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Is it acceptable to publish student names with the label 'stupid question', on a publicly-visible website?
While I was browsing faculty websites, I came across this  page (new link: http://www.pdmi.ras.ru/~iaroslav/teaching.php?screen_check=done&Width=360&Height=640).  Near the bottom there is a section called Top 6 Most Stupid Questions & Remarks That I'he Heard from my Students where one can find a question and the first name (followed by one letter) of the student who asked it!

Just in case the page is eventually taken down here it is on archive.org

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No. This is completely unacceptable. Sometimes faculty rant on social media and email lists where they do not think students will see the comments. Even this is frowned upon if the student could realize it is them being made fun of. It is completely inappropriate to make fun of students on a public website with students names.

It is completely inappropriate to make fun of students on a public website, regardless of whether it includes student names or not.

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Does the same apply to ex-students? There is nothing in the material quoted which rules out the possibility that all of the students quoted have graduated or otherwise left the institution.

@JamesMartin ask in chat and I will happily give you an answer.

I find it completely inappropriate to make fun of people trying to learn - full stop. I'd say calling that page "teaching.php" is really misleading.

I think making fun of students who are that stupid is entirely acceptable; it may even be required to maintain sanity. I suppose this difference in judgement is partly related to a difference in American vs. European attitudes.

@PeterA.Schneider Mockery hinders innovation.  Good luck.

@sean The quotes are not from brainstorming sessions or other types of explorative discourse; they were exam answers or questions during lectures which betrayed that the students did not invest the least effort in their studies. They failed their parents, their teachers, their fellow students and themselves, wasting everybody's time and occupying valuable, limited resources. The quotes have nothing to do with innovation whatsoever. The mockery (and side notes like "what shame!") is, as I understand, intended as both a frustration vent and wakeup call. Both are necessary.

@PeterA.Schneider "...which betrayed that the students did not invest the least effort in their studies". What a retarded assumption. There are multiple possible reasons why a student may have failed, and absolutely none of them are justification for a teacher who is being paid to teach to abuse a student who is paying to learn... but then going through the rest of your answers shows that you probably have a deep-seated problem of abysmal reasoning anyway. I'd suggest going back to school and taking a critical thinking class, Peter.

@Hashim The answers and questions which I can understand leave "no effort invested" as the most plausible explanation, unless we suppose insufficient cognitive abilities. Of course it's possible that the reason for the lack of effort is not laziness but some extraneous situation which kept the student from learning -- but Occam's razor makes "did not learn" the assumption of choice. Note that for exams, circumstances like "mother died", "needed to work for a living, couldn't study" etc. should be mentioned to the teacher. No teacher would make fun of that.

@Hashim As an aside, we try to avoid judgements like "retarded" in conversation on stackexchange. Another aside is that while I sometimes feel like provoking somebody who is too goody-two-shoes out of their bubble, I still like my answers, including the downvoted one, after just having reviewed them.

@Hashim Another aside is that while I couldn't find information about that particular school, tuition often seems to be more like an administrative fee for most institutions (a few hundred dollars per year). That is indeed one factor which sets American and public European colleges apart: In America the students are paying customers who correctly have a certain sense of entitlement but are also under economic stress to be efficient. Both is not so clearly the case with many European students.

@PeterASchneider: You are joking, right?! The mockery is necessary??!! "making fun of students who are that stupid is entirely acceptable"????!

@PeterA.Schneider: in case you are not joking: every teacher who needs to mock their students as a frustration vent does not belong in the teaching profession.

@Haque No, I was not joking. The questions and answers of the students were insulting the teacher. To be that unprepared is showing a couple of things: A lack of respect for the teacher; a lack of self-respect; an utter lack of effort, obviously; a chuzpe which does not go well with the performance. The cognitive dissonance of chuzpe together with this blatant intellectual disrobement is exposing the students to ridicule, entirely at their own fault.

@PeterASchneider: Horrible. A student who does not know something deserves to not pass, not to be ridiculed on the Internet.

In addition to StrongBad's answer, this kind of behavior would also discourage students from asking questions in fear of finding themselves on the “stupid questions and answers” list. Given that “unacceptable” wasn’t defined further in the original question, I think this is also an important aspect that makes this sort of student shaming unacceptable. Except if the Professor doesn’t actually want any questions asked of course :-)

I'd like to add that additionally, I don't think posting photos of test answers online (like this specific professor did) is ethical or even legal. According to this website (archive link), handwriting is personal data according to the EUs GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and can almost certainly not be published without permission.

I think this is an important answer, as it highlights that the consequences of riddiculing students for their answers is more far-reaching than just affecting the riddiculed students. As teachers, we should be encouraging the students to ask questions, not trying to deter them from it. Sure, everynow and then we will get a question that might seem "trivial", but I'd much rather have that than not getting questions at all.

https://xkcd.com/1053/

Yup to all of this. I can almost guarantee that for every student with the courage to ask a "stupid question" there are half a dozen more who are keeping quiet and waiting for somebody else to ask.

Better link for whether handwriting is personal data since it deals with pretty much exactly this issue and references the court case.

It's not only that such ridiculing is absolutely unacceptable and counterproductive (as others mentioned already) but it also puts the academic themselves in a kind of bad light as a lecturer/teacher. If my third year math/engineering students didn't know what the cotangent is I would consider it much more of my own fault rather than theirs.
And most importantly, one shouldn't be embarrassed of not knowing something but of not wanting to get to know it. Most people don't even bother to ask a question even being proud of their ignorance sometimes. So I believe that no curiosity should be frowned upon.
UPDATE: Having said the above, it could still be considered a good attitude for a student to come up with some answer themselves (i.e. do some research/thinking) prior to asking their professor a question.

+1 for putting the onus back on the lecturer for the student lack of knowledge. I also like your point about "no curiosity should be frowned upon". I've got a friend who has been teaching in another part of the world for a number of years. He's run into an interesting cultural issue, where the students are bought up to accept things without questioning anything. Obviously this can cause some big problems. Imagine having students who don't question any basic assumptions, ever. They're good at learning things as rote, but cannot handle problems outside of exactly what they've been taught.

This echoes my thoughts, except that I'd add it's either my fault, or else the collective fault of the institutional program. (Maybe it's something that should have been taught in a prerequisite, but it wasn't taught well.) "Despite the extreme simplicity of this question, many students did not respond correctly" – that sounds like an indictment on the professor!  Also, a note on your update: That might not apply in the middle of a lecture, when I've just mentioned something, so there's no time for a student to do the research.

Blaming the professor or "system" makes sense if every student does not know basic facts. But most students will, the dumb questions come from a select few. Also engineering students generally need to cover trig (and more) in high school.

@A Simple Algorithm still the professor/system's fault. No student should get to the 3rd year not knowing the basics either by being taught appropriately or by being kicked out of the establishment.

@ASimpleAlgorithm - From the OP's graphic: What is a decibel? – several 4th-year students. If several 4th-year students don't know what a decibel is, and the professor feels like that's a "Most Stupid Question," then it might be time to take a hard look at the curriculum. And "covering trig in high school" doesn't mean everyone has what they learned three years ago locked into short-term memory.

@J.R.Yes the "Several" students in that quote comprise a select few. Confused? I feel like you're cherry-picking to be argumentative. A decibel is a pretty sophisticated concept though, so I actually don't consider that one particularly dumb. I have students who can't do high-school math and can barely write coherently. And they are from all over the world so blame the whole world, I guess. To paraphrase Chris Rock, whatever happened to just dumb?

@ayorgo I certainly agree many schools admit, pass, and graduate many students they should not. Generally it seems a 3.0 or somewhere above there is the real cutoff between learning and not. But students can still advance with grades below that.

If a student got into college without knowing what a cot is, then the Admissions Dept screwed up.   Stop thinking the lecturer is responsible for hand-holding the entire class.

@CarlWitthoft If the Admissions Dept screwed up, the Professor should discuss this with them, but not ridicule the students.

@Marzipanherz you are missing the message: Admissions is letting completely incompetent people into the college.   Granted, every college lets such types in because (a) they play some sport or (b) their daddy is a rich alumnus; that doesn't mean it's a good thing.  Some more dedicated schools run evaluation exams on incoming frosh of dubious capability (for whatever reason) and provide remedial coursework as necessary.

