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Is a second PhD ever necessary?
I'm an undergraduate student. I used to think that a PhD certifies a person as an expert in a specific topic of a specific field. I've now been told that while that's true, a PhD most importantly proves that you are capable of independent research in general.
A professor of fluid dynamics told me that if he wanted to shift his research to an unrelated topic like dog anatomy, rather than getting a second degree he would seek out successive projects that get progressively closer to his research interest (e.g. a project on modelling blood flow in a dog, etc.), until eventually he is working on his originally unrelated research interest.
Is the above approach generally valid? If it works, then what legitimate reason is there to get a second PhD?

In some countries, e.g. Italy, you are not even allowed to apply for a second PhD.

@MassimoOrtolano - Why not? What would be a reason for that?

@MassimoOrtolano, all my Italian friends in the PhD program at Oxford were also doing a PhD in Italy! They were using the Italian scholarship to finance their Oxford PhD. Perhaps what you mean is that you won't get a second scholarship for a second Italian dottorato.

@Mirov, what you'll find is that your PhD certifies you as an expert only if it's from a top institution and you get good publications right away. I know several people who got 2 PhDs, including a former professor of mine who had a Biology PhD from MIT and Economics from Harvard (or the other way around), but he didn't get extra credit as an economist from holding Biology credentials!

@Idigas: I checked better, and I now see that my comment above is not entirely correct. Actually, in Italy you can apply for a second PhD, but you are not allowed, by law, to have a second State scholarship for it. Most of PhD scholarships in Italy are funded by State Institutions (privately funded PhDs are rare), and the State will not pay you a second scholarship. It appears, however, that if you have a job, and willing to take a second PhD without scholarship, you can (the cost of a PhD here is around $2000/yr for three years, which is not too much if you have a job).

@PatrickT: you're right, see my comment to Idigas above.

I suppose this question needs to specify how wide "a specific field" is considered, to get better country-specific answers. For example, in some countries that issue doctoral degrees, you sometimes cannot have several of those in the same area (engineering, biology, ...), but you can have several when they are from different such wide areas.

@PatrickT Not right away of course. The professor suggested taking on projects that would slowly build credentials in the second field. Just speculating, but would the following be possible? Attempt to collaborate using one's programming and mathematical experience from an economics degree. Acquaint oneself with the relevant libraries in a programming language, then take a minor role in a biology-related project. Then repeat the process, slowly taking on less economics related work, leveraging your increasing biology experience.

Is the first PhD necessary?

A PhD does not make you an expert on any topic, it means you have served your apprenticeship as a researcher and are able to conduct a program of independent research.  It is your papers that show your experitise.  A second PhD may show that you are able to research independently in two different fields.  Whether it is necessary depends on how different the fields are.

@Mirov, yes the strategy you describe is very sound. I should have been clearer: getting a second PhD title and a bound stack of pages approved by a PhD committee is not going to help, in my humble opinion, but if doing a second PhD means getting into a research team and publishing then why not. Publishing is the key. The PhD is almost worthless without it: I know exactly what I'm talking about here, unfortunately.

Oh and an excellent answer here: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17232/is-doing-two-phds-a-good-path?rq=1

I would tend to agree with your professor: a Ph.D. primarily certifies you as being capably of creative contribution to research, and secondarily as an expert in a narrow sub-discipline.  Combine that with the continually shifting landscape of the scientific frontier, are there is a great deal of flexibility in what a person with a Ph.D. may end up doing over time.
I have heard one of my close colleagues say that: "One way or another, in ten years time we can't be doing the same thing we are now.  Either we will have succeeded and need to move forward, or we will have failed and need to try something else."
In such changes, there is usually a significant degree of continuity that allows one to "pivot" from one area for another.  Like in your professor's example, there are a lot of ways in which dog anatomy and fluid dynamics are related, and it's natural that an expert in fluid dynamics might well be drawn to the parts of anatomy most relevant to their existing skill.
A nice real-world example of such a radical transition: Tom Knight made his name pioneering networks and computer architectures, then radically shifted into biology.  There is a nice interview with him about his history and how he made the transition, which involved lots of re-education but not bothering with the formality of another Ph.D.  He's also moved back and forth between industry and academia quite a bit.
That said, I could imagine some transition so extreme that it might require an entirely new apprenticeship, e.g., from astrophysics to medieval French history.  But that sort of change would be a rather extreme an unusual example.

Some doctorates are more specific than a PhD
Some tasks require specific qualifications for which a generic PhD may not suffice. For example a researcher working on neuroscience or robotic prosthesis may come from various fields of science, but (depending on your jurisdiction) can be prohibited to work on people independently before obtaining also a degree in medicine - no matter what skills they may already have, the specific degree is mandatory. Similarly, there are areas of sociology and politology where a reseacher would be well skilled in the relevant areas of law, but they may need to obtain a jurisprudence degree to be allowed to practice those skills.

It depends. Largely on is the first PhD recognized?
Consider someone doing a PhD degree in some field with rather low standards. Say, in politics, or medicine. You may end up being frowned upon if you are in contact with technology PhDs, who (apparently) have higher standards.
It will of course also vary from school to school. And people in medicine and politics will downvote this answer...
So in my personal opinion:

if your PhD was 3-5 years additionally to a masters degree, is from a highly regarded school, involved publishing several scientific papers, and is in a discipline such as CS, Physics, Math: don't bother doing another PhD
if your PhD was a "small" solution, maybe only 2 years after a bachelor, you didn't publish anything before (if at all), and your work was mostly summarizing and discussing what others wrote before: compare to standards in tech departments.

Your professor of fluid dynamics probably has a PhD of the first kind. Widely respected as capable of doing own research. But you know: not all PhD programs have such standards.
I've read of PhD "thesis" assignments that essentially meant transcribing some old medical work into modern language; which apparently many students outsourced this, because they couldn't even read the script anymore...

I suggest asking yourself this set of questions before engaging on a second PhD:

Do I find delight in long hours of profoundly involving, extended, and solitary study?
Have I achieved my greatest satisfaction in researching and writing long research papers in the previous PhD? Would I enjoy writing more?
Do I have a compact intellectual drive and curiosity that is becoming more concentrated in the next field of research or several related fields? (This momentum needs to be distinguished clearly and honestly from a drive to have a Ph.D. in order to obtain something else, whether an attractive job, a certain status, a sense of accomplishment, and so on.)

This doesn't answer whether second PhDs are necessary.

You need to add a bullet, "are you willing to work for very low pay for another 5-6 years?!"  Also, I concur, you didn't really answer the OP's question...


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Is there any way to only do research after getting a Ph.D.?
I'm currently a Master's student in my final year and I want to start a Ph.D. next year. I really like doing research (one of my papers got published in a fairly reputable journal), but I more or less dislike the teaching aspect that comes with the Ph.D. title. Is there any alternative way to do research, outside of industry, and not be obligated to teach?

When I saw only the subject, I was going to recommend going into industry. In my experience, industry is far better than academia at recognizing that different people have different strengths, likes, and dislikes, and offering career paths to suit.

Yes, sure. All over the world there are research institutes whose main focus is research and where no teaching takes place. You don't specify your field of research nor your country but just to give you an example, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is a fairly large research institute in the US which collects researchers from different fields, e.g. physics, engineering, computer science, mathematics etc.

If you are exceptionally good, you could find a position in an industrial research lab or national research institute, if such things exist in your field.

Note that many "only research" positions involve work other than just research, such as proposal-writing, administration, accounting, personnel management, etc.

If you're talking about research for your PhD, many (but far from all) major European universities will have no teaching expectations of postgraduate students.

A Massimo said,"field of research" is what matters.  Get a Ph.D. in medieval literature ... then it is probably unlikely that any (non-teaching) research institute will hire you.

@GEdgar My research is in mathematical physics.

Sure.  Just find a job that leaves you enough time to do research.  Now if you want to get paid to do research, that's a bit harder.

Yes. There are national laboratories like the US DOE labs (Sandia, Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, etc), non-profit independent labs, industrial labs, and even university labs like the one I work at. You will find that many of these kinds of labs have some sort of service mission instead of teaching, but others are purely research focused. For example, researchers in my group also support users of our supercomputers when they run into problems. There are lots of these non-academic research opportunities out there in the STEM fields. I think there are probably many less in non-technical areas.

It depends a lot on the type of research you'd like to do.  For example, suppose you're in mathematics:

There are many jobs that use applied mathematics in highly directed R&D activities, where you are working in a team on some bigger project, which is not under your control unless you really rise in the ranks.  Academic publications will not be a primary outcome, but applied research could be a substantial part of the job.
There are a moderate number of more academic-style applied mathematics positions, for example in national labs, where you are in charge of your own activities (subject to securing funding) and write many research papers.
There are only a tiny number of secure, long-term jobs where you can do whatever mathematics you would like, including pure mathematics, with no teaching responsibilities (and where doing mathematics is your primary job).

So the availability of research-focused jobs really depends on how flexible your interests are and how well they fit with other people's goals.  If your work is obviously and immediately applicable to industry or government, then there's a good chance you'll be able to convince someone to pay you to do it full time.  If you are doing applied work that is less immediately applicable, then it depends on the availability of funding.  If you are doing highly theoretical work, then you'll have to be extraordinarily skilled or lucky.

