text:
How to start research as an undergraduate CS student
I am an undergraduate CS student, and I would like to start doing research, because I want to boost my chances of entering a graduate school, and research is something that sounds interesting to me. Currently I am in second year and in the top of my class. I live in Southeastern Europe.
Should I come up with a research idea myself and then approach the faculty staff, or should I just tell them that I am interested in research and see where it goes?

Presumably you have some coursework as part of your course. You should conduct coursework by addressing research problems where there is an option do so. Where there isn't, you should consider negotiating.

You could also conduct a research-based dissertation or at least have a research element. The latter case is particularly relevant if your dissertation must satisfy some non-research criteria, e.g., you must implement some software.

The two options you give are not mutually exclusive.
In some universities some members of the faculty will have summer internships, you can ask staff about such opportunities. Since you are studying Computer Science the internships are likely to be somewhere between research and implementation.
If you are interested in research-proper or you are still finding out what interests you then it is also good to approach faculty. However, stating you are simply interested in research will not provide them with a way to help you. I suggest reading some papers related to a course you enjoy and start looking for gaps in the research, thinking of - very small - improvements you can make and - then - discuss with a member of faculty who may give suggestions on how to approach the problem and offer to look at any progress you have made. This second approach makes it much easier for faculty to help you.
This second option is not coming up with a research idea yourself, but instead finding a small gap and getting the advice of staff on where the research may lie (that you could feasibly conduct).
I must stress that it is important to be realistic about what you can do; faculty will be more receptive if what you want to do is manageable (i.e., you show them you're a grounded type of person).


text:
How do I find a research topic without the guidance of a professor?
I have been out of uni for quite some time now, but I would like to apply for UK (!) PhDs (so not the MA including US-PhDs). I am in the Humanities and I know the general topic within my field which I would like to focus on.
However, I am not sure what would make a good research question and even less sure how to find one. Any advice? How will I know? I am worried I will propose something ridiculous that will make me look immature, but I don't want to squander my chances with potential supervisors by looking so clueless.

Find a question that excites you because you don't know how to answer it (yet). Read the literature to see if anyone else has answered it, and if not, whether anyone else would care. Repeat as necessary.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How do I ask a professor at a different department whether I can attend his classes?
There is a professor in Department X. I will be applying to Department Y & Department Z for a MA that really fits my interests. Now, I am wondering whether the professor in Department X will also hold classes in Department Y & Z, or whether these classes are shared and accessible over multiple departments anyways (how does this usually work in the UK? I don't really know). How do I ask him this question, how do I best phrase it? I am a bit unsure about this. Right now I have
I am currently thinking of applying for X at Uni X, and am wondering whether I could then attend your courses too?

but it sounds a bit strange to me? (English is not my native language)

Just ask them! Faculty will likely speak one or more human languages. If you have questions about how to phrase things in English, you should ask a friend (ideally one who is a native speaker) or use the English Language Learners site. https://ell.stackexchange.com/

US student here.
Typically you wouldn't need to ask. If the course is allowed in your degree plan (i.e., course of study - the classes you're allowed to take for credit toward your degree) then you can just enroll. I've taken two statistics courses and three systems engineering courses as a math student - these were allowed in my degree plan.
You may need to ask, however, if the course is majors-only. Sometimes these major-only courses are for students enrolled in the department and may have limited space for out-of-department student.
If you're still unsure, ask both a graduate head in your department and the instructor of the course you want to take.

Don't act yet.
There's no need to ask yet. You aren't enrolled at the university, so there's no need to ask. If you must ask, then ask an administrator, rather than the professor. (Professors are busy, they'd rather have fewer emails.) Assuming you're accepted, then you have several options.
Exception: You should ask if your decision to enrol depends on the answer. (See comments for further discussion.)
Just turn up.
You can sit at the back of the class and ask the professor afterwards, e.g., Hi, I sat-in on your course today and I really enjoyed it. I'm not formally registered, but I'd like to continue attending, is that okay? You can answer any follow-up questions in person. For large classes, this approach is fine. For smaller classes (or tutorials, lab sessions, etc.), you might want to ask in advance.
You needn't ask: Attending an occasional class on which you aren't registered is fine, but it is courteous to ask. (See also Allowing a student to sit in during class.)
Ask in advance.
You can attend the professor's office hours and ask something along the lines of, e.g., Hi, I'm studying ..., but I'd like to attend your class ..., is that okay? Again, you can answer any follow-up questions in person. The same question can be asked by email.
What's better?
It really depends on the professor. Personally, I'd favour a student just turning up to my class. It requires the minimal effort on my part.

Hi! I do not live in the same country as the professor and am not a student at that uni, and part of the reason why I would be applying for the course is that I would love to work with that professor (but there is no course in his department I could apply to). So I can't wait until I am accepted and then ask him.

@J.Miller You're applying for an MA in subjects "Y & Z that really fits [your] interests]," but you actually want to study subject X. That seems rather peculiar. Regardless, I now think (as previously highlighted) https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/100379/how-do-i-ask-a-professor-at-a-different-department-whether-i-can-attend-his-clas/100381?noredirect=1#comment261131_100379 is perhaps the most applicable (the standard advice applies to your case too). Albeit, see also my next comment.

The MA will have a syllabus. That syllabus will most likely be published online. (Albeit, https://xkcd.com/773/.) You can search the syllabus to find out whether the professor you want to work with teaches any classes on the MA. (Note that taking a professor's class isn't the same was working with the professor.)

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


text:
Are my chances of getting into a PhD higher if I choose a "not-so-accomplished" supervisor?
Some professors are very accomplished, others are younger and maybe not yet so accomplished (although admittedly this does not need to correlate with age of course). I presume everyone wants to work with the accomplished people, and not so many people want to work with the people who have just started their careers.
However: Say I really wanted to get into uni X, because of personal reasons (I can't move to a different city because of my wife etc., so just personal reasons; also I do not aspire an academic career after the PhD, I have other reasons for wanting to complete one), would my chances be increased if I were to target a not so accomplished/famous/senior advisor (all other things being equal)?

It does presume that I am able to judge that (and I think I am) -but you could ask the same question without that presumption. So I could ask : are the chances of students who talk to 'not so accomplished advisors' increased - which does not imply that they know. I also don't see why you equate will it be (generally speaking) easier to get into uni X if I want to work with a not-so-accomplished advisor with potential advisors are going to run after me/ are desparate for PhD students. Not the same thing, not what I said. You're projecting this into my post.

Are we presuming these supervisors have the same amount of funding/the same number of openings?

Yes, all other things being equal.

The answer to this can be a little tricky. I would say : it depends.
Let's say you have the means to judge that a supervisor is "accomplished" or not and that you have not a GREAT background.
The accomplished supervisor might have nothing more to prove. Thus he can select you because "he has not much thing to lose" if it does not go well (this is subject to debate also). In the other hand because he is already accomplished he might be used to quality work. So why bother himself with a lower quality student ?
On the other hand if you go with a not so famous supervisor. Given he wants to be famous, he might refuse you because he wants a better student to help him also. He might accept you because he has not much choice and need ASAP a PhD student.
In resume the chance of being accepted depends MORE on you and your background than the celebrity of the supervisor. It's normal to want to go with the one you think accomplished because: more contact, more funding. However the less famous can give you much more of his time.


text:
How do I ask a professor whether his seminars & lectures will be available to students from other departments?
I will apply for a PhD soon. I would be applying to the Politics department, but there is a professor in a different department who holds really interesting seminars on political topics. However, as I said, he is not affiliated at all with this department. How do I ask him / how could I phrase this best?
PS: My question is not whether I can attend his lectures as a guest -I would love to take these seminars for credit, if I can. I just don't know whether that's an option, or whether students from the politics department will be allowed in these lectures/seminars.

The answer to your question is easy. Simply ask:

I am very interested by your lectures. Can I attend them as a student in the politics department?

The professor, however, is probably not the best resource to answer your question, especially if you want to enroll in the course. You should enquire at your future department what is allowed and what is not. Rules can vary between departments and programs.

This. Almost always the question for "How do I ask..." is "You ask."

I agree with Emilie, and would emphasise first checking the regulations/technicalities with administrative staff who can advise you on that.
My experience (in Germany) is that taking a related class in another department is totally possible, but may require that lecturer's permission, which would be the point at which you contact the lecturer.
Emilie's suggested phrasing sounds good. I would suggest to maybe include (very succinctly, in one or two sentences) why you are interested in their course and a bit more specificity regarding who you are (rather than "a politics student"). This just makes it a bit easier for them to remember you, which is helpful if you need to go up to them at the beginning or the end of the first class in order to get a form signed indicating their permission for you to take the course.


text:
Should I contact the PI on Monday after the postdoc interview held on Friday to enquire about the outcome?
I had a second round postdoc interview (and presentation) on Friday at a prestigious UK university. They seemed very pleased with my work and they stated that my research is in line with the needs of the project. The interview took longer than it was supposed to and I was even told that they have postponed the next interview by 10 mins, as they found my work interesting. At the end of the session, I was told by the PI that they would let me know of the outcome next week (i.e. this week), which he quickly corrected himself by saying that they'd let me know on Monday (today).
I spent the entire weekend feeling very confident of having secured the position; however, after not receiving any emails today, I have started questioning said confidence (e.g. that they may have gone with another candidate). Is it too early to be disheartened? Would it be appropriate to send them a polite email and ask about the status of the interview outcome?
I understand that technically only one working day has passed since the interview; but I was told by the PI that I would be informed today (which I took as a sign of their interest in me), and as I have not heard anything, I have become somewhat paranoid.