This is a bad taste, for sure (IMHO), but since there are plenty of websites where students are more than welcome to tell anything they want about their professors with full names etc., I guess this may be viewed as a kind of "symmetric response". I'm pretty much against internet trashing of anybody (usually it does more bad than good for all parties involved) but, alas, it has became a pretty common culture nowadays, so I am not surprised that some professors resort to it too.
As to the questions listed, they do not show stupidity, just utter ignorance, so I personally would object more to calling them "stupid questions" than to listing the student names. If a third year student asks me what a geometric progression is, I just answer with a definition and an example and consider the case closed. Moreover, I can openly announce that at the moment of this writing I don't remember what exactly a decibel is myself. All I remember is that it is a unit of measure of sound intensity and that the scale is logarithmic. If the student is not able to process an answer appropriately, it is, of course, a completely different story, but if one just doesn't know something, there is no shame in asking.
This means that I would neither call such questions stupid, nor list the names myself and would, probably, discourage my friends from doing so, but I wouldn't cry out loud "Unforgivable crime!" or "Unethical behavior!" if I see somebody else doing it either. For me it is bad taste, period.
That was the "common sense" part. As to the legal part, it is country dependent and I'm not really familiar enough with the European laws to discuss the corresponding subtleties.

"They did it first" is not an acceptable defense, especially when it's likely that the "they" in this case have nothing to do with the "it."

-1 There is an enormous power imbalance between lecturers and their students. As a result, for a student to complain about a lecturer is often petty and immature, but for a lecturer to publicly complain about individual students by name is always abusive. This is not, as you claim, a "symmetric response."

-1 Also, teachers are paid to teach students and answer questions. What if a restaurant publishes a list of "things stupid customers do"? Students are obliged to abide by a set of rules indeed, but "no stupid questions" is not one of them. Asking what cotangent is would embarrass the student badly and perhaps signal that the student shouldn't have been there, but it is not a "wrong" thing to do. In fact, the student is being responsible to themself, as they asked questions when they do not understand.

If you provide a service, it's only fair that people rate your service. I'm sorry that young adults can be impolite, but using that as justification to rate your customers on their intelligence seems like quite a stretch. If a private sector employee did that, it wouldn't be "bad taste", it would be "reason for termination"

@Clay07g I don't "provide service". I pass the knowledge I possess and try to raise people who will continue the craft after my death. If somebody wants to rate me, he should be not any worse craftsman than I am (at least by the formal criteria). Peer review is fine with me and I welcome it any time. It is evaluations by totally incompetent people that are irritating.

@fedja You seem to be confused. People want education so that they can form a career. They (or the government) pays other people for that education. So, unless you're not being paid, then you're providing a service, by the literal definition. Also, I find your notion's about ratings delusional. A student does not need to be an expert in Physics to know that their science professor is bad at teaching others.  If you want to "pass on the knowledge you possess", do it for free. Otherwise, offer your services for money, and be subject to those who want to be informed before spending money.

@Clay07g I'm doing it for free whenever I have a chance. As to being paid, I agree that my employer can terminate my contract if it finds necessary to do so (so far they prefer not to). However I maintain that students are typically not qualified to evaluate their professors in any meaningful way before they master at least the subject that is being taught and that student evaluations in the form they are practiced nowadays create more harm than good for the education. I admit that our points of view on what the goal of teaching is are different, but it is OK.

Fedja, why are you even talking so much about students rating their professors? That’s completely unrelated to the question at hand. As for the shaming of students being discussed, the reason it’s unacceptable is that the professor is blatantly acting against the interests of his students - both the specific ones he is making fun of, and future students who are likely to be intimidated by the shaming into asking fewer questions when they take his class. It‘s unacceptable for someone who has chosen the noble job of teaching to wilfully act in a way that so blatantly sabotages that same job.

@xuq01 There are lists where employees rant about customers, and it's a fun read. Yet the important part is that it's fully anonymous, for entertainment or insight into the daily life of said jobs, not to trash a particular person, which doesn't apply here.

@Darkwing Indeed. The restaurant equivalent for this would be "customer John Smith wanted a spoon because he can't use chopsticks properly. So funny!" Which does not sound amusing at all and just tells me the person posting it is a horrible person.

A symmetric response is not appropriate in an asymmetric relationship. Confidentiality often goes only one way. I have every right to tell people if I have a problem with how my doctor is treating me, but they have no right to tell the public about my medical history.

There is a difference between punching up and punching down.

Horrible answer.

Not only the ethic behind this is very doubtful as StrongBad said, but this is also probably illegal under the loi informatique et liberté & the GDPR because it falls under the definition of "Donnée Personnelle" (see the CNIL definition). If someone decide to warn the CNIL about this page, it could put the university and the teacher at risk.

Accordingly to CNIL site the first name (le prénom) is not a personal data.

"Nom" is a catch all word. I can mean the familly name or a full name. In anycase, you have to add to this that the university of the student and the year they were in is also mentioned which would make it trivial to identify the student. How many "Mathieu C." in ISITV had Iaroslav Blagouchine has a teacher in 3rd Year in the Higher Mathematics class ?

Because personal data are any information that identify someone directly or indirectly. Here the mention of the university name and the year they were in (plus the teacher name and the name of the class) would be considered indirect personal data when mixed with a mention of their (not full) name.

I don't know how many students Iaroslav Blagouchine had in ISITV, but 1) this information is not public and is not accessible for others 2) I am teacher and have about 250 students each year. So if he works there during, say, 10 years he have 2500 students, of which at least 1/4 with common first names, which were published on his WEB-sites. So I don't think that you can easily identify them. Note also that the year when that happened is not specified..

@MarkS. I don't disagree with you (although getting a students list through alumini network is usually fairly easy), but it doesn't matter what we think. If the CNIL decide that this is personal data and if there is no trace that student gave explicit consent to appear in this list, then it is illegal.

@MarkS. yeah, lucky students who were given common first names at birth. But if your first name is Robinson or Zeus or Orion or Kami or Iaroslav, then you're out of luck?

@MarkS. the information is not available to many people.... but anyone in this university knows it. You have 250 students each year, and your 250 know at least a little. They probably have a facebook or whatsapp group to share data if they are at least a little organized. That's more than enough people to understand who is who from the teacher's website. Once just one people know, the information is definitely leaked. I have 0 doubt this is illegal in my country, which does not take lightly confidentiality issues. There's a good reason why serious companies pays millions to protect their data

As has been said in prior answers, it is NEVER acceptable to make fun of students or otherwise say or do something that could prevent them from learning.
Many sites on the Stack Exchange network would not be the same without “stupid questions” and you could view students asking them in the same way.  Even if it seems utterly ridiculous to you, the student likely is honestly wondering about it and laughing at their questions somewhere where they could potentially see them could encourage them to not ask questions for fear of being laughed at.  Students who hold their questions for this reason often never get them answered and as a result earn a lower grade.

1) First of all, it seems that the leading question of the discussion "Is it acceptable to publish student names with the label stupid question?" is not correctly formulated. A part of the the question contains a statement which is actually faulty: the names of the students are not revealed, only the first names are mentioned, which are all very common ones. The format like Donald T. or Emmanuel M. does not permit to identify the person, so that the anonymity is fully kept (hence, GDPR has nothing to do with this). Moreover, such a format of names is usual in classic literature. Actually, to name the person only with her/his first name means precisely that you do not want to reveal the identity of the person.
2) I don't think that the objective was to ridicule the students, but rather to make them attend more or/and to make them understand that they are simply too lazy (since they do not recall even basic notions). In engineering schools, as was remarked earlier by @A Simple Algorithm, students should have at least basic notions of the trigonometry (the trigonometry is usually covered in high school before the university), because it is used throughout all the university curriculum. Same remark concerns decibels: this is a very basic notion, which is covered during the 1st year of studies. So (@J.R.) nobody mocks. After all, it ain’t funny to have students with such a poor level.
3) In France, the higher education is free, so that it is easily accessible even for the lazy students. Don't you think about those students from other countries, who have a talent and would like to study, but can't do this because their parents can't pay??
4) Also, I don’t understand why it is acceptable to widely rank teachers and professors on the Web sites, and why it is not acceptable to do the same with the students (thought on this Web site the rank of the students is not published)? And on the Web sites, the professors are fully named, not as Antoine W. or Sven F. So strangely, nobody thinks about GDPR or FERPA for the professors and teachers.
UPD: the initial question was modified so that now it is clear that the actual names are not revealed on the website in question.