Thanks! Can you give me examples of the 3rd point?

@user119264, NSA, CIA, etc.

I don't think most math jobs at NSA cover "whatever mathematics you would like, including pure mathematics".  I'm thinking of IAS, a tiny number of fancy chairs in universities, a handful of jobs in large industrial or government labs, etc. I haven't worked at NSA, so maybe I'm off base, but I imagine it's typically more in category 2: an ideal fit if you want to do cryptology, but not if you are trying to prove the twin prime conjecture. (Of course if "whatever mathematics you would like" happens to coincide with what someone else wants to fund, you are in luck and don't need a special job.)

I would imagine the NSA would have a very deep interest in prime number research. :-)

There are the rare few jobs that are permanent research positions in mathematics, such as the theory group at Microsoft Research. However, most of these eventually vanish, so there is some lack of job security relative to a tenured position.

There are many institutes called "Academy of Sciences" all around the world. In general, being member of these, you're not obliged to teach nor to supervise students. You can still be assigned some other responsibility than teaching, but it should not be really limiting you.
As an example, this exists in France as CNRS (Le Centre national de la recherche scientifique) and in Czechia as CAS/ASCR/AVČR (The Czech Academy of Sciences).
As for France, note that getting a CNRS position is very difficult, the positions are literally couple in each branch each year. Most people in CNRS laboratories (institutes) have teaching positions at the associated universities.

Those CNRS professors that I interacted with on a project from my postdoc years actually had teaching responsibilities, thought they were very light. Of course those people were titled professor and supervised grad students; perhaps they have pure researchers that I didn't bump into.

@dmckee No. Neither CR1 nor DR1 have teaching duty, but they can opt in. I know many people on these positions who do not teach at all.

Interesting. All three of the folks I knew were doing some teaching. May be connected with particle physics manpower needs.

@dmckee: beware that many people working in CNRS units (or most commonly, mixed CNRS/university units) are in fact professors who really are employed by universities, and thus have teaching duties. But CR ("chargés de recherche") and DR ("directeurs de recherche") have no teaching obligation (be they CR/DR 1 or 2). Typically, CNRS has between 2-3 and a dozen open positions every year in a given discipline (e.g. maths, physics, biology, history, social sciences...) These position are also typically more difficult to get than assistant professorships in the same field.

@BenoîtKloeckner I'm well aware of this fact. I don't mention University positions at all, do I? :) I should probably make this clear though.

I've heard that the Center for Communications Research is like this, if your Ph.D. is in math. I know people who work there and quite like it. (US Government; a security clearance is required.)

In the UK, places like the JIC,TGAC, Sainsbury Lab and IFR on the Norwich Research Park are affiliated with the University of East Anglia but are a significant distance from and have no real connection to the undergraduates therefore no teaching is expected. There are quite a lot of places like this in the UK, like CRUK and MRC as well where you are not expected to teach.
NB: You should look out for institutes funded privately or through charities as these are the ones that are more independent and less likely to have teaching commitments, if at all.

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How is it common that universities provide assistantship positions for their graduate students?
Do a lot of graduate programs provide assistantships to their students (e.g. teaching or research assistantships)? How common is it for graduate students to be paid while going to graduate school?

Very field-dependent. Clarify?

Yes, a lot of graduate programs prove assistantships. In many fields, it's considered stupid to accept admission to a graduate program that does not guarantee you multiple years of financial support. Whether this is true in your field is a different question,

Depends on your country, your field, and your definition of "paid". It is common in many fields to get a grant that covers tuition and (hopefully) costs of living, but an actual salary is only common in some places (most notably in central europe in the STEM fields).

Downvoted as too broad.

@xLeitix: A salary is common in Northern Europe, too, and not just for STEM.

This depends on many factors, including the discipline, the degree, and the institution.  Some disciplines have a lot more research dollars to support research assistants.  For example, scientifically oriented programs tend to have more money to support students than liberal arts degrees; PhD programs tend to have more money than terminal Master's programs; and, of course, educational institutions exhibit a lot variability in terms of their overall resources.

Generally, if it's a research degree (i.e., a PhD or a research-focused Masters designed to lead to a PhD), some form of assistantship or fellowship will be provided to cover tuition and a stipend. The details including the nature, requirements, stipend size, and other perks will vary by field, institution, and department and sometimes even by how much a department or professor wants a particular student. The degree to which this funding or these assistantships are guaranteed — and the periods during which they are guaranteed — can vary as well.
If the graduate degree is a non-research masters (e.g., an MBA) assistantships will almost never be offered or guaranteed although they are sometimes possible. Most students are expected to pay.

To answer your first question:

Do a lot of graduate programs provide assistantships to their students
  (e.g. teaching or research assistantships)?

In my experience, programs do not provide assistantships -- professors do. When you are applying to a program, whether Master's or PhD, your application is considered in relation to work that the faculty of that department have on the table for the next year or several years. For RAships this is grant-funded projects; for TAships these are large-workload courses.
In my understanding, just about all graduate programs (except not so much in professional degrees like business, law, medicine, and perhaps a couple others - although there are definitely exceptions) provide R/TAships. This is so for simple reasons that there is research and teaching to be done, faculty don't have time to do it all by themselves, and graduate students are the cheapest workforce with post-Bachelor credentials for an institution of higher education.
So, yes, a lot of programs provide these assistantships. You should assume the program you are applying to does. This is easily confirmed by reviewing the websites of current grant-funded projects run by the faculty (research groups/labs/centers) and seeing if they have graduate students on their rosters.
To the second question:

How common is it for graduate students to be paid while going to
  graduate school?

This largely depends on the size (for TAships) and/or amount of research activity (for RAships) at the institution and the department in question. The typical heuristic applies: engineering and engineering-like hard sciences tend to be better funded, philosophy and theater tend to be barely scraping by, and the social sciences are somewhere in between. (Of course there are exceptions to every rule, and you might find a truly flourishing social science program here and there, just as you might find a relatively cash-light hard science program.)
Beyond these generalities, it depends on the fit between you (your qualifications and goals) and the on-going projects and needs of the faculty who will be advising you and whose research you are interested in. Most likely you will at times have to reconcile the trade-off between seeking an RAship on a project you are not really interested in, or proudly sticking with doing exactly what you want to be doing while paying out-of-pocket or debt financing your studies. This is the nature of the graduate game, and THAT is indeed common. Good Luck!

RA's are commonly controlled by individual faculty members and research centers or labs rather than academic departments.  On the other hand, TA's are often awarded by the department to students, sometimes with an understanding that students must transition to RA funding by some point in their graduate career.

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Should I keep all my .bib files in a single folder, or one with each .tex file?
Self-explanatory. I would be most interested to hear from researchers who have published a fair amount, decided one way or the other wasn't working for them, so switched — and why.
Related advice / observations welcome: e.g. "why the hell would you need more than one .bib file?"

I would love to hear "a good practice" (as I am struggling with the same problem), but the question should be asked on http://tex.stackexchange.com/ instead.

What are the possible advantages of having multiple bib files? I suspect most people use a reference manager like Mendely or similar that creates a bib file for you. The only situation I can think of when you would want a separate bib file is if you want uncited references to appear which generally you should avoid.

I use a single .bib file (about 45k lines / 2.3MB), edited in emacs, and don't know why I would want more than one. I'm not the only one. When writing a paper in LaTeX I use the master .bib file during development, but paste the required entries into a new, specialized bib file for submission. (I should really write a script to automate this last step.)

Then what happens if four people write a paper together, and each one of them has their own master bibtex file containing everything but the kitchen sink [KS82]? With different key styles and journal abbreviations, of course.

@PiotrMigdal — I have a feeling that this question would be voted down on that site for being too general, plus I wanted to hear specifically from experienced academics.

@nivag: I have listed some advantages (from my point of view) in my answer. "if you want uncited references to appear which generally you should avoid" - s/if you want uncited references/if you want all uncited references/. Showing particular uncited references is not a (technical) problem even with a single, large .bib file.

Several .bib files in the a single folder:

You might want to do this if you write about quite disjoint topics, or if you want to keep several sets of inherently different references in separate files (e.g. scientific publications in one file, technical standard documents in another, etc.). Overall, however, I see little reason to choose this approach.

One .bib file (obviously in one folder):

This allows you to build up a database with your personal literature collection. Given that BibTeX by default only shows cited references, this is one of the ways the system is supposed to be used. For someone working entirely alone, this might be a viable way to go.

Several .bib files in several folders:

This is the approach I follow (using JabRef), with the further restriction that the .bib files usually reside in precisely the folders where they are used by .tex documents.
Advantages:

The .bib file is a part of the source. When using a VCS, everything required to build the document should be in the VCS, and with one repository per paper/project, the appropriate .bib file needs to be stored in each repository.

This might be solvable by including repositories in repositories (such as with SVN externals), but that still assumes a central repository location that is accessible to all co-authors, which is not a given when collaborating with different groups.

