer period of time... and lo and behold, that's exactly what he tells you he has done.
Let him do research in the area of physics that interests him, and fill his lab with students who are pursuing the same area long-term.  Wish him the best with that, promise to send him a copy of your completed PhD dissertation someday, express confidence that he will read it with an open mind and better understand your interest in evolutionary physics.
Then find yourself a research group that provides you with the background you need for your future studies.  If he really is just asserting his right to direct his own research, as it sounds like, he may even help you find one.  Especially if you thank him for all he's taught you about (other area of physics) and mention that you know he isn't interested in your new area, but you're unsure how to find a position better aligned with your new direction and could really use a little help from him in that regard.
Or, if you would be interested in using the time you'd set aside for research for a heavier course load, but the add deadline has officially passed a few days ago, that's almost certainly something within his power as department chair to instantly solve.
Be respectful of his focus on one of the many areas of physics that doesn't overlap heavily with biology, and I suspect you'll find him both reasonable and helpful in getting you placed.
Bottom-line: You've announced a change in your research topic; it should not be surprising to anyone that that necessitates finding a new advisor and a new lab.  The timing is unfortunate, but you've suspected you were interested in this new area for an entire term -- things would probably have gone much more smoothly if you'd mentioned that you wanted to take those classes to explore a new direction, and had a conversation about what your options would be when the fall came and you had to choose between the two.

Downvoted. — You've announced a change in your research topic — This is not an accurate summary of events.  OP described a set of classes that they took, and then asked her advisor about the possibility of changing research topics.  Asking about a possible change is not the same as announcing a change.  The advisor's objections were not based on intellectual fit, but rather on a religious opinion that is at best irrelevant to OP's suitability for a PhD-level research in physics.

@JeffE: There may be some misunderstanding between the student and advisor concerning how final the change in direction is, but it's not wrong to say that the student has pursued a new topic.

I also firmly agree with JeffE's comment and find this answer distressing in the extent to which it adjusts the facts of the case (and completely omits the worst parts) in order to reach its conclusion.  Speaking as an advisor of PhD students, in my opinion it is dangerously irresponsible to suggest that a student in one degree program who asks about an interest in a future degree program to be construed as being no longer interested or suitable to work with their current advisor.  Students should be encouraged to have interests and entertain other avenues, not punished for it.

@BenVoigt it's not wrong to say that the student has pursued a new topic — Yeah, actually, it is.  Taking a class is not the same as pursuing a new research topic.  But even if OP had started actually doing research on a new topic, that would not be sufficient grounds for summary dismissal.  As Pete Clark says: Students should be encouraged to have interests and entertain other avenues, not punished for it.

@JeffE: Would it make any difference if grant funds (tuition support, research hours) were being redirected from their intended purpose under the advisor/lab director's supervision, to other topics?  The question doesn't say that has happened.... and also doesn't say it hasn't.  It's not clear how the tuition for these classes was paid.  And it's not clear, but highly suggestive, that the advisor asked for assurances that the student wouldn't pursue this "on the clock", and got none.

"Have interests and entertain other avenues" gets very funny when there's money involved.

@Ben: "He didn't let me talk at all." strikes me as a fairly obvious repudiation of your 'guess' that the adviser sought assurance. I find the continued fairly eloquent misrepresentation of the original question (for the transparent reason and agenda) troubling, saddening, and likely a hint of what someone in OP's situation might face if pursuing any investigation (in the extraordinarily religious US at least),

@gnometorule: Do you believe for a moment that the question is a word-for-word facsimile of the conversation?  I don't think it even claims to be.  There certainly was a breakdown in communication between advisor and advisee: the student said they felt out a change in topic, the advisor acted as if the change were a done deal.  We don't know whether the advisor told OP what classes to take over the summer and the student took these instead, ending up unprepared for the lab work.  We don't know if the student was an order of magnitude more excited about the new field, and the advisor

interpreted it (correctly in such a case) as a decision that the student would not consider reversing, or if the student was equally interested in both.  Reading between the lines, it sounds very much as if the student did request a change of topic, backpedaled when the advisor wanted nothing to do with the new topic and the student realized the advisor wasn't offering to fund the new topic, and found that the advisor didn't believe the sudden renewed interest in the original project.  "didn't let me talk at all" contradicts the question's own statement that the student spoke first.

At least three others, and probably quite a few more, have upvoted this. Why do I stand alone at defending Ben Voigt? As for creationism vs. evolution, this battle will rage unto the end, with all too few willing to discuss reasonably. Here is an answer that is the same both ways and equally right if you swap the terms, and written as the author knows this.

If the concern is that there is grant funding for some other project, the professor can just say  "I only have funding for this topic". If he is concerned the side project would take too much time, he can require results and progress on the main one. I am interested in a bunch of stuff, but that is not stopping me from mainly work on my project.

" "didn't let me talk at all" contradicts the question's own statement that the student spoke first" He brought up the topic, and then the professor started ranting about "evolution", without letting the student participate. I see no contradiction there.

