text:
Verification of PhD from Harvard
A person claims to have earned a PhD from Harvard University, but is offering no credible proof. How can I verify their claim?

Why do you need proof?

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is not related to academia

@user3209815 I strongly disagree: this question is about verifying a claimed academic credential.  It doesn't matter that it's a roommate asking, rather than a PI considering an academic hire.

I heavily edited the question to remove the backstory and just keep the meat of what's being asked. I agree with @jakebeal that this is a perfectly valid question, as this could be asked by anyone doing a hire, looking into a collaboration, or simply trying to learn how to prove their own attendance without providing a diploma.

I think we all want to know --- did he?

Possible duplicate of How can I find out if someone really holds a doctoral degree?

@jakebeal A PI considering academic hiring can ask to see a copy of a transcript (and all possitions I applied to required a copy of the transcript), a roomate cannot (well they can ask but they should not expect it).

Harvard has a page on their website dedicated to this exact question, and the answer turns out to be simply "contact the specific school and request verification of the degree."
To speak to the general case, just call the university registrar and ask how they go about verifying degrees. This is a very common scenario and they will almost certainly have a process in place for it.

This is the right way to verify a real degree, but it won't conclusively disprove a fraudulent claim.  For example, the person can claim he received a degree under a different name, which he is unwilling to reveal (for any number of possible reasons: hiding from a threatening stalker, participating in the witness protection program, sex reassignment surgery, etc.).  For job applications, this is good enough, since it's the job applicant's burden to provide enough information to verify the degree, not the employer's burden to disprove it, but in other cases it can leave a sliver of doubt.

then the hiring party can elect to not hire.  if someone claims to have a credential, they must allow that claim to be verified.  if they say "I, (current name), have a PhD from (some college) in Harvard University, awarded in (some year)" and Harvard says "No one with that name exists in our recorded degrees awarded from that school and year." then the applicant has to accept that their claim is unverified until they provide sufficient information to verify. It is up to the applicant to reveal sufficient information to verify the claim.

@robertbristow-johnson: I completely agree for hiring situations, which is certainly the most important case, but the question as stated is broader than job applications.  (It's worth noting that before editing, it dealt with a roommate who claimed to have a Harvard Ph.D. without providing any evidence.  That's the sort of situation where someone might say "I do too have a Harvard Ph.D., but my previous name is none of your business," and even though you don't for a minute believe them you can't conclusively rule it out without hiring a private detective to track down their life history.)

Everybody's favorite topic of conversation is "themselves". You can usually figure out in a few minutes whether someone is a good or a bad liar when talking about themselves - the simplest way is just to remember any vague or evasive answers, and steer the discussion back to asking the same question again, after the interviewee has had time to forget what his/her first answer was. There's nothing very original in that strategy - every police officer is taught how to do it!  Of course in some (non-academic) jobs being a good liar can be a positive attribute, but being a bad one never is.

@alephzero: How do you tell if they're a good liar with that technique? If they were then you wouldn't be able to tell they were lying...

If he got his PhD after 1970, then his dissertation should be available through proquest.  Go here enter the name and see if anything comes up.

Not true anymore. Many people embargo their dissertation or opt out, so not being in pro quest is no longer diagnostic.

@RoboKaren:  That's a good point.  But typical embargoes are 2 years or less, so might not apply here.  I also think (a little googling backed it up, but I could easily be wrong) that embargoes only hide the content, not the metadata (author, title, school, year).

For people curious about the trend RoboKaren mentioned, here's an article on PhD embargo rates at Harvard.

From the article that @Noah Snyder mentioned: "As a result, as a search in ProQuest reveals, an unprecedented number of dissertations (almost one in three) produced at Harvard in 2012 and 2013 are embargoed. These dissertations are now secret and the authors can decide how long to keep them so."

Research universities tend to archive their PhD dissertations and list them in the online library catalogue.  The institution named in the question does that.


text:
Can a University explicitly say, "no more conversations" to me about an issue?
To keep this as short and simple as possible I will only provide relevant details and be as anonymous as possible.
I’ve been talking to a former University about an issue (hold on my account) for the past few weeks (about a month probably).
I have not been able to come to an agreement with the University. They have given me two options about my issue but I’ve declined as I’m seeking for a better solution for myself (and I cannot afford the options they’ve given).
Most recently, I’ve emailed very high up officials and received an email stating, “no more conversations will take place about this issue. You must pay the full hold.” (I paraphrased). I only emailed these high up officials once and received back this one email.
I have since emailed back stating I would like to continue and have a solid argument about kind of solution I’m seeking (so now a total of  two emails sent to them).
So can a University tell me they will no longer talk or work with me? Is this actually legal?
Edit: As to provide more details here are some.
I have this hold because I applied for a private student loan to use for the one semester only. The University changed their policy to use loans for the entire year (Fall and Spring). I asked through a phone call if they could use my loan for the one semester only as I knew I would not be attending the next or any upcoming semesters. I was told they would do this. I have no proof of this phone call and neither does the university. (So that's where things fall apart on my end).
Fast forward a few months and I find out I still have this hold as the University representative never did as they said.
I know my chances of having this forgiven are essentially none, however I decided to shoot for it and come to a good compromise. They offered two options, both I cannot afford.
I don't want to go to a lawyer as obviously, I cannot afford one. The sum of money is less than $5K. I'm in the United States. I am essentially liable for the money. I know I cannot get away without paying it. BUT I have documentation from the University stating that a committee may look at my case and come up with an exception. As far as I know, they have not done so. It has simply been speaking to different University officials.
I really want to know if it is as simple as a University stating that they will no longer have conversations with me about this issue. It seems highly unethical.

If the sum of money involved is large enough, it is lawyer time.

They have given you several options. You don't like them. At some point, why should they keep bargaining? You owe them money, apparently, and not surprisingly they want it. Of course it is legal for them to wait for you to choose one of the options presented. Presumably they will turn it over to a collections agency at some point should you continue not to pay what you agreed to pay.

There isn't enough info for us to say anything constructive about the details.  Does your university have a graduate student union, or committee?  Are there advisers you could talk to?

From what you describe, the university is not refusing to "talk or work with" you. They are merely telling you that there is no more wiggle-room for additional options besides the ones that were apparently offered, as (from their point of view) this is the crucial message that has not yet gotten through.

@O.R.Mapper. They also explicitly say that the previous offers are off the table.

Please check my edit

Most lawyers will agree to sit down with you without you paying them a penny. I AM NOT A LAWYER and I don't know how it is with universities, but usually you first file a complaint in the court, then there's a hearing in which the judge recommends the matter be solved through arbitration. This costs you nothing. If some form of settlement cannot be reached, then comes the trial. At this point, you would have to pony up for lawyers. I know this cause I went through something similar, though not with a university. Good Luck.

If you had asked here before sending e-mail to "very high up officials" you would probably have got at least one answer or comment warning that the university might decide that attempting to accommodate you is more trouble than it is worth. That is apparently what happened.

Legal issues are off topic for this site.

Apart from being legally compelled, they can chose not to talk to you. In the US at least, if you sue the university, they will have to talk to "you" (or a judge) or they will be in contempt of court. It is worth noting that if you sue the university and the court finds your suit to be frivolous you can be force to pay the legal fees of the university.

Short of a suit, if the OP has a really strong legal case for not being liable for the money in question, a letter from an attorney stating that case may get a response.

