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How to handle endless revision requests for PhD thesis?
I am in my 5th year of my PhD and handed in the draft of myentire thesis in December 2022. I discussed wanting to defend in August 2023, and was told that this was doable and to look for an external. I found  one but was told to hold off contacting them – this I understand but it's now dragged on for a long time.
I expected revisions to take some time, but it has now been nearly 8 months and I don't find I am anywhere closer to nailing down a defence date or even getting any of the chapters to the rest of the committee. The supervisor insists they want to review everything before sending it off, but a number of things have happened.

There was some issue with the theoretical framework, resolved (more on this later)
I was told to revise methods, findings chapters...then told to hold off as they want to revise (again) the TF...and to wait for them.
Revisions I have handed in get sent back repeatedly for things that seemingly were resolved in early revisions.

At this point I feel like I am just going in an endless loop of revisions on chapters that I thought were resolved and we aren't moving forward. Again, I understand that revisions to some chapters have cascading effects...Everytime I push a bit I get more revisions sent back or some seemingly new issue. These revisions requests are becoming even more infrequent (as I think they are just stalling), but we aren't progressing.
Not sure what I can do about these endless revisions. I mean it could very well mean my thesis has major issues but that was never indicated at any point. Not sure how I can convince the supervisor to agree to some hard deadlines we can try to hit so I am not just being stringed along endlessly.
I mainly contact them by email, but they take a while to reply, now more so that in the past. They refuse or are not likely to Zoom, get on the phone or meet.

I'm sorry, just to clarify-- your committee (and your primary advisor?) are refusing to meet with you in real-time formats?

The committee is willing to meet. The primary is not really willing. I’ve tried to request meetings but usually the emails go unanswered. This just stalls everything as we can’t meet if the primary isn’t there.

Ah, I see, it's the supervisor specifically that is the problem.  I will try to write up an answer today, but it may take a little while.  Thank you for the clarification.

Canyon clarify exactly who asked for what?

This seems egregious to me, but your instinct that you have no real leverage here is correct.  That your supervisor is now dodging or refusing meetings in addition to gumming up the works by insisting that everything go through them is a major problem.
There must be someone at your university you can talk to about this, with some level of confidentiality.  It may be someone outside your department formally, like an academic ombudsman.  It may be someone inside your department (not your supervisor) who has special responsibility for graduate students or interfacing with the graduate college.  It may just be the department chair (assuming that's not your supervisor.)
Find this person, and set up an appointment, just you two.  Explain the problem, as calmly and deferentially as you can.  (To be clear, I would be boiling over after eight months, but it isn't helpful.)  Be ready to talk about the whole timeline in detail, and comb your e-mails (which I hope you saved) as evidence that you're being ignored.
Also, this is not meant as justification but as caution:  It might be your supervisor underestimated some professional commitment, and this is leaking out into their relations with their students.  Or it might be your supervisor has problems outside academia that aren't visible to you.  Again, this is not justification, but-- to make up a random example-- you don't want to be the person lashing out at someone who has been taking care of an elderly family member in hospice, or something.

Agreed.  I would say that most often in departments that are at least medium-sized there is a graduate chair or associate chair, graduate, someone different from the chair, who would be the best starting place (if you're comfortable keeping it within the department and not escalating to an ombudsperson).

This is hard to answer without reading your thesis. So let's establish the two extremes, and you can then figure out where between the two ends your case lies, and from there find a solution.
On one extreme you have the thesis with serious problems. Maybe the proposal should have never been approved in the first place, and you ended up with unusable results (say, experimental data without controls, samples that can't answer your question, etc.) Or the thesis is so badly written than your advisor feels overwhelmed and decides to give you piecemeal revisions. I've seen both cases. In the first type of case, the student almost always ends up  saying "You approved the proposal, and I ran the experiments, now you have to pass this thesis, even if it contains no science or original contribution to the field." At some departments, this strategy works, and the professor and/or committee is forced to accept an unacceptable thesis just to make it fair to the student. At other departments (most?) the student is told that even though he/she is right in that the proposal should have never been approved, they still have to produce an acceptable thesis even if it means starting from scratch. In the case of bad writing, the student is so unprepared to write a thesis that, from the perspective of the advisor, to give detailed feedback on everything that needs to be fixed is pretty much writing the thesis on behalf of the student. So the advisor says things like "rewrite the intro", and the student brings the intro from a 1/10 to 2/10, then more revisions that bring it from 2/10 to 3/10 and so on. While the student gets exasperated, this is the only way to bring a badly written thesis to acceptable-land. If the student were capable of writing an 8/10 thesis, they would have done that already.
On the other extreme, you have the lazy, overwhelmed, and perfectionist advisor, asking for minor revisions without end. They tell you to revise from A to B, and you give them B, they say C would be better and when you bring C, they say how about A? Or they contradict earlier advice, and never read their old email, taking every draft you give them as a first draft. Or the perfectionist type that does not understand that the world runs on deadlines.
My advice is that you find others to read your current drafts and give you an honest opinion on where you stand. If the thesis itself is the problem, your only option might be to switch advisors and start again with another project. I know this sounds like the worst possible outcome, but forcing the department to accept and unacceptable thesis is bad for everyone. If your thesis is indeed acceptable, and the constant revisions are indeed trivial, and your advisor is not giving you timely feedback, you have to go up the chain of command. This usually means the director of graduate studies at your department, then the department chair, then some assistant/associate dean, then the dean's office and ultimately the Provost's office. Don't be tempted to jump steps, as it usually backfires. Another option, and one that I used myself when my MS advisor would not approve the final draft I gave him, was to publish every chapter of the thesis in good journals. The peer-review standard is much higher than an MS thesis standard, so he looked kinda stupid and petty in front of the committee trying to justify more revisions when I had reprints from the journal at hand. This route, of course, can take 6 months to a year, and the results can vary, but it does work.


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Advisor writing bulk/entire student thesis
I am forced to write this question as I believe it is unethical and needs to be addressed in my faculty. I suspect a faculty member in my university has the habit of writing his students' masters thesis (for free or for a fee). I believe he does it for a fee. A colleague has mentioned this before, but that colleague isn't a board member so I can't really take his word officially.
I noticed that for several theses I examined for the examination board, his students have a very solid thesis but performed questionable during oral presentations. Some colleagues think it's stage fright, but I believe it is more than that.
This faculty member always requests that corrections for the thesis be mailed to him to "pass to his student". I think he's just doing the corrections and submitting the final copy. This faculty member taught me in my undergraduate years in the same faculty and I heard some stories of his shady dealings with students then.
Question: How can something like this be investigated since there are no mechanisms in place to limit what a supervisor contributes to their students' thesis? It is difficult to get the students to testify as this is what most of them would want by default.

I think there is little to do. The most important thing to me is that s/he does not get profits (others than having all students attaining the degree).

I believe he does that for a fee. A colleague has mentioned this before but that colleague isn't a board member so I can't really take his word officially.

" very solid thesis but would have you questioning their abilities during oral presentations."  That is not unusual.

Its completely normal for student to perform less well at viva than on paper (and vice versa). Insisting that the examiners pass corrects to the faculty member to pass on to the student does strike me as irregular though.

@IanSudbery Or thorough: Perhaps the supervisor wants to make sure corrections are made.

I'm not saying its not possible that there are good reasons. it would just be very unusual. In fact, the supervisor getting highly involved in a master's like that would be seen as unfair on those whose supervisors do not get so involved. That's clearly true, and unavoidable for PhDs, but masters are generally seen a little different, and often there are processes in place to ensure that every student gets the same amount of help.

@IanSudbery, at my univ, in math, in the U.S., there are absolutely no procedures in place to ensure that Master's (or PhD's) get "the same amount of help". In some cases this does mean that students are effectively marooned.

Contact the University Thesis Office regarding policies regarding professors making edits. Maybe what he is doing is sanctioned; maybe there is a strict policy against it. The prof. won't tell you, and the college won't shake the boat. University administration offers the only chance of independent administration.

How could bribery possibly be sanctioned?

What bribery? It's not like the professor is being paid to pass them. Regardless, the whole point of having an oral exam board is to prevent exactly that, by having reps from college and university present to ensure that the candidate is of sufficient quality.

It's in the question: "I believe he does that for a fee."

There is a lot of supposition and hearsay in the question, regarding whether the activity in question has happened, and to what degree it has happened. The degree to which the university regards professorial participation in thesis writing as unacceptable is also unknown. Finally, the question regards how to get something investigated, not whether a crime is sanctioned.

Your answer implies a crime might be allowed.  That is wrong.

My answer implies that many things the author considers to be criminal may not be considered criminal by the professor, the department, the college, or the university.

Anyone who considers bribery to be a crime will consider your answer to be wrong, then.

If people who accept assertions on the basis of hearsay consider my answer to be wrong, I can live with that.

Now it sounds like you are assuming the question is wrong, which is not a reasonable approach to answering questions.  There is nothing about hearsay here; the asker wants to know how to gather evidence of a crime.