@BenVoigt Would it make any difference if grant funds — No, of course not.  If the student isn't meeting the contractual obligations of their RAship, then there's a problem, but that's a totally different question.  People, even graduate students, have lives outside of their jobs.

@Davidmh: Well, I agree with Pete and JeffE that giving a student flexibility to explore other aspects of the field is a good idea.  But I am certain that being a stickler for strictly requiring tuition waivers and lab hours to be spent on the focus area named in the award, although inadvisable, is neither illegal nor even immoral.  The student gains nothing from making a stink about the consequences they face from ignoring their advisor's instructions re: classes, and everything by asking for help making the transition smoothly to the new area that excites them so much more than the old.

@BenVoigt assuming these are the reasons for dismissing the student, I find it unethical to do it without a warning, and specially when it is past the deadlines for the student to find an alternative. But, since the student hasn't started working with this person yet, no contractual breaches could have possibly happened.

@BenVoigt If I suggest my advisor a new research topic, the worst case scenario I expect is "no, that is useless", not "you are fired" (of a sort).

@Davidmh Or even worse: lie that there is no more room.

@slicedtoad: Right now, we have no information on the advisor's and lab's funding situation.  Extrapolating the number of students that can be supported from the average number associated with other professors in the department is very very thin.

@Davidmh: I think so too.  But remember that this question does not claim to contain a word-for-word reconstruction of the conversation, and I can think of several expressions which can be interpreted either as "Do this on your own time, not in my lab" or "Recant" (as the OP understood it).  For example, Are you willing to set aside your belief in evolution?

@BenVoigt He had a meeting that ended with a direct question of "Do you believe in evolution?" (with clear disapproval) and then the group was conveniently full. I'm making an inference. I'm not saying it's certain. I am saying the odds are high enough that it is rational to operate under that assumption until further evidence is provided.

@BenVoigt And yes, I realise the OP could be lying about everything. Who cares? We aren't the arbiters of this situation. We are giving advice. If he's lying, the truth could be anywhere in a HUGE set of possible alternatives. Don't try and guess, take him at his word. If he's lying, then he's getting bad advice.

@BenVoigt Are you willing to set aside your belief in evolution?. Evolution is an acceptable a priori in all the major journals and in all of the sciences (or at least most). You can believe what you want, but you can't use religion as evidence in anything but the social sciences (and then, only for explaining circumstance).

Please take extended discussion to [chat].

@BenVoigt You are assuming information we were not given, such as that the provided dialog is not an accurate representation of the conversation. That is, at best, unscientific, and at worse, intellectually dishonest. The information given is all we have to go on, as you yourself have said, so why do you insist on making your own creative interpretations while dismissing others?

@Alice: Not an assumption, the question itself says that it is a condensed version (the word "summary" is used), not the whole conversation.

@BenVoigt Right, which is why you cannot make any assessments beyond what is in the text, which is why your statements are by and large predicated on assumptions about what the non-included text was. That is wholly without merit.


text:
For an undergrad, how long should a short-term volunteer position in a lab be?
I've been working as a research student at a biochemistry wet lab since my final years of high school (as a result of cold-emailing a professor). I'm entering the same university as that of this lab soon, and I plan to continue working here.
My direct supervisor (an incredibly hard-working graduate student and mentor) recommended me to try to work at several different labs throughout my undergrad. She said this would help diversify my skillset and expose me to potential environments I might enjoy working in even more.
However, my current plan is to spend most of my time continuing to work at this same lab as I'm more likely to have the opportunity to produce publishable results. I don't believe working at two labs concurrently would be a wise use of time (based on Working in two research lab at the same time – unethical?).
I do think it's feasible to take on short-term positions with different labs to gain insight into other fields and expand my skillset. I intend to be completely upfront about a short-term interest when applying, but I'm unsure how short this interest should be.
For an undergrad looking to volunteer in a short-term position at a lab, what would be an appropriate length of time to both learn some basic skills and truly bring some value to a PI's lab or a graduate student's project?

I would refer to the way university offers undergrad research courses.
For example, at my university, students can work in lab in summer (12-16 weeks, full time, 40-45hrs/week).
Often, assuming both parties like the work, the student continues as a research course student for the next school term. In this arrangement, nothing changes except the compensation - in summer the work is paid, during the school year it is for credit.
Now, from what I have done and seen, people don't stick in the same lab longer than that ESPECIALLY if you are looking at grad school or medical school. This is because you need 2-3 PIs giving you a glowing reference.
That been said, I have taken a summer research project which I didn't continue (I.e. the length was 12 weeks). And I've done one research project which is 2 years (and still on-going). My third project was summer + school term in length.

In short, you should diversify your research experience in different labs. You can work as long as 12 months, and as short as 3 months in the same lab.
Though I don't know much about other universities, I expect this to be same or very similar at other universities. The time to learn basic skills will vary but 3 months should be a good start, of course as you do something longer you will get even better. But doing work in different setting will definitely help person get better with basic skills because different labs operate differently.

In my experience, 3 months (of during-school work) would be almost useless as you've only just then learned enough to be a decently productive member of the lab.

