text:
How to avoid being falsely accused of harassment by a student?
I am a junior faculty member and as part of my work I have to supervise students. I am required by the University to have one-on-one meetings with them every week to check their progress and give feedback. I usually have these meetings in my office like all the other staff.
One piece of advice I have received from senior colleagues and online fora is to always keep my door open during the meetings to minimise the risk of being falsely accused of misconduct (in particular harassment). This could happen for instance with a student trying to hurt me or the university for failing a course.
I understand that the probability of this happening (being falsely accused by a student) is very small. Yet, the advice of keeping the door open during meetings is standard in academia, which means a probability must exist (albeit very small) - or, the universities think so.
Question: Is there any other advice, common practice, or university policies for precautions to be taken - along the lines mentioned above (open door) - to minimise the risk of being falsely accused of misconduct by a student (with the focus on false harassment accusations) during private meetings?
I reject in advance any answers that might discriminate or bias against any group of students based on their gender, origin, or background history. Also, I would prefer to avoid solutions that include audio-visual recording, as this is not usual in my university.
For context, I am a male professor having meetings with students of all sexes. My main concern though are meetings with female students (due to past experience of a friend being falsely accused by one of his female students, with severe effects to his professional and personal life).
Note: My original question was misinterpreted leading to debates concerning what I actually asked. You can retrieve the original question in the edit history for context on some of the answers.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. Further comments will be deleted.

I am not sure if my experiences are common, but as a faculty member in a psychology department I have had a number of unique and uncomfortable experiences with female students. I have described the two most egregious cases here and here. As for an answer, I want to start with an excerpt from this answer since I think it is so good

1) Never sexually harass your students. Don't even come close -- have a clear-eyed view of what the boundary of acceptable behavior would be and make sure that you stay two stops on the side of that boundary. Especially, maintain a very strong sense of what is acceptable physical contact with a student. (Handshaking: okay. Tapping someone on their clothed arm or shoulder to get their attention: probably okay, but monitor while you do it to make sure that it is being received that way. Almost anything else: as a rule, don't do it.)

In addition, it is important to think about your behavior. I advise always keeping your door open, and remaining on opposite sides of the desk/table when appropriate. You need to be mindful of physical contact with students (cf. What physical contact, if any, is acceptable between a supervisor and a student?) and what you say to them.
Apart from actually not harassing your students, I advise you to document any awkward interactions you have with students. If you accidently (remember rule 1) inappropriately interact with a student (e.g., physical contact or an odd turn of phrase), regardless of if was you or the student that did/said it, you need to tell someone. Similarly, if a student gets unusually upset about a grade, or anything else, you want to document it. I suggest email so there is a written record. I always told my department chair, but the director of teaching or a faculty mentor could also work. I would advise always telling the same person, so they have some context.
In cases where you know the situation could be difficult or where students have been difficult in the past, you my want to have another faculty member join your meeting. You obviously cannot do this for all meetings (e.g., having a faculty member sit in on all your office hours would not work), it would be fine scheduled meetings with problematic students and difficult situations (e.g., failing a student or academic misconduct).
It is also worth noting that sometimes students want privacy (maybe you are discussing grades or a medical condition). If a student wants to shut my door for privacy, I am fine with it, barring a past history or an obvious difficult situation. If anything uncomfortable happens after the door was shut, or if you are feeling the slightest bit concerned/paranoid, you should document what happened.

Dear Department Chair,
I met today with Jane Doe to discuss her medical condition. She requested and shut my door while meeting. At one point she briefly came around my desk and showed me the rash on her arm. It was a little odd and in the future I will make sure students know to respect our personal space. I don't foresee any issues, but wanted to keep you in the loop.

Your advice is good but there is unfortunately conflicting requirements put upon educators. Any educator is advised to keep their door open when meeting with students to avoid liability. We're also told that student privacy is important and student records (grades) are confidential. I don't see how I can maintain student privacy while also keeping my door open, especially for the student who is being told they're failing and/or distraught, but those are exactly the students you're concerned about doing something like this.

@David that should probably be a new question. In regards to this question, in the absence of a past history or an obvious difficult situation, if a student wants to shut my door for privacy, I am fine with it. If anything uncomfortable happened after the door was shut, or if I was feeling the slightest bit concerned/paranoid, I would email my chair explaining that the student shut the door and what happened.

@David I generally keep my door open also, but occasionally students do want shut the door, either for privacy or because of loud noises (e.g.,  construction) outside my office.  I have always heard the "open door" advice as a general rule of thumb rather than something to stick by legalistically.  Really I think the main reason to keep the door open is (i) for convenience, and (ii) so all parties feel "safe."  If those reasons are absent, closing the door at a student's request seems generally okay.

@David There should be meeting places available that block noise but allow visual contact. If there aren't it would be something to suggest to who-ever can make that sort of thing happen. If you explain that it will help the school avoid lawsuits you might be persuasive.

I am not sure this works. If you email the chair on a frequent basis documenting interactions with female students, this would rapidly start to look very suspicious.

Perhaps the door should have a window in it? Even a little one would do.

@Lembik if you are having frequent awkward interactions with students, then there probably is a problem. If all your awkward interactions are with female students, that could also benjoy an issue.

@StrongBad I suppose it depends on your definitions of awkward and frequent.  But the number of times a year you might have a student in your office who is upset either about their own lives or a grade you have given them could well be more than one on average I would guess. This is especially so if you teach hundreds of students. I still maintain that the only real solution is just never to be alone with a student in private.

@StrongBad - I noticed that you never explicitly stated your own gender.  I proposed an edit to your answer to make it clear.  (It's true that the overwhelming majority of participants at Academia.SE are male, but objectively I don't see anything about your username that would make your gender obvious.)

@aparente001 any reason you think my geneder/sex matters for this answer?

@David, To maintain privacy, grades can be written down on a piece of paper and shown to the student silently (like it's done at a bank when you request your bank balance). After which, it's the student's choice whether to keep the grade private or not, or whether to become visibly upset or not. Either way, if a student doesn't want to maintain their own privacy, it's their problem, not yours.

Frankly, it is not clear to me why you are so concerned about being falsely accused of sexual harassment.  Yes, there is a chance of this happening, but the chance is very small, even compared to other equally or more grave things that are largely out of your control (serious health problems, accidents, and so forth).

Lately, maybe because of the news, I am afraid that if I displease one of the students (for example fail her) she might accuse me of harassment to hurt me or force the University into a deal.

How often does a student fabricate a sexual harassment claim against a faculty member who has behaved entirely professionally?  Such a student has a lot to lose as well.

No matter how it ends up, it will have serious consequences on my life (personal and professional).

I don't really agree.  Such allegations are treated confidentially at first, and if they are totally without merit they need not go public.  I speak here from direct experience with the process for dealing with harassment allegations at my university.  I have reported (as required) secondhand information about possible harassment by faculty members at my university, and these investigations were indeed kept confidential and the faculty members remain in good standing at the university.

It happened to a colleague (different university) and it practically destroyed his career and marriage; even though he was finally cleared.

I'm sorry to hear that; maybe that's what's setting you off. I don't know your colleague's situation at all, so I can't speak to it.  I do however respectfully disagree with your claim that any false claim of harassment by a student will come close to destroying one's personal life.  There are many public examples of marriages that survived sexual harassment.  Moreover, there are people in my life whom I would not believe guilty of sexual misconduct based on any amount of circumstantial evidence.  I think a lot of people feel this way about their spouses.

I thought of rejecting any female students (you can select the students to accept), but I could never discriminate like that. I thought of hiding a camera in my office, but that could go badly if it's detected (and it's illegal). Asking only the female students to meet me at the library or public space would seem very odd and discriminating. Asking all students to do the same would be difficult to me.

I agree that with the possible exception of the last, these are terrible ideas.  (Really, you thought of putting a hidden camera in your office to protect yourself from claims of sexual harassment?)  The last idea is not inherently bad, but...how is it different to have students meet in a library than to meet in your office with the door kept open?

How do you protect yourself from this? How can I not discriminate, be a good educator, but protect myself and my family? Am I being paranoid (probably)? I am uncomfortable asking senior academics in my department about this.

