text:
Is it legal (USA) and ethical to use international edition textbooks? When I pay for a textbook, where does the money go?
Background:
I am a student.  I didn't have anything in life for four years, and I worked myself silly at times for it. So now I ask - when I pay hundreds of dollars over the production cost (new textbooks are over a week's pay each) what and whom am I giving my money to?
It's probably not those working in  the publishing factory,  I don't think it's the professor who wrote the book;  I imagine a rich entrepreneur , who, by positioning himself well in life, makes an immense amount of money while directly producing nothing of value, aka, the brass of a publishing company (correct me if I'm wrong).  In fact, when our college tried to use an "open source" textbook, publishing companies promised to stop selling us books - all over that one class!
Now, I can buy an international version for some 20 or so hours of my life (aka, payrate) for each and every class. However, there are plenty of people in this process who deserve to be paid (yes, even the brass.)  That said, books are so (over)priced I think it is more unethical not to pirate the book or buy a used or international edition - by feeding the predators, I become part of the problem.
However, there are many people on this site who are vastly more informed and experienced in academia than me and so I ask the following questions.
Questions:

Is it ethical for me to buy international textbooks?
Incidentally, is it legal in the United States to buy international textbooks?

I think there is a fair question here, but you would probably receive better responses if you asked your question in a more neutral way. As it stands, this borders on a pure rant and may get closed.

Hmm, I suppose I tend to be a little bit of an over activist.  What parts do you think I should neutralize?  It almost has to feel like a rant to convey the likely truths involved - sorry if I'm a gadfly.

I don't understand how buying an international book can be perceived as unethical. Free market and what not.

You can find some interesting graphs, when googling for "textbook price breakdown", however not really sure how accurate that is.

@MarcClaesen: I agree - if anything, offering the book internationally in a way that this could make a difference is what seems possibly unethical to me (i.e. tricking customers in one country into paying a lot more for the very same product than customers in another country).

The production quality of some international textbooks is also of lower quality than standard American textbooks. For example, one of my texts had paper so thin that the next page's text would bleed through. Had to use a piece of black paper below the page to be able to actually read it. No ethical crisis here otherwise.

@MarcClaesen: ah, the excellent topic of price gouging in a free market. I guess that doctrine of first sale says you can bring books across borders, whereas a serious free market approach to IP would suggest that the publisher should be permitted to segment its market by selling the book subject to an IP license under which you agree not to read it while located within US borders, and can be clapped in irons if you do ;-)

When you by a textbook legitimately, where does the money go?  See http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/64943/4484

Legal  Yes, Ethical Yes as in this case here in the USA we live in a free market system, if there are versions of an item that you can not afford, and versions that you can, you buy what you can afford.   The real issue I see, is if the international version and the version for the USA, as in the case of this question, is what the instructor requires for the course and bases assignments/etc off of.  That said.....the era of physical textbooks really should be ending soon, what with access to e-media, and constantly evolving data (especially for Tech courses).

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/14318/1010 which discusses practical differences in the "international" version.

In fact, when our college tried to use an "open source" textbook, publishing companies promised to stop selling us books - all over that one class! - can you give more details about this? I'd be quite surprised if the publisher reacted like this if the lecturer simply decided to use another book.

I know that, especially in my field (academia tech), when you write a book for Springer, you get 0 money out of this when someone buys a physical copy. I think in the academic world, the authors even prefer to that you pirate the book and then cite their work in a later publication :P

The US Supreme Court ruled that it is legal to buy and sell international editions of textbooks. As for the ethics, it clearly goes against the wishes of the publisher, so one might conclude that despite being legal that it is unethical. As for where the money is going, I believe most big publishers are publicly held, so the profits in general go to the share holders. Of course the costs include the salaries of the executives, royalties to authors, and the salaries of the individuals running the printing press.

I don't see how it should be unethical just because it goes against the (profit-oriented) wishes of the publisher.

@silvado I don't want to start a discussion and I am not a supporter of publishers, but I think their argument might go along the lines of: We sell international textbooks at a decreased price to make material, that would otherwise be too expensive, available to individuals in those countries. Importing these discounted international versions decreases sales of the standard version and this makes it economically infeasible to provide discounted versions to needy individuals/countries.

I see that point, although I guess the real argument they don't state is more along the lines of We sell international textbooks at a decreased price because there's no market for the full price in those countries. Interestingly, even Great Britain seems to be among those countries.

As @StrongBad correctly notes, that is the usual argument made by publishers. However, lets not assume that the publishers are selling at a loss in those countries out of a noble effort to help humanity. The only incentive for publishers to present international editions is to tap into an otherwise closed market, where the only finality is to increase revenue. There is still plenty of profit on those editions (which I don't mind, by the way). International editions merely show just how outrageous the margins on standard editions are.

@MarcClaesen I am not saying that publishers are not making ridiculous profits, but the printing and shipping costs is only a small portion of the cost of producing textbooks. Can we please move this to [chat]

I want to add that when I went to school in Canada some of my profs often told us to order the international versions as they were cheaper, and they would prefer us get the international version rather than pirate the textbooks.

Is it ethical for me to buy international textbooks?

Big companies want to have their cake and eat it. They want to source their labour and materials from whereever in the world is cheapest but they want to discriminate on price based on what each local market will bear.
American students have easier access to money than students in most other places. Even in relatively rich countries like the UK the student finance system is not set up to support students buying large numbers of expensive books.
So textbook companies set a high price for American students driving them deeper into debt while setting a lower price for the rest of the world where students can't and won't pay american prices.
I see nothing unethical about refusing to play along with their price discrimination games and buying an international edition.

NPR did a piece on this concluding that publishers' response to piracy and digital copies was to keep jacking up the price assuming there are many people who don't care about the cost and just pay the price asked regardless of how ridiculous (ie their parents pay or student loans, grants, or scholarship money pays for it).  This results in $30 books shooting up to $100+ in a decade or two.  If the publishers are happy with this model, I see no ethical issue as poor and middle class can still pirate or buy cheap copies while those who don't care about exponentially increasing prices can offset the fact that less people are buying standard versions.  The fact that they are required to lower the price by 80% to sell outside the US should be a pretty clear message that the ethics problem is not on the consumer/pirate side.  As iTunes $1 song sales was the solution to piracy when the alternative was pay $15 for a CD with 1 song you wanted, the solution here would be for publishers to go back down to realistic prices where it is easier just to buy the textbook rather than go through the hassle of pirating it or locating international editions.  They won't stop making international editions because other countries will just bootleg xerox copies of the book and bind it, as I believe was the practice before international editions became available (and I think I bought a few of those in the past as well).  I hope they figure out price-fixing doesn't work like the music industry, as pirated/international editions are saturating the market currently.

-1. This reads more like a rant than it does an answer to the question. In addition, while it offers a perspective on the first part of the question (is it ethical), it does not offer any answer to the second part of the question (is it legal).