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text:
How should I position myself in the US job market if I am an assistant professor with tenure?
In my country, job rank is not aligned to tenure. You can be an Assistant Professor with tenure (i.e. a permanent contract at the university) or without tenure (on a temporary e.g. 5 year contract), or you could be an Associate Professor with or without tenure. I have tenure, but I am an Assistant Professor... which I understand is fairly rare in the US (if not non-existent)
If the time comes that I want to look for a position in the US, I assume based on the feedback from my previous question that I should focus my search on an Assistant Professor position rather than an Associate Professor level position.
If I were to apply for an academic position in the US, how should I explain this? Is it worthwhile to mention that I have tenure already? Do I need to ask for a shortened tenure clock or will it be decided by the university on their own?

I believe tenure clock is something you can negotiate.

If you list your job title on your CV as "Tenured Assistant Professor (title in local language)"  would that not be sufficient?

Could you specify your job title in the local language? Assistant professor with tenure doesn't really exist in the North American context.

Actually, assistant professor with tenure does exist in the US. It's not very common, but it's not exactly rare either. There are places where promotion is decoupled from tenure and where you can get promoted without getting tenure and vice versa.

@roseofjuly: Yes, promotion is often decoupled from tenure, but in my experience this means that you can't know for sure whether an associate professor is tenured or not.  I feel like it's been established on this site before that there are still a positive number of tenured assistant professors, but I think it's fair to call it "rare".

They will not care about your position outside US. They will care about your publication list mostly. There are countries where people get a formally permanent university position just after PhD, but their are not called professors immediately. This fact does not, however, mean that their position is equivalent to the tenured professor in US.

Yes, having tenure at an early career stage will be viewed as incomparable with the U.S. system, and it won't count as being the same as any typical U.S. career path.  (In particular, it will not be considered equivalent to a tenured position in the U.S., since it is not based on the same criteria.)  Instead, you and the department will have to figure out where you might fit in the U.S. model based on your CV.  Unless you have unusual accomplishments, this will generally amount to roughly lining up the time since degree.

Having a permanent (as opposed to temporary) position is not the same as having tenure.  Many employees, working in all sorts of jobs, are considered permanent employees.  However, permanent employment does not normally prevent an employee from being fired for most reasons, whereas tenure is accompanied by very strong employment protections.

This advice is just for research universities (R1s) in the USA:
If you are applying for untenured positions then the number one question we have is: when this person comes up for tenure in X years, will they be tenurable?

You should check to see whether the tenure clock 'resets' at hiring and whether you will be evaluated on the entirety of your portfolio or the new material since you were hired.
People can  usually come  up for tenure early if they so desire.
We've had people leave tenured associate positions to come to our R1 as untenured assistants.
We're wise enough in the world to assume if someone is leaving a tenured position, they have good reason to.

If you are applying for a tenured position then we would want to see a portfolio commensurate with that status. Just because you have tenure at your school doesn't mean that it'd meet the bar at our institution.

You would need to submit your curriculum vitae
as part of your job application,
so it would be natural to include the information
that you have a tenured job position there.
In your CV, you could include something to the effect of:

Department of X, University of Y

Assistant Professor with tenure (2014-present)
Assistant Professor (2008-2014)

You should also briefly mention your employment history
in your cover letter,
at which point you can include the fact
that you currently have a tenured position.
Occasionally, a candidate who currently has
a tenured position at university Y
is willing to take an untenured position at university Z.
If that is the case, you should also
mention that explicitly in your cover letter.

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text:
How to write the literature review part of a paper when 'the perfect one' has already been written?
Let's say I'm writing an original research paper about the design process in the helicopter industry.
In the literature review (or context/related work) section, I want to talk about:

the various design processes that exists;
specific features of design processes in aviations;
specific features of design processes in helicopter industry;
how to study a design process;
etc.

I have found a major paper that deals with the design process in the airplane industry. This paper is recent (= references are up-to-date), frequently cited and published in a major journal (= acknowledged for its scientific quality). Its literature review is top-notch: clear, concise, well written, etc. It tackled the topics #1, 2 and 4 of the review I want to write.
Question: How to write my review, since this papers does almost all the job in a perfect manner?

If there is already a perfect paper, why do you want to write another?

Because it focus on another-but-close field: helicopter vs. aircraft (and I assume there are some differences between both). Note: aircraft vs. helicopter serves as an example. My question is more general: how to write a literature review when (part of) it have already been written in a perfect way?

If only a part of the literature review you plan has been written up perfectly and published in another paper, then you'll need to 1) reference to this perfect paper and 2) write up what was not contained in it

Please forgive my naivety, but aren't helicopters aircraft?

@EnergyNumbers edited question aircraft -> airplanes

A review should be written by somebody long enough in the field to know more than most of his/her fellow scientists to be useful. Or else to know things in a different way. A good test whether you should/could write a review is to give a lecture/seminar/tutorial series. Thumbs rule: if you can fill 3 two hour slots with non-trivial material, you are probably in a position to write a review.