@PatriciaShanahan of course there are a lot of steps one should take before suing. I was just pointing out that the university cannot legally ignore a law suit. Prior to to that, they can do whatever they want.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
When did US undergraduate education become so expensive?
As far as I know, in the majority of  countries in the world, especially in Europe, undergraduate education, even at the top universities, is almost always significantly less expensive than at prestigous US universities.
For example, for the 2018-2019 academic year, the standard cost of tuition and fees at MIT was $51,520. Add in room and board and other fees, and the price tag reaches $70,240 annually. The average cost after aid was around $ 22,549.
At Cornell, the cost after aid was $30,498 and at NYU $37,362.
This is representative of most of the Ivy League schools as well as many liberal arts schools which are less well known internationally.
The average tuition cost at my school in France is a mere 2000 euros per year whilst other French schools have tuition ranging from 300 euros per year to 15,000 in one extreme case. In several European countries, tuition is either free or students are payed to study.
The student debt crisis in the US is a recent phenomenon, but how recent? I suspect that that students at Ivy League schools in the 1930's weren't paying anything close to their present counterparts, adjusting for inflation.
So when exactly did top tier American schools start raising  tuition and board fees to the astronomical levels we see now?
I will leave out the question if whether this is sustainable or what the consequences will be, as this is speculative and opinion-based.

There are very many books and articles on this phenomenon.  I think it's too broad for a Stack Exchange post.  One important point to note, however, is that the "sticker price" for tuition is commonly offset by various forms of scholarships, financial aid, and discounts.  So the net price of tuition varies from one student to the next and can be substantially lower - in some cases $0.  There's no doubt that the typical cost is still much more than in Europe, but not as much as the sticker price might lead you to believe.

To show how meaningless the tuition price is for private schools, MIT says "For students with family incomes under $90,000 a year and typical assets, MIT guarantees that scholarship funding from all sources will allow them to attend the Institute tuition-free."

iT remains the case that the AVERAGE cost is the number given. The adtronomical prices may not apply to everyone, but the phenomenon is real. For every American accepted at e.g MIT not benefiting from free tuition, there is a European coming from a similar economic background attending school for much less.

@JoshuaBenabou No your number is not the average, it's the full tuition, which is the maximum anybody pays. If you look at the numbers, 59% got need-based scholarships, which on average, covered nearly everything.

you are right , my mistake. i edited my question with the appropriate numbers, my point still hold as you can see

Why is quite clear - the costs are mainly infrastructure and professors. There are no efficiency increases when the job is one-on-one or one-on-few for high quality instruction. Thus, costs will rise faster than inflation.

It isn't clear to me why this occured only in the US and not in the other countries...

@JoshuaBenabou Are you comparing to other countries where the government strongly subsidizes education by funding universities directly?

I am comparing to all the countries besides the US. As far as I know, in the vast majority of them the cost of university eudcation isn't comparable to the US. I can't even think of one example where it wkuld be close.

Which French school costs 15,000 EUR? Is that an isolated case?

Yes it is an isolated case. It is EM Lyon business school.

Although I've provided what I felt is a simplified "broad stroke" answer on one factor, if you're looking for a multinational comparison I'm going to have to side with Nate and the others and find the question to be too broad.  That's definitely a subject matter for entire books. We could perhaps answer "Germany vs. US" or "UK vs. US" and the answers will be different, and may not share any underlying causes; and even if they did, moving over to comparing to yet another country may yield no common causes.  It's a constellation of many factors.

@Nate: i removed the "why" part. it's less broad now.

The question is broad, but not unanswerable. Sure, going into detail on why would make answers very long, but one does not have to go into detail. One could simply give an outline and direct the interested to further resources. For example here're 210 reasons the Western Roman Empire fell in one page: https://courses.washington.edu/rome250/gallery/ROME%20250/210%20Reasons.htm. Voting to reopen.

The answer is to "When" is that it happened gradually.  The cost of education has always been increasing.  The answer to "Why" is inflation and Baulmol's Cost Disease.  There are other contributing details, but Baulmol's cost disease is the main thing.

"It isn't clear to me why this occured only in the US and not in the other countries."  It is happening in other countries, but slower.  The increase is cost is more noticeable in the US because of lower subsidies for education and health care, plus higher quality higher education at the most expensive institutions.

The short answer to the new title question is it roughly started at the end of the 1960s for a slow start, steady increases throughout 1970 (which is hard to be clear on because of the rampant inflation that occurred at that time really blew up the dollar amounts, it was a crazy time for the US economy), and then it really started to take off in the 1980s. Forbes gives a nice chart: https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2017/05/10/the-exaggerated-role-of-cost-disease-in-soaring-college-tuition/#3fd4b20e2b4e Tuition varies by citizenship/region though, so take numbers with salt.

@AnonymousPhysicist: Well, the pount about higher quality education is highly debatable, at least in domains like math/physics where the education in top French schools is on par with and sometimes better than at top U.S universities. Concerning why the cost in the U.S is more noticeable, did the U.S used to subsidize education e.g in the 1930's? I believe that college was relatively more affordable back then.

Interesting question.  I do not know about costs or subsidies before the 1944 GI bill.  However, I do know that enrollment grew a lot during the 20th century.

Actually, IMO, the why question is much more interesting than the when question. Understanding why gives you a hook into how it might be changed.

This article in USA Today from 2017 shows the graph below, which is average tuition and fees adjusted for inflation from '71-'72 to '16-'17.

To answer the question in the title: it looks like it started rising above inflation in around 1983.

Very interesting chart. Although, it would be good to see how far back the 'flat' period between 1971 and 1981 extends before that. Also, it begs the question as to why prices started increasing so much in 1983.

@Time4Tea Yes to both older data and why.  The data here seems to have come from this spreadsheet on collegeboard.org and it only goes back to '71-'72.

There's another interesting graph on the Wikipedia page for College tuition in the US that compares the growth in tuition cost to the cost of living. The same page suggests that student loans did become much more important during the 1980s.

@Time4Tea Answering why the prices started to increase so much sounds like a research project rather than a Stack Exchange post, in that it's unlikely that there is a single, easy-to-identify, and well-documented reason. Usually, these things stem from the interplay of a bunch of complex factors, the importance (or existence) of which is often subject to considerable academic and political debate. In short, I think the current answer is perfect for Stack Exchange - it answers the question, and only the question, using fairly uncontroversial data.

@xLeitix I agree and I think this is a good answer. I admit that my answer focuses more on 'why' than 'when'.

The simplest explanation I've heard is that proliferation of student loans have allowed the costs to skyrocket by spreading the cost to the student over time. Similar effects have occurred in other areas where loans have become prolific, such as 30 year housing loans and mortgages.  The bank can afford to wait years, even decades, to reap the benefits, as it operates by volume and in the long-term.  As such the sticker price rises to account for the fact that people can now "afford" to pay large amounts for things.  Amounts that will take them many years of budgeting to actually cover. It is the loan itself that grants and permits them that time.
So while a historically normal transaction might be "pay now, get what you pay for now", loans (and things like credit cards) turn the transaction into "get what you pay for now, pay for it over the next several years".  A one-time cost of $100, say, can be ballooned into charging $200 instead and then with interest costing you $240; but spread out over a year that's just 20 bucks a month, which at least feels easier to afford than turning over 100 bucks right away.
The issue is not one-dimensional, of course, as the proliferation of scholarships, financial assistance, and moreover the commercialization of these things (wherein organizations seek to profit off these matters, and so work to proliferate them), also allows costs to be deferred away from the individual student and the immediate moment. For example, government assistance would move the costs onto the tax base, which is again a deeper pocket to plumb than the student's.