While publishers often argue that international editions open access to knowledge in poorer countries, this argument is hypocritical at best. Publishers do make a profit when selling such books, it's by no means a charity. And the "market segmentation" strategy is not unique to textbooks, it is applied to various retail goods from computer games to luxury products with the purpose of maximizing the total profit. So if you think that you're paying a higher price for your calculus book so that poor a Syldavian student can afford one too, you're being simply misled.
Furthermore, the means required to implement such market segmentation are disruptive to the free market because they violate the First-sale doctrine. If you let publishers forbid reselling international books, what prevents the car manufacturer from forbidding you to resell your car to someone who'd have to buy a new one otherwise, with the same argument that they're losing a profit? (If you think my example is too far off, consider what fraction of the car's price is software, with copyright considerations which are not that different from a textbook). I don't see anything ethical about it, quite the contrary.
Buying cheaper books most probably reduces royalties the authors get. On the other hand, if you have a fixed budget to spend on books, buying international books will get you more books while the authors will get the same amount of money on average. Free market is great at maximizing the profits at one side an utility at the other, and I don't see how disturbing free market can be more ethical than letting it do its job.

Strongbad answered the legal aspect. I won't say whether or not it's ethical because it's ultimately up to your personal values, but I'll mention this tidbit which hasn't been mentioned yet.
All the book contracts I've seen has had author royalties tied to sales revenue. The clause can be complicated, but the essence is always the same: the more revenue the publisher makes from the book, the more the author is paid. If you buy an international edition, you pay less, so the author also gets less. If you pirate the book, you paid nothing, so the author gets nothing also.
Whether or not this is ethical is up to your personal values.


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Where to take your research ideas when you don't have a PhD/Master's
This is a matter of concern that a friend of mine has been dealing with for quite many many years. They have done much research on the topic using a lot of different online resources and have emailed numerous different universities all around the globe but still have not found an answer. Therefore, I wish to discuss this here to know if anyone has any ideas or experience related to this.
A friend of mine has been an autodidact in many different topics and has been researching on many topics on his own. Due to financial problems, has never been able to afford studying in a good university and a major of interest,  is now finishing the last year of Bachelor's of Economics. They have few research ideas that are not related to their studies, and  have been working on this idea for at least 8 years, and know quite A LOT about the topic, however,  have not got an academic degree or any paper to show that they have the knowledge. A few years ago they discussed one of their ideas with a big company working in their field of interest and gave them a lot of information about the idea and how to realize it, and the company said they had no interest, but unfortunately after a year the company had stole the idea and had already realized it under their own name.
They have been emailing many different universities for many years and contacting anybody they can think of, but no one shows any interest. Universities they have talked to just ask for a PhD or at least a Master's degree in a field related to the project. Is there anyway for someone who has research ideas to carry them out without having that academic "paper"? After the stealing scenario they is also extremely afraid to talk about their research ideas in detail with anyone.

You do not work for 8 years on a topic without a paper. The paper is a reality check. If nothing else, you could try and get an abstract on arXiv. Generally, one should be skeptical about "ground-breaking ideas". The really ground-breaking ones are the ones one is doubtful whether they have this power. As in Darwinistic evolution, it turns only out over time whether they are really important. If one thinks they are ground-breaking, they probably aren't. If your friend is serious, they should publish regularly, get feedback and work onwards. If all else fails, a blog is a good start.

Ph.D. program don't give financial support?

@CaptainEmacs: The word was not meant to be taken literally and meticulously; if you take a look at papers that are published every month even through research carried out in the best universities in the world, you really realize how much money is being spent on ridiculous and nonsensical and repetitive research ideas, I am not saying it as an outside observer, but I am a part of that community and I really see the amount of nonsense being produced and easily funded every month. Therefore, by using the word "ground-breaking" I was merely pointing out that his idea is not THAT type of idea.

I think the best thing your friend can do in this situation is to self-publish the idea. There's really no benefit to keeping it secret, as all that will happen is that someone else will publish first (with more credibility). Best to take a chance and write a blog post, receive criticism, then write an arXiv paper after that. With something like that in the bag, he will find it much easier to get a position in academia to continue his research if thats what he wants to do. Until then, i'm afraid it sounds a lot like he's selling magic beans :(

Bert: If you are a student, you should be advised that other academics will take what you say and write literally and meticulously...at first, and if it looks like you are blowing smoke, they may mostly stop listening.  When you are asked about your friend's "ground-breaking research idea" and you reply that you mean that it is not ridiculous, nonsensical and repetitive, you lose a lot of credibility and goodwill.  In general my reaction to this question is that it would take a lot of work to sort out what is true and what is exaggerated or otherwise wrong.  Too much work for me.  Just FYI.

Why didn't your friend enrol in a program related to his interests, instead of Economics? And I don't see how financial problems factor into the problem (given that apparently he had the means to study Economics).

however, he has got no academic degree or any paper to show that he has the knowledge. -- Nobody cares. Academic degrees are not a prerequisite for publication. If his results are publishable, he can and should publish them. (On the other hand, if all he has are ideas, he'd have a hard time publishing even if he had multiple degrees and tenure.)

Why is he contacting universities - what is he hoping they'll do for him? Why doesn't he just "carry out" the research himself?

@ff524 Because it's Sea-Monkeys.

@Bert We all love our ideas. They are our children. But, in science, we are merely like fish, and many of our ideas will not survive. Are other people's papers ridiculous/nonsensical/repetitive? Probably they are, but they also spent a lot of time working on them, so they probably didn't think so. So, the question must be: why is your friend entitled to think that her idea is the one that makes more sense than all the others? Do the Viking thing, try to kill it. If it survives many attempts to finish it off, perhaps there's life in it. And then the internet will provide some outlet somewhere.

There is a world of difference between a research idea and a research result.
For an actual research result, the right thing to do is to write it up and publish it in an appropriate peer-reviewed journal.  If one is concerned about intellectual property theft, then put it on a preprint server like arXiv first.
Research ideas on the other hand, are a dime a dozen, and there's often no way of judging their value until somebody has executed them.  Moreover, most scientists have more ideas than they have opportunities to execute, and are frequently offered new research ideas of dubious value.  For example, as a graduate student, I was contacted by a man who wanted help implementing his research idea: all he needed was somebody to get his trash-can robot to understand "All in the family" episodes better so that it could irrigate the Sahara desert and solve world hunger.
If you have a research idea, then, there are really only three basic paths that you can take with it:

Work on those aspects of it that you can work on, given the resources you can get access to (personally, in a community lab, through collaborators, via a startup, etc.)
Keep it in reserve to work on later.
Give it away to others.

Note that none of these actually have any requirement of any particular credential or affiliation.  It is just that credentials are strongly correlated with having gained sufficient scientific skills to construct and present a solid result, and credentials and affiliations make it easier to get access to resources for executing on ideas.