You don't have the job until you receive a formal offer, no matter how pleasant or excited anyone is when meeting you, or any information you find in tea leaves, bones, horoscopes, numerology, etc.
I would wait at least until the end of the week until contacting them, unless you have some outside reason that you need to know the outcome immediately, for example if you have another offer that will expire. In that case, you could send a brief message that covers:

Thanks for meeting with me last week

I'm interested in the job

I have another offer and my response for that offer is due by (date)

Ask politely whether they are able to let you know prior to that date, and if so/if not, when you can expect a response.

If you don't have another offer, I'd just wait, but do continue pursuing other opportunities: keep applying for jobs, schedule/attend further interviews, etc, just as you would do if you've already been told you haven't gotten the position. I don't think you need to be disheartened or pessimistic, just pragmatic. At the end of the week, you can send a polite email along the same lines as I suggested above, minus (3) of course.
I think the most likely explanation for no response as of yet is that their timeline of getting back to you so quickly was a bit optimistic on their part. However, I don't think that gives you any more information to work with than you had 24 hours ago.

Thank you for a very sensible response to a panic riddled postdoc candidate!

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


text:
Theses are exercises, rather than "full work"?
Theses are exercises, rather than "full work"?
Does this view hold?
It's a bit vague sometimes, because a thesis is supposed to practice "real work", but since a thesis is often an author's first work of such kind, then I find that expecting it to be "fully professional" is same as asking some other "newbie" to perform like an experienced pro. Thus making me believe more along the lines that even Ph. D. theses ought to be treated as "first of an author's kind" work as opposed to "end-all"s like they often may feel for the author.

@Roland But isn't the point of Ph. D. to be "first of a kind of original research contribution"? So whereas in B. Sc./M. Sc. the focus might be in writing, in Ph. D. it's more in the quality of results.

The truth, as so often, is somewhere in the middle. No, a PhD thesis is not an exercise in the traditional sense - it's supposed to be a novel, useful contribution to the scientific state of the art. For PhD students that leave research behind after their degree it will typically indeed be the most advanced, most complete piece of research they ever produce. However, for academics that stay longer at university it will often be only a starting point, with more, larger, better work to follow.
Basically, a PhD thesis is a student's masterpiece in the traditional meaning of the word ("A work created in order to qualify as a master craftsman and member of a guild."). It's not necessarily a "masterpiece" in the sense of "the defining piece of work of a researcher", although it might be (most commonly if this researcher quits academia after their PhD).

Your last sentence gets precisely to the point - it is to make the author adopt a new mentality and develop an approach to academic work; the thesis is supposed to be the start of the path, not the end of it. Or maybe a new beginning, if you wish, a new stage in life.
It is an accomplishment and is celebrated accordingly, but it is similar to the first item crafted by an artisan or the first song written by an artist. It is not supposed to be their last, far from it, but more often than not it is special and holds sentimental value to the author.

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


text:
Who are good readers to ask for opinions regarding the "readability" of papers?
Who are good readers to ask for opinions regarding the "readability" of papers?
https://typeset.io/resources/how-to-become-good-at-academic-research-writing/

Share your paper with your friends, reviewers, whomever is ready — ask them what they understood. Is the idea clear? Is the solution clear? Is there a correlation between the two? What parts are found easy to read and what parts are difficult? Feedback is the best way to improve on your writing.

Is the measure an average of feedback? Or are there some readers that are more qualified than others?


text:
How should I go about publishing a manuscript in which my mentor does not actively support my best interests?
I am at a loss of what to do. I had started working on this project, a systematic review and meta-analysis back in undergrad. I was a senior. Long story short, for a while my manuscript was going well. Come August 2016, my mentor stopped communicating with me in the final stages. Weeks of no responses predominated, and as a result I emailed the Chair of the department on 3 separate occasions (over a total of 7 months). I was promised 3 different deadlines, all of which went unfulfilled. I finally emailed the dean in April when we got close to my final deadline of May 1, 2017. I got my edits, but I was 3 days away from leaving the area because I was heading off to graduate school.
I ended up telling my mentor I didn't want to publish or take this situation into a new institution, but if I found someone who could advise and help me with the situation I would reach out to her. I expressed I had felt we had failed to meet the deadline and the outlook was bleak. She responded positively saying we hadn't missed the deadline, but if I were open to forfeiting my primary authorship stance then she'd be glad to completely finish the manuscript. I took this as a direct offense to the work I had done because I had decided on the topic, done the data extraction, results, conclusions, and limitations of the paper.
I have found someone but am worried my old mentor will not follow through or will hinder the process again. My new adviser suggested I send her an ultimatum and deadline for her final comments for the manuscript and submit to a journal. However, as I am not a researcher, am going to grad school to be a clinician (current graduation 2019), and only have a bachelor's degree, I am scared if I do this then I may lose her support for the manuscript.
How should I proceed?

I'd be highly cautious of working with somebody who wants to hijack primary authorship.

Same. I was hesitant to even reach out. However, I have found a few scholarship opportunities and feel this would help my application. It would show initiative and leadership on my part.

Also, I do believe I cannot simply remove her from authorship and find someone else. She was involved till the end.  My second option if I cannot get her to cooperate is to simply complete the manuscript and give her an acknowledgement. My issues with that are I don't want retaliation or not give credit where it is due (she did advise me), plus I don't know many top tier journals who would take a paper from someone with only a bachelor's degree.

@Eppicurt: I don't read that as a "hijack", rather as an offer to take the project off the student's hands if they aren't able to dedicate any further time to it.  It sounds like OP isn't interested in that offer.  Fine - make her a different offer.

@soaring-eagle: Your "second option" is unethical.  In order to remove her as an author, you'll have to remove all her contributions and redo them yourself.

@Nate Eldredge: I figured as much. Also, I tried not to see it as a hijack, but after making me email the higher authorities so much to get any progress done it just seemed unethical of her to suggest it.  Like I said, I am not sure how to proceed. I feel sitting down with her, the dean, and myself might bring us somewhere, but I am out of the area and would have to take a whole day just to attend the meeting.

Phone conference call.  Try to get them on separate phones if you can, otherwise they'll be on a speaker phone, which makes it harder to hear and understand. // I wonder whether your current advisor would like to reach out directly on your behalf?

First, regardless of what you do, secure your independence of her in every way: funding, reference letters, etc.  All that has to run smoothly without her.
Second, forget her.  Don't count on her finishing. She won't do that at all or if she does it, it won't happen personally, but she hires another student.
Third, prepare a journal submission, and get someone senior to read your paper and provide critical comments.  You need a more-or-less constant eye on the paper from some senior person in the area to guide you away from pitfalls you don't see due to the lack of experience.  If you don't have that person, count on a rejection of your first submission.
Fourth, put your prior, no longer supportive advisor either into acknowledgements or as the last coauthor, depending on how much of her contribution is left by the time point of submission. Submit the paper.

Good advice. Because of you I was prepared for this scenario. I sent her an email with an ultimatum and a deadline for review. I included the dean in the CC of the email. She said yes to the deadline. The nice thing is since it is a data analysis, we didn't need to secure funding to do the research. My plan is to follow through with your suggestion of putting her as the last co-author if she doesn't meet my submission date. I have everything else straight away. Thank you for the insight, everyone! It was really helpful!


text:
How important is it to present your paper yourself?
My paper has been accepted at one of the top conferences in my field for oral presentation (very low acceptance rate).
In the past, I have always presented papers for which I was first author myself. However, this time I may be not be able to present myself (the date and location make it harder for me to attend the conference).
I can let the second author present and I am sure he would do a great job, but I am afraid to miss an opportunity to improve my career.
What do you think? Could it make a difference in my career, like getting you in touch with more people? Would it make me more recognizable?
Or is the fact that my paper has been accepted for oral presentation what really matters?
The field is machine learning, if it matters (maybe things are different depending on the field).

What career stage are you?

Postdoc stage .

Are you trying to decide between going or not going to the conference? Or are you sure you aren't able to go, and you're trying to decide between having the second author present or having nobody present? In the second case, absolutely have the second author present. In the first case, it depends significantly on your reasons for (possibly) not being able to go.

