text:
What can I do if a student in my lab threatens to tell lies about me, and my advisor doesn't want to fire her?
I'm doing my Masters right now and I am a new lab member (I've been there for just 4 months). A undergrad student didn't like it when I told her to follow biosafety rules when handling dangerous chemical reagents. So by e-mail she said she would tell our advisor lies about me and that he will believe in her because she's there for 2 years and he likes her, and I am a newbie.
I took that issue to the advisor, who read the e-mail that she sent and he was 100% supportive of me. However, they used to go the same church and he either pities her or really likes her, I don't know. Then he asked me to forgive her. But I can't, I can't even look her in the face anymore. I think she's evil and mean: she even told me I'm making my own grave and would spread lies about me to him. Now he knows the truth about her, but I think their personal relationship is blinding him. He should fire her! But he wants her there, so...
I don't want to change labs because I really like my PI. How should I deal with this situation?
She and I will have a one-to-one meeting next week, and my advisor told me she will apologize to me in that meeting, but I'm still worried she can sabotage my experiments in the future.  We are not in the USA.
UPDATE: I had another conversation with my PI today, and he's dealing with this situation as "teenage fighting" - his words, not mine. He's being complacent about all of this and laughs about my worries and insecurities. He does not think that abusive and threating language from a student to another to be a big deal.
Religion plays a big role here I guess. He does not want to fire her in ANY hypothesis. Same religion; knows her parents and so on...
I really really like him, but I don't know if I do anymore. I think he's not providing a safe mental health environment for me...
He was too perfect to be true...
UPDATE 2
She lied, lied and lied again and it blew up on her face! Now, ALL* lab members wanted her to go. The PI cut her funding, and she finally left our lab! Now we can live at peace, right? Not so fast...
*She has a friend (just one - and also an undergrad like her) that is still here. And he's full of revenge! Another sociopathic liar. Sabotage is being a big issue here. All mice from a PhD student were found dead inside their cages. We cannot prove anything, but they had a fight two days earlier... Also, controlled drugs are now missing, and my PI is being once again complacent about it. I can denounce him to our correspondent DEA, but it could backfire somehow, I don't know. He still likes me, but I don't think I like him anymore. Actually, nobody in our lab trust him anymore.

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She has been mean to you, not the PI. He clearly signals that he likes you and your work. You say that he also realises she has an immature attitude. I think that you are in a good position here, unless you mess it up.
The superviser clearly sees the situation and - in veiled form - tells you to be the mature part of the interaction. When he tells you to forgive her, that's very clearly what he means. In short, at this stage, you have to show maturity. Clearly, you need to work on that (I quote your response: "Hahaha...." - SE is not the place for such formulations).
You should not worry too much to prove that she lies about you, as the superviser made very clear that he will not pay heed to her stories about you (why otherwise would he have emphasised that you are one of the brightest students he had?). He has sent you a clear message of confidence.
Whether he likes her or not, you do not know, but it seems very clear, even through your report, that he takes pity on her. He will not fire her; it is not your job to make him do so. He also will not remove you, unless you decide to go. He seems a very reasonable person.
As for her using threatening language, you have a number of options: when she does that, you ignore it. Or else, you find a reason for yourself to go away, without responding, to some made-up excuse (for yourself), such as the bathroom. Or else, you respond: "This is not the place for threatening language. Please refrain from such language, it is inappropriate to talk like that to your colleagues." - or something along those lines. In a cool, calm, and collected manner. If she indeed has the maturity of a 12-year old, she may not absorb the words, but she will absorb the tone.
She presses the buttons where she sees an effect in. If you signal to her that you have no business with her, and that you are unaffected by her threats, you will become an uninteresting target.
Forget about winning/losing. You just do not have to play her game, you decide which games you play, and which ones you don't.
Bottom line: stay away from her; relax, the PI trusts you; and follow your maturity level and do not let yourself be dragged down to hers. She is not the one to set the agenda, your PI is, and he unambiguously signalled his trust in you. When he sets the meeting, if she apologises, graciously accept the apology (even if you do not believe in it, take it at face value), but still stay away. Her safety procedures are not your business anymore - you have made your case.

I like your answer, but for the kind of threats OP received, you cannot stay silent: yes, stay composed (and certainly no giggling), but this is serious bs.

@gnometorule This, indeed, is the call of the OP. Of course, one can take the threats at face value and fully escalate, in which Tom Au's alternative advice applies. However, first of all, the PI does seem to have a good overview over the situation; on escalation, he will cease to be a likely ally. If it is really immaturity, maximum disconnect may be just the action of choice. The key is not to play the game of the OP's enemy. Of course, caution still applies and the OP will have to use his more detailed knowledge about the details of the case to make up their mind.

I would also add that any threats she makes should be documented. If she sends an email, forward it to the PI. If she writes it down, give the PI a photocopy. If it's solely verbal, at least tell the PI as soon as possible. It makes it much easier to prove that she did something if there is evidence that she threatened to do so a week beforehand. As soon as there's evidence she carries out her threats, however minor they were, any further threats will be taken much more seriously. With things that can impact your career - like sabotaging experiments - that's very important.

I'm a little concerned by your last sentence. If the safety violations are egregious and the OP works in the same lab, this could represent a real danger. That said, the violations being egregious is a major assumption that isn't clear from the OP's question.

@jpmc26 You have a point if it is danger to life and limb (independently whether it is by ignoring safety rules or actual physical threats). I was assuming a more generic issue of safety rules at which responsibility lies at the lab director (where the buck ultimately stops). Again, I point to Tom Au's alternative response for this context.

@anaximander On the face of it, that seems really reasonable.  But the reality is that the PI is clearly aware of this young woman's behavior, and repeatedly stating and restating the case may end up giving the impression that you either don't trust the PI and feel a need to prove that he is wrong for keeping her around. I don't know that that is a wise course of action.  The matter has been decided, it would be best to either let lying dogs lie or just leave if the OP finds the situation distasteful (my personal choice, but it's the OPs call on that one.)

@JayCarr Of course, there's no need to go overboard with it - all I'm suggesting is that when a threat is made that, if carried out, would present a serious problem (sabotaging experiments, telling other members of staff things that would have serious consequences if believed) then it's worth passing it on, just as a polite FYI, to make the PI's job of working out who's telling the truth somewhat easier.

Collecting the evidence of those threats is good advice. Forwarding each item to the PI seems excessive, though.

@anaximande Ah, yes, I'd agree with that sentiment.  I think I made a couple of illogical leaps on your behalf, sorry :).

@DevSolar I suggest forwarding it to the PI because it proves authenticity. If after something has happened you come out and say "I know X did this because she threatened to do it a week ago", then it's your word against hers that she said such a thing - you can't prove you're not making up the threat after the fact to pin in on her. If your PI remembers you mentioning the threat before anything happened, then there's evidence. As I said, it's excessive if the threats are minor, but if there would be serious consequences, it's better to have evidence that is beyond accusations of fabrication.

@Captain Emacs I had another conversation with my PI today, and he's dealing with this situation as "teenage fighting" - his words, not mine. He's being complacent about all of this and laughs about my worries and insecurities. He does not think that abusive and threating language from a student to another to be a big deal. Religion plays a big role here I guess. He does not want to fire her in ANY hypothesis (same religion). I really like him, but I don't know if I do anymore. He was too perfect to be true...I think he's not providing a safe mental health environment for me.

@ÉmileLebacq None of us is closer to the situation than you. Words sometimes are meant the way they are spoken, sometimes not. It is also difficult for us to judge whether your supervisor is too much laissez-faire or sees the situation in more realistic light than you. We cannot judge whether religion is in fact as important a factor as you suspect. However, one thing is clear: if you do not trust the supervisor (whether justly or not), then you should consider a way out. Law of Delayed Karma says: if you are right about her, she is almost guaranteed to blow up in his face at some point.

And you were right @CaptainEmacs ! She lied, lied and lied again and it blew up on her face! Now, ALL* lab members wanted her to go. The PI cut her funding, and she finally left our lab!

However, she has a friend (just one - and also an undergrad like her) that is still here. And she's full of revenge! Another sociopathic liar. Sabotage is being a big issue here. All mice from a PhD student were found dead inside their cages. We cannot prove anything, but they had a fight two days earlier... Look up my new update for details.

@ÉmileLebacq Either your supervisor has really a lot of bad luck or made a series of bad choices and now needs time to get rid of them; but it sounds like the toxicity of the lab is more pervasive than you indicated in your original post. If you had mentioned that there is a "Dynamic Duo" of troublemakers, I would have probably emphasized the leave option more than the stay option. An accumulation of several ill-willed personnel potentially demonstrates a deeper issue with the lab management, from sending the wrong signals to failure to enforce a constructive lab culture. However...

@ÉmileLebacq what is not clear to me is why the second undergrad should harbour revenge feelings for the first one? Why should they endanger their own career for some other colleague? Somehow, that doesn't make sense to me, unless there is some other piece of information that is missing here.  Anyway, this is not an atmosphere to do research by. Really, if that persists, you should consider moving elsewhere.

