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Can a PhD thesis use only data that other people collected?
If another PhD student created a dataset, can I use it for my own PhD thesis, with permission and attribution, and not collect any data myself? Or it is usually expected that a PhD student should collect at least some data?

Ask your advisor.  He/she will know the answer in your specific case much better than anyone here.

I'm sure this is field-specific: neither myself, nor any of my fellow statistics PhD students came anywhere close to collecting our own data :)

You should be fine not collecting the data and instead use widely used data if there is no regulation against it (which generally does not). Moreover, using others' data has a good side that might increase the impact of your work.
First, people in the field will know right away what to expect. For example, in the digit recognition work, using MNIST data would be the no-brainer choice for this task as people in the CS would have known it by heart. Or if it is an RNA sequence, you might not need to do sequencing again if it is on NCBI.
Second, using the already existing data would benefit you in benchmarking your method. This includes the performance of your method and the correctness of your work. Now, given that you are using another Ph.D. data and assume that it is not yet published or it is not a well-known dataset. If your results are in the same direction, that will tremendously increase your work and another Ph.D.'s work impact.
That said, you might need to look into the purpose of the data you are using and whether it will take the crucial part of your work. Nevertheless, please review with your advisor and university to get a more decisive answer on whether the data inclusion is ok.

Indeed, using public data is convenient for comparing your result with others'. DNN papers seem to be fond of public data.

Good answer, though your MNIST digit example is a bit out of date, that challenge problem is pretty much solved.

@cag51 Look at it another way - it is a timeless classic now :)

Yes, in principle there is no issue with not generating your own data. The general requirement is that a PhD provides an advancement of knowledge in a particular field, not necessarily generate novel data.
However this is likely to be subject-dependent. My PhD was based on developing a new statistical method to analyse data, and for that I applied to data other people had collected, not data I had generated. However, if your field was experimental plant sciences, I imagine there may be an expectation (but not necessarily requirement) to collect your own data.

Yes, my field is Stats&ML, and I tend to use readily available datasets as well (other than artificial data)

There is no ethical problem with using data from others with permission and attribution. However, what is acceptable in a dissertation is up to your advisor and your institution.
Since one major purpose of a PhD is to give you training and experience in research, some will expect that collecting the data yourself might be required. There are problems that can arise in collection that you avoid by using the data of others in some cases.
Work this out with your advisor if the question isn't purely theoretical. The research question itself might be important enough that the source of the data is less of an issue. There are lots of possibilities.

Ph.D. theses, like other publications, can use data other people collected. A meta-analysis or meta-study is a statistical analysis combining the results of pre-existing published scientific studies.

While this is true, a meta-analysis is not usually an acceptable PhD thesis, at least in fields I'm familiar with

Yes. Also: depends on your PhD.
Whole areas of physics rely on data retrieved by someone else (or layers of "someone elses"). Particle physics is one of them.
I used the experimental data of other people because I am not interested in the experimental part and they were interested in the theoretical / analysis one. We made a few papers together.
I wrote a paper after asking someone else for their data (they published an article based on them) because I wanted to analyze them differently. That person did not want to be a co-author but was happy to share their data (and more).
I gave the data I received to another PhD student so that she does not lose time gathering more.
All of this, of course, assumes that the exchanges and relationships are clearly acknowledged (or co-authored).
And then comes the second sentence of my answer: your PhD may require you to actually retrieve your data. I do not think that this is a hard rule but the spectrum of research is so wide that everything is possible.


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What should I do if I don't understand the problem my PhD project is meant to solve?
I have been struggling to understand what problem my PhD project is trying to solve. The project did not start with a problem. Instead, the project started with tasks assigned to me by the PI. But the tasks are not in logical order. The project is mostly the PI's ideas. I don't have a say. Please, what should I do in this situation?

Your question never spells out how the problem was actually defined. Did your PI assign it to you explicitly? Did you infer it from the tasks? Are you sure there actually is already a specific problem? Many PhDs are months of "standard" tasks meant to give you an understanding of the field and along the way find a problem to focus on.

The problem was never defined to me. The tasks are not meant to find a problem.

Go to your PI immediately and discuss with them until you are sufficiently happy. That certainly does not mean you need to need to understand everything 100%, but you should at least be satisfied that you understand the context well enough. If there was a project proposal involved at some point to get grant money for the project, ask for that - that typically has all the information, and while it was already written with a subject matter expert audience in mind, it would still be invaluable to you.
In a Ph.D. project, you are not a technician or factory worker who does their assigned task with little visibility to the greater whole. You are training to be an academic. This is your apprenticeship to be qualified to lead similar projects yourself in the future, whether in academia or outside. This period is absolutely the point where you need to look beyond the technical tasks of the moment.

A worker is exactly how I feel, not a student. But discussing this with the PI previously has not led to me becoming sufficiently happy. The PI doesn't see the importance of explaining.

Then your problem is with your supervisor. I would recommend you take a look at our questions in the [tag:supervision] tag, potentially edit your question to include information about your interaction so far to the supervisor, and more information about your situation.

This is true, but different countries can have different perspectives: in some places PhD students are hired directly by the PI with their own funds and for a specific task, so it's understandable it would end up feeling like that in some cases. Nonetheless, do follow Stephan's advice because a PhD definitely needs structure and focus

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How to deal with incompetent teaching?
I am doing a Master's programme that is a sort of mixture of linguistics and literature. The university is in Europe and is in the world's TOP 200 according to QS rankings.
I feel that most of the academic staff in the department is incompetent. They:

make lots of factual errors in lectures and when grading tests;
don't seem to understand the material they're presenting - the discussion in the seminars is superficial;
give feedback and advice that is unhelpful and unsound;
shut down my ideas in ways that makes me angry.

To make matters worse, it seems to me that none of my co-students is interested in academic work (at least in the topics we're covering). They hardly ever offer interesting input in seminars.
What should I do? I feel like I can't protest and criticise too loudly, because I am interested in pursuing academic career in that same university and don't want to hurt my reputation and relations.

You think most of the people there are incompetent and yet want to pursue your career in that place? I don’t feel you would be happy even if you manage to do so…

@Benjamin_Gal there is always the possibility of trying to bring about change for the better.

@Sursula How would the be possible if they don't want to report the problems for fear of it hurting them at the institution?

Criticize what? That no one is competent as you think? I can hardly imagine that this is the case in Europe but if you believe so, there is nothing to criticize, just run away!

@JoeW I guess once you are employed by the university as a lecturer/professor, you will be able to tackle problems without having to fear for your career as much. If you are already percieved as a troublemaker as a student, chances are you will not get hired in the first place.

@Sursula If addressing problems like that is considered being a trouble maker would they really bother fixing them just because a new professor says something?

Your question asks "how to deal with ..."? As with so many similar questions, there really seem to be two parts that are easily conflated, as indeed is suggested by your own dot points.
One issue, which you list as the last (fourth) dot point, concerns matters internal to you; specifically, your own internal emotive response. The other issue, covered in the first two dot points, concerns things external to you: the "objective" (I use the term with some hesitancy) state or quality of the teaching. The third dot point is concerned with both internal and external issues.
With regard to the first issue, illustrated with "... in ways that make me angry", I suggest that crucial thing is to take responsibility for your own emotions and to recognize that while you might get yourself angry about things that you consider to be wrong, improper, unjust, incompetent etc. the causative agent in your anger is you and your own thoughts. If you doubt this, consider the possibility that you had never been to the university where you now are. Whatever teaching is currently takes place in your presence, would just as likely take place without you. And yet, if you were not there, you would not be getting angry! The teaching events themselves therefore cannot be the direct cause of your emotion. So, learn to manage your own emotions, perhaps by examining your own thinking processes. The teaching might be incompetent, but your emotive response is your response ... and your responsibility.
The second issue is how to deal with the quality of the teaching itself.
You ask what you should do, as if there is a moral imperative to do something at this time and in this place. There isn't! If you think there is, I would suggest that it is because you still haven't managed the issue about your emotions. Once you have reduced the question to the more realistic problem of "what, if anything, could I do to improve the quality of teaching" you might more clearly see the truth of many of the comments that have already been made! You might, for example, decide that anything you do would be too costly, or too unlikely to succeed, for you to make any attempt to improve things at all. Alternatively, you might, as another commenter suggests, simply complete the course you are doing, hope you are employed at the institution, and work for change from the inside.