For papers where you are second author, wouldn’t you expect to be “allowed” to present them?

@GregMartin I am 99% sure I can't go.

@PLL Yes. The thing is not if I should allow the 2nd author to present, but whether not presenting could mean missing some career opportunity.
I always had the chance to present, so I never thought about that, and wanted to get opinions for more experienced people.

@Simon Is there an alternative? Having the colleague present is IMHO fine, while ”having nobody present” is usually not a real option (most publishers would then undo the acceptance and you’d have to resubmit, also it would annoy organizers). The only choice, AFAICT, is whether next time you should submit to a conference you can’t go to (answer: IMHO no, but that seems a separate discussion).

If you're that concerned about not presenting it yourself, would it be possible for you to vid-conference in, present an introduction/abstract, and then hand it off to the second author for the rest of the paper? Perhaps not ideal, but I've been to conferences where the content was presented remotely. I don't think there should be an issue here giving the second author the presentation, and if you're concerned with your 'reputation' just have the second author convey "Simon wishes they could be here, but unfortunately they were unable to attend [conference name] this year" or something.

@Daevin Yes. Actually yesterday I read that all talks will be pre-recorded, so my problem is solved. It was still super interesting and helpful to read all the comments and answers.

Congratulations on having your paper accepted! I wouldn't worry too much about presenting the paper yourself. Conferences are a good way to broaden your network, but missing one in one year won't be detrimental to your career.
You could ask your co-author who is presenting for you to add a slide at the end of their presentation which has your contact information/website and to specifically state that people should get in touch with you in case of any questions. In this way, people who are really interested in your research will seek you out after the conference and you can still grow your network and establish collaborations.

Thanks, adding the slide at the end is a very good idea!

"...but missing one in one year won't be detrimental to your career..." presumably being a postdoc is a short window for certain opportunities; while these words are comforting in nature they are hard to support. Early in one's career one should look for every possible opportunity to interact with others. However if the OP can't go they can't go, so the slide is a great idea!

I was once in this position (before remote attendance became commonplace) and had my co-author link me in on video for the Q&A at the end.

On a few occasions where coauthors of mine gave talks about our joint papers, I heard later from colleagues who were there that my coauthors said extremely positive things about me and how essential my contributions to the paper were. I would never have dared to praise myself in such a way or to even think that I deserved that sort of praise (nor would anyone be inclined to believe these sorts of statements if I were saying them about myself).
These experiences made me realize the importance of acknowledging and praising your collaborators when you talk about joint work, so ever since then I try to praise my coauthors in a similar way (assuming that I actually believe in the praise, which is often enough), knowing that I am free to say positive (and accurate) things about them that they could not get away with saying about themselves.
So, as you can see, a talk by a collaborator has the potential to be more useful for your career than a talk you are giving yourself. Of course, that’s not guaranteed (some coauthors will not be so thoughtful and will focus on their own contributions and importance), and there are other effects going in the opposite direction. It’s just something to keep in mind.

Never thought about that, thanks!

@Simon I've also seen this happen several times and had a similar experience of finding out how well someone spoke of me at a meeting I couldn't attend. I agree that this is the right way to approach the situation.

There are a lot of reasons for attending conferences in your field, but personally presenting a paper is probably pretty ephemeral. You might get noticed. Sure. But the more important consideration is the long term effect of the contribution/importance of the paper itself. That will live on, long after the 50 minutes or so of a live presentation.
But this requires a value judgement. How important are the other options that you say make it hard to attend? I found a lot of value in just talking to colleagues at conferences and other meetings whether I presented anything or not. That builds collaboration.
Don't obsess over it. It will be fine.


text:
Why is 90% of medical research useless?
After many years of doing medical research it is very clear to me that the vast, vast majority of what we create in terms of research is utter garbage, and it is so a priori, i.e. we know it before we publish.
There are hundreds of meta research papers on this topic, including the Lancet series “Reducing Waste”.
Why is this the case and how can this be resolved?

Surely this question must be answered by the Lancet series you cite?

I think you would do well to explain why you think it’s ‘utter garbage’ and where you arrived at the ‘90% useless’ figure

This might be relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

I am a layman in medical science, I Googled and found Why published research is untrustworthy. The opening sentence writes: As much as 90% of the published medical information is flawed according to John Ioannidis, one of the true experts on credibility of medical research

@Nobody there's a lot of issues with that paper and to be honest, interpreting the outcome as '90% of medical research is useless' is just plain wrong.

@user438383 Maybe the paper I mentioned above is one of the 90%. Again, I am a layman in medical science.

Research has shown 90% of research is useless. Though there are some caveats: 1. We do not know which 90%. 2. We do not know if above research is part of the 90%. 3. We do not know what "useless" means, anyway. ("What's the use of this thing called electricity?" "Number theory being useless" [Hardy], etc.)

"we know it before we publish" - the use of "we" suggests that you see yourself as part of it, so some introspection might help to answer your question. Why do you do it? Why do your colleagues do it? What would stop you or your colleagues from doing it?

I’m looking for other answers and thoughts from bright minds. I’ve read the Lancet series. The number 90% is, for anyone who does this on a daily basis, very reasonable.

John Ioannidis put the figure on 85% in his Plos Medicine paper

It is an egregious misreading of Ionnidis to infer that 85% of research findings are known to be "utter garbage" at the time of publication.

I don't think this is a good question for this site.  It's too broad and opinion-based.

https://statsepi.substack.com/p/the-clueless-the-hopeless-and-the

The numbers range from anywhere between 60 and 90% in papers devoted to this but I really don’t care about the exact rate of uselessness, I wonder what are good means of resolving this and making sure researchers strive for discoveries rather than publications or merits. For those who comment on the rate 90% in the title; my sense is that in cardiovascular research, we’re I’m active, the rate could easily exceed 90% if the definition of waste is “research that adds nothing to no one but the researchers CV”.

But again, I’m primarily wondering if anyone has thought of means of resolving one or several culprits causing this.

I think this is a very important question, but you've framed it in a really poor way if you want actual answers and not to just rant about the problem. All of the sources you seem to be referring to (without citing them properly) have recommendations for solutions, they are not merely describing the problem, so you do them a disservice by ignoring that part and instead editorializing on uselessness.

I very strongly think this question isn't within scope. We're not supposed to field questions about the content of research, which this question explicitly asks after.

@user176372 I do think it should be closed because the framing and scope is more for a broad discussion rather than a specific question, but I think it's sufficiently far from the content of medical research that it's topic is closer to appropriate here than on e.g. Medical Sciences. The solutions to these problems are not about blood pressure and small molecules but about publishing ethics, peer review, research funding, responsible conduct of research, etc - all very much on-topic for Academia.SE.

TLDR: It isn't.
Longer answer:  Much medical research is flawed. How much is debatable, but it's a lot. But the flaws do not always (or even usually) make the research "useless" or "utter garbage".
For instance, in much medical research it is impossible to randomly assign people to conditions. E.g. you can't randomly assign people to "overweight" and "not overweight". That does not make the studies of obesity useless.
Medicine isn't physics or chemistry. People are complicated. Disease is (often) very complicated. There is a lot more error (in the statistical sense) in medicine than in physics. But that doesn't mean it is useless. (E.g. a lot of people who smoke don't get cancer, but so?)
Of course, there are ways medical research could be improved. I am a statistical editor at a couple of medical journals, so I do my small part to improve it.
Another issue is an over-reliance on randomized clinical trials, which reduce some kinds of error at the cost of increasing others. For one thing, people act differently when they are part of a trial than they do in real life.  And RCTs often look at samples that have no other medical conditions when, in real life, people with one condition often have others. And there are problems with selecting too many White men and not enough women or people of color. And so on. It's by no means perfect.  But there's a long way between "perfect" and "garbage".
For evidence, just look at the amazing progress medicine has made, much of it based on research.
Of course the "pressure to publish" doesn't help. But ... that pressure also applies to the people who are writing papers decrying the state of research.

I think a "TLDR" needs to be a bit longer than that

I agree that medicine has made huge progress. I agree humans are complicated. But we still see thousands of new papers every day that answer the exact same question as thousands did before. Please read this https://www.nature.com/articles/533452a

There has to be a main culprit here that is driving us away from discovery, towards publishing garbage.

@AdamRobinsson - clearly we just have to find an easy algorithm that will predict which studies should not be done because they will be "useless" - should be simple, right?

Oops, RTC should be RCT, I will edit.

@JonCuster that was a very good idea, to make a prediction problem of this and have it be used by funders.

Apparently, there is a debate in the community, since you pointed out to Lancet "Reducing Waste". I guess they also point out to some solutions to problem, not simpy yelling at the produced waste.
The best path forward (best as "minimal effort and penalty for you, maximal long term gain) you can try is to keep on publishing your waste (as required by career, social pressure, contracts, research agreements and so on...), and continuously mention and refer to "Reducing Waste" of Lancet somewhere in your publication (I would suggest either the introduction or discussion section).
Advertising works very well that way, rewiring brains through repetitions, why should not this work in the medical community, too?