@CaptainEmacs Yeah, there was a "Dynamic Duo". One already have left, but the other one is still here. They are deeply close friends. She said awful things later to the other grad students after her friend got kicked out. And the PI LOVES her (more than the first one, I can surely affirm that). But she's so as aweful! She left their own mice die because she didn't want to put food and water to them, or change their cages! They were covered of faeces when we found them. But my PI just gave "a slap on her wrist" and moved on. But there's a new problem:

@CaptainEmacs Narcotics are now missing at the lab (and we think it was her because of a previous history of drug abuse in her family, but again, we have no proof), and my PI wants everyone to forget that and is trying to "pour oil in troubled waters". He think it's no big deal. I think the police should be involved, but, as I said before, I don't know if it could backfire at my career.
My PI has made a lot of bad choices, and apparently doesn't want to get rid of them.

@CaptainEmacs This undergrad is trying to lure me into think "we're still friends", because she didn't attacked me directly, but I found out on a Facebook post, and I know the truth. I have a little advantage over her.

@CaptainEmacs the "Dynamic Duo" were laughing and saying terrible things about me on Facebook (after the first troublemaker got expelled).

@ÉmileLebacq Frankly, you should not be worried about the DD laughing at you (or probably even saying terrible things); these are trifles compared to the other issues. What you should be really worried about is, if your description is an accurate description of the situation, staying in this group. Frankly, if what you say is true, it would be a much wiser move to get away, under whatever pretense, and find some other group than to stay on. And, BTW, you may want to anonymise your name.

@ÉmileLebacq You also should probably consult with a lawyer, just in case. Your situation is beyond the reach/competence of SE.

Document as much as you can.  If possible, you may want to have a neutral but trusted third person in attendance at your meeting with her.

Undervalued answer. It's the golden rule of mobbing — document, document, document. Keep the documentation in a safe location (not your laptop at work!), esp. the eMail you mentioned. No matter how the situation develops, if you have to go higher up, the documentation does make a difference.

Assuming US here. If she continues to fail to follow basic lab safety procedures, you may have to report her to the equivalent of your university's Environment Health and Safety department which oversees lab safety at many universities or OSHA. They may even have an anonymous tip line. This woman can probably guess that it was you if you try to make an anonymous report given your history, and you may even be fired by your boss if he really likes her more, wants to be vindictive, and you live in an "at will" employment state and lack an employment contract or union collective bargaining agreement if you are unionized.
I think that these things are unlikely, but your personal and labmates' health and safety should probably come before your job and their reaction to it. Depending on your university regulations and state labor laws, you may not be able to be fired for reporting a violation of safety regulations, but if you are in an at-will state, you can be fired for wearing the wrong color shoes or cutting your hair too short, so a smart employer will avoid saying anything that could be conceived of as dismissing you for reporting a safety violation. Keep notes after meetings of what was discussed and email them back to your PI as a record to confirm that you both agree on what was said and what you agreed to do.

@ÉmileLebacq, unless you are in a very poor country with little infrastructure, there is still likely to be a government agency that deals with lab or work safety. I'd urge you to look into that. While you might be secure in your program, if you lose your lab job, can you still afford to eat and sleep? If not, I'd still be careful. You country might not have very employee friendly labor laws. Be careful!

Unionized grad students? Is that a thing? Also, there are federal laws against firing someone for reporting safety violations in the U.S. Whether a state is at-will or not is irrelevant. I'd assume nearly every state, if not every state, also has state laws against that, but the federal laws apply regardless of state/territory.

@reirab, Here's some info on unionization of student employees in the US. And, yes, I think you're right about federal laws trumping at-willness, though, I don't know what happens if you report it to a state agency only in each state. If you go to OSHA, I think you're likely to be covered completely, but I'd want my lawyer or OSHA to tell me that first, not some random dude on the internet. Still, a vindictive prof could just wait a year and fire you based on your smell and not mention your report. Hard to prove.

See a lawyer. Find out what your rights and responsibilities are in this matter. A good lawyer will tell you what to say and do, what not to say and do, and what actions could provoke the other parties to furnish you with more evidence. A lawyer will also tell you what to record, and how to record it. (I am not a lawyer and I am an American so this post may be more suitable for similarly situated Americans than for you.)
There are some very serious issues here, most of which work in your favor.Bottom line, they can fire you from the lab, but only at the risk of liabilities that most rational people would not choose to incur.

Slander. If the undergraduate slanders you, and you lose your job, you can sue the party for lost wages, as well as punitive damages. This may be true even if the slander was not what cost you your job, only that it "possibly" did.
Safety. A safety violation is a serious matter. If you can document this woman's violation of safety, you have a very strong case. That fact that she threatened you about this compounds the offense, making it a multiple of a simple" safety violation. That's because it is "willful," not an oversight.
Employment. Termination "without cause" is acceptable in many parts of the United States, and the rest of the world. But "wrongful termination" is not. If you are terminated, there will be a strong presumption that it was "wrongful."

One more thing, the higher this goes, the better for you. A lab instructor may fire you (and try to cover up his misdeeds). A department would not take these issues so lightly, and the university less so. And if you need to get this out of the university and to your country's health and safety or labor department, so much the better for you.
So "lawyer up" and prepare for a fight that you should be able to win. An American army captain once told his troops, "Don't fire the first shot. But if they want a war, let it begin right here." He was talking about the American Revolution, which his side won.
Maybe this thing will "go away." Maybe it won't. But in the latter case, you should position yourself to get the maximum compensation possible if they hurt you first.
I refer you to Captain Emacs' excellent post that gives you rather opposite advice, so that you have a "pro" and "con" to choose from, based on your situation, which you know better than either of us.

This advice applies to US only. Other countries' compensation rules are much less generous and when the career is ruined, it is ruined. You are talking about "war", but the PI seems to be a pretty reasonable person and knowing what is going on, so going for maximum confrontation does not seem wise here. The key is the PI, not her.

@CaptainEmacs: If things are that bad in the OP's country, the lawyer will be the first to say so. So there's no downside to seeing the lawyer.  The OP says that the PI can fire him from the lab (and force him to find another one) but not the "program." That puts a floor under the downside. I am writing as someone who was "bitten" by a boss who seemed reasonable but was chasing the woman..

The question is whether the OP wants to leave the lab because of some undergraduate ("I really like my PI"). There is nothing in the post indicating the PI wants to fire the OP (except for the OP's fear). Fear is a bad advisor. The example with China or especially Poland is often brought up, but they are on the extreme side of the spectrum. Berlin 1948 and Cuba 1961 come to mind about not going to a - possibly devastating - war by a judicious choice of counterstrategies.

@CaptainEmacs: I qualifed my last sentence about getting "maximum compensation"  by adding "if they hurt you first." To paraphrase an American, "if this is career ruination, make the most of it."

Tom Au: I quite noticed. And, if the PI would support the OP's enemy (let's call it bluntly so), I would agree with you that preparation with maximum prejudice is warranted. However, setting off with a full-blown bellicose attitude in the first place is likely to spill over to the OP's interaction with the group; he is probably not yet experienced enough to not let that shine through; and it does not seem necessary with the present PI. However, if danger to life and limb is suspected or that the OP suspects the PI is dishonest in his dealings with OP, seeing a lawyer is indeed good advice.

@CaptainEmacs: You were gracious enough to acknowledge my points, so note that I acknowledged yours in a new last sentence.

@CaptainEmacs: Someone who knows someone else is violating safety rules and threatening people who dare to mention it, yet doesn't want to fire them is either NOT a "pretty reasonable person" or is the recipient of such threats himself.

@WGroleau: IMHO, quite likely the latter. And note my own experience (comment above) about being "bitten" by a boss (of 10 years) who seemed "pretty reasonable" but was chasing the woman.

@WGroleau The "reasonable" applies to the fact that the PI is aware of the situation (instead of blindly trusting the OP's enemy). We have not enough information to judge how dangerous the situation really is (after all the person had been rehired after having already contaminated another lab, so either it was not that critical, or they have been skilfully hiding that fact). Of course, if there is danger to life and limb, all bets are off.  There are different levels at which this interaction may operate; reading between the lines, it didn't seem to me that maximum escalation is necessary.

Note:  You will deal with a LOT more evil and mean people in your life.  So, that will not impact my comments.
Second Chance:
Talk to the PI, about giving the student a second chance, and get confirmation from the PI that if they do it again - and jeopardize anyone's safety, including their own - throw them out.  Ask the PI what to do if you are concerned with safety.
Likely, give them a chance.  Give the student another warning "the last warning".
If you want to pursue it before the second chance:
You will likely anger the PI.  But.
What is #1?  Safety.
When asking someone to "follow biosafety rules when handling dangerous chemical reagents", it is a matter of safety.  Having someone jeopardize their own safety or the safety of others is not acceptable.
If this were something like asking a student to "shutdown windows before turning off the lab PC", and they don't, then ignore it, and get on with life.
"follow biosafety rules when handling dangerous chemical reagents" is likely an OSHA policy (if you are in the US), university policy, law, and is not something that can be disregarded.
Go to the Dean and/or safety person.  There is likely some safety officer (not like police, but like chemical/biological safety).
Confrontation with the student:
Any confrontation with the student must be done in public with neutral witnesses, and preferably video and audit if permissible.  The email is a threat to slander you.  That is likely against school conduct policy.
Decision time:
Now, it is up to you whether there really is enough to pursue, or if there is a small enough time that you can just let it go, and get on with your life.
If you don't let it go, then it is possible that even by winning, you will lose.  You may have to deal with this for more semesters, and face other retaliation by the student or the PI.