A name in the pattern of Rashad Gabriel B.–K. (changed for privacy) is distinguishable enough. 2) This behavior makes me want to stay away from class instead of attend. Also I'd rather have a few stupid questions than none at all because students are to afraid to ask. 3) Yes, free education might attract/support more lazy students, but they don't prevent other countries from offering free education. 4) Bit of a Whataboutism, this is a different topic. One might argue that professors are public figures, though the ethics of ranking them are a different topic.

@Marv 1) In your example - perhaps yes, but the format given in this WEB-site is too short and does not permit to identify the student. In France, the name of a person is composed of 3 parts, e.g. Pierre Laurent Dubois. If one writes Pierre D. or Pierre L. it cannot be related to Pierre Laurent Dubois... 2) The students should also do some research and preparation prior to go to the university or engineering school (in such a case it's the problem related to the system, not to the professor) 4) Professors and teacher assistants are not PEPs, they are exactly as their students: equal in rights.

I've taken the pattern straight from the website, see the third point there. And even then, the professor published handwriting which also seems to be protected by GDPR, see my answer. 2) Yes, they should do their research. But as others have said, it might not even be the students fault that they don't know, but the institutions. Also, as I said, if "stupid" questions are the price to pay for people not to be afraid to ask questions, I'll gladly pay. 4) Perhaps, but as I said, that's a different topic entirely. This question is about a professor publishing students personal data.

"I don't think that the objective was to ridiculize the students" – "Top 6 Most Stupid Questions" in bold letters including actual names. Really?

@dasdingonesin The actual names are not revealed, please, read the post. It's like recounting a funny anecdote about a nonspecific friend (see a post by @NicHartley). Also, the trig is a part of basic school program in France, it's not normal that a 3rd year university student doesn't know what the cotangent is.

It's strange that the author of this answer believes that the first-name-last-initial format is adequately anonymous, yet chose as his handle "Mark S." and not "Iaroslav B."

@Marv I am sorry, but students deliberately take photos of professors' handwritings and post them everywhere on the web. It is strange that nobody never speaks about this.

@MarkS. If a professor sees you taking pictures and doesn't say anything, he most likely doesn't care. If he sees it and tells you to stop and you keep taking pictures, or if you do it without him noticing, then you already know you might be doing something that's not okay. But again, this is a Whataboutism. This thread is about professors publishing personal data of students and students doing the same to professors doesn't make it okay. Your argumenting with "an eye for an eye" logic.

"The format like Donald T. or Emmanuel M. does not permit to identify the person" - this is not a safe assumption. For example, it's easy to guess that you were using Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron for that example.

@Geoffrey Brent ...well, actually I meant Donald Tusk and Emmanuel Moire. You see how wrong you are?

@MarkS "If a professor sees you taking pictures and doesn't say anything, he most likely doesn't care". A professor/teacher is working and has 30 students in front of him. When he is writing or explaining something, he simply can't see what the students are doing... they are 30! Don't this simple idea cross you mind?

@MarkS. Read the rest of the comment as well... „If he sees it and tells you to stop and you keep taking pictures, or if you do it without him noticing,  the you already know you might be doing something that’s not ok.“ And it’s still not relevant.

"First name - Last initial" isn't the only information being shared. We're also given their university, the fact that they've had this professor, and which year they had him in. That's a tiny pool of people. 2) Objective is irrelevant against results. This is ridicule - plain and simple; it doesn't matter if the professor didn't intend it that way, and this also discourages asking any question out of fear it might be "dumb". 3) This just makes no sense as a justification of any kind. 4) Because it's a common rule of decency that in a position of authority, you don't punch down.

@MarkS. You'll note that I didn't say "guess correctly". Partial information of this kind invites speculation - it's human nature to try to solve these puzzles - and that speculation is no less harmful when it's incorrect. Is it any better that we're assigning this mistake to the wrong Donald and Emmanuel?

"only the first names are mentioned" This is incorrect.  The initials of the second names are also mentioned.

Are you implying that it's okay to publicly humiliate "Iaroslav B. from the University of Toulon" because it's not really his "actual name"?

This is perhaps the most childish answer I've seen. You seem to forget that professors provide a service that the students choose. Rating students makes little sense considering you are not choosing among them. If a professor is angry about having to teach a less-than-competent student, perhaps they should lookup why their job exists in the first place. If you were in the private sector and did this to your company's customers, it would be an absolute firestorm.

Very horrible answer!!!!! Are you this awful professor?!


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As a student with questions about a paper, can I email the author myself or should I ask someone else to contact him?
I am reading a paper and have questions about the details of the procedure described. I have read other papers by the same team but they don't explain too much about that procedure anyway. I think it might be common, but my supervisor doesn't know it too.
I am stuck and I want to get out of it. As a student working on my master thesis, can I email the contact author for the manuscript cold out, or should I ask someone to contact him for me? I would ask my supervisor but I don't want it to imply that I'm avoid taking initiatives when I could do it on my own.

In many cases, authors are very happy to hear people are interested in their work and we be delighted to have someone contact them with questions.

You can definitely contact a paper author. They might be of the 'it obviously follows' == after 5 pages of calculations kind, or the empiricist who published the 20 successful regressions or simulations out of 200, with 180 contradicting their result or being inconclusive; and in either case ignore your question. From personal experience though, it can even lead to breakthroughs: in my case, someone sent me his lecture notes which clarified something I was stuck with, and related to the submitted question. However, if your advisor knows the author, or simply is well-known in their field, do mention that you are their student, as it should increase good will on the author's part - after confirming with your advisor that they are cool with it. Showing that you are active, interested, and independent should also go down well with the advisor.

Definitely contact the author. Collaboration is what research is all about. Authors expect these sort of emails when they publish. Also, sending email like this lets people know your name, one person at a time. This way, when you're at a conference later on, you can go over to the author and say, "hey, I emailed you a while back, nice to meet you in person." It's always good to network.
It would be good form to mention your advisor in the email, whether he's well-known or not.

how would you go about mentioning your advisor? will that not easily seem a bit unnecessary and name droppy?

@K.Schaffer - Not really, it's just to give context. It's highly unlikely that the professor has heard of you, but he may know your advisor. I would introduce as, "Hi, I'm (my name), a graduate student in (advisor's name)'s research group doing research on (topic)."

I concur with your advice, but I would certainly not say that "collaboration is what research is all about". Research is about discovering truth. Not collaboration, which is only a common practice in research.

I will give the point of view from Eastern Asian Universities.
Here the Lab culture is too focused on the professor as the head and only public face of the laboratory.
Because of this, many students are not used to being asked directly about their research, and usually they do not know what to do about it, and will end up asking their professor.
The best case scenario is that the professor won't mind and will give the student authorization to mail you back, but the worst case scenario (it happens!) is that the professor will get offended because you contacted a student and not him, and you won't get any answer at all.
This mostly applies to Universities in China, Japan, Korea, etc. I would recommend mailing the professor and asking him directly, it will take time, but is usually your best bet. Even more, it is way better if you get your adviser to contact him for you, and then he can ask for his permission for you to contact the student directly (I'm really not joking about this)
Unless the guy writing the paper is foreigner, then go ahead.

In that case, wouldn't the professor be listed as corresponding author anyways?

You would think, but since they don't want to be bothered with things like Copyright forms and formatting and things like that, it ends up being the guy who wrote most of the paper.

This cultural difference is fascinating

Yes, you can and should contact the author of the paper.
The more thought-out and coherent your email and questions are, the better chance you stand of getting a useful reply. The risk with a cold email is being ignored, so make sure that you do everything to avoid that.

Make sure you carefully state your question, and make sure that you actually can't understand it yourself (for example by reading the references in the original paper).
Make sure the subject line is to the point, send the email from your university address, and don't be afraid to mention your advisor or even cc them on the email - this will give the person you are cold-emailing some immediate context.