As also remarked by Federico Poloni, when several authors work together, they need to use the same references. It wouldn't make any sense if each author had his or her personal large .bib file, rather than having one common .bib file for the paper/project.
Even when working as a single author, the .bib file sometimes needs to be submitted for the camera-ready version of a paper, to allow editors to build the document themselves. While I don't think it's usually explicitly forbidden, I'm quite sure it's not a very good idea to submit your complete multi-MB literature database every time you submit a CR version.
Different papers/projects need to be formatted according to different styleguides. While the actual layout of the bibliography is imposed by the BibTeX Style that usually comes with the paper template, some paper-specific tweaking is required more often than not in my experience:

Some styles show URLs, for other styles, the URL needs to be inserted into the howpublished or the comment field.
In some papers, you want to (or have the space to) show some redundant information such as publication months, publisher locations, or DOIs, in others, you don't.
In some papers, you may want to use full journal or conference proceedings names, in others, you may want to abbreviate them as far as possible
In some papers, you can use special packages (e.g. for correctly rendering a Latvian name with a comma accent), in others, this might not be allowed.
In some papers, the layout of the bibliography is such that you need to repair some ugly block formatting with additional \hskip commands, custom hyphenation, and the like.

When starting a new paper or project related to a topic I had written about before and want to grab some random related work for the introduction, I find it most convenient to open the .bib file of the previous document to get an overview of the ~30 references that I had used there. Of course, I could also look in the compiled PDF file, but I cannot directly copy the entries that seem suitable from there.
As mentioned by darij grinberg, it might not be desirable to have later changes to bibliography items retroactively show up in old documents. It would mean that the old sources compile to something else than what they did at the time of writing the document, and it may even ruin a carefully adjusted layout.

Disadvantages:

I regularly need to copy some references from one file to another when I want to reuse them.

Another big reason to have project-specific .bib files is that you might want to update a reference to a newer edition/version without automatically changing all citations to that reference in all of your projects (otherwise page numbers, theorem numbers, etc. will become out of sync with the source). I'm seeing this done wrong so often I'm more surprised when I see people doing it right.

Great answer. One detail only: In some papers, you want to (or have the space to) show some redundant information such as publication months, publisher locations, or DOIs, in others, you don't.  -- I think that this problem should be solved by changing the bibtex style, not by removing data such as publication months from the database. The job of a bib file is containing data, not pulling and formatting them.

@FedericoPoloni: I agree, though sometimes, publishers may insist on using their unaltered style and class files. Also, changing the BibTeX style requires familiarizing oneself with the BibTeX style syntax, which is nontrivial even when one is fluent in LaTeX.

@O.R.Mapper I too feel that bst file are a Lovecraftian horror, but biblatex simplifies a lot the formatting part.

I have a single Mendeley-generated bib file (1.8MB as of now).
There reason in the following:

Mendeley works that way,
it is convenient to be able to add a bib entry just once, so it can be easily used in any paper.

However, it has its problems as well, especially related to collaborating with others, and encapsulating content:

any changes in a bib file (e.g. modifying existing entries, errors) will affect all files,
it's harder to add citations from collaborators without affecting your structure (especially as citations from collaborators can have different key conventions),
if it need to be in some git repository, it requires a copy of bib file, with many non-relevant entries.

In any case, when collaborating with others, or finalizing a project, I do copy the whole bib file to protect myself against changes.
I did try to extract a subset of citations, which I use in a given paper, with bibexport (learnt from Creating .bib file containing only the cited references of a bigger .bib file - TeX.SE), but with some various results (it seems that bibexport does not support all fields supported in Mendeley); but it was some time ago, so maybe things are different.
See also:

Strategy for managing multiple Bibtex files - TeX.SE


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Pursuing integrated master’s and PhD in business
My friend has a diploma (associate degree) in commerce. He has 35+ years of industry experience. He wants to do integrated master’s and PhD in business. How is it possible?

In which country?

The typical college cycle
The typical college cycle works like this:

Start with a high-school diploma or equivalent.

Do 2-years of undergraduate education; some get an Associate's degree for it.

Do another 2-years of undergraduate education; most get a Bachelor's for it.

Do 2-years of graduate education; many get a Master's for it.

Do a few years of PhD work; successful students get a PhD for it.

It sounds like your friend's done Steps (1) and (2), and now they want to do Steps (4) and (5).
Your friend's atypical situation: rejoining the cycle & skipping a step
Your friend's situation is atypical in two ways:

They want to skip Step (3).

There's a significant gap between the earlier and later steps.

Skipping Step (3) is a tricky proposition.   Basically, they'd need to find a grad school that will accept their application despite not having done Step (3), which won't be something all would be willing to do.
Unfortunately, doing Step (3) would probably require repeating Step (2) as well.  It's probably unfair, but that's how the system currently works in most places; undergraduate continuation is lost after about 5 years.
Potential approaches to achieving this goal
This seems to leave them with four tactics that might work depending on the locality and a lot of happenstance:

Option 1:  Repeat Step (2) by enrolling as an undergraduate, then go through the process from there.

Option 2:  Re-enter the process at Step (3) by finding an undergraduate program that'll accept the prior Associate's.  This may be unlikely.

Option 3:  Skip ahead to Step (4) by finding a graduate program that'll overlook the absence of a Bachelor's, perhaps by arguing that 35-years of experience is a supplement.

Option 4:  Enroll in an MBA program instead, then try to re-enter the typical college cycle at Step (4) or Step (5) with an MBA in-hand.

Option (1) might not be interesting to your friend, since it'd involve doing an extra 4 years of full-time college work before starting with the Master's/PhD program that they want to do.
Option (2) would be tricky, primarily since it'd probably be hard to find an undergrad institution that'd accept an Associate's from that long ago.  Additionally, it'd still involve an additional 2 years of full-time college work before starting with the Master's/PhD program that they want to do.
Option (3) would probably be what your friend would like most.  However, the Master's-level classes might be a bit hard for someone who's been out of academia for so long, plus a lot of graduate programs might spurn their application in the absence of a Bachelor's.
Option (4) seems more plausible than some of the others because MBA programs tend to value work experience far more than typical Master's programs, so it'd probably be easier for them to get in.  However, MBA's are typically terminal degrees; I don't know if there're combined MBA/PhD programs.  That said, a Business PhD program might be inclined to accept an applicant with an MBA, or else an MBA might qualify them to enter a traditional Master's/PhD program.

@LilyEast I suspect that you're right that there'd be a lot of variance there.  My primary experience with grad programs is in the US for STEM fields where a Bachelor's degree is a basic necessity, though the odds of someone getting into a Business program based on their industrial experience might be better than in STEM.


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Is positive discrimination in faculty hiring really efficient at promoting diversity in an academic department?
I have questions about affirmative action as described in this answer to another question (also called positive discrimination) in the context of US universities, more specifically departments recruiting assistant professors.
What is the evidence that using positive discrimination to select assistant-professor candidates is efficient at promoting diversity?
How does it compare to granting scholarships to (or waiving tuition fees for) minority undergraduate students as an attempt to promote diversity at the very beginning of the academic curriculum and hoping this diversity will propagate to the pool of applicants to assistant professor positions when these students arrive on the job market?
I would like to learn about real examples and facts and figures suggesting why these policies worked or didn’t work.

I cleaned up the comments since the question has changed substantially. If you feel that constructive criticism on the question is still valid, please re-post it. Mind the above notice though.

The effects of affirmative action in academia and corporate environments is a matter that has been the subject of an immense amount of study and scholarly literature, so any detailed answer to this question is probably going to involve some engagement with that literature.  Nevertheless, at the outset, there are some aspects of your question that could be unpacked and clarified, so that you can focus your analysis more effectively on what exactly is of interest:

Define what you mean by "diversity": I suspect you are referring to the promotion of outcomes where the racial composition of the faculty is closer to the racial composition of the host society (e.g., increasing the proportion of people from "underrepresented" groups and decreasing the proportion of people from "overrepresented" groups).  Or do you mean something else?  Either way, you should take a moment to consider exactly what "diversity" would entail, so that you have some basis for assessing efficiency in its promotion.
Consider what you mean by "efficiency": What constitutes "efficiency" here?  Is it the speed with which a particular outcome is achieved?  The cost?  Some combination?  If it includes some consideration of cost, then what counts as a cost?  Does "efficiency" require the academic system to remain functionally efficient, or do you simply mean that the method used to promote diversity must itself be efficient?
Some results follow virtually by definition: If "diversity" is defined as above, then positive discrimination in favour of "underrepresented" groups is likely to increase diversity (at least in the short term) virtually by definition.  If efficiency refers to rapidness and simplicity of the processes then the simplest and most overt forms of positive discrimination are likely to be the most efficient, again virtually by definition.  In such a case, the consequences are so obvious that it is unclear why you would need empirical evidence at all.
Are you even asking the right question? If the sole goal of interest in your question is to be "efficient" at achieving "diversity" then clearly the most efficient way to achieve this is simply to impose immediate quotas in faculty composition without regard to any other considerations.  It could even be achieved simply by appointing all academic positions via random lottery among the entire population.  In other words, your question is rendered trivial.  This happens because you have not posed any trade-off with other considerations in your question.  Does the actual merit of candidates matter?  Does the quality of academic work matter?  Does fairness matter?  If so, then you now have a trade-off between multiple things, and you will have to adjust your question accordingly.