Also, installing multiple high resolution web cameras in the lab would be a good option.

@Mikey It probably goes without saying, but installing cameras without getting the supervisors' permission and telling everyone in the lab they're being recorded would be very unwise (and possibly illegal, depending on the location).

@ ff524 Indeed.

One university I was at had HD surveillance cameras in the labs where safety was paramount.
If you want cameras, it is best to work with the campus police/public safety, Environmental Safety, and/or other groups like that.  Surreptitious video recording may be illegal or grounds for expulsion.

@MikeyMike In some EU countries what you suggested (if done without consent from everyone recorded) has a minimum of 5 years in jail up to a max of 10 years.

@ Fermi paradox I didn't said anything about not getting permission.

I think the best approach is to follow Captain Emacs's advice but also make clear to the advisor that you will not compromise on safety of the people in the lab and will be morally obligated to report the safety violation should it be continued (as per Bill Barth's answer). At the same time make it clear that you do not wish to get the other student into unnecessary trouble so you just want safety protocols to be followed from now on.
In short, aim to fix and forgive.

Unfortunately the World is full of stupid, ignorant, selfish, hateful, jealous, etc. etc. etc. people and you have to find a way to deal with that. There is no way you can get rid of all the nasty people so that you can live and work in peace with only perfect people. What works better is to outsmart these usually quite stupid people. If she wants to tell lies about you, then you can tell a lot of lies about yourself to her that can easily be verified to not be correct. E.g. you can tell that you failed most of your exams. That's not true, your supervisor can easily verify that it is not true, but she can't. So, she'll fall in a trap set by you the moment she discloses such things to your supervisor.

What kind of "trap" is this? Say you "trapped" her into telling things she believes to be true (not lies) to your supervisor, this accomplishes what, exactly?

Well, you just shoot yourself in the foot by this. Telling lies is never a good idea, even worse if it is making you look bad. That can backfire so heavily. Have you ever tried this yourself, with good effect? If not, I can only recommend to not follow your own advice and do not try this at home unless you know precisely what you are doing (which I doubt if you didn't experience it yourself).

@ff524 it discredits the person who is gossiping about such things if the supervisor knows the truth.

@CaptainEmacs I have done this on a few occasions, but in a different context than the situation the OP finds herself in. Lying is, like it or not, an important tool in our society. It has been suggested that our brains evolved so fast because our ape-like ancestors in social groups would try to deceive each other and then it was important to be able to see through deception while becoming better at it yourself.

// , Looks like someone's read "The 48 Laws of Power", or its ilk. I can't imagine that pragmatic perspective gets much popularity, especially given this forum's knee-jerk political correctness.

@CountIblis I am not talking about "courtly lies" or political lies. It's fun to watch strategy games using deception as is an intrigue by Shakespeare or Game of Thrones. But here, we have real life: I am talking about escalation of toxicity. Perhaps you are able to handle lies skilfully, without them damaging you (and possibly everyone around you). However, I have seen whole institutions (I am not exaggerating!) brought down by a mutually escalating buildup of machinations. I believe one should not be a tool of such a process. Lying is an important tool as is deceiving as is backstabbing.

... and it is just as toxic. If you do not mind being part to a toxic buildup (and it's not an excuse that the other member of the group is - if you are helping to escalate, you play their game), you are no less responsible, probably more, because you consciously chose this route. It has nothing to do with political correctness, and everything with being a professional. And even if you dismiss these statements as too goody-goody - there is one more pragmatic aspect: the OP seems inexperienced and you suggest to use a highly volatile double-edged weapon. Dangerous advice, handle with care.

You should of course act in a professional way as far as your (research) work is concerned. In this sorts of cases, the issues are not relevant in that sense but still perceived to a problem. There is no good reason why you should tell the truth about such irrelevant issues. This eliminates moves you can make which puts you at a disadvantage. Telling lies can e.g. be a good defense against harassment. if people want to put you down, you can give them some fake materials to work with, e.g. a fake facebook account where they can waste all their energy on can work just great.

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How much political influence is involved in the academia in Germany?
I heard that German national politics influences the appointment of tenured positions in their universities.
E.g. if some party is in power, they would like to see somebody loyal to them as the head of a faculty or even the rector of the university. Also, if someone is loyal to the party in power, his PhD students have better chance of getting into the university and obtain tenure.
I also heard that, even getting a "Habilitation" requires a lot of political backing.
To what extent is it true?

What do you mean by "politics"? Involvement of public authorities? Unlikely but not impossible in Germany (there is Wissenschaftsfreiheit, after all.) Strategizing and coalition-building within the university? You bet!

"What do you mean by "politics"?" --- suppose an 'X' party is in power, and they would like to see their loyal as the head of a faculty or even the rector of the university.

Do you have any source, boulevard news link or this pure hearsay?!

@MichaelSchmidt, someone doing a PhD told me.

I reduced your question to one country (at random), to avoid separate answers about each country competing. (You can ask about the other one separately, but I strongly recommend that you wait how this question turns out.) Either way, your question could be improved by having some more specific statements, e.g., your first example is self-evident as it stands (of course, a party would like to see their own people in high positions, but that doesn’t mean that they can or do influence this).

Following an edit by @Wrzlprmft the question has been asked again for Poland (https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/127029/how-much-political-influence-is-involved-in-the-academia-in-poland). I suggest removing references to Germany in the question title and opening sentence. Perhaps mention them later in the question, e.g., I'm particularly interested in the situation in Germany and Poland. I've voted to close the new question.

I think this question is on topic and of good scope and see no reason to close it.

"One of China’s most prestigious universities has suspended a law professor and placed him under investigation after he published a series of essays that warned of deepening repression under President Xi Jinping" -- https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/world/asia/chinese-law-professor-xi.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

@user2768: Why would you remove all references to Germany? This makes the question completely unspecific and overly broad. Also, what has your reference to China have to do with this question?

@Wrzlprmft The question originally went beyond Germany. It could go further to ask: How much political influence is involved in academia? I think mlk's answer (https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/127033/22768) applies beyond just Germany. Probably to at least four continents. My comment shows that it doesn't apply universally.

@user2768: mlk’s answer explicitly refers to German hiring practices and law. For other countries, the one-sentence conclusion is the same, but the way to arrive there isn’t. If you generalised the question to “How much political influence is involved in academia?”, providing a comprehensive global answer would be take somebody familiar with every country in this respect – such a person probably doesn’t exist. Also the answer would be overly long. Otherwise, we can only answer: “it depends”, which is not helpful at all.

The answer is a definite no, none at all. Each open professorship is filled by a committee consisting of students, employees and other professors at the hiring institution.¹ There is no political appointee in those committees, so there is no way for national politics to influence those. There is of course a lot of internal bickering between the professors involved (which is what most people mean if they talk about politics in an university), but nothing to do with any political parties.
Appointments of higher positions such as the rector are a bit more involved and the details may vary a bit more between different universities, but the principle is the same. Normally the decision there is made by the senate (of the university), which in turn was elected by students and employees.
In general, there is a reason for all of this, which is the German constitution, which, in order to prevent history from repeating, in article 5, paragraph 3 specifically states that "science and teaching is free", meaning free of political influence.² This includes all specific appointments. So while some politicians might try to wield some influence, any attempt to actively get a specific candidate appointed for political reasons will be met with strong backlash and a successful challenge in court.
There is one famous exception, which is theology, where an appointment can be blocked by the corresponding church. There was a scandal last year, when a bishop seemingly tried to force his preferred candidate this way, but again this has nothing to do with national politics.
¹Technically they just decide on a list of three people, which then is given to the university administration and in some places to the ministry, but if they cannot state a compelling reason to do otherwise, those then have to take the first person in the list. Except in those rare cases the second and third choice are basically spares, in case the first declines.
²Specifically, this is one of the few unchangeable articles that not even parliament is allowed to abolish. They aren't taking any chances this time.

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If someone doesn't have stellar grades in high-school, and in the bachelor's, does earning a PhD help much?
If someone doesn't have stellar grades in high-school, and in the bachelors:

Is there really any possibility for him to work in the field of academia?
Does earning a Ph.D. help much, or is it just a waste of time in this case?

Check this out:

Nobody in theoretical computer science cares where you got your degree. Really. We. Do. Not. Care. We only care about the quality and visibility of your results. Publish strong papers and give brilliant talks at top conferences. Convince well-known active researchers to write letters raving about your work. Make a good product and get superstars to sell it for you. Do all that, and we'll definitely want to hire you, no matter where you got your degree. On the other hand, without a strong and visible research record, independent from your advisor, you are much less likely to get a good academic job, no matter where you got your degree.

If people don't care where the applicant got his/her PhD, they are not going to care about high school or Bachelor's grades. Even outside of academia, it's a general rule that one's latest degree supersedes all the previous ones. Once a person earns a PhD, nobody cares about his or her Masters, Bachelor's, or high school results.
The real concern here is whether the person who didn't do well in high school and in the Bachelor's can still earn a PhD, but that is for a separate question.

I wrote that seven years ago; it's still true.  And sure enough, starting about a month into my PhD program, nobody has ever cared about my terrible undergraduate GPA.  (My mediocre high school grades stopped mattering the moment I was admitted to college.)