@Mox It my seem like hearsay at this point which is why I asked for a way to investigate this. Note that it is difficult to get a student to testify as he does not force them to take this deals. Most of our masters students work in the industry and some  would generally prefer this option when it is presented to them as they won't have to "stress" themselves.

@Mox Here's another reason I believe he does that apart from what I heard from a colleague. I got a call from a strange number telling me this colleague gave him my contact. That he is enrolled for a PhD in XXX in another university and would like for me to help him with his research. I told him I am available to assist if he has questions. He went ahead to make it clear that he wants me to write the whole thesis and tell him the price. I told him I can't do that but again available to answer his technical questions. ..

Weeks later, I ran into this colleague outside school and he asked if someone called me, I told him what our conversation was about and how I turned him down. He said it's a shame because the man is rich and is willing to pay any amount. That he would have done it if it was in his core area. This isn't hearsay. This was a conversation between the both of us.

How can something like this be investigated since there are no mechanism in place to limit what a supervisor contributes to his students' thesis?

I doubt it is true that there are no mechanisms for this.  Academics are generally bound by broad ethics rules in relation to their research and supervision, and this would almost certainly fall within the scope of those rules.  Being paid a separate fee to write the entire thesis for the student is something that would obviously fall well beyond what is appropriate help for a student, and it would almost certainly be a breach of research ethics.  A complaint of this matter could be raised either with the Head of Department for the faculty the academic is in (or was in at the time of the alleged conduct) or with the university Research Committee or Higher-Degree Committee.
As far as the actual investigative aspects are concerned, that is where it gets trickier, but not impossible.  The university might interview past students or look through correspondence between the students and the academic.  The university has the power to open investigations into the past award of a degree (and withdraw it under appropriate circumstances) and so this can be used as a way of seeking responses from past students.  The university also has access to all emails, etc., on their own systems, and there is generally no right of the academic to privacy of these things beyond certain narrow bounds (e.g., personal emails that do not relate to work).  In a complaint proceeding, the university would certainly give this academic an opportunity to tell them what he has been doing, and give his own arguments in relation to his practices.  He might even admit it, and argue that what he does is okay, in which case evidentiary issues would be moot.

What if the professor and the students used their private e-mail accounts? How do you investigate it?

Just like any other situation where bribery is suspected, a sting operation can be used by law enforcement to get proof.

Find someone who could plausibly offer a bribe.
Give them immunity to punishment.
Have them offer a bribe.
If the bribe is accepted, you have proof.

You can also investigate financial records, but this is much harder.

None of this I would recommend an ordinary faculty member undertaking in a non-official manner. Even if undertaken in an official manner, this would probably not be within the rules.

@IanSudbery Edited.  If you think there are rules that prevent law enforcement from doing this, let me know.  Certainly ordinary faculty cannot do step 2 unofficially.

By "official manner" I was more thiking about university authorities, rather than law enforcement. When it comes to the police, I suspect they just wouldn't have time for such a minor thing. The integrity of the academy might be very  important for us, but I suspect the police have other things to worry about.

How would you get law enforcement to do this? If I'd go to the local police and told them this plan, they would laugh at me and say they have more infortant things to do.

@DanielHatton I knew I'd get that comment.  I don't believe you.

@user111388 You're right.

Interesting.  .....

@user111388 "If I'd go to the local police and told them this plan, they would laugh at me"  This is why some universities employ their own police or security staff.

Then please add to the question that this is about"university police". I am not familiar with the concept of university police (it's not worldwide) and thus would not have thought you mean university police by "law enforcement". Still, it's hard for me to believe you can just go to this police, tell them your plan and then they just go along with this. It seems also unlikely that a "normal" student would try to offer a bribe just to help this investigation. If you have any experience etc. that uni policy indeed works in this way, please add it to the answer.

@user111388 This is about law enforcement investigation rather than university policy.  There's no need for a student to be involved.  It does not have to be university police.  I didn't claim that police would do this on request.  The question was "how can something like this be investigated" not "what can I, as a student, do to investigate".  Law enforcement sting operations like this are often featured in the news in the United States.

It makes sense for an operation like this to catch a drug dealer, but has there ever been such an operation to catch a professor who writes thesis' for their students? I find it hard to tell now if this is an "academic answer" (as in "if the government had infinitely money and personel, they would do this") or is it a real-world answer? And, what is the recommendation to the OP? Should they go to police? Or to university police, if any?

@user111388 Neither the question nor the answer really have anything to do with academia; it's all about bribery.  The question didn't ask if investigating was a good idea; I'd say a student should spend their time studying.

@DanielHatton Each university has its own practices, but in some cases they work directly for the university, even if it is a private university.

I don’t know if the investigative strategy described in this answer is feasible, but +1 for emphasizing that the alleged behavior described in the question is likely criminal. I find it strange that this can be regarded as controversial.

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What kind of help can I request from a terminally ill professor?
I am a student in Mathematics. There is a field I'm interested in (possibly enough to make it my main research area) which is not studied in my city. I've read a lecture notes on this topic a few months ago and sent the author a list of typos/inaccuracies I'd found. He responded in a positive way. When I was looking him up I found out he is terminally ill which, besides being extremely tragic, prevented me from asking for his guidance.
Since then I brought him up in a conversation a few times and people told me that it is very important for someone with terminal illness to know they are appreciated. I am thinking about requesting some help with my study of the field from him. However, I believe, the author was a great professor and mathematician so he probably has a lot still going on and I shouldn't bother him. Thus, my first question is: is it okay to ask him for help in this situation?.
If the answer is yes, what should I ask of him?. For example, would it be appropriate to inquire if he knows a colleague who could potentially become my adviser? Or perhaps I can ask about current research? I already used the opportunity to ask for some literature in the first letter.
To state it more clearly, is there a favour/question I can ask that is

Appropriate for the level of contact we had;
Easy for him to do and hopefully would make him feel appreciated;
Would be helpful for my own studies/career?

The last (and least) issue: in his email he thanked me for the list of typos and said that because of illness it would take him some time to implement the changes. It's been two months and the text is still in the first version. Should I offer assistance with this?

"It's been two months and the text is still in the first version." I was a bit jolted when I read this, since when you earlier wrote "I've read a text on this topic", I assumed you were talking about a book, but apparently this is not even a published paper. You may want to rewrite the earlier part to be more specific, such as "the unpublished notes on the internet" (or whatever it is that "text" refers to).

Edit: note that my original answer below addresses OP’s original version of the question, which has now been edited.
To address the current version of the question: yes, it is okay to ask for help, but your motivation should be wanting to get help, not artificially creating feelings of “being appreciated”. If you want to let someone know they are appreciated, just tell them that that’s the case. And if you don’t know what questions you should ask, to me that is a sign that there isn’t really anything that you particularly need help with, so the best thing to do is to not ask any questions.
Finally, the fact that you know the professor is ill shouldn’t change anything about the nature of the questions you should ask him. Just ask what you want to know, whether it’s an easy or difficult question to answer. I am confident that if the professor finds the question too burdensome to answer given his illness, he will either not respond or will simply tell you that he is unable to help.

My original answer:
Maybe I’m misunderstanding your intent, but the way your question is phrased (particularly your statement “my main goal here is to make the professor feel appreciated” and the slightly absurd list of hypothetical questions you are thinking of asking the professor) I get the impression that you’re thinking of inventing a fake request for help, that is, a question whose answer doesn’t actually interest you very much, out of the belief that the professor will feel “appreciated” when receiving the question.
If this interpretation is correct, my strong advice would be: no, it’s not okay, so don’t do it. The reason is that this would be dishonest (and somewhat transparently so, for some of the questions you proposed - not to mention that you’re publicly posting your plan here using your real name...). I can’t claim to know what it feels like to be terminally ill, but as a general rule people don’t appreciate other people being dishonest with them, so I think your question could end up having quite a different effect than what you intend.
Here’s an alternative suggestion however: if you want the professor to feel appreciated, why not simply tell him that you appreciate him (assuming that’s correct)? And certainly I think it’s okay to offer to help him in any way you can — again, assuming the offer is genuine and you intend to follow up in case he takes you up on it. It’s also okay to ask him a question if you genuinely want to know the answer, but you should be asking it because you want to know the answer. Please don’t invent questions solely for the purpose of making someone feel appreciated; I find that idea patronizing, offensive, and highly misguided, despite the fact that the intentions behind it are good.

I just joined to up vote this answer... Though I'm sure there will be some contributions for me in the long haul. This very situation happened with a professor I knew during my undergraduate studies. She was terminally ill and a student wanted to lift up her spirits by asking her some technical questions that didn't really interest the student but wanted her to feel useful. She quickly saw his true motives and was quite offended. Later on (before she passed), she recalled this story with me and felt that she was the subject of a pity party. Lesson learned: don't do it this way

@Dan, thanks a lot for your answer! I thought about what you wrote for some time and it helped me understand what I really want. I edited the question accordingly. You're right, the questions I came up with were ridiculous... To say what I want in other terms: I feel like I earned a little bit of goodwill with my typos list and I want to use it in the way that would be beneficial both to myself and to the prof.