I would encourage you to email the author.
I have sometimes emailed authors of papers and occasionally I have been mailed by people asking about my research.
If you write a polite and reasonable mail, most people will be glad to hear from you.

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Writing an article outside of Academia. Is it likely to get supported?
I graduated from my MSc two and a half years ago, so I have been outside of the University environment for a while.
I have recently started working on some novel machine learning techniques. Writing an article by myself and submitting it to a prestigious journal is no joke. I'm wondering: how likely is it to get supported from a University, or by specific researchers that are working in a University (for example PhD or postdoc students) with my work? I envision them becoming co-authors of the paper. Would they benefit from this? For example can they get some credits for correcting the paper and being a co-author even if I'm not a PhD student?
Clarifications:

I'm developing my own technique, independent from my employer. It's a general topic (regularization) so it's not directly applied to an industrial task.
I want to apply for a doctorate, but my GPA and MSc thesis grade weren't brilliant. Hence, the need to publish an article before applying for the PhD - but also for the pleasure of writing about innovative research, of course

Please don’t write answers in comments. It bypasses our quality measures by not having voting (both up and down) available on comments, as well as other problems detailed on meta. Comments are for clarifying and improving the question; please don’t use them for other purposes. Existing answers in comments and the ensuing discussions have been moved to chat.

Submit your paper to a peer-reviewed conference near your city

I agree with Wetenchaap's answer and just want to elaborate the picture from our (university) side. Occasionally people write me and suggest something along the lines you envision, so, in general, yes, it is possible. However, my personal experience with this type of collaboration is mostly negative so far, and thus now I'd think twice before venturing into such projects again.
So, what's the problem? Usually it boils down to expectations and work management. People outside academia often misjudge what is considered "interesting" or "publishable", and what kind of work is typically required to compose a paper. More often than not getting a full picture cools down their motivation. Next, since people typically have jobs and do research in their spare time, months of efforts can easily end up with a short "sorry, piled up at work" message. Thus, investing into someone else's idea requires trust that lies on some firm foundation.
Dealing with students and colleagues is much easier. Students need it for their graduation works and (possibly) for their future careers if they consider staying in academia. Colleagues do research with me as a part of their normal daily activities. Outside people are unpredictable: today they believe that publishing a joint paper is good for them, but tomorrow they can easily change their mind.

It's good to point out that the root cause is in "research in spare time" more than "research outside academia".

You don't need "support" from a university to publish. What you need is work good enough to satisfy journal reviewers and editors. You can always publish as an "Independent Researcher" without other affiliation.
However, if you want help in the research or writing, then you need to make some personal contact with an interested party. Being in Amsterdam gives you some options as there are universities within reach and someone there might be interested if you pay them a visit.
Blind emails to people aren't likely to be very productive.
And, given that you are interested in a doctorate, you might try to apply to a few places and include your current work as "work in progress" in your CV. Of course you will need to meet the admission requirements, and I'd think that some letters of recommendation in your case might be helpful if you can arrange them.
Post-docs probably have their own projects and little time. And working with an "independent researcher" isn't unheard of for an academic, but you need to find a way to make contact. Even if there is someone who is trusted and can introduce you to someone else.

I publish on the topic in question.
If you were to write a paper, the first step would be to get a good understanding of the relevant literature. In doing so, you'll end up having a good idea of who publishes work similar to the method you are proposing. I would recommend looking those people up and contacting them: an email stating that you're working on something similar and would be interested in chatting. Set up a short video call, run your idea past them, and see if they're interested.
Key would be to know your audience: you'll likely want a 2nd/3rd year PhD student. Younger and they might not have any idea what they're doing. Any older, and they're either busy writing up, or a full time busy grownup postdoc/prof.
Even if no one is willing to work with you, you're likely to get useful feedback on your idea that may improve it.
PS, I strongly disagree with @Libor's statement as to writing a paper being a `stupid' idea. At the research group I am at in ML, a publication at a top conference is a prerequisite for applying for a PhD position. That's a fairly common requirement in the field. A blog post/non-peer-reviewed arxiv article/code would have to be extremely impactful to be accepted in place of that (i.e. a higher threshold).

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text:
How not to come off as boasting or arrogant, if you are one of the few active students in a class?
tl;dr: How not to come off as boasting, arrogant, attention seeking, etc. if you are one of the few students participating in class?
Some background:
I am currently attending a Master's level course where in-class participation of students is quite low. Typically, very few questions get asked by the students. When the lecturer asks a question to check if the class is following (or rather: at least not sleeping), the same 2-3 students provide the answers.
I try to participate actively: I'm not afraid of giving a wrong answer or of "looking stupid" by asking a question that can easily be answered. This however sometimes leads to me answering most of the lecturer's questions, which - I think - discourages other students to ask questions in the lecture (after all, who wants to announce that they didn't understand something when there is somebody else in the class who apparently did?) This in turn might lead the lecturer to falsely believe that everyone is following (not really my problem), but it might also lead to me being perceived as boasting, arrogant, attention seeking, disruptive (without ill intentions), etc., which I want to avoid.
I realized a while ago that I do like the attention and since then I try to evaluate whether a question/comment is really helpful before actually asking it. I also avoid answering the lecturer's questions immediately so that other students have a change to answer (or feel pressured to do so because of enduring silence ;)). On the other hand, I do not want to sell myself short and I do not want to be perceived as being arrogant because of not bothering to answer.

Related, possibly enlightening: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/29804/what-to-do-about-top-students-making-other-students-lose-confidence

One good heuristic that you might use is to discriminate between two types of questions:

Questions with a clear "right answer"
Questions encouraging discussion

Questions with a clear answer are typically more about polling for whether people are tracking, and answering deprives somebody else of a chance to answer.  For a question encouraging discussion, however, your answer instead may break the ice and make it easier for other students to join in with answers of their own.  Answering discussion questions also benefits you more, since they are where your answers can demonstrate deeper understanding, if you have acquired it.
If you and your instructor both know you are doing well, then why not "step back" and leave most of the "right answer" questions for other students?  Especially if you let the instructor know that you have realized you are talking a lot and want to give space for others, it should not reflect badly on you in any way.

You can probably expand on #1. There are a lot of "clear right answers" with multiple parts. If you answer partway, i.e. "First you would cultivate potatoes, but I'm not sure what happens next" it gives a student who has a part of the answer to continue if the instructor calls on someone else. This shows that you understand the concept without demolishing the question for everyone else.

Hm, to me that would feel like taking control of the course. Probably not the best approach if one does not want to be mister smartypants.

I agree with @mort. Trying to shape discussion seems like it is the instructor's job and it sounds like your instructors are not doing their job of maintaining a balanced discussion that engages the entire class. That's a problem, but I think I don't think that its your job, as a student, to try to fix it. +1 For the commendation to step back and let others speak.

Based on this...

I realized a while ago that I do like the attention and since then I
  try to evaluate whether a question/comment is really helpful before
  actually asking it. I also avoid answering the lecturer's questions
  immediately so that other students have a change to answer (or feel
  pressured to do so because of enduring silence ;)). On the other hand,
  I do not want to sell myself short and I do not want to be perceived
  as being arrogant because of not bothering to answer.

...I think you're already taking appropriate action to avoid the appearance of arrogance. Some additional suggestions:

Be alert for any "hints" from the instructor that you might be monopolising the conversation. For example, if the instructor says "let's hear from some other people", that's a pretty strong hint.
After you've answered one or two questions, you might want to stay silent. If no one else speaks up and the silence gets awkward, then briefly make eye contact with the instructor, as if to say "I'm willing to answer this if no one else does". The instructor can then call on you if he or she chooses.
Try to focus on answering the questions when you're not sure of the answer. That way you'll get feedback when you need it.

+1 for the second bullet point. By answering one question, you essentially give permission to others. After that, you let the rest of the room discuss or not. This won't work instantly, since you've already helped to establish the personality of the class, which is that a few of you know what's going on and are willing to keep the unanswered-question tension bearable for everyone else.