"Paranoid" is a little strong, but I don't really understand where your worries are coming from.  Nor do I understand why you are reluctant to talk to your colleagues about this.  You seem to be slightly "hung up" on something here.
Anyway, here is my strategy for avoiding allegations of sexual harassment.  The first two points are key, and the third is optional but helpful.  Here we go:
1) Never sexually harass your students.  Don't even come close -- have a clear-eyed view of what the boundary of acceptable behavior would be and make sure that you stay two steps away from that boundary.  Especially, maintain a very strong sense of what is acceptable physical contact with a student.  (Handshaking: okay.  Tapping someone on their clothed arm or shoulder to get their attention: probably okay, but monitor while you do it to make sure that it is being received that way.  Almost anything else: as a rule, don't do it.)
2) Make sure that your interaction with students looks to all observers like you are a steadfast subscriber to point 1) above.  So, yes: keep your office door open whenever students are in your office.  Feel free to make a point that you are doing so.  Make a point of not talking about romantic relationships with your students -- either theirs or yours --  except possibly in ways that are so passing and innocent that they actually reinforce that you know where the boundaries lie.
3) Actually be ahead of the male-academic curve when it comes to knowledge and sensitivity about such issues.
In your case, I caught a few minor things that suggest that you have some room for improvement on the latter point.

Most of all, being fearful of being falsely accused of sexual harassment suggests a certain lack of empathy with your female students.  I am aware that pointing that out is not directly helpful, but I do hope you can attain a better state in the fullness of time.
For every female student who falsely accuses their male faculty member of sexual harassment, how many female students are truly sexually harassed, or borderline sexually harassed, or not harassed but treated differently from the male students in a way that makes them feel uncomfortable?  In my experience, if you include all of the above the ratio is something like 1:100 or more.  If you can come off as legitimately sympathetic to these issues, then (apart from other benefits!) you make yourself a much less appealing target for students to make up stories.  And having other students step in and say "On the contrary, Professor A is one of the good ones..." will certainly help to defuse things if it comes to that.
"Some of the students are girls." Do you mean that they are under 18?  If you do mean that, say that.  It is no longer considered appropriate to refer to adult women as "girls."  Probably you would not refer to your male students as "boys," and by the way, you shouldn't.
"I understand that the same accusation could come from a male student. My 80s small town bias doesn't allow me to consider that possibility."  What the what?!?  First of all your statement is literally contradictory: you are evidently considering the possibility.  Second of all: what are you trying to say -- that you're more backward / less progressive than other people in your position might be?  You are giving an excuse that excuses nothing and that could be quite off-putting to many other academics.  So don't say things like that.

Added: Here are some statistics on the prevalence of sexual harassment in American universities.  I can't find statistics on prevalence of false accusations of sexual harassment against American faculty members (and doubt such exist), but in my best judgment it somewhere between two and three orders of magnitude more likely that a female student gets sexually harassed by someone in the university than makes up a claim of being sexually harassed by a faculty member.  Several people have suggested that such statistics are not relevant to the OP.  I respectfully disagree: as others have said, a rational approach to this problem is to quantify the risk and ask what tradeoffs the OP is willing to incur to lessen it.  Knowing that female students and faculty routinely occur a risk hundreds of times greater is something to take into account when making these considerations.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat and new comments will be deleted.

While it is nice that the other people show consideration for all women who are harassed, they do not seem to fully appreciate the position of the many men who are falsely accused. Someone in another answer claims the ratio is 1:100, there is no statistics for that in academia, but in the field I am aware of (family law) the percent of women fabricating accusations against their husbands is around 50%.
While the OP might be seen as paranoid, people who think that do not understand how devastating is to be falsely accused (or to know someone who has been falsely accused), and this is much more common than people often assume. In many cases men are assumed guilty until proven innocent.
I am not saying this to scare the OP, on the contrary, I think it is important that he feels people understand he is not paranoid. However, we also need to be realistic, and while, as I said, it is true that men who have been falsely accused have felt devastating consequences, it is also very unlikely for this to happen in your situation.
The best analogy I can make is this: think of air travel. If your plane crashes, your chances of survival are almost zero, and if you know someone who died in a plane accident, you might be afraid of flying. Understandable, and everyone should be understanding and sympathetic of how you feel, you are not paranoid if you are afraid of flying. However, flying is also quite safe, in the sense that driving is actually more dangerous, and so are many other activities.
Be aware of the dangers, but don't stop flying, you cannot take the train from New York to London. In your job, you need to understand you need to be relaxed, and feel comfortable with both men and women. Do keep that door open, the same way you will fasten your seat belt, and understand that the probability of being falsely accused is quite low.

Family law is a completely different situation.  Moreover, the ways that women in academia are discriminated against / mistreated / harassed are quite well documented.  There is nothing in your answer that is specific to academia.  Do you have any relevant expertise to share with us?

Do you have a reference for your 50% number?

The self-selected population of people involved in acrimonious divorce proceedings are very much not the right comparison. As for the 1:100 statistics, those are indeed for the general population, not academia - and probably on the low side, because that is as far as I am aware the rate for rape, which presumably is somewhat rarer than harassment. Most studies of reports of rape to the authorities find a false accussation rate of 3-9%, and other studies find that less than 1 in 10 victims report at all. But why would academia be different from the general population?

@nengel: My estimate of 1:100 was not just for harassment but also for other ways in which women get marginalized or made to feel uncomfortable in academic environments.  Some of this is certainly academia specific, or even specific to certain academic fields.

If 1% of accusations are towards people who didn't do it, that's meaningless - the statistic you should be looking at is what percentage of people who didn't do it get accused?

@PeteL.Clark: in that case you can probably just divide the number of reports by the number of female students for a reasonable approximation. Certainly I can't imagine making it even through undergraduate studies without encountering e.g. that one prof who keeps inserting comments into his lecture about how awful it is that they can't even hug and kiss their students any more these days. Or the one who keeps bending down to admire the legs of anyone so unfortunate as to walk into class wearing a skirt.

@immibis: hardly meaningless - you need that statistic to answer your question. The percentage of people who get accused and didn't do it is 1/10th of the percentage of people who get accused. You just need to know the overall rate of reports, which I think US universities have to report in their title IX reports, and the overall number of people, which should be available somewhere on their website too.

@MaxvonHippel: it's 5% that end in court, apparently. But it's a much shorter hop to say that someone with whom you were already sexually involved and were having conflicts with made sexual advances at a time when you were not in the mood, in a situation where you have to argue which of you two is right for financial gain, than it is to claim that someone with whom you were sitting in an office with an open door discussing a technical subject made sexual advances, when this is likely to leave you unable to finish your degree.

@nengel Your statements that women get marginalised does not apply at all here. This is a legal problem, and ANY court, not just family law, is heavily biased against men. Men get on average 30-50% longer sentences than men for the same crime, and are much less often believed. In courts men are marginalised. There is no point in arguing whether women are marginalised in academia, the point is, if a woman makes a false accusation (maybe she is bitter because she is marginalised) than the man falsely accused is facing an uphill battle because in the Court men face a heavy bias against them.

@user: In most US universities, these matters are investigated internally, as far as I know. Also, I never stated that women are marginalized, that was Pete L. Clark. (I do happen to agree though.)

@nengel Yes, sorry about that. In any case the point I was making is not about whether or not women are marginalised in academia. However, that these matters are investigated internally is not always true, a potential victim can press legal charges and end up in court.

I know a few people who have (visible) cameras in their office or other workspace for exactly this reason; a certain employee was falsely accused by a student to get a better grade, the employee was quietly fired but then re-instated when the student's was later discovered to be completely fabricating the incident. It was really treated as a "guilty until proven innocent" case and many other employees decided they'd rather get in trouble for having a camera than possibly MORE trouble after being falsely accused.

What do you mean by 1:100?  1 in 100 men get false accused, or 1 in 100 accusations is false?

@owjburnham "Well we can assume that it's never less than 1 (by definition, surely, an accusation can't be taken seriously until there's been an accusation)?" Depends on whether by "accuser" you mean "alleged victim". There have certainly been cases that were taken seriously when no one publicly claimed to be a victim.

If you read the news lately more closely, you will see that almost no one believed the past individual accounts of harassment, and it took about a dozen simultaneous accusations for anyone to even begin to take it seriously. So even if it comes to that, the scale is still utterly weighed in your favor. The best thing you could do, IMO, is educate yourself more about how sexual harassment plays out. Try to put yourself in the place of your female students, rather than reflexively identifying with harassers just because you share a gender with them.
Right now, you are treating your female students like some bomb that might go off at any moment. That is no way to be an advisor. Knowing the patterns will let you both:

rest more easily in the knowledge of where the boundaries are, and that you are not crossing them
recognize when others are crossing them, and not make excuses for those of your colleagues that actually do harass their students.

The boundaries are not even all that gender-specific. For instance, do not talk about sexual or romantic feelings in the office. Since you are heterosexual (I assume from your post), this would likely take very different forms for male and female students, but it is equally inappropriate to bond with your male students by talking about who you find attractive than it is to expound on your marital problems with your female students. Watch yourself in moderation in both situations, rather than walking on eggshells around only half your students.