That simplest explanation doesn't hold, because such loans are available in other countries too, and many US public universities are much cheaper, in particular for in-state students.

@gerrit That's when I fall back to Nate's position and note that entire books can be written (and have, and presently are being) on this matter.  We'd have to delve into their economies and politics, discuss the US's aversion to socialism and nigh-religious embrace of capitalism, the historical trend of a politically powerful sector of people who hate big government,  degree of government regulation and control, where the actual costs go (e.g. are in-state students getting a discount or the real market price? if a discount who's actually paying for it, and what's it really cost all told?) etc.

Actually, you have the cart before the horse. Student loans increased because the costs escalated and weren't compensated. Not the other way around. Colleges and universities didn't increase tuition etc. because they could but because they had to as other funding disappeared. It was a combination of political philosophy and also geopolitical issues. For example, a lot of funding dried up immediately upon landing on the moon and beating the Russians to that goal.

I don't agree with this answer. Are student loans a new concept, that has only been introduced in the past 30 years?

@Time4Tea That's a bizarre criticism, because it fundamentally supposes that everything must be taken to 11 immediately.  Things usually don't immediately ramp up to their most extreme and exploitative forms; that's not realistic. It takes time and the right environments to allow it.  Exactly what circumstances had to come about is, again, something I have to defer to the "we can write books about this, and I'm not going to write a book for an answer" line. Though I do understand why it is desired.

I didn't attend a US University (although my wife teaches at one), but I would think a big part of the reason is down to simple supply and demand economics (which after all is what governs the price of pretty much anything in a free market).
Ivy league US Universities, in particular, are widely considered to be some of the absolute top Universities in the world. Plus, the US is a very desirable country to live in, in general. So, the level of demand is very high, and has only been increasing when you consider the huge increase in both the US and worldwide populations over the past 100 years.
However, on the supply side, the number of US Ivy league schools is very limited and has not increased significantly over the past 100 years (at least, not anywhere near the rate of the population increase).
So, I think it is natural to see significant increases in the price of something, when the demand is ever-increasing, but the supply is relatively fixed.
The free-market capitalist nature of the US has probably exacerbated the situation, since the freer a market is, the more susceptible prices will be to  supply/demand forces. Regulation and state intervention can help to 'dampen' the supply/demand effect, which may be what is happening to a larger extent in other countries.
I disagree with this answer, that loans are a significant part of the problem. They may be enabling people to pay higher prices, but it is not as if loans are a new concept that has only emerged in the past 50 years. Also, loans are available for pretty much anything else that people might want to buy, so the simple existence of loans doesn't explain why the price of US college education has risen so much faster than inflation.
To address the OP's question of when the price increases occurred: I think it is highly unlikely there was any 'watershed' moment where prices saw a sudden 'step change'. Prices have been creeping up gradually over many decades, as the population-driven demand has increased.

As others have mentioned, there are numerous reasons.  Here's a couple more:
Universities have been competing with each other.  Room and Board have gone up because the amenities have improved.  Part of the improving is matching the improving in non-academic life, part of it is acting as a benefit to make one university more appealing than another. Another way to compete is for the faculty; faculty is (on average) paid better than they used to be. (Policy Report)
Another sort of competition is in showing how exclusive they are; part of that is by having a large sticker price, but then actually charging less on average.  (Forbes article.)
Lastly (for me and my answer, anyway), financial support for public universities and colleges has been decreasing.  They have to make up the revenue differences somewhere; cuts to programs can only go so deep. (Washington Post article.)

Usually, competition in a market should reduce prices, not increase them.

@Time4Tea The competition he's talking about here is in providing more stuff.  It's not focusing on competing on the core product, but on providing the shiniest ancillaries.  It's like if competing pocket knife makers decided that rather than trying to make the best pocket knife at a lower price, they will instead start making Swiss Army Knives.

@zibadawatimmy Competition is competition. If there were any kind of serious competition between Ivy league institutions for undergraduate talent, that would imply that tuition fees should be coming down, which doesn't seem to be the case. Imo, this answer has something of the 'cart-before-the-horse' - universities are spending more on amenities because they have more money to spend, because they are able to charge more, because of the supply/demand effect.

@Time4Tea  Sure, the price of the pocket knife in the Swiss Army Knife is going down.  But then there's the corkscrew, and the Flathead screwdriver, and the Phillips screwdriver, and the bottle opener...Those have costs, too.  One component might get cheaper, but when you stop trying to sell just that component, because it's increasingly difficult to distinguish yourself on that alone, and instead try to sell a huge package of things the entire cost goes up.  You just add more things and fundamentally higher quality versions (boat replaced by yacht, etc.) to keep it going.

@zibadawatimmy those examples are very different to top-flight US universities, and operate at very different supply/demand points. For a start, those are all mass-produced products, the supply of which can be increased fairly easily by expanding or building new production plants. I would think it should be possible to expand a school, to create more places, but it's not quite so simple, especially if a school is in a city and so can't easily expand its campus footprint.

@Time4Tea It's an analogy, it's not supposed to be perfect.  It's supposed to help you focus on what's similar so you can process the larger issue.  If I wanted to state it perfectly as is, I would have written what Van already did. But you didn't get that, either.

@Time4Tea the theory of supply and demand / competition reducing price relies on the products being offered being essentially the same.  If two producers of pencil both produce no. 2 wooden pencils, we can use the concept of supply and demand to explain the market's behavior.  OTOH, if one of the pencil makers starts making mechanical pencils with all sorts of bells and whistles, the basic S&D concept doesn't accurately predict how the market will behave.  There are goods where demand is higher for more expensive versions: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/giffen-good.asp

@Van As I said to zibadawa timmy, that example, of a mass-manufactured product, is vastly different to the type of market that US universities are operating in, so I don't think the comparison is valid. Ivy league schools are not operating in anything like such a fiercely competitive market as pencils, so they are not being forced to innovate and differentiate themselves to the same extent.

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


text:
PhD Applications: Can a good academic record in my master's compensate for a horrible UG academic record?
I have a very bad undergraduate academic record -- I failed or didn't attend the end semester exams for many courses (15 courses, to be exact!), and I  had to clear these later on, towards the end of my course.
Admissions to graduate courses in my country (India) are based on entrance examinations (and not your profile or UG record) -- which I've cleared and I'll be going to one of the best universities in my country.
I wish to do a PhD, and I want to keep options in the US or UK open. I intend to study well in my masters and get good scores, and, going by what I've done in the past couple of years, I think I'll be a lot more disciplined in my masters.
My only worry is: will my undergraduate record be a bottleneck no matter how hard I try in my masters? Should I just go into the industry after my masters? I really want to do a PhD!
My overall undergrad GPA is bad (2.72), with, as I've said, 15 "backlogs" (exams that I didn't attend or failed, and cleared later on). However, during the last 3 semesters, I took no backlogs and I averaged above 3. During the final two semesters, I averaged 3.2 and in the final semester I got a 3.4.

@BryanKrause Not really a duplicate, since the question is about grad vs undergrad record rather than having a weak application.

@ElizabethHenning Yes, but that answer already addresses how performance later on can possibly atone for poor early GPA, how interpretations of minimum requirements vary by institution, and I think the record the OP is describing would put them into the category of having a weak application so all the other advice there is relevant as well.