The answer is to test. Testing removes assumptions and you've been making many.
Go silent for a week (or whatever period you deem sufficient). See how the class responsiveness changes. Everyone keeps scratching their heads as usual? Problem solved.
One or two guys/gals start participating more? Give them occasionally some extra time before you respond to help them keep it up. You could also talk to them and say that you're not competing with them and "very glad someone else is participating, keep it up guys!"
The whole class raves, hands constantly fly in the air and even the sun gets hidden in the process? Not going to happen, so no need to worry about that :)

Strictly speaking, from personal experience, I actually like these kinds of people who are hyper-active & ask many questions.
I shied away from actively participating in class at a later stage of high school mostly out of my introvert nature.
During my Masters, I had a guy in the class who used to ask a lot of questions & was the first to answer & generally wanted the teacher to go into
more deeper concepts, out of scope for the current exam syllabus. Since the teacher, while answering these questions, address the whole class
rather than the
one who asked the question, I also gain more or less equal information & knowledge from it.
So its basically two choices for me,

Feeling negativity towards you, jealousy & call you names & think
about your boastful nature & how I hate you & missing on teachers
answer & then  going home & having to spend extra time on the same
concepts you asked about in class
Feeling positive & actually thank you for improving my knowledge as
well, when all the effort to analyse the teachers concepts &
deducing a question from it was made by you while I was just happy
for you to do the work for me.

Also, to add another point, monotonous lectures from teachers are boring & I get distracted fast. Its only because of this hyper activity from
you that helps me regain focus on the lecture.
So, I do not consider you as boastful & arrogant. You are a good person for me & another step on the ladder of my success.

If you are answering most of the questions, it sounds like you are speaking too much. If I were your instructor, I would think you were dominating discussion in a way that was disruptive. Because other students may want to think more before speaking, my advice is to sit back and don't be afraid to allow awkward silence as a way of encouraging others in class to speak.
Ultimately, it is the instructor's job to moderate discussion to maintain an effective participation balance. That said, doing so effectively often requires the cooperation of other students in stepping back — even if this means awkward silence in the room — as a way of ensuring participation balance. In my own classes, I encourage students to maintain balance using a rule of three and one I have adopted from Joseph Reagle at Northeastern University: I encourage students to limit themselves to three good responses before everybody in the class had an opportunity to speak once.
Following this advice should give you ample opportunity to have your questions answered and to impress the instructor with your engagement and thoughtfulness. It will also mean that other more timid students speak up in ways that will raise questions you have not considered and will improve your learning in that process. My tendency is, like you, to dominate discussion. In my own experience in workshops and discussions, I've found that following this advice means that I learn much more from my fellow participants. The fact that I come off as less overbearing and arrogant is a nice bonus.

Given a set of questions, answer those for which you have answers but that you perceive as the hardest ones only.
This way, you can cut down on your participation rate for the questions. Meanwhile, by giving answers to difficult questions, lecturers will know that by transitivity, you most likely also know the answers to the easier questions.

The questions come in sequence, how will you know which are the "hardest only" when you haven't hear all?

I don't think the question is whether you come across as boasting or arrogant, even though I agree it's good to be cognizant of that possibility. I think the real question is how do you balance your desire to participate with the needs of the rest of the class? In some sense, the lecturer is also responsible for this. In my own classes, it frequently happens that there is one student who is a lot readier to answer than others. If it seems like it is interfering with classroom dynamics, I will purposely solicit answers from other students too.
Since this is a shared responsibility, I would talk with your instructor and mention your concerns. If they feel you are answering too many questions to the detriment of the other students, then perhaps you can scale back. On the other hand, if they think the classroom dynamic is fine, then maybe you don't have to worry.

I had the same problem in college. In many of the classes that I took I was apparently the only one who had the slightest interest in them. I did ask a lot of questions, and generally participated more than most students. It was not a problem. Just make sure that the teacher is comfortable with it by discussing it after class if he has the time and interest. Just don't come off like Eddie Haskell (i.e., a sycophant).

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My professor is rigging data and plagiarizing. What can I do?
I am a graduate student. My department head is manipulating data in his research papers and skillfully alters plagiarized text to avoid detection. I found this out while working with him on a journal article. Specifically, he modified data points (right in front of me) to dramatically increase our R^2 value, and then he told me to do some formatting and submit it to a journal. I politely confronted him but he did not concede and I backed off from that paper. Later, other professors confirmed that most of his papers are bogus and results are fabricated.
He mentioned once that the reason for choosing nanotechnology (which he is not familiar with) is that there is very little literature available and few experts to review the paper. He gets through the review process by using a plethora of statistical analysis results (with fabricated data) to support his claim and gets through (some) editors by using fancy terms like neural network and fuzzy logic. The irony is that he does not even know the underlying theory of whatever analysis he is doing. How do I know this? I uttered a few doubts and the responses were extremely poor. He uses Minitab and Matlab tools to get things done. He once jokingly told me that he gets a paper ready overnight. Maybe it was not a joke after all.
Reporting to the management is useless as they won’t listen to me. I cannot challenge his paper, because I barely know anything in nanotechnology (neither does he). Editors won’t take me seriously since he has considerable reputation due to articles in high impact journals. So what should I do? I could not tolerate his insanity and literature pollution.
More info:

I am about to graduate and leave the department for good.
I managed to avoid submitting the fradulent paper because I eventually convinced him that the hypothesis was fundamentally wrong. I still have the original manuscript he mailed to me from his unofficial mail id.
Institutional routes are closed, I tried complaining about his poor lecture quality once (anonymously) and it backfired for the entire class. He has 15 years of experience, 20+ journal article and numerous conference papers. I don't stand a chance against him.

Update: I will try to report this issue to retraction watch or through any other means possible. Still it is not possible to disprove his claims without repeating the experiment.

related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/27309/10643

Your backing off reaction is the appropriate one: cease any form of association with him right away.
The description of your first-hand witnessing of him fabricating data is more than enough to ascertain his academic dishonesty. You don't need to know about nanotechnology to know that manually modifying data to make it pass a statistical test is idiotic and fraudulent. Also, experts in that field will assume the data are real when conducting peer review, so it's not something they can easily detect without repeating the (alleged) experiments.
His 'results' are unwanted. By publishing bogus science he makes people lose time and money, he's robbing legitimate researchers of their funding, he is adding noise that masks the signal. If you can afford to report his behavior please, do it. Depending on where this story takes place, you might lose a variable number of feathers in his striking back, but at the end of the day he is the one who is wrong.
Taking direct action to publicly expose his fraudulent behavior is risky for you, especially since he is your hierarchical superior. But, when he will get caught (because he will), if it is apparent that you were aware of his wrongdoings and still accepted co-authorship or credit for his publications, his bad reputation is going to stain your career. If you fail to prove your claim, it's your career that will be at risk. So, proceed with caution. Note that it is ethically perfectly fine to report scientific wrongdoings anonymously.

Make sure that all institutional reporting routes are inefficient before bringing the issue to another level. It is not clear in your post if you actually tried or if you just assume 'they won't listen to you'.
Since you provided the content of at least one paper, and know about its fake nature, if he submits the paper despite your protests, notifying the editor is a thing you could do. Editors will take you very seriously in reputable journals.
You can also take part (anonymously if relevant) in a post-publication comment on his papers, on websites like pubpeer.com or retractionwatch.com.

I feel like the author needs to do at least something. Saying that the guy will be caught eventually is likely, but until then, the person will continue actively harming the field of study.

"But, when he will get caught (because he will)," Says who?

@FaheemMitha I'm sure there are many unnoticed cases of isolated data nudging, but a systematic, naive fraud like the one described by OP is bound to fail.

Also remember that the guy will never be caught, if everybody relies on him being caught eventually. Somebody needs to make the first step.

I feel like the author needs to do at least something. — The author is a student; his first priority is getting his degree and getting out.  Starting a fight with his department head, no matter how ethically justified, is not in his best interest.  Leave this one to more senior colleagues.

To back up this answer, consider the case of Diederik Stapel, a (previously) highly respected social psychologist, who turned out to have fabricated many of his results. His PhD students saw their degrees---for which they'd sacrificed half a decade of their lives---turn to dust overnight. Same situation you're in: they suspected stuff was wrong, there was weird behavior, but they did nothing. Even if you get your degree and get out, the fact that he's your co-author can ruin things down the line.