Intellectual property theft is prevalent, and this is why one often learns the hard way how to deal with it.
I'm going to assume that your friend isn't inventing an unprecedented new branch of science but instead an off-branch of an existing one. With that as the case, he might want to consider looking up professors at nearby universities whose field of research is similar. Especially less expensive school where he might attend part-time. Those places often have research programs for their students, and professors are often happy to take on students who are self-starters. However, he should be ready to have his triumph shared. That's the nature of the game.
Is your friend more concerned with his research going out into the world to help people or for himself to get ahead? That's not to disparage either and it's rarely all one over the other. If you put the work into it, you expect some form of compensation for your efforts. But is he willing to share the limelight in order to get traction?
You say he contacted universities- I don't know what that means, but I guarantee that any schools I attended, if I called he general help line and said I had a research idea, they would have been useless. Tell your friend to look up the professors and if possible find some of their former grad students and ask what that professor is like. You don't want someone who seems nice on the outside but is actually nasty and scheming.

You can write a paper and attempt to get it published. If your friend has researched the subject exhaustively, they will know exactly which journal they should use for publication.

This is a weird description of PLOS ONE. The thing that separates it from others is that no weight is put on importance of the results (is this what you mean by popular?). No reputable journal cares whether you have the right degree or know the right people.

It's not a weird description, it's a wrong description. Most journals don't look at your degrees or network. They will only be more likely to publish popular science, but if you have something good it shouldn't be a problem to find a decent journal that will publish it for free.

One does not "pay to publish" in PLOS One. They do not take anything you send there. Sure, their open access model is such that the author pays. Anyway, you do not get to that point before passing the peer-review.

Downvoted as really misleading in its current form (as the previous commenters have noted); paying a fee for open access is common these days. It also isn't required for publication; if you say 'I can't afford the fees' when you submit it does not affect the chances of publication. This is true for all PLoS journals (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/publication-fees) and I can personally attest that the editors were happy to waive the fee for our paper in PLoS Biology a few years ago.

I apologize for the unclear nature of my post. I will edit it accordingly for the record.

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How to Deal with Unfair Grading in Team Work?
I was a part of a project course for about four months working as a team member in one of the teams, the project was extremely hard for all of us, but we were working real good together keeping up, but out of three of us, one was being a bit lazier than the other and usually me and one other of team members was doing most of the things, I hate to say I did everything, but as far as this is a case of rights and equality, I want to say that preparing all the presentations, writing the final reports, programming-side, all was on me.. Now when the grades have come out, the person that did the least has got the highest grade (5), while me and the other team member who did most got lower grades than them (we got 4). It wouldn't irritate me as much if all three of us had gotten 4, but it's ridiculous when the person who had put the least effort has gotten 5..
Grading was based on team members grading each other plus the instructors in charge of the course grading people too. In grading team members, I gave everybody full points, and I am very sure everyone else in my team also gave me full points, I have no doubts about that.
How would you deal with such an unfair case?

If lazy guy sandbagged the whole project, then why would he not also sandbag your grade?

I would not think he gave bad grades to me, because he was so thankful all the time of me doing many things and taking initiatives, but then I don't care what he did and did not, although he was something late with doing certain things and I or the other team member had to instead do things for him, but the problem here is it is not fair that he got a 5 and the other two people just a 4..

The only thing you can do is talk to the instructor. Be prepared for a surprise if lazy guy completely denies your claims.

I have already talked to the instructor and they said that changing grades at this point is not at all possible and if somebody received higher grades is e.g. because they were group representative, etc.

Unfortunately, if you have already talked to the instructor about the grade you received, the only other option is to talk to the Dean of Students or Vice President of Academic Affairs (or equivalent) at your school.

I'll agree with @DanielR.Collins here - ask yourself - were you 'fair' to yourself and your non-slacker teammates? (By the way, asking if something is "fair" is often a bad question - nobody ever said life was fair, and fairness is usually in the eye of the beholder.)

I wouls like to know what was being judged by the grade: if an oral presentation took place, then maybe the lazy one was perceived to have given a better (part of the) presentation?

Maybe your professor marked you down for grammar and organization.  I certainly would have.  (And there'd be a sea of red ink to show why.)

@BobBrown, the project may have been done in the OP's mother tongue and even if the quality of the report was low, all team members should have been penalized equally.

In grading team members, I gave everybody full points — "Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this."  Why did you lie to the instructor about your lazy colleague's contributions?

You were unfair to the team member who did work when you gave just as high a grade to the non-working member.

@BobBrown: Could not expect more from an "academician" to give such a nugatory input, that is so 'academic' of you to give such a response. If you are trying to be so grammatically correct (which I already despise your comment for such a nonsensical point being made), firstly, I have to advise you to read Gilles Deleuze to crack your shell of arrogance in language. Secondly, I was the person who wrote the entire report in Academic English as I was the only one in the team who had scored 8 in the IELTS test, not to mention that our report was finally chosen as the best report.

Did you give him the full grade? if so, why?

I'm doing site editing work and was surprised to see 4 close votes cast because the question was about situations faced by undergraduate students. Please be mindful that there are group projects with similar grading mechanism in graduate institutes as well.

It seems to me that faculty fall into two camps on graded group work: the first is the camp that avoids it where they can, because it seems to always involve asymmetric work and annoyance, and the second uses it because they think working in groups and dealing with the inherent difficulties therein is an important skill.
Without any additional context, it seems like your professor falls into the second group.  Either that or they simply haven't reflected on the matter and are doing it because they (or the people who taught them) have always done it.  Regardless, they are unlikely to be receptive to your complaints.  Unless this is their first time doing it, you can be certain others have complained about this in the past.  In other words, part of the lesson was probably you handling the dynamics of group work, including asymmetric productivity and quality.
I should also point out that you gave this person you claim did less work a top score.  This leaves you with a very difficult case to make.
If you do decide to protest to the professor about it, I would phrase it as a question.  You want to do better, and you thought your whole group worked well together, so you want to be clear on how one person on the same project got a higher score than everyone else.  Was it based on some work they did?  Was it based just on grades from each other?  You'll get a feel quickly if the professor is interested in hearing your defense of the issue, or if you should just move on and treat it as a lesson for the future about group work.

If every member of a team is marked individually, then obviously there was a component to the work that was done individually. Perhaps how the work was written up or a presentation? Regardless, the lazy individual scored the best mark presumably because their individual component was better than the rest of the group.
You may see this as unfair, but where does that inequality really stem from? The professor marking the work? The lazy individual who maximised their effort in areas that yielded the most reward?
This is a "don't hate the player hate the game" scenario, but really it goes one step further than that, because the actual source of the inequality came from you and is not inherent to the game. You put in far more effort than the lazy person, and caused an imbalance. In short, you were unfair to yourself, and this matter won't be concluded until you pay back what you owe to yourself.
If that doesn't make a whole bunch of sense to you right now, don't worry, the concept that people can be unfair to themselves is not something people learn until they're really quite mature. Cheating yourself often requires you to forgive yourself, which is an even harder concept to wrap your head around. But this is how we grow as individuals.