Edit: based on the comments, let me expand this answer some more. The reality is, one sufficiently motivated person of any gender can make your life hell. This is simply a fact of life, and it is ultimately impossible to guard against every avenue of attack. Any student with a grievance might just as well file a report that you have falsified data. (In fact, my institution has recently revised their grievance procedures following a report of research misconduct that was deemed frivolous after investigation. I am sure the professor in this case also suffered. You can find news articles if you are so inclined.)
Focusing on the one variant that is more likely to come from female students has disparate effects on some of your students. This is discrimination. Since you note in your question that you would prefer not to opt to discriminate against female students just to assuage your fears (a commendable position that I wish more people would take), but it is impossible to find some way to hush up any accusation immediately (for obvious reasons this is also undesirable), the way to deal with this is to become more comfortable with the situation. Just like women learn to live their lives with the constant threat of being sexually harassed, and somehow still manage to interact with men normally, you can learn to live with the possibility of being accused of harassment.
How do you do this?

Step one, and this is why "don't harass anyone" keeps showing up in the answers, is to make sure your behavior is above reproach. If you are afraid someone will think your house is too dirty, put some extra effort into cleaning, for your own peace of mind. (This can also include always treating your students fairly in matters of grading etc. It is harder to make up an accusation against someone you respect than against someone you hate.)
Step two, make sure your standards are in line with everyone else's. Read a forum where people talk about housekeeping, and learn how many days in a row it is normal to use a towel before putting it in the wash.
Step three, get involved in the process. I'm giving up on the analogy now: read up on past accusations, join the equal opportunities commission, or volunteer to assist in an investigation, etc. Learn more about what happens after an accusation, which types of evidence are used, what the standards of proof are, etc. Get familiar with how your institution deals with grievances. This will let you have strategies in place for how to deal with an accusation if it does happen, and return some feeling of control of the situation to you, rather than just being afraid that your life will be over at that point.

@DavidRicherby: If you frame it in that way, true. I was thinking just of the scales of whose side people are more likely to take after an accusation has already been made. That would be cold comfort, of course.

That may be true for high-profile Hollywood stars, who only became newsworthy because of their position, but is not necessarily the case for an average academic so accused. This seems to be a case of availability bias. Do you have any statistics showing the average number of accusations that an academic gets before it is taken seriously? I'll be seriously surprised if that number is more than 1.

I would also add that records of the student's academic performance would lend credibility to or against the notion that the student would make such claims to not fail a class.

@MarchHo: I'm not aware of any statistics about that, and news reports will surely tend towards the higher-profile who might also be more impervious due to their status. But I was thinking of accounts of harassment in academia such as Geoff Marcy (4 accusations) and David Marchant (3 accusations). I guess we can add "do excellent work and become a stature in your field" to the recommendations for OP...

@MarchHo Well we can assume that it's never less than 1 (by definition, surely, an accusation can't be taken seriously until there's been an accusation)?

This answer is also not helpful. It's not about  treating every female as a bomb. It is common knowledge among educators that you should keep your doors open during meetings with students anytime. Why? So that you are clear if anyone accuses you of anything. OP is asking if there is any more advice along this same vein that he hasn't heard. He likely does not need a lecture on gender politics. If you think he is already doing everything he needs to protect himself adequately, just say so.

@EvSunWoodard: there's truth to your comment. I started out writing a comment but ended up putting it in an answer when it became too long, because I felt that OP... kind of did need a lecture on gender politics. I've expanded on why I think that that is in fact relevant advice in this situation.

I think your “edit” is particularly spot-on: there currently seems to be a moral panic about supposed rampant accusations of sexual harassment in US academia that is utterly unsubstantiated by evidence. If people want to ruin your life, a false sexual harassment accusation is just one of many weapons in the arsenal. Don’t waste too much energy guarding against a single perceived threat while forgetting about the rest.

"Just like women learn to live their lives with the constant threat of being sexually harassed, and somehow still manage to interact with men normally, you can learn to live with the possibility of being accused of harassment." This is a very nice argument I never thought and I shall keep in mind from now on. Although, the actual question was about "Step two": are there any standards I don't know about? I didn't ask for psychotherapy concerning my fears or for a lecture on gender politics. This is supposed to be a Q&A site, not a Q&lecture.

Fair enough. I was suspecting a bit of a XY problem in this case, hence the psychotherapy/lecture. In the end we all bring our own baggage to these questions and the answers will not always be 100% relevant to the particular context of the original questioner. But exploring the broader topic isn't a bad thing - SE is meant to be a general resource and others with similar questions might find different parts of answers helpful.

@nengel sure. That's why I didn't modify the question when I realised it was derailing and I just added a clarification. It has turned out to be a bundle of information. And given the upvotes, I guess many people have the same concerns / fears or simply found the topic interesting. Thanks for taking the time to answer.

@nengel - Unfortunately, your answer still doesn't actually answer the question. "Make sure you aren't harassing, and don't let others harass", doesn't help me in a situation where I get falsely accused (which does happen, regardless of quantity. There is no XY problem, the problem is that some people will take the opportunity to screw you over. There are ways to protect yourself without being sexist (an open door policy).

@nengel - Your example of a student saying data was falsified is a bit of a red herring as the consequences are no where near as severe, and it can be quantitatively disproved. Which is likely why the teacher got off. Sexual misconduct has a much more severe penalty (as it should), and is often much, much harder to prove (which is why too many people get away with it), but while trying to fix the fact that too many get away with it, it opens the door for false claims to get more credit. So, if there are ways to stop false claims, then real claims get more attention, helping both problems.

@EvSunWoodard: We'll have to disagree on the bits questioning the framing of the question. But my actual answer to the question was "familiarize yourself with your university's grievance procedures". Surely that will help?

"If you read the news lately more closely, you will see that almost no one believed the past individual accounts of harassment, and it took about a dozen simultaneous accusations for anyone to even begin to take it seriously." You're simply cherry-picking. It's quite possible for one case to garner an under-reaction while other cases garner over-reactions. Duke rape case, Rolling Stone's UV story, etc., etc. And even in the Cosby and Weinstein cases, it was less than a dozen.

@nengel - Not to be argumentative, but no that's not what your answer was, nor is "grievance procedures" mentioned anywhere in your answer. You do say, "rest more comfortably in the knowledge of where the boundaries are", and "recognize when others are crossing them". Along with "put yourself in the place of your female students, rather than reflexively identifying with harassers" which, by the way, OP isn't doing. He is identifying with victims he shares a profession with, because he doesn't want to become a victim. If your intent is for him to read policy, maybe edit to make that clear.

Perhaps think of this the same way you think of avoiding being run over as a pedestrian.
There are obvious precautions you should definitely take, such as looking both ways before crossing a road, and keeping your interactions with your students strictly professional, no touching, no dating students, no sex-related remarks.
There are a series of further pedestrian precautions you can take, such as only crossing at light controlled intersections, not walking at times when drunk drivers are especially likely, working up to never walking outside your home or buildings at all. Each further reduces the risk at an increasing convenience cost.
Similarly, there are a series of further accusation-preventing precautions you can take, discussed in other answers. The equivalent of never walking outside buildings is to not take any job that requires one-on-one meetings with students some of whom will be women.
Life is a constant series of trade-offs between risk and reward, in which you have to decide how much risk you are prepared to take to get things you want in life. If you want a job that involves meeting one-on-one with students, and want the convenience of using your own office rather than going to a busy public location, there is going to be a non-zero risk.

This is a great answer. I think your comparison really nails it, and captures the fact that there is no foolproof way OP can avoid the thing he fears with 100% certainty, since it is simply part of his job, but at the same time gives a vivid illustration of the (very low) magnitude of the risks involved if proper precautions are taken.

Thanks for the nice answer. I will try to lighten up; I am a stressful person by nature. However, I did receive some nice suggestions to decrease that risk (mainly in the accepted answer). I'll take the criticism along with those :)

I also like this answer.  We all agree that the OP is right to observe that there is some risk, but putting the risk in perspective and asking what tradeoffs he is willing to incur to decrease it is a psychologically astute approach.

Don’t professors mostly  use their own office because they have no other choice? If a professor took a student to a quiet and secluded place that was not their own office, that would look really bad,

@Lembik Indeed. I would expect a professor who is just trying to avoid accusations and who decides against meeting in their office to hold their student meetings in a busy public location, such as an active college library, not a quiet and secluded place.

The issue is that the student may well not like that option at all. I feel students expect to meet in an office, not a college library. Also, when a student complains that they are being made to meet in a library, the professor would have to explain why.   Isn’t the only solution never to be alone with a student and to have that as a departmental policy? I know universities where that is already the policy for any student under 18.