Edit: By "literature review", I meant the "Related work" section of an original research article.

Question is thus how to write a standalone section (a reader would understand the rest of the paper without absolutely needing to read the other literature review), without just paraphrasing 'the perfect paper'?

@scaaahu Is it still ambiguous now?

Does the major paper cover various design processes for helicopters in #1 and #2?

@scaaahu Yes it does. As it is an example (but close to my real case), I wants to show that most of the 'related work/context' content I would have written about in my paper have already being well written.

I would use the other literature review as a baseline, and focuss on how helicopters are different from airplanes. So I would start with mentioning the other literature review, and saying that the basics are discussed there, and here I will focuss on how those apply and/or differ for helicopters.

Thx. Is it an issue if it makes the literature review unbalanced (ratio "significance of the topic" vs. "amount of text dealing with it")? And if my report is not standalone readable (i.e. if you need concepts explained in the "perfect paper" to understand what I'm saying)?

@ebo Perhaps a good way to deal with this is to go only into sufficient depth as is necessary to give sufficient background to understand your paper and the context it sits within. Then you can use the common line "For a more in depth discussion of design processes within aviation, see (1)." This directs the reader who wants more depth to the correct source and acknowledges that you are aware of the other review.

I have recently written a paper which addresses a particular angle of a fairly common topic. Although I am presenting a new perspective, since the topic is a common one, I came across several papers during my literature search which has near perfect literature reviews. It definitely does help if you get one or two such exhaustive literature reviews: you will have pretty much covered everything if you can go back to the sources cited in these reviews and read them as well.
I don't know if the procedure I followed in writing my literature review was correct, but this is what I did. Once I had read whatever I could of the existing literature in the field (not in great detail, just read the abstract and results well and skimmed through the rest of the paper), I created an outline for my literature review - a basic framework with the key points that I would include. I started with a broad topic and gradually tried to narrow down to the angle I am covering. I then started writing the literature review based on this outline. For each of the points on my outline, I did a search on google scholar and came up with one or two most relevant articles (didn't take much time as I was already familiar with them) and cited them. I did not cite every single article in the field, nor did I go back to those perfect literature reviews while writing. My aim was to convincingly narrow the discussion down to my core topic and ensure that this particular topic had not been covered before. Later, one of the reviewers pointed out a couple of relevant articles that I had missed and I added them.
I have seen the other questions that you have posted. I feel you are overthinking and getting overwhelmed by all your reading. The best thing you can do now is to take a break from your reading. Let the ideas settle down for a day or two and then create your outline and start writing. Search as you write and cite the relevant articles that come up in your search. In fact, don't read the literature review of the other article at all. Even if some of the ideas are similar, you should be able to present them your own way. Also, try to reference the primary sources and not the secondary source.

In principle, for academic articles, you should only write things that are new and have not been published before. From this perspective, you should not rehash what others have already done if they've already done a good job doing it.
This makes your work easier. That means that you shouldn't spend the time writing up what others have already done, but rather spend your time on discussing your own new unique contributions beyond what others have already done.
That said, so that your article can stand on its own, it is necessary to do some kind of repetition so that your readers can sufficiently read and understand your article in its own right without having to read other articles for background reading just to follow your article.
Based on these principles, here is my recommendation for the scenario you described:

Since points 1, 2 and 4 have already been done nearly perfectly, do not redo it. However, do summarize these points in your own words in as much detail as necessary so that your readers do not need to read the other literature review to understand what you are talking about. In your summary, not only should you certainly cite the other literature review, but freely quote it as ncessary to get the message across. Then, you should explicitly ask readers to read that other article for further details. (However, I repeat, make sure that all absolutely necessary detail is included in your own summary in your own article.)
Develop point 3 in detail, since that is clearly different from the treatment in the other literature review. Make sure you highlight this difference so that readers can appreciate that although you borrow from the other article for points 1, 2 and 4, you are making a contribution above and beyond what has already been done.

With this approach, you not only benefit from the other work that the other article has done, but you use it as a platform to highlight your own valuable contributions.

Unless the "perfect literature review" is very recent, there will be new developments that warrant discussion, if only to contrast to what was already described. I'm not familiar with helicopter design, but I'd hazard the guess that larger supercomputers build on different architectures require new approaches to numerical modelling; larger/faster supercomputers means more detailed or precise models can be tackled; there are new requirements, like less noise or even less radar cross-section.
Or you could focus on some specific aspect(s), doing a more in-depth study of that. Or even do a sort of history instead of discussing the current state of the art.


text:
Wife: advantage or drawback when asking for visiting student position?
My wife and I are both PhD candidate in major-but-not-elite French universities. We study in completely different fields.
She got a visiting student position in the US for 1 semester as of January 2017. I would also like to go to the US as visiting student, at the same time,  for both personal (i.e. not being one ocean away from her during 6 months) and professional reasons (i.e. experiencing the anglo-saxon scientific research paradigm, international experience, etc.).
Question: When contacting Professors of local universities, should I mention that my wife will be in the US at the same time, or not? In other words, would P.I.s be more prone to accept me as visiting student (I'm financially autonomous, so I'm not asking for a funding) if they know my wife will be there (because of empathy or whatever), or would they tend to consider that I apply because of my wife, and not because of the research -- so that I'm not motivated enough?