@BryanKrause I think that this question has some unique component which I tried to address in my answer. While your link to the more general question is still extremely relevant.

@BryanKrause -- I asked this question because other questions don't address the issue of having had "backlogs".

@WorldGov I don't know what a "backlog" is, since it isn't something that exists in my system, but it sounds like you failed a bunch of courses/exams and had to retake them? Yes, to be blunt, that looks pretty bad and probably disqualifies you from graduate school unless you can explain it (i.e., if you had an untreated mental health issue that is now well-controlled, or some other life change). The other ways to cover for it are answered in the marked duplicate: have good letters, good research experience, good recent academic performance, etc. A 3.4 GPA isn't particularly stunning, either.

In short:
You need to do some research-type work during your Master's to evaluate if your desire to get a Ph.D. has some foundation.
You certainly would have a chance to get into a Ph.D. program with strong enough application. However, you would have to work hard during your Master's.

There are several things you need to consider:

you have not yet finished (or, I guess, even started) your Master's degree. Therefore, you are planning way ahead.
you certainly want to do a research-based Master's degree with a thesis, as opposed to doing a pure course-based Master's. Doing research during your Master's would allow you to understand if you like doing research in the first place. Also, it would strengthen your potential application for a Ph.D.
a carefully written Letter of Intent would be crucial.
sometimes, only a GPA in your last two years of the undergraduate program is used for applicants with a Master's degree.
you should make a decision of industry vs academia closer to the time you are finishing your Master's degree. Moreover, even if you get into industry, nothing prevents you from applying to a Ph.D. program several years later if you still have research interests and, especially, if you position at industry had a research component that you were excited about.

Thanks. While these are tips for having a generally low GPA -- do you think it'll allow me to address the issue of having had backlogs as well? (Also, the reason why I'm deciding this is because I've been accepted into two good universities -- one known for it's strong research opportunities and one known for strong industry placements upon graduation).

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


text:
Pure math field for PhD when planning to go into industry
I'm a mathematics student just starting my third year. Since entering grad school, I have become rather firmly convinced that academia is not the place for me. The intellectual work is great, but the life side sucks. I hate the administrative bloat, the grad student/post-doc slavery system, being constantly surrounded by people with no social skills, the whole toxic self-sacrifice culture. I think I want to just go into industry, find myself some niche, or work my way up a corporate ladder. Probably in tech or finance since that's who needs mathematicians.
Problem: my research area is real pure, pretty much no direct applications at all. So, since deciding to go into industry, I've started to look at another field which I have taken a class on and is interesting to me, but I don't really know very much about yet. It's a relatively new discipline which has seen recent applications in data. There's a couple of people in my department who do related work so I might ask one of them to be my advisor. (I don't have one yet- the first two years here are very coursework heavy and this is the semester to choose.)
The trouble is, I feel like I'm starting back at square one. I fell in love with my original field during undergrad and have been going hard on it ever since. I was research-level before entering grad school, published a paper in top journal, had a bunch of ongoing side projects, and have read enough that I can easily hold conversations with professors about most topics. I know 100% I could bang out a thesis in the next three years if it was in this field. I even have an original topic based on a generalization of my earlier paper, and have made some progress on it on my own.
In my new field, I feel like a beginner. If my peers in the new field have the same level of expertise as I did in my original field, then I'm way behind. I might take longer to graduate, or have a crappy thesis. Or maybe I'll discover I just have no talent in it, that my brain is only built for original field. I don't know.

I am very confident in my original field, but from an applied perspective it is useless. Is it worth anything to get a PhD in a pure field if you know 100% you're going into industry? Would it be worthwhile for me to attempt to change to something more relevant in which I am a beginner?

You fell in love with your original field during undergrad. Do you like the new field? If not, are you 100% confident you'll get PhD in the new field? Do you think you won't hate the new field enough to give it up later?

@scaaahu I dunno. I think I can do it, but who knows? I haven't done enough of new field yet to understand the experience of doing research in it. All I really know is the general feel from the course I took, its place in industry, and that research probably involves coding (which is something that I do like).

Your first two years are course heavy, right? Have you been exposed to that field? What was your guts feelings? I was a math guy, too. There are some fields I knew I don't like  but I could do. Doing something you don't really like is a great pain especially if you have to do it for the rest of your life.. That's why I asked the question.

@scaaahu I guess it's hard to tell. At this level, I don't love it, but I do think it's interesting. I don't know whether things will be different at higher levels one way or the other.

Another point for you to think about. Number theory and Category theory were considered pure pure math (note that I used two pure's here) several decades ago. Now, they are considered pretty much applied. Are you sure your original field is absolutely useless?

@scaaahu Those fields have a lot of interesting applications, but they are definitely not considered "applied."

Tech and finance don't need mathematicians; they need a lot of engineers and data analysts, and a few economists. Some places will like the fact that you have a PhD, but it (and you) would be wasted in industry; other places will think that the fact that you have a PhD means you can't do anything practical or applied. I'm not sure a PhD in an applied field would help you any more, so pick something you at least like. It's easy to find a job in industry with a doctorate, so you shouldn't worry about it being a liability.

Especially if you are only two years in, do consider not completing a PhD. Could you leave academia this year with a Master's and enter the job market? In 3-4 years, having 3-4 years of industry experience may be as useful as PhD in finding a job. And you'd be making a real salary in the meantime.

It's hard to say much without more concrete info about which fields you are talking about.
I switched from geometric analysis as academic to quantitative finance in industry pretty easily. But it was probably easier at the time in that they didn't expect you to know much, just be smart.
Being an analyst meant that the distance to applications was much shorter than from many fields. However, the PhD badge does help whatever your original field; I have helped people with topology PhDs make the switch.
My general advice to people planning to switch is to do something related to probability or statistics. There are plenty of pure problems but it leaves you well placed for applications.
(see my guide on www.markjoshi.com for more discussion.)

OK, I guess I should have included this in the post. My original field is finite group theory. The field I'm considering is computational topology (i.e. topological data analysis).

+1 for "My general advice to people planning to switch is to do something related to probability or statistics." (I did exactly that and it worked out well for me, so I may be biased.)

Incidentally, this earlier answer of mine may be helpful.

@divield: And what about Finite group theory --> cryptography --> a lot of applications ?

A pseudo-answer: It is my impression that academic "applied" mathematicians who style themselves "applied", and the topics they pursue, are not at all reliable perceived as knowing or doing anything relevant to actual industrial, tech, business pursuits. This is explained by inertia, by the cachet (such as it may be) of hijacking "applied" as a modified for one's enterprise, etc.
Then there's the issue of passion... Indeed, it's hard to excel at something one doesn't really care about, and if that thing is not what one thinks it is anyway, it is doubly a waste of one's life.
I've had about 2/3 of my PhD students decide to go outside academia for various reasons. Usually insurance, phone companies, banking. Yes, necessarily, mostly this was 10-20 years ago, so things may be tighter now. But all the reports back were that having a PhD in math (of any serious kind) from a good university is at worst a certification of one's brains, perseverance, and analytical talents.
The traditional notions of "applied-or-not" are largely ignored by anyone outside academe... in case there were any doubt. If anything, perhaps having "applications" pretense without genuine knowledge of current practice is more discrediting than a more honest "here's what I have done and know about".
(After all, it still seems to be essentially that PDE and/or numerical solution schemes for PDE have claimed exclusive rights to "applied math". That is, "applied math" doesn't mean (in many peoples' minds) math that's applied... Crypto still doesn't count, nor error-correcting codes? Ignorance, yes, but inertia and pop-culture trump facts always.)