I had a similar experience. As you say, it is an open secret that the professor is a problem - I once had a formal meeting about this with one of the other heads of department, who said "I think he should be sacked", but nothing ever came of it. I've also heard he has some powerful friend high up in the university. A few years ago, some of the other academics allegedly complained about him and suggested the university drop him, but instead of being reprimanded he was instead promoted from "Reader" to "Professor" (he doesn't even have a PhD).
It still irks me that someone can get a very well paid and respected job at a top university whilst being fundamentally clueless about science and the technology that they are supposed to be teaching and researching.
"I tried complaining about his poor lecture quality once (anonymously) and it backfired for the entire class" If we are talking about the same person  then this is not new. Other students have complained about his poor lecturing, dating back 15+ years now. His "trick" was to try and come up with some idea for a course that sounded cool but left everything on the shoulders of the students. Typically this involves the idea of students coming up with their own project idea based on some vague tech (dev board) and then doing a bunch of programming with either zero lectures, or lectures completely devoid of any meaningful content.
It is very hard to do something about the fundamental issue. If you have honesty and integrity, then you will feel like you should do something, but there is a systemic problem here, and, quite honestly, it should not be down to a lone student taking this on. This isn't your problem, it's an institutional problem, and the best you can do is to find a new professor as soon as possible. Several of his students have walked away.
Later in life, I had the unfortunate coincidence of interviewing for a research position where the lead researcher had been a personal friend of one of the students who did walk away. When he asked who my supervisor was, the interview went silent then the interviewer shook his head and said simply "I know of him. He is a terrible researcher." How could one justify spending several years being the student of a person with such poor reputation, and yet still claim to be a capable, top class researcher yourself? It is hard, and it is ultimately self defeating. There are far better options in life. Walk away.
"He has 15 years of experience, 20+ journal article and numerous conference papers. I don't stand a chance against him." - This is the fundamental problem, and there is no solution. As a student, the balance of power is unfairly against you. You can't just accuse a respected person of producing useless research, or of abusing their position. It beggars belief that there is no effective oversight on these matters, and that universities are not more proactive in policing their workforce - but that's the way it is - academic institutions have historically given academics a great deal of freedom, and their position in society was respected. I honestly don't know how the situation can be fixed, other than by waiting for the professor to retire.
"he does not even know the underlying theory.. I uttered a few doubts and the responses were extremely poor." - This echoes the exact sentiments of a quote I heard from an irate MSc student - "Have you ever tried to pin him down on any details? He doesn't know anything!" I wish I had listened to his advice at the time: Walk away. Life is too short to waste fighting battles that you can't win.

As it is unethical behavior by your direct supervisor I would recommend that you seek outside legal council. These things can get very nasty, and can damage your career, having pre-briefed council on call when the administration finally goes to town will be a huge benefit to you.
Legal council can also help you write your correspondence with the University administration in a way that will force action against the guilty instead of you the whistle-blower (or at least make it more likely). In any correspondence do not mention the fact that you have retained legal council, until forced to do so. At no point should you discuss matter verbally and all your responses to any written letter/e-mail should be vetted by your lawyer.
Whistle blowers are very unpopular for management as it shows that they have not been paying attention (or allowed fraud to occur). It is, unfortunately, likely they will come down on you before they come down on a professor.
The option of quietly leaving is something you should strongly consider.
Also discuss with your lawyer, if you can/should report, the professor to any granting bodies that funded his/her research. Potentially via the lawyer, leaving your own name officially out of it as much as possible.

Absolutely get out and far away, but perhaps then you could take action. If you were the only one who has or saw the original data, even keeping it anonymous, he may figure out who reported him. Aside from Retraction Watch, COPE has some interesting cases to read through. This is an organization that many major journals are members of, which deals with these sorts of ethical issues. Many of the cases they describe involve anonymous reports and it might be helpful to read through them and see what the process would like were you to contact one of the journals that published his fraudulent work.
If you do anonymously contact the journal, be sure they agree to a course of action (they will not tell the author where the information came from, they will only reveal certain information, etc.) that protects you. I'm not sure legally what they can and can't agree to, but have them tell you this before you reveal who the fraudulent author is.
I would absolutely not go through your University's channels, but maybe this is too cynical. Although this is logical and 'fair', there is a chance they will want to hide the fraud to protect their reputation, which might mean discrediting you. Just go straight to the outside parties (anonymously and after graduating and getting a job etc.) and let them work backwards to the university. A publisher (as you will see reading COPE cases, has much more to lose by not confronting fraud and they take it very seriously!

Keep low, you are young and have no power.
Graduate
Then put queries on PubPeer - make sure the query does not allow you to be traced.  By this I don't mean anonymity, because PubPeer guarantees that, even if you log in, but in terms of the actual query.  For example, if he is R hacking his data, then an analysis of a series of papers will reveal a statistically impossible distribution of R values.
Engage allies - people you may not know, but who are on the right side - but do this with care, because one can get bad surprises sometimes.
Putting things right takes time, what may appear to be a lifetime to you and bear that in mind, do not expect a "result" in months or a year.

Publish an attempted replication of his work that demonstrates that his analyses and data are not reliable.
If you can show definitively that the work is bogus by providing reproducible analyses and release your data publicly for others to verify, your work will trump his, and you can launch a career off of this.

Why would you waste your time to prove someone is a sham when you could be doing real research?

This would be a very difficult, uphill battle against a person who has more experience, and is entrenched - they would have every reason to fight you tooth and nail if you attempted to do this, and also a large head start.

@user2813274 Fully agree. Especially considering how hard to publish a paper if the central message is that something doesnt work (opposed  to Heureka type papers). Also, I never heard of any disciplinary action against any researcher if intentional misconduct were not proved. Being considered less reliable because someone could not reproduce his data - it has no substantial impact on any level, will not stop him doing research the same way for years and years .

@Octopus It is real research to show that a previous body of work that is accepted as fact does not actually match observations. For example, there is a lot of published research showing that GMOs have no effects on health. That research is mostly done to prove that claims to the contrary are false.

@user2813274 "This would be a very difficult, uphill battle against a person who has more experience, and is entrenched" - Experience and time on the market doesn't trump data.

I agree with Akka Demic: cleaning the current literature is as important as publishing new ones, perhaps even more. The ridiculous reproducibility rate in some fields (e.g.  A 2011 study found that 65% of medical studies were inconsistent when re-tested, and only 6% were completely reproducible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducibility#Reproducible_research) seems coherent with the mentality behind the number of downvotes the answer has received.

@Octopus: Because this will prevent the Nanotech research community from falsely believing that Professor's research claims and misdirecting their own efforts.


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How to handle a student's public speaking anxiety when teaching a class that requires presentations?
In one of the courses I'm teaching this semester, each student has to give a 20-minute in-class presentation of a paper relevant to the topic of each class. One of the students has approached me asking to be excused for this requirement, on the grounds that she is terrified of having to speak in front of others. She is willing to do an alternative assignment that doesn't involve a presentation; more significantly, I think, is the fact when I pressed her a bit about this, she seemed willing to straight up forgo this assignment and get a zero grade for this particular part of the course. Conversations I've had with other faculty who have had her in previous courses confirm that she is, in fact, a good enough student that she should be able to properly understand the kinds of papers we are reading in this course. So, this seems to be a genuine anxiety problem.
Given that I had my own mental issues way back when I was an undergrad, I know that a just-suck-it-up type of attitude on my part is likely to cause more problems than it solves. I'm willing to accommodate her request for an alternative assignment. On the other hand, there are two reasons why I'm in principle against this decision. First, it is unfair to the rest of the students (and also, it might get me a reputation as a lecturer that students can sway). Second, giving her an extra assignment effectively amounts to kicking the can down the road: the more she delays dealing with her problem, the harder it will become to solve, and chances are that the kind of environments she will encounter after graduation will not be as speaker-friendly as my class is.
How would you proceed here?

I am looking forward to the answers to this. Even more fundamentally, I would be interested where other teachers  draw the line between "I am uncomfortable doing presentations" (to which most people would answer "great, now you can practice in a lower-risk environment") and "I have a real public speaking anxiety" (where it, as you say, seems unreasonable and counter-productive to ask the student to just suck it up).

A friend of mine with this problem struggled in university. On entering the (much less tolerant) workplace, she visited a doctor and found that beta blockers helped diminish the physical symptoms of the panic/anxiety for her. Now she takes one before she has to give a presentation and she is able to function. (I'm not suggesting that you give your student medical advice, just sharing this story to show that there's hope.)