The OPs clarification:

Assume there is a person that might want to hurt their educator for failing them by spreading lies or accusing them of something they didn't do (harassment during 1-1 meetings). How can that educator protect themselves (best practices, measures, etc.)?

changes the question somewhat. It's not about the one student in X (whatever X is) who is willing to risk mutual destruction to satisfy a grievance. In this case, I agree with StrongBad regarding general precautions. I would also be selective in which students to accept. There is nothing bad about it if done on an individual basis (instead of based on the sex of the person). After all, you need to work with the student and if the interaction does not work out, it's unlikely you'll both get something good out of it.
But your clarification sounds like there is a student out to get you. In that case, it might be helpful to talk with trusted colleagues who also know the student (about your difficulties with the student). It might even be time for legal support — someone who knows academia and knows how to deal with these cases. Also, "always be recording" might be helpful here (again: talk to a lawyer first).
In general I have found that conflicts with students (e.g. about grades) can be mediated if done correctly (needs a neutral and skilled mediator). However, this might not work for all students.
One issue I haven't found in the answers so far is a worst-case scenario plan for the unlikely but possible case of a false accusation happening. I find that with rare but devastating events, having a plan on how to deal with such a situation might help. You are unlikely to think clearly if that event occurs.
A website I have seen long ago (page no longer exists) listed a few tips in case of a wrongful accusation (albeit directed at students). Among others:

not to talk with others about it (save close family or attorney; never ever talk about it on social media; you never know how it might be used against you),
keeping your cool (influences perception)
seeking independent counsel (the university might decide to protect its reputation)
not use the university eMail/phone system (again: the university might not be neutral)
be wary of pretext calls (friend calling you and trying to get you to admit guilt; just decline to answer any questions and hang up)
be wary of physical danger (person who accuses you might instigate violence)
never talk to the police if accused (let the attorney deal with it)
getting to know the procedures on how the university deals with it (esp. to know your rights)
recording anything that you are legally allowed to record (state laws! consult attorney)
document-document-document — and keep everything organized
adhere religiously to no-contact orders (even if the students wants you to call back or wants to meet)
and the like.

Hopefully you never need it, but a worst-case plan might be helpful.
Talking about helpful, a comment about the question and some of the reactions here:
I think a false accusation is one of the worst things that can happen to a person. It can destroy a person's life, can socially isolate them, can drive them to suicide, and can undermine the basic trust in the legal system.
And yep, sexual misconduct/harassment/assault happens. A few people — male and female — are criminal assholes, no question about it, esp. in positions of power. But there also are a few people — male and female — who will use any method to get at someone. There is a phase in conflicts where even devastating personal losses are accepted just to get at the other person. It's not rational but deeply human. And in some cases, this can involve wrongful accusations.
Which sucks, given that most people in academia just want to do a good job — do good research and teach good courses — and these things make life unnecessarily difficult.
With this in mind, I wonder how some answers would read if you gender swap it (useful test to see biases). If the question had been about a female professor being afraid of possible physical violence from male students. After all, a wrongful accusation is essentially assaulting a person via a proxy, and over a longer time period. Here the proxy is the legal system, and sometimes also the court of public opinion (which sometimes comes with actual violence, not to mention violence in prisons).
In this swapped case, essentially saying: it's rare, bad things do not happen to good people, don't invite it, just be professional, and what's really important are cases of Y ... just does not cut it. It would probably be called "victim blaming" and "derailment". Yes, being professional is good advice, but it doesn't work if the student is not. Humans aren't always professional, or even rational.
So, with the question asked here I think it's best to ... well, assume the best: the OP just wants to do a good job and cases of false accusations just scare the shit out of many people. No matter how rare they are. And as useful as statistics are (which would have to be about false accusations), a person has only one life and the consequences are devastating. Even if the probability is low, if the consequences are serious enough it pays to prepare for such an event. That's why we have insurances.
So, kudos to the OP for asking the question and dealing with the reactions.

This isn't like preparing for nuclear war or an asteroid strike. "Protecting yourself" (beyond very basic common-sense precautions) against false accusations of sexual harassment necessarily means treating men students and women students differently. And there's still the question of just why this particular very-low-probability event is apparently so frightening to many men. A car accident, violent crime, or serious illness has devastating consequences too, and they're much more likely.

@ElizabethHenning People generally fear risks they can't control. After the July 2007 terrorist attacks in London, there was a big increase in people cycling to work, despite the fact that one is much more likely to die in a cycling accident than a terrorist attack on the public transit system. Similarly, people feel that they have some control over car accidents (drive carefully, be more aware of other road users), violent crime (avoid the dodgy parts of town) and serious illness (adopt a generally healthy lifestyle). False accusations are impossible to control.

@David The key point is feeling like you're in control, because you don't actually have a whole lot of control over any of the other examples either. Which makes me think that the spiky psychological nub here is the idea that a professor expects to have a feeling of control over his students, and maybe especially his women students. And this expectation is shattered by the ("recent") realization that a woman student can (theoretically, at least) bring the professor down and there's nothing he can do about it. I think there's also a strong whiff of #notallmen, but I'll leave it at that.

@ElizabethHenning: you think it is control over students, while it is probably control over his career.  As with the example of driving a car, people that think that if THEY are good drivers they are in control and everything will be fine, and then they realize that doesn't help at all when the driver next to you has a stroke and runs you off a bridge. Never drinking doesn't prevent you from dying in a drunk driving accident, and never engaging in  inappropriate behavior does not prevent you from loosing your career due to accusations of inappropriate behavior. Scary.

@jmoreno I agree, but the fear isn't about women colleagues or superiors, either of whom are much better positioned to destroy someone's career.  So there does seem to be a power dynamic involved in the psychology behind it.

@ Elizabeth Henning "a strong whiff of #notallmen" Blatant sexism flagged.

@Elizabeth-Henning
Regarding low probability event:
Who has the right to decide which risks are acceptable for another person to take and which are not? Would your answer be the same in the gender swapped case?

I get the impression some reactions here are due to the scenario stating that women can be villains too. It violates basic assumptions about who can (also) be a perpetrator and who can (also) be a victim. Can make the question appear immoral and lead to reactance. But I see no reason to deny women the agency to be (for lack of better term) „criminal assholes“. Not something to aspire, but something women are also free to „achieve“ (as with men, luckily only by very few).

Your gender-swapping analogy is invalid because it is extremely common for men to be violent, threatening, or hostile towards women, but it is rare for women to falsely accuse men of harassment. So you need to find an equally low-probability swap for comparison. No one is saying that women lack "criminal agency." But in the real world it's heavily skewed in one direction.

@Elizabeth-Henning I find this to be a very low opinion of male students, not to mention of men in general. I guess such a mindset can explain why it is so difficult to show empathy for men‘s concerns and listen to them. And why it’s so easy to conflate concern about wrongful accusation with a desire to have control over others. It‘s wanting to have control over one‘s life, incl. in the face of (devastating) low probalility events.

@ElizabethHenning Wow, I cannot imagine which university you work at that it is "extremely common for men to be violent, threatening, or hostile towards women". That must be a sad place to be and work... Aren't there measures in place for these events at your university? I know that it does happen, but at my university, these are not tolerated and dealt with quickly with expulsion and criminal charges brought forward. In such cases, the police are involved immediately. I think I understand your heated opinion now, being in such a place must be awful.

@ElizabethHenning: superiors and colleagues are seen as "normal" hazards that are managed by appropriate conduct.  For example, you prevent your superior from getting you fired by doing what she says and making her job easier.  This is of course partly self-delusion, but it is how people generally see it.  Students are scary because they are mainly strangers.

@electrique: From the link in my answer: "The incidence of sexual assault and sexual misconduct due to physical force, threats of physical force, or incapacitation among female undergraduate student respondents was 23.1 percent, including 10.8 percent who experienced penetration." Thus ElizabethHenning's comments apply to the average university in the United States.  (If you think that your own university is so very different, please provide statistics.) The percentage of faculty members that are reported by students for sexual harassment, either truly or falsely, is well under 1%.

@PeteL.Clark So, is it 23% the percentage of female professors being harassed by male students? Because that was the gender swapping comment about. Also, my original question was very specific about an admittedly low probability scenario. Nevertheless, I must be very poor in communication, because I seem to receive answers and statistics about (very important) issues but not what I asked for. Anyway, I give up trying to convince I'm not a unicorn (or, a male pig trying to extend my patriarchic dominance). Cheers!

Hmm, the cited study is irrelevant for the example (didn‘t even use the graduate numbers, still wrong but likely closer). Plus, the student-vs-student topic is highly complex and difficult to assess correctly. And before we throw male students under the bus in that scenario, there is a difference between the number of alleged victims and the number of alleged perpetrators. A few students are criminals, but the vast majority of students — incl. of male students — is not. I hate to have to say it, but the vast majority of people — incl men — are good.

I am afraid that if I displease one of the students (for example, fail her) she might accuse me of harassment ...