If I simplify it, maybe one of the reasons that many of the doctors publish their papers based on data collection e.g., out of 100 selected patients, in certain age groups certain findings, and so on. Finally giving a conclusion at the end of the paper, which the doctor already knows. This is because many doctors prefer their knowledge-based profession instead of thinking analytically about some disease or ignoring critical thinking. Doctors are trained as practical professionals, not as researchers. They don't go through a PhD. They earn a huge amount of money by treating patients with existing diseases and become ignorant about unsolved problems (diseases in this case). To be precise, medical professionals, especially doctors, do their jobs on existing problems or existing diseases. So they are bound by the nature of their profession.
However, of course, there are some researchers in the medical sciences who don't practice as doctors and instead focus on finding solutions to unsolved diseases. Of course, those medical professionals publish pure, original research papers.
To conclude my answer, I would make a separation between medical doctors and medical researchers. The first category focuses on the treatment of patients and earning a flexible livelihood. While the second category is dedicated to real research to solve mysteries about many unsolved diseases, this second category certainly publishes fundamental research papers. Of course, researchers from biochemistry, bioengineering, applied mathematics, and biophysics also publish some original research works that are important for the medical sciences, as you can see among the Nobel Prize winners in chemistry in the last few years, some of who worked on destroying cancer cells, etc.

I agree that basic science researchers can have a larger failure rate. But the problem is that clinical research is more predictable so why does it not add more value?

@AdamRobinsson, It is commonly believed that clinical research should have a lower failure rate than fundamental science research because it is more predictable. Nonetheless, a number of factors contribute to the complexity and unpredictability of clinical research, which can influence its perceived value and success rate such as "ethical consideratins", "sample size and statistical significance" etc

There's a lot of scientific sloppiness that goes on with research within the medical profession - a lot of that is attributable to the lack of training you mention. Another big chunk is simply money. Most physicians are not allocated sufficient time for research to run after grants and such. It's expensive to do solid clinical trials with sufficient power. It's relatively cheap to collect medical records data from your own institution (cost is really just your own time). As far as medical researchers, they're just as guilty of the sins of the field as the physicians...

Why is 90% of medical research useless?

If that implies 10% of medical journal articles are useful, then I would say that's good performance.  There are several fields of research that never produce anything "useful," some of which do not intend to be useful.
Publishing useless journal articles is useful in that it discourages other people from repeating the useless research (0% success rate).  That encourages people to do something new (apparently 10% success rate).  Some think publishing the useless results is obligatory.

0% success rate ? What are those fields ?

Thats not how medical research works. For EVERY research question that doesnt require industry funding, there are 1000s of papers doing the exact same thing instead of trying to discover something new, with the exceptions being a tiny fraction of the output in total.

@ANG "useful" and "success" are not the same thing.

I think you're addressing a different problem than the one OP means to, though they were pretty sloppy with their interpretation and citation in the original post. The research they have labeled "useless" based on the sources they refer to has more to do with p-hacking, underpowered studies, and publication bias, rather than usefulness in terms of practical utility. If anything, we're balanced way on the side of not repeating enough, while also not publishing the useful "useless" articles you refer to (like those with null results) that are less exciting but very important.

@BryanKrause I don't think you should compare my answer with a citation the asker didn't put in the question.  Also, I have now voted to close.


text:
Number of registrants for a virtual talk I organized turned out to be small, should I notify the speaker beforehand?
I'm a graduate student and I organised a series of online lectures spread over many days. The total number of registrants was 50 but those who actually came were around 10 to 11. Now, today one of the speakers did not agree to continue because he was expecting more attendees, so it was awkward.
There is one more lecture tomorrow. Should I tell the professor coming tomorrow to give a virtual talk that the number of the anticipated attendees is around 10? I fear that they won't come to the talk or make it awkward.
What is the best thing to do now?

If registration costs nothing, more than 1 in 5 turning up is pretty good in my experience.

It is always great to be truthful about such details, so you may distribute the available statistics. And if the speaker, unethically, refuses to talk, it is their own fault. It would be professional, if there is a planned event and if there is only one attendee, they deliver their session. If it was before the presentation days, and if the event was still in the registration days, it was another story, and they could apologize not to come at all! Now that it is started, refusing to deliver the talk, is indeed awkward. BTW, it is always a good idea to consult your mentor or manager about this.

@Roland "people are reluctant to act like a jerk" you are correct 99.99% of the times, but the academia is about carefully (self-)selected individuals :)

It would be courteous to tell them, and it give you options. I think the one who refused to speak to a small group was acting badly. You can't control the number of attendees, of course.
But if they do indicate they want to drop out you might try to convince them otherwise. The ones who do show are likely the most interested. And if they don't go through with the talk you can inform the ones registered that they can free their schedule.

It's a good idea to tell the lecturer beforehand. There's a surprising benefit of having a small group as if the lecturer is up for it, you could keep the session more interactive and personal. Instead of doing a lecture and then questions, you could consider doing something more casual and for example discussing through their content.
I believe this would be a good option as it would leverage the strengths of the online platform while giving the few participants more interesting experience while giving the lecturer an option to discuss through the content in a more in-depth way that fits the audience.

Thing to do now: cancelling the event would be very disrespectful to the 10 or so people that registered and made space in their agenda to attend to the lectures.
Things to do in the future: never contact that speaker again.

I think the speaker who refused to give the talk and the speaker scheduled for the next day are two different people. I believe "never contact that speaker again" refers to the former, but the OP seems to be asking for the latter (and in general).


text:
Is It Acceptable to Contact the Professor of a Publicly Uploaded Lecture?
A full graduate level course is publicly uploaded as a series of videos on Youtube.  Within the housekeeping section at the beginning of the course, the professor provides an email address as a means to contact him with questions.  No attempt is made to obscure this email address when the video is later uploaded.
Obviously, the professor's primary intent was for members of the class to have a way of contact, but would it be within the bounds of etiquette for a Youtube viewer following the course to email a question about the course material?  Suppose the question is of a sort that would not be well suited to ask in a Youtube comment.  Perhaps the question is long and includes images for clarification, but let's assume that the answer would not be proportionally long, that the professor could answer it fairly quickly and easily.  Would it be okay for a Youtube viewer not enrolled in the course (perhaps after the course had ended) to send such a question to the professor, maybe with the qualification, "Please do not feel compelled to take time out of your busy schedule to answer this, but I was watching your lectures on YT and was wondering..."?

"Perhaps the question is long and includes images for clarification..." I would not include images if at all possible (could make it look like spam or a crackpot email).

That salutation seems reasonable

Is their email address on their Faculty page? If so, it's public so of course you can email. They may not answer. Check first to see if your question is, for example, answered in their published research or, well, is something you should look up on your own.

Of course it is acceptable. But you also might not get a reply. The professor has to prioritise their actual students over someone who saw a Youtube video, and they are generally busy people that may not have time to respond to your question. However, they will not find it rude that you ask. You can find most professors' email addresses by simply Googling their name anyway.
To maximise the chance that you will get a reply I suggest writing your question in the most concise way possible (hint: not the way your question here is written) and in a way that clearly indicates that you've understood the basics in whatever field the lecture is about.


text:
Teaching for the first time: is reaching out to each student acceptable?
I work as a programmer as a full time job. Since I'm an experienced programmer and have some teaching aptitude, I've been asked to give a 40-hour course in C# programming to a computer science group of 70 students.
I've given two lessons so far (4 hours total), mixing lecture and practice sessions. I think I'm doing just fine but I'd like to reduce the number of students I'll lose along the way.
I thought I would make each student more engaged if I established a conversation with them, even if that might prove to be time consuming. I already have an ongoing conversation with (roughly) a fourth of them, since they reached out to me to ask questions and be advised on practical matters. Plus, they did the excercises I assigned to them.
How should I act with the rest of the students? Today I thought I would be sending a message to each of them (we're in a Slack team) just to check if they've understood the lessons and be helpful in giving advice in case they were stumped by simple matters they might be too shy/afraid to report.
On the other hand, I understand they are adults and that I should not babysit them. What would you do?
Thank you in advance.

It's acceptable. In some places it's even mandatory for instructors. It is time-consuming and you should carefully consider if it's worth the possibly indefinite expenditure of time (i.e., consider if what you're doing would scale if you were teaching 3, 4, or 5 such classes at once some day).