Yes, provided you can get into -- and complete -- a good Ph.D.
All of this presupposes you are interested in an academic career. Once you have a Ph.D., your future career in academia will look primarily at your Ph.D., and your publication/research record since then. If those are good, it's pretty unlikely (North American, pure/applied science perspective here) a hiring committee will turn you down due to previous grades, or educational pedigree prior to the Ph.D.
The flip side is that a super prior educational pedigree (grades, institutions, awards, etc.) can certainly positively complement even a good Ph.D. for your first post-Ph.D. job, since it buttresses an "achiever" image. And I've seen superior prior educational pedigree compensating for quirks/inconsistencies in your Ph.D. profile, such as unusually long time to complete, inscrutable or laconic letter of support, weaker publication record, not in the spirit of an explicit pro-con analysis but as greater confidence for a hiring committee that they can look past the quirk if they otherwise want you.
However, none of this takes away from the fact that a good, solid Ph.D., with good publications and reference letters, will draw a line under quite a bit of prior questionable academic performance. To the extent a hiring comittee later notices those issues, there will be a feeling of "but I assume the admission committee investigated that....and look, the candidate did good [Ph.D] work".
Of course, Ph.D. admissions committees are a different story, and while there are heartwarming stories of committees that that take the time to look past grades, the unfortunate reality is that you had better have a very good narrative what happened, and impress the institution which you want to attend. If the program is at all selective, they will be concerned whether you'll be able to finish. A Ph.D. takes a lot out of you, and if you weren't able to hack high school and bachelors, why will grad school be different -- for you? And if they're not being concerned and selective, you should wonder if they just want your tuition money (and/or slave labour) until you fail....
Finally, worth saying that there are many reasons your prior academic performance may have been sub-par (personal/family health issues, socioeconomic status and quality of schools you were able to attend, etc.) that ought not be derogatory for you, i.e. much better than "I partied too much and/or didn't really know how to study". I do think the system is steadily getting better at consciously looking for such explanations, especially for so-called "diversity candidates" but also more generally as the push for diversity gradually -- and inconsistently -- challenges lock-step assumptions on success even for candidates who don't check one of the conventional diversity boxes.

Nice answer, though I disagree a bit with the third and fourth paragraphs (maybe we're just in different fields or regions). In my experience, no one cares AT ALL about pre-PhD work if you have a PhD, and no one really even cares about the degree, only about publications and other achievements.

@cag51, in areas I know that's true once you're several years past Ph.D., but it can still matter for the 1st job or 2. In particular, hiring committees often have 2 candidates with solid pubs etc, each with one committee member advocating for them based on research interests. Others on the cttee desperately look for other indicators to break the tie. And while in some fields a new Ph.D. has several pubs already, in others they're lucky if they have 1-2 arXiv preprints at the time of the 1st job hunt. Anyway we're both saying the pre-PhD stuff is certainly not a major impediment.

Others on the cttee desperately look for other indicators to break the tie. — On the committees I'm familiar with, this tie-breaking process is usually called "reading the papers".  I don't remember the last time I even saw a GPA on a faculty job application.

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text:
Should I consult my professor before sending my newly written research paper to a journal?
I have written a research paper (in the field of Education & Social Science, and I am not a professional) and I want to publish it in a reputed peer-reviewed journal.
I am not in cooperation with any of my professors in terms of research activity.
Should I give my writing to one of my professors for a review before sending it to a research journal? Is there any possibility of stealing of ideas?

Are you an undergraduate student?

@chaos, grad....

Master level then? If you are close to one of your professors, I would definitely recommend that you talk to them about it. If you are worried that they might try to take undue credit for it, you can talk to them about the prospect of publishing a paper without saying too much, for the moment. I think most professors would be happy to have a look simply to lend advice to a motivated student, but if you really do not trust them, by all means, be precautious.

Do you mean proliferation (increasing the ideas)? Or are you worried about them stealing your research?

@CJR the assumption is that the research is written in English? It could be that they have done great work in their native language and are just seeking help here but are less familiar with English? But I agree, seems unlikely.

Unless the professor should be a co-author or you need their permission to include their name in acknowledgements, there is no need to have it reviewed. If the work is yours, you can decide to submit it.
But if you have any doubts about it or any part of it, having a review by a professor can be worth it. You may get advice that results in a revision or you may get advice that is worthless. But again, you are in control.
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. While it happens, it is rare and not something that reputable people do. If you have doubts about the ethics of someone, don't send it to them, but that is obvious.
If you send it, you will get feedback from independent referees. It is to your advantage to start out with the best product you can create, but the review process itself can lead to some improvement.
If you don't have a particular journal in mind then a professor might be able to give advice on that, just from reading an abstract. Lots of possibilities.
But the work is yours. You choose.

+1 Don't worry about people stealing your ideas.

It's not that often that ideas are so outstanding that they get stolen, but, when they are excellent, it does happen; let's not pretend it doesn't. On the other hand, when someone comes to a prof to ask their opinion and implies to them that they want to make sure it does not get stolen (by implication: by the prof), the prof will probably compliment them to their achievement and suggest to the author to publish first before they will comment on the work. Nobody wants to be accused of plagiarism - openly or implied. It cuts both ways.

It could be that the author is only familiar with researchers who are not reputable and that plagiarism is flagrant in their community or area unfortunately.

It does seems very unlikely that anyone can develop such a novel research concept without much research experience and then produce novel work. Let alone write at a peer review level at the simultaneously.
However let us assume that this is the case. One way forward is to contact the editor that you are interested in publishing with a brief outline of your paper to check that your concept is indeed worthy. So then at least if your idea is "stolen" by researchers you approach later for support, you are better able to argue and mount an academic integrity claim? You can also highlight your previous discussions with the editor so outright "stealing" may also be discouraged when you approach researchers to help with drafting your research paper?


text:
Should I discuss my research idea with my supervisor?
I am a 2nd-year interdisciplinary PhD student, and I am pursuing a publication-based PhD.
I have been thinking about a new research idea that was never done before.
For example, say applying a specific computer science theory (say, automata theory) to a specific biological element or process (say, analyzing human bones), which was never done before; or, say, applying a specific cartographical (geographical information system) technique to analyze genes, etc.
There are risks involved with my idea.
I know for sure that this technique can be applied to achieve something new. However, I don't know if this technique can cover all aspects of that specific biological phenomenon. For example, if I go back to that bone example, say, I know for sure that automata theory can be applied to measure, say, bone density; however, I am not sure if this theory can analyze osteoporosis, predict bone marrow regernation, etc.
Since my time is limited as a PhD student, I am planning to talk to my supervisor about the possibility of writing a literature review and publishing it. I want to do a feasibility study so that I can pursue a full research project. That is why I am thinking of a literature review.
So, I wrote him an email:

Hello.
I regularly see a lot of literature reviews or the so-called "state of the art" being published.
Why don't we publish one?
Kind regards.
Me.

He replied:

Hi,
Publishing a review requires a lot of time and knowledge. Basically, you should be an expert in the field. This also requires reading hundreds of papers. Typically, a professor who is well established in a field writes a review of a field he knows best. He already read those hundreds of papers, so he can work efficiently. Even though it takes time, it's a group effort.
Sure, I've published a few such articles, e.g., the one on molecular modelling in Chemical Reviews or about Nature Protocols.
Best,
Your PhD supervisor.

Now, I have two questions:

Should I discuss my new idea with my professor? In that case, is there any risk of pilferage?
If he refuses to guide me or share the risk, should I abandon my idea or should I proceed with it myself?

I'm missing the connection between your idea of applying method X in field Y and writing a review paper. Could you clarify that?

@coffee_into_plots, I want to do a feasibility study so that I can pursue a full research project. That is why I am thinking of a literature review.

Ah, thanks. The reason I was confused is that in my field, doing a bit of reading/testing and then pitching an idea to your supervisor is very different (and much less involved) than a full literature review.

You may be interested in the question At what stage of research career one can write a 'review article'? to better understand where your supervisor is coming from. There is a pretty wide range of types of review articles, with different levels of detail and comprehensiveness.

What is a non-publication based PhD?

@JonCuster, You write a thesis, and nothing else. Even if you publish something, the PhD committee won't count that as part of the PhD.

I don't know what you expected from your email as it lacked all detail bout your ideas. So you got back an equally uninformed, general, response.
If your supervisor is ethical there should be no danger of pilferage. If he is not ethical then you need a different supervisor.
I don't understand your numbered point 2. If he refuses what, exactly? Or are you suggesting a collaboration.
Yes, you should talk to him about what you propose. He can, perhaps, give more explicit advice once he knows some details. You can then judge whether it is worth pursuing now as part of your degree. You can also always defer it to later if there is something with better potential that will get you done earlier.

I don't understand your numbered point ... exactly? Or are you suggesting a collaboration. - first, I need to know, how feasible my idea is as a research project, then I need to know if I need any collaboration.

I don't (still) understand "refuses". Refuses to permit you? Refuses to help you?

If he refuses to guide me and says my idea is good but I should not pursue it as a PhD student and postpone it until I am an independent researcher, etc. I.e., he doesn't want to share risk.

Once he better understands what you want to do, such advice would be valuable and probably worth following. But you need to give details to him and work over the issues.

Okay, I am writing another email.

I'd visit in person if possible. Much easier to work it out face to face.