If there is no actual cause for such a claimed harassment from your side, such an accusation can always happen quite independent of any actions you can take. Inventing a cause is probably not such a big obstacle for someone determined to accuse you falsely of sexual harassment. For example the accuser could state that the harassment happened outside of office hours when you met in private.
Therefore I conclude that this is a general risk of a teaching/research career and quite unavoidable.
You could minimize it by not giving bad marks, not letting anyone fail, avoiding to teach female students or going full surveillance, but all these strategies have their own severe drawbacks prohibiting their use while ultimately not eliminating the risk that someone still might accuse you of harassment no matter what.
You can just hope you never, ever get into such a situation. Whether it's true or false, it's really bad for all affected persons. I know that in general the burden is on the accuser to prove the harassment, which should be difficult even with office hours and one-to-one meetings, but the social implications often do not wait for the legal processing of the case.
It probably applies to anyone of any profession and may be more likely the more people are dependent on you.

If you really want to nip false allegations in the bud, put a camera in plain sight.  Announce at the start of each meeting that you are recording the meeting to prevent any potential issues from arising (you can even be candid about your fears here).
Record all of the meetings, not just those that are worrisome to you.  Archive them for as long as you are worried.  A low resolution webcam won't come close to filling a $100 hard drive anytime in the next 10 years.
Be sure to label the files well in case your fears manifest themselves and you need to show the meeting to your administration.

A less-intimidating way to explain it might be that you're recording for their benefit, so that if they wish to complain about your behavior, they can do so with a complete recording of it. Saying that you, as a prof, are protecting yourself might make some students more anxious than they already are.

I don't think this is a good idea.  American academia has strong protections on the privacy of students (FERPA and all that).  If (as a faculty member) I walked into a meeting and there was a camera recording me, I would begin by asking a lot of questions about the purpose and use of this, and if I didn't like the answers I would walk out of the meeting.  I view being recorded without my consent as a form of harassment, and also being pressured to consent to being recorded as a potential form of harassment....

...If as a student in a department there was a single faculty member with this policy in their office hours, I would consider speaking to the department chair about making alternate arrangements so that I did not have to be recorded.  Finally, how does recording everything that happened in your office show that no sexual harassment occurred?  Maybe the harassment occurred in the elevator, or in the hallway, or outside on campus, or in some off-campus location.  If I am a student fabricating a harassment allegation, I can claim that it happened in some place without cameras.

@PeteL.Clark  This question was not about the elevator, this was about one on one sessions in a closed office.  A camera in this place with full disclosure before the meeting begins is not recording without your permission.  Police are now wearing body cams for this very kind of issue.  It's a two edged sword that protects both parties.

The question is about how to avoid getting falsely accused of sexual harassment.  Most faculty members could not reasonably limit their interactions with students to only their office. "A camera in this place with full disclosure before the meeting begins is not recording without your permission." Right, but if I have to consent to being recorded in order to show up to the office hours, then my consent is being somewhat coerced.  Law enforcement is very different from academia.  Are you active in American academia and aware of the current privacy regulations protecting students?

A teacher I know defends himself so, that he never talks with female students without external observers.
He prefers talking them where also other people are present. If the student comes into his room, then he opens the door, so others can see (and, later, testify) what is or is not happened.

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

I teach in the UK, and I've just never encountered a comparable 'keep your door open' culture to the one being described here.  I frequently counsel students (because, I think, I'm approachable and they feel they can come to me), and of course that happens in private, in either my office or a small meeting room, where the student has privacy and feels that they can talk about serious issues.  I've had students reveal active suicidality (and then been able to get them help from the university because they felt able to reveal that), recent rape by another student and serious mental health issues specifically, I think, because I provided them a private space with a caring tutor where they could talk with someone with whom they felt safe.  I will readily, whenever it feels appropriate and like it would be appreciated, offer a hug after a discussion of something difficult - and I've never had a student say 'no thank you' and it's always been clearly appreciated (EDIT: I'm male).  How sad it is to have a litigious culture where you have to keep your door open - surely doing so robs the student of the possibility to feel safe with their tutor?  Surely it says to them 'I don't trust you', or 'you can't trust me'?
EDIT: in case someone reads this as a comment and not an answer, here's my answer.  The OP asked for advice to minimize risk of false accusations.  My advice is NOT to take any action to minimize said risk, and instead to reconsider how you view the situation, and in particular consider what both you and the student lose by preferencing an imagined potential conflict over creating a bond of trust.  Imagine you have 100 students, and 1 of them has the potential to launch malicious false allegations against you, so to defend yourself from that imagined disastrous outcome you deny all 100 the opportunity to form a bond of trust with their tutor.  You implicitly tell all 100 that you can't trust them and/or they can't trust you.  You would be negatively impacting all of your students to protect yourself from something that is unlikely ever to happen, and, in doing so, you would arguably be making that bad outcome possible - if you implicitly tell all your students you can't trust them and deny them a positive experience that they have every right to expect from an educator, don't be surprised when they prove you right.  If you negatively objectify your students (e.g. 'I assume you are not trustworthy') your students will feel that, consciously or not, and will react.

Law enforcement usually cannot press charges unless there is preponderance of evidence such as injury, witness(es) testimony(s), past crimes such as the accused being a registered sexual offender, or evidence that the victim showed that they were in some real danger. If they were a minor, then the rules may change, depending on your local laws, but normally there's more leniency for those who want to press charges when there's a minor involved because not even an attorney is required to press charges according to this Florida Statute 784.
There are some fallacies in your assumptions, most of which already pointed out.
Always document your interaction with your fellow students, such as the amount of time spent with a student. Whether it's a handwritten or typed log documenting the amount of time you spent with a student for the day. Phone call logs or even your Internet history states what you did at what time to counter-argue against someone who may think of accusing you.
Do you have an office? Tutor in an area with the door open and visible glass. Is there a camera nearby it? All the better for you. Take advantage of your office space. That's why it's built that way: to help prevent civil liabilities against school employees such as yourself.
Of course, since you work in a public institution, I assume, that means whatever evidence supports you may be used against you if the accused wants any evidence. But with what I stated about being open to all of your students by tutoring in an open area in front of others whether they are passing by or waiting in line, then there may be witnesses who support you no matter what.
I'm sure you were presented with a type of teacher-student agreement or contract when you were hired. It is an agreement that you will not engage or seek personal relationships with your pupils and you will be held to that standard. I, for example, cannot engage in a personal relationship with my clients and if I was discovered just meeting them outside the workplace for a drink at the pub and it was proven that we met at my job, then I could definitely be terminated or worse, charged with a crime, depending, of course. So, no matter how you tell it: if they give you their phone number, e-mail, whatever and then can prove they did so and you accepted it, then that's it.
Don't assume the worst, but always be secure. Good luck to you.

Unfortunately, in some jurisdictions, the bar has been lowered quite a lot, and you may be tried even without a past history, witnesses and/or injuries.   And what the OP is concerned is the fact that these accusations will linger on the falsely accused person for quite a long time after he/she has been cleared.

I am so glad that I have never heard of a university that makes me log all of my interactions with students. I have also never seen a teacher-student agreement/contract, although some universities have policies regarding faculty student/staff relationships. It sounds like you are trying to map your experience in industry onto how universities work.

Re jurisdiction etc., a quick look at some of the OP's other questions and answers suggests that he's in the UK.

Receiving training and keeping a teacher's certification dictates otherwise. Such an agreement may not be explicit, however I presented in an example that presents the teacher-student relationship to a tangible form. I'll be more direct to your response: violate the policy, lose the certification to teach.

@h.pacheco University teachers do not usually have certifications to teach. We just do.

If you could only prosecute people who have a past record of similar crimes, it would be impossible to prosecute anybody. Also, there are consequences beyond criminal prosecution: one can be fired or suspended on much less evidence than the criminal standard of "beyond reasonable doubt".

"Law enforcement usually cannot press charges unless there is preponderance of evidence such as injury, witness(es) testimony(s), past crimes such as the accused being a registered sexual offender" If someone claims to be victimized, there is a witness: the person who is making the accusation. Also, past crimes are generally not admissible.

If there is an actual chance that you would fail a student, then seek out resources to help the student academically.  That's the right thing to do, and it's the right think to focus on, rather than fantasies of how the student might want to take revenge.
Your concern seems irrational.  Statistically, which is more common?

A. A student is sexually harassed and reports it, yet the university does nothing to address the problem.
B. A student falsely accuses an instructor of sexual harassment.

If you're not sure, then I recommend you do some reading on recent activism around Title IX.
If you spend a significant amount of time worrying about this, then you may want to check whether you have any additional  intrusive thoughts beyond this one.  If so, you might benefit from a treatment called Exposure and Response Prevention.  Ideally you would be able to stand back and notice yourself having an irrational, perhaps outrageous thought, and just watch it go by, as you might watch an interesting cloud float by overhead.