It sounds like you are in a difficult situation and feeling frustrated with the quality of the education you are receiving. Here are a few suggestions for how you might proceed:
Talk to your advisor or department head: They may not be aware of the issues you're experiencing and may be able to address them. You can express your concerns in a respectful and constructive manner, highlighting specific examples and suggesting potential solutions.
Seek out other resources: Look for other professors or academic staff members who may be able to provide additional support or guidance. You might also consider reaching out to alumni or other students who have completed the program to gain their perspective.
Take advantage of office hours: If you are struggling with the material, consider visiting your professors during their office hours to ask for additional help.
Seek out additional support: If you are struggling with the coursework, you might consider finding a tutor or study group to help you stay on track.
Consider your options: If the situation does not improve and you feel like your academic progress is being hindered, it might be worth considering transferring to another program or university.
It is important to remember that, as a student, you have the right to a quality education, and it's okay to speak up if you feel that your needs are not being met. However, it's also important to be respectful and tactful in your communication, and consider the potential consequences of your actions. It is always a good idea to think before you act and make sure you are in the right frame of mind.

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Changing from pure math phD to a computer science phD?
I am in my first year phD in pure math but I am getting bored, I think a phD in computer science would be a better fit. How should I go about in order to switch the program?
Is it possible to do both in the same time? There might be a bit of overlap between the two.
I hear that there is a lot of work in the computer science side (publications, conferences, building things,…) and I like to be productive and compete with others.

My first question is: why do you want a PhD at all?  Why not go work for a few years and figure out what you're interested in enough to do a PhD in?

I was bored at work, I figured they do more interesting things in academia, turns out it is the same kind of boring.

I will attempt to answer your question based on my experience; well, not really my own experience but something similar as you read on.
I am a PhD in Computer Science (specializing in ML), and my wife is a Mathematician with a PhD in Pure Mathematics (primarily, Number Theory, Representation Theory, and such). Trust me when I say things are not as easy in our respective fields as they may seem. I can undoubtedly say that Pure Mathematics is no fun. I have seen her frustration when she sits on a single theorem or idea for months, and nothing comes out of it sometimes. So I do understand what you mean when you say, "I am getting bored." However, she always tells me that that is what keeps her going and keeps her love for mathematics. She also tells me, and I too know that Pure Mathematics is often called the "Recreational Mathematics". It is what these mathematicians do for fun sometimes. They do have beautiful applications in real life; but that remains least of their concern. So, I think you should be proud that you are getting to do this. Maybe, to get your motivation back in your field, you could read or watch some documentaries on the great mathematicians: Ramanujan, Hardy, Godel, Fermat, etc. Their lifes were worth reading about.
On the other side, that is, Computer Science, probably the closest (not too much!) to Pure Mathematics that you could do, is Theoretical Computer Science, that involves a lot of exciting research on Prime numbers, automata theory and computation, logic, compilers, etc. If you are interested in probability and statistics, you could try your hands on the theoretical aspects of machine learning. However, from your questions, I guess that you may not have been trained in computer science. That could make your life a bit difficult if you switch entirely. As other answers suggest, it will depend a lot on administrative factors too if you plan to switch anyway.
That said, you could see if you could work on an area that uses ideas from pure mathematics to solve (open) computer science problems.
Last, remember, it is okay to feel like "I don't belong here". But that is okay, and just hang in there; just try to do something every single day.

I like your answer, thank you. It is the closest to my specific problem. I will tell you something, I only want to publish, apparently the publish or perish thing is the norm, my supervisor is always busy trying to get his name out there, he never shared anything about what he is working on, ...

... I am left with free time so I spend it solving (or trying) Putnam problems. From what I understand it is not only his case, actually he is one of the best profs out there, it is the environment which is like that, all the profs are doing the same with their students, if you are pragmatic, why would anyone help you publish something if he can publish it himself? It is like a race...

How to switch depends on where you are, but if it would be at a different institution, then it would probably entail going through the full application process again. Even at the same university, it is likely that CS is in a different department, but it is easy to ask them what you might do.
It is unlikely that you can (or should) try to do both at once. It will get much harder as you go on. In the US, you would need to pass two sets of qualifiers most likely.
Yes, there is a lot of work in any field. But it differs by field. In CS you probably want to attend as many conferences as you are able. Not so much in math.
There might be some overlap between fields, depending on your CS focus, but probably not a lot between pure math and CS. If you are bored, talk to a faculty member or two about how to get un-bored. There may be projects around that would interest you.

Contact suitable supervisors in the computer science field.
Talk to your existing supervisor - they would rather you move and eventually complete than fail or drop out.


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Copyright of a custom image of a well-known game character
This question is quite similar to another one I already found here.
I would like to use an image of a very well known plumber in my upcoming research paper. Of course, I do not own any rights to that character, nor the specific JPG above. However, I plan to use a freeware pixel-art software to re-create it on my own, using my own custom (though similar) colour palette. I will never refer to this character by his original name, of course.
Am I legally allowed to do this or can I expect problems?

Questions on legal issues should be asked on https://law.stackexchange.com/

This seems like a boat-programming question to me. Is there anything particular about the fact that you want to use the image in a research paper?

In case people don't know what "boat-programming" is: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/14470/what-is-the-boat-programming-meme-about

If the figure is copyrighted you need to ask the copyright owner for permission. You may be on the borderline of fair use in the US, but if the copyright owner objects you have to defend it (think expensive). But, they might agree to its use (the original, not a recreation) in such a case. And you would mark the use as "with permission".
Recreating a "similar" figure is no protection at all as the right to create "derived works" is one of the things protected by copyright in most jurisdictions.
A "twitchy" copyright owner might well object. Disney for example is very strict about what is allowed for their IP.
One thing that may be in your favor, though (related to fair use), is that you aren't creating a competing product and won't reduce the "value" of the image to Nintendo.

I do not know which of the two (Disney or Nintendo) is worse when it comes to copyright issues... Some people still went through with it, though (most papers in games-related RL prefer to deal with Atari 2600 games, but there are some SNES ones in the mix as well): https://pathak22.github.io/large-scale-curiosity/


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How do I interpret rubrics with general/vague language?
I'm an undergraduate student and I've found that for many assignments, rubrics are not very specific and describe adjacent grade bands with almost identical wording. For instance:

0-19%
20-29%
30-39%
40-49%
50-59%
60-69%
70-79%
80-89%
90+

The explanation of how the  business process works and its purpose within the organisation is missing from the report
The explanation of how the business process works and its purpose within the organisation is extremely weak.
The explanation of how the business process works and its purpose within the organisation is discussed in very limited terms.
The explanation of how the business process works and its purpose within the organisation is adequate.
The explanation of how the business process works and its purpose within the organisation is satisfactory.
The explanation of how the business process works and its purpose within the organisation is good.
The detailed explanation of how the business process works and its purpose within the organisation is very good.
Excellent explanation of how the business process works and its purpose within the organisation.
Exceptional explanation of how the business process works and its purpose within the organisation is exceptionally detailed.

The last few grade bands will usually always converge to the same sentence, with the adjective replaced (like in this case, detailed to excellent to exceptional).
What differentiates the last few bands? Could anyone explain how to interpret them and how can I make sure my work gets there?

I think if anyone that can explain this better, it should be the one who grades your assignment.

Since this gradation is chopping the possible marks into ten categories, it is not particularly surprising that the transition from one category to the next involves a fairly small change.  It is also not surprising that the language is qualitative in nature (and therefore somewhat vague) since it has to accommodate a wide range of work in a wide range of fields, with allowance for reasonable discretion by the academics marking that work.
You have correctly noted the differences in language for the last three bands (i.e., from detailed, to excellent, to exceptional).  These are words with a literal meaning that can be understood in general terms --- detailed means something like, having many details or facts; showing attention to specifics; excellent means something like excelling relative to expected quality; exceptional means something like of such high quality that it constitutes an exception to the general quality of work.  Since these are qualitative judgments there is some art in their interpretation and so you would need to seek the opinion of the grader if you want to know how they will apply this.  All that can really be said in general is that academics will use their experience in teaching and assessing student work to judge what constitutes "detailed" work, what constitutes "excellent" work and what constitutes "exceptional" work.


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How long does it take for a manuscript to get accepted in the International Journal of Surgery?
I sent my short communication almost a month back, but have still not received a response. There's a high chance it might get rejected, and my colleagues are asking me to submit it to another journal. If it gets accepted by the other journal, than I can just retract my submission from IJS.
Can someone guide me? I'm scared that the topic I chose might get picked out and published by someone else. Do I contact the journal regarding this?

Possible duplicate of Is my paper under review (or similar) for too long and if yes, how should I react? and How is it in my best interest not to submit a paper to two journals simultaneously?

If you want to know what's happening to your manuscript, the best (and possibly only) way to do so is to write to them and ask. I note their website gives the email address of the editorial office; they are the people you want to write to.
One thing you really should not do is submit your paper to another journal before withdrawing it from IJS, because if you do that then you are likely in breach of dual submission rules at both journals. That can get you blacklisted by both publishers.