I interpret your question as saying you have some new idea that you think is worth pursuing. To be sure it is worth pursuing, you need to do a literature review, and you're thinking of turning that literature review into a review article.
If this interpretation is correct, you should certainly discuss with your supervisor, because it's got a glaring problem: review articles are very difficult to write. As your supervisor points out, it requires reading "hundreds of papers". If you decide to expand your literature review into a review article, you could easily be working on it for months. But your goal is only a feasibility study, which can usually be done much quicker than writing a review article. There's simply no need to write a review article.
So yes: discuss with your advisor, say you're not sure whether the idea is feasible, and they will probably be able to guide you towards answering the question of whether it's feasible.

For grad students, I would say a few months for a review article would be optimistic. There used to be a requirement to write a review article as a 3rd year in my program (US). The issue was that people would take more than a year to write something sufficiently insightful, and it was not very valued on the job market.

The last thing a supervisor wants is for their student to wander around different topics and lose focus.
If it's something that interests you dearly, have a look by yourself first, like suggested above. But make sure it doesn't influence too much your current track. And then you need to decide whether is this something worth switching your PhD towards, then talk to your supervisor. Or whether you can grow connections bit by bit in that field and do a research associate position in that topic after you finish your PhD, or apply for a grant.
That's my recommendation.

I think of these types of projects in stages. You appear to be on the road to this type of thinking by mentioning reviewing the literature before launching into a full project. However, I would proceed slightly differently.
The overall staged approach is iterative. You have the 2-day stage, the 2-week stage, the 2-month stage. (Or maybe your numbers are different, depending on how much attention you can give to something in an average working day.)
You have an idea and then you think to yourself, "What can I do in 2 days that would tell me if this idea is worth pursuing?" This might be something like looking through Google scholar and also seeing how hard it would be to get the data you need to proceed.
If there are no red flags, you proceed to the next stage. "What can I do in the next 2 weeks to see if this idea is worth pursuing?" This seems to be the stage you are at - the goal of your next meeting with your supervisor is to figure out some initial work that would tell you if there is anything promising to be done. It is probably not writing a review article, but it might involve reviewing literature. Perhaps conversations with other experts, etc.
Then, you launch into more real work on the project, but try to set yourself a cutoff. For me, I am often collaborating, and I figure out if we haven't made progress in 2 months then we are not sufficiently committed and need to have a heart-to-heart. Your cutoff time frame or questions may vary.


text:
Why do some universities refuse to issue duplicate diplomas?
Many universities have a policy of not issuing a duplicate diploma for a degree, unless your original copy is incorrect, damaged, or lost.
One example:

University Policy forbids the issuance of multiple copies of a diploma. Each diploma is considered a one-of-a-kind legal document.
http://www.queensu.ca/registrar/diploma-replacements

Another example:

Replacement Graduation Diploma

A graduation diploma will be replaced in the following cases:

When a diploma has been lost or damaged.
When the name of the holder has been changed under the regulations for the change of name process as per University records.

Return of the original diploma with the request is required if the reason for replacement is due to damage or an official name change.
In cases of lost or destroyed diplomas, the holder must submit a Statutory Declaration (form available below) to the University Registrar and have it signed and sealed by a Notary Public*, legally swearing that the original diploma has been lost or destroyed. The condition of the reissuance of a diploma in cases of loss or destruction is that if the original should be found at any time, the replacement diploma must be returned to the Registrar’s Office at Carleton University for cancellation.

http://carleton.ca/registrar/academic-evaluation/replacement-diploma/

The most explicit example:

Stanford University will not issue duplicate diplomas under any circumstances. This measure is taken to protect Alumni from identity theft. If your diploma was permanently lost or destroyed, a replacement diploma may be ordered from the Office of the University Registrar. You must fill out the Replacement Diploma Form, have it signed by a Notary Public ...
(PDF) The Stanford diploma is a unique document; neither copies nor duplicates are available.
https://registrar.stanford.edu/students/diplomas/replacement-diplomas

But then, there are other universities that have no, such, restrictions on duplicate diplomas.
The inconsistent policies between universities seem to suggest that some see it as a problem and some do not. Why would duplicate diplomas be a problem in practice?
My speculation, with no evidence provided:

Giving a duplicate diploma to another person who coincidentally has the same name as you?
This rule was born in an era before telecommunications and online services? You physically carried and showed your diploma to prospective employers and academic admissions officers?

Interesting. My university was happy to issue a duplicate for some annoying paperwork I had to do once and I didn't want to damage the original. (The copies were printed in the current format)

The Stanford example you give seems to answer the question in their case.  Did you try reading the Queens university policy that the Queens quote refers to?

Using the physical diploma document to check whether someone has a degree is a largely outdated practice.  Instead, most people doing background checks (e.g. potential employers) will contact the institution to ask for confirmation that the degree has been granted.

It comes down to what the theory is about what a diploma is.  Some consider it a piece of paper that you can hang up and not an explicit representation, some consider it a legal document.  (Having degrees and working in Higher Ed for 20 years, often with various policies including those of Registrar's offices gives me some insight.)
Reasons for the policy:
These policies are based on legal theory or precedence regarding identify theft and legal documentation.  Schools with a higher 'reputation' or a better 'ranking' will have more restrictive policies to protect themselves.
Queens U, above, states "Each diploma is considered a one-of-a-kind legal document."
If you give/sell a copy to someone to attempt to represent themselves as having a diploma, then it might be fraud.
What is the difference between having two originals, and simply saying 'I lost my original, can I buy another?'  --  It could be quantity. If you can go to a web site, pay $40 each and buy 100, then sell them all on Ebay with a "custom name" for $500, that's fraud.  The schools are attempting to protect themselves in a few ways.
Here's a sample of a fake diploma for sale:
http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/nva/fns/5668595297.html
Here's a list of real diplomas for sale:
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.Xdiploma+degree.TRS0&_nkw=diploma+degree&_sacat=0
People lie on resume's and they lie with diplomas.
Reasons why such restrictive policies are nonsense:
IANAL, though, legal documents often have multiple copies, both original and duplicate.  Ever buy a house?  It is normal to have to sign multiple 'originals' of the contract documents.
What is the difference between having two originals, and simply saying 'I lost my original, can I buy another?' regardless of whether the original is lost.
If you have a diploma, and you make a photocopy, frame it, and hang it in your office, and keep the original in a fire-safe, seems ok to me.
For degree verification, I've been asked to provide official, sealed, stamped transcripts, not a copy of the diploma.
In summary - the policies will vary based on laws, precedence, legal theory, and/or policy.

The analogy between contracts and certificates is backwards. Contracts are duplicated to prevent alterations by making sure all the people who need them have them, certificates are not duplicated to prevent alterations by making sure only the people who need them have them. One is bounding above, the other is bounding below, because that is the direction of greatest importance to place a limit.

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text:
Is using a rhetoric element plagiarism?
Let's suppose a paper uses an interesting rhetoric element to present idea A. So let's say it says "Wise men have had the brilliant, although not fully correct idea that A". Is it plagiarism, to say in a different paper (even different discipline) concerning (completely) different idea B something similar, like "Wise men have had the brilliant, yet slightly wrong idea B"?
My intuition is no, because plagiarism is the process of presenting ideas as ones own. As long as the rhetoric element is not the idea in itself (lets say a poem) it seems to me it cannot be plagiarism.

"Abusing John Knowitall's dictum, it could be said that "Wise men have had the brilliant, yet slightly wrong idea B".

@CaptainEmacs I do not understand. Could you elaborate?

Instead of running the danger of being accused of plagiarism, you could use a phrase such as the one I proposed, with a famous saying by John Knowitall, adapted to my needs.

@CaptainEmacs: As an academic, your quoted suggestion satisfies me completely.  As a writer it does, to say the least, not satisfy me.  In fact, as an academic and a writer, if I read a sentence like that I would then have to decide whether this was honestly bad academic writing or a sly parody of bad academic writing.  Be real with me: did you make it bad on purpose?

@PeteL.Clark Do you have a better suggestion? I did just come up with it as a quick and dirty solution to the OP's problem, but I do not quite see why it would be so excruciatingly bad (except that the original quote is already limping, so I probably wouldn't have used it in the first place). It's certainly no Shakespeare or Eliot, but it's what one gets as the result of 2 uninspired minutes.

@CaptainEmacs: As you saw in my answer, my suggestion is to rewrite rather than quote, especially since the original quote is not so great.  To be honest: I actually did think it was likely that you were kidding with the phrasing of your suggestion.  I could tell you why I think it is pretty darned bad if you insist, but the gist of it is that it is written in "Stilted academese" rather than any natural language I know,

What's so difficult about simply citing the original text?

@PeteL.Clark I agree the text wasn't great, but I didn't expect it to raise so much attention, anyway. And besides, I'm afraid I am quite often guilty of slipping into "stilted academese", but then, I'm German-trained :-) If I compare the classic textbooks/papers of people like Sommerfeld and others from that period to the way textbooks are written today, I must say that they exhibit what I consider a beautiful and elegant language, but it would probably be considered too playful/overbearing compared to today's prevailing "matter-of-fact" style.

@TheMathemagician: It might ruin the effect. It's a bit like ending a joke with "This was the punch line of the joke."