You are not going to use very much of your specific pure math PhD thesis knowledge anywhere in industry (or even applied math for that matter).  Most employers will not care about your specific thesis topic.  You will use your soft skills more than any (pure math) domain-specific knowledge, and you will be better off getting into industry as soon as possible.  There is no substitute for learning on the job, and PhDs tend to be rather good at learning.  Trying to go into a new field (that you guess is more relevant) without knowing exactly what it is you want to do is not worth the lost couple of years of industry experience.  The opportunity cost of losing real world industry experience in order to hopefully make yourself more marketable does not pan out.
Switching fields or focus requires you to rely on your soft skills more than your intimate knowledge of how to run an R simulation of some uber-specific blah blah monte-carlo sampling nonsense.  Here are some of the soft skills that you will use, regardless of your specific thesis work:

You will know how to chip away at a big problems and make incremental progress.
You will most likely be pretty self-directed, and so do not need much supervision.  You will be able to make estimates, organize your own schedule, and set deadlines on the month/year/multi-year time scale (compared to the day/week timescale).
You will most likely be rather tenacious.  Getting a PhD is hard work that is often extremely unrewarding.  People with the perseverance to push through and get to the finish line are sought in all industries, especially tech.
Most importantly, you will know how to think: Logical thinking, "big picture" thinking, and identifying implicit assumptions are skills that people value.

Of course, you will need to cut the mustard with your "hard" skills as well, but for an industry job those hard skills will almost certainly be much more generic than your thesis research (those pesky google-style algorithms-and-data-structures type questions come to mind).
If you are sure that academia is not for you, I would certainly recommend you take or sit in on some programming/stats/"applied" courses while you are still enrolled as a full time student (or whatever courses you see fit).  Take advantage of the opportunities you have as a student.  Good luck!

You're in a great position to try the side path, because you have a pretty solid contingency plan (go back to the original area and topic).
But, um, if you like coding, it sounds like applied math could be a fun direction for you to go in.  And it would give you an easier transition to industry, I would think.

I don't see how this answers the question, "Is it worth anything to get a PhD in a pure field if you know 100% you're going into industry?"

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


text:
PhD funding agency, and conflict of research and development
I am doing PhD which is funded by Science and technology department. Those coming to check progress (first time) are mainly software engineers, while in PhD the work is research based. So far I have published some papers in initial years including a review, early experiments. Another Journal paper is ready for submission and one paper submitted which I co-authored. BUT these things are something only a PhD understands and they are coming mainly to check the software (still under development). What I expect from them is that they will definitely say that it should have been developed by now without realizing the research progress.
How should I justify the research part and the development part both so they get satisfied with the work? Because my advisor also told me that they don't know anything about research and they are mainly interested in the software.

Just try to explain that you cannot spend all your time on software development. Consider having your advisor present during the meeting to support this.
Show them the software, and ask them what they think about it, how they would hypothetically further develop it, what tips they can give you. Try to change the discussion to a constructive conversation where they help you and you can exploit their expertise. People generally appreciate when you value their knowledge, and are often happy to help.


text:
How to politely and logically explain that I don't want to receive notification at my private social media account?
My department is becoming more and more annoying by posting everything in Facebook group, from exam results, seminar schedule, to private information about students ( telephone numbers, addresses, emails, etc.)
I don't know how to explain them  that I care about safety of personal information and that privacy of my personal information are important to me, but please be aware that I don't want to sound pretentious. Is there any way to address this issue correctly?

The country you're in will make a difference. In the US, for example, the university could be violating privacy laws by doing this.

It's not pretentious. You have a right to privacy. Facebook is not a designated secure distribution pathway for data, certainly not for sensitive data such as exam results and private information; it is unprofessional to use it for this purpose. Are they at least tie them to limited viewing rights? At the very least (if they are not going to change the distribution channel) you could insist that this be set to maximum opaqueness.

@Kathy: FWIW, the OP lists his location as Macau.

The title and the body ask different questions. Do you not want certain information posted to facebook (body), or you do not want notifications on your private account (title)? Please clarify. As for the second interpretation, I recommend a separate 'school' account to give them which you can then ignore.

@JonCuster I dont want both, I dont want any distribution of faculty data at FACEBOOK,

@Kathy I am not sure if this country has a privacy law, I should check it, thank you, is there anyway to alert facebook of this?

@CaptainEmacs maybe they dont know that, how to prove them that facebook is not secure distribution pathway?

Fine - I might suggest the title be something like 'How can I get my college to stop posting personal info on Facebook' - that would resolve the discrepancy.

I have noticed this trend and it is worth discussing and your question is timely. There are developments in Academia that may not have reached all parts, but it is something that students and academics may need to be thinking about. What follows are my own opinions, but they may illuminate the issue.
A Personal Analysis of Social Media in Academia
There are branches of Academia that study student engagement, student retention, student attitudes and so on. Some for pedagogic reasons, to enhance student learning and to improve life long learning. There is also a trend to do it for fiscal purposes on the basis that the longer the students pay fees the more viable the institution; or sometimes the greater the performance related reward of the leadership.
A common mechanism to gather data on these issues is often in the form of an online students survey. Many institutions request that students complete a survey at the end of every course to gather quantitative and qualitative feedback. For academic management and some teachers an improvement in the nature of the feedback results is regarded as evidence of improvement of teaching and learning.
As announced by the recent Queen's Speech the financial reward to UK universities will be linked to perceived evidence of improvement of teaching and learning.
Those looking at engagement of students have observed that both course materials and communications from the teachers and the institution do not have the primary attention of the students. The thought is that the students are primarily involved in social media, even during taught classes and whilst performing assignments. The belief is that if the course communications came through that social media the attention and engagement of the student would be realised.
The desire to encompass social media  in the teaching activity has resulted in the majority of courseware and Virtual Learning Environments including that within their mechanisms. To not embrace social media would reduce the courseware vendors market share. Once it is within the courseware it can become part of the institutional pressure to use it, on the basis of "no innovation" as an analogue of "old fashioned" which is correlated to "poor teaching and learning". There is now a conflict of interest between the use of social media and finance.
Students from school have not built a mature separation between a professional life and a personal life. This maturity comes later; in school socialisation, friendship, learning and assessment go together. It is only natural that when electronic media enters the mix the blurring of the lines remains. Elements of society are becoming aware of the difficulties and risks created by this technology in a school context (sexting, grooming et al) but conversely others are embracing this new vehicle for communication and have replaced books (and sometimes teachers) by e-devices and courseware.
Universities are faced with Freshers that have not yet separated the social aspect of their development from the academic one. It has always been thus; consider the importance of the organisation of Fresher's week events for many learning programmes. We just have the complexity of the blurred lines of social media to add to the mix.
The fast development of the technologies involved has meant that we regularly experience new waves of communication trends whose popularity waxes and wanes. It often moves so rapidly that a medium is defunct before any study of its usage is ever made. I've been using waves of leading edge communication technologies from the mid 1970's. For me there is much deja-vu; I am reminded of Thomas Edison's fascination with the latest media of the day in education. He too though that the embracing of the latest technology would be the solution. I am also reminded of fashionable predictions of how 21st century eduction would be performed using modern media. Each time a new technology becomes fashionable, be it computers, email, web pages, cellular telephony, smartphones, wearable computers or social media they are projected as the ultimate solution to any perceived  ills of the education system at any particular time period.
If we combine fashionable technology with immature usage with the belief that "Vox populi, vox Dei" you can end up with a system built on very shallow foundations. One could suggest that the students, as consumers, use it out of inexperience and immaturity and the academics use it for short term gains of engagement or institutional reward.
What can be done?
Those who have evolved to separate aspects of their social and professional life also find that the trend is working against them. The social media providers are moving towards single identities. The trend is to require a single individual to have a single account, in their true name, for example. The trend is for governments to consider regulation in this area to inhibit multiple identities as part of a security agenda. Although some attention is paid to aspects of personal privacy in different legislative domains, there are many trends moving in different directions. Few students and academics have the technical knowledge to use the media in a manner that easily permits the distancing of personal and professional identities.
One needs to develop this technical awareness, because at the moment the tools are working against the separation. One solution is to abstain from social media. If one does not have an account, or social media identity, then you cannot use it inappropriately! The answer to the question "what is your ... ID" the answer always will be "I do not have one". For some the technology is so invasive that they do not even have telephone number. For the majority this would make academic study or teaching an impossibility and a more informed solution would be needed.
Separate domains of operation is a possible method. Consider someone with two locations of operation; lets call them the home and the office. Each one can be equipped with its own devices and its own accounts. One just uses the office computer/phone/device with a work identity at the workplace and the home computer/phone/device with a personal identity at home. If only life were that simple! However, we can use it as a model, even when the lines of work place and time and home place and time might become blurred.
The use of separate devices for separate identities is well known, and from that comes the name burner phone, and even burner app. This can also be done with the internet, by using distinct devices for each identity, or having software divisions between those identities. A software division can be achieved by using separate browsers for each identity (i.e. Chrome for one ID, Firefox for another and so on) or using the incognito (or InPrivate) browsing mode of your browser. You have to be careful though, and know how they work. There is information leakage between different incognito windows!
Summary
You may be required use social media in an educational context, even though it may not be your desire to do so and may not always make sense in every situation. One can separate personal and professional identities to protect ones privacy, but an informed knowledge of the internal workings of the technology is often needed to do this satisfactorily.
The suppliers of the media and politically derived regulation are attempting to inhibit the separation as multiple identities are associated with criminal and national security concerns.
You can do it, or not. You are damned if you do and damned if you don't; but at least one should make an informed decision.