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The name on my article doesn't match my national ID name, and it has already gone into production
I have submitted an article to the International Journal of Surgery, and it has gone into production. Just as I was signing the licensing agreement, it caught my eye that the name I had put in as the main author only contained my surname and my last name. It did not contain the middle name that is present on my national ID card, as well as my University ID.
E.g, The name I put in the manuscript: Wan Teller
The name on my National ID: Wan James Teller
It is a thorough mistake on my part, and I should've paid better attention.
I have no clue what to do now. The deadline to sign the agreement is today. What do I do?
A, Send an email to the producer to change my name in the manuscript before signing the licensing agreement.
B, Detail in the email about the mistake and ask the producer to change the name after signing the license? (Note: the license also contains my non-ID name e.g Wan Teller)
C, It's not necessary to add the middle name, it's fine if the name on the manuscript doesn't match my ID name.
Will be tremendously helpful if someone can guide me on this, and quickly.

The description of option C is correct; see https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/16333/17254 for example. Is that your desired outcome, or do you want the full name spelled out?

No, I do not want my full name spelled out.

Sign the agreement with your full legal name, e.g. Wan James Teller.
If you want the author name in the publication changed, email the editor with that request, but be prepared to be  told that it's too late.
Edit in response to comments: In general, a legal agreement should be signed with one's legal name.  My (non-lawyer) opinion is that it won't really matter in this case, but if it were I, I'd use my full legal name.
As others have said, publish with any name you like... with certain limitations like not impersonating others. It's probably best to pick a name and use it consistently on your publications.

Several other answers here hint that it doesn't matter if I use my national ID name in the paper or not. I do not want to use my middle name. If it wouldn't cause any problems in the future, I would prefer not to use it. If I sign the agreement with my full legal name, it will contrast with the main author name written in the same agreement. Should I still write it?

@WanTeller Does this ordinarily matter in the place you're from? I don't typically sign my middle name at all except for a couple very very rare cases where the government asks for it; no one else has ever cared or noticed.

@BryanKrause No it doesn't matter in the place I belong to. I guess I am just worried that the name on the published article will not match the one on my passport, just because I forgot to put in a middle name. I'm worried I might breach a policy by not putting my full name in the article, and they might put down the article later because of it.

@WanTeller See the post linked by Anyon and many others here like https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/191001/changing-my-legal-name-for-research?rq=1 - you can use whatever name you like for publishing research. Many people choose a particular name because they are known by that name, to simplify long/difficult to pronounce names, to keep a consistent publishing identity after changing name (e.g., due to marriage), etc.

@BryanKrause Alright, thank you for helping me out.

Note that the advice is to sign forms with your legal name, but the "author name" on the paper can be different and as you desire.

If your paper has only just gone into production, you should be fine - just tell the publisher when they sent you the proofs that your name is incomplete, and give them the full name. If they have already sent you the proofs (and you approved them), then chances are it is too late, but you can still try. Again, write to the publisher and give them your full name (or whatever name you want to use).
Don't email the editor. This has nothing to do with peer review and is not handled by the editorial board. If the editorial board need to be involved, the publisher will contact them.

OP said they don't want their full name on the paper.


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Is it acceptable to email a professor about an article they wrote years ago?
I'm an undergraduate from a non-academic background.
I have a personal interest in researching about some ethnic minorities, and came across a Routledge Handbook that focuses on that topic.
The author of the article in question seems to repeatedly use language that implies genocide denial, victim blaming and minimization of oppressive policies. I'm not sure if this matters, but the author belongs to the ethnic group that keeps systemically oppressing this minority.
This professor wrote this article in 2019 and lives in a different country.
Is it an acceptable practice for random people to write to professors they have no connection to about material they've written? My intent isn't necessarily to criticize the author, but rather to question them about the claims they've made and ask for clarifications.
Alternatively, I would contact the editor/coordinator of the handbook instead. Are any of these options acceptable?

Be aware that you are asking them for a favor. Make your question as precise, succinct, and easy to answer as possible. Might be a good time to review the various "how to ask a good question" essays on the Internet.

You might explain a bit more about why you believe they might not be acceptable.

Remember you can also make questions about academic writings in public and anonymously on PubPeer

First, 2019 isn't that long ago.  When I read your title I was thinking it was an article from 20 or 30 years ago.
But, to answer your question, I think it depends on "acceptable to whom?"  I mean, you are exploring a personal interest, and it's not breaking any laws to send an e-mail, it's not even breaking any norms. Is it acceptable to your recipient? Maybe not. But what's the worst they will do? Probably ignore you.
OTOH, is it going to be useful to you to write to him?  If they wrote what you said, then I can pretty much guarantee they get tons of angry e-mail (and maybe worse). They probably routinely ignore it. They might even have a rule set up on their e-mail that automatically deletes a lot.
So, if you really want to engage in some sort of dialogue with the author, then I'd word my e-mail very carefully to try to make it as friendly as possible. It still might get ignored.
Writing the editor of the handbook might be more likely to be productive. It depends how tight the editing was. In some of these, the editor basically just collects things, maybe checks the grammar and spelling, and publishes. In others, they take much more interest.  What were the other articles in the handbook like?

If someone puts out something into public view, they can expect to be contacted about it from time to time, though depending on the contents, being contacted might be a very rare occurrence.
In your case, you want to disagree with the professor, which you are free to do in many different forms. Direct contact is fine, but you might not get an answer. Talking to the editor begs the question what you want to achieve. The editor usually does not have any additional information.
So, go ahead, but do not have high hopes that something good will come out of it.

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I think that all of the options are acceptable. Whether or not the recipient replies is a matter for them to choose (I like to assume that the authors are adults with free will) ... as is whether or not they even read your email.
I frequently receive queries about papers that I have written, and in most instances, I reply. Similarly, I frequently write to other authors ... most recently about a paper that was published in 1992 (I wasn't even sure that I had contacted the correct person given the elapse of time!)
I don't always get a reply, but I do on the majority of occasions and I have never received a reply that suggested that it was somehow improper to write. In fact, I find it difficult to see how it could be improper. It is worth adding that, while I frequently ask questions about the methods used, or conclusions drawn, in a paper, I never ask questions to which I could find the answer from another source or by updating my own general knowledge of the area. In other words, my questions are only ever about things that only one of the paper's authors could possibly answer.

Is it an acceptable practice for random people to write to professors they have no connection to about material they've written?

Absolutely (though beware that your email might easily get lost in a spam filter, or the professor might delay responding and eventually forget about it, or any of a number of other things might happen). However:

The author of the article in question seems to repeatedly use language
that implies genocide denial, victim blaming and minimization of
oppressive policies.
[...]
Is it an acceptable practice for random people to write to professors
they have no connection to about material they've written? My intent
isn't necessarily to criticize the author, but rather to question them
about the claims they've made and ask for clarifications.

It strikes me as unlikely that they would wish to be drawn into some protracted political discussion, however well-intentioned, with a random person over email. And if they do, it seems even less likely that this would lead to a productive outcome for either side. Note that while you might know that you are a reasonable person who can take a hint if the professor indicates a lack of interest in pursuing the discussion further, the professor does not know that. For all they know, you might be the kind of person who will keep pestering them with their political opinions even after they have indicated that this is unwelcome. It may be quite difficult for you to overcome this suspicion.
Besides, what are you hoping to achieve with this? You say that you want to ask for clarification. If you are fully honest with yourself, is it genuinely unclear to you why the author takes the opinions they take, or is this more of an attempt to get them to see the error of their ways? Even if it's the former rather than the latter, good luck convincing the professor about that.

Alternatively, I would contact the editor/coordinator of the handbook instead. Are any of these options acceptable?

Saying what and hoping to achieve what? If your goal is to get the paper retracted, you need some support from some group of people who know how publishing works and who are invested in this particular political issue. If your goal is not to get the paper retracted, what exactly are you hoping of achieve as a result of contacting the editor? Editors are not responsible for explaining why the author wrote what they wrote.

It is not just acceptable, it is desirable. Academia is all about the pursuit of truth and knowledge, and the ability of any “random” person to contact any academic with a question about the academic’s work is one of the core strengths that help make academia the powerful truth-seeking machine that it is. When people of different backgrounds communicate openly and respectfully to share their knowledge and perspectives, great things often happen.
Conversely, groups of people who isolate themselves from the thoughts and opinions of others in the wider world, claiming to possess some special wisdom that only they, an anointed few, understand and have access to, are doomed to stagnate and become irrelevant.
In other words, I’m going to disagree with @ThomasSchwarz, who wrote in his answer:

So, go ahead, but do not have high hopes that something good will come out of it.

I would argue instead that the correct answer should be: So, go ahead, and hopefully something good will come out of it!