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Use a survey from a study under review?
I developed a survey and my study using the survey is still under review for a publication.  However, my friend wants to use the survey and data for her study. I collected the data only in my school; she wants to collect additional data from a different school.
My concerns are:

If her study is published before mine, my study could be meaningless.
Also, the two studies could be very similar.

Is it okay to allow her to use my survey as well as my data?

I assume that your supervisor already know that you already submitted your work:
If your targeted publication venue allows you to publish pre-print than you may submit your work at arxiv or any other similar public library and give reference to you work in extended work conducted by your supervisor.Otherwise, you can give reference to your work in extended version with status "Under Review".

If this person is using your data as one part in a larger project, then this is great. You should strongly encourage this as it will lead to a citation and more visibility for you. Indeed, that's the whole point of research.
If this person is simply going to repeat your test with larger statistics, then I think you should discuss the publication arrangements now before agreeing to this. It may be worth combining your papers into a single paper (with you as first author), or this may be significant enough to write a second paper with the larger statistics. The second paper can reference the first one even if it is under review, so the timing is not necessarily a problem. In any case, you should be clear now on what your authorship will be. Send an e-mail summarizing what you agreed on after the meeting so you have it in writing.
Finally, if you are a PhD student, then the correct answer is to discuss this with your advisor; they will know the specifics far better than anyone here.

If your friend uses your work, academic ethics compels her to cite you, even if it is only as personal communication or similar. Currently, the typical type of citation would be unpublished or under review and this should be updated to your paper once it is published (the details may depend on field, citation style, and journal). Thus, it should be clear to everybody that your friend’s work fundamentally builds upon yours, and it would be absurd to consider your publication irrelevant due to your friend’s one. Of course, some reviewers and editors out there make absurd decisions, but that’s nothing I would consider likely and take into account.
You have to decide yourself how much you trust your friend to adhere to academic ethics (and cite you). At worst, you can contractually stipulate that any publication based on your work must cite you (or make you a co-author in the event that you do not publish). Either way, it is usually a good idea to have a discussion with everybody involved to clarify this and arrive at a common collaboration and publication strategy.


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Will the January 2018 government shut down affect the NSF postdoc awards?
I very recently learned that I will be awarded an NSF postdoc!
And then the US government shut-down.
Should I expect the NSF postdoc to work out once the government starts running again?
Note: The email I received from the NSF is not an official award notice. From the NSF website is says that during this shut-down period “no new grants or cooperative agreements will be awarded”. It does not say anything about whether grants that have been scheduled will be awarded once operations resume. Perhaps I am overthinking it, but I am worried that the NSF postdoc might fall through and it will be to late for me to make alternate arrangements.

This really isn't a good question for a stackexchange site, since none of us can give an authirtative answer.  Furthermore, once the shutdown is over (I'm hoping it ends sooner rather than later) you will no doubt get an answer from the NSF.

Well there may be people on this site that experienced a similar situation during a previous shutdown...

The first thing that you should do is asking the NSF directly.

@Trilarion Agreed. But how, during the shutdown?

The NSF recently changed its accounting practices, so that money for awards are committed all at once, rather than year-by-year. So, that means that the funding for your award should already have been “available” when you got the notification. Unfortunately, a shutdown means that no further processing will likely take place until it ends, so there may be some delays in the start of your award. But I can’t imagine a scenario where the NSF cancels awards it was planning to make because of the shutdown.

It appears that indeed because the funding for the award had already been scheduled when I received the notification, the government shutdown had no effect. Thanks!

Congrats on the NSF postdoc!  As Brian Borchers' comment indicates, none of us can answer this question definitively, since we aren't the NSF (or the U.S. Congress for that matter).  Arrangements for the 2013 U.S. government shutdown (which as you may recall was in October and lasted over two weeks) resulted in submission deadlines being postponed, and in NSF Postdocs (at least in math, and I presume in other fields) not being paid for the duration, which contrasted with NSF graduate fellowships, which are paid to schools in lump sums in advance.  (As an aside, this has tax implications you should be aware of when you accept the award.)  Awards (and selection for awards) resumed after the shutdown and back pay awarded for affected individuals. (Excuse the lack of references throughout, normally I'd be linking to the NSF website, which of course is currently displaying only minimal information.)
All the paperwork required for an NSF postdoc to be official takes months (requiring proof of graduation among other things) and it sounds like this shutdown caught you at the very beginning of it; the next steps will probably be delayed with the shutdown, but speculating (as nothing more than a member of the public) unless there is a major change to the NSF budget or a very long shutdown, it's probably not time to panic yet. ;)  It is worth understanding that future shutdowns, should they occur after you start your postdoc, could affect your paycheck and when it arrives.


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How to write about an area I'm going to study in undergrad research?
I'm a undergraduate student in mathematics and I'm applying for a scientific-initiation (or maybe undergraduate-research) scholarship in which I'll study a certain topic in mathematics (so I'll not really do any research, despite the name of the program).
To enroll in the program, I have to submit an eight-page project describing what I'm going to do, with a schedule for the duration of the program, methodologies, and references. Formally, the project text must contain a summary, introduction, objectives, methods (or methodology), a schedule of activities, and references.
For the methodology/methods, I'll just say what I'll do: read the theory in the main reference text, maybe rephrase some definitions or results and make some additional remarks, do the exercises, maybe construct some new examples/counterexamples. I think it's a bit too direct but I'm not very concerned with this part. The same applies to the references.
My problem is: I don't have any knowledge of the subject (beyond the very basic) I'm going to study (and don't have time to further study it until the deliver of this document), so I don't know what to say in most of this document sections. I'll just pick a book on the subject and study it. In the summary, I quite already said that, and I don't really know what to write in the introduction and objectives.
I'm a bit concerned of talking about this to my advisor, because we already talked and it seemed clear that I should write the document all by myself. Maybe it's just me not being able to write down some very simple things of what I'm going to do.

"I'm a bit concerned of talking about this to my advisor, because we already talked and it seemed clear that I should write the document all by myself."  You need to find a different advisor.  A good advisor will know that very few undergraduates can do this well without help.

In most of these situations, a large part of the "exercise" is for you to grapple with the writing of that document yourself, thinking about the various aspects.
It is to be expected, or even hoped, that you feel you are unable to do this, due to lack of information, and lack of experience.
Then, talk to your advisor for hints and advice, and show them what you have written, _in_your_own_voice_... as the starting point for further progress.
That is, there should be several/many iteration cycles in creating the document, and, yes, you certainly do need your advisor's help... but in refining and redirecting your own thoughts and preferences.
Good that you recognize that you don't really know what to do, having had no experience at this, but a large part of the experience is to try to do a thing you've not done before... and partly fail, get help, fail less, get more help, fail less, rinse-lather-repeat. :)

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


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As an inexperienced/unknown recommendation letter writer, what should I do to make my letter stand out?
It is generally acknowledged that one should try to get recommendation letters (for grad school, jobs, etc.) from well-known experienced members of your field, if at all possible (for e.g. see some of the answers to this related question: Do letters of recommendation typically include a biography of the writer?). Of course, sometimes this is not possible.
I am a first-year postdoc (in mathematics, but perhaps this is not relevant), and a masters student in the graduate-level class I am currently teaching approached me to write a letter for them when they apply for PhD programs. I am a natural person to write a letter for them since they are interested in the field that I teach (topology) and I'm teaching one of the three courses they are taking (since application deadlines are quite soon, they won't have taken any other courses here before applying). Of course, I am also a poor choice (which I mentioned to them) as a relatively unknown person with little experience.
While it makes sense to me that recommendation letters from senior research-focused faculty are worth more (since they have greater experience interacting with graduate/soon-to-be-graduate students), there are a fair number of students from relatively obscure 4-year universities who apply to graduate school. They might not have had any access to senior research-focused faculty.

What are some things I should keep in mind when writing a recommendation letter for graduate admissions as a new entrant to my field, or perhaps as an instructor at a relatively obscure primarily teaching-focused school?

Statements like 'they are in the top 7 of all graduate students I've ever taught' carry little weight, since I've only ever taught 7! For what it's worth, the student in question is doing quite well, and my goal is to write a well-deserved relatively glowing letter; I would like to make sure, as much as I can, that my letter is not ignored.

I would not undersell letters from a junior letter writer. Consider that a senior-level person who may be writing a few dozen letters. Saying you've worked with a person as your only, I dunno what postdocs call grad students, supports your position in that the reader will know that you didn't just meet them once and write a letter for them, but actually worked with them, perhaps wrote a paper with them.

To the downvoter, is there a way to improve this question?