If it's exactly the way you say and you are not wrong about this, then think like this: it's a lesson that life is very unfair . It has happened to me too, I was a student in Strasbourg - a human rights master. There was someone from a certain country and there is no friendship between her country and mine, if you understand what I mean and this girl did everything she could to make others think badly about my team work, she even tried this in front of a Professor. Just because I was from my country. I was lucky that the French did not believe her  . Anyway what you say there it can happen in a big company, a law firm too and so on.
Talk to your professor.

You know how hard it is when it comes to "project/team work". It is so extremely hard to truly "defend" yourself if you do not want to be pretentious and not talk about what you did in the project.. I mean what else can I write? I have been trying so hard for about 7 hours now to write a perfect letter to the professor in charge (because the instructor implied in her email that that person who got higher grade was more active which is a slanderous lie) but I cannot get it right because in any aspect if I want to "prove" something I have to boast about myself and do comparisons, which I hate..

@Bert: The lesson here is likely that as an academic and professional, you need to market/advertise your accomplishments. It is the only way they will be recognized. Consider: https://www.mainstreet.com/article/how-to-brag-about-your-accomplishments-and-not-sound-like-a-jerk

I am like you , I don't like to boast about myself and all my life I suffered because of this. Do yourself a favour and learn from other people mistakes, mines for instance, if you can, if you are tough. it's easier for tough people. But it's hard for educated, gentle people, they are modest, which is not good in general, unless you meet people like you, who can appreciate the noble character. Forge about this now and if it's possible , in the future avoid team work and do a research/work alone that nobody can steal and brag about .

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What are pros and cons for an adjunct professor job at a community college for an IT professional?
I've just been contacted by a friend's friend who decided I'd make a great adjunct professor at a community college, IT department, application development. Suddenly I heard myself agree to an "informal" job interview, and now am freaking out. What am I getting myself into?
I have all the hard skills necessary, in fact probably overqualified as far as the hard skills go. Soft skills, different matter. I am shy and fear public speech. Counselling one-on-one is no problem, but I do get a bit shaky in the knees thinking about standing in front of an audience. Which is why a part of me wants to do this job - to overcome my fears, to develop leadership skills, which I could then use in private sector. I also have a few interesting curriculum ideas I'd like to try. From tutoring my nephew through his university years (different school), I saw much in the Comp Sci curriculum that I think could be improved.
I wonder though whether this will help or hurt my career in the private sector. First of all, the very fact of being an adjunct professor at a community college (one of the weaker community colleges actually) - is it a resume builder? From looking at the faculty, it just might be.. the staff seems to have good bios.
Then there is the RateMyProfessor.com. As a newbie, and a pretty anxious one at that, there is a non-zero chance of me screwing up and getting a bunch of low reviews that will then haunt me for the rest of my career. The HRs do google job candidates' names.
My current career as a software developer has had its ups and downs: have worked for a few prestigious, big name corporates, left for a startup of my own, the startup is imploding, time to get a day job. While the bottom of my resume (where the old jobs are) looks great, I need to build up the recent part of my resume, need references. Would  this be a good move or not?

Please limit yourself to one question per post

Done. For the reference, here are more questions that I edited out: "
Ideally, I would want to try myself at one or two free-standing lectures, to see how it goes, before committing to more. Can this be accommodated?
As a side note - I was told the salary is going to be very low. That's OK, because I am not going to do it for money, but exactly how low, and is there room for negotiation? Any chance for medical/dental insurance?"

The answer is simple. Do you you want to teach or not? If not, don't. If so, then go for it!

Without wanting to sound harsh, this whole post is all about you and how it will benefit your further career (after leaving this job). You seem to forget that you will be teaching real, young people that need a good teacher, in order to get the education they deserve. So, unless you refocus on them first, perhaps you should reconsider getting this job for simply "overcoming your fears, developing leadership skills, which you could then use in private sector" and leave it to someone more passionate about it.
To directly answer your question: Getting a job you are not sure you are going to like and risk being bad at it or prematurely leave, always looks bad on any resume. So, unless you are really passionate about this, perhaps you should stick to what you already know.

That was harsh. Are you making a point that I will  fail? That I will be worse than the average adjunct professor at a below-average community college, struggling for IT professionals as it is? How do you know that? Did you get the part that there is a whole lot I can teach them professionally, if I am able to overcome my fear? If all people listened to you and avoided what they "don't already know" for the fear of "risking being bad at it", stayed in their comfort zone at all times, where would we be as a society?

@ТаняТ. It is 100% OK for someone to leave his comfort zone, if he really wants to excel in something for a job he 100% wants to do. But it is obvious you consider this job on this "below-average community college" too low for your standards. Teaching is not an easy job and starting from classes of hundred people, teaching university level material, without any experience or training, is more than leaving your comfort zone. I never questioned your ability (I do not know you) but I only question your motivation.

what you are saying might be 100% correct in your line of work, but I can bet you are not in Comp Sci. Do you know how desperately even the larger companies with all the resources in the world are wanting for qualified developers and to what lengths and expenses they go to find one, and how shortage of qualified staff is their main bottleneck impeding their growth? Even more so in community colleges. There is simply nobody else to teach them, and no way they can learn on their own. Who will I leave this job to?

BTW, I hope I won't be teaching 100 people right off the bat! If that is true, then I just might bail out. Is that the only option for an adjunct? That's an important data point, thank you.

never mind, looked up one of your C++ questions on StackOverflow, I stand corrected. But then, you do know what I am talking about, no? Or are you saying there is no shortage of qualified proffessors with great communication skills, in lesser known community colleges, teaching practically on a volunteer basis? If there is no shortage and people with better skills are lined up, then sure, I'll pass, but that's not what they told me!

Around here the CC has smaller classes than the elite universities.

As a full-time I.T. employee with a CS background at a community college, I feel I may be able to chip in here. We have a lot in common -- great hard skills, shaky soft skills, a desire to overcome our limitations, and a desire to better educate the next generation of programmers.
As Alexandros said, first you need to focus on the students. You've pointed out that their CS material could use revision, so I think you're already on the right track there. The best CS professors I've worked with have one thing in common: they all had prior or concurrent industry experience. Current, real-world experience gives you an advantage when it comes to curriculum development that can really benefit the students.
As for the class size, I'd have a hard time imagining 100 students in a CS class at a community college. Our class sizes tend more toward 10 than 100, limited apparently by interest, not class size caps. It's still more than one-on-one, so you'll still have to get over that, but just remember why you're there.
Don't worry about how badly you might screw up. Even the best professors get occasional low ratings and the internet is full of anonymous jerks spewing vitriol. You're not in middle school anymore, just don't worry about it.
As for how it looks on your resume, I can't personally speak to this with any great experience, but as a hiring manager I'd look favorably on it, particularly if you teach only one or two classes per semester for awhile. It shows that your soft skills are maybe stronger than the next guy and that you're comfortable conducting training and writing documentation within your field of expertise. Those are all desirable qualities that are a little harder to find in the software industry. The only negative point I can think of for it would be if they thought you might be trying to get your foot in the door as a full-time professor, they might not want to bring you on full-time. Not a lot of places think like that, though.
Finally, regarding benefits: I can't speak to any other school's policy, but adjuncts here are simply part-time faculty. As part-time employees, they don't get medical/dental benefits. They're hired on a per-class basis, so if you want to teach one or five classes, that's up to your desire and their needs. We're pretty flexible, I expect that's pretty standard.