In my opinion what you are suggesting is brushing up against plagiarism.  Done just once as you suggest, it will surely not be a problem.  But if this is an example of something done more systematically in your writing -- or is indicative of the way you look at borrowing others' ideas and words -- you may in fact have a problem down the line.  Certainly I see room for improvement.
Plagiarism is the act of using someone else's ideas or distinctive language without sufficient attribution.  So your explanation as to why you are not plagiarizing is not really convincing: the language was distinctive enough for you to want to copy it.
Now you have taken a rather short "rhetoric element" and changed it a bit, from

Wise men have had the brilliant, although not fully correct idea that A

to

Wise men have had the brilliant, yet slightly wrong idea B

I think it's an interesting question why you changed it.  Did you change it because you didn't want to copy too many words verbatim, or because the second one reads as better to you?  It's not a trick question: both impulses are good and ought to be taken further.  You feel less bad copying a smaller number of words, so keep going with that: keep going until the first six words are no longer identical, at least.  In terms of reads better: experienced writers know that anything can be be made to read better if you put more time and work into it.  A main task of a writer is to come up with language which is (i) original and (ii) optimized for the subject matter, and in really effective writing these two goals are confluent and mutually beneficial, not antithetical.
What piece of writing is really so good that it needs to be repeated as is from one situation to another?  (That's not a completely rhetorical question, and there are a few positive answers, but they are few.) Since you are writing about new ideas and new work, you should (the vast majority of the time) find that new words are more appropriate than old ones.
In the case at hand: I don't find "Wise men have had the brilliant, yet...." to be rhetorical gold or anything close to it.  If I am honest, to me it sounds like the kind of hackneyed academic writing that young students sometimes use earnestly and older students and veteran academics either mock or use ironically.  (And a tip: that the brilliant and wise are men is going to be noticed in a negative way by some.)  I suggest that you practice slinging your own phrases: soon enough you'll be able to do as good and I hope much better than this.  (I thought about showing you half a dozen similar phrases to indicate it's no big thing, but I decided not to because I don't know the intellectual content, and choosing language divorced from content is part of what I'm criticizing.)
Good luck.  For further reading about what it's like to encounter many short passages of your writing coopted with minor changes, I recommend this piece.  (And to gain some respect for the complexity of these issues and remember not to be too critical of others, I recommend this piece.)

"Since you are writing about new ideas and new work, you should (the vast majority of the time) find that new words are more appropriate than old ones." - it seems to me like the statement "Since you are writing about new ideas and new work, you should (the vast majority of the time) find that old words are required to make the new ideas comprehensible to readers." sounds just as logical a line of reasoning.

@tomka: Sure, here are my thoughts: "I took a note on the phrase sometime earlier and didn't recall it was not my phrase at the time of writing." From now on, when you write down someone else's words, you should write down who it was.  I think you see why.  In fact, nowadays with it being so easy to store papers in their entirety, I would recommend to just keep the paper itself and the pointer to the paper.  " It is the only point in the paper where that happened and a rather short phrase of 7 words of which I changed 2." As I said, in small quantity this is not going to be a problem for you.

@O.R. Mapper: I think you are saying that some repetition of old ideas is useful and even necessary in academic work.  I agree with that.  In terms of how to deal with this issue, the thing I would say first of all is that you should make your reader aware that you are repeating old things.  The next thing I'll say is that I do think it is most often possible and desirable to present "old stuff" in a way which is slightly different and adapted to the present purpose....

....I would think that math is a subject where necessary repetition is at the high end.  I have written a few thousand pages of lecture notes (available on my webpage), and of course their coverage is not disjoint or close to it.  Just now I am writing up some material on the Nullstellensatz, which appears in my commutative algebra notes and now in my scheme theory course.  I didn't cut and paste; I rewrote from scratch.  Of course, "many of the words are the same" if that's what you meant.  Anyway...gosh, I had better get back to preparing for that course.

@PeteL.Clark: That is indeed one possible interpretation. My point was that the statement "Writing about new ideas and new work requires new words." is so abstract that it can be interpreted both in ways where it is absolutely true and in ways where the opposite is true.

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text:
How to explain low grades in a phd interview
I am a recent Masters graduate in nanotechnology and I have applied for a  reputed phd position. I will have an interview very shortly. Unfortunately my Masters grades are very bad and I believe that this will most likely come up as a question in the interview. I would like to know how I can explain those very low grades?

How can we know why you got bad grades? You were the one who got them, so you need to be the one that knows how to explain them.

Surely that depends on... well... the explanation for the fact that you got low grades? "I was caring for a sick relative", "I have been suffering from a serious medical condition", "I was too lazy to do any work" or "I failed one course and that badly affected my overall grades" may all require different approaches.

Can you explain your low grades? If so, give whichever explanation makes you look least bad and is truthful. There is no point in beating around the bush here. The grades are on your record and that is that.
The committee must have a reason why they invited you in spite of low grades. Ask yourself: How did I manage to impress the committee and get invited? Rather than come up with a justification for any deficits, I suggest you focus on these strengths. Try to shift the topic of the conversation toward what's positive in your application. You want to be remembered as the one with the awesome project, not as the one with the subpar grades.

From your other question, have you studied in Italy and applying there? If so, I will try to answer with my own take from the country. Remember though:
We cannot know why you have bad grades. We can only speculate.
I am going to exclude any serious issues in your life, such as sickness or death in the family or economical hardships that got you to stop caring about grades; if this happened, I am sorry to hear it and I think it is great that you were able to finish your Master's nonetheless; on the other hand, that would be your reason: just tell them you have been through a rough time, so it was a challenge to simply graduate, let alone graduate well.
I bet the most likely reason why you have "bad" (how bad?) grades in Italy is that you accepted your grades no matter what, even when they were low, when you had a chance to refuse them and take the exams again.

Maybe you did this because you wanted to graduate as quickly as possible and get a headstart in the field as a young graduate.
maybe you took very difficult classes with strict professors and you did learn the material, but without much luck in the exams.
Maybe you could not afford to stay in school for too long, so you finished quickly in order to move on with your life.
Maybe you were just unlucky in a few, "heavy" exams, and the other grades could not raise your GPA back up. This happened to me in my B.Sc. and I was recently asked about it in an interview; in my first year, not wanting to disappoint my family, to drag on my studies, to repeat some exams I did not like, I accepted some bad grades that affected my GPA throughout my B.Sc.

I can only repeat what other people have told you: first of all be truthful about it and remember that if your grades had been really THAT bad, you would not have been contacted for an interview. Try to understand why they liked your application enough and play those strengths.


text:
Does giving an easily-understood talk make the audience think you did something simple?
Alice and Bob both go to a conference. Alice gives a great talk, and most people understood it. Bob gives a much more technical talk filled with jargon which almost everyone failed to understand. Do people walk out of the talk thinking Alice must've done something simple while Bob did something profound?
I get the feeling that this happens - after all given two concepts, one which I understand and the other which I don't, it's intuitive that the one I understand is the simpler one. It also feels like the easier-understood the talk is, the more questions Alice receives that aren't directly related to her work. For example I once attended a talk where the speaker talked about aggregating samples of the sky, and someone asked "why do you use square samples? Why not circles or triangles?". This kind of non-specialist question is obviously hard to see coming, and the you-either-know-it-or-you-don't result is uncomfortable.
On the other hand, if it's indeed true that giving easily-understood talks makes people think you did something simple, it would imply that giving comprehensible talks is a bad thing. That not only sounds silly, it's also counterproductive.

Isn't this question entirely opinion based? I mean, I could answer it as a single person who sometimes makes up part of an audience and tell you the answer is "no" but even that is subject to my own biases. It almost certainly depends on the audience as well.

I think the more usual concern for Alice is that experts in the audience may be frustrated by the missing details, since they will not get a full understanding of what she actually did.  And the experts' opinions are typically more important to the speaker than those of non-specialists. Many people try to aim for a compromise - part of the talk being more accessible, and another part containing more technical details.  That's not to say that everyone strikes the right balance, of course.

This calls for a quantitative study. The perception that too-understandable talks will be misconstrued as shallow certainly exists; some seminars (the MIT combinatorics seminar, I think) are aggressively reminding speakers to keep the prerequisites low.

@BryanKrause It doesn't feel opinion-based to me - it's something that's answerable by e.g. a survey of the audience.

You could come up with counter examples for every which way. For example, I went to a talk by a prof who was detailing all the work she had done on multiple continents with the military and then back at home. Was it complicated to talk about? No. Did it make me feel like she was doing something simple? No, absolutely not. That might have been the most complex project I've heard of in my field.

The purpose of a talk is to generate interest in your work.  In both cases, if the idea or work is sufficiently interesting, then I would pursue the work/idea further.  In both cases, the title or the first few slides should be sufficient to pique the  audience's interest.  In Alice's case, since she presented the work well, then she has saved me the trouble of understanding the work at a deeper level and allows me to evaluate whether the work is valuable to my own research during her talk.  In Bob's case, I need to do some additional work.  I will do it if I'm interested.

@Allure Which audience? For whose talk? In which field? In what context?

I know this is a hypothetical situation but unconscious gender bias may play a role, leading people to perceive Alice's work as less complicated.

@BryanKrause I don't understand what you mean. If you're saying it depends on the conference/talk/etc, then the same goes for most of the questions on Academia.SE (depends on the professor/university/journal etc).