I just searched Academia, MO and Google for different variations of "best questions to ask a famous scientist" and came up with nothing, surprisingly. Also, generally speaking, I can't agree with this statement: "if you want the professor to feel appreciated, why not simply tell him that you appreciate him". I can certainly do it but after all words are just words. However if I express honest gratitude after someone helps me it should give a much stronger feeling of satisfaction.

@Petr you are entitled to your opinion about how to best make someone feel appreciated, but respectfully I disagree: asking disingenuous questions of someone is simply a terrible way to make them feel appreciated. Offering help is better, but the truth is, this is someone you never met and who doesn’t know you or likely cares very much who you are. He has his family and friends and a limited time to do things that are important to him. Probably nothing you do or say will make much of a difference. But whatever you do, please express your intentions honestly or you’ll do more harm than good.

@rayryeng thanks a lot for sharing your experience. I hope you’ll end up contributing in other questions (but be careful not to get sucked in too deeply like some of us... ;-))

"Dan, when you put it like this I can't help but agree. Thanks again!

I started reading this answer while waiting at the traffic light, without looking at the author, and I thought: there's a lot of common sense in this answer, should be Dan's ;-)

@MassimoOrtolano aww thanks. Can you tell I’m blushing? :-)

@DanRomik :D thanks. Actually I've been a fan from afar. I've been reading your answers for a while now but I've had no account on Academia. It was this particular answer that motivated me to join and thank you personally... But hopefully somewhere down the line I can also be a meaningful contributor on this side of the Stack Exchange network. Looking forward to reading more of your answers!

Agree 100% with both the original answer and the new answer, and like so many great answers this is not limited to Academia. Unless you know for a fact that someone will unduly burden themselves (i.e. they can't say no) in order to assist you, there's no need to change the course of action based on an illness, whether that means adding or removing actions.

I think it would be perfectly fine to ask him for help, just as you would from someone that is not terminally ill. Amos Tversky (a famous professor) made every effort to conceal the fact that he was terminally ill from melanoma from most of his colleagues, until this was no longer possible. (Not everyone may take the same approach, but it seems that he is not abandoning academic pursuits entirely, since he was at least willing to try to act on the list of typos you gave.)
However, I think it would be best to confine yourself to a list of questions that can be quickly and easily answered. He probably has a lot going on (even without his illness), and I would ask a lengthy question only if he were the only expert in this area.

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Is it advisable to apply to graduate programs after the deadline has passed?
I committed to a decision to attend graduate school starting the semester of Fall 2017. I made this decision around mid-December. I started applications 2 days ago and to my surprise, many of my schools had deadlines of December 15th or January 5th.
I don't feel I badly managed my time. This was just when I felt comfortable committing to this direction in my life. I took the GRE about 5 months ago so that 'future me' wouldn't have to worry about it if I decided to attend. I also saw that some schools had an admission deadline of March 1st, so I figured most universities would follow this pattern it would be ok if I stopped focusing so hard on work and side projects to enjoy the holidays with my loved ones. I'd rather not wait an additional year to attend grad school.
Is it (generally speaking) worth my time and money to apply to these programs so far after the deadlines? Fall 2017 is 8 months away after all. I feel I should still have enough time to get my name into the figurative hat.

I removed the secondary questions because one question per post. Also, the questions of "what to do to make yourself a better candidate during a year off" and "what makes a candidate stand out" are already addressed pretty thoroughly in other Qs on this site :)

You could try contacting the graduate administrator for programs you wanted to apply to, and ask them if it is too late to apply. I would consider doing this before I'd start throwing hundreds of dollars in applications to programs who wouldn't consider my app at all, anyway. However, most programs I've dealt with have online applications that are all marked as closed and won't allow any new applications, even if you wanted to apply, if it is after the selection date.
I don't personally know anyone who has tried this, but I suppose the most it will cost you is a polite email.
In all honesty though, I really don't expect anything other than a "you are welcomed to apply next year" response. A few graduate programs with deadlines in December have already made their decisions, some have contacted students for interviews, and some haven't started reviewing files (but admissions has still been processing their files, ensuring everything is attached, etc). Those that haven't started may still not allow any new applications.
You can ask, but most likely you will need to consider alternative plans, such as looking at programs that have spring admissions, dates that haven't passed, or just waiting until fall of 2017 to apply for fall of 2018. Good luck, regardless!

You are less likely to get into a program the closer to a deadline the application is, because most schools have rolling admissions programs and will have already started accepting people. Applying late can give off the false impression that the application is an afterthought, and with so little time, you will also be rushing letter writers, trying to get transcripts, and more likely to make an error that cannot be corrected in time.
GRE scores are good for five years. You would likely be better off finding an internship or work experience than applying this late in the cycle.

I think the use of rolling admissions must vary between fields or countries, since it's not the standard for math Ph.D. programs in the U.S.

@AnonymousMathematician not necessarily PhD programs, but most Master's programs tend to roll.

I would not apply if the deadline has passed simply because this is a graduate program you are applying for. Assuming it is competitive, the school will look down upon your application thinking that you applied on a whim. I would apply again next year. In the meantime, I would pursue a job in the field that you want to pursue graduate school in. This will show that you have interest in the profession and that you took a year to learn from industry and now want to apply that in conjunction to what you will be learning in academia.

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"Garbage in, garbage out" - Is it rude to call others' works as 'garbage' compared to ours?
I'm working on a data model which, I think, produces more accurate and valid results than some of previous works by others, including my supervisor, who by the way supports my work. But so far, the relevant community in general hasn't paid enough attention to the need for such more accurate results in this field.
When presenting my work (verbal/poster/paper), I need to emphasise the importance of the problem and the need to using better models, and that if we used less valid models (such as some of the existing ones) we should expect less accurate results.
Is it rude to use the computer science axiom "garbage in, garbage out" (or similar phrases) when referring to others' works in this context?
Edit: I missed important details. In my case, by 'garbage' I specifically mean the low-quality data usually used to solve the problem, which makes other models less valid. Even though, I would never use it as it might be misinterpreted as evaluation of the works per se, rather than the resources used!
But I was surprised and not comfortable to read the analogy in a published comment which criticised another author's results for using unreliable data!

Yes, it would be rude, unprofessional, and unfunny. In short, don't do it.

Yes. This should be obvious.

Regarding your update: well, yes, academics are often rude and unprofessional, just like any other group of people.

To avoid the poor connotations of garbage in garbage out, I often switch to gold in, gold out. Expresses the same idea, the output is only as good as the input and may be improved with better input data. But I'm not sure I'd consider using GIGO in either formulation in a formal paper outside of CS.

How could you possibly think that it might not be rude to call somebody else's work "garbage"?

And recall "all models are wrong, some are useful" - George Box

"Garbage in - garbage out" is true of any model or algorithm  (e.g. yours too), thus it is not a criticism of a given model or algorithm. So it's not rude, but it's not usually used the way you intend to.

@guifa No, the two statements are not equivalent.

If you want to be tactful, and communicate effectively at the same time, try referring to the corrupted data as garbage, but not use the same term for the process that generated it.  Call that "defective" instead.  If the programmer is miffed at the word "defective" then you're dealing with someone that's too sensitive to be working in a team.  And, of course, you could be wrong.

That phrase is often used to indicate when input data is bad you can't get meaningful output. Not the model.  It's particularly useful when working with stakeholders who think that a great algorithm will magically fix their bad data issues....

why did that question get a lot of upvotes if almost everyone here thinks it's completely obvious that it's rude and unprofessional

@bubakazouba: Because at SE we usually do not vote "like or dislike"(opinions) on the topic of a question (unless it is off-topic, of course), but on the technical quality of the question: It is well phrased, not a duplicate, ... While I agree that the question could be improved, it is by far not a low-quality question. Hence, it deserves some upvotes. In the end, SE is all about questions. If something is "completely obvious" is in the eye of the beholder.

Your question is missing some important details: As pointed out by others, GIGO does not refer per se to the quality of the model, but the quality of input data and its implications. So what exactly was input, what output in the previous work? Was the model the output? Did they, e.g., train the model with bad input data, which resulted in an unrealistic model?

That all depends. Do you like your job? Do you appreciate a regular paycheck? Do you want to continue working at your current employer? Would you prefer not to be beaten to a bloody pulp in the parking lot by your coworkers? If you've answered "yes" to any of the above questions you might want to consider being less judgmental of the work of others, and perhaps consider that what they did was an improvement on what had come before. If, on the other hand, you answered "no" to all these questions, hey, game ON, man! Just try to have another job lined up first - just, y'know, in case...

Yes, it's rude to describe somebody else's work as garbage, and unnecessarily so.  You've already said it much better yourself:

if we used less valid models we should expect less accurate results

There's no reason to confuse this simple factual statement with a value judgement.  Just because something works poorly doesn't mean it's garbage---it may also simply be earlier and less well engineered.  Would you call a Model T "garbage" just because it gives inferior performance compared to a current car?