My advice is to start your letter by explaining who you are and your background.  For example, you could mention where you went to graduate school and that you think the student could succeed in that graduate program.  This will give the reader a sense that you have some idea of what will be expected of the student in graduate school.
Beyond that, you should focus on the same things that more experienced letter writers do.
You need to explain how you know the applicant and give the reader some sense that you've had enough interaction with the student to be able to judge their chances of success.  Simply having had a student in a large class isn't really enough here.  On the other hand, "I was Johnny's instructor in a senior level topology class with 12 students.  Johnny frequently met with me during office hours to ask questions about aspects of the subject that we were not able to cover in class." tells me that you have had many discussions with the student and really know the student well.
You should comment on both the applicant's intellectual ability and their work habits.  Ideally, we want applicants who are smart and work hard.  An applicant who isn't very smart but smart enough and who works very hard might be a good candidate for admission to a master's program but might be a very poor choice for a PhD program.  An applicant who is brilliant but lazy might start to work harder in graduate school and could turn out to be really successful.  Some faculty are willing to take a chance on brilliant but lazy students.
You should talk about the applicant's personality and how they get along with other students and faculty members.  No one wants to work with a student who is not fun to be around because they're argumentative or depressed all the time.
You should talk about the applicant's communication skills (both writing and oral presentations) and in mathematics you should comment specifically about their ability to write mathematical proofs.
If it's relevant (and it would be for any area of applied mathematics) you should comment on the applicant's computing skills.  What languages and specialized packages have they used in their work with you?  Have they been able to produce programs of any substantial size?
You should check that what you've written matches up with the student's transcript and their statement of purpose.  For example, don't say that they're one of your top 5% students if their GPA is 3.0.  Don't say that Johnny would be a great master's student if he's applying to a PhD program.  If the "story" told by the applicant's application file isn't consistent, then I'll be much less likely to admit a student.

I would end the letter by explaining who you are and your background - start with the actual letter of recommendation; your bio is, in essence, 'metadata' or 'appendix' that would come after the content as some extra justification on why the actual content is trustworthy.

I agree with Peteris that it makes sense to talk about who you are at the end of the letter rather than the beginning.  The point is to say this somewhere in the letter.

Providing an anecdote about your interaction with the student which highlights his or her competencies will make your letter stand out, as well as making your letter more readable.
Choose an anecdote that will resonate with the desires of the reader - in this case, finding an articulate, self-motivated and talented researcher.
Far from being inappropriate for reasons of formality, a properly constructed and relevant anecdote about the student will speak volumes to the reader.
"Alex came to me with a particular problem he was facing in understanding elliptical functions. I wasn't able to help him greatly at the time - as it was grant-writing season -- but I suggested that he review Walker et al on the topic and we would discuss it more fully later. Alex returned having not only read Walker, but had downloaded the relevant open-source codes and had made a start on amending them to his problem, solving his original problem and actually identifying a serious flaw in the code which he had started to address".
(Completely fictional. I don't even know what an elliptical function is. Or if there is, indeed, a Walker et al. on the topic.)

There seems to be a Walker et al. on any topic. (great example by the way)


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When should we use publication list for peer evaluation?
This is a second attempt to ask about peer evaluation, after a pretty unsuccessful one which was probably much too broad. Let me start again, with a more precise subquestion.
The point is commonly made that one should not judge one's peer by looking at the impact factor of journals where her papers are published, as IF is a very poor indicator of the citation rate of individual articles, and certainly even poorer at asserting the intrinsic merit of individual articles. Some go further and consider that one should not judge one's peer by looking at the prestige of journals her papers are published in (e.g. because more selective journals tend to publish less reliable science). Last, the sheer number of publications is obviously no more useful to judge one's peer than the sheer number of books written is useful to judge a writer's merit. So, following these principles, one is lead not to use publication lists in peer evaluation.
However, publication list is most certainly the main component of a record in many, if not most, evaluation.
I have several questions on this paradox, to which I have personal answers which are partial and non definitive.

Q0 What are the actual practices you witness about the use of publication lists in peer evaluation?
Q1 Are there circumstances where using IF, journal prestige or other aspect of publication list leads to a better evaluation than not?
Q2 What other proxy if any can be used for evaluation that are expected to be done rather quickly (e.g. extracting a short list from dozens to hundreds of applicants for a tenured position, attributing small fundings), and what are their pros and cons?
Q3 What criteria can be used for evaluation that are expected to be done more thoroughly (e.g. hiring for a tenured position once a short list has been established), and what are their pros and cons?

You might find this article in today's Nature interesting: http://www.nature.com/news/insider-s-view-of-faculty-search-kicks-off-discussion-online-1.19165

Q0. Short answer, all kinds; from trying to dig into all details you mention in your backgroudn text to simply looking at the number. My experience says that evaluations often have lofty aspirations but when it comes down to actually performing the evaluation, a time crunch or other circumstances makes evaluations boil down to simple statistical measures.
Q2. The short answer here is, we do not know. In order to say that one approach yields better results than any other we need some form of comparable materials. I have not seen such comparisons made (which of course does not mean they do not exist).
Bibliometricians work with more advanced tools to try to work out comparable numbers. Having been through a few such processes, for organisations not persons, I can say that the results often indicate whether the object is good, average or perhaps poor and not much more; very relative terms. In my experienced studies the litterature is dealt with after having been subjected to, for example, field normalization since different fields have very different publication strategies. This i sone reason why a straight IF or h-index has limited value; it is important to know with what one is compared.
Q2. What immediately comes to mind is funding. If one is looking for a person that will contribute to a department through their activity, looking at their publications may not reveal the whole. Ability to attract funding may be equally important. It is obvious that the two may be well correlated in many cases and really poorly in others so even this would not be straight forward. Again, one has to look at the norms for the particular field to see how these can be used.
Q3. Thhis goes back to my answer under Q2 to some extent. I think, however, that in order to successsfully select a person for a tenure track, one has to be very clear of what one expects from such a person. Looking at publication rate is one thing but let's say that person locks themselves into a room and is never seen except whena new paper is published. Is that what the department really was looking for?
Appointing (good) people (contributors) is a difficult task and I very much doubt that using simple tools is the best way. Surely some tools such as IF end the like can be used to narrow down a larger group but the smaller the group from which to select, the more obtuse such tools become. I believe multiproinged approachs where the search criteria are clearly identified from the beginning and followed up by an assortment of means is the way to go. This usually involves interviews etc. to figure out how a person can and will integrate and contribute to the work environment.
So the short of it is that you get what you deserve if you use simple tools and underestimate the effort that is needed in the recruitment process.
This answer is very relative, I know, but I am convinced that hiring people is so much more involved than what simple statistics can resolve.

It is true that looking at a measure of the quality of the journals a colleague publishes in (such as your personal or your community's assessment of a journal or, if need be, the Impact Factor) is, by itself, a relatively poor indicator. It's also true that the number of journal articles is, by itself, a poor indicator.
But taken together, these two are certainly highly indicative: If someone has half a dozen publications in Science and Nature over the last decade, then she's clearly doing good science. If someone has 50 publications over the last decade but all of them in journals you've never heard of and published in second and third world countries, then that also tells you a great deal about the candidate.
You can make similar arguments about most other combinations of criteria that have to do with bibliometrics: taken in isolation, they don't tell very much; but if you consider two or three of them together, they are highly correlated with the quality of science someone does.
(I will add the following, because this argument has been made so many times and I'm tired of it: of course, the fact that there is a strong correlation between a combination of metrics and the quality of science neither implies that (i) there are no examples of candidates for whom the metrics incorrectly predict poor science, (ii) there are no examples of candidates for whom the metrics incorrectly predict great science. An example for the first point above may be Andrew Wiles pre-FLT, who did not publish much. But the important point is that just because there are outliers does not mean that the approach has no merit. You will, in most cases, be easily able to spot the outliers once you use the combined metrics on a candidate. It just requires a human inspection. But the inspection requires less work, and the results are far easier to document by taking into account metrics.
The argument that no metric, in isolation or combination is reliable is, in my view and observation primarily made by people whose metrics do not look great (but reasonable), and whose overall science career does not look great (but reasonable). They would not have much to win if someone took a quantitative approach to their annual evaluation. But just because a sizable number of people claims that metrics are "plainly unusable" to evaluate candidates does not make it so.)

"If someone has half a dozen publications in Science and Nature over the last decade, then she's clearly doing good science" I don't quite know about that. She is clearly doing hot science, but her article need not be especially good methodologically, may not have huge statistical power, and may be more unreliable than the average paper, see http://bjoern.brembs.net/2016/01/even-without-retractions-top-journals-publish-the-least-reliable-science/ and the replication crisis.

I'd be willing to discuss this if I had said "one paper in Science or Nature". But with half a dozen, you're clearly doing  good science that people care about.

I'm also going to repeat my frustration with making a distinction between "good" science and "hot science". "Hot" topics are not chosen by random selection. They are "hot" because a lot of other scientists care about them. To deny this fact denies those working in these areas the credit they get for choosing highly competitive topics, and for attacking questions that a lot of others feel are important. It's elitist mumbojumbo to claim that all science is equal.

I never meant that hot was not a positive attribute, nor that it was randomly chosen. I can agree that great science has to be hot. But Science can be hot without being good, if one shows a result about a very important topic that turns out to be an artifact. Of course not most Nature-Science-Cell papers are of this kind, but this issue still makes not reading the papers quite a liability.