When you say "language that implies" X, can you point at where in the article where X manifests itself? Also, by stating the "author belongs to the ethnic group that keeps systemically oppressing this minority," you are not only drawing conclusions on this author specifically but also pigeonholing an entire ethnic group.
Go back to the article. Identify what you consider inconsistent with an article in that field, or discrepancies that could have been attributed to incomplete research. And then ask yourself how can you help address those. And then you can consider starting with something like

I am a student at Y and recently came upon your article. While I enjoyed reading it -- anything that causes my mind to work overtime pleases me -- I noticed some small points I would appreciate some clarification.

Work from the factual side, not the opinion one. For inspiration, lookup how Zhang Chongren contacted and then helped Hergé write/improve The Blue Lotus.

I have written professors a couple of times with questions about things I read in preprints... I got answers a couple of times. Sometimes they were questions I maybe should have already known the answer to and sometimes they were questions already answered in research but not something I could have easily found or should have known. Thanks to those professors. I think it was reasonably polite. No citation or further collaboration was needed, because the questions didn't result in research, but if they had, perhaps it would have been polite to include the person I emailed in some form (even if only in a citation or acknowledgement).
I don't see any reason not to email someone if it's friendly, kind, and well thought through, but in this case it seems not quite friendly, and I am not sure it will help your career or theirs, or either of your moods, or your cause.

Part1 - Personal experience
I did this once for my final project of graduate school, where I had to report on a paper. I was praised by my instructor/supervisor that I got a reply from the author of a paper.
The issue was that there was some unclear thing in the paper. I asked both author & my instructor, who was unsure, but my instructor & I had the same interpretation. Later I got a reply from the author who corrected our interpretation! I proposed a precise way of wording what the author said and then the author told me

You would have been a good reviewer. Your comments could have improved the readability of the paper (and avoided any misinterpretations)

Part2 - My own thoughts + Terry Tao
Anyhoo, I'm kinda the opposite end of the spectrum of you. I never had reservations of doing anything like these. I even email like sports players or youtubers & authors of fiction or non-fiction books. I thought they'd like getting inquiries because it implies they're being read.
Terry Tao:

When you write a paper by yourself you know there's always somehow the nagging fear at the back of your mind that maybe you know no one will care about this.

Part3 - Wait...
Or well maybe this a thing formal and natural sciences (usually only a few answers for one question) and the social sciences (usually many answers for one question). If it's some political issue and then you're messaging, then it's 1 of those fields of study that has 'opinions', so Idk maybe something's up there. But mathematics isn't like 'pro-Riemann hypothesis is racism.'
Part4 - Connection
As for

they have no connection to

Depends what you mean by connection. You have common interest. That might be a connection.


text:
Should I request audit grading for my MTH 111 class or just fail it?
I’m a freshman attending a community college. I’m taking 17 credits, 5 of which are from my MTH 111 class. I have struggled with sepsis and infection over the past year and got sick in the middle of the term, causing me to fall behind in due dates and information in the class. It is too late for me to withdraw from or drop the class, however in the grading options I have an option between A-F grading or Audit grading. I have no idea what to do and I need advice. Should I change the grading style or just fail the class?

You should ask your advisor, who will be familiar with the rules at your college.  These rules differ from college to college.  (Do ask about the medical withdrawal possibility though!)

Should this be tagged US? It seems like it is very specific about their system.

Many institutions allow a hardship withdrawal after the deadline.  Check with the registrar's office.  You will likely have to produce documentation that you were treated by a doctor.
If a hardship withdrawal is not available, ask what changing to audit grading will do to your GPA and how it will show on your transcript.  It will likely be better than a grade of F.

Failing the class means you hurt your GPA and do not get credit for the class.
Taking an audit grade will not affect your GPA (but check the specific details at your school), though you will not get those five credit hours.
Another option, depending on how far behind you are, could be to take an incomplete and wrap up the class next semester. The details would be negotiated with the instructor. This risks failing the class but would give you some time to study enough to pass. If you pass, you get the five credit hours. I did this once in college, and it was not a big deal. (In a class of 20-30, I was not even the only student who took an incomplete and took the final exam the next semester.)
Medical issues often get special consideration, so there might be even more options if you talk to your instructor or advisor.

Where I taught, the requirements for a grade of Incomplete were very strict.  It surely wouldn't hurt to ask the professor though.


text:
Did our class do wrong or is the professor being odd?
I'm a master's student at a world-wide top business school. In one subject (a subject that related to my undergraduate specialization) I had a very good professor. He researches in the same field I want to conduct research in later, so we had quite some conversations about research, which were really interesting. I answered his questions actively in class, got one of the highest grades in his exam, he also praised how interesting my presentation was, which made up 40% of the final grade (in short, I doubt that me being 'dumb' or a bad student is the issue). In our last class together, he told the entire class that we can always e-mail him if we need career-related advice, or when we come to his hometown, he would be glad to have a drink with us, and that we should add him on Linkedin.
I added him on Linkedin, as I would have loved to keep up the professional relationship, especially when it comes to my master's thesis later, I would have loved to have him as my advisor. He then turned down not only my Linkedin request, but the whole class'. In addition, when one of us emails him about professional matters, he doesn't answer. I asked him about a certain specialization I was thinking on doing in his field, as I wanted to hear his opinion, and got ignored, but other classmates told me their e-mails got ignored by him as well. To be honest, I'm pretty disappointed, as he was the professor our class had the best relationship with. The classes were always very interactive and fun, and all of us got pretty good grades at the end, so I really don't understand his behavior and it makes me think. We also were a quite familiar group as our class is really small with only 30 students. Do you think we as a class did something wrong, or is he the one being odd?

There is nothing in your post that suggests you did anything wrong. It is possible, however, that the professor is going through some life crisis. Someone local (professor, dean) might know.

And please don't forget Covid is not gone yet.

You did not do anything wrong, but he did not do anything wrong either. That is just his decision not to reply to students' emails.

Time scale of the facts exposed here?

in short, I doubt that me being 'dumb' or a bad student is the issue a student is a student. There is no excuse to find a behaviour from a professor less bad because of this.

Any number of reasons possible for the prof ghosting you. He could have personal problems. He could be out of town. He could have some other high priority thing. Or one of your classmates might have been a pest, maybe sending 50 messages in a day or something.

None of the comments/answers addresses that the professor wasn't just ghosting OP, instead turned down the students' linkedin invites after telling those same students to send him one - if this is how it really went down. That does make the professor seem fake, but it's so odd that there must be some misunderstanding.

Sounds like a bummer, but 30 students is not "really small" in graduate studies.

Don't overthink it. The professor might have 259 new emails each morning and he is simply not able to answer all of them even if he wanted to. (He might not even have checked his linkedin for many weeks).

Of course I cannot tell you for sure why your professor acts like this, but I can tell you one thing: Professors are always busy. Always.
You may have had a good relationship with him and he was interested in you, but this was last term, last year. Now there are other students he has to take care of, other classes. He has to give lectures, correct exams, visit conferences. No time to deal with some people who are not his students any more.
I don't think that you have done anything wrong. Perhaps he really liked to work with you, and that's why he proposed to stay in touch. Now he has realized that it just does not work.
Don't worry about him. You will find other opportunities.


text:
How many cites are necessary for a research paper paragraph summarizing one source (legal case)?
I'm writing a law school research paper where one of the sections describes multiple legal cases, each under a separate heading. For each case I am describing the factual history of the case, then the holding, noting specific areas of interest to the paper topic.
Should I have a separate footnote for every sentence, as each is pulled or inferred from the case I am referencing? If not, how should I rephrase?
Current my cites look something like this, and I'm concerned:
fn.1 - [case]
fn.2 - Id at x.
.
.
.
.
fn.10 - Id at y.

Have you asked your instructor what their expectations are?

I once have asked this my supervisor. He said that no one will - or can - critize you if you do add a reference for each sentence, while you might be critized if you don't add a reference for one critical sentence. So, following this logic, it's better to have more citations then less.
However, this is theory. In practice, I personally would follow a more pragmatic rule now: If multiple sentences are taken from the same source (or case in your case), I would only add a single footnote for the first occurence; but in that footnote, I would say something like "The case is described following Smith (2000)" or similar. The important thing is that the reader always needs to be able to distinguish which thoughts are from you and which are taken from literature.

In contrast to @Remirror, I recommend that you cite every single instance, as you have suggested, with reference to the particular location in the original.
Despite one's sense that the page would be less cluttered without such a density of citations, you should follow the standard (tradition?) of citation in your domain of practise. In law, pinpoint citation (even repetitive pinpoint citation) is the norm in many jurisdictions; see, for example, the decision from the Supreme Court of the United States in Roe v Wade or the decision of the High Court of Australia in Pell v The Queen.
It is particularly easy to see the repetitive pinpoint citation in Pell v The Queen. If you scroll to the end of the very long web-page, you will see the long list of references accumulated in a way that is more difficult to see when they appear as page footnotes.
My impression, from following transcripts of proceedings in both courts, is that repeating pinpoint citations is absolutely vital in oral argument when the possibility exists of an interrogating justice on the bench asking "Where, exactly, Ms Smith, does the case say what you say it does?"
The approach in most of the law journals I have seen is to follow exactly the same approach as one finds in the case reports themselves.