Debate on value judgements is pointless, so people try to stick to facts to avoid endless debates. There's certainly garbage around, but people won't agree on which, unless it's such garbage that it's not worth mentioning.

@ChrisWhite I have a deeper problem with an insult like "garbage," which is that it's not very informative.  All "garbage" tells me is that the person using the word doesn't like something, but it doesn't say why.  Is it poorly grounded? Badly motivated?  Sloppily executed? Just plain incomprehensible?  A word like "garbage" is essentially ad hominem for ideas, and just as poor an argument there as ad hominem normally is for people.

Not only would this be rude, but also downright wrong. Science proceeds by successive approximation producing better and better models. But when we find a better approximation, we don't start calling all the previous models "garbage", for at least two reasons:

Out of respect, because we know that we wouldn't have found this new model without all the previous ones. And should someone else find a better model than the one devised by us, we wouldn't like to hear our work called garbage.
A new and better model does not necessarily remove all the previous models, because the domain of applicability may not completely overlap.

Therefore, highlight the qualities of your work, but don't be rude about the work of those who came before you.

I think the thing here is that you're conflating the invalid input/invalid output of garbage in garbage out with, well, less accurate models being replaced by more accurate models, which is ENTIRELY a different thing.  If you put garbage data in to your model, you would get garbage results out of your model.  This does not change no matter how sophisticated the model is.
In short, no, from both a CS standpoint - your model would have the same problem as any other model, or indeed any piece of code, taking invalid input -, and, as others have said, a propriety standpoint, in that you really shouldn't be insulting everyone else's work.
E: Perhaps another way to put this.  You're confusing the input with the actual calculations and modeling.  If someone input that same guy's data in to your model, it would be equally as shaky in the reliability of the calculations.  Accuracy of calculations is another matter entirely.
Another note:  I am approaching this solely from a programmer's viewpoint, but the points about not insulting other people are all very good reasons to not use GIGO in your presentation.
E2:Okay, I seem to be serial-editing as I think of stuff.
As regards your edit ("missed important details..."):
I don't get what you're saying there.
Are you saying that you're pushing for more accurate input?  Or are you saying something else?  Your question and your clarification are at odds.

Regarding your "E2" section, requests for clarification of the question should be placed in comments on the question, not in answers. You should have enough rep to start posting comments soon (1 more upvote should do it.) You can find some general information about what's expected for answers in [answer]. Other information about how SE sites work can be found in the [help].

I like this answer!  In GIGO, the first G refers to the input that gets processed in the program.  In your case, you're refining a model.  This will give you improved results.  GIGO isn't remotely relevant.

I'm going to disagree with some of the other opinions here.
GIGO is a recognized term in the industry.  Using it appropriately is, well, appropriate, even if people in other industries wouldn't recognize the term as a very common, and appropriately used, term.
Also, in the real business world, people poke fun at competition in advertisements.  I've certainly seen it done before.  A lot of academia is designed to prepare you for the business world.
You may brush on some sensitivities, and perhaps even offend some people, while other people may chuckle.  In short, your level of success may depend on how well you know your audience.  What works well for computer programmers might not work as well for an audience that doesn't recognize the jargon and places a lot of value on things like showing respect for others.
However, even if your audience could appreciate a GIGO reference, you must make sure you're using the term right.  As a computer programmer myself, I am familiar with the phrase.  "Garbage", in this case, doesn't usually mean "low quality data".  It means "wrong data", or "random data that could be wrong, and there is a high probability of (at least some data being) wrong".  "Low quality" doesn't really fit that technical description of "garbage".  Any craftiness points you might deserve would be offset by the inappropriateness of your simple wrongness.

There is another usage of 'Garbage' in computer science, namely Garbage Collection. In that context, garbage just means the memory that is no longer needed. It's neither low quality data nor wrong data. Its only meaning is "no longer needed".

The garbage reference in GIGO refers to bad input data, as your answer points out. If you don't mind me adding a bit: GIGO is not an indictment on the system running the data; rather, GIGO essentially means that, no matter how good the original [software] system might be, if you feed bad data into it, you'll inevitably get bad data out of it. The acronym goes back a long way; I can remember my grandfather explaining it to me in the 1970s. So long as it's being used accurately and appropriately, I think it's okay to use.

@scaaahu The meaning of 'garbage' in the concept of garbage collection is completely different from and irrelevant to the meaning of 'garbage' in GIGO.

I think this is pretty close - I would note that I would only use this in an informal setting though. I wouldn't use this phrase in my root cause analysis document, but that's more because I would be more specific about the why the data didn't work, not because I'm afraid of insulting someone's sacred cow.

You initially began by talking about models, but in your update it seems you're really talking about collected data. I'm still a bit unclear.
But it seems that you're grappling with uncertainty in different data sets, so I propose that instead of using the computer science term GIGO, you use a signal processing term: noise. All data is noisy, your new techniques give you a less noisy dataset and therefore allow more accurate predictions.

The golden rule "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" (and the various equivalent statements that appear in a variety of ethical codes) applies just as much to academia as elsewhere.  Ask yourself, would I consider it rude if someone (1) referred to my work as "garbage" in the context of GIGO?  If the answer is "yes, probably", that suggests it would also be rude for you to use it to refer to the work of others.
I suppose technically that still leaves the question as to whether it is acceptable to be rude to others in an academic paper! ;o)
(1) They say "familiarity breeds contempt", and nobody is more familiar with my research than I am, but there is a difference between being contemptuous of my own work and having somebody else do it for me!

It actually depends on if they understand that their work wasn't good enough or look for a better pharse like 'what you put in is what you get out'

Yes, it is conditionlessly rude. Other answers explain very well, how bad is if you communicate negatively in a hierarchy. I extend this from the other site:
Although it is rude, it can be justifiable. Sometimes people do garbage, it can have many reasons, many of them is tolerable, many of them isn't.
And, naming the things as they are, makes the situation much clear if the reality is masked by complex polite formulas.
It depends on the balance. But, don't forget: people around you will weigh the real hardness of your negative words probably more serious, as you intended it!

authors: Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні


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how to indicate citations from the same, long document at different pages
I am proofreading a grant from another researcher. This is going to be submitted to the NIH which follows AMA guidelines. A particular, long report is providing her several of the researcher's citations. I asked for page references to some of her stats since I couldn't read the whole thing, and I needed to verify her correctness in interpreting them. This document is hundreds of pages long and she cites 3 different sections in the article.
1) Is it necessary for her to indicate the actual pages in the citations
if so,
2) How to cite the same document at several locations?

The AMA citation guide does not accept ibid, op cit, or loc cit references. Their protocol is listed here:
http://jeffline.jefferson.edu/Ask/Help/Handouts/Citation_AMA_style.pdf
and the basic recommendation is that endnote references should include page numbers when necessary e.g.

In his early work, Smith found a significant difference between smokers and non-smokers8(p.23) Age was also a factor. 8(p.64,66)

When citing a specific page or pages of a longer document (not generally necessary for published journal articles although that may also be mandatory in some fields) one adds the page number to the reference. In the Harvard system one would write "Smith (1969, p. 24)" or "(Smith, 1969, p. 25)". There are as far as I know no hard rules when such references should be made but an author should consider the readers of the work they produce and facilitate finding the information cited as well as possible. In a short article of 10-15 pages this would not be difficult but in longer works one should consider providing pages. The point of references is after all to provide sources for information used in the article and one should not have to read an entire book to find it.
If I understand the second question correctly, citing different pages in a specific document is done as above and the reference in the reference list will be just the document itself; no need to refer to page numbers there. The reference list provides the litterature to find and the in-text referenes will provide information on where in the literature you need to look.

(+1) but I can't accept it as an answer since I needed to apply some edits to my question and the citation mechanism you're using is not an accepted method. Basically, we are using AMA guidelines where you don't supply author/year but instead give a reference by number to the bibliography.


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Should I use my official legal name or the one I'm known by on my Master's dissertation?
My official, legal name is A, but I'm know by most people as B. B relates to A as Bob to Robert, however this connection is only obvious in my country of origin where I am no longer based. I am known primarily as B, among my friends and colleagues. In order to build a consistent professional profile over the past several years I've been making a conscious effort to not use A at all, as I've noticed it causes some confusion. My undergraduate degree certificates have my legal name on them but I feel like in a Masters I am currently writing up I would like to proceed with "migrating" over to being a "full-time B". I am not sure though if that in itself won't generate damaging inconsistencies in my professional profile / online presence etc, with various certificates awarded under different names.
Should I use my official legal name or the one I'm known by on my Master's dissertation? What kind of problems can I expect from going either way?

What name did you use to register for the master's degree program?

Are you planning on legally changing your name, or just using it?

I registered using A, and ended up using it on my Masters thesis. I'm not planning to legally change it to B, only aspiring to be consistently known as B.

You could write your name as Robert "Bob" KubaFYI, if your university policy allows for it. At least in the US, that's a standard stylization to indicate a nickname or unofficial name one goes by regularly. Classmates of mine who were international students from Eastern Asia and had traditional legal names but went by English names commonly did this.