I seem to have started on a topic for an academic paper. Damn.

not paper, this is nice preface for book

I agree with Captain Emacs that you have a right to privacy. Private information(exam scores, contact information) should not be posted on Facebook but general seminar schedules can be.
I think the best course of action is to discuss this with the head of the department, and request in writing, that your information not be posted there. If that doesn't work then you will have to speak to someone above the him/her. If this is not an option see if there is someone you trust that you can ask for their help or advice to bring this issue to the right person's attention.


text:
What is research misconduct of Xuetao Cao about?
Recently on social media, news broke that Xuetao Cao duplicated or manipulated images in more than 50 papers of his. These accusations were brought to the public by Elisabeth Bik and explained in great details in following article
using social media and pubpeer website they notice duplication in images.

as someone who finished MSc in Immunology I can't understand what is wrong with images, they look credible to me, although there might be some software that can tell difference. How is possible that so many figures got duplicated and no-one from peer reviewers noticed? What is this scientific misconduct about? If it is really one after all.

The article you link to states plainly: Cao’s research works contain elaborately falsified research data.   It does not go into details, but some details are here: https://twitter.com/MicrobiomDigest/status/1194668436736995328/photo/1

The claim here is that the Figure 2 and Figure 6A look like they separate blot, but if you look at the pixel level shape of the dark blue highlighted bands, you'll see they are the same band. I.e. the bands being used to say that the mock in Figure 2 had no effect on p-IkBa are the same bands that are used to claim that the mock in what is presented as an entirely different experiment had no effect.
You might argue that they have demonstrated that mock treatment has no effect once, isn't that good enough - but in that case, why present it as though t were a different experiment? Its not just that they are presented as though they are on the same membrane, but also look at the columns -
Bands in the same column are supposed to have come from the same physical sample - the same membrane probed with a different antibody. Both Figure2 and Figure6A have been probed for both p-IkBa and p-JNK, but where as the bands for p-IkBa are the same across blots, the bands for p-JNK are different. That suggests that in at least one of the figures, the bands for p-JNK did not come from the same samples as the bands for p-IkBa.
As for why this wasn't spotted- this stuff is pretty hard to see unless you look really carefully for it - examine the deformities in each band, where are the dust grains (e.g. in the fourth IkBa band there is a black bulge on the top of the band about 3/4 of the way along). I wouldn't have seen this unless someone had told me it was there.

Interesting. Imagine how many others tried harder to falsify data. Here is than lazy or sloppy try. Is this reason of reproducibility crisis

“Is this reason of reproducibility crisis” Not really, no. It’s generally caused by a bias for publishing “interesting” results rather than “I tried a thing, and nothing happened” results.

Without considering the actual case. A referee is not an investigator/detective.  This is why figures/tables/photographs might be composed or manipulated without being noticed at first.
It is right what you say: they look credible and likely make sense in the context of the work. Though, some entries look copied and pasted. This is a recurrent case. Sometimes the authors take a pace in which even ex-novo fabrication of data is time and energy consuming.
An example of how things can go is this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schön_scandal

He has H index 36. How is that possible. Schön.

@SSimon likely the count considers the retracted papers.

But they still cite him. Amaizing. In his case fraudulent behavior was apparent. He didn't hide it well.

@SSimon no. The papers were highly cited.

No. They are still in 2019 cited. Which is strange


text:
Is it appropriate to make 1 or 2 statements without providing data in the abstract and summary
In the paper that I am writing, I am only showing some results from a more rigorous/full-scale study. So as to highlight the importance of the results in the new paper, I am thinking of including one or two statements which state the full results that we have obtained (not published).
However, I can't include all the results from the full-scale study in this paper, because of size limitations. So is it appropriate to include these one or two sentences which demonstrate the results of the full scale study, but not include any data supporting these sentences in the abstract and summary?

@nate, and Patricia, I meant 1 or 2 sentences in the abstract and summary :)

I don't think so. Unless you have another published paper that you can refer to, I wouldn't put anything about the full result in this paper nor its abstract. Since you don't have that paper (yet?), there's no good way to refer to such a result without a way to back it up.

The purpose of the abstract, from the point of view of the audience, is to help people decide whether they want to read the paper or not.
If the extra sentences do not create interest, you have merely wasted space in the abstract.
If the extra sentences do influence someone to read the paper, the situation is much worse. They will be looking for more information. They will expect to find either direct support for the statements, or a reference to another paper discussing them. You will have wasted the time they spend looking for those things, and it often takes longer to be sure that something is missing than to find it if it is there.
If readers learn that your abstracts do not accurately reflect the paper contents, they may be less likely to choose your papers to read.


text:
To what depth can a new algorithm be presented while applying for PhD?
I am applying for PhD to German and Finnish universities.
I do not have any publication  date. Hence there is no direct proof that I can do the research.
However I am working on an algorithm. The work is more than 60% complete. I have a confidence that method will be accepted for publication as it is in a lower quality journal, but there exists a belief that if I push a little harder, it will be a material for a very good publication, signifying original work.
Hence, I am thinking of sending the work done up till now with the application, but I have the following  concerns.