Actually, different people in the audience will answer differently because of their background and their interest in the subject. What "the audience" thinks is up to them, individually. But, objectively, an easy to understand talk doesn't imply a simple solution. It would be foolish to claim it. Some people have a gift for making the complex comprehensible. Many public scholars (Carl Sagan, for example) have a second career doing just this.

I will tell you what I've observed in Math.  Similar to what Jordan Ellenberg says in How not to be wrong, one can think of depth and technicality as two orthogonal axes, so one has 4 rough categories of results:

Deep and simple (technically easy)
Deep and hard/technical
Shallow and simple
Shallow (unimportant) and technical

Some people like things that are more technical and some people like things are simple, but deep.  For instance, Atle Selberg thought that the most profound ideas in math are simple and said all of his ideas were simple ones.
Correspondingly some people are more easily impressed by technical talks and some people are more easily impressed by simple talks.  So my answer to:

Do people walk out of the talk thinking Alice must've done something simple while Bob did something profound?

would be, while it of course depends on the audience, I think this depends largely on the talk.  If you can explain a simple idea that lets you solve long-standing open problems, I think most people will agree this is deep.  However if your talk doesn't make it clear you're solving long-standing open problems, then people will be unsure.  And you certainly want to avoid giving a talk that is shallow and simple, as no one will be impressed.
I myself generally prefer (giving and listening to) understandable talks, and here are a couple other pieces of advice:

Even if you don't want to present technicalities, make it clear to the audience that technicalities are present, and maybe make a few comments to the experts as to how you handle them.
What may seem simple to you, who have been thinking about these things for months or years, may not seem simple to others.  I've many times given talks and worried that it was too simple for the experts in the audience, and found out later that many of them didn't completely understand what I said beyond the introductory material.

No.
People are impressed by Alice's presentation skills, and her ability to explain a complex subject in a way that can be digested in a short talk.
Obviously a few people are impressed by impenetrable jargon, but trying to impress them does the rest of your audience a disservice. The purpose of a presentation is to communicate ideas. If almost nobody understood Bob's presentation, then Bob has failed.


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Why do academics drink so much coffee?

A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems -- Alfréd Rényi

All the universities whose staff lounges I've been to have had coffee machines with free coffee. I've seen groups name their meetings after coffee much more than other beverages (e.g. from Google, "AstroCoffee" exists in OSU, IfA Hawaii and Goethe University; a corresponding search for "AstroTea" turns up nothing). I've also witnessed one academic telling another "I'm stuck, don't know what to do next" and the other say, quite seriously, "have some coffee! If you're still stuck, have even more coffee!"
What is it about coffee that makes it so ubiquitous in academic culture?

citation needed

I've seen "coffee lounges" far more often in companies than in universities.

it's definitely limited to the area you live in. where i live most of the academics drink tea and call it 'tea break' and it's despite most of the professors in these universities has studied in U.S, so it might be more dependent on the traditions of the homeland rather than relating it to the academic tradition.

@yekanchi do they actually drink tea during the tea break though? "Tea" has another meaning other than the drink itself - from Google, "a light afternoon meal".

free coffee? Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
(the "free coffee" may be paid for communally by the staff making a monthly contribution.)

@Allure yes the drink exactly tea, what i mean by "tea break" is a translation of the phrase they use for it. it can be translated like "tea time" too.

I don't understand the close votes. jakebeal's answer is completely non-opinion based. Please explain.

In Austria coffee is the normal drink for adults or people over 14 years (no legal restriction!) everyone is expected to like coffee and I as a no-coffee-drinker get to hear some comments why I don't drink coffee. I don't see why there should be anything special in Academia

@Allure In the UK, a tea break is just that. “A light afternoon meal” would be referred to as “afternoon tea”, or just “tea”, not as “tea break” (though of course there might well be regional differences I’m unaware of). At Cambridge, tea breaks are tradition and, although coffee is also served, tea is commonly drunk.

Just because a question can be interpreted as opinion-based does not make it opinion-based, because it can conceivably also be interpreted as non-opinion based. jakebeal's answer clearly demonstrates the latter possibility, and in fact is quite appropriate for what I was thinking when I wrote the question. Accordingly, voting to reopen.

For some "evidence":
http://dilbert.com/strip/2006-10-18 (and the next day strips until Oct. 24)

@Seraphina Austrian here. Yes, everyone is expected to drink coffee. Still, I would be comfortable having a professional meeting without coffee. I wouldn't dream of having an academic meeting without coffee.

I've never heard of a "juice break." Is that something people do?

Coffee break is the widely accepted term for a short pause. It is not unique to academia and can be found in wide parts of society and doesn't really require you to drink coffee.

Software developers also drink a lot of coffee.

Ob. SMBC.

Per this 2011 study by Dunkin' Donuts and Career Builders on coffee consumption in the US by profession, cited on io9, "scientists/lab technicians" are the heaviest consumers of coffee in the country. The more generic "Professor" ranked 8th, and "Education Administrator" was 3rd. There's not much info on methodology, and only the "top fifteen" professions are ranked, but it's at least some evidence for the OP's proposition.

Academics actually drink less coffee than others for two reasons.  First, there is no good coffee on university campuses, and second, we don't even have time to relieve ourselves properly, much less take time for a coffee break.  That said, a graduating student gave me a coffee maker, with a note that said, "Thank you for staying on my back."  I still have, and treasure, the note.

What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning, with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine?

Academics sure do drink a lot of coffee---but do they drink any more coffee than other professionals?
According to Wikipedia, 150 million Americans adults drink coffee daily (out of about 240 million total), a rate of more than 60%.  So if most adults drink coffee in America, it's entirely unsurprising that academics are like most other adults and that departments might happily supply this cheap perk---just like many, many other offices do.  Similarly high rates of consumption appear to pertain in most other developed Western countries, which are also where the majority of high-impact scientific research is still conducted.
In short: many academics appear to drink a lot of coffee simply because they are typical adults in societies where most people drink a lot of coffee.

@NajibIdrissi Shhhh! Don't expose us to the earthlings!

It is probably also relevant that academics have desk jobs, and having a desk job makes it easier to drink more coffee, since you can have a cup of coffee next to you while working (while people with more physical jobs will usually need to wait for a break to drink coffee).

Not really a rigorous study, but this may suggest there could be something to the OP's claim: https://nationalcoffeeblog.org/2016/09/22/which-profession-drinks-the-most-coffee/

There are at least two possible explanations and neither involves coffee. The first is that when you try to force your brain to work it sometimes rebels and leaves you stuck. Taking a break, any kind of break can undo the knot. There are stories (and I've experienced it myself) of going to bed with a sticky problem and waking up with the answer. Your brain, generally, isn't idle. It can seek pathways more or less unconsciously.
The second reason is that in large departments the coffee is in a common room, usually with a table that a few folks can sit around and an adjacent white/blackboard. So you get a cuppa and you sit down and chat about your work. Someone else says something that strikes a chord and you have the germ of the answer. Actually, sometimes when you chat about someone else's work, the key comes to you almost unbidden.
Those who work in isolation don't get the benefit of the second solution, and I found that to be true myself. The colleagues you chat with don't even need to be deeply involved in your own research, but sometimes a hint from "out in left field" gives you the path to integrating the concepts you've been working on.
On the other hand. Coffee is good. Long unbroken hours of intense work are usually less good. Less tasty anyway.

Note that a coffee pot in your own office gives you neither of the above benefits.

As your answer makes obvious it doesn’t even have to be coffee. Some people drink tea, cocoa, juice or water during those breaks/gatherings. I think advantages of coffee are that it is warm, quick to make (doesn’t have to steep like tea) and has a low sugar/calorie content.

And also, sometimes an unrelated random conversation is mentally refreshing and turns out to be what you need. Or even going for a walk or game of pool.

@Michael - Spot on. In fact, one could argue that it’s entirely possible to drink a soda during a “coffee break.” One dictionary even defines coffee break as "A short break from work during which coffee or other refreshments may be consumed.”

In my Humanities years, it was also variously called a "wine-", or "beer-break." 10am (or any other time after opening) was often referred to as 'Tav o'clock' - this also extended to Engibeering students (whose club was sponsored by a brewery), and Law students, particularly those in double degrees with Art.

There are two components to your question: the actual presence of coffee, and the social aspect of talking about it.
The Social/Humorous aspect:
Coffee, and the need for it, is a memetic joke in Western culture, where the obsession and need for it is humorously exaggerated. This happens in fiction but also is a common trope in the working world, especially in desk jobs, which academia primarily is. Jokes like "Don't Talk To Me Until I've Had My Coffee" are resonant enough to have a McDonalds commercial, and appear on literally millions of mugs.
The actual usage aspect:
Coffee is the primary, non-stigmatized stimulant in wide use in Western culture. It's not even close. 90% of adults in the US consume coffee every day. I think you'd find that it is prevalent in every setting, not just academia. As a software developer, I hear this humor all the time.
Why is it so popular? Well, in a culture that celebrates visible displays of overwork, and in a profession in which both overworking and bragging about it are common (see this question, it's no surprise that it both is widely consumed (to compensate for long hours) and also widely talked about (since consuming lots of stimulants indicates that you're working really hard, of course).
tl;r: toxic culture and overwork.