That is a question to ask your advisor. There are most likely rules on how the dissertation has to look like, including things like where to put the university and institute, how to mention the advisor and, of course, also how and where to put your name (e.g. "name must be the same as on transcript/certificate").
If there happen to be no rules regarding that at your specific university, then your advisor might still be the best to ask, as he knows both the names A,B and also the field you are aiming to work in, so he can say which name might be better.
edit: This recent question here might be relevant to you: Proving authorship when name in publications does not match name in passport

If you are going to change the name you are known by, it is best to do so early. The more you publish the harder it will be for people and the more likely it will be that you need to stick with a name you don't prefer. People will look more to your publication record than what is printed on your official transcripts and diplomas unless you are seeking a new job, etc. However, you can also help inform the world about your formal and informal names by listing yourself as, say, Robert (Bob) Smith. List the informal name in parentheses. It is also possible to footnote your formal name at the top of a paper with "Also known as Bob".
Some editors might object, I suppose, but I would probably press it. Professional women (and even men, actually) who change their surname at marriage often have a similar dilemma and may need to connect the two names in the public's eye.
I don't predict "trouble" no matter how you resolve it, but you will need to explain things to people as you go along until the name you use becomes closely associated with you.

If this is in the US, unless you have changed your name legally, it might be considered fraudulent by the authorities to use B instead of A.
My wife has a similar issue. Until she changed her name legally when we became citizens, she had to use her legal name instead of the one she is known by.

Going by a name other than one's legal name is fraudulent? Misrepresenting one's legal name to authorities would be fraudulent, but that's very far away from what the OP is suggesting.

@StellaBiderman Yes, that’s why I said by the authorities in my answer. How is your point different from my answer?

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


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Why is citing to old publications seemingly the norm even in fields where much research becomes obsolete as technology progresses?
While doing literature review towards my Master's dissertation I noticed that many recent papers in my field (robotics/computer vision) frequently cite publications produced a decade or even more ago.
Now, that would not surprise me so much if those were, say, about fundamental algorithm which we still use (even if in modified and updated form). However, often the papers in question are of high-level systems designed to tackle a problem using technology available at the time. If the same problem were to be tackled in the present day, with current technology, the solution offered in such citation would make little sense.
It seems to me that referring to such work in a publication introduces very little (if any) value to the paper and mostly serves as a show-off-y way to generate more words and populate the reference list. And yet, it seems like nobody minds that, because the vast majority of the publications I've been reading have a number of obsolete / pointless references in them.
Is there something I'm missing there? What value, if any, is there in citing a clearly obsolete work? If it is really as pointless as it seems to me, what is the reason for the practice being commonplace in contemporary academic writing?

So, nothing a decade old is worth anything? The concepts, the solutions, tracing developments through time. I guess I’m an old fogey now...

Answers for philosophy and software engineering are going to differ.

Coming from the same field as you, I know what you mean. I also wondered the same thing at first. Note that in other fields, citing papers that are 100 years old is the norm so saying a paper is old because it is a decade old might not resonate for them :).

There is much to take from an old paper. Even if the problem was solved with "obsolete" technology for an obsolete problem, the method employed, the problem tackled, the method used to test the results, ..., all this might still be relevant to your problem.
You might also use related works to show that a research direction was taken as to explain why you don't have to do it yourself. But at least you will show that you know it has been searched and your reader will also know.
The last reason you might want to cite those paper is to put your own work in contrast to those present there. You say the works are obsolete and old ? Perfect, explain how your research tackles a problem they have not resolved. This is something especially important in robotics where everything is new and shiny and cool and changes so fast. Make yourself unique by citing close related work but showing how you differ from them. And those similar work might be those older highly specialized work:

This method solve very specific problem 1. However, it cannot solve novel situation while the method we present in our work can.

There is more to a paper than meets the eye.

Academic writing is a genre of literature. It is a convention of this genre to include a little history lesson on the ideas and past work that lead up to your present contributions.
Readers from your field appreciate you indicating the foundation you are building on, rather than having to assume that you and they have the same understanding of the concepts and the terminology. They must be sure that there is a shared pool of knowledge between you. You not only cite, but summarize your sources and how they are relevant; because not only they must know where your concepts and terminology are coming from, but they must also be convinced that you know what you are talking about.
Readers unfamiliar with your field appreciate the little history lesson. You have already done the work of researching it. Don't make them do it again.
Citations are a form of currency in academia. Citing an old paper shows your appreciation of it. It is a form of payback, a "thank you" note, a show of respect for the researchers who did the work before you. (A political aspect of this is that these people may be the ones reviewing your paper and deciding on its fate.)
While a specific "technology" may be obsolete, there are numerous surrounding issues discussed in academic papers - process, implementation details, evaluation, insights, methodology, etc. It is likely that there is a lot that is relevant for you in old papers.
My personal experience is that many older papers are more understandable and "literary," more readable, than recent ones. For novice readers it may be easier to start there to get a handle on things.

There is no such thing as "obsolete work" in academia. A particular device or technology that is the subject of research may be obsolete, but never every single aspect of the research done around it. In fact, by design, by virtue of the scientific process, such "obsoletion" is desirable and even necessary in research; because it shows that progress has been made in the field.


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How to get the PDF of a hard-to-find paper?
I'm finding this paper: Adobe Camera Model.
It's the second result in Google Scholar:
the result of Google Scholar
That's it, without any linkings.
And I searched Tech. rep., Adobe, Adobe Technical Reports in Google, but get nothing useful.
I also tried the names of the authors.
What are the common methods to find the PDFs of such papers?

Is this it? It is the first result from Google...

Google Scholar results will vary depending on your past research (or so I've heard...), thus the inconsistencies.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this is not a relevant question

@101010111100 Yes, to me, looks like this is it

@101010111100 I'm surprised the Macromedia domain is still in use given how long ago they were absorbed by Adobe (and, for that matter, that Adobe still posts stuff on it).

@101010111100 Things are different to me. Sigh...

I see that quite a few people have cited the work. The authors of those papers can be contacted for help. I'm hopeful that they will respond kindly.
I've experienced this before. Don't hesitate to ask them by email. But also, be ready to explain why it is needed and what you've tried to find it yourself. All the best!
Edit: The link by user 101010111100 looks like it!


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How to have several subjects when submitting an article to arXiv?
I would like to submit an article to arXiv and I have chosen a primary category so that the article is listed in that category. But I also would like to have another category in the list "subjects" when the paper appears on arXiv. For example, a paper is published on arXiv with "Subjects: Analysis of PDEs (math.AP); bla bla bla". I am wondering how to add "bla bla bla". Should it be done while doing cross-list? If so, does the paper also appear in the second category mentioned? I do not wish to have the paper in several categories.

Probably the best way to decide such things is to look at it from a user's point of view. If you were looking for the information in this paper, how would you want to see it listed? If you were not looking for this paper, but some similar-in-some-vague-way paper, how would you like to see it listed? That is, try to list it so that it maximizes the usefulness for potential readers. Don't try to maximize exposure, that will just annoy people.

I would like to submit an article to arXiv and I have chosen a primary category so that the article is listed in that category. But I also would like to have another category in the list "subjects" when the paper appears on arXiv. For example, a paper is published on arXiv with "Subjects: Analysis of PDEs (math.AP); bla bla bla". I am wondering how to add "bla bla bla". Should it be done while doing cross-list?

Yes, the additional categories you see for an arXiv paper comes from specifying them in the cross-list. This can be done while submitting the paper. This help page provides further details.

If so, does the paper also appear in the second category mentioned? I do not wish to have the paper in several categories.

The paper will be announced to all the categories it is listed in, i.e., the primary category as well as the cross-listed categories. This is mentioned in the arXiv moderation page (emphasis mine):

arXiv moderation may result in the reclassification or removal of a submission. Reclassification by our moderators helps make sure that submissions are posted to the most appropriate archive. Cross-lists may be added to other related archives, or they may be removed by moderators when the classification is deemed inappropriate. A submission that is cross-listed to a category will still be announced in the mailings to that category.

However, it is possible to distinguish between primary and cross-listed categories when looking for a paper. In "Advanced Search", it is possible to specify if papers cross-listed in the category being searched should be included in the results.
Image for reference:


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Does it matter where I get PhD degree from if I want an academic career in the US?
I am an EU citizen who is going to apply to PhD Physics programs soon. My ultimate goal is to become a university professor. In considering which university I should attend for PhD, factors such as tuition & program differences don't matter to me. What matters is that I don't feel like doing (nor do I agree with) the GRE (which would require a significant preparation), thus applying to PhD programs in the US might be out of the picture for me. However, the question pertains that if I want an academic career (ultimately, a professor position) in the US in the future, does it matter from which university I get my PhD degree?
Note: I do not care about a uni's rank or status. What I care about is whether the uni's location (different country) will affect where I can get jobs later on...
PS: On a separate matter, I've heard that PhD graduates in the US can obtain academic jobs without going through postdocs, is that true? If so, what does it take do achieve that?