Put yourself in the shoes of your reader and think about the information they will need to easily check your assertions and verify that they are correct, or to go back to the source for more information.  The reader will want to know the citations of the cases you are referring to, but will also want to be able to find the specific pieces of information you refer to in those cases, without having to read the whole case to find them.
In order to assist your reader to find the necessary information, typically you would give an initial citation to the case when you first start discussing it, and then you would give judge-paragraph references for each new assertion about the content of that case.  Depending on how quickly you are running through information in the case, the latter might be required for each sentence, though in some instances you might get away with having several sentences describing an aspect of the case with a judge-paragraph citation for all of them at the end.  Nevertheless, you should make sure that it is simple for the reader to locate and confirm the relevant parts of the case for each of your assertions --- do not make them read then entire legal case scouring for confirmation of one of your assertions.
To see why this is helpful, I'll give a short example discussing a recent legal case.  Depending on the specific legal citation conventions you are using, this looks something like the following:

The High Risk Serious Offenders Act 2020 (WA) (hereafter called the "HRSO Act") allows the State Government to apply to the WA Supreme Court for an order in relation to a "serious offender" under a custodial sentence.  The High Court of Australia recently considered a challange to the consitutional validity of parts of the Act (Garlett v Western Australia [2022] HCA 30).
This case related an offender in custody, Mr Garlett, with an extensive criminal history and a history of drug abuse (per Kiefel CJ, Keane and Steward JJ at paras 1-3).  The WA Government applied for an order under the HRSO Act in relation to Mr Garlett and he responded by challenging the constitutional validity of the Act, leading the High Court to consider a limited aspect of this initial challenge (paras 6-8).  The argument advanced by Garlett was that the exercise of non-judicial powers under the HRSO Act is inconsistent with the WA Supreme Court being invested as a repository of federal judicial jurisdiction (paras 39-42).

From the above description, the reader can find the legislation and the case I am talking about, but they can also find the relevant paragraphs for each part I discuss.  In particular, they can verify that the applicant has "an extensive criminal history and a history of drug abuse" (at least according ot the court), they can verify the scope of the challenge, and they can verify the nature of the argument advanced for that challenge.  In each instance, the reader is told to relevant paragraphs of the judgment that discuss this part, so they don't need to read through the entire case to find it.


text:
Is research output determined by your type of institution more than your skill?
I've often thought it was strange that one's value as a scholar is determined largely on the basis of one's research, yet one's ability to perform "good" (in quantitative and qualitative terms) research is based largely on the type of institution where one works.
Consider the following scenario: Scholar A gets a job at an R1 straight out of grad school. Scholar A therefore has a light teaching load, generous sabbatical, a large research budget and so on. As a result, Scholar A goes on to publish prolifically in top journals. Scholar A's professional profile rises. The university that hired him pats itself on the back for having made the right bet in hiring him, since, of course, he turned out to be a "top" scholar.
Scholar B, meanwhile, attended the same graduate institution as Scholar A, and wrote a dissertation that was deemed equally meritorious. Due to the vicissitudes of the academic job market, however, Scholar B ends up with a first job at a teaching-focused college rather than an R1. Saddled with a 3/3 teaching load and few opportunities for internal research funding or protected research time, Scholar B publishes little, and most of what he does publish is in second-tier journals. Even if he is a great teacher, he remains unheard of within his field, since status is determined mostly on the basis of research. Consequently, people who look at Scholar B's academic record ten or twenty years after his Ph.D. confidently conclude that he is a mediocre scholar, who would never have been fit for an R1 that hires top scholars.
This would seem unfair. Scholar B might have been just as productive research-wise as Scholar A, had the former had the good fortune of working at an institution that facilitated an aggressive research agenda. But Scholar B ends up being deemed "not very smart" because he produces little research.
In other words, it has always seemed to me that scholarly success is in many ways a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The R1s that pride themselves on hiring "top" scholars don't actually pick or attract the right people as much as they create the conditions that allow one to turn into a top scholar (in a world where, again, that status is based mostly on your research).
I happen to be a tenured faculty member at an R1 university, with a publication record that I am quite proud of. But I'd be lying to myself if I said that I would have published as much -- and earned the reputation I have in my field -- if I'd spent the years since my Ph.D. working in a more teaching-heavy place.
I'm also in the humanities. I'm not sure whether the trend I describe above exists in the sciences.

This seems a bit opinion based, but a lot of it boils down to dedication. If you want to do research, make sure you work at a solid research institution.

@DanielGoldman Dedication and place of work are orthogonal properties.

"I'm also in the humanities." I think that's a key sentence and perhaps should go further towards the top.  In most STEM fields neither of your scholars has the most common academic trajectory: rather, most STEM PhDs who want to continue an academic research career take one or more postdocs.  Postdocs still differ in teaching loads but not as much: 2/2 would be a heavy teaching load for a postdoc.  And you can do more than one postdoc.  Certainly I've seen lots of people in "worse" postdocs be more productive than people in "better" postdocs.

What is the question? Obviously, if you have the time to do research, you will do more research than if you don't have time to do it.

In STEM fields, not really. Your "quality" is typically a measure of how much you are willing to sacrifice, whether that be time, morals, a spouse, or entrusting others. The more you sacrifice, the better you will typically do. They call that dedication, which is nonsense. It is where you draw the line in the sand, nothing more.

Is research output determined by your type of institution more than your skill?

Almost definitely. It doesn't matter how much skill you have if you do not actually use the skill. There, however, are people at R1s who do not have the needed skills to be successful researchers.
Your comments like

Consequently, people who look at Scholar B's academic record ten or twenty years after his Ph.D. confidently conclude that he is a mediocre scholar, who would never have been fit for an R1 that hires top scholars.

and

But Scholar B ends up being deemed "not very smart" because he produces little research.

are not universally true. I don't know many people who judge intelligence (i.e., smartness) based on research output. In my field we often have to evaluate how people who chose to work in industry will be able to fit into an R1 environment.

Hence, therein lies the problem; how do you identify an 'ugly duckling' from the many 'swans' who want to work at R1?  In this case, the ugly duckling will always remain an ugly duckling.

@Prof.SantaClaus I think that (i.e., how to evaluate the research potential of someone in industry for an R1 faculty position) would be a really good question.

It is absolutely true, and quite prevalent in all the fields. I did my masters in a institution that forces professors to teach 60% of their time and the research budget was/is extremely low. My supervisor was an MIT alumni with great knowledge in his field. His research output though was extremely low because of the institution. At the end he stopped publishing any of his works.
My point is being in such a institution demotivates even the smartest people and they become unproductive.

Fyi, "alumni" is plural, so you would either use the male form "alumnus" or the gender-neutral form "alum" to describe your professor.

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


text:
What is the effect of F grades caused by administrative errors on graduate schools?
Last year, I went to exchange credit with another university. During course registration, I applied for a graduate class in another department by purely clicking mistake. I explained that the school could not accept graduate classes and that I could not take more than my maximum grade point.
If it had been the way it was, I should have dropped the class easily, but my school abolished the drop system a long time ago. I thought that other schools would be like ours, and of course there would be no drop system at that school. I had no choice but to hold back my tears and decided to get an F grade.
It wasn't until recently that I learned that an F grade is a big problem in determining sincerity. I will take classes there again to erase this credit, but that does not guarantee that the F itself will disappear, or even I can get to that university again. I will also ask the professor to write a letter explaining the different administrative systems between the schools, but I don't know if this will work.
I know that many competitive schools drop students with F grades or don't offer scholarships. What should I do in my case? Will a letter with such a story work for the judges?

Does this answer your question? How are Ph.D. applications evaluated in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students? Am I likely to get into school X?

Also related: How will a 'fail' in a course affect chances at graduate school admission?, Does a bad grade in one course (with otherwise OK record) affect graduate admissions?

Your story is confusing, but if you registered by mistake and never attended the class or submitted any work, can't you petition to have it removed from your transcript?

Presumably even at your own school if you misclick and apply for a graduate class you did not intend to apply for, you're not condemned to take an F. Whatever you do, I would suggest omitting entirely the strange and irrelevant sounding part of the story about "different administrative systems" in any applications. If you cannot fix your transcript, then stick to the relevant, non-confusing part of the story, which seems to be that you misclicked during the registration process but did not do anything to fix it and took an F instead, and only later did you realize that this was a bad decision.

You need to make this clearer to get any answer here, or any good answer from an admissions committee. It is hard to understand what you did, or why, or how you "decided" to take an F. It is hard to tell which school you are talking about in various parts of this. I don't understand "could not take more than my maximum grade point". Could not take more "what"? And "more than max grade point makes little sense. Clarify if you need an answer.