@BenoîtKloeckner -- I think we agree. I was mostly (and unfairly!) using your sentence to vent some fundamental disagreements I have with some of the colleagues in my department :-)

I find that a publication list plus citations lets me answer three key questions about a person:

Has this person done a least some things that people care about a lot? (i.e.., a few highly-cited papers)
Is their work generally respected by their community? (i.e., many moderately cited papers)?
Has this person been consistently active in recent years? (i.e., good numbers of recent publications)

The numerical thresholds and definitions for judging all of these depend, of course, on field and career stage.  I do not however, find publication venue to be a particularly interesting or convincing metric: strong publications in good venues are typically well-rewarded with citations, and I find that includes them in my evaluation well enough.  To also count venue would effectively be double-counting.
Note that there are also key things that do not show up effectively on publications lists.  For example, a person might have made a major contribution in software or community organization that would show up elsewhere on a CV.


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What factors to consider when choosing between similar tenure-track offers?
When one is fortunate enough to have multiple tenure-track offers that are roughly similar (research-focused institutions, similar levels of prestige, salary offered and teaching load), what factors should one consider?
Naturally, the weight of different factors can be subjective, so I am more interested in what types of things to consider and why, rather than what is the final choice that should be made.

There's a pretty strong overlap with this question.

@BillBarth thanks - I saw that question. My question is focused on which factors should be considered, some of which cannot be affected by negotiation (e.g. geographical location).

Howard Raiffa is one of the founders of Decision Theory, and he would talk about the time he was torn between competing offers from Harvard and Princeton. His colleagues asked him why he didn't apply his own methods to his decision, and he said, "But this is for real!"

@MatthewLeingang nice anecdote. I guess this is why some people say that in this kind of situation you should just ignore all rational considerations and go with your gut feelings.

You might want to check into details about "tenure track." At some institutions this means they won't automatically fire you at the end of your appointment period, but your chances of actually getting tenure are very low. At others, tenure-track faculty who do a reasonably good job are almost sure to get tenure. And of course, there's a whole spectrum of meanings for "tenure track" between these two extremes.  (My own department's official policy is to make tenure-track offers only when we think there's at least a 50-50 chance of the person's getting tenure; in fact, our promotion record in recent times has been way better than 50-50.)  I'd suggest you find out, from each of the departments that offered you a tenure-track position, what percentage of the people hired into such positions in, say, the last 15 years got tenure.  (You might also ask what happened to the others. Were they denied tenure? Did they leave voluntarily for other jobs before coming up for tenure? Did they leave "voluntarily" because they realized they were unlikely to get tenure?)

In the U.S., for a "state university", stability and robustness of the state's economy, and related political volatility (and popular/political attitudes about higher education) will have a significant long-term effect.
For that matter, ambient socio-political attitudes will have a direct impact on whether one "feels at home".
Relative price of real estate! Can you afford to buy a house (supposing you want to)?

If both offers are roughly similar, I believe you should consider the following things: likability of department faculty (can I get along with these people and build lasting relationships?), where you will be living (example: Offer A has a better climate, more opportunities for R&R), family (will my significant other enjoy this location?, and if you have kids, will this be a great location to raise them?), etc. So basically, which location do you better see yourself?

I'm not sure what field you are in, but you could compare opportunities for collaboration with external institutions. E.g. in Germany you'd look whether the relevant Max Planck Institute or DLR (German Aerospace Center) is located in your city or already has a collaboration with you university.
For some fields, it can also make a difference to be near relevant industry to ease getting collaboration and funding for research projects from them.


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How to find conference sponsors?
I am interested in the basics of how a conference organizer would go about finding potential sponsors for a conference. I am referring to limited sponsorship for things like travel fellowships.
This includes a few questions:

What kind of sponsors are there?
Do they generally expect something in return (in addition to advertising their contribution)? What kinds of things?
How does the process work? Do you just write various potential sponsors and ask if they are interested? Do you promise anything in advance? Is there some kind of negotiation?

Any thoughts on this are welcome.

What field are you in? What country?

@ff524 international life sciences conference in Europe

@ElmerVillanueva this is asked from the perspective of a conference organizer.


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Pedagogy for biology (genetics)
Someone at the biology stack exchange website referred me to this site.
In studying for biology courses I feel as though I have to take things at face value. Is there a way to get around this and study from a more logical standpoint? I can memorize things but don't want to because I know from experience that I will forget about them later.
I am interested in studying disorders that are genetic in origin. However, I am having difficulty in understanding molecular and cellular mechanisms regarding processes such as meiosis, mitosis, and recombination. I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to study these processes from a physical standpoint. When I took a class that discussed these principles, I felt that it was more memorization rather than a deep understanding of concepts such as these. Again to ask my question, does anyone know about a physical (i.e., classical mechanical/electrodynamical(magnetic) or quantum mechanical/statistical mechanical/quantum electrodynamical and thermodynamic/kinetic) way of viewing these interactions and the logic behind why certain things happen in the manner that they do. I know that this is vague. I wish that I had taken cell biology first, then molecular biology and then genetics and developmental biology rather than the way that I was advised to. It makes a lot more sense that way.
Thank you.

I've taught a lot of biology students, and none of them have EVER asked me to explain concepts using more physics and chemistry. I'm afraid taking biology courses in a different order would not have increased your understanding, if that's how you process information. Biochemical engineering is quite cool these days -- have you looked into these courses and their corresponding materials?

I propose changing the title to something like "Why is biology often taught as a collection of observations?"

@Bitwise or "Why is biology often taught in such a way that it is dependent on rote memorization?"

Just a comment about a similar situation studying chemistry: In our 2nd semester, we all complained that we had to learn by hard tons of facts about the elements in inorganic chemistry. Arguing that this is not how the mind of people who want to become chemists work: we wanted to understand not memorize. We also argued, that if learning by hard were easier for us than understanding, "medicine would have been the appropriate subject". One of the TAs basically said that unfortunately and in contrast to physics/physical chemistry, the underlying structure of knowledge was not yet well enough ...

... understood to be tought as principles (i.e. of course lots of principles and rules are known, but there is a substantial amount of exceptions and "fine-tuning" that in general this and that happens, but in all these important situations things differ this way etc) . He said that unfortunately, this part of the studies still has to rely on that in our brain, somehow things will sort themselves out when we put enough effort and facts together, and in the end we'll arrive at an implicitly formed understanding which cannot yet be taught explicitly.

Thank you for your comments.They don't make me feel as dumb for not understanding.The idiots teaching now don't know what the hell they are doing. Time to move to physics until they get themselves straightened out.

First, let me say that I share your feelings about the way biology is typically taught (i.e. as a collection of facts). I believe this will change in the not-so-far future.
Now, some historical perspective:
Biology was, for a long time, a field of science which was mostly concerned with making observations and collecting data. Even though people were interested in the underlying mechanisms, they were often very difficult to understand in a principled way. This is mostly because biological systems are complex systems, in the sense that very complicated system-level behavior (often referred to as phenotype, e.g. mitosis) emerges from interactions between many (e.g. tens of thousands) different types of elements. This makes these systems very difficult to understand by only looking at a handful of elements.
As our ability to collect and analyze data has improved due to technological advances (computing power and high-throughput biological experiments), along with a better ability to perform genetic perturbations (e.g. genetic engineering), biology is becoming more and more quantitative. This has given rise to new fields such as computational biology and systems biology. Still, this approach to biology is very new, and so most biology courses (and books) are taught in the "classic" way. In many cases, we simply do not understand yet the logic or mechanisms underlying certain phenomena in a quantitative way.
Since courses that teach biology from the systems biology / physics / mathematical perspective at an introductory level are still quite rare, I suggest starting with a book (for example, "Physical Biology of the Cell" by Phillips et al. is one such example of teaching biology from a physics perspective; SPOILER: statistical thermodynamics are very useful).


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What is the recommended level of detail for published mathematical proofs?
Suppose I am writing a Mathematics paper to a peer review reputed journal. I have to go from step 1 to step 2 in the paper which needs the knowledge of some well-established theorem X. Can I go from step 1 to step 2 without saying anything about X?
For example, this page contains some identities related to Fibonacci numbers, which (I assume that) may be well known to reviewers. So, instead of explicitly showing the identity, I want to use it implicitly from going one statement to another statement.
Does it give a poor impression on my paper? If I need to include all supporting identities, the paper may become too long!

If all your readers know that identity, go ahead without citing it.  If none of your readers know that identity, then cite it.  If (as usual) the situation is somewhere between, it is a judgment you have to make.  But a small notation "by [9, Equation (3), page 22]" is not adding a poor impression.

If in doubt, I'd write everything out in detail, then ask a more experienced person to check how much of that detail is unnecessary.

I recently got a request from reviewer  to give a reference for hamming distance.  this implicit knowledge may harm the presentation of tour paper to the broad audience.

What is obvious to you may not be obvious to others.
Let me repeat a story I told in another answer here. I'll just repeat it, but also note that user Stella Biderman commented that the story may be apocryphal and not from KU at all.