In answer to your non-postdoc question to tenure track sidebar, yes, it is possible in some fields (such as philosophy), but in other fields I gather 1 to 2 postdocs is the norm. But it's almost entirely field dependent (and then luck getting a TT without having to find something else).

The separate matter should be asked in a separate question. Regarding the main question: Maybe focus on the aspect of whether there is an advantage of getting your PhD from a university in the same system as you want to get a faculty position at? Other aspects have already been covered in the quesiton linked by virmaior.

I don't know that I agree that this is a duplicate of that question, since that question concerns rank and OP explicitly states that they don't care about rank, but rather that they care about country. However, I know that this question has been addressed here -- but I'm unable to find the answer in question.


text:
Should I ask for confirmation of my admission from University academic department
I have applied to two Canadian universities for MS program. One of them has accepted my application and has given me admission. While for the other one, status is "Under department review". I am waiting for second university response. But the problem is that I have to give my confirmation with in two weeks time. In this case, can I ask them to accelerate the decision process for me and can give me a definite answer? Is this polite to do it? Do I need to mention the University name in mail?

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/41852/inquiring-about-phd-status-and-mentioning-standing-offers?rq=1

Interestingly, "fasten" doesn't mean "to make faster," it means to hold in one spot: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/fasten

You should absolutely contact them with the information about the info about your other acceptance and what your deadline is.  They may or may not make a decision before your deadline, but they will appreciate knowing about the situation.

Yes, in this case it is appropriate to contact the department/program head or admissions administrator and inform them that you have another acceptance. Rather than ask for them to "hurry up," it would be more polite to say, "I have received another offer of acceptance that requires my response within two weeks. Will your department be able to make its admission decisions within that time line?"

Do I need to mention the university name in my mail?

I don't think that is necessary. I suppose the department could ask for proof that you received an acceptance somewhere else to make sure that there is a real need to work faster than their normal timeline (rather than a student who just wants them to work faster and therefore fabricates a non-existent offer somewhere else). However, I never heard of this for school admissions. I would leave it out unless they ask.

If the university you are waiting to hear from is your top choice, you could mention, "Your program is my top choice and I would prefer to attend your program if I am accepted."


text:
Which tense to use when presenting my master thesis?
In a couple of weeks, I have to present my master thesis to both my professors (supervisors) and family and friends. After the title page, I immediately present the main novelty of my thesis (instead of first presenting a lot of "blablabla" about the literature and stuff).
What would be a suitable tense to do this?
For instance:

I found/ have found/find that [description of findings]

or

This thesis shows/has shown/showed that [description of findings]

I think you'll get the point. It is basically whether to use the present simple/ present perfect or past simple.
EDIT: My thesis is about the effects of unconventional monetary policy announcements by the Fed on European government bond markets. So w.r.t. to the comment of C26 below, it is something happened in the past. However, I also examined through which channels these announcements influence government bond markets in the eurozone. So this is more like a process; something that is most likely also true in the future (i.e. when these announcements will occur again).

From the two examples you've provided, I'm actually comfortable with both. Anything you did leading to your thesis is past tense, but anything your thesis demonstrates, i.e. your thesis shows that underwater basket weaving is still relevant (active finding, still valid in the present). Just putting it out there that trying to conform to a single tense can sometimes not feel quite right.

I think it really depends on what the research shows. If the research demonstrates a process that is ongoing, or straddles multiple timelines/periods, you can go with "the research shows that". However, if it is related to something that happened squarely in the past, you can use the past only.
I personally tend not to use the first person when discussing results of undertaken research, though I have seen it done in all the ways you describe. Really it comes down to what feels most natural and right to you as the author.

You are right about that it depends on the research. I will edit my OP with this information.

I recently completed and defended my MA thesis in psychology within the last couple months. I believe that mine was primarily in the "has shown/have found" tense (I apologize, it has been years since I have had to remember tense names.). The only exception was in my method section, where I wrote it all in the past tense ("We ran participants..."). I, personally, avoided the first person where possible as it just felt wrong to me, but I think that it is probably a personal choice, if you are the sole author.
I do not know if that helped. Good luck!

I would avoid the first person.
At the start of the thesis, use "This thesis shows that ..."
At the end of the thesis, in a summary, use "This thesis has shown that ...".
I do not think that the tense you use to describe the thesis depends on the time at which events described in the thesis occurred.


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What is the acceptable similarity in a mathematics PhD dissertation when checking by Turnitin?
I have checked the originality of my PhD thesis in mathematics using Turnitin. The similarity was 31%. Is this percentage acceptable by most committees?

Provided that we are speaking about the ratings provided by automated tools (somewhat implied by the "similarity"): the answer should probably be that it does not matter. Any single copied paragraph that is beyond coincidence is a reason for rejecting the thesis. At the same time, for a thesis, someone should definitely check all potential cases of plagiarism that an automated tool provides. Otherwise the department would use the automated checking tool in a plain wrong way. If the rating is "90% plagiarism", but all cases found by the tool are false-positives, then this should be fine.

Different (but similar) question with good answers and comments is asked in this link: What is the range of percentage similarity of plagiarism for a review article?

@EnthusiasticStudent, Yes, but the percentage for PhD thesis is different than the percentage for review articles

@Nora Yes, I know; but in the answers to the linked question there are some referred papers and reports which may help you find your answer.

Surely you know whether or not you've plagiarised. If you have, you'll be removing that plagiarism before you submit, regardless of the Turnitin score. So why are you checking your own thesis with Turnitin?

@FranckDernoncourt: I do not think anybody will need a link to Turnitin. See also this Meta discussion.

there are places out there that mandate the use of turnitin before PhD thesis submission; one such place is Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). They say it must not be above 30%. However, turnitin does bad job on PhD theses. It marks stuff like "Let G be a group" and every reference in the bibliography as plagiarism...

@DimaPasechnik: well, if you're copying verbatim a standard citation block for the paper you're referencing, shouldn't you mark that as a direct quote and cite the standard source you got the citation text from? ;-)

"turnitin [marks] every reference in the bibliography as plagiarism" - Construct a document consisting entirely of a quote from a paper and the corresponding citation and reference, then show the resulting 100% plagiarism rating to whatever lunatic set a policy that uses a hard threshold on turnitin score instead of using it as a tool for shortlisting the papers that need a closer look.

Is this percentage acceptable by most committees?

This is the wrong question to be asking, since academic decisions are not made based on a numerical measure of similarity from a computer program.  The purpose of this software is to flag suspicious cases for humans to examine more carefully.  It will identify passages that appear similar to other writings, but it can't decide whether that constitutes plagiarism.
For example, part of your thesis might be based on previous papers you have written.  In some circumstances, it may be reasonable to copy text from these papers.  (You need to check that your advisor approves and that it doesn't conflict with any university regulations or the publishing agreement with the publisher.)  Of course you would need to cite the papers and clearly indicate the overlap.  It's not plagiarism if you do that, but Turnitin doesn't understand what you've written well enough to distinguish it from plagiarism.  So it's possible that Turnitin would flag lots of suspicious sections, but that your committee would look at them and see that everything is cited appropriately.
If you haven't committed any plagiarism, then you don't need to worry about this at all.  If you genuinely write everything yourself (or carefully quote and cite anything you didn't write), then there's no way you could accidentally write something that looks like proof of plagiarism.  There's just too much possible variation, and the probability of matching someone else's words by chance is negligible.  The worst case scenario is that Turnitin flags something due to algorithmic limitations or a poor underlying model, but human review shows that it is not actually worrisome.  (Nobody trusts Turnitin more than they trust their own judgment.)
I'll assume you don't know you've committed plagiarism, but it is possible that you honestly wouldn't know?  Unfortunately, the answer is yes if you have certain bad writing habits.  For example, it's dangerous to write while having another reference open in front of you to compare with.  Even if you don't copy anything verbatim, it's easy to write something that's just an adaptation of the original source (maybe rewording sentences or rearranging things slightly, but clearly based on the original).
If that's what worries you, then you should take a look at the most suspicious passages found by Turnitin.  If they look like an adaptation of another source, then it's worth rewriting them.  If they don't, then maybe Turnitin is worrying you unnecessarily.
But in any case a plagiarism finding won't just come down to a percentage of similarity.  Any percentage greater than 0 is too much for actual plagiarism, and no percentage is too high if it reflects limitations of the software rather than actual plagiarism.

Something that may be different for math papers is that many definitions are standard enough that the wording is almost exactly the same in all papers. I would not try to get "creative" with the definition of a complete metric space for example.