Edit: As given answers made me figure out, a motive of my question is that there is no research team in the US that study my particular sub-field. So the question "why are you asking for a position in our lab, since this other lab in the UK is closer of your research topic?" might be raised.

Not an answer, but since being close to your wife is important, keep in mind the size of the US. If you are in a different city, you are likely to be at least a few hours away from your wife, and if you are on opposite coasts, it's a 5-6 hour flight to visit.

Just a tip for Europeans coming to NA: don't underestimate how big things are. You'll want to be geographically close to your wife. Being on opposite sites of the US won't be all that different from being on opposite sides of the ocean.

Be honest. Present it as a happy coincidence. That's what it is, after all. For example,

I've always been interested in different research communities and paradigms, given how this knowledge can help me to work more effectively with others and to introspect my own methodology. My wife has been offered a place in [state] also, so this is a ideal opportunity in my academic career to gain the experience I've sought.

I personally would prefer a more straightforward message...

Just strip off the whole "I've always been interested in different research communities and paradigms, given how this knowledge can help me to work more effectively with others and to introspect my own methodology." It's too self-glorifying, formal and slightly insulting to the reader by stating the obvious.

@orlp, Kimball it's just an example for the ideas. That's what I would write in a formal letter; it would be much shorter (both words and sentences) if anything else.

I don't think professors would be more likely to accept you out of empathy if you're expecting them to fund you.
On the other hand, there might be a question of how serious you are about wanting to go for research purposes, particularly if your work is not very close to theirs.  But if your work is not so close, they probably wouldn't accept you anyway.
So I don't think it makes much difference, but just to keep things brief and straightforward, I might omit mention of your wife in your initial email.  (Actually, if you don't know these professors but your advisor does, it's probably better if your advisor contacts them first.)

Definitely use your advisor, either directly or (with his permission) as a 'known' name. Your advisor is on board with you doing this, right?

Funding should not be an issue since I've a grant for my PhD and I could pay for flight tickets with my savings. // Your second paragraph made me realize US lab works might not be very close to mine (see my edit above). // My advisors do not already have existing relationships with local research teams (They have international collaboration, but with South Korea and Japan). They are good (invited keynote speaker to major int. conf.) but have no strong international aura, especially in my subfield.

@JonCuster Yes they both are. However, their name might be no asset, since they are rather playing - with all due respect - in the 2nd league (from an international perspective). I could however ask them to ask "Prof A." (with whom they're collaborating and who is 1st league player) to recommend myself...


text:
Is it ok to talk about next chapters in a chapter's introduction?
Context: I am writing a thesis that is divided in a few parts (e.g. "Context and motivations", "Literature review", "Experiments", etc.).

Each part starts with a 100-200 words-long introduction (or preamble) that links the new part with previous content, introduce purpose of this part, as well as give an overview of its content.
Dummy example, for part "Experiments":

We have defined the research question we address in this research, and derived from it hypotheses. This part details experimental studies we have conducted in order to test these hypotheses. First, we give a global overview of experiments we conducted, and then, we will detail them one by one.

Question: Is it [ok/common/a good practice] to append to this introduction a few words about "next steps", i.e. what comes after this part?
For example, one could add following sentence to the preamble above:

Once these results detailed, we will summarize our thesis contribution in the next part.

What do other people at your school do for their theses? I would skim other theses from your program. Also, what does your advisor think? Her or his opinion about your thesis are more important than strangers from the internet.

@RichardErickson Thanks for your common sens advises. Of course, I don't intend to use "strangers from the internet"'s opinion to argue against some existing policy or against my advisor. Actually, I have no strict policy nor models in my lab previous theses to follow, and my supervisor is fine with it. My question is thus rather about reasons for doing it, or not. I personally consider it improves the understanding of the whys and wherefores of the chapter; yet I wonder why it is not so common to see it.

The most important thing is to make your thesis your own, and write it as well as you can, in a way that makes sense to you.  This can indeed include guideposts at the beginnings of chapters.
Another possibility is to give the guideposts at the ends of chapters, i.e. teasers for the next chapter.
Once you have a whole draft, show it to your advisor and a couple of beta readers.  At that point, someone might convince you to get rid of the guideposts.  In other words, go ahead and write your first draft as it feels right to you, but then don't be afraid to edit the heck out of it if need be.  (Make sure you practice careful version control, since sometimes one ends up wanting to go back to a previous version.)
Try to find someone to edit your English, once the thesis is pretty close to done.  If necessary, pay someone.  (Make sure the someone knows what he or she is doing.)


text:
Why are examinees often not allowed to leave during the start and end of an exam?
I notice that, quite often, exams have a rule similar to this:

You may not leave the exam theater during the first ten minutes and last ten minutes of the exam.