Here are some specific observations to back up my conjecture that you might be spending "a significant amount of time worrying about this":

You wrote, "Am I being paranoid (probably)?"

Several participants quoted and addressed this question in their answers, and you did not remove this line from the original question, and you did not jump in below their answers to try to convince them they had misunderstood you.

A participant wrote, "You are afraid, perhaps phobic, but not paranoid."  This suggests that I'm not the only one who wondered as I did.

You wrote, "I will try to lighten up; I am a stressful person by nature."

Your title and focus were "How to avoid being accused of harassment by a student," not "How to avoid giving the appearance of harassment," or "How to avoid making a sensitive student uncomfortable."

I wondered if you were making yourself just a bit miserable about this.  All over this page, you basically say, "Well, yes, ... hmm, no...."  Look, IF there is an element of phobia here, the only person suffering from it is you.  You get to decide whether this is limiting your enjoyment of life or not, and if so, whether you want to do anything about it.  If I were in the set of people close to you, and I confronted you with my conjecture, that could make things uncomfortable for you.  But the beauty of the internet is that you are free to consider my conjecture, or not; you are free to consider it, and reject it; you are free to accept it, and then put your head in the sand and leave things the way they are.
There are two aspects to my answer.  One is motivated by a sincere interest in sharing information about what you could do about it if you conclude that your worry has wandered outside of the realm of healthy fear.
The other is indeed about gender issues.
There are students who have been traumatized by previous experiences, and there are professors who spend a reasonable amount of energy avoiding causing discomfort to such students.  I wonder, would such considerations make you less reluctant to hold some of your office hours in a public place, such as the library, as you were considering doing?

Sure, another lecture. I know that A is more frequent. For that, I'm involved with the Women in Engineering group at my university and my professional organisation, I help organise the 1st year information sessions, I've attended several sessions on how to recognise and treat such events, on unconscious bias, etc. Fortunately, there is a lot of support and information out there and through my school to inform people on A. My question was about B, since the only precaution I found anywhere was keep your door open. I simply asked if there is something else along those lines that I haven’t heard.

I don't spend a significant amount of time worrying about it. And based on the comments of the people here, I have implemented some simple measures and forgot about the issue. Keeping the door open for all students, informing my manager in cases of awkward situations, and bringing a colleague in the meeting when I have to announce bad news or there is a history of abnormal behaviour by the student. These measures give me the peace of mind that I have done what humanly possible, thus I don't need to bother anymore.

Please do not add comments I didn't say. I didn't ask how to avoid being accused. I asked how to minimise the risk of being falsely accused. A paranoid person wouldn't call themselves paranoid, it was a joke I made to show that I know that the risk is minimal. Finally, I did try to clarify my question in an edit, but if I modify the original question, all the answers (incl. yours) will be incoherent. It will create havoc with people seeing answers totally irrelevant to the question.

I do have phobias, but this is not one of them. It's a risk that I have identified. It's a low probability, high impact event that I wanted to know if my countermeasures are in line to other academics. Similarly, when any of my family members get a taxi late at night, we share the car registration number. It's a precaution against a very low probability, high impact scenario (being attacked by the taxi driver). Is this a gender issue since most of the taxi drivers are male? Should they be offended that we do so if they knew? Probably, but really we don't care. Better safe than sorry.

@electrique - "Please do not add comments I didn't say.  I didn't ask how to avoid being accused. I asked how to minimise the risk of being falsely accused."  Um, I believe your question title does state, "How to avoid being accused of harassment by a student?"  But why nitpick about that, anyway?  Isn't it clear from what I wrote that I have accepted your premise, that you haven't, and will not be, harassing any of your students?

"A paranoid person wouldn't call themselves paranoid, it was a joke I made to show that I know that the risk is minimal."  A person can still be aware that an intrusive thought is irrational.  If you have phobias, then you know that being aware that your thought is irrational doesn't necessarily make it just go away, poof!

We all have fears.  Some are healthy fears.  We focus our awareness on them, come up with a rational response, and move on with life (e.g. your taxi protocol).  Sometimes an individual experiences an intrusive thought that digs itself a groove.  There is a therapeutic technique for reducing the impairing effects of intrusive thoughts and phobias.  If you're interested, look at iocdf.org.  I have written a little bit about the technique here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/78073/32436 (jump to Part II).

See this question https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/39880/is-a-police-officer-18x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-a-black-male-than-an-unarmed which explains the blatant abuse of statistics.

C'mon aparente, you know what a conditional probability, so try working out which probability OP cares about (Hint: it's neither of the two bullets you mentioned)

Done, I've modified the question to avoid more answers that don't go through any of the comments I've answered in the 2 chat rooms of this question and simply reiterate what they think I should hear. Cheers

Maybe handle it like many male doctors do when performing gynecologic examinations: Always keep another person in the room. You could handle this by simply not isolating yourselves in your office, but rather meet somewhere open? It might be kind of an extreme, but..

The question already rejects the idea of meeting somewhere open, as being too inconvenient.

In the case where student meetings (with students of either sex) have potential to become difficult or uncomfortable, as with a failing student or academic misconduct, I invite a colleague to the meeting as an observer.

Treating 1-1 meetings with female students where everyone is presumably wearing clothes with the same level of caution as gynecological exams is too extreme. And the other person in the room is for the protection of the person being examined.


text:
Can a PhD student accused of plagiarism revise/resubmit the thesis?
I don't know how to ask this so please forgive my ignorance and lack of vocabulary. Consider a case as below. I just would like to know.. :
Can a PhD student who just defended their thesis, but is accused of plagiarism the day after that by his own advisor, be denied the right to correct/revise/resubmit/etc. the PhD thesis?
I think it's unfair that the student is denied the opportunity to correct/revise/resubmit/etc. with the reason being "there's no time". Long story short, the part covered by the accusation is only related to the explanation of some previous research (with difficulty in English) and the result of the defense was Successful. At least the advisor (and we generally as people in academic world) should help - at least give him/her a chance/right of resubmission/etc., not denying the student's hard work, worth and right. Many other people got the chance to at least resubmit/redefend/etc.
Any advice on what can be done also is very much appreciated.
[ADDITIONAL QUESTION]:
On this page, it's said that the Materials and Methods part is often given a high similarity score in plagiarism checker software. What I understand from the link is, a situation like this is acceptable; not considered as plagiarism. I wonder if this is also true for other/most universities/institutions?

I don't see how the thing about similarity in "Materials and Methods" is relevant; you said the part that was plagiarized was "the explanation about a previous research," not the methodology section. Plagiarizing in the related work section indicates bigger problems; if a student who copies parts of this section from the papers describing the related work probably isn't contributing their own analysis and insight to that section, and isn't properly contextualizing their own work.

You seem to have a misunderstanding of what plagiarism is. A high "similarity index" is not the same as plagiarism, although it is often an indicator.

The fact that the advisor of the student was the accuser and nevertheless after the defence, gives me the impression that there are severe underlying problems. Isn't there an ethics committee to decide on these issues at the university? Most of the times it's not a black&white situation.

@electrique in my experience with academic misconduct by students it is generally pretty blatant (i.e., black and white).

thanks for comments. sorry I don't know the exact details. after writing this question (before edit), i got to know that it was Materials & Methods section. The accused person was so upset at that time (he/she didn't plagiarized) so he/she didn't manage to see clearly the software results in detail. The advisor also is very busy so maybe the advisor also didn't have the chance to clearly investigate this, maybe was just shocked to see the similarity index. I hope everything is going to be fine for them.. and get the PhD because they did very hard work for the thesis..

A post related to your additional question. (Except for, it is for journals, and not for PhD theses).

To your additional question: Any software index is a hint only! It always should be confirmed by human who reads the texts and judges their actual similarity.

@StrongBad, to be able to prove misconduct requires ironclad proof, and that is hard to come by unless the transgression is blatant.

Thank you all for your helpful advice and answers. Fyi, in this student's case, thank God he/she only need to send the correction in about a month. We learnt so much from you all, many thanks!

My university gives this kind of example of plagiarism in its workshops on how not to get caught up in plagiarism. There are also cases of full professors losing their PhD and career because of such plagiarism in their dissertation that was detected many years after their defense.