TurnItIn uses a complicated algorithm to determine whether a piece of text within a larger body of work matches something in its database. The TurnItIn is limited to open access sources and therefore has huge gaps in its ability to detect things. Further, while TurnItIn can in some cases exclude things like references and quotes from the similarity index, it sometimes fails. Overall, when my department's academic misconduct committee looks at TurnItIn reports we essentially ignore the overall similarity index. We do not completely ignore it in that it guides how we are going to further examine the document.
We employ 4 different strategies based on whether the similarity index is 0, between 1 and 20 percent, between 20 and 40 percent, and over 40+ percent. A piece of work with a similarity index of 0 is pretty rare and generally means that students have manipulated the document in a way that TurnItIn cannot process it (e.g., if a paper is converted to an image file and then converted to a pdf, there is no text for TurnItIn to analyse). A similarity index less than 20 percent can arise from work that contains no plagiarism with the similarity being quotes and references and small meaningless sentences. The key here is "meaningless". For example, there are only so many ways of saying "we did a t-test between the two groups" and it is reasonable to assume that someone else has used exactly the same wording. A piece of work with a similarity index less than 20 percent can also, however, include a huge amount of plagiarised material. A similarity index between 20-40 percent generally means there is a problem unless a large portion of text that should have been skipped was not (e.g., block quotes, reference lists, or appendices of common tables). A similarity index in excess of 40 percent is almost always problematic.
You really should not depend on the overall similarity index. First and foremost you should depend on your own following of good academic practices. If you have followed good academic practices, there really is no need for TurnItIn. If you want to use the TurnItIn report, you should look at what is being match and ask yourself why it is matching. If it found something your "accidentally" cut and paste, or "inadvertently" did not reword appropriately, fix it and use that as a wake up call to improve your academic practice. If everything it is finding are properly attributed quotes or common tables (or questionnaires, etc) and references then there is no problem.

I have some familiarity with Turnitin, though that was way back in undergrad. The thing about similarity engines is that they aren't perfect.
It's important to consider exactly how Turnitin describes itself on its FAQ.
What does TurnItIn actually do?

Turnitin determines if text in a paper matches text in any of the Turnitin databases. By itself, Turnitin does not detect or determine plagiarism
—
it just detects matching text to help instructors determine if plagiarism
has occurred. Indeed, the text in the student’s paper that is found to match a source may be properly cited and attributed.

When we were testing Turnitin in high school (probably a decade ago) with a short writing prompt (~page or two) with a single source, the entire class ended up getting 15 to 20% similarity score, because not only did our sources match, but our quotes matched. No surprise there, really.
Now, consider how large Turnitin's database has grown. If this FAQ is to be trusted, you're comparing your paper to more than 80 thousand journals.

Turnitin’s proprietary software then compares the paper’s text to a vast
database of 12+ billion pages of digital content (including archived internet content that is no longer
available on the live web) as well as over 110 million papers in the student paper archive, and 80,000+
professional, academic and commercial journals and publications. We’re adding new content through new partnerships all the time. For example, our partner CrossRef boasts 500-plus members that include publishers such as Elsevier and the IEEE, and has already added hundreds of millions of pages of new content to our database.

If I recall correctly, you can see exactly where your paper has similarity with others, so you can pull that up.
Sources of Similarity
My bet is that your paper cites papers almost identically to how another paper cites theirs. The great benefit of commonplace citing techniques like APA and MLA is that they're consistent.
If you cite, for example, the general APA format from Purdue, and someone else cites it, they're going to match at almost 100%.

Angeli, E., Wagner, J., Lawrick, E., Moore, K., Anderson, M., Soderlund, L., & Brizee, A. (2010, May 5). General format. Retrieved from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

The chances of you citing a paper that has never been cited before when compared to the world of science is, let's face it, probably 0%. Someone out there has cited your sources at some point. With sources being at times up to 10% of the paper's length, that's an easy portion we can knock out.
The other portion likely has to do with the vernacular that is used to describe a situation. Let's go with the following statement, written entirely off the top of my head.

Java is an object-oriented programming language.

Pretty simple statement, and true enough that it has been mentioned 260,000 times already, in that exact wording.
Similarity for that statement is 100% if it were to check for that. But when you make it loosely checked for similarity (i.e. remove the quotes from the search), you get several million hits.
Does that mean I plagiarized? Nope. Would TurnItIn flag it? Definitely. Consider how likely everyday people great each other with "How was your weekend?" Are we plagiarizing each other's greetings? Nope. We pick up similarities in how we control language to understand each other, and that shows in papers, where we describe confidence intervals, methodologies, and processes the same way.
Perhaps even more terrifying in considering the similarity score, is that it will likely evaluate the two following statements similar:
Statement 1

The double helix of DNA was first discovered by the combined efforts of Watson and Crick. Watson and Crick would later get a Nobel Prize for their efforts.

Statement 2

The double helix of DNA was not first discovered by the combined efforts of Watson and Crick, but by Franklin. Watson and Crick would later get a Nobel Prize for her efforts.

Two very similar sentences. 80-90% similarity word-wise. Meaning-wise? Completely different. That's why the human element is required. We can tell those two statements tell an entirely different story when read. These small similar sets of wording add up quite quickly, and a 30% similarity in your case, given the level of research probably done in whatever your field is, and the amount of sources you have probably cited (100+?) is unlikely to be anything to fret about in this day and age.

Nice analysis, but I disagree with your conclusions. Do you have any evidence that "30% similarity is unlikely to be anything to fret about in this day and age." I haven't calculated the numbers for my department, although it might be worth doing, but I would estimate that over 3/4 of the cases of academic misconduct I have seen have an overall similarity index of less than 30%. Harder for me to estimate is the percentage of work that has a similarity index in excess of 30 percent that did not involve academic misconduct.

@StrongBad I mean in his case, not in general, sorry D: I'm sure if we really wanted to, we could definitely break TurnItIn by forceful plagiarism at a <10% rating, and I know students will likely do that. I'll edit it to reflect that.

From my experience with Ithenticate (the version of turnitin for journals and conference proceedings), I'd say that 30% similarity most likely indicates significant plagiarism or self-plagiarism (recycling of text.)  I would certainly investigate further to understand exactly where the similar text was coming from.
If the similar text is taken from sources written by other authors, then I would investigate further by reading the text carefully and comparing it with the sources.  There are certainly false alarms raised by this type of software.  For example, common phrases like "Without loss of generality, we can assume that..." and "Partial differential equation boundary value problem"   will be flagged.  Standard definitions are also commonly flagged.
However, if I see long narrative paragraphs with significant copying, that's clearly plagiarism.
It's traditional at many universities to staple together a bunch of papers and call it a dissertation.  Conversely, it's also very common to slightly rewrite chapters of a dissertation and turn them into papers.  Either way, this is "text recycling."
Now that text recycling can be easily detected, commercial publishers are cracking down on it for a variety of reasons.  First, the publisher might get sued for copyright violation if the holder of the copyright on the previously published text objects.  A different objection is that the material shouldn't be published because it isn't original.
As a result, text recycling between two published papers (in conference proceedings or journal articles) is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.  This has upset many academics who have made a habit of reusing text from one paper to the next.  Some feel that if the reused text is from a methods section or literature review, than the copying is harmless.  Publishers typically take a harder line.
The situation with dissertations is somewhat different.  In one direction  journals have always been willing to accept papers that are substantially based on dissertation chapters with minimal rewriting.  Since the student usually retains copyright on the thesis itself, there's no particular problem with copyright violation. Since dissertations traditionally weren't widely distributed, publishers didn't care that the material had been "previously published."  I don't really expect this to change much in the near future.
In the other direction, there are two issues:  First, will the publisher of journal articles object to reuse of the text in the dissertation as a copyright violation?  You'd need to check with the publisher.  Second, will the university be willing to accept a dissertation (and perhaps publish it through Proquest or its own online dissertation web site) that contains material that has been separately published?  That really depends on the policy of your university and the particular opinions of your advisor and committee.

I have used websites in the past to help with similar content, they will give you a report of what was found online and help remove/reword the similar content so you don't have to worry about your document being marked as plagiarism.

He doesn't have to worry about the document being marked as plagiarism, no matter what a program says.


text:
Rainbow flag in paper
I am making a diagram in my paper. In that diagram I use several squares of different colors and one rectangle of multiple colors. An easy way to get a rectangle full of colors is the rainbow flag. I am sympathetic to the LGBT cause, but I am not LGBT. I thought the flag could be a small gesture but I am not trying to make a strong political point.
One labmate told me to not put political symbols in papers (+could make people think I am LGBT, nothing wrong with that, but false); another says it's completely fine.
I am considering whether to keep the flag or find an alternative (different colors, structure, or move the colors around).
Any ideas/opions?

A rainbow could just be a rainbow.

Is it an exact copy of the LGBT rainbow or is it just a block of rectangles of random colors? If you are using the exact LGBT rainbow- just change the color ordering if you are concerned that some people may view it as a political message.

You are fine. I struggle to think of any possible negative consequences stemming from you having a rainbow in your paper.

Whatever you do, make sure your diagrams are still readable when the paper is printed in grayscale.

It is my philosophy that research is research and political activism is political activism. The idea of being a researcher is being as unbiased as possible and looking for the truth, political ideologies create bias. It may be completely unrelated to your research, but I personally make it a rule to keep my political ideologies away from my work. Not saying those ideologies should not be fought for, nor defended, but a research paper is not the proper place to be pushing a political narrative.

"Not that there's anything wrong with that!"  "No, nothing at all."