What if people there take my work, modify it, and publish it? I have a feeling that I will be helpless even if someone publishes it as it is.
I am working alone on this project. Will my work have any importance? Because around 98% of the papers I have read were from multiple authors, belonging to some academic entity.
Is there any alternative in making person next to me believe that I can do the research, other than publication? Even though our (professor's and mine) area of interest is the same, we are targeting the problem from two different ends, and I obviously do not have time to study his entire work.

Your answer is going to be a key factor in my deciding my approach.

method will be accepted as publication as it is in less quality journal I do not understand what you mean here. Are there peer-reviewed journals which will accept  algorithm only publication?

First of all, you are talking about publishing an algorithm and in CS experimental algorithms  are usually published in conferences and not journals. Also, a publication in a mediocre-to-bad journal will not benefit you. Third, submitting something that is 60% ready will probably lead to rejection. Why can't you complete the work before submitting?

@scaaahu I meant to say that, the work done till now, can be published today, as it is, without any further additions. But that will not be IEEE Transaction paper kind of thing..

@Alexandros, thank you. I agree with quality of a publication. Work is 60% ready, because there are few blockages, I need a guidance to complete it, which is not available in my proximity. This is one of the reasons of doing the PhD.

Do you have a Master's degree? Did that not require some research?


text:
My work was published before me. What should I do?
Some time ago I switched departments within the same institution. Before leaving I had an idea of a paper and started to work on it. I shared my thoughts on it with my then-coworkers and they praised it. So now, after I settled things in a new department, I continued to work on that paper and completed it. Before submitting anywhere, I decided to look for a new papers relevant to my work.
To my surprise, I have found a paper with my idea (implemented in a somewhat narrower sense) by several of my previous coworkers, with whom I have discussed it. Without my name on the paper of course. The paper was published a few month after I left, so they probably started to work on it immediately after I left.
Most (if not all) conversations were done verbally, so I don't have any proof that I am the original author, and I also don't know any authority that I can go to and explain the issue.
What bothers me is if I publish the paper now (even in a broadened version of it) it would look suspicious to an external observer, as if we (together with ex-coworkers) are trying to overuse and multiply a single result or even worse that I'm plagiarizing over their work. As we are in the same institution and had previously coauthored some works, nobody will believe similar papers are a coincidence or a an independent inventions. (And they would be right. It's not.) I think that in the worst case it can destroy my reputation and career, or maybe it's a non-issue and I'm worrying too much.
I can see several possible extensions and further research paths to the paper. But if I'll try to develop these ideas and publish an advanced version of the paper, there is no guarantee that they aren't doing the same. They could even had already submitted them somewhere. And if I submit my version, the reviewers may reject it because of its similarity to theirs. This again can be devastating to me.
What options I have, as I see it:

Pretend I don't know about their work, and publish mine as fully original, without citing them. Even if it's still a more general view on the subject and I know I'm the original author, it doesn't seem ethical to me. And we're still in the same institution, what make things worse.
Do more research, make more advanced paper and cite them accordingly. But they may even have submitted an advanced version somewhere. I can't be sure if I'm overlapping with them or not.
Change the field of study completely to not overlap with them in the future. Seems to be an overreaction.
Change the institution and then publish. Will it help? I'd still be their co-author-in-the-past. Seems not to be a solution at all.
Mention them in the acknowledgements. Thank them for praising my work, and cite them through a footnote. After all, what acknowledgements are for if not to thank your colleagues? But I doubt any editor will let it pass.

TL;DR Several of my ex-coworkers rushed to publish my ideas as their own while I was working on these ideas. I worry that my future publications on the theme would overlap with theirs and be considered a plagiarism.
So what should I do? Am I right that my wrong actions could possibly damage my reputation and career?
UPD. Thank you for your answers, I see that I have to cite the paper by the old department researchers (still not sure how: through a regular citation or a footnote in the acknowledgements), but I'm not really convinced and just want to be sure that I would not get into any (more) trouble if I'll continue to do research on the topic (especially in the case when editor/reviewers will get similar papers from different people with the same affiliation). Maybe someone has had such an experience as a reviewer?

What about  a variation of 1 and 5? Publish your work as independently carried and mention the competition in passing? If you have done a somewhat better job out of it, it is probably worth publishing anyway,  and if it was your original idea  you are likely to have other ideas in the future, so do not agonize over this.

Option 2 is the correct one. if you know of previously published work, hiding it from your readers is unethical and annoying.

Option 2. Do the work quickly and post a preprint as soon as you have it if your field uses anything remotely similar to the arXiv. That way, even if they have already submitted a bigger paper to a journal, you get priority for the expanded research, and they must cite you or pull their expanded paper depending on how different it is. Openness is the friend of priority!

Option –1. Continue working with your coworkers in your old department even after you started working in the new department.  The fact that they continued working without you is arguably no less problematic than the fact that you continued working without them.

I would advise caution, when saying "XYZ published my ideas as their own", esp. if they were working on related problems before. Even assuming you raised the subject first and that X was praising you, Y and Z could have quietly the same ideas too. Perhaps you are right, but the situations when you can be 100% sure are rare. Nevertheless, it's certainly strange that they didn't invite you to collaborate.

This is not an uncommon situation. The famous paper that got Watson and Crick their Nobel prize, where they propose the helical structure of DNA, was very much inspired by an unpublished experimental result by Rosalind Franklin who was working in a different group. One of Franklin's coworkers (who believed the advancement of science to be more important than individual credit, and the Brits wanted to beat the Yanks) showed Franklin's result to Watson and Crick, who immediately realized DNA had to be a helix, and published it.

(I left out an important part of the story: Franklin died before the Nobel prize was awarded, and even though Watson and Crick insisted she also got to share it, the prize rules say it cannot be posthumous.)

In response to your update, my answer doesn't change. A regular citation is appropriate for that and any other work you're building on.

Option 2 is the right one.  Do more research that builds on the ideas, advance the field more, and publish that, citing the first paper appropriately.  Maybe they're also doing further work and advancing the field and will publish that too.  If so, great!  That's how science works.  People publish papers and then they and/or others continue building on it.
While the authors of the first paper could have included you in the acknowledgements, the fact that you had talked about ideas with them isn't necessarily enough to warrant authorship and you certainly can't make the statement that "I am the original author." Unless you're accusing them of plagarism, one of the main points of free exchange of ideas within academia is so that somebody can build on those ideas and develop them out into a publication.
Imagine going to a conference and discussing ideas with people (incl. those from other institutions) and then somebody takes one of those ideas back and does all the work that's needed to develop it into a formal research contribution.  They publish it, great.  Then you read the paper in a venue for your field and build on the work, citing it and extending it further.  That's basically how it's supposed to work.

nobody will believe similar papers are a coincidence or a an independent inventions. (And they would be right. It's not.) I think that in the worst case it can destroy my reputation and career. Or maybe it's a non-issue and I'm worrying too much.