Having taught online for many years, I can say that you will get a large proportion of students who will not engage with you. Some of these are good students. Some of these are low-performing students. As long as the students know you are available to talk, that's what is important.
For instance, for in-person classes, I have office hours and only a small number of students will visit me during them. However, I regularly announce reminders of my office hours and when particular students are falling behind, I will reach out to them to see if they would like to visit me in my office. I do not schedule an individual meeting with all of the students in my class.
My advice is reach out to students who are falling behind individually and send full-class reminders that you are available to talk/video chat with about their questions or concerns. I actually think that having a quarter of students actively engaged with you without it being required is actually pretty good. Good luck!

Establishing cordial relations with students is almost always beneficial in education. By making connections with them you are providing a form OF social support that helps with retention and academic performance.
Your concern with babysitting relates more to.the students expertise in the subject matter rather than their age. Novice students normally require much more support than advanced students regardless of their age.

No. Do some simple math, if you have 70 students and "reaching out" to each of them takes 5 minutes this would take you 5:50, the better part of a work day. Moreover, "reaching out" via e-mail could mean getting replies at different times meaning it would take even more time.
Your intentions are admirable. However not everyone is going to grow up to be a programmer. Set expectations. Be humorous. Some students will find it easy, others will be completely incapable (You are doing them a favor by showing them this is not a career path). Invest your time identifying the ones that are struggling but putting in effort and put your effort there. Differentiate between those, and the students that want to politic for better grades.

TL;DR: Instructors have many responsibilities that they need to balance in order to be successful in their careers, and it is often not feasible to reach out to each student individually. So, rather than reaching out to each individual student, I suggest you make your students aware, collectively, of additional resources, and really be available for those individual students who want the additional help. For those lower-performing students that don't want the help or don't seek it out, they will fall behind and will need to do some much needed soul searching about why they are in the course in the first place.

To answer your question, we need to answer another question first: "acceptable" with respect to what?
Assuming the answer to the above question is "with respect to my other responsibilities," then I would say that, no, it is not acceptable to reach out to every student individually (especially in your case, having 70 students at present).
When instructors need to balance their teaching and other responsibilities (such as research, service, or, in your case, your full-time job), reaching out to all students collectively is the more efficient approach; this is accomplished by making students aware of additional resources that are available (e.g., office hours or additional interaction times, as needed, practice problems, etc.). I list all of the resources available to my students in my syllabus, and I make it a point to reiterate what the available resources are verbally throughout the semester. I also send emails to groups of lower-performing students to suggest that they make some time to come in and talk to me about things that are unclear.
Now, the individual students who really want additional help will seek it out. So, what to do about the students that don't seek out the desperately-needed help? Again, from time to time, I will remind students that help is available, but it is up to them to seek it out.
I suppose your stance on how to handle this scenario may be field dependent. In my field (engineering), I think that engineers-to-be should be "trained" in such a way that encourages them to take responsibility for learning and getting to the bottom of things that are unclear to them. (Perhaps in other fields, such a stance is not as important.)
I have especially noted that, in the follow-on courses, where the topical coverage is more advanced and at a deeper level, students who don't get the memo on how to take their studies seriously and take full responsibility for their learning are really not able to keep up; so much so, in fact, that the course pace is slowed down to the point that I am not able to cover all of the topics that one would nominally expect to cover. This is especially troublesome for the students who do put their best foot forward and are having to suffer the consequences because some of their classmates cannot keep up.
Thus the free ride of having the instructor do every little thing for the lower-performing students has to end at some point so that only those students who are willing to put in the effort are allowed to advance, and those that don't need to do some self reflection and try again.

Most instructors don't ask for feedback about the teaching or the material at this stage.  However, that doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't, if you wish to.
Think about exactly what you wish to know, and then try to put that into a very short form that you can link to or include in an email or a post in your classroom management software.
For example, you might be interested in asking

How does this course fit into your academic and career goals?
How much time did it take you to do Hw # n?
What is your preferred way of getting help when you have difficulties with understanding some course material or completing some homework (email, course management software, office hours, special appointment)


text:
A Not Very Approachable Professor
I am in a math PhD program, and I feel that my long interest in a particular area of mathematics is discouraged here.
I have an interest in an area of mathematics, but the leading person doing the research at the institution which I am going for PhD is not very approachable. I went to office hours for one of the classes I am taking and this person (to me) seemed very stand-offish and was ready to let me go out the door for a simple question regarding the class material. The professor was also very critical of my background and where I got my previous degrees/experiences at after a brief conversation. Thus, the experiences with said individual lead me to feel discouraged and potentially lead me away from my interest in said specialization within math, as they are the leading faculty in this institution doing the type of research I am interested in.
What should I do in this case? Should I just accept things how they are and try a different approach, or is it even worthwhile to try to transfer somewhere else?

Maybe you haven't proven yourself to the professor.  Top people tend to have a high minimum.  Otherwise, you don't get a look in.  As an aside, why base your worth on someone's opinion? There has been countless stories about naysayers.  If you listen to them, they will destroy you. Not worth your time.  Everyone has something to contribute.

Going somewhere else? Personality match is also important for a supervisor-supervisee relationship.

How long have you known the professor?(or better... how long have they known you?) Where are you at in your program? Have you completed any of the qualifying exams yet? If you are in a class with the professor, how are you doing in it? Are you acing all your assignments and contributing to classroom discussions, or are you missing points and flying under the radar in class?

Another late answer.
In undergrad, there is a maxim that you should "choose your professors as carefully as your classes." I think in hindsight, most graduates agree with this -- we've all had random classes taught by great professors that were meaningful, while great subjects taught by lousy professors were worthless.
How much more crucial, then, is the choice of your PhD advisor! An advisor in the right area but with the wrong personality is a terrible choice. An advisor in a merely acceptable subfield but the right personality is a much better choice.
Ideally, you will (a) find someone at your current school who will make a good advisor even if their research area isn't obviously aligned with your current interests, or (b) find that the professor in question is actually reasonable once you get to know him/her. But, I think transferring out would be preferable to working for an unreasonable person -- I've known multiple people who stayed in grad school for 10+ years, and the common problem was an unreasonable advisor.

An advisor in the wrong subfield but the right personality is a much better choice. - I half agree with this.  Working with a friendly advisor on a topic you hate might not be any better.  However, I strongly believe that most mathematicians would be happy doing many different kinds of mathematics.

Fair point, updated my answer.

My only suggestion might be to first study up on the professor's publications if you haven't already.  Then think about where your interests overlap with the professor's.  Do you have ideas for extending the professor's research, by chance?  Talk with the professor about what projects they are currently working on, and see if there is any chance you can voluntarily help out with them, even just attending meetings to listen in and learn more.
It can backfire.  I did what I just suggested at the very beginning of graduate school and my advisor was taken aback, I guess, not thinking that a first year grad student is ready to even start talking about research ideas yet.  It ended up delaying my masters because I had to just sit on my hands and wait for an opportunity, but the next year, the department changed their thinking and started encouraging first year grad students to get involved in research projects sooner rather than later.
One other big difference in my case, is that the professor picked me (admitted me), I didn't pick the professor.

Sounds pretty similar to a friend who was is nearly finished with his PhD in mathematics. His relationship with his professor eventually became unmanageable, but I believe there are steps you can take to improve your relationship. Try to prove yourself by asking the professor if there is something he needs help working on. Even offering to do a small thing, may go a long way.
Either way don't get discouraged, I've heard this story quite a few times, and as long as you don't get too discouraged, you should be fine.

The approach you recommend sounds reasonable, but the reality can be very volatile depending on the subject within mathematics, the degree of sophistication of the faculty person, and so on. If a very-young person asked me if they could help me on something, I'd not be offended, etc. (by this point in my life), and would try to take it as a well-intentioned gesture, but it would also signal to me a significant cluelessness about the non-immediateness of the issues I (and many other relatively experienced people) face. In particular, at best, it would not really help develop a positive ...

... relationship, and might really annoy the faculty person, depending on their personality and frame of mind.