May be relevant to your question and help you with your problem: How should I control my nervousness, so as not to disturb my presentation on the day of a conference?

To go along with @ff524's comment, you may want to check with your university's student support services to see what support they can provide for this.  There are many classes that require presentations, so they should have at least something in place.

just an anecdote, when i was an undergrad there was a student during thesis class that was terified of speaking, so much that when she did have to speak, she was trembling and crying during it.  The class largely ignored her emotions and focused on the content.  Im not sure if it would be considered a good situation for the student or not

Clearly not a good situation. There is a difference between an assignment being difficult and it being mentally scarring.

In Austria students with long term disease have the legal right to request a different mode for their exams and lab works. (UG 2002 §59(1)11). One of the examples given by our university, the Vienna UT, is to allow students with a social phobia to write a state of the art report instead of giving a talk in front of class. Depending on where you are located, there might also be a legal basis for working with such students.

@BDL: my university is in Germany, so chances are a similar legislation exists. I might go with that this one time, but if similar issues arise in the future, I will go with Stephan Kolassa's answer.

Since you understand german, this and this might be interesting for you.

Another possibility--would she be willing to record her presentation and have the recording shown? That way she can answer any questions. If there are slides, would she be willing to present them from the back of the room (aka everyone else will be looking at the slides, not her)

This link might have some advice as well: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37660/how-should-i-control-my-nervousness-so-as-not-to-disturb-my-presentation-on-the/37777#37777

Fear of speaking in public is common. It is one of the major symptoms of social phobia. I'll work on the assumption that your student has diagnosed or undiagnosed SP (I used to work on SP data.)
SP is very amenable to classical cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). You are a teacher, not a therapist. I would counsel against "rolling your own" therapy program. Instead, refer the student to on-campus counseling and strongly encourage her to seek professional help. As others write, the need to present will not go away; neither at college nor at the workplace. And college is probably the best place to start therapy. To repeat: this is a good point in time to start working on this; encourage your student to do so with a therapist.

So, that's the long-term answer I'd give. However, even if CBT frequently shows effects rather quickly in SP, your student will likely not have progressed far enough in her therapy to actually present her paper by the time she should. So you will likely need to make some kind of accommodation. I'd recommend that you contact your university's student service. There likely are some sort of guidelines on how to deal with such an issue - you probably are not the first professor to be confronted with this.
If you are afraid of getting a reputation as a professor who can be swayed, there are different ways around this:

You could require an official diagnosis of SP, or whatever doctor's communication your local privacy laws permit. In this, you could let yourself be guided by what kind of paperwork is required for a student to skip and retake an exam for medical reasons. (Student services could again be helpful here.)
You could make sure that the "alternative assignment" is not a bonus, but does add significant work to the student's workload. I personally would be careful here, since you don't want to penalize her for her disability.

That said, if the student does take your recommendation and starts therapy, it is quite possible that her therapist would assign making at least some kind of presentation as a piece of "homework" for her. Apart from possible confidentiality issues (your student may opt for waiving these, so you could talk directly to her therapist), this could allow you to help her much more than just doing a short-term fix. It may be worthwhile pointing this out to her. After all, you are willing to go to an effort to help her - her next professor or her employer may be less accommodating.

Oops. Um... thanks for accepting so quickly, but seeing an accepted answer might discourage others from answering. Perhaps you want to un-accept and see which answer is best in a day or so?

Eh, well, if an answer is good, it's good, but I'll do as you suggest.

Requiring a diagnosis is a great idea - it both makes sure that any students saying this do have a genuine problem (which sounds true in her case, but for consistency helps guard against "oh yeah me too" students), and puts them on the right track to getting help (because it's not like the doctor's going to say, "Yep, you have social anxiety (or whatever). Now you know. Bye!").

Allowing her to replace it with something else if she has a doctor's (or psychologist's) note seems like an excellent solution to me, because it moves the burden of diagnosing whether this is a genuine mental health issue onto a medical / mental health professional. And as @starsplusplus says, it puts her on the right path for getting treatment, while also giving you a straightforward and fair way to 'draw the line' with other students.

Could you get her to do the assignment, where she still has to present her work, but to a much smaller group; perhaps even to just yourself and another lecturer? That way she is still tackling the problem, but in a manner that will hopefully not seem so daunting to her.

+1. This could be a good alternative assignment, while keeping the pedagogics of actually doing a presentation.

A prerecorded video presentation would be another option along these lines.

It sounds from your question that the students give a single in-class presentation in the entire semester.
I like the idea of in-class presentations a lot, mostly because presenting is a very important skill going forward, particularly in academia and (I imagine) also in industry. Unfortunately in many fields (such as mine - mathematics) students don't really do much presenting in the course of their majors necessarily. This is of course an excellent reason to require in-class presentations! But since students don't get practice or training in this, your single in-class presentation might be the first one they ever give and that's understandably scary for many people.
My solution to this in a class this semester was to include 2-3 short (5-10 min) in-class presentations through the semester leading to a final 20-min presentation at the end of the semester. The short presentations are meant to be low stakes and formative - the students will get lots of feedback from me and their peers (anonymously) and the topics will be easier (relatively accessible material from their textbook). The short presentations are also progressively stricter, e.g. In the first presentation I just want them to see what it's like at the blackboard, in the second I'm going to harp on timing more, in the third focus more on generating interest in the audience, and so on. They're low stakes in the sense that while they are worth a total of 10% of their final grade, they get those 10% as long as they present and give feedback (this allows me to be more nitpicky in my grading of their homeworks too...)
The goal is that when it's time for the final presentations, which are worth a not-insignificant amount of their final grade, they'll have had a lot of practice and will be able to do themselves justice.
(I should admit this is my first semester trying this and I've never seen this strategy used before, but I think it makes sense and I have high hopes, but also crossed fingers).
In any case it's easier to convince someone to give a 5 min presentation than a 30 min one, and I believe that for a lot of people the anxiety in presenting comes from lack of experience. Many of us are also aware that presenting is an important skill and might appreciate getting feedback and the chance to improve. It is possibly too late for you to do this this semester, but perhaps something to consider in the future.

One thing important with "progressively stricter" grading, is to make it clear to students that they need to take your suggestions for improvement seriously, as although it didn't penalize them significantly early on, it will later.

I've dealt with substantive (not crippling) social anxiety as a student from middle school through the public presentation of my masters' thesis in front of a couple hundred people, as an artist, and as a student teacher. This is less of an answer than testimony. I will meander a bit, covering my experiences, what worked for me, how I applied to my own course design, and some ideas for dealing with your situation.
My Experiences
I had my first panic attack in middle school when I was called up to the front of the room to do push-ups after smarting off. I was a mess (bright red, heart racing, couldn't breathe normally, couldn't stop crying, sweating, shaking.) I've luckily never had it so bad again, but even up through undergrad I have big holes in my memory of presentations, speeches, or anything that left me in the spotlight. We are stuck in a paradox. We desperately need more experience giving presentations we're probably never going to feel like giving. The biggest point I can make is that, in my experience, the situation could go roughly 3 ways:

Despite my discomfort, I perform to the best of my ability, avoid completely losing my place or getting so nervous I can't speak/read/etc. I have no strong sense of how well I've done, because every little mistake, tremor and quiver in my voice are magnified in my body. Observers may or may not notice; I have no clue. Ironically, I desperately need people to engage (read: not confront!) me about the presentation's topic and what I've said afterwards. I don't need things like, "you did well!" because I can't trust you not to protect me; I need engagement I can use as a proxy to assess how well I communicated. As I absorb the event, I learn that future presentations of this complexity or easier are something I can survive.

In my perception, I am overcome by the anxiety. I may have had to stop to compose myself, re-state something multiple times because my voice is quivering, transfer my speaking materials to an object more stable than my own hand. But, in reality I still managed to cover most of what I was there to say. I am alive, but the disaster I perceive to have happened is going to obliterate my ability to self-evaluate. When I calm down, meaningful engagement about the presentation, if it was indeed understandable, can help give me some less-biased data to stack against the first-hand experience. This doesn't really increase my long-run confidence in my ability to speak effectively, but it can help provide some small assurance that the world doesn't really care if I give a mediocre presentation.