Yes, I think you're worrying too much.  It's fine that you had some conversations with colleagues exchanging ideas, and then cited a paper they published, in your own new extensions of the work.  It is even possible for you to have extensions that are similar to extensions they may be now independently developing.  If your colleagues did a good job of making the path forward from the last paper clear (to an expert in your field), it wouldn't even be that surprising if one or more others were doing a similar extension elsewhere.  Credit your colleagues' publication and move the work on.
If you're concerned about duplicating efforts in expanding the work, you could consider whether or not you want to formally collaborate with your former colleagues on doing that expansion.  Maybe they just figured you weren't interested or didn't have time when you left, but would appreciate having you on the team for further work (if they're still working on it); it seems they like the ideas you have to offer.
It's also possible they don't even know that you feel offended, especially if they're under the impression that these ideas were generally percolating in the department for a while before they actually did the work for that paper.  They may have discussed the ideas with other people in advance, who are in a similar position to yours, some of whom may still be in the department, and some of whom may just feel happy that somebody actually did that work.  It'll be your decision about whether you perceive enough of a breach of trust to prevent future collaboration or not.

Collaboration should not be a option, in this case. If the other people wanted any form of collaboration, they would have reached the OP when preparing the first manuscript and tried to include him in it.

It may be that OP had already signaled a "no" or "I'm too busy" answer to such a request in the course of OP's move. We don't know all the facts here.

Collaboration should not be a option, in this case. — I strongly disagree.  Collaboration is always an option.  The former coworkers might have concluded in good faith that OP wasn't interested in the topic any more after leaving their department and not talking to them any more.

@JeffE They knew for sure I'll continue to work on the paper (I was quite explicit on that). Also they never expressed any desire to coauthor it even when I was working in the old department. I did all the needed thoughtwork to develop the ideas into solution, which I shared. I contacted them on different occasions after leaving, and they could offer a collaboration if they wanted. But they just bruteforced the text and the first data for paper to publish before me. I can't see how I could collaborate with them after all this.

In that case, I think you need to have a candid private discussion with your former department head that includes the phrase "legal representation".

@JeffE What if any law do you think was broken?  If OP's contributions strongly warrant it, it seems the primary remedy here (other than OP just publishing more advanced work, citing & based in part on what his colleagues did and published) would be to add OP as an author to the first paper, which is difficult but easier to coordinate with the publisher if the currently-listed authors are on board with the change.  Advancing the work might just be an easier solution, esp. as OP has already done the thoughtwork to be familiar with the problem and solution strategy.

Option 2 is what Darwin did.  Things turned out OK for him.

I agree with this, I think you should also communicate more with your former peers, and discuss the issue.

I have experienced a similar situation, however with the important difference, that I could proove others plagiarizing me by various written drafts that dated back to before others came out with the idea.
Nevertheless I could proove the idea to be mine, it was not the same as if there were no other publications on this subject.
But maybe you could do the following:
Neither pretend to not know of their work nor mention them in the aknowledgements but continue self-confident and try to find some nuances where you can broaden it without doing a lot more research.
This would raise your work above the work of the others and gives the clear impression that you do know more on that subject.

To be clear, are you suggesting that LostInThought should publish an expanded paper without citing his/her former coworkers' now-public work? That would definitely be unethical.


text:
Is this a legitimate excuse for missing an exam?
The class I am teaching had a quiz yesterday. A student wrote to me 2 hours after  that he missed the quiz because he suspected he had a strep throat. He would see doctor and provide me a doctor's note.  Personally I feel this particular reason is a little lame. If he decided to skip the exam because he suspected he was really sick, he would have wrote to me earlier. My question is, if in the end the doctor says he did not have strep throat, should I still give the student a chance to make up the quiz (just because he suspected it)?

Actually: if you are the TA, ask the instructor. If you are the instructor, ask (a) the department administration or (b) the university ombudsmen's office/registrar's office/office of the dean. Some places have specific procedures concerning what counts as valid medical excuses for missing class/exams. Either familiarize yourself with them and decide yourself, or punt to someone who is familiar with the rules. Don't ever make administrative decisions when ignorant of the school rules!

^ Just want to point out that most universities I know require advance notice of such appointments in all but the most extreme cases (e.g., sudden death in the family, sudden illness that requires hospitalization, etc.). Doesn't mean that you shouldn't consult with the proper authorities, but this scenario definitely does not qualify as an "extreme case".

Basically, you need to decide if you are there to support the students to grow and learn, or are you there to police them.

In this case, I would allow the make-up, but have a conversation with the student, explaining that whenever possible, it is best to notify the instructor what's going on as early in the process as possible.

For arguments sake, assume that the student is telling the truth, took an over-the-counter antitussive that made them drowsy and they overslept the exam. That may explain the lateness of the email. Also, even if the student does not have strep, but some other form of communicable upper respiratory infection, then they put others at risk for contracting it, and if they did show up and are hacking away, how fair would that have been to the other students in your class that would have been distracted by the student's constant coughing?

Rather than having to think about what is a legitimate excuse or not, I routinely give make-ups to anyone who misses a quiz or exam. Yes, it is explicitly assumed that they are operating with knowledge of what was on the quiz or exam that was given, so the situation is somewhat different, and the nature of the make-up is consequently somewhat different. I explain this at the beginning of the course. One might worry that there'd be too many people trying to game the system, but it seemed not so.
(I think it is not reasonable to demand that people who are sick get a note from their doctor... if it's something like a severe cold, say, because the wisest and most socially reasonable thing to do is stay home in bed, not travel to a clinic... Also, I do like to cultivate the atmosphere that I am willing to believe students' excuses, rather than have the default be skepticism about their honesty.)

I think this is the best option. It covers the case where the student honestly thinks he is too sick for the exam, but the doctor disagrees. And if someone is trying to game the system by abuse, then it is time to have a talk with them.

I think that most public health administrators would agree with your policy.

To skirt this kind of issues, I tell everybody at the beginning of the term that they can skip an exam, no questions asked. It doesn't matter if they just overslept, were scared to fail, or were undergoing surgery. At the end of the term, all those (and only those) who didn't show up give a make-up exam. I just ask them to tell me as soon as possible, and remind me they are due for the make up exam (to coordinate a schedule, mostly) at term's end.
[Yes, if they have a weighty reason for not showing up, I'd cut them some leeway. But don't tell that to my students ;-]

A doctors note will never confirm nor deny if a person is truly ill, Just merely that they were seen by said doctor at X Date and Time. If your syllabus states that you allow make up exams with doctors excuse then your hand is forced.
In my experience most profs had a zero tolerance policy on missed quizzes and exams. Some would allow for a much harder quiz or test to be taken towards the end of the semester to replace the missed grade.

"A doctors note will never confirm nor deny if a person is truly ill, Just merely that they were seen by said doctor at X Date and Time." - that probably depends on the legislation. In some countries, the idea is indeed that a doctor's note is the formal way for a doctor to confirm the patient is not fit for work for x days. (Whether that is always true is a different question, but at least in some legislations, it is certainly not a mere confirmation of a doctor's appointment.)

This a slippery slope. Personally, if the guy has a doctors note, I'd just let him take another test. IMHO, it is better to let some lazy student get a pass than to deny that right to a really sick student.
Some decades ago, I was that sick student...
And I really like vonbrand's idea. I'll try to remember and put it in practice on my next courses....

The rule at my institution is simple: Either you get graded for the performance you showed in the exam or you get graded a 1 (worst grade). If you are seriously sick, you get a doctor's confirmation of said sickness. Doctors here (Switzerland) will write down what sickness you had.

Just to add to the other answers. You must be careful not to get a reputation as being gullible. This may cause this type of thing to become habitual from this pupil and may even rub of on some of your previously good pupils.
The proverbial giver a person an inch and he will take a mile can very easily be true here.

I don't know if this is better as a comment.