I recognize that this response is late, and that I absolutely cannot speak to experiences that are PhD specific, however I am interested as to how OP ultimately handled this, and in the event that the situation is still unresolved or someone else looks to this question for an answer I may be of some assistance.
First of all, is it at all reasonable to abandon your chosen field of study or completely upend your life because someone is "unapproachable?" I hope that anyone who is pursuing a terminal degree would say no.  My approach has always been that professors are available to me whether they like it or not, and I have yet to have this belief invalidated.  A major commitment associated with a position in academia is teaching and interacting with students, and while it may not always appear this way, this commitment is likely what drew the professor to academia in the first place.  One of the most enriching academic relationships I have developed is with a professor who is absolutely the most unnapproachable and stand offish professor within the college. He regularly tells students that the world needs t-shirt salesmen, destroys incorrectly formatted homework in front of the class, and unilaterally refuses to answer any questions related to problem sets to give only a handful of very real reasons he has earned this reputation.  However, I have found that well formulated questions can be utterly irresistible to his teaching sensibilities. Additionally, he is absolutely one of the staunchest advocates for student rights that I have encountered. He labors intensively to foster the environment he believes is most beneficial to the students who will actually carry through with their study in the field, whether it is because of him or in spite of him.  I can guarantee you that any student who would transfer or quit because of their interactions with him are not the students who he spends time benefiting.
Often times people are not hard to approach because they want to be that way, humans are social creatures.  That being said, be selective in the manner that you do approach some people.  Some professors are receptive to a student establishing a dialogue through a "simple question" while other professors, like the one in my example and I am inclined the one in your question, believe that a student has more to gain by investigating simple questions on their own, especially considering that you are pursuing a PhD in mathematics.  My advice would be not to approach the professor with simple questions, you will gain far more from answering simple questions on your own, after all a very valid problem solving technique is breaking down a complicated question into easier component questions, and recognize that if you absolutely cannot answer a simple question on your own it is because it is really a complicated question that the professor may be more willing to address when posed as such.
Most importantly, I really hope that you DO NOT leave or abandon your chosen field simply because you see someone else as an obstacle.  It will never pay off to hurt yourself in an attempt to hurt someone else.  If you have a well formulated question ask it and if the professor doesn't like it then fuck him (new to the community I will edit this if the f-word is frowned upon) be persistent enough that he realizes that it will be easier to help you than to belittle you, but recognize that you are being held to a standard which requires you to answer questions on your own if it is in your power to do so, and realize that if you demonstrate to him that you see the value of his time and only make use of it when necessary that he will likely be far more receptive to you requesting his time.  Ultimately, there will be people in your life who ARE INTERESTED in making your life worse and actively work to do so.  My experience has been that these people do not have PhD's and have not spent their lives making far less money than they could elsewhere educating the next generation, but even if that is not the case,  it is past time for you to decide whether or not you will allow them.

First of all, is it at all reasonable to abandon your chosen field of study or completely upend your life because someone is "unapproachable?" — No, but it might be reasonable to pursue your chosen field of study somewhere else, with someone else.


text:
Question about asking letter of recommendation to non faculty researcher
I know similar questions have been asked before in here, but this is slightly different direction of question.
I'm applying for tenure-track assistant faculty position in my field. But one position requires 5 letter of recommendations. I'm currently working as a post-doc and I know 4 tenured faculty who could write a letter of recommendation for me. But I'm really not sure who should be the 5th one.
Who should I ask to write a letter or recommendation
In here, the answerer wrote

Familiarity with your work (research, teaching, service). You want them to provide details for how promising your research is, how you would work with colleagues, how you'd teach and mentor students, and so on.
Familiarity with academic work (tenure-track or tenured professors > other kinds of recommendations). From the perspective of credibility, someone who is familiar with the positions you apply for will be more readily believed when they recommend you. Also, they'll be more likely to mention details that speak directly to the position you'll serve in.

In my current research center, I have a collaborator who is NOT tenured faculty. But he has been full-time research associate in here for 5 yrs, and we researched together and he knows well about my research.
Based on the 2 criteria from other stackexchange answer, can I ask for a letter of recommendation from him? I mean, he is not a faculty, but this application is about tenure-track faculty. Still, could his letter be regarded as a good letter of recommendation?

How important is research as compared to teaching in the job you seek?

@Buffy It is research university so research will be more important than teaching. But it is public (state) university at the same time, so teaching will not be lightly considered. But just research duty seems more important.

Strive for some balance in your letters. At a State U. teaching, even of undergraduates, is pretty important. So don't focus it too heavily toward research. But if one or more of your faculty writers can say a bit about teaching, then a research associate should work fine. Especially since five letters are needed instead of the usual three (say).
But it might also be possible to have the PI of the lab review any letter and make comments to the writer. Or possibly another faculty member who knows both of you. The researcher might not be very experienced at this, and it is possible to say things that give an unintended impression.


text:
Is it possible (and also meaningful) to do two PhDs?
During my PhD I have developed two different research projects in parallel. This was not planned from the beginning, it just happened this way. I am sure each of these could be presented as a PhD and I am thinking on the possibility of presenting both, one after the other one. Would that make sense?
I had a quick talk with my Professor although I didn't ask him about this option because I had the fear he would find it a bit arrogant. So first of all, I wanted to get to know if it is meaningful.
Thanks in advance

See also: Is it sensible to do two PhDs simultaneously?

You cannot obtain two Ph.D. degrees by carrying out two research projects in the same field, albeit in different topics – it just does not make sense. Ph.D. is a per-discipline degree or a per-field-of-study degree (the latter applies to interdisciplinary fields).

I am not sure you understand what a PhD is. In many disciplines (e.g. CS) you need multiple good publications (>3) to obtain a PhD. Thus, you have to work on many different projects (somewhat related but not entirely) to actually produce these publications.

Thanks for your reply. However I understand my question is substantially different from the previous threat on this topic. In that one, the person is asking if it is worthy to work in this direction as a future plan. In mine, I already have two fully finished projects and I'm wondering whether presenting them both as PhDs is a good idea.

In addition to the earlier comments, I don't see how you can submit two PhD theses when you are only registered on one PhD course.

You don't need 2 PhDs, you only need 1 good one. Why not try to merge all this work into one, strong PhD dissertation?

There are many more interesting groups you could present the second project to than a doctoral committee.
Go forth and publish.

Thanks for the reply. Sorry, what kind of groups do you mean? Both projects are done at a university.

Conferences, peer-reviewed journals


text:
Can I submit two papers to the same conference event as me the first author?
I have two studies that are not related to each other but in the same domain (Social Media Analysis) and I already submitted one of them to a conference as my name the main author.
-Can I submit the second paper where I am also the main author to the same conference event? I have read the conferance regulation but did not find any related information for such an issue.
EDIT: I also tried to contact them, but since two weeks, still no answer and the deadline is within 2 days. And normally if it ok to submit two papers, will I be having two-time slot for the presentation, or will it be one slot to manage both?

For many conferences (though, I don't know if it is the norm in your discipline), it is common to submit two papers as a first author/presenter, unless the conference states that it prohibits this. In your case, it does not. When you state that you are the "main" author, there is a difference if you are the sole author or the first author. Some conferences do not want someone to submit multiple papers as a presenter, because it can create difficulties in scheduling the sessions. In these cases, they may allow multiple submissions as a first author as long as it indicates that a different person is presenting each paper.
Good luck!

Yes, unless the conference regulation specifies a different policy, it's fully OK to submit multiple papers as main author to the same conference.

and will I be able to have two separate time slot in the presentation to present them? or will it be on slot where I have to manage both papers?

Normally, the conference organizers should notice and won't schedule your talks inside the same time slot. To be on the safe side, I would send them an e-mail in case both submissions are accepted.

If you haven't found anything in the conference regulations, the best solution is to contact the organizers directly and ask.
Since nothing is specified against it directly, you can try and submit two papers. However, keep in mind that they may nonetheless decide to disqualify the second submission (for example, if they simply did not think to add this rule to the submission guidelines, which can happen).

I think this is a poor answer. If it doesn't prohibit, which is EXTREMELY rare in any case, it is a fair assumption it is permitted. If it is prohibited it should be stated in the call.


text:
How do journal/conference reviewers make sure of the results' integrity for submitted research papers?
How do reviewers/referees make sure that the author has done the work as he described in his paper and the written results are achieved?
Do they ask for the code or the tools that you have used? Will they test the output to make sure that the results are not faked?
I know that reviewers with 20+ years experience in the specific field can figure out if the results are real or fake or if they are even accomplishable, but it is still easy for the writer to fake results without any monitors..
For example in CS machine learning, you can extract an extra feature from the texts and claim that you got better results in classification than others have done before, when in reality you did not. So how do reviewers make sure that your work is sincere?

I don't think this is a duplicate.  The linked paper asks specifically about data manipulation; this question asks about more general dishonesty.  (For example: How do we know that the authors' code is consistent with the paper's description of the algorithm?)

@JeffE same thought, I don't even know how they voted to close the question...

Of course you're free to accept whichever answer you want. But it's weird that you'd pick one that doesn't answer your question and has 10 folds votes lag behind the most voted one. It's seems you're more interested in validating your frustration with peer review (a specific case maybe) than genuinely interested in an answer.

@CapeCode 10 folds votes lag behind the most voted answer doesn't make it wrong answer. Anyway, as u said, I am free to accept any answer. For instance, It will be more interesting if you asked why community is voting to close a question where they claim it duplicates but in reality it is not!

There are notorious wrongful claims that peer review failed to catch for the exact reason mentioned in the question. Reviewers don't and most of the time cannot check the validity of the data.
Cold Fusion, is an example where hundreds of peer-reviewed manuscripts got published.
Hendrik Schoen Scandal is another case where lots of fabricated data got published in very high impact journals.