I hit the point where I am too overcome by anxiety for any emotional/mental/physical coping mechanisms or crutches to get me back on track before I spiral out into panic. I'm going to need to leave; my body is too far outside of my own control for me to regain my composure over any reasonable timeframe with other people around.

What helped and how I applied it as an instructor
I suspect preparation varies per person, but what has helped me the most is resisting the temptation to prepare and memorize a speech. While this is how I was taught to present, attempting to relay anything verbatim (aside from quotes or anything else I will literally be reading) is perilous, because no amount of prep will help me find the words once the anxiety starts taking over. All of my time will have been spent preparing to say something a single fragile way, which is the wrong task. I will never feel confident in this task, because I know how easily it can get derailed.
Instead, my goal is to know what I need to say so thoroughly that I don't need to know exactly how I'll say it. I talk all the time with one or a few people about things I find interesting. Sometimes at great length. I'm trying to make presenting or giving a talk as similar as I can to this other thing I can do just fine.
I usually write a short paper which covers everything I want to say, and then decompose it and other source materials into a single stream of documentation to lead me through my points. Sometimes this means taking a source text I'll be talking about and filling it with Post-it notes and notecards; sometimes this is just a single printed document with block-quotes, marginalia, and directions to myself. From here, I spend a few hours trying to ad-lib the discussion from my notes without reading from the original paper. It doesn't always come together, but my goal is usually being able to ad-lib the discussion at least three times without getting stuck or missing anything. In this phase I may end up phrasing the same points dozens of ways.
When I got the chance to teach (freshmen!) I tried to apply what has helped me to my policy on presentations. I built three short/low-risk presentations into the course. The grading was quite generous. I permitted powerpoint, but discouraged it. I encouraged my students to come prepared to talk at slowly-increasing length about three different phases of their semester project without preparing a speech. The presentation counted as part of the grade for the assignment each was paired with, and the total number of points it contributed meant that the only way it penalized your assignment grade was if you didn't try; from there, presentations earned bonus on the assignment. In class, I let them know I sympathized strongly with not wanting to present, explained how the grading rubric was structured to give them a reason to present without the stakes being high, and assured them I was far more interested in rewarding them for talking to us about what they were working on than in penalizing them for how it went.

Addressing your problem
Others have well-covered encouraging the student to get help; I'll go in other directions. I try to shoot for policies that are flexible and anyone can take advantage of without questions. I would avoid letting the student off without doing anything unpalatable, but try to give them some agency in the tradeoff.

Offer to hear and give feedback on presentations for all students during office hours, or at some other time before each presentation. You might even make them to talk to you about what all they plan to cover before they give it a go. Consider requiring all students who want any alternative accommodation you make available to take you up on this.
Offer full credit for presenting to the class, X% (85?) credit for presenting to you and a smaller group of students, and Y% (70?) for presenting to you one-on-one. The group option can either be a pre-registered group of the like-minded, or can be folded into a group activity day that requires everyone to practice their presentations, while some students opt to let you grade them then.

You question says the class requires a presentation. In my mind a class on public speaking might require a presentation as there is likely no way for students to meet a reasonable set of learning objectives without the presentation. From you description it sounds like the requirement is because of how you structured the class or decided on the grading. Most universities require reasonable accommodations to be made for students with known issues. In the first case, there may not be a reasonable accommodation. In the second case there are likely a number of reasonable accommodations.
Making reasonable accommodations does not mean students will think you are a push over. In fact, when an alternative assignment is used as an accommodation it can be, and often is, much more difficult than the standard assignment. This is not because the student is being penalised, but rather because the primary assignment is the most efficient way to meet the learning objective and therefore the alternative assignment takes more work.
When I receive a referral from my university's academic services asking me to make reasonable accommodations regarding presentations, I provide the student with an alternative assignment. For that assignment they must create the presentations slides, write a script of what they would say, create 5 potential questions and short answers, and write an extended structured abstract regarding the presentation. Then after I look at the presentation and script, they must write short answers on up to 5 additional questions that I give them.

First of all, any human being that I know, including myself, have public speak anxiety issue to some extend; at any level of their professional life. However please speak to the university students service in this matter; to make sure they offer the student to get the help he/she is needed, by referring him/her to a professional; and tackle any background mental issue he/she is having for public speaking.
In general to tackle this public speaking anxiety issue for all the students, I would recommend the following; to equalize the preparation stage, from your end, as much as possible:
Before Presentation
Make a Template: Because they are undergraduate student, I would put a presentation template on the course websites with some guidelines. This will save you loads of time, both for you (how to judge and mark each student) and students (make them to focus on the content and not the cosmetics). So for a 20 minute talk about a paper, I would put up the following guideline:
     Title: Name of the paper/author/speaker; with the university logo.
     Outline: The overview of the paper.
     Problem statement: What is the problem.
     Aim: Aim of the approach.
     Contribution: Contains the paper's contribution.
     Conclusion: What is the conclusion here, for the paper and the problem it tried to solve.
     Future work (Optional): What will be their future work; and if you do agree with the authors of the paper.
     Questions: Answer any question in the audience.

Time Allocation: One fun thing I do before the students presentation, is to ask each student to write their name in a piece of paper and fold it. Then I draw the names, and start allocating the time to them. So they know there is no intention behind my decision on who goes first or last.
Organizing the slides: Tell students to send you their presentations 48 hours before the actual presentation. This way you can put all their slides on one laptop, so they don't need to waste time switching laptops during their presentations and destroying the flow; and creates unnecessary stress for students, because their USB can not be read by their machines.
Presentation Day
Little More Formal Than Usual: Before the presentation starts, tell the students to respect others and their effort to present a paper. This way, other students know better not to hackle or crack jokes while their fellow classmates try to explain something (I learned this the hard way).

Here you have to trust your judgment and see if the student does have a mental state that make it impossible for him/her to give a presentation — Bad idea. I'm not trained to diagnose anxiety disorders, and neither are most faculty. On the other hand, most campuses employ professionals that evaluate students' need for other kinds of accommodation. This seems like a job for them.

The template is an excellent idea. But @JeffE is right that professors are not qualified to diagnose disorders.

@Alexandros Ok updating the answer right now.

@JeffE Thanks for the comment, updated the answer.

"tell the students to respect others and their effort to present a paper." I go so far as to grade the students on their audience behavior and performance. That also let's me insure some questions because everyone is required to ask at least one relevant and interesting question of one of the speakers.

As JeffE's comment alludes, In situations where a student has a disability that may interfere with their ability to do an assignment, you should tell the student to go to the disabilities office.  The experts there can come up with a plan.  That will also get the student in contact with people who can suggest help, and will help out down the road if this comes up for the student again.

Note that not all universities have that office, or it is not functional.

Most universities in the US have an office for students with medical issues (/disabilities), and they can go there to get academic accommodations.  For instance, some students get extra time on tests, or are allowed to use a computer to write essay exams.
Generally the policy is the student doesn't tell the professor what disability they have.  Instead they go to the disabilities office, and get a note telling the professor which accommodations they need.
If you teach at such a university, you should tell your student to go through the official channels, and provide the accommodations required by the school.

For what it's worth, gradually approaching such "obstacles" can be a great way.  You can split students into pairs, small groups, etc., until students are presenting to greater and greater numbers of their peers.
Really, all presentations are one-on-one, even if there are 300 people in the audience, it's still one-on-one (just 300 times).

your last comment is just not right. I can present to hundreds, even thousands of people without fear or anxiety. However presenting to a group of 5 or less I find very scary indeed. There is clearly a significant difference between the two no matter which side makes you anxious.

The fear of public speaking to this extent is a medical disorder.  You should treat it just like any other medical disorder that requires accommodations.
We have an office that clears and manages all such requests.  If it were my student, I'd ask the student to work through that office to document the situation, and then work with the student and that office to come up with a suitable accommodation.  My preference might be to ask the student if a one-on-one presentation would be acceptable and not elicit a fear response, but I'd certainly take input from the pros.
It isn't your place to encourage or discourage the student from seeking help.  I would hope that through the documentation process that any counselor called upon to evaluate the situation would make it known what the options are for help.