Cons:  Adjunct teaching at a community college may be a poor way to get references because you will mostly be working with students, not professionals who can serve as references.  I taught one class at a CC and met my department chair a total of twice.
I would not worry about ratemyprofessor.com.  Most people don't take it seriously.  All students are different, so you are sure to get one occasionally that does not like your teaching.  You can use a different name for teaching if you are really worried.


text:
Why aren’t my Personal Keywords accepted by the registration system in Journal of Number Theory (Elsevier)?
I have tried many times to register (pre registration) in Journal of Number Theory of Elsevier publisher, when I put my Personal Keywords I got the below attached error notice, I separated my keywords by semicolons then by comma, however they asked for 5 keywords, I plugged the required keywords but always the same notice error:

"You did not enter the required number of Keywords".
"Please use the button below to go back to the Previous Page and enter the missing information":

.
I checked the Author guide for pre registration  but unfortunately no talking about that personal keywords:

Sorry if it's a stupid question, but what even are personal keywords in the first place?

It looks like keywords are entered separately, one at a time in a form, not as a list, comma separated or otherwise.
See: Keyword Instructions.
If you entered a long list in the form's box it got confused and sees only one entry.

And generally need to be spelled properly as well...

Thank you so much for your help  it fixed now

@JonCuster Actually it may be better for you to mis-spell keywords. I think they are only used to suggest you automatically to editors as a referee, so by mis-spelling them you get asked to review papers less often. (Source: just speculation.)

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


text:
How to find out if my specific idea is really new, or if someone has already worked on it?
I started working on my PhD few months ago and I am trying to solve a problem in a particular topic. The topic is quite specific and many people have already worked on it before. I am stuck at the following two scenarios:

I would like to extend the topic in some particular direction which I think is interesting and new. How will I know if people have already worked on that 'new extended topic'? I google hoping to find something, but I don't. I read some review papers (but most of them are old) and they don't cover any. Also, I think it is very difficult to read all recent papers related to the topic of research in a hope to land on my specific topic.
I would like to solve an existing specific topic in a new way, which may be quite simple, but looks efficient. But, I have the feeling that people should have already solved the problem in 'my new way'. How will I find if that has been done? I use google again and land up in quite interesting papers but it still do not solve my problem.

How do you tackle the above situations? I think one way is to do a very extensive literature review of the topic, but how will you achieve that? Review papers? Reading 'all' papers in that topic? I tried to do that right at the beginning, but I realized I can not and should not know everything, but should have a very rough overview of the topic and in depth knowledge in my way of solving the problem.
Edit: My research is in the topic of Computer Vision, in the field of Computer Science. My very specific topic is the topic of marker-less augmented reality.

Ask your advisor.

Thanks for the input, I see this same comment everywhere 'ask your supervisor'. Asking supervisor does not really solve the problem of knowing a particular thing on its own.

Your advisor is supposed to help you learn how to search the literature. How to do this effectively will depend on the field (and possibly subfield). They are also supposed to help you pick a suitable topic that has not been done before. Finding topics completely on your own is for after you have your PhD.

But on your note, I did ask my supervisor and he is guiding me to go in a particular direction. But I don't think he has the time to go through this minute details. He did and probably in the future will, say to go and read the papers and see myself.

@TobiasKildetoft, he asks me to read papers from recent big conferences which is very important I know. But I still do not get to know about if someone has already worked on my idea (which is relatively simple).

From the body of your post, it seems that your actual question is "How to find out if my idea is really new" not "How to find out state of the art in a topic." (These are not the same.) I've edited your post accordingly, but if I've misrepresented your intent please [edit] to clarify.

@ff524, it is both. That's why I have two bullet-ed points asking two separate questions. I think both are highly coupled with each other?

Both of your bullet points ask, "I have an idea for some research I think is new, how do I find out if someone has already worked on it?" Neither of your bullet points ask how to find out the state of the art, which is a very different question with different answers. (The answers you got didn't really address your problem, because they were answering the titular question - the SOA thing - which is totally different from the body.)

@TobiasKildetoft That may vary by field; in my field, students are absolutely expected to make sure an idea is really new, and it takes a lot of searching. Especially if the general field is very popular and many people are working on it...

@ff524, You are definitely true (looks like I'm confused about what I want?)! I meant how to know if people have worked on a topic (either the topic or the method), and if someone did, what is the SOA of this new specific topic? But, I guess it is more inclined towards what you suggested; thanks for the edit. I'll try to edit the body as well.

What I find most critical: figure out the nomenclature. Look for articles about your research question in your own words and create a list of keywords that are frequently used. There is usually no consensus, so you will end up with synonyms.
Once you know the words used by the community in your field to describe the concepts and problems, literature searches get a lot easier. My usual approach is to use a large database of publications (in my field Medline is good, I guess your field has its equivalent) and look for the few keywords I listed. Now, don't read all articles of course, do a selection based on the title first, then on the abstract. There is a lot of redundancy in published papers so you will be able to weed out a majority of the papers at this point.
In some fields, senior researchers sometimes write review articles that list the 'open problems' in the field. Even if they don't give such a list, good review papers give an overview of the state of the art and are a great source of secondary citations.
Of course, discuss the matter with your colleagues and adviser, read prominent blogs and if possible go to (a) good conference(s). Conferences are great to grasp what others do and don't, and they help to make sure you don't reinvent the wheel.
Finally, I think you shouldn't worry too much at this point, here are a few words form my answer to this question Is there any research on the prevalence of academic theft?

The chances that your idea is absolutely original is close to zero. Concepts, ideas and theories are almost always due to an
  intellectual environment in which many researchers are present. Even
  theories traditionally attributed to a single individual [...] were the result of
  inputs from several individuals over several years.
The chances that your state of research, access to resources and previous intellectual work is similar for someone else is very small.
  Research breakthrough are a result of the right coincidence of
  opportunity, resources and intellectual maturity.

+1 nomenclature is the key to successful literature search. Not an easy one, though.