I'm wondering what the purpose of this rule is. In the first ten minutes presumably nobody would have finished the exam, but I don't see why that should stop anyone from leaving. As for the last ten minutes, if I had to guess, it's to prevent an "arms race" where examinees race to leave before everyone else so they can avoid the traffic jam at the end of the exam. However this hardly seems like a deal-breaker. There're also exams where nobody can leave the exam theater until the exam is over, and usually the end of those exams aren't a complete mess: examinees just wait until scripts are collected and then leave. Besides, having this rule just pushes the "arms race" to ten minutes before the official end.
What is the point of this rule?

What do you mean by arms race?

@user2768 in the sense that, if the traffic jam at the end of the exam is undesirable, then I have to leave before everyone else does. Of course everyone else knows that too, so they have to leave before I decide to leave, and then everyone starts leaving earlier and earlier - an "arms race".

"leave before everyone else so they can avoid the traffic jam at the end of the exam" - this can be generously generalized, as the very same behaviour (trying not to leave with the bulk at the end if possible) can be readily observed in places where the number of students who are there by car is negligible.

@O.R.Mapper I think traffic jam is meant more metaphorically, as in the crowd of people who will all be leaving at once. Being at the back of that could mean waiting a brief time to exit.

Well the 10 minutes at the beginning is to allow some to arrive late without the possibility of collusion.
Where I work, it is 15 minutes at the beginning just for any who are late...
The 10 minutes at the end is probably to allow those rushing to finish a quieter time to concentrate - most students leaving manage to make noise - chairs scraping etc

"10 minutes at the beginning" makes sense, probably students are allowed to arrive 10 minutes late.

In France that's as much as 30 minutes in universities.

In the UK (at least Bath) it is 30 minutes the beginning so students can arrive late and not have heard anything about the exam. The last 10 minutes is to allow quiet for the students who are in a panic at the end, yes.

At my University I am allowed to let students in as long as nobody else left... Because of this we sometimes ask students not to leave a 3 hours exam before 30 minutes from the start.

When you forbid students from leaving early, this is usually a trade-off between the total disturbance caused by leaving and the discomfort caused to the student.
To summarise:

Without that rule, far more students would leave early, because the vast majority of students actually uses most of the time.
Most of the students who leave in the last ten minutes without the rule leave because the few remaining minutes do not allow to reasonably start a new task or revise anything – not because they finished everything.
These students would not want to leave earlier with the rule in place.
A single student can easily leave in an orderly, quiet fashion.
Multiple students can’t.
They are going to be in each other’s way, will accidentally talk to each other, etc.
In the last ten minutes you are very likely to have such an accumulation.
In most exams I attended or proctored, we used the following rule: If you want to leave early, you raise your hand, a proctor collects your exam, and then you leave quietly (to reduce the disturbance).
However, if you stay until the end, everybody stays at their desk and the proctors go round to collect the exams and then everybody is free to leave (because the number of proctors is limited, and to avoid last-minute cheating).
Obviously this only works with a forced separation of the two phases.
In the beginning, you will have some people arriving late, whom you do not want to confuse with the people leaving very early.
The first ten minutes establish the behaviour for the rest of the exam.
Therefore you want to avoid disturbances as much as possible.
(Thanks to O.R. Mapper for pointing this out).)
In some systems, there are always some students who just take a look at the exam and then immediately leave due to being discouraged or because they just want to know the tasks.
If the students at least have to wait for ten minutes, they usually have nothing better to do than to actually look at the exam, and thus get an idea of what the tasks are like, be it to better prepare for the repeat exam or to think twice before impulsively making a bad decision.
If they still want to leave after that, there is probably no helping it anyway.
Moreover, those who do leave tend to spread their departures a bit (unless you publicly announce that the ten minutes have passed).
If something is horribly wrong with the exam, there is a good chance that it will be found in the first ten minutes; the professor or proctors can then take immediate action.
In some systems, it may be helpful to ensure that all participants are present for this, to avoid somebody complaining of unfairness later (“If I had known about the correction, I would not have left early.”).

So, to summarise, the ten-minute rule avoids of the trouble caused by early leavers, without causing too much discomfort to those having to wait.

Excellent visualization tools here. This should be regarded as a model answer.

I don't get the red line on your graph - why does someone leaving at minute 5 cause a greater disturbance than someone leaving at minute 15? I'd say this rule could cause even more of a disturbance, since now everyone that would have left independently during minutes 1-10 gets up simultaneously at minute 11, which will be noisier than people leaving one-by-one. Several of the other points in this answer are valid, but I don't think the rule reduces overall disturbance in the early part of the exam.

@NuclearWang: why does someone leaving at minute 5 cause a greater disturbance than someone leaving at minute 15? – Because this collides with late arrivers and other issues happening in the early minutes. However, you are right that it is not as bad as at the end (see my edit). — now everyone that would have left independently during minutes 1-10 gets up simultaneously at minute 11 – Not necessarily. Some of them may not leave at all, and the rest tends to spread out a bit (see my edit). Also, you do not have that many very early leavers in the first place.