The concern I'd have reading your story is less about an F on your transcript but that it seems like you made so little effort to do something about it. Graduate school expects more self-starting and initiative than earlier education levels.

Where I work, the numerical grade of 1 is entered next to the letter grade.  In fact this numerical grade is reserved for “failure; no work to assess” and this is grade is not part of the GPA.  Normally a simple petition removes this grade.  I do not know if a simple petition is enough, or the grading scheme is explained in the transcript of the OP.  I find it difficult to believe there’s no built-in recovery from this type of error.

If I understand the story correctly, it's something like this (modulo the fields): you are a physics major, but you accidentally signed up for a graduate-level art history course while studying abroad. You assumed that you would automatically be dropped from the course, since this is what would happen back home. By the time you realized this assumption was incorrect, there was nothing you could do, and you ended up getting an F. Is this roughly correct? In particular, was the graduate course indeed in something very different from your main subject?

I think you should work from the premise that a typical school does not recognize the concept of “F grades caused by administrative errors”. An F grade is supposed to signify that you took a class and didn’t manage to pass it, and that’s how almost everyone will interpret it. I doubt that the admissions systems of most graduate schools are capable of handling complicated explanations of F grades that don’t actually mean what they are supposed to mean.
If it really was an administrative error, I’d advise you to fight hard to get it corrected by your school. Your grades should reflect your actual performance, not the vagaries of institutional bureaucracy.
I’m sorry about your predicament. Best of luck resolving this issue!


text:
What comes first a research question or a hypothesis?
I am thinking how to structure a paper on economics. I have some scatter data from online sources, but nothing I collected on my own, say, via a survey.
I am struggling to figure out how to organize my research. Specifically, I am unsure if I need to first have a research question and then a hypothesis. Or if both are even needed, perhaps a research question suffices?

Since the hypothesis is about how to resolve a research question, the former makes little sense without the latter. So, the question, and why it is important, should come first.
But without a hypothesis you can't really conclude much from a study that uses statistics. Yes, you can give descriptive statistics you derive from the data, but unless they support a given hypothesis (or give evidence against it) they have little scientific value.
And, one normally forms the question and the hypothesis and decide on appropriate statistical test before gathering data. Two reasons for this.
The hypothesis guides the sort of data that must be gathered to settle the question (within statistical bounds). And knowing the hypothesis helps you avoid bias in data collection, leading to misleading results.
However, at the very beginning of some exploration, it may be impossible to formulate a hypothesis and even the research question might be ill formed. In such a situation, a preliminary study might be undertaken to try to figure out what might be going on. Some data analysis might be useful, but it is generally wise to consider such information with a grain or more of salt. Such things can inform your research statement and also lead to the hypothesis to confirm (or not) the results from the prelim.
Perhaps you need to get a good book on research process since the question seems a bit naive. Gathering data, alone, isn't really research. It needs to be directed toward an end.

Thank you. A follow-up. If my study was more exploratory, would I still need a hypothesis or would a research question be enough? It seems a research question is always needed but hypotheses are more apt for STEM and quantitative research.

I'll add a bit about preliminary studies.

I am unsure if I need to first have a research question and then a hypothesis. Or if both are even needed, perhaps a research question suffices?

I know what you mean by "hypothesis": you suspect something is true and you've set up an experiment that will provide evidence for or against it.
I'm less certain what you mean by "research question," especially since you talk of "doing a study" around the question. I suspect you're thinking about more exploratory or "service-based" research. For example, a new virus has just been observed; I have no idea what it is, so we'll look at it under a microscope and see what we see. Or maybe producing a nice dataset that others can use to study their hypotheses.
Conventions here, and the importance of such work, will vary a lot by field. As you say, STEM generally incentivizes proving important hypotheses, though there are certainly examples of high-impact papers that provide only data or tools. I suspect the situation may be inverted in some humanities fields, where the most important papers will present new evidence (e.g., from fieldwork) and the less important papers will simply provide a new interpretation of long-established evidence.

I would first consider your philosophical and research paradigms. For example, if you combine the positivist and quantitative paradigms, the hypothesis may proceed the question. In contrast, if you combine post-structuralism and qualitative, the reverse may be true. In summary, your ontological, epistemological, and methodological, perspectives should provide you the answers you seek.
Cheers,


text:
Grant proposal plagiarism
I want to check if the following case is considered plagiarism or at least unethical.
Four years ago, I wrote a personal grant proposal for a PhD scholarship. It was written entirely by me in my own personal time. I sent it to a professor, who read it and gave some minor remarks. He agreed to become my promoter if I receive the grant. I got the grant and carried out the research under the guidance of said professor.
It now came to my attention that our research unit has recently received a grant for similar research. I read the proposal, and about half of it is verbatim copied out of my original proposal. No permission was asked from me.
To me, this feels very wrong. What are your opinions?

This is unethical and unfortunately not uncommon. Many group leaders automatically consider all research ideas, proposals and papers generated within their group as a commodity that belongs to the group and that they can manage without discussing it with original author first. In their mind everything that benefits the group automatically benefits all participants, which is of course a comfortable point of view for the group leader (who is in control of how the benefits are distributed), and not so comfortable for early career staff on precarious contracts, who have no job security and often find themselves without a solid ground to make demands and argue for a better recognition.
You are right to feel wronged. Depending on the culture in your Department, you may or may not have many good options, except graduating and leaving this place for good. When you feel safe, consider sharing this story with more details to inform new potential members of the group about how the group is managed and what they can expect.

Great answer. I think I would emphasise even more that the problem is not asking permission. In my group, we often share materials and ideas, event parts of grant proposals, but it is always discussed and permission is sought. This works if there are clear rules in the group. Also, I think @user44136 should have been a co-applicant.


text:
Rediscovering an idea - tell or hide?
I discovered an idea independently. I searched previously and found no prior work. Today, I discovered prior work completely by accident. The field's in STEM, and I'm in US.
Can I still take full credit if I just say I discovered it independently? Or should I lie and say I've never seen it? I have no moral qualms with latter since I'm not lying when I say I did it myself, and I really need the credit for it.

Hmm, what precisely do you expect people to reply to this question? Actually, I think you already know the answer yourself. Or to put it differently: If you really had no moral qualms about this, I believe you wouldn't be asking this.

Sooner or later people will know that it is not you.    If you can find it, surely another person will stumble on what you've found.  In my areas, there are many instances where an idea is 're-discovered'.  In most cases, the original source is credited.  In research, it is quite normal to find that your idea is not new.  I'm especially happy if my idea appeared  in a good/top venue, though I'm not the author.  At least my idea was good!

What "credit" do you expect to get?

@BryanKrause Recognition of skill. I don't care for profit, but I do need self-advertising points.

Recognition by who? Who are you self-advertising to? Why do you think anything but honesty would grant you more of this "credit"?

@BryanKrause Employers and field practitioners, but mainly former. Honesty risks being perceived as dishonesty as anyone can claim they reinvented something, yet it's harder to accuse of dishonesty on not knowing something's already invented. I have no problem acknowledging reinvention after publishing my work.

It seems to me that if you claim to have discovered something as if you're the only one that's done it, you're just telling everyone you weren't very good at searching the literature.

What you discovered is probably known already to those in the field. If you say you discovered it for the first time you will be refuted, possibly rudely so. Be content with the insight you got from your rediscovery. That isn't nothing, but it isn't something you advertise (other than to your mom).

@Buffy Shunning who seek due credit and career opportunities is a good waving of academia red flag. I'm an individual with living needs, not a science martyr.

@user689325 the point is that you probably should have found it, and not having found it earlier doesn't look good on you.

Some rediscoveries are interesting. Especially in mathematics, discovering a new way to prove something already known can still be interesting, since it's partly about the "journey" to get there, and the possibility that the same approach might help solve other problems.
In other areas, sometimes the isolation of different fields leads to things being rediscovered because people are using different language/conventions in their work. It can be very useful to recognize that actually the technique for doing one thing in field A is related to something else in field B. Connecting the two can create an entire new bridge between the fields.
If you try to publish something as new that isn't, or try to tell other people you discovered a new thing that isn't, it will be a bit embarrassing for you when someone catches the duplication and tells you it's not new and that it's actually just that your literature search was poor. It's far more efficient to hire someone who can find things that already exist than someone who spends time rediscovering what's already known.
I don't see much benefit to dishonesty here. You can say what you've done, emphasize any part of it that is new, yet acknowledge that the conclusion has been reached before. This sort of thing happens all the time in research.

Hmmm. A new and novel proof of a known theorem isn't "rediscovering" anything. It is a genuine advance if the method can be otherwise applied. In many cases in math, the proof is more important than the theorem statement.