Here is a story (real occurrence) from the University of Kansas about 50 or so years ago. A prof, quite well known and respected, was lecturing in Topology. This meant writing proofs on the board. Occasionally a step wouldn't be filled in with the statement "Of course it follows, trivially, that ...". On one such statement, a student didn't see the obvious connection and so asked. The prof looked at the board and the developing proof for a few minutes. Then walked over to the corner of the (chalk) board and started making notes to himself in a tiny script. He went into totally abstract thinking mode, ignoring the class. After a bit of writing and erasing, etc, he wandered out of the room toward his office. The students followed along, gathering outside the office. The prof started pulling books off of his shelf and consulting them - several books - several more minutes.
Then he seemed to find enlightenment and returned to the classroom. When everyone was again seated he announced. "Yes, of course. It's trivial."

The conclusion is that you should make the connections yourself, and not rely on reviewers grokking it. If they don't make the connection they will comment on it and at least slow down acceptance. It is also possible, as the story above, indicates that you might actually be making too big a step or even an incorrect one.

I've also heard this story, except the lecturing professor was one G. H. Hardy, with the details slightly different.

I've heard multiple versions of this urban legend as well, but never about anyone in particular.

@CoffeeBliss, Fermat did something similar as I recall ;-)

There's a similar story in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman.  It ends with the onlookers deciding that "trivial" means "proved".

Look at what level of detail other papers in the area use.
Ask your advisor for advice.
With journals moving more and more online, length isn't really a problem, these days. Most people would probably prefer to read a 40-page paper that spells everything out than read a 20-page paper where they have to scribble down 20 more pages of calculations and 20 pages of failed attempts at calculations.
Finally, if it's just a matter of replacing "Therefore, Z" with "Z now follows from Theorem X", why not just do it?

If I need to include all supporting identities, the paper may become too long!

As others have noted, there's a middle ground here: you don't have to explain (let alone prove) every identity you use, but you can simply mention it ("by X, we have ...") to save the reader having to guess.
Looking at it from an economic perspective, there's a small cost to you in mentioning X (it takes you that little bit closer to the journal's word/page limit, so you might have to tighten your wording elsewhere), but a potentially huge cost to the reader who has to work out how you got from step 1 to step 2 if you don't mention X at all (I'm sure as students we've all cursed authors who stole hours from our lives in this manner). And there are many readers vs one of you so that multiplies the cost even further.
Thinking of this cost/benefit trade-off can help you determine the right level of detail. When you're wondering how explicit you need to be, you can ask yourself "what are the chances that a reader of this journal will know what I'm doing, and how much time will it cost them to work it out if they don't?"

Indeed... and a novice may have great difficulty confidently answering all the questions about the readership, and the cost/benefit analysis... so a more experienced person needs to be consulted.

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


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Having Public Consumption on my record to greatly affect my PhD applications?
I made a really stupid mistake. Me and some other graduate students were playing Dungeons and Dragons in my lab after hours (9 pm) this summer and we each opened up a beer and the cleaners called the cops on us. I think I'm going to get an academic censure because of it, which means I think that it will go on my transcripts. This is the only case of my misconduct, and I feel really stupid that I did it. My question is will this greatly affect my ability to go into a PhD program? I joined this masters program as a stepping stone, and have done very well academically and with my thesis in this program. I'm worried that all the progress I have made will go away because of one lapse of judgement.

Why is this a thing at all? "Called the cops"? I don't understand why it's illegal for you to have a beer in the lab.

its not illegal. its against student code of conduct. so while no legal action was taken, they informed the school

Seems really weird to me that they made a fuss about it. I'm curious how the actual rule you violated is phrased. It doesn't sound like you were consuming alcohol publicly, if you were in the lab.

Public consumption, by the definition in the Student Handbook says anywhere on university unless specifically permitted. They also charged me with with unauthorized entry, which i dont think will stand(I have a key to both the front door of the building and my lab). I'm not going to put down my school... but we were really making the least trouble possible. Perhaps we caused some trouble for the cleaning crew, ie they had a difficult time completing their job because we were playing dungeons and dragons.

For curiosity, where in the world are you?

I'd rather not reveal where I am. Nothing is official yet.

Sadly, I could see this obscene overreaction happening almost anywhere in the US.

I thought i would respond and after a fairly long series of conversations with the dean of my school,I was let go with a formal warning that no one will ever see unless I do it again. In the end, I feel thats appropriate. Crisis Adverted.

I would do everything I can to prevent this going on my transcript. The first thing I would do is write a letter of apology to the cleaning crew for my misbehaviour. Do not approach the cleaners directly, but rather through their boss. Then I would contact the head of the MS program to explain what happened. While waiting for that meeting I would schedule a meeting with an alcohol counsellor so I could demonstrate I do not have a problem drinking. You may also want to enrol in a workplace sensitivity training course.
I cannot recall seeing an application with anything like this before. I don't think people would really hold it against you and you could explain it in your cover letter. That said graduate school admission is competitive.

Thanks for the response. The weird thing about this is that the head of my dept said he handled it, gave us a warning (IE we would lose our TA positions and be Expelled) if anything like this or of this magnitude happened again and we all thought it was over. Maybe it will all work out. I don't really think a school wants to hurt good students (all of us have over a 3.5 gpa in the program) for a one time mistake...

@Neo Daniel gave a good answer to this, and I do hope you've heard the last of it (unsure why you believe you'll get an academic censure if the department head said he handled it).  I don't know that I'd personally go to the alcohol counselor and workplace sensitivity training yet (seems a bit reactionary), though.  However, at first I thought the whole thing was a typical undergraduate mistake, but then I re-read it and realized you are a grad student, and that does lend more weight to the issue.  I second the recommendation to write a good cover letter if it does end up on your transcript.

Hey chris I agree. As to why I think it will come up again, is that yesterday I received a form from the Dep of Student Responsibility charging me with public consumption and if I accept responsibility for it I basically accept what ever sanctions they choose to give me, and if I do not accept responsibility I have a "hearing" about the incident. I'm just preparing for "best" worst case scenario as they could expel me for that matter. The head of my dept is talking to the dean for us... clearly there is some disconnect. Its encouraging that you both seem to think this doesn't break my app.

I don't think you need to worry unless there's something more to the context.  Drinking a single beer in a computer lab seems pretty harmless; the university might legitimately object to the risk of spilling your beer, but this should not be a career-ending mistake.  On the other hand, drinking in a chemistry lab could be a very serious safety violation, especially if you were tending to an experiment during the game.
Assuming the only problem is a technical violation of the "public consumption" rule and that you retain the full support of your letter of recommendation writers, I doubt it will do you any harm even if it does end up on your transcript.  You should look at your transcript before applying to see exactly what it says.  You can then include a few sentences somewhere in your Ph.D. application addressing this issue and explaining that the "academic censure" was only because you had a single beer in a campus location not specifically permitted.  This is very important, because to me the term "academic censure" sounds more like cheating or plagiarism.
Assuming you aren't applying to Brigham Young University or KAUST, I can't see why anyone would care about this sort of technicality.  It would lower my opinion of the university, rather than the applicant.  (On the other hand, if there's more to the story, such as safety violations, then you'll have to work harder to sort it out.)

Daniel’s and Anonymous’ answers are great, and I want to emphasize that they are not mutually exclusive. I’ll also add some tidbits:

Fight as much as you can to avoid it getting on your academic record. It may not matter much for admissions later on, or it may, you can never know for sure. It sure is easier if there is nothing to explain. You can tell the admission committee that “it was just a single beer”, but that's still just your word: all the official information they have is less informative and, probably, scarier than that. Also, being known from the start as “the guy with the beer-drinking record”, even if you get the position, may not be so good.
However: fight nice! Don't create stronger hostility than you already have…

If it does get on your record, be upfront and address it straight on in your cover letters. Doing so, people may not care so much. If you aren't upfront with it, they will definitely not take the risk.

I agree. I plan to ask the head of my department to write a supplemental "recommendation" about the event if it goes on my record. thanks for the advice.


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Are “DIY projects” valuable or publishable?
I’m 17 and will be joining a UG physics program soon. I’ve done a lot of DIY projects over the years, ranging from electric arc speakers to air-quality and climate-control systems. Most of my projects involved Arduinos.
I’ve been thinking of conducting a five-year study on air quality and climate change using ten sensors (gas, dust, temperature, and humidity) and an Arduino. I will collect data for five years and then conclude my findings.

Can I publish such research anywhere?
Do these type of projects have any value or are they a waste of time?

Welcome to Academia SE. Please give us some time to answer your question. Also, I removed your last question since multiple (distinct) questions per question do not fit our format well and it was very broad on its own.

Which question would you like to answer with your study?

I just want to know how much of an impact climate change and vehicular pollution has on air quality. I want to know if such independent studies will do any good in my career , maybe not this specific project , but .

If nothing else, an informal, blog-like write up of your findings would be valuable as a writing sample down the line if you need it.

Keep in mind there is a difference between research and engineering. Engineers do research too, but engineering work is not typically publishable, whereas research is. "I built a thing" might be something you can get in your local newspaper and you could cite this in an application/resume, but "I built a thing" isn't publishable research, it's engineering.