@NuclearWang: My impression is that during the first few minutes even a large exam room gets as quiet as hardly ever. When everyone has unpacked their writing utensils, shifted to a sufficiently comfortable position, opened their bottle and unwrapped their chewing gum and whatever other noisy steps of preparation some students seemingly think they need to take, even hundreds of students can be absolutely silent for a while. Then, this is the standard that is being set, and - consciously or not - people will try to adhere to subsequently. That is, someone leaving after 5 minutes, when ...

... the room has maybe not really reached calmness yet and there are multiple noise sources all over the room will instinctively take less care to produce as little sounds as possible themselves than someone who has just experienced the absolute silence for a few minutes that has established itself by the time 10 minutes have gone by.

The 10 mins at the beginning is possibly to prevent cheating - an examinee sees the paper, leaves the room and phones it to friends who have arranged to arrive late. Or am I being cynical?

Closer to not cynical enough I'd say; Assuming the paper does not leave the room, little impedes pictures being sent through network while they are in the class even if it does take some remarkable sleight of hand to go unnoticed.

Actually, leaving in the first 10 minutes can also result in cheating, depending on the question(s) and the possibility of returning.

You're not being cynical, but the cheating mechanism is different from the one you hypothesized ;-)

My university has a policy of not allowing students to leave during the first half of an exam's time for exactly this reason, since students are allowed to show up late and begin the exam until then.

I find that having students leaving near the end

is disturbing to students trying to finish the exam
creates an environment where distractions make proctoring and monitoring for cheating difficult.

To add to the other answers: Students who finish the exam early enjoyed a quiet and disturbance-free room. The other students deserve to finish the exam under the same conditions.

I really like this succinct reasoning.

In general, start and end are crucial moments.
The beginning is when explanations are given and questions answered, papers distributed, seats assigned, presence taken.
Conversely, the end is where paper are collected, some anti-cheating mechanism might take place (e.g. leave the document on your desk).
You would like these moments to be quiet so that all tasks can be performed with ease.

I think the ten minutes without anyone leaving are the first ten minutes where all of what you describe is over.

Where I work students are required to sit for at least one hour when taking a final exam (which cannot be less than 2hrs in length).  Students cannot enter the exam room 30 minutes after the start of the examination.  They also cannot leave in the last 15 minutes: if they are done within this last quarter hour, they must remain at their seat and examination copies. will be picked up while they are seated.
This serves multiple purposes.
First, it give the instructor/invigilators time to verify that the students sitting at the exam are actually students in the course, so that "phantom students" cannot leave the examination room with a copy of the final exam for whatever ulterior motives.  It is not possible for one student to get an exam copy, leave the room immediately, and give the copy to another student before he/she enters the room.
Next, it avoids situations where a swarm of students "rush" the instructor or invigilator at the end of the exam period and makes it easier for the instructor or invigilator to verify that each student leaving the room has submitted an examination copy; it avoids increased noise levels in the examination room or adjacent corridors in the last minutes of the exam for those students needing concentration to finish their test.
Overall, my experience is that this policy has decreased the number of "blank copies": students show up and immediately give up.  When you are forced to stay at least one hour, you are more likely to attempt some questions than just draw tanks rolling uphill.

So that they don't loose concentration, to avoid them using unorthodox means to pass the exam, Some may run away if the exam is complex

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text:
Do professors remember all their students?
One of my high school teachers once said that if I ever meet her again, I should identify myself by name because otherwise she will probably not remember me (there are simply too many students every year to remember all of them).
So just curious: do professors remember all their ...

Collaborators?
Postdocs?
PhD students?
Masters students?
Undergraduate research students?
Undergraduate non-research students (i.e. those who took one of their classes)?
Summer students?

... years into the future? Or are situations where the person goes "Hi Prof. Smith, I'm one of your ___ from 1985, remember me?", and Prof. Smith looks blank, common?

I'm not sure what an answer to this question will look like. Beyond anecdotes, I expect this will vary a lot between individuals. Some professors will make a point of learning everyone's name, and some won't. Some will have a lot of students, regularly teaching classes of several hundreds, and some won't. Some, unfortunately, develop dementia and can have (at least) days when they won't recognize their past PhD students or even family members.

@Anyon: Yeah, this is the only answer. It's not like becoming a professor will automatically improve (or degrade) your ability to remember people, or that people with particularly good or bad memories are forbidden from becoming professors.  There could be some slight correlations, but not enough to make any blanket answer to the title question.

Well if we assume that the "Undergraduate non-research students" group is too individual to say, what about the other groups?

@Anyon Your comment reads like an answer to me.  I mean, as you say, there's probably a lot of room for individual variation, though that observation itself, along with insight into norms, seems like a reasonable response.

Just like other human beings, academics will tend to remember students who they have had regular one-on-one contact with over a sustained period of time.  They are unlikely to remember students who they have met only in group settings (e.g., in lectures, etc.) or only on sporadic occasions.  The passage of time will also tend to eradicate memories of particular students, unless they were well-known.  And as with all other people, the memory of academics is affected by the length of contact, volume of other contacts with students at around the same time, time since last contact, and the idiosyncracies of memory of each individual.