They don't. Reviewing papers is volunteer work, which has to be done besides the regular job. So no more than half a day is spent on reading the paper and writing the review. That is enough to filter out obvious scams. But for more sophisticated fraud we rely on people trying to use the results once published and finding out that it does not work. The threat of the subsequent sanctions (and for most, the internalized honor code) is hoped to prevent most fraud.

Relying on people to approve someone research fraud is not an effective method to detect scams and most probably the author who do this will have a plan B, and if this author is a Ph.D. student where he already gained his degree will not affect him directly as it will affect his/her supervisor...

I don't understand your comment. A review won't approve anyone, as it is blind and we don't know who wrote it. The only thing that is being evaluated is the paper.

Are you suggesting that the penalties for getting caught with fraud are not severe? If that is the case, then you are simply wrong.

Peer review is not intended to detect fraud. So the fact that it does not do that is thus not a bad thing.

How it simply wrong? if the penalties are not enough severe, then we will find more and more research papers as scams...

It is simply wrong because they are severe.

severe for whom? the student who already get his doctoral degree and already working in industry or for the professor who was considered as the main supervisor to the student?

@Krebto: There are consequences for the advisor, obviously, and s/he is certainly in a position to be able to tell if the work done by the student is genuine. They would get the fallout and that is how it should be, because their role, in part, is ensuring the integrity of their students. Besides, if they really committed a serious fraud, I'm guessing the word would get out of academia. I doubt the integrity (and a reputation of integrity) is something irrelevant to an industry researcher.

On a different note, when you say about not spending more than half a day reading the paper, I think this depends on the discipline. If someone did a full math paper review in half a day, I would say that they most likely did an extremely sloppy job (assuming the paper is not total bunk).

@Krebto There have been cases of PhD degrees being revoked later when fraud was discovered. This obviously also has pretty severe consequences for the job situation of the person.

@Krebto, I think you make some valid points, and obviously you have some concerns about the validity of peer review as part of the scientific process. I don't really know what you expect to get out of this question though - Maarten has answered your question accurately and succinctly. Arguing that it's not good enough isn't going to change the reality.

One should note, though, that the majority of papers if never thoroughly read after they are published. They are cited once or twice in the introductory section of a paper (author X has also used method Y), but probably nobody digged into the details of proofs or reproduced any experimental results.

"has to be done besides the regular job" I'd say that reviewing is part of the regular job.

@MaartenBuis A review won't approve anyone, as it is blind and we don't know who wrote it — Not in all areas.  Theoretical CS conferences do not use double-blind reviewing.  (Theory conference submissions are much more often incorrect than dishonest.)

In software conferences, it is becoming a trend to have artifact evaluation sessions where produced data or software is provided to be evaluated according to the claims given in the submitted paper.
While the process is currently optional, it does increase confidence in the claims that are made by the papers that had undergone such process.


text:
Are appendices included in the maximum page count for conference papers?
I am writing research paper following the ACM 2-column format in Latex. The conference is limiting the number of pages by only 6-8 pages. So far, my paper has a lot of figures and tables and would be impossible to fit them all in 8 pages.
So what I want to do, is to include an extra page as an Appendix at the end. will it be considered as 8 pages or 9 pages? Will it be considered that I am following the conference regulation?

I think this might depend on the conference in question. However, in my rather limited experience with CS conferences, I have only seen a handful of papers with appendices. In all cases, the paper stayed within the 8 page limit, appendix included. So I'd expect your case to be considered as exceeding the limit.

I'd also suggest that you change the question title to something like "Are appendices included in the maximum page count for conference papers?"

@InquisitiveLurker okay thanks for your input.

Ask the conference organizers.

Are appendices included in the maximum page count for conference publications?

The only way to know for sure is to ask the conference organizers, or look for instructions for authors on the website of the conference.
In my experience, the appendix will sometimes not be included in the page limit (8 pages + 10 pages of appendix is fine), but the appendix will not be published in the conference proceedings (if any). It will thus only be used during the review process. Therefore, you would want to fit important figures/tables in the main text, not in the appendix.

It will only be used during the review process, at the discretion of the reviewers. The reviewers are often free to ignore the additional material.

Are appendices included in the maximum page count for conference publications?

In my experience from CS, typically yes. That is because the page limit has (at least) three purposes:

To ensure everyone gets the same space to make their point (whether that increases fairness or actually decreases it - different topics may require different amounts of space - is a different question).
To limit the amount of information/contributions per publication, lest the conference talk be just an exemplary excerpt that fails to encompass the entirety of the paper.
To actually limit page size in printed proceedings. I base this on the observation that I have come across conferences that would charge authors for extra pages, and even a few that would charge authors or put a (lower-than-total-pages) limit on pages with coloured content.

It is for the latter point that "bonus material" such as appendices also counts towards the maximum paper length.

In my experience, it depends; make sure to check the submission guidelines.
For example, from the top two database conferences, SIGMOD 2017 research papers have the requirement "12 pages + 4 pages for bibliography/appendix", while VLDB 2017 states, "The maximum research paper length, inclusive of ALL material, is 12 pages. "
And, as you can see from the other answers, even within CS conferences, practices vary wildly. So, the only way to really know is to find the instructions for the conference you are targeting. If you cannot find specific instructions regarding an appendix, and cannot contact the organizers, you should probably assume that the page limit stated is strict and includes anything you might include in the paper, including appendices and references.


text:
Can I include Figures and Texts from IEEE/ACM publications in my PhD thesis?
I am currently writing my Ph.D. thesis. The thesis is in computer science specifically the data science domain. The thesis will be based on my 8 first-authored publications in IEEE, ACM and springer. The final thesis will be eventually available online for public by the university library.
Can I use the text and figures I created and published in the conferences papers? to what extent can I copy from them? will it be considered self-plagiarism if I do so?
Looking into some of my previous colleagues' Ph.D. published thesis, I found that they have used the same exact text and figures without even citing their original IEEE papers(they mentioned in the introduction a list of papers references that are used in the thesis) while some created complete new figures to represent the results and some just included the figures while citing their papers in the captain.
PS1: I Wrote the copyrights@ieee.org and will update the question if I get a reply.
PS2: The answer from IEEE is (That is indeed acceptable, as IEEE allows authors to use everything short of their entire paper for thesis reuse without requiring permission, provided that everything is cited. If you need to use an entire paper however, you will need to contact our permissions department (pubs-permissions@ieee.org). The following URLs may be of use to your for this and future post-publication work, and the first link specifically deals with thesis reuse.
https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/choose-a-publishing-agreement/avoid-infringement-upon-ieee-copyright/
https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/become-an-ieee-journal-author/publishing-ethics/guidelines-and-policies/post-publication-policies/
https://conferences.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/author-ethics/guidelines-and-policies/post-publication-policies/  )

You will need to consult your local institutional policy to determine whether reusing text from prior publications is permitted, or whether the thesis needs to be all new at time of submission. That varies, and without that information people can only be speculating.

It would be good if you posted your edit (and @MichaelHomer, perhaps your comment) as an answer instead.

You need to consult your institutional regulations with regard to the self-plagiarism question. Nobody here can help you with that.
Requirements for doctoral theses vary, and span the full range of

The thesis work must not have been published previously in any way.
You can reuse all the text, but have to edit it into a coherent whole.
You literally staple three papers together and hand it in.

and many points in between. You may not be allowed to do this at all, or it may be the standard way a thesis is written where you are.
While everybody thinks that what they're used to is universal, only someone who knows your actual institution's rules can answer that question usefully for you. If you've been seeing it happen plenty, presumably it's fine - but you want to know where the line is.

On the copyright issue, both the IEEE and the ACM permit anywhere up to total reuse of the contents of accepted papers within a thesis or dissertation, including figures, as long as a citation to the version of record of the paper is included. This is an explicit part of the copyright agreement that you make when publishing the work for virtually all legitimate publishers in one form or another (sometimes by reference to a published policy).
For the ACM:

Authors can include partial or complete papers of their own (and no fee is expected) in a dissertation as long as citations and DOI pointers to the Versions of Record in the ACM Digital Library are included.

For the IEEE:

You may reuse your published article in your thesis or dissertation without requesting permission, provided that you fulfill the following requirements ... [fine-grained citation format rules for text and figures follow]

(You can infer from the existence of this blanket licence term that such theses are common, but they're not universal)
If "they mentioned in the introduction a list of papers references that are used in the thesis" and inside captions, your colleagues have likely satisfied that requirement. The IEEE also requests copyright symbol markers virtually everywhere, though to-the-letter observance of that is limited in my experience.

Generating new figures from previous data sets may well be outside of the copyright transferred to the publisher and not require their permission at all, but it will depend on the nature of the figures. It's not required in order to reuse them within your thesis, but you might prefer to have them a consistent style throughout anyway. You can cite them with "adapted from ..." if it's derivative.