Among the papers you have found, there will be some that most papers in your research direction would reference, such as foundation papers that define the sub-field and its terminology. Look for recent papers that reference them. Pick out the ones closest to your proposed direction.
Recent doctoral dissertations in your general area can be particularly useful. One of their purposes is to convince the committee that the student is familiar with existing research in the area. They typically have a substantial "related work" section that is, in effect, a small survey paper.
Similarly, select the journals or conferences to which you might submit your papers. Your supervisor should be able to give guidance on selecting journals and conferences. Examine their tables of contents for the last few years, looking for papers related to your direction.
You now have some recent papers that are at least a little bit related to your research direction. Read them, and look at papers they reference, always trying to move in a direction closer to your ideas.
If your field is one with commercial implications, you should also attempt a patent search. However, this is very difficult because patents often use different terminology and seem to me to be designed to be unreadable. It will be a little easier if you use the paper trail to get the names of people working in the area.

First of all, finding 'a state of the art' of a research area will take some time! You can do the following while searching for papers:
Quantity Check: Who did publish more papers/journals for the last 5 years in your field. This is a little tricky, because if your field is more on the theoretical side, then you might even need to go back and check the last 20 to 50 years.
Quality Check: Who did publish more high rank journals. This is pretty strait forward, from the list you made in the first step, check what journals they published, and the ranking of each journals. This step, will definitely give you a clear idea, who is doing the real contribution in your field.
Other factors: There are other common sense factors, you can check on them. For example, who is more involved in the conferences in your field; or who has more of an active research group.

Where did the OP indicate that they were "stuck"? The question was very specifically about how to find out if something has already been done.

@TobiasKildetoft If you don't know about a potential contribution of a research area, then you are in fact in the "stuck" stage!

@DaveRose, I probably misused the word 'stuck'. I am just trying to find a solution to the problem I stated. Seems like the easier solution is to take the help from supervisor, which I really agree, and I'll definitely try to come up with this to him. But, in general I want to know how do you handle the situation like that? Like, if you have a very particular strategy of doing literature review, or search in a particular databases and on.

@krips89 Ok. I'm updating...

In a very nutshell, if someone has a very specific topic in his mind, how does he know the state of the art research work among this? I hope we had some kind of heirarchical database storing the current SOA, but there is none, and everything is scattered over thousands of research papers which gets published everyday.

There is no universal organized database. Go into the libraries, search all the indexes you can find for all the keywords you can think of, read those documents, refine your search criteria, repeat untill you either find the prior work you're looking for or are reasonably convinced it doesn't exist. This is a basic research skill. It isn't exciting, just necessary.

have you consulted with the reference librarian at your university library? this person can most effectively help you in finding the appropriate data bases to search and assist you in formulating the proper search query (ies).  Google is NOT the answer.

First of all, note that proving a negative is often practically impossible. This includes proving that noone had your idea before.
If you find something, then you prositively know that someone else had the idea already. If you do not find anything, there are several possibilities:

you're really the first one.
You didn't do your homework properly.
It has been done & published, but under some name that you did not find.
I've made this experience (actually more than once): e.g. thought about a problem, eventually solved it.
Knowing the solution lead me to further search terms which in the end lead to literature in a not too closely related field (remote sensing vs. spectroscopic tumor recognition) but even retrospectively, I wouldn't associate the remote sensing name of the method with my description of problem and solution: some key term of the remote sensing nomenclature is used already with (several!) different meanings in my field.
You may be lucky and find the "unknown" search term mentioned in an introduction section of an article you find via "your" terminology. But I've experienced it twice that came across the "unknown" term by accident - hadn't found a paper giving the link, and even after asking around on conferences for several years whether someone knows (of) a solution for ...
It may be that the key terms are not really suitable for searching.
One part of this is the already mentioned overlap in terminology. For the example above, we now have a 4th meaning of "soft" in chemometrics...
Or, while the precise search terms do not yield results, widening the search may lead to impractically large numbers of papers to wade through (see below).

Point 1 obviously is what you hope for, while point 2 is what you fear. Points 3 and 4 I'd say come under the general risks of research life: shit happens, and IMHO it is an illusion to think it possible to prove the absence of a particular idea in the scientific literature.
So I'd recommend to document that the negative results are not due to your negligence. This may be slightly unusual, but e.g. I told my supervisor that I did not find any previous work for something (report the search terms you tried), but that I'm not absolutely sure it was not done as it was not feasible to read through the details of the >80000 pubmed records that list the "parent" method just to ensure that noone has done what I did before under a totally different name and that I gave up after >100 abstracts hadn't yielded anything.
I'd guess that it is good to have numbers if you follow this line of argument.

For the literature search, if your reviews are old, do not forget to check which articles cite these reviews.


text:
What does "DeWitt W. Buchanan, Jr." in a professor's title mean?
I've got to cite the author of a text and her full title is

Jeanne Brett, DeWitt W. Buchanan, Jr., Distinguished Professor of
  Dispute Resolution and Organizations; Director of the Dispute
  Resolution Research Center

I'm at a loss, her name is Jeanne Brett so why is this person's name in her title? When I google  "dewitt w. buchanan" all I get is entries for DeWitt W. Buchanan or this professor. What does it mean in academia terms, is this a prize, the name of an institute, an honorific title, is it important to cite it when talking about the professor?
I could have posted it to ELU, but it seems something very idiomatic to academia. So...help ?

It means she has a professorship called after 'DeWitt W. Buchanan, Jr.', likely a wealthy individual who donated money in exchange for that vanity.

Actually, what lets me at loss is the rest of her title 'Professor of Dispute Resolution'...

@Jigg Well, apparently it's a thing...

I knew you could name a building, a scholarship, a prize, a ship after someone's name, but I had no idea about naming a position in an organisation. Why not "Kenneth Ellen Parcell, Jack Donaghy steward of VIP guests" ? It's very weird.

@JoBedard: If Jack Donaghy made a donation to your organisation, of a fund for the purpose of employing someone like that, then you might call the role the "Jack Donaghy stewardship of VIP guests", and Kenneth would be the "Jack Donaghy steward of VIP guests". But people don't endow stewards, they endow professors.

... and it gets worse. This person (http://chemistry.uchicago.edu/faculty/faculty/person/member/aaron-dinner.html) and many others have been "EPA Cephalosporin Junior Research Fellows", so their job is named after a guy and (indirectly) a fungus.

You would list the "DeWitt W. Buchanan, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Dispute Resolution and Organizations" if you were, for instance, issuing a press release about Prof. Brett's accomplishments, or writing very formal correspondence. You might also mention it if you were introducing Prof. Brett in a seminar.
Under most normal circumstances, however, such information is not needed, and could come across as being almost pretentious.
As for what the "Dewitt W. Buchanan, Jr., Distinguished Professor" represents, it's what's known as an endowed chair or named chair. Mr. Buchanan was the person honored by the chair—either because he gave the money to establish the chair himself, or others gave the money on his behalf or in his honor.

+1 Putting commas in there because of the Jr. make this a little hard to parse.

Isn't the second comma superfluous and confusing? "DeWitt W. Buchanan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Dispute Resolution and Organizations" makes it clearer that the name is part of the chair title.