If it's never a good idea, why does it happen, with rediscoverers benefitting before or even after the duplication is spotted? This case is special because if it was widely known, it'd almost certainly be widely applied, yet it isn't. Search incompetence is a price I'm willing to pay for strong technical competence.

@Buffy That's what I was trying to convey, I'd invite an edit if you think it wasn't clear.

@user689325 Most of those cases I can think of involved the initial discovery being poorly communicated either due to the discoverer not fully knowing what they had or from barriers in language and research dissemination before the internet. I'm not convinced that technical competence doesn't include search competence, I think one of the key skills a PhD student learns is how to find information they need and therefore both not waste their time and also understand what should be done next.

Maybe an example from biology or medicine would be better. ;-)

@Buffy Harder for me to think of useful rediscoveries in those areas - usually what we need in biology and medicine is replication which is entirely different. Mendelian genetics maybe but that's less a case of a particular rediscovery and more a case of appreciating an earlier finding due to other advances in theory.

If it were inclusive there wouldn't be dedicated professions for it. Many companies want someone who excels at product design, not dig in deep web which is something they hire others to do. Dodging the matter for sake of some idealized ethics won't stop those like me from proceeding with lies. It's more productive to help us lie, or to help sell our competence despite rediscovery - at least when we're honest.


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Why scientists don't share their research ideas?
A lot of scientist that I've talked to are worried about sharing their ideas with too many people. They get very protective of those ideas. Here are some reasons why:

Ideas are harder to define on your own
Ideas are hard to validate
There is no good way of getting constructive feedback outside of my network
Ideas get stolen with no reference or credit to the source
Afraid of stupid idea

As a scientist, do you agree or disagree with these observations?

I am not sure this question is based on a true premise. I find many scientists won't shut up about their ideas

I totally agree with @Calchas. Most of them are just talking about their different ideas. Even when they have a very good idea, the majority of them prefer to quickly publish rather than patenting it.

Your question sounds as if "scientists don't share their research ideas" is a fact or an observation. Can you be more specific about the circumstances you observed?

It's an observation and based on project we were doing - purpose of this project was to build a collaborative idea platform, where you can share your research ideas and get constructive feedback (Like a forum). The main feedback was that they are not interested to share their ideas, based on those 5 points.

So, they don't want to share their ideas by putting in time and effort (and dealing with trolls) on your proposed 'IdeaBook' platform. That doesn't mean they don't share ideas with their colleagues, just not in the way that you want them to. They have their own ways.

Sounds like a student project to me. Questionnaires based on such projects are to be treated with great care, or you get catch-all statements such as yours. The actual issue is much more complicated. What ideas do and don't you share, and with whom and under which circumstances? Mueller and Bednorz discovered high-temperature superconductivity and submitted their discovery to New York Times and a domestic German journal first because it was clear that this was absolutely groundbreaking and easy to reproduce by an unethical reviewer. Most cases are not as clear-cut.

At least a lot of the cranks are afraid their ideas will be stolen.  Not sure about actual scientists, though.

Scientists do share their research ideas.  What do you think journal papers are??

I'm not sure why this question is closed: I think it may be because people disagree with the asker's premise, rather than because it is actually opinion-based.  As such, I have voted to reopen.

I disagree with the basic premise, that scientists do not share their research ideas.  I, like most scientists that I know, share most research ideas quite freely, for the following reasons:

I always have more research ideas than I have time to pursue them.
Ideas are easy, implementation is hard.
Sharing ideas is a good way to build collaborations.
The more people who are interested in the ideas I'm interested in, the better it is for us all.

The only type of "ideas" that I do not typically share are the details of proposals that I am currently writing.  The general ideas are probably shared with others, but the particular pitch to a particular call for proposals is obviously competition-sensitive information.
Now, there are some scientists who I know who are much more cagey about their ideas, often because they are insecure about their ability to have ideas and undervalue implementation and execution, and I tend to find that these people are less successful than those who share more freely.

I was a bit brusque in my comment there so perhaps I owe a more detailed answer. There are a few folks I know who like to keep their cards close to their chests when members of "competing groups" are around. I have to say I have only really seen this behaviour from the big American labs, but that might be a bias I have somehow.
It tends to be as the idea is moving towards publication, they don't want to be scooped by another group obtaining the idea, doing the experiment, and publishing the result first. It is more paranoia than anything else, although there are one or two examples where this has really happened and it caused a big stink at the time, even the editors of the journal had to get involved to sort it out.
But really this behaviour is quite rare. If you go to any scientific conference, they will talk just as much about new ideas as they talk about past work.

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


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Publishing while working from home independently, what affiliation to give?
Currently I do not belong to any institution and work from home.
Now can I put the name of the last university I attended  in place of affiliation in a journal paper?
I have masters degree from Linkoping University, Sweden. Do I need to ask permission in this case ?
Regards,
Umair

Generally speaking, you should not put any institution as your affiliation unless you are currently based there, or did the work while you were based there. In this case, unless you did the research while at Linkoping, you should not give Linkoping as your affiliation.
See, for example, this discussion.
If it helps, it's worth remembering that the "affiliation" is in many ways an "address" - it evolved out of simply giving an address at which you could be contacted, and some journals still refer to it this way. It's not unknown in some fields for independent researchers to give their home address, but it's perhaps more common just to say "independent".
If you have no current affiliation, you can simply say "Independent researcher", or similar, and leave it at that (adding an email address is good, if not asked for elsewhere in the paper).

Or you can ask, if you still have contacts there, to become an adjunct/visiting researcher, getting a proper affiliation.

You should leave it blank, or provide the name of your independent business (if you have one).


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Publishing a framework review
I have been examining a novel machine-learning framework for a seminar at uni.
After some people asked me whether I would publish the results in a paper so they could see them as well, I thought I might as well put some more effort into it and make a publication out of it.
However:

I am not sure whether this adds any research value since I did not really do something new, I just summarized the key concepts of the framework and took example use-cases to compare their implementation with and without the framework (implementations without the comparison have been done in blog posts).
I have recently been told that publications in a non-high-ranking journal can actually hurt your career. I do not want this to negatively affect my PhD application later this year.

My question is thus: Is it worth publishing a paper that is only an examination of a framework and a comparison with not using it?
Some technical background: the framework in question is Google's TensorFlow and I am comparing plain Python implementations of machine learning algorithms with the implementation utilizing the framework.
I wanted to also briefly summarize the framework and compare it with other machine learning frameworks already out there - this is only half a page regarding performance, capability etc though, no code is compared here.
Ultimately, the paper aims at people currently using Python who are not sure whether they should switch.

I think that there are two questions in here that it may be useful to separate out:

Should you spend the time to prepare a well-written analysis that you make publicly available to others?
Should you make your analysis available in the form of a peer-reviewed paper?

For the first, it seems that you've done much of the analytical work already, and that there are people who will appreciate it.  I thus see no reason not to produce a good write-up and publish it.
Whether you should publish it as a peer-reviewed paper, on the other hand, is not so clear to me.  I don't think that you need to worry about being looked down upon for publishing such a paper: that concern is more about bad work, not work with a clear, intentionally limited scope.  I just don't think there's much to gain from going through a formal peer review process here unless your work involved more experimentation and surprises than it sounds like it did.
Instead, I would recommend posting your analysis as a technical memo (many institutions have a mechanism of this sort), a whitepaper, an arXiv pre-print, or other such semi-formal document.  A semi-formal publication of this sort can place your work in a permanent archive with a DOI and clear means of citing if people find it useful, yet also is fast, easy, and need not be a significant distraction from the main thrust of your research.


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What would happen if I am doing my PhD on a topic and I find a very recent paper with the results I was obtaining?
I am doing my Ph.D. in maths and working on something. However, I was wondering what would happen if someone publishes similar results to the ones I am obtaining while I am working on that.  I have no control over that because it may happen that the result is totally new and therefore I couldn't check before starting to work. Will all the time spent being lost? Are my results valid for defending my dissertation?

As I understand it, in the math community, the method of proof is more important.  If you have a different approach to proving the same result that is useful, then there is no worry.  I think it's quite rare to have exactly the same approach unless you are looking over another person's shoulder.


text:
can I cite personal communication from a co-author?
I received a strong opinion statement in an email from an expert in the field who later ended up making enough suggestions that I'm including him as a co-author. Coming from me, or from the paper's general authorial voice, the statement would stick out as an unsubstantiated claim, and his papers don't tend to include opinion statements. This would also be the only place in the paper where I'm quoting an expert. Should I just give it up?
To clarify, I'm not even wanting to include it to bolster the paper's argument, in fact it works against the paper's argument. But the fact that an expert has this opinion is a significant piece of information that readers might want to have.

I'm going to leave this because I'm curious if anyone has an answer, but in the interest of transparency I should mention that I've decided not to use the quote. It's too hard to fit it in.

What field is this?

Medical informatics.