There are a handful of issues here. First, an accusation of plagiarism does not make it plagarism. There is most likely a formal policy for cases like this. Things get messy if the work has already been graded and accepted. Many university polices allow retroactive punishments and universities can even revoke degrees. If, after the procedure concludes, and possibly your appeals have been exhausted, you are found to have plagarised, a penalty will be applied.
That penalty can vary substantially from a warning to expulsion. The academic misconduct panel I served on took an exceptionally harsh view of academic misconduct by graduate students and a exceptionally lenient view towards undergrads. Our university policy would not allow us to expel a student on a first offense. In the case of a thesis, we would be allowed to apply 3 penalties. The most lenient we could be would be to evaluate the thesis with the plagiarized material removed. If this caused the student to fail, they would be allowed to revise the thesis. The most harsh we could be would be to require them to submit a new thesis with entirely new work. This means an entirely new thesis project with all new writing, data collection, and analysis. In the final case, for localized plagarism, we could require the student to generate a new chapter or literature review.
My advice to you is to talk to student services ASAP about the university rules and getting independent representation. Most universities prohibit using lawyers in the process. Additionally you need to know why the accusations have arisen. Did you plagarise? Did you not understand what plagarism was? Did you make a copy and paste error? Maybe it is you who have been plagarised. Finally, setup a meeting with your advisor and another with your department chair. You need to know if your advisor and/or department are backing you or not.

I'm familiar with cases in which a student retained legal counsel to help with a disciplinary hearing (including attending the hearing).

@DanRomik And it is also common for universities to prohibit legal counsel at all in disciplinary hearings as mentioned in the answer (mine included). If criminal charges are involved, the university hearings will often wait until the conclusion of the legal portions just so they can prohibit counsel from attending. So it comes down to what is in the student code of conduct and what procedures are outlined, but banning counsel is not uncommon.

@tpg2114 the real issue is that universities often let someone accompany the student and if that person just "happens" to be a lawyer then it is difficult to not allow the person to attend.

@StrongBad Yeah, we have language specifically to prevent that. Ours specifically says that you cannot bring somebody who is licensed to practice law in our definition of "adviser" that a student can bring to a hearing.

@tpg2114 do you really not let a legal guardian attend just because they are licensed to practice law? Our university says a similar thing, but folds when pushed. I think I might ask a new question.

@StrongBad I (fortunately) haven't had to go through the process myself but was on the committee when we rewrote the policy. The only exemption to the rule is when legal charges are also pending. We talked about when a parent was also a lawyer and decided that the rule is no lawyers, period, doesn't matter what the relationship is or why that adviser is chosen. What they do in practice may be different, but bending the rule would open them up to lawsuits for times they didn't bend it and I would be surprised if they would risk that.

@tpg2114 maybe the solution is not to have such a stupid rule in the first place. Just saying.

I think it's relevant what kind of plagiarism this is.
If it's serious plagiarism, such as quoting large blocks of text without proper attribution, then that can be a serious academic offense. Asking why you can't just change it and re-submit is like asking why you can't just re-take an exam if you're caught cheating or why you can't just give the item back and forget everything if you're caught stealing.
Depending on your institutions procedures you might be allowed to resubmit if it's found that the plagiarism was minor, accidental or not actually plagiarism but I suspect you're missing the point.
Plagiarism in a submitted thesis isn't like a simple technical error to be corrected, it's potential wrong-doing or dishonesty to be investigated.

The problem is, I may add, that a PhD declares the candidate to be a "full" member of the scientific community, and to adhere to certain standards. In other words, by plagiarising the candidate has demonstrated that he has little respect for the rules of science (it's not lack of knowledge anymore, at PhD level, the offence level can be assumed as well-known). It remains with the board responsible for PhD awards to decide whether this offence can be put to rest.

I think the student just didn't do well in paraphrasing that part. By the way, from this link, it's said that Materials and Methods part often give a high similarity in plagiarism checker software. From the link, situation like this is not considered plagiarism. I wonder if this is also true for other/most universities/institutions?

@kate that's exactly what I meant by saying it's relevant what kind of plagiarism it is. An accidental bit of self-plagiarism or a few non-notable sentences isn't a big deal but would likely still need to be investigated to decide if it's a result of dishonesty. On the other hand notable chunks of text without attribution would be a big problem.

@kate In math, verbatim repeats of standard definitions for self-containedness are normal. Nobody expects you to invent a new definition for vector spaces. In a way it's a bit like a library import in software. This is not plagiarism, as long it is not claimed to be the candidate's own invention. I should believe that this is not the type of plagiarism that triggered the advisor's response.

@kate A high similarity index is just cause to investigate. A high similarity index can never be considered plagiarism by itself.

As a senior university academic, I would say that there is not really enough detail of the alleged misdemeanour to judge the severity of the case. However, if the fundamental research is unique and valid (as the successful defence of the thesis would imply it was), and a robust understanding of the area was demonstrated, then resubmission with ironing-out of over-similar sections would seem an appropriate outcome.
If this is at a UK university, approach your Students' Union for support, they will understand the norms and Regulations and have a mandate to represent you.

The answer will depend on the rules and regulations of the university in question.
However, I would be surprised if the regulations gave the advisor total power to adjudicate such disputes. Usually such matters are referred to a committee at the department level or [in Europe] may be elevated to the university senate. There is usually some kind of process that tries to be fair and impartial in resolving these matters and usually the people will take it quite seriously.
The first thing I would do is read the regulations carefully, and seek  advice from the head of the department or the chairman of the research student committee.

source: Stack Exchange

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

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава

sort: votes


text:
Importance of undergraduate honors thesis vs. research published in undergraduate research journal, for graduate schools in the United States?
I have the option of graduating from my university (U.S.) a semester early. If I do so, I would not be able to complete my honors thesis and have it approved by the honors committee of my university. However, I would still complete the same research project, write up the manuscript, and probably submit it to my university's undergraduate research journal.
For admission to psychology PhD programs in the United States, how important is the actual "honors thesis" component?

What is your field of study?  See Academia varies

@ff524 Psychology

The answer to your question probably varies not only by field but by the particular people who happen to be on the admissions committee. In general, I'd expect the difference between "undergraduate honors thesis" and "published in my university's undergraduate research journal" to be rather small compared to what the letters of recommendation say about this research.

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


text:
Is Dumping PhD Work on a Junior Scientist a Form of Academic Misconduct? Who Should I Report it to?
A potentially controversial issue that can jeopardise the career of one or more people, so I am treading lightly while protecting the concerned persons as much as possible, save a few details for context.
This is taking place at a government funded research institute in Singapore (something akin to  national laboratories in the US). They hire a fair mix of scientists and engineers to perform fundamental and translational research for industry. The particular person (let's call him Tango, in his late forties) recently became a deputy director there. However, he does not have a PhD, a fact which

likely bothers him a bit
may become a glass ceiling in terms of his influence or career progression

For context, this is a place which keeps a very clear line between scientists (staff who have a PhD) and engineers (those who do not). However, Tango's division still has collaboration with some local universities and professors to conduct joint research projects.
So recently, a bright young chap (let's call him Delta) joined the institute as a junior scientist right after his PhD, and Tango is in his direct reporting line (I think 2-3 levels above his manager). Obviously, Tango holds a great degree of influence over Delta.
So, Tango, because of his influence or some leverage unknown to me, entered an arrangement with a professor in a local university to do his PhD, but almost the entire real work has been dumped on Delta. In the arrangement, Delta's responsibility includes

Reading papers in the field
Identifying interesting problems or open areas
Proposing solutions, approaches, run simulations, experiments
Writing papers (where he is a co-author, and obviously Tango as well)

To me, the above sounds like doing another PhD. But Tango's responsibility includes

Attending conferences
To talk to people (I know in academia, a lot depends on talking)

I did my PhD (in what I call the honest way, writing my own paper and stuff), and then left the academic landscape. Personally, I do not care who has a PhD or not, as anyone without a PhD or masters can be as smart, hardworking and technically proficient as anyone else. But I am not a senior academic, so I'm not sure what I observed above is an aberration, or the norm.
But it enrages me when I see people getting a shortcut to a PhD (purely by connection and leverage), when there are thousands who had to finish a PhD in their twenties without any concept of connection, leverage or name. I used to believe PhDs earn you connection and leverage, but Tango shows it is the other way around.
So, I have a few questions

What makes a professor (Tango's supervisor) accept such an arrangement, assuming he is aware of it? I know he has collaborated previously with Tango's division for joint research project, but this seems like outright theft
Is this a violation of academic integrity? Or assuming everyone involved (the professor, Tango and Delta) consented to this quid-pro-quo, it is totally fair?
Is there a way to blow the whistle on this while remaining anonymous? I mentioned it's an RI in Singapore, only to give some context as I know the authorities are country specific.

No disrespect to anyone, but seeing this makes me kinda happy that I left academia.
And yes, if any of the readers here are affiliated to any institute in Singapore, or have connections to the academic/research community in Singapore (it's a small circle), feel free to share this with your colleagues and get their feedback as well. I would be very happy if Tango or his supervisor see this post and identify themselves.

Comments have been moved to chat; please do not continue the discussion here. Before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments. Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an answer, on [meta], or in [chat]. Comments continuing discussion may be removed.

The real variable here is whether Tango's advisor and committee are being deceived.

What makes a professor (Tango's supervisor) accept such an arrangement, assuming he is aware of it?