@PatriciaShanahan: Per the pre-1993 Chicago Manual of Style, "within text, if you decide to use the more traditional comma before Jr. or Sr., the function of the comma is to set off these abbreviations, so an additional comma is needed after the abbreviation if the sentence continues."

@shoover Not applicable here, because it is not the sentence continuing after Jr. or Sr. it's a proper name continuing, and only after the end of the proper name does the sentence continue.  The guideline is to put the comma at the end of the name, and this is in the middle of the proper name.

It looks like the professorship she holds was named in honor of Mr. Buchanan.  You shouldn't need to include it when you cite her.

I removed that part of my answer. When I reread your question it was clear that the comma is because of the "Jr."  Unfortunately, having a (needed) comma in that position obscures the fact that it is the professorship named after Mr. Buchanan (and not the professor!).

It got me confused as well, because as it stands I could not decide what Buchanan was refering to in grammatical terms.

This is a so-called "chair" professorship, where the "chair" was endowed by a wealthy man named DeWitt W. Buchanan Jr.
That means that the donation given by Mr. Buchanan Jr. was large enough to pay the holder of the "chair" over her probable tenure, so he gets to have his name attached to the work of that one professor.

Endowed chairs need not provide salary—they may just provide an annual stipend for use in supporting the group.

@aeismail: I didn't say that he paid the actual salary. I said that he paid "enough" to (more or less) compensate for the salary in order to have the privilege of having the "chair" named after him. Usually it's a lump sum, and whether it covers the salary depends on how long the tenure lasts, and whether or not interest on the money makes a large enough contribution.

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


text:
How do I deal with an advisor who's biased and doesn't give you time?
My primary advisor is on a sabbatical and is currently working in the industry; he doesn't return till before I graduate.
He passed me onto another advisor who's roughly in the same research area. My new advisor however is extremely biased and doesn't give me much time. Multiple times, I've emailed him asking for an appointment to discuss my work with him, but he's ignored those mails. When I turn up his office during his office hours, he confesses about seeing my emails but says that he forgot about replying. He also makes me wait for about an hour in his office and then reschedules the meeting. Even during those rescheduled meetings, he either isn't in his office or ends the meeting right away saying that I need to find the answers to my problems myself. He has a couple of favorite students with whom he spends all his time, ignoring the other two students (me and one other). How do I deal with this whole situation? I am very serious about my research, and plan to go for higher studies in future.

Can you contact your primary advisor? That seems to be the best person to give you advice and help in handling this situation.

Agree.  Contact your primary adviser and either ask him for help or ask him to help you find another adviser.

Wouldn't it feel like bitching about my current advisor?

can you clarify what stage(MSc or Phd) of your studies and what type of questions you have. or what is the nature of help you seek. I am asking this to see the time requirements of your help.

biased towards whom/which thing?

As I mentioned in my question, he has a couple of favorite students with whom he spends all his time, while ignoring the other two students under him.

This is very unclear: you have an advisor but you claim you want to proceed to higher degrees in the future? What does this mean?

As Patricia comments, you should discuss this with your primary advisor.  However, you should try to do this in a diplomatic, non-accusatory way.  It this case, there are a couple of concrete points you can make

You have trouble arranging meetings with your pro tem advisor.
He does not give (or rarely gives?) you satisfactory answers to your questions.

And if there is anything useful he is doing, give him credit for that.
Incidentally, what is he supposed to be doing?  Directing you in some reading?  Giving you advice on your research?  Were there clear expectations laid out in advance?


text:
Should I withdraw my other PhD applications when I have a secured funding and a supervisor but I am waiting for the faculty decision?
I'm applying for PhD studies to a university in Netherlands, the procedure entails that you should contact a professor and obtain a letter of acceptance. I have already secured funding and now found a supervisor and obtained acceptance.  I now have to obtain admission from the faculty.(Which will take about two months) I have sent out other applications and I was in the middle of sending more PhD applications. I want to know:

What are the odds that I will be denied admission even after securing funds and getting acceptance from a professor working in the faculty?
Should I stop sending out applications and withdraw my other applications now or wait until I am granted admission by faculty? (I have read on this site that wasting other people's time in academia by going to interviews or applying for a position you know you're not going to take is considered unethical).

No!
Until you receive an official offer of admission, you have not been accepted to the PhD program. Do not withdraw your other applications until you have actually been accepted somewhere.
(In fact, I would not recomend withdrawing your applications at all, but rather, if possible, waiting until you have all your official admissions offers and then deciding which one to accept.)


text:
Is it ethical for authors to reference another paper, but not cite it formally, because they consider it unscientific?
I found in a medical paper from the 1990's a non-citation like this:

The results and terminology by John Smith, Jane Poe, John Doe, Richard Roe, Larry Loe, Journal of Scientific Papers, 12345-698 (3), are unscientific [Brown, 1997; Lawrence 1985]

So, they want to unequivocally  reference the paper by Smith et al; but as they consider it bad, they don't want to give them a citation. I have never seen that before. Also, I am not familiar with the field, so I can't say how bad that paper is.
Citations are considered as a measurement of the impact of a paper, and as such, a proxy for its quality. On the other hand, people cite papers even to criticise them (you did it all wrong, people!).
Is this non-citation ethical? How bad would the paper have to be to justify it?

Possibly related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7688/verifying-that-cited-results-are-still-current-before-publishing

Offline rel="nofollow"?

re "Citations are considered as a measurement of the impact of a paper, and as such, a proxy for its quality." - see Warnock's dilemma.

As editor I would not accept this in a publication. If it is published it should be referenced. Yes, it bumps the references for the authors and yes, bad science may attract a fair amount of citations for all the right?/wrong? reasons. But, it is not up to the authors to decide how referencing should be made, journals have guidelines that should be followed. Having the citation properly referenced makes it easier for others to find the article and see it for themselves.
Furthermore, from another point of view the statement that something is "unscientific" is not appropriate either. It is an opinion. The cited paper can be unscientific but the academic way to show this is not to just say it but to prove it.
Your quote is a specific case, of which I know nothing, so the reply concerns the general case but I would react if I saw something like that in a paper I edit and I would ask the authors to stick to facts.
One last point is that if a paper is really bad, then it should be considered for retraction. That is how scientifically extremely poor, bordering on dangerous, papers are handled.

It is good to have the testimony of an editor. Do you think your opinion would be the general rule, or other editors may feel different?

I would think most would go this way. There are a few qualifiers, though. I expect the "bad" paper is a "normal" publication in a "normal" journal that for some reason may have "slipped through" so that it is correctly considered published. I assume the journal publishing the "new" paper follows standards where sources should be referenced according to a referencing standard. The latter would preclude referencing of the sort you mention. So it seems a technical error from the side of the journal to a silly behaviour from the authors.

"Citations are considered as a measurement of the impact of a paper, and as such, a proxy for its quality."