So just curious: do professors remember all their ...
Collaborators?

Usually, but not always - Collaboration on a research project generally involves sustained contact, though it can also involve remote contact (via email, etc.) with some collaborators that you do not meet face-to-face very often, or at all.  Some research projects might involve large teams, and in this case an academic might forget some members of the team.  Academics will generally remember most or all of their research collaborators if they work closely in small groups, but might forget some who they did not meet often, or those on large teams.

Postdocs?

Yes - Supervising a postdoc involves regular one-on-one contact over a period of several years.  It involves assessment of work, research collaboration, and supervisory feedback.  It is a close working relationship that would generally be retained in memory for a substantial period of time.

PhD students?

Yes - As with a postdoc, supervising a postdoc student involves regular one-on-one contact over a period of several years.  PhD students require more guidance than postdocs, so the relationship usually involves even more contact.  It involves assessment of work, research collaboration, and supervisory feedback.  It is a close working relationship that would generally be retained in memory for a substantial period of time.

Undergraduate research students?

Maybe - Undergraduate research projects involve talented undergraduate students (the type you might remember) but they are usually short and simple research projects (which are fairly forgettable).  Contact with the student is usually for only one or two semesters.  After a period of time you might forget these students.

Undergraduate non-research students (i.e. those who took one of their classes)?

Definitely not - There are hundreds/thousands of them.  Some academics teach courses with several hundred undergraduate students each semester, in which case there are thousands of them over a period of years.  You might be lucky to remember a few of the students that did particularly well in your courses, or had a lot of contact with you.  For the rest of them, you would probably recognise the faces for a year or two afterwards, but eventually even this would fade and you would not recognise them at all.

Summer students?

It depends - This really depends on what exactly is being taught for these summer students.  If they are just taking summer classes then there is a similar dynamic to other undergraduate students, although the classes are probably smaller, which aids memory retention.  If they are doing research projects over the summer then the dynamic is similar to undergraduate research students.

Some research professors might have a couple dozen "students" over the course of their career all of which spent considerable time in their lab. Other professors can have 500 students a semester taking their classes. In these cases they will not even necessarily ever know the names of all their students.
As for collaborators, I have a couple of coauthors who I have never even met. If I grab my CV, I could find their names, but I have no idea who they are.

I can tell you that I don't remember all of mine, at least not immediately.
Just a few weeks ago, I got a DM from someone who I knew I knew, but I couldn't remember how or from exactly where, there was no photo on their profile, and they had a fairly common name. I thought at first it was someone I had gone on a couple dates with, but it turned out to be a former student--one I had taught in 3 different classes and met with a couple times after he graduated. Fortunately, I hadn't said anything of a sexual nature before realizing who he was (nor after).
Do you remember everyone you've ever met/worked with/studied with? I can't recall all my students from last year, let alone the hundreds from farther in the past. Some, yes--the ones who made some sort of mental or emotional impact on me.
Introducing yourself with a bit of clarifying information (like in your example) would probably prompt recall, or at least allow the professor to pretend like they recognized you.

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text:
Does giving a good conference talk affect the acceptance of future submissions?
Sort of a follow-up question to Does giving an easily-understood talk make the audience think you did something simple?
Let's say Alice goes to Big Name Conference V and gives a great talk. Everyone understood what she did, why she did it and what she's going to do next. Does that make it so that:

The organizers of Big Name Conference VI are more likely to invite her as a speaker;
If that doesn't happen, any submission she makes to Big Name Conference VI is more likely to be accepted?

If the answers to the above is "yes", does that imply that if she submits to Big Name Conference VI and is rejected, then her talk at Big Name Conference V was probably poor?

I think this depends a lot on the culture of Alice's subsubfield in general, and in particular on whether the leaders of the subsubfield value good exposition in general or not.  This may be true even if the conference is a broader conference.

An easily understood talk on complex material shows you know how to explain complex material - nobody will mistake it for being 'simple'.

Does that make it more probable that:
The organizers of Big Name Conference VI are more likely to invite her as a speaker;

Yea, obviously a person who develops a reputation for giving great talks is more likely to be invites to give talks than a person who has not developed such a reputation.
However, one good talk will probably not increase the probability of getting to be an invited speaker by a huge amount. It will be a very slight increase. And Alice still needs to be well-respected as a researcher, not just a speaker, otherwise she almost certainly will not be invited to give a talk.

If that doesn't happen, any submission she makes to Big Name Conference VI is more likely to be accepted?

Not in the areas I’m familiar with. Typically acceptance of submitted papers/abstracts to conferences is based on the scientific quality of the submission and not on speaking ability. I’m guessing this is true universally across the STEM areas. Perhaps in humanities, social sciences and other non-STEM areas things are different in this respect.

In my end of the sciences, it's usual for the organisers to select some abstracts to be delivered as talks, and the others as posters. Prior knowledge about the presenter's abilities (or lack thereof) may be a factor in this decision - especially at large conferences with parallel sessions, where the audience may vote with their feet.