Impossible to guess. One option could be that Tango has already proven himself as an individual contributor (that's how he achieved such a high rank) and so his advisor suggested that they focus the PhD on supervision. What seems to you like "dumping work" might seem to them like a good opportunity for Delta to do some interesting work under Tango's guidance. Of course, your theory is also plausible; we normally avoid trying to judge individual cases from the outside for exactly this reason.

Is this a violation of academic integrity? Or assuming everyone involved (the professor, Tango and Delta) consented to this quid-pro-quo, it is totally fair?

There could be violations of academic integrity here, for example if Tango did not contribute intellectually to the papers that bear his name, or if he is lying to his committee about what he did. But it's hard to say from the outside.

Is there a way to blow the whistle in this while I remain anonymous, and does not jeopardise Delta's career?

The proper authorities are likely Tango's advisor or other committee members. Only you can decide whether your evidence is strong enough, whether Delta's career will be impacted, or whether it's your place to get involved in this.

If someone being listed as an author without contributing to a paper is an academic violation, then every single Max Planck Institut director I've ever met should be investigated. (I do believe in that, btw)

@QuantumBrick This discussion is never-ending here on Stack Overflow. Let me put it like this - everybody agrees that only contributing people should be authors, but there is an enormous span of what counts as "contributing" between fields, countries, and institutions. I have found the discussion to be not particularly fruitful, to say the least.

@QuantumBrick Also, it's kind of neither here nor there for this question. For getting a PhD, the requirements are a lot higher than "co-authored papers" - those papers need to be your papers, your research. Even your Max Planck Institut directors will not claim that they were the sole driving force behind the 40-ish papers that came out of their institute in 2023.

@xLeitix It will be fruitful the day someone decides to do something. I've been around and I've seen things (in my field and closely related fields). I've seen fair directors that let their group leaders publish papers without them, and I've seen directors who force everyone in his/her division to put their names in every single paper. This has been normalized because people wonder about the metaphysics of "contribution" instead of taking action. I hope someone will take action one day... But this is indeed off topic to this question and I will stop here.

This sounds unethical to me and warrants reporting to the Ethics Officer/Board
There are several potential issues in this case, some of which raise scope concerns about the candidature, and some of which raise ethical concerns:

Scope: Is the share of the work that Tango is doing in this project sufficient to meet the requirements of a PhD award (assuming that those parts are done to appropriate quality)?

Disclosure/ethics: Has Tango fully disclosed the relevant work-sharing arrangements to the university, via disclosure to his supervisory panel?

Disclosure/ethics: Will the university fully disclose the relevant work-sharing arrangement to the outside referees assessing the PhD award when it is sent for review?

Based on the facts as you have described them, the described portion of work being done by Tango certainly would not meet (or even come close to) the requirements for a PhD award.  In particular, by delegating the reading, problem formulation, literature review, substantive analytical work, and writing of papers to another person, the "meat" of the research project is not being done by Tango.  Mere attendance and conferences and networking relating to a research project is nowhere near meeting the requirements of a PhD award.  In particular, the described contribution to be done by Tango would not meet the requirement to produce novel and substantial research work.
It is important to note here that it is not sufficient for the supervisors to agree to this arrangement; the supervisory panel at the university has a responsibility to ensure that the candidate undertakes the required work for the award and does not delegate this to others.  They cannot simply agree to have a student delegate their work to others and then have it assessed as their own work.  (Otherwise people could effectively just purchase any degree they want by paying someone else to do it for them.)  Contrary to the other answer here, it is irrelevant whether Tango has "already proven himself as an individual contributor" --- he must either seek a PhD award for individual work previously done, or else prove himself again in the candidature by doing more individual work.
In general, if there is to be any work-sharing arrangement between a PhD candidate and another person, immense care must be taken to ensure that the scope of work done by the candidate meets the requirement of candidature and that there is full disclosure of the details of the work-sharing (i.e., who did what) both to the university and then to the referees assessing the award.  This is something that is so tenuous that most supervisors would not consider it at all, due to the risk of insufficient disclosure and resulting ethics issues.  The requirements for a PhD award are assessed by independent referees, usually outside of the host university but at least outside of the faculty.  This means that if there is work-sharing occurring then the university must ensure that this is disclosed to those referees to assist them to determine whether or not the requirements for candidature are met.  If there is any misrepresentation to the referees, this could put the university at risk.
As to your question of whether this is academic misconduct, that depends on whether Tango has disclosed the work-sharing to the university.  If Tango has not disclosed this work-sharing to the university and has represented any of the work done by Delta as his own (either explicitly or by implication) then that is highly likely to constitute academic misconduct.

Reporting this situation: Based on what you have written here, I think there is a strong case for reporting this situation to the relevant Ethics Officer/Board at the university.  This is the appropriate point-of-contact for reporting potential ethics concerns, so you should bypass the supervisory panel and faculty entirely.  When making your report, I recommend you do not presume anything beyond the known facts and simply let them know that you have knowledge of delegation of work that appears to be part of a PhD candidature.  The Ethics Officer/Board will then investigate the matter and obtain the full facts to see if there is any problem.
If you wish to make your report anonymously, you should make a preliminary phone call to the Ethics Office/Board (without giving your name) to see if you are able to make a complaint that allows you to talk directly with the Ethics Office but not have your name disclosed to others.  Failing this, you will need to decide whether to make a report with your name on it, or you could simply make an anonymous report through some communication medium that does not have your details.

I disagree.  You list three factors in your bullet list.  I suggest the original poster has no way of knowing the situation of any of those items, as real knowledge (and not suppositions or guesses) would be held by Tango, Tango's school, and Tango's employer.  The poster is none of these.  You say "Based on the facts ...", but I don't really see facts here.

@ScottSeidman: OP appears to be aware of the work-sharing arrangement directly, but does not know what, if any, disclosure has occurred in the university.  As I have noted at the end of the answer, this is sufficient to refer to the Ethics Officer, who can then investigate the remaining issues that are unknown.

This really depends on the details of each situation.
The purpose of people doing a PhD is to prepare them to be senior researches. A major part of that, and something not covered by doing a BSc and MSc, is managing other people to do the grunt work. In fact, during a PhD is the first time I would expect people to manage and supervise others. Usually, that means supervising the "lower ranks" but a good, senior PhD student should be able to supervise junior or even other senior PhD students.
Since Tango also is a deputy director, supervising other PhD students in joint research is exactly what I would expect from them. Presenting the output of this, connecting with others, is exactly what I would expect from them.
The real question is where the line goes, and your description of the situation is not clear on that.
You say Delta is "Proposing solutions, approaches, run simulations, experimentations", but proposals and simulations and experiments are a dime a dozen - is it Tango who decides on solutions, who evaluates the simulations and experimentations?
You say Delta is "Writing papers" but also "where he is a co-author, and obviously Tango as well" - is Tango a co-author in name only, or do they actively take part in creating the paper?
You say Tango is the one "Attending conferences" - is it to upstage Delta or not really because Tango is the better presenter and manager? You say Tango is the one "To talk to people" - how do they do that if they are not familiar with the science and decisions behind it?
By all means this can be academic misconduct but you should be absolutely sure about it. I too was in the boat of seeing a PhD student do zilch but "delegate" effectively and "surpass" the honest, diligent, and competent PhD students who would do all the grunt work. But as much as it pained me back then, on reflection I have to say they got research done that others did not - even if they did not get the stuff done with their own hands, but just the human tools they had at hand.

Ad hoc solution to this conundrum.
Show up for Tango's public defense, and ask involved questions about their thesis. If Tango can answer these to the satisfaction of the committee members, then they deserve their PhD. If Tango cannot, they fail.
There are precedents for this, e.g. Hendrik Schön or Martin Heidegger.

Interesting idea, but a good bullshitter would fare perfectly adequately in this scenario.

If your institution awards PhD degrees to bullshitters, then all hope is lost, run!

We need more information about Tango's current role as well as his scientific background.  What does "deputy director" mean at your institute? Is it (1) a technical position equivalent to being a professor or research group leader? Or is it (2) more of a management position suitable for someone with a business/MBA background?
In case (1), Tango almost certainly has a PhD in all but name, and this arrangement that you describe would be unusual, but not unethical.  It would just be a way for Tango to finally "formally" get his PhD, while supervising Delta.
For example, imagine that at some point in his later career Freeman Dyson decided, for whatever reason, that he needed a PhD.  Would you expect him to go through the same coursework, qualifying exam, work-for-a-supervisor, etc., that a typical PhD student has to do?  He would probably just do research as usual (with students as junior collaborators, as usual) and then "officially" submit that to to receive a PhD degree.
In case (2), it would definitely count as exploitation of Delta. If Tango only has the scientific experience of a beginning researcher, then he needs to work to earn his own PhD, regardless of his age and management position.

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