...and damn if that isn't frustrating when doing engineering research, @BryanKrause ;)

You are asking whether you will be able to publish these data and use it as an edge. It all depends, as user2768's answer mentions, on the value that your work has. Specifically, you have to come up with a valid and important research question that you work will answer. For example,

the 5-year or even 10-year array of data for a number of sensors staying in your basement are useless
the online tool to monitor the dust quantity in the air in your neighbourhood is useful as a community project, is likely to be useful to your neighbours / town administration, and can be commercialized, but is unlikely to turn into a scientific article. I know of such a service in my city, and you can take some inspiration from it: Tion CityAir.
monitoring gas release and dust particle concentration next to a nearby industry plant or landfill is useful. It can become particularly useful if the administration of the plant / landfill is about to introduce some environmental safety measures and is seeking to quantify their efficiency. In this case, your research will be answering a well-defined question: "Are enter new safety measures here improving the air quality?". This is valuable and publishable. In this case, 5-year arrays of data are not required; most important is to monitor the air quality some time before the planned safety upgrade and some time after; I'd suggest at least three months before and after.

Bottom line: starting a 5-year data flow is easy. Coming up with a valid design of experiment is harder.
Specific points to account when planning an air quality monitoring experiment:

Are your gas sensors able to monitor the exact gases you are interested in? If you are targeting plant monitoring, ammonia and sulfur oxides come to mind, but there might be so much more.
What particular dust particles you are able to quantify? For the environmental safety applications, PM2.5 particles are often the most risk-inducing.

It is great that you have worked on such projects at such an early age and I wish you all the best for your physics degree.
You want to know whether there's value in your projects.
First, you need to consider what you want, perhaps in terms of commercialisation, impact, or ... That is, you need to establish what "value" means to you. Then you can establish (perhaps with our help) whether you should start "a 5 year study on Air quality & climate change using 10 arduino sensors (gas , dust , temp & humidity) and an arduino."
Secondly, you need to establish how you can achieve what you want. You've mentioned that you'll have breaks during your physics degree. (That detail has been edited out, see the archived version.) But, those breaks are short and you'll need longer to conduct your five-year study.
I think these points need further thought before you can decide whether results can be published and whether it is worth your time.
Can I publish such research anywhere?
I think it is better to consider whether you should publish, rather than whether you can publish. This has been dealt with elsewhere (it was written for mathematics, but it applies to physics too):

I would advise almost any junior high school student not to think about publishing their mathematical work. Note that I did not say to stop or slow down in the learning and doing of mathematics in any way. In fact, the point is that the publication process is something that is done by professionals largely for reasons of professional exigency and not because it is pleasant or educational in its own right. When I work with PhD students to try to get their first paper published, there comes a point where they realize that the amount of effort to do so (even after all the theorems are proven) is something like 2-10 times as much as they expected...Moreover, undergraduates who do summer math research are now being much more pressured to write up their results -- even when they are not really significant, and even when they were largely put up to the results by their faculty mentors -- and this is very worrisome.

The OP is significantly older, but I think the point holds.

But , it takes only a few days to set up the 5yr project after the initial setup the sensor data will automatically stream to my laptop daily ( until something goes wrong ) so it wont consume my semester breaks , i want to know whether it is of any use to my degree

The setup time wasn't apparent from your initial question. Nonetheless, running a five-year project does have an overhead (just in terms of time, if nothing else). What does i want to know whether it is of any use to my degree mean? I can say that the project will probably be good for your advancement. You might even be able to get some degree credits for it. (You just need an opportunity to write an essay on it or use it as the basis for your dissertation.) Longer-term, it might even create employment opportunities, if results can be commercialised.

Yeah i just need the opportunity. But can i publish this on my own like an article ? , Independently ? Will it add to my resume !? Will doing such projects give me any edge over the competition , say i when i apply to a grad. school ?

I think you should consider the points I have raised before focusing on whether you should publish an article. There are many-many factors that need to be considered before that point.

Nonetheless, looking forward, I suggest reading https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/81975/a-published-paper-stole-my-unpublished-results-from-a-science-fair/82020#82020 from I would advise almost any junior high school student not to think about publishing their mathematical work. You are considerable older, but, many of the points still apply, e.g., the publication process is something that is done by professionals largely for reasons of professional exigency and not because it is pleasant or educational in its own right.

The other answers for this question are good, but I'm going to follow a different path.
Besides the raw data you gather, whether relevant to others or not, you should document your process, including any hardware and software solutions you use or create.
If you get good data for yourself, others may want to gather that same type of data for themselves, after reading your blog (or whatever).  You will gain experience in building, designing, and maintaining your equipment, which can be invaluable to others who may want to avoid all the trial and error you already have done.
You may be able to provide schematics/diagrams, parts lists, or even kits to these like minded people.  Given enough time, effort, and interest, you may even find people who want to add to your project, growing it into a larger study.
With more people come more data points.  What you are doing now might not be a research paper, but it could be if you have 1000 people/devices spread across a (large) section of geography.  Given that they would be using the same designs (procedures, equipment, and software), it could be fairly easy to correlate the data into a something that actually means something to more than just your neighbors.
Even if that doesn't go anywhere, you might have a nice side business with selling the kits.

Other answers have adequately addressed the question of whether your proposed project is publishable and, indeed, whether you should publish it at all. This one focuses on addressing whether it is valuable.
In this regard, I think it really depends on what you expect to get out of it. I would argue that this sort of personal project is definitely valuable in that it is a way to practice the collection and analysis of data. It could be a talking point going forward and, though it may not be useful as a research credit, it would do a good job of demonstrating your work ethic. There are many soft and hard skills involved in this sort of project that are useful independent of whether the data produced is valuable.
If you want to do it and you think it won't cost you much in time or resources, then go for it. If you're worried about the commitment, plan for a smaller data gathering period. You'll get something out of the project, if only by proving that you can do the project.


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What can I do with a research project that is my university’s intellectual property?
I'm working on a final year project on software development. I intend to publish it as a research paper on computer science, but the university says that it will hold intellectual-property rights (IPR) over all final year projects.
Can I publish the project as an independent research paper in a journal by including me and co-authors or will the IPR of the university cause problems?

What intellectual property rights usually means in circumstances like this is that you can't file a patent, or sell software, that originates in your project without permission. The university generally wouldn't complain about publishing papers. You might want to verify this with somebody, though.

You need permission, and it is hard to envisage circumstances in which permission would be withheld, unless your'e doing something obviously unreasonable.

In Greece at least, your thesis is co-owned by you and the university intellectually, so you do need their ok to do anything with it. I have never heard of a case where they decline though, especially for publishing papers (which is in their best interest).

Have you actually asked the university if you can publish a paper on this (and what acknowledgements they would require if you did) ?  You may be reading more into this than you should.  It usually just means they are asserting ownership for patent rights and to insure the institution gets it's name published.  Nothing unusual.

@StephenG Yeah, I probably only have to send an email and ask for permission. After reading the answers.

First, it would be good to know if that is a claim they can legally make where you are. It is possible that it is an empty claim.
Second, if it is a proper claim, you should learn how it is interpreted by the university. A place making such a claim should have an office at which you can learn the consequences. I suspect that all it means is that you need permission from them to publish and, perhaps, include a reference to the university in the acknowledgements.
But forbidding publication would be unlikely except in extreme circumstances and assigning it to another "author" would be unethical.
My guess is that you have a way forward for nearly any sort of publication. It is actually to the university's benefit to have students publishing.

As Buffy says, it's very likely that you can publish your work. What you should do is discuss this with your project advisor and probably have them as co-author, as I assume that they had a role in the project, right? Additionally they are certainly able to help you make the publication more likely to be accepted.
Institutions usually retain (some) IP rights on the outcome of students projects because such projects are part of the curriculum and usually include work done by the professors; sometimes the main idea is actually based on the professor's research topic. But this is not meant to limit your ability to publish, it's mostly for the cases where the project could lead to a commercial application based on the university/professor IP.

This is something you should have checked before signing any contract as student/employee at this university.
Certain legislation give more intellectual rights to scholars / teachers in some places than others.
Things like "Academic freedom" or "University teacher exception" clauses may exist in the IP legislation of your country.

In the U.S., so far as I've seen, students are not presented with contracts to sign, and this kind of IP thing not only is not on their own radar, but is never mentioned by "orientation" people. So after a year or two whatever-the-rules-are shows up as a fait-accompli to which the students didn't know they were agreeing...

@paulgarrett OP is from India though, and they do things different enough there that I'm not sure it's comparable.

@paulgarrett it is as I suspected, then. Quite sad and unfair.

@paulgarrett: in the U.S., if you haven't signed a contract, I don't see how the university has any legal rights to anything you do. But probably students do sign a contract at some point without realizing it.

@PeterShor, well, probably, but, as with many publishers, there is the attempt to make it (implicitly!) a buy-out rather than buy-in. So, in the fine print somewhere, it says "by submitting/registering [existing?]... you agree to our ... IP? ... policies...". Enforceability and/or hassle potential is unclear. As I know you know...