Another example you might try where the colors mean something is this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Flag

I'm a strong supporter of LGBTI+ rights, but if I encountered a rainbow flag in an article with no particular connection to those issues and nothing else to explain the choice of that symbol in particular, I'd be more confused than anything else. The editors may also be confused about whether you're trying to sneak in a political statement.
Leaving politics aside: rainbow colour schemes are often a bad idea because they're not very good at communicating information.
As Dmitry Savostyanov suggested, it's wise to ensure that your diagrams are still readable in grayscale. Rainbows often fail this test because colours far apart on the spectrum may be close together in luminance (brightness), and vice versa. Even for readers who have full colour vision and are reading the colour version, rainbow palettes can create the illusion of abrupt changes where there are none, and so forth. For those with colour-vision impairments, they're extra-poor. For more information, see Borland and Taylor's Rainbow Color Map (Still) Considered Harmful.

While it is admirable that you wish to promote equality, a scientific work should be as objective and free from bias as possible. Sneaking in an LGBT ‘Easter egg’ doesn’t add anything substantive and in the worst case, may convey a sense of triviality that weakens your actual directive.
To use a silly example, suppose a figure in a paper had a 4x4 grid the cells of which were either filled or empty. Now suppose the filled squares were the American flag. There’s just more potential downside than upside.


text:
Is sending the same research proposal to multiple schools considered plagiarism?
I am planning to pursue my PhD in business administration. I would like to apply to more than one school to get an admission because business schools are competitive. Can I submit my research interest (proposal paper) in the application to more than one school if the faculty in each school have the same research area or is my application going to be rejected because I submited it to more than one school and that is considered to be plagiarism?

Why would this constitute plagiarism?
First, you wrote it, so it could at best be self-plagiarism.
Second, a proposal paper or expression of research interest is expected to be send to more than one institution. Sending them is not tantamount to a publication. You do not even have to mention this, since every-one on an admission committee will assume that you are applying to more than one institution.
If you do not get accepted, you would be free to resubmit the expression of research interest to the same institution the next year.


text:
Is it ethical / legal to publish results obtained by AI if it was trained with only own results?
I understand that using AI results and publish them as your own violates academic ethics, if it is legal at all. I also understand that AI in its current state is probably far from finding new insights that can be published.
However, if researchers train an AI, e.g. ChatGPT, using exclusively their own published papers and draft research results, is it ethical / legal to publish the new discoveries of the AI under their name? Is it necessary to indicate that some results were obtained by aim of AI?
This question can be viewed with another perspective. It is common practice in some academic circles that the scientific advisers publish their PhD students' results as their own, even without mentioning it. They even can justify this action by saying that they guided the student and the new result was a logical continuation of this guidance. In my question, AI plays the role of the PhD student.

I removed the additional questions, as with them your question might be closed due to asking too many things at the same time.

Can I add these related questions in a comment?

No. According to the site rules, please ask only one question at a time. You can ask a new question, but do not sidestep the rule by asking more things in the comments. Otherwise your comment might be deleted.

"It is common practice in some academic circles that the scientific advisers publish their PhD students' results as their own" If you really want to go with the analogy. do these advisors disclose that the results are obtained from the work of their students?
If not: common practice does not mean it is an acceptable practice (although the dissonance between the norm, the rule and what is acceptable will make life a pain for everyone involved)

It is common practice in some academic circles that the scientific advisers publish their PhD students' results as their own, even without mentioning it. --- Although you did qualify with "some", it's worth noting that in math almost the opposite is often the case. For example, see the extensive discussion answers/comments to the mathoverflow question When should a supervisor be a co-author? (e.g. this answer and comments to this other answer).

Well, probably to clarify myself, what role should be regarded to AI: as a tool to obtain the result (aka: footnote "In my research I uses XYZ software to compute the result") or as a owner of intellectual property (aka: "Some helpful results were obtained by XYZ")?

Aside:  I saw recently a ruling that output of an AI cannot be copyrighted.

Machine learning models already generate plenty of research. Computational chemistry (my area) is seeing a boom in models that can take a small set of expensive but accurate calculations and extrapolate them into equally accurate calculations of configurations that the models have not seen before. Such "ML calculators" can slash the time taken for calculations by orders of magnitude. Others can (almost literally) dream up designer proteins that bind to your target of choice. Entire laboratories are being run with an AI hand at the wheel.
But when you say

e.g. ChatGPT

I take it you are not referring to such "technical" models, which use ML to speed up the technical tasks of running simulations and validating protein folds and such. I guess you are thinking of something more futuristic, like Tony Stark asking JARVIS "Hey, what would a room temperature superconductor look like?" and JARVIS replying, after a morning of prompt-crunching, "well, first sinter lead(II) oxide with lead(II) sulfate to form a lanarkite ..."
The problem is that anything like a Generative Pre-trained Transformer represents a fraught usage of licensed data even before your hypothetical scientist has logged in. To learn language, HypothetiCarl (or whatever the bot is called) will almost certainly have been trained on something like Books3, containing in its 100GB of data about 60,000 non-fiction and 120,000 fiction titles, all pirated. So, from that perspective, using a general generative large language model for anything at all where IP is in question is at least fraught if not downright wrong.
It also underestimates how science is inherently social and founded upon people helping other people discover great things. AI-science will need to be repeatable and reputable to help other scientists. (What if "A Remarkably Energetic Synthesis Of A Room-Temperature Superconductor, by Tony Stark and JARVIS" actually prescribes a recipe that, when attempted in competitors' labs, will blow them sky high?) The kind of secrecy that would lead a scientist to hide an AI's contributions (or, for that matter, their PhD students' contributions) would also make them extremely difficult to collaborate with and would prevent them from progressing in science.
Wherever science is progressing well, it is progressing in the direction of becoming more open, more transparent, more replicable, and more democratically approachable. A hypothetical scientist who used AI without stating so would run counter to every instinct in that bundle and would not make it far.

Shern Ren Tee, your point about impossibility to train AI exclusively upon own research is valid. Still, there is different ways to regard someone's contribution. If you use Taylor series, his contribution is regarded in the method name. Some more specific results are regarded in bibliography. If some researcher / adviser made a substantial suggestion, but remains outside of research, he can be regarded in a footnote. If someone worked together with author, he is probably put as a co-author.


text:
How to properly reference the appendix
I have an appendix in addition to my thesis. How do I refer to this correctly?
Which version is the correct one?

As seen in the Appendix A1
As seen in Appendix A1

And how does it work if I refer to the appendix as a whole?

This is rather about English writing and I'm not a native speaker. I suspect both are OK (the upper case in the beginning of "Appendix A1" makes the whole thing a name, so it can do without "the", but I don't think "the" is wrong either). It should be "as seen in the appendix" without the A1. But there may be better expertise than mine.

Use 'as seen in the appendix' to refer to the appendix as a whole, or 'as seen in Appendix A1'. Capitalisation should only be used when refering to titles.

"Appendix A1" suggests that there exists at least Appendix A2 (and possibly A3 etc as well as B1, B2, etc) and so I would recommend not writing "the Appendix A1" at all.  Indeed, if this is the only Appendix as you say,, why name it A1? Just call it the Appendix and be done with it.


text:
One Proposal, Two Submissions (NSF GRFP and NDSEG)
I'll be applying this coming fall to start a master's program in fall 2024 and plan on applying for both the GRFP and NDSEG for potential funding. I was wondering if there are any guidelines about submitting the same proposal to both. I know both have different requirements but my plan is to just write one and change it to fit the requirements of the other. I'm just not sure if that is allowed and am worried that if I do do that, it could make my application un-reviewable.

Yeah, that’s what everyone does. More generally, the NSF does not require, expect, or even encourage people to follow the plan in the proposal. They understand that things change as people move from college to a PhD. The point of the proposal is just to show that you understand the context and purpose of your undergraduate work.


text:
Is it beneficial to prefer keywords complementary to words in the title?
This was some advice given by an editor in a writing course:

If there is a limit to the number of keywords, don’t use terms already used in the title. Rather, use terms that are complementary, synonymous, or equivalent (even “non-standard” terms) to those in the title. This will allow your paper to appear in more searches in Google Scholar and similar search engines.

Is this correct?

I don't know how often this is recommended, but it makes good sense.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because one would have to analyze the frequency with which this advice is given.  Pretty impossible for us to say.

@aparente001: Well, you could theoretically analyse the frequency. More importantly, the answer to the question is irrelevant and what actually matters to every sane person is whether this advice is correct. As I presume the asker to be a sane person, I will just edit the question accordingly.

Relevant and similar question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/49093/what-is-appropriate-number-of-keywords-for-conference-paper

Key-words are crucial for indexing, whereas the words chosen for the title and the abstract are impactful for free text searches.
For instance, you may search PubMed with key-words (using the [mh] tag), with title words (using the [ti] tag), with title or abstract words (using the [tiab] tag), and so forth.
In case you use in the title and abstract words which correspond to indexing terms, then you may find reasonable to use alternative words as key-words. However, the most important thing is to use, in at least one of the venues (key-words, title, or abstract), the accepted indexing terms.

Joe please roll back if my edit is not correct.