Many people, including me, agree that these considerations are not appropriate; the second even more so than the first. However, using a practice as you describe, i.e. citing a paper but not adding it to the bibliography, could work in the direction that citation indeed stand a bit more for "impact" and "quality". However, since are so many more flaws with the impact factor and bibliometrics as a measure for anything else than the number of citations (such as self-citations, citations "forced" by reviewers, citations rings in the vanity press, citing without reading the paper…) I would say that it does not make sense to use a practice of citing without citing.
My brother proposed a "markup" for citations which goes in the same direction, i.e. something like
\cite[negative]{PaperWithSevereErrors}
\cite[community feeling]{PopularPaperWithNoSpecificRelation}
\cite[please journal editor]{AnyPaperOfEditor}
\cite[enforced by a referee]{SuggestedPaper}
\cite[proof or evidence elsewhere]{TechnicalPaper}

but I guess that this proposal has to be taken with a grain of salt…
In another direction: Citations say on what work you build your own. If there is a paper which you find horrible and which you do not build upon, is there a need to cite it? If you simply want to bash some others work, use a blog post, or probably even don't do it at all. However, if you think that the respective paper is bad but used by others nonetheless and want to emphasize in what way it is flawed than you have to cite it properly as your contribution really builds upon that paper.

Regarding the "other direction": Many journals accept critique from readers, if a paper published there has serious concerns regarding the content.

If there is a paper which you find horrible and which you do not build upon, is there a need to cite it? — YES!

@JeffE Your lists of citations are presumably very long…

@Dirk You have no idea.

"Citations say on what work you build your own." - I disagree. Citations say where you place your work. A thorough discussion of related work should not restrict itself to explaining what existing works you used, but also to explaining where you diverged from existing works. i.e., you explicitly cite things that you did not use.

There's actually an ontology of citation types, CiTO.  I'd likely classify this case as 'derides' unless they gave specific reason as to why they didn't like the other study, and then it'd be 'critiques'.  I have no idea if anyone's made a way for authors to easily encode this information  when writing their paper, though.

It's most certainly bad form.  Let's say you read a paper that you believe is wrong, and you want to write a paper saying how wrong it is.
If you cite the paper, yes, the wrong paper will get the citation, but when people who know how to use the literature (less and less every year -- sigh) look up the original paper, they have a fair chance that bibliographical tools will point them to the new paper.  This should help correct the literature, and prevent the wrong paper from being cited for years to come.  The citations will eventually die down for the wrong paper.
In contrast, if you don't cite it, it will be harder for the community to learn that its wrong-- thus YOU ARE HURTING YOUR FIELD by not using every tool at your disposal to correct the literature!!
As to ethics, it's certainly not plagiaristic with the full citation appearing in the text.  You're not trying to hide anything.  It's just wrongheaded and somewhat petulant, but I'm not sure I would call it an ethical breach of real magnitude.  It certainly doesn't make the author look good.

I agree with this answer: the practice is justly denigrated, but that is not quite the same as being unethical.

A citation is not a recommendation.  One of the purposes of citing a paper is that readers of your paper can check what use you have made of it.  I would say that this is at least as important when you are criticising that paper as it is in the contrary case.  If you criticise the paper and do not make it as easy as possible for the reader to find that paper, then it could be felt that you are hindering any attempt to tell whether or not it is in fact your comments that are "unscientific".
(I am sure you understand that this is hypothetical and I am not suggesting that there is any such intention in your own case.)

The reference was very complete (including volume, pages, and so on), so I don't think it was an attempt to hide it. It is not difficult to find, provided one has access to the journal in question.

This looks an awful lot like a reference to a secondary source where for whatever reasons the authors were unable to find primary source (in your example the paper by Smith and colleagues) and instead is relying on the secondary sources by Brown and Lawrence. In APA style this would look like

In Seidenberg and McClelland's study (as cited in Coltheart, Curtis, Atkins, & Haller, 1993), ...

and wouldn't have the date and journal of the primary source, but there is substantial variation in citation styles.
If, however, the paper by Smith and colleagues is readily available, then it is bad form not to use the primary source and instead rely on the secondary sources.

They went to great lengths to give the full reference, including all authors (and they were a few), page, and volume number, so I think that is unlikely. Also, they didn't say "as cited in" or anything like that.

It's not obviously ethically bad, but it's a poor way of going about things. You cite papers for a number of reasons:

To place your own work in context (to show the way in which your work relates to that of others).
To help your readers find other papers in the field.
(Somewhat more tenuously) To demonstrate your own awareness of the broader field in which you work and thereby imply that there might be a slightly higher chance that you know the subject well enough to make your work interesting. (Of course, work done in isolation can also be interesting, so this doesn't entirely hold water.)
(Sad, but not entirely uncommon) To avoid your paper being sent back by a reviewer who was saddened that his/her own paper wasn't cited.

In none of these cases does citing a paper in and of itself imply that you endorse the contents of that paper. (In the last case, people have been known to say mildly complimentary things, which do count as endorsing the paper to some extent, but the fact of citation itself doesn't.)
As a result, you should cite all papers that you feel are relevant, and explain your views on them in the text. If you think a paper's relevant but rubbish, you can always say things like:

In \cite{Foo}, Foo et al. described an early method for crawling Bars.
  This work unfortunately had a number of significant downsides,
  including its failure to maximise your whiskey intake per unit time.
  More recent works \cite{Baz} have addressed this issue by focusing
  exclusively on Whiskey Bars.

It's less helpful to say something like:

There was some work by Foo et al. that focused on generic Bars and
  wasn't great. However, the exciting work by Baz and Wibble \cite{Baz},
  which focuses exclusively on Whiskey Bars, has addressed this issue.

As a reader, I might still want to read the sub-optimal work of Foo et al. to better understand the limitations of their approach. By citing it, you help me do that.
More generally, judging the quality of a paper by the number of citations is an inaccurate business at best - you can write a bad paper and get all of your friends to cite it, and you can write a good paper that gets ignored. Number of citations tells you a little about the impact your paper has had (if only on your friends in some cases), but nothing about whether it's any good. A bad paper can have a greater impact than a good one.

No. If some existing work is really somewhat pseudoscience only, it is unlikely to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, to start from. However if major flaws have only been discovered after publication, such history must be cited properly, including the published reference to the analysis, why unscientific.

One thing to consider is that one way to judge the quality and impact of a specific publication is to actually look at the references that cite it. If you formally cite it, you will appear in such a list:

Papers citing "A is good", J. Smith et al., J. Sci. Pa. 1, 23
[...]

"A is actually terrible", A. Green and B. Black, J. Sci. Pa. 4, 56

[...]

An unorthodox citation will remove your paper from this, and will deprive people investigating J. Smith et al.'s claims of the chance to easily find your refutation.
I should note that no literature search is really complete until you take at least the key works in the field and look carefully at the papers that cite it, and this is something that people do look at.