You should not provide information from one co-author as e.g. personal communication since any author on the manuscript is expected to contribute to the manuscript. If there is need to state that a specific author has come up with a particular point you could do that by stating that e.g. "one of us (initials) discovered that..." or something equivalent.
In the end, just remmeber that any fact presented in a manuscript is either due to the authors or to other (referenced) sources. It is rare, but not unheard of, that a co-author may have specific contributions that require, or perhaps deserve, special mention. I would deem this quite rare. Becoming an author on a manuscript means you contribute intellectually to the end product and that includes sharing your ideas.
So to sum up, tred carefully and objectively.
By including a reviewer as co-author, you should follow regular authorship "rules". I fully realise that the question whether or not you should include the person as an author is a different question entirely so I will only focus on the situation at hand.

I'm fairly new to this business, so I'd actually appreciate hearing about standards for including people as authors. I imagine different fields have different conventions, but if you can point me to a primer, it would probably help me (on my next paper; too late to do much about this one.)

@Sigfried Do you have an advisor of some sort? This is exactly what an academic advisor is for. Authorship guidelines vary a lot by field, though some journals provide guidance as to who they expect you to name (and to not name) as authors.

@BryanKrause, sorry I forgot to answer earlier. My advisor is in a different field than I was publishing the paper in.


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The best way to refer readers to other paper(s) for more details
Sometimes you need to refer readers to a reference for more details about a subject. I wonder what is the best way to accomplish this. Or if there is a specific way to do it for scientific papers that target journals in the field of computer science and engineering.
I use something similar to this "For more details about flying monkeys see [1,2,3].", but I feel there's something wrong about it (other than the flying monkeys).

"More details" as in "less terse treatment, in case the reader can't follow yours" or as in "more related material that might satisfy the reader's curiosity"?

Also, I generally advise against chaining references like [1, 2, 3]. It makes it harder to see where a given paper is being cited: e.g., searching for "[2" in the PDF will not see its appearance in "[1, 2, 3]".

I would try to work the references into your text and include why you're referring  the reader to them. I might write something like:

Smith et al. [1] provides additional background on flying monkeys and their use in underwater basket making.

Or

Several recent articles review flying monkey [1, 2, 3].

Or

Recent tutorials and overviews of flying moneys exist for readers unfamiliar with the their background and use [1, 2, 3].

As a style note, I would not simply refer to the number inline (e.g. see [1, 2, 3])).
For more inspiration, I would skim and read recent articles in your target journals.
I find reading to be a one method for improving my own writing style.
Here's an example from my own publication:

For readers who are unfamiliar with IPMs, recent overviews, introductions, and tutorials of integral projection models exist (e.g., Ellner and Rees, 2006, Ramula et al., 2009, Ellner et al., 2010, Merow et al., 2014).

What I like to is to use [1,2] if I cite something and if I want the reader to check a article for more details I would write the name of the first author et al. [5].
So as example: For a more detailed analysis on the algorithm behind deep learning, I would recommend Smith et al. [x] detailed analysis on this topic...
Something like this.


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Qualifications to be computer science undergrad TA?
so I've applied to be a teaching assistant for System Fundamentals (undergrad course) and am meeting with a Professor tomorrow.
I did well in the class, but I'm not sure how "smart" one has to be in order to be a teaching assistant. I'm not the geeky and super-smart type that knows computers/programming in and out. I suppose you could say I'm "textbook smart," having studied a lot, but I can't solve problems on command.
My question is, how much above the students' knowledge of the subject should I have in order to be an adequate TA? Insights/experiences on anything related is appreciated. Thanks.

It is better to ask the professor tomorrow than to ask us.

I just want to know if there are other CSE TA's here who can share something.

Parts of the answer to your question vary wildly based on your university, and some are universal.
For the first kind, some universities/departments exclusively offer TAships to graduate students. In my university, the minimum requirement to apply in the CS department is to have completed the course.
As for the second kind, there's a kind of truism in teaching: to teach someone, you only need know more than them. So, really you just need to know what's being taught in that course well. Sure some curious students might ask beyond that, and if you don't know the answers to more advanced questions, that's perfectly OK - you're not a prof, you're there to help them understand the material in that course. Tell them what you know then direct them to where they can learn more.
Of course knowledge isn't enough to be a good TA, teaching is it's whole other science. To be able to explain things in basic terms to novices in a subject is an extremely underrated and rare skill. If you're gonna be a TA, you should work on this and things of this nature.
Overall, don't fret about if you have sufficient knowledge to be a TA - if they accept you, you can rest assured they won't hire someone who doesn't have the sufficient mastery of the subject. That only happens when they're forced to give grad students TA positions :)

+1 for nicely expressed practical advice, especially "Tell them what you know then direct them to where they can learn more".

Well it depends on your institution. But at mine the minimum requirement is to be a third year. When multiple students have applied, graduate students are prioritized firstly, and then the students course and grade history secondarily.  When there is only one applicant for a role the bar isn't set particularly high to take them on.


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I emailed the professor a research idea, he responded: "Just go ahead". Is this an ok?
I'm an undergraduate in CSE doing research this summer under the guidance of a professor. After an initial repeating of a previous experiment, I've been reading relevant research papers for three weeks. The program ends on August 3rd, so I have less than a month left. The professor hasn't said anything to me these past three weeks, and I don't really know what to do since this is my first time. He is rather busy.
On Friday (3 days ago), I emailed him some general ideas of a research direction (very informal, I don't think it was really a research topic proposal), and he responded: "Your ideas make lots of sense. Just go ahead". Is this an "ok"? I feel like he's upset (because of the word "just"), but I might be overthinking. Sorry kind of a stupid question, but this means I am free to continue (and that) he's not upset?
Thank you

The answer of JPDias seems right on the money. I wouldn't read anything into "just". Just do it. ;-)

Also http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd072508s.gif

You are probably overthinking it.  I would send the same response if the topic/idea is sufficient to teach you research, if that is the intention.  Also, he/she might think of your project as 'low priority' given other commitments; e.g., I'm required to supervise undergraduate students which I cannot pick and choose.  Most of the time nothing useful comes out of these projects.  So I tend not to place too much time on them.  This means any topic that is 'reasonable' and not too hard for an undergraduate is 'ok'.

Related-almost-duplicate: Why do academics frequently write very short email replies?

Which discipline? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSE

So, short answer, that's a yes. However, I think that he wants you to start exploring those ideas and get back to him with more content beyond of what you extract from those papers. Some proof-of-concept or similar.

I had mentioned a method+details with an objective and purpose based on many different papers I read. But I didn't specify algorithms or anything (like which classifier we would use). It should be ok for me to update him weekly(?) right? I will email a more formal outline next time. Thank you for the reply :)

Don't just outline, actually do implement something and report your progress: what you implemented, what were the difficulties, what you learned, and what results you have so far.

@chy00, that depends very much on the professor, her workload, and how much advance you are able to show each time. Personally I'd expect to see you (sort of a "I'm still alive" greeting) say each fortnight, perhaps sit down occasionally for a half hour or so to see how it is going or if you hit a snag or need to request extra resources.


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How do I pivot from a collaboration with some professors on a project I am not particularly invested in to one lying more in my area of interest?
I am a graduate student who is currently working on a project with another student and some professors which will soon lead to the publication of a paper with my name on it. As someone who would like to become an academic, I am obviously very happy about both the opportunity and the paper.
Unfortunately, these professors' area of interest, and the topic of the project, are not something I want to specialize in long-term. While I was happy to work on the project, I would like to somehow pivot to working on projects with other professors in the same department whose areas of interest are more interesting to me.
If possible, I would like to know what other professors in the department are working on and if they are interested in collaborators. If not, I'm interested in what one specific professor is working on since his area of expertise is what I am interested in. We spoke last on friendly terms, but this was more than a year ago, and I do not know what projects he is working on, or if he is looking for collaborators. I am currently studying at a different university and cannot talk to any of them in person.
Is there a way to ask the professors I am collaborating with about who else in their department is looking for collaborators on a project without coming across as rude, ungrateful, or as if I do not value their collaboration, and ideally without jeopardizing my position on future projects with them in the event that I still have time to do so or do not find a project I am more interested in to collaborate on? I have no complaints about working with them: this question is purely a matter of my personal interests.

No need to pivot. Let me tell you something I've learned as a PhD student: it's a big world out there. You can collaborate with anybody you want to! As often, or as little, as you'd like. So, if you've done a paper with a few people who you liked working with, and it'll soon be published, then great! My hat's off to you. But, why need to ask permission to work with others? If there's somebody in your department or elsewhere, who you feel like you'd work better off with, then just reach out to them. Pitch an idea for a paper to them.
Academia is partly about being able to study questions that interest you, and you don't need to burn bridges or ask anyone else for permission  to do just that. So, ask around. You'll form more