Given that there are overwhelming health benefits to drinking coffee I find it mildly frustrating that coffee is mostly associated with toxic culture.

@KonradRudolph: I wouldn’t call them overwhelming.

@Michael Correct. What I mean to say was “overwhelming evidence of health benefits”.

Another answer says that the number who drink coffee is about 60%. The article you link to says that 90% use caffeine every day, not coffee. Caffeine is also in some soft drinks (partularly cola and Mountain Dew) and tea.

Yes. I should have said ‘caffeine is the primary no -stigmatized stimulamt’. Good catch. Will leave unedited for posterity.

This answer's "90% drink coffee daily" link is broken.

It is nothing specific to academia.  Coffee causes physical dependence.  Habitual coffee drinkers feel really bad if they stop drinking it.  The stimulant effects only last for 18 days once someone begins drinking coffee.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine_dependence

Note that 300mg of caffeine in the given page is about a litre of energy drink, or slightly upwards of a pint of black coffee. Yes, you can do that three times a day, but you're unlikely to build up complete caffeine tolerance by accident.

Back here in Portugal we end up drinking more coffee than we should because it is a cheap, quick and a fairly acceptable excuse for socialising or having a not-so-formal meeting.
Coming back to the corporate world, coffee is more an excuse for team building and taking a break, as meetings tend to be more formal.
When I worked in Academia coffee, besides breaks, was more an excuse for building connections, meetings and making informal point of situations with other teams without going through all the formal hoops to book meetings.
So at the end of the day, while doing socialising and impromptu meetings, I ended up drinking more coffees in Academia than in a corporate setting.


text:
What is the point in publishing a paper in a journal rather than arXiv?
I'm undergraduate student in Physics. I don't know what the point is in publishing a paper in a journal rather than arXiv.
As far as I know, there is a fee which must be paid for publishing in a journal. (That may not be for all journal or fields.) If I do some publishable work in my undergrad research, what option would be more logical and advantageous? How would they affect my future PhD admissions?
Or more generally, how would these options affect one's career in academia?

Note that, at least in fields that do not routinely used arXiv, "being uploaded to arXiv but not published in a peer-reviewed venue" sometimes counts as "unpublished".

You're presenting a false dichotomy -- there's the third option of publishing your work by both putting the manuscript on arXiv and submitting it to a journal. (To what extent this is possible, is of course field-dependent; in mathematics, this is usually no problem -- some journals even allow you to specify an arXiv identifier instead of uploading a PDF when submitting.)

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

Papers published in (reputable) journals are reviewed by other scientists (peer review), which usually makes it considerably more difficult to publish a paper there. By contrast papers on the ArXiv only receive a brief inspection to keep out utter crap. Thus, most academic evaluations consider only peer-reviewed publications or value them considerably higher.
Moreover, often only peer-reviewed papers are considered citable, in particular for purposes of backing up your claims. This may extend to papers that are considered certain to be eventually peer-reviewed¹, but this is unlikely to apply to your paper. As being cited (by peer-reviewed papers) is another important academic evaluation metric, this is another advantageous aspect of journal publications.
As a sidenote: There are a lot of physics journals where you can publish without a fee.

¹ in particular in fast-moving fields or fields with long peer review such as parts of mathematics

In mathematics, (from my admittedtly limited experience) preprints seem to be cited quite often for sort of the opposite reason of the field being slow-moving, in the sense that it takes a long time to get a paper reviewed and published (even over a year, even if there is nothing wrong with it). If there is a lot of work being done in an area, the research may very well be obsolete by the time it gets actually published.

often only peer-reviewed papers are considered citable — [citation needed]  Peer review is not a prerequisite for citation, nor even a prerequisite for credibility.  If you use a result from any source, you must cite it, no matter whether it is peer-reviewed or not.  At least one of my StackExchange posts has more citations than at least one of my papers.

@JeffE: I witnessed and experienced problems with citing preprints myself (though I cannot prove it). Also note that I am mostly reporting an attitude here, not defending it. I am all with citing an inspiration or source of an idea, no matter where it was published (and this will most likely not cause a problem anyway). I do agree, however, that something that you cite as a basis of your argumentation should at least have considerable chances of passing peer review (given the current publication system).

@tomasz Indeed, citing preprints (at least ones on arXiv) is generally fine in mathematics, but often journals will request that if the paper is also published elsewhere that at a minimum a reference to the peer-reviewed version is added.

It is not at all clear that peer review improves the quality of publications as much as it delays the dissemination of interesting ideas.

I have seen multiple arXiv papers that seemed fine on the surface (and people were referring me to them, based on reading the abstract and the main result). But after going through the paper it became clear that it is flawed to an extent that it couldn't possibly have passed peer review.  Of course many flawed papers do pass peer review, but based on my (admittedly limited) experience I trust a peer reviewed publication more than something that's only on arXiv.  At the same time I do appreciate getting early access through arXiv. @DanFox

@DanFox We may be refereeing different kinds of papers, then. (I agree to some extent with your comment as stated, but just want, perhaps in vain, to put a marker down against the prevailing wind)

Publishing in a journal typically means that your paper has been peer-reviewed. As far as I know arXiv does not review any papers.

@NajibIdrissi At risk of derailing: see http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.4144 (I appreciate that over the last five years the arXiv seem to have increased filtering/moderation)

Reminder: publishing is about making (a work) public. From a link on your webpage, to a highly considered journal, the ways you make it public provide a stamp on the level of "evaluation" your work are undergone. Going through peer-view and being published in a journal means that a board of editors, generally with the help of reviewers, consider that your paper possesses sufficient potential value to stand among the other papers.
Nobody knows the actual value of a paper just published. It takes time to reveal. Journals and archives (like arxiv) serve different purposes:

journals: they are "official", and produce indices (the infamous "impact factor") of average "values" of papers published in the journal.
arxiv: can store preprints, set a public "first date" for a submitted paper, since peer review can take long time.

If you stick to the publishing system, you can submit your paper to a journal, and perform an arxiv upload (in accordance with the journal's rules). When it is published, you can add this mention to the arxiv page. Having a paper under review, under revision or even better published would be quite good for a PhD admission. Having a paper on arxiv only shows that you are confident enough to share your work, but does not give the same impression.
If you do not stick to the system, you can put your preprints online, and hope that the people you talk to will effectively read your papers, instead of relying on peer-review judgement done by others.
For the second question, one might consider that a huge proportion of arxiv preprints that have not been published (say, a few years later) may raise questions about the publishable quality of the work. Unless one reads them to evaluate their content (and somehow do the peer-review work that has not been done before), this is likely to cast shades on an academia career.
Unless one is a genius who does not care about evaluation, think about a recent Fields medal.

There are a number of good answers here that get at the core of your question, but I thought I would add a supplement to make the answers more general beyond Physics:
Because some fields don't use arXiv. Or indeed preprints of any sort.
Large swathes of biomedicine, for example, don't interact with arXiv in any way.

This may sound silly and childish, but publishing in peer-reviewed, indexed journals makes all your little numbers (h-index, i10-index, and many more!) grow. These numbers, whichever way you twist it, contribute either some or a lot to acquiring funds, either in the form of someone hiring you or some institution/concern/company giving you direct research funds.
Sure, the quality of your actual work is important, and I'm not saying everyone should play the numbers game. But it seems like you can't play if you don't have the numbers.

It's not silly!  That is exactly how people are evaluated in academia.  But I think it strange that an undergraduate would be publishing anything that would pass peer review.  It is not a typical course requirement - more likely for research degrees.

It is silly because it is very possible and occurs often that someone (co-)authors a paper in a high ranking journal (s)he had little or nothing to do with. They get the credit but can't explain the content of the paper. Getting published in these high-ranking journals often entails using the right contacts, or even having a famous name in the author list ("oh, he knows what's important"). I'm not saying this is always the case and requirement, it's just a nasty trend that really has no upsides and I've seen crappy papers getting into quality journals too many times.

What you say often happens.  For that reason many journals use double-blind review process. Of course, there are some who suggest that many fields are rather narrow, so the most suitable reviewers can deduce who the authors are.

I have made a similar question (Why publish in a journal instead arxiv or in my blog?) but questioning also motivation of publishing in journals and patent implications.
And the answers leads to that conclusions:
Publishing on a journal :

no earnings for me (they do)
no protection (industry can use my methods and may be with unethical purposes)
not accesible (a very wide number of people can´t pay for knowledge)
loss on copyrights (the knowledge can be limited for the elite)
I gain reputation (I´m not sure if I want that at this price)
Scientist get it fast and take it seriously
Free peer reviewed

Publishing on arxiv :

no earnings for me (they do)
no protection (industry can use my methods and may be with unethical purposes)
accesible for all people that have access to internet
I preserve my copyright, I can do what I want with them
I gain reputation (but bad reputation too).
Scientist get it fast and take it seriously (but need good endosers)
Free peer-reviewed (arxiv is open peer-reviewed but it can be lost in the sea)

So publishing on a journal is very similar to arxiv, but giving away rights in exchange for peer-reviews and notoriety.
By the way ... https://www.smartsciencecareer.com/best-publication-strategy-in-science/

Regarding your point 7: ArXiv isn't really peer reviewed in any the usual sense. I'll also say that, in my field, most papers are posted on arXiv and also published in journals. So they're accessible still.