There are actually two issues, copyright and self-plagiarism.
The latter is easy to avoid if you quote and cite the earlier work in the thesis. Cite it as you would cite the work of another. This holds for both the text and the images.
The copyright issue can be a bit more involved, but likely is not. When you give copyright to a publisher you normally get back a license for certain uses. Among the typical permitted uses is for a dissertation. You may have the specific wording of your license for reuse somewhere in you email (or paper mail), but both IEEE and ACM will have them online if you look. This license for reuse is typical of all reputable publishers, not just those that are also professional societies. But, you should quote and cite even here. But longer quotations than are typically allowed (work of others) is almost certainly ok but not unlimited.
Your colleagues should have done this also.

Although many things related to intellectual properties are a grey area, the only certain thing is that copyrights do not cover the pixel of a figure, or the wording in a sentence, copyrights cover the intellectual property.

I found that they have used the same exact text and figures without
even citing their original IEEE papers while some created complete new
figures to represent the results

While the first group that used same text and figures without citing IEEE papers probably broke the copyright (maybe they submitted the thesis before IEEE papers?), the second group definitely broke the copyright, because they knew they were representing the same intellectual content!
Stay away from shortcuts, ask the permission for reproducing the figures/plots/etc. or simply cite your own work with something like "see Figure 7 from Krebto (2020d)" without including the figure.

The final thesis will be eventually available online for public by the
university library.

Yes, but I am 99.9999% sure that when you upload the final PDf to the library for publication, you will sign some document stating that you have all the rights and you obtained permission to reproduce any contents included in the thesis. Since you are asking the question, it seems you do not want to declare something you know is false.

Both the publishers mentioned provide a blanket licence to reuse paper contents in your thesis, and all of the uses identified in the question clearly comply with that. This doesn’t seem to answer the question at all and in parts seems outright incorrect.

I think you can include figures or text from IEEE papers with citation. To be on the safe side, ask the editors of the journal, if you need a permission.
For more explanation, please read here.

With "here" do you mean here: https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/copyright-policy.html ?

Just click on here and you will got to https://libraryguides.vu.edu.au/ieeereferencing/figurestablesequations


text:
Citing Ramanujan's notebooks
I am citing a specific entry in Ramanujan's Notebooks and have a question: should I cite Berndt (the author of the aforementioned text) and Ramanujan directly (to each their own citation) even though I did not consult Ramanujan's actual notebooks?
I am asking because I saw this done in this article published in the Proceedings of the AMS, who cite Berndt's Ramanujan's Notebooks as well as Ramanujan himself (see the first sentence of the article for the relevant citations.)

If you use Harvard referencing, do it as it says, ie use the method for the system you  follow.

There is some inconsistency in how different sources list Ramanujan's Notebooks and the two people deserving credit for it:

The Library of Congress catalog entry lists Ramanujan a bit ambiguously under "Personal name", but describes the work as "edited by" Berndt.
The British Library catalog entry lists Ramanujan under "Author" and Bruce Berndt under "Contributor" with the notation "Ed." (again implying that Berndt's role is that of editor).
Google Books lists Bruce Berndt as "Editor" and has the convoluted string "Srinivasa Ramanujan Aiyangar Bruce C. Berndt, Bruce C. Berndt, Ramanujan" under "Author".

It sounds like these three sources pretty much agree that Ramanujan is an author and Berndt is an editor. I don't know if there's an authoritative answer to the question of whether Bruce Berndt is also a co-author. I can only assume that either one of the famous national libraries I linked to above would be regarded as authoritative enough that no one will fault you for relying on their listings.
From a more philosophical point of view, whether Bruce Berndt is considered an editor or author is immaterial. His compilation and editing of Ramanujan's original notebooks was a monumental achievement, and that is what really matters.

For other cases where it's not established that it's an author & editor, you might use an "indirect citation" (aka "secondary source").  But how you do it is a function of what citation style you're using.  See https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/7776/1622 / https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/45374/1622


text:
In a mathematics publication, is it preferable to state all definitions immediately, or as they arise?
I am writing a mathematics paper for publication which frequently:

Uses special functions the average reader would not be aware of.
Uses my own notation.

Within the first section of my paper (introduction/preliminaries), I define the relevant special functions. Should I also define my own notation within the preliminaries, or wait until its use naturally arises within the paper to introduce it? My notation can be understood without context, though its usefulness will obviously not be clear.

Have you got a specific journal in mind? If so, have a look at that journal's submission guidelines.  It varies from journal to journal.

I am not aware that such guidelines are used in mathematics and for me this would be a sufficient reason not to publish in such a journal. It’s just to much a question of personal style and there are good reason for doing one or the other (or even doing a hybrid solution).

Have you discussed best writing practices (for your discipline) with your adviser? Probably the best qualified person to talk about the structure of a manuscript (from a short communication through journal papers to thesis) is the senior academic in your chosen field guiding and supervising you on best research practices - your adviser?

There is no general rule. Different authors have different opinions about this. To my knowledge no mathematics journal has guidelines about this sort of thing.
A rule of thumb could be that if your notation is going to be used throughout the paper, then it should be introduced at the beginning in a special section called "notations", "conventions", "background", or however you want to say this. If the notation is only going to be used locally in some section or even one proof, then I would introduce it at that point.
Another possibility is to make a categorized table of notations at the beginning or an alphabetical list of notation with references to where the object is defined, if your paper is long and complex enough to justify it. This can of course be combined with the previous rule of thumb.
I would recommend against making the "background" section as part of the introduction. The introduction is supposed to be something that can be read by almost everyone slightly interested in the paper, to know what the main results are and how they fit with the general literature, and in case of stars aligning, whether the paper is worth reading. (The abstract is to decide whether you'll even glance at the paper at all.) Keep it short and simple and avoid introducing too many things at once. In my opinion it is a mistake made by many younger, and also more experienced authors to make the introduction way too technical.

A couple personal thoughts: (1) it's okay to put a notation section at the end of the introduction like acknowledgements if it's short, particularly if some of your later sections are more-or-less independent.  (2) What I define in the notation section at the beginning are things like quasi-standard notation, things that are easy to define and frequently used, and notational remarks that will be useful for someone skimming the paper.  For bjects that require some exposition or notation used only locally/infrequently, I typically define them as they arise.

There's also the issue of definitions that rely on some intermediate results to make sense (if you're defining the doohicky of x to be the smallest real number such that something holds, the proof that there is a smallest real number with that property better be either before or immediately after that definition).

@user3482749 I don't know, that seems easy enough to finesse. Instead of "The doohicky of x is the smallest real number r such that P(x, r).", something like "If there is any real number r such that P(x, r), then the doohicky of x is the smallest such r." should work fine. Later it can be a nice surprise that every x has a doohicky, but it needn't appear in the definition. I think it's usually possible to pull such shenanigans.

@DanielWagner The question is whether there's an actual benefit to doing so.

What you should prioritize in any paper, mathematics or otherwise, is readability. Organize the paper so that your reader can comfortably follow your argument without a lot of jumping around.
In a short, relatively "flat" paper, almost any organization will probably be ok. Flat in the sense of later parts not depending fundamentally on earlier parts.
But in a longer paper it becomes an issue, for me at least. Things should be introduced with some context: Why is this being introduced here. If I see a definition, I expect to be able to easily grok why it is here from some prior context or by being used quite soon in the development. A definition or piece of notation introduced without context is just irritating.
As an extreme example, imagine a calculus or abstract algebra textbook in which all of the book's definitions are in the first chapter along with every notation that will be used.
I'll note that the very purpose of defining things in mathematics is to give us something to think (and write) about. Defining something with no context is just noise. We define rational number or Abelian group for example, because we want to say things about them. If you define them, but don't soon discuss them, the reader has no context.
So, first think about the flow of the paper from the standpoint of the reader. I think that in most work with any significance the "just in time" organization will probably work better. I'll admit there may be exceptions. But it is the readability that should be prioritized, not some abstract concept of an "ideal" organization.

Yes!  But I would recommend both.  It is at least equally annoying to be skimming a paper only to find a piece of information/definition that I could only figure out by essentially reading the entire paper up to that point to find where it is talked about, but could have been a bullet point in an appendix/preliminary section.  And using the text book comparison again, they also solve this by doing both.

@whn internal cross references.

Everything you write in a paper should be the answer to the question that is in the reader's mind at that point. So the title needs to answer the question: "Do I bother with this at all?".
The abstract, as @user119516 says, answers "do I glance at this?", and the introduction answers "do I read this?".
If you follow that principle then it is obvious that you do not divorce your definitions or novel notation from the points in the paper where they are used, because until the reader reaches those points they have no question in their mind about them.
If your paper is very long then it might help the reader if you collect all your notation and maybe your definitions into some helpful appendix, but don't interrupt the flow of the paper with such stuff.
Fashion plays a part here. At one time, and maybe still in some sub-disciplines, it was considered reasonable for the first sentence of a pure mathematics paper to  be something like : "Let A be set ...". No-one writing with the reader in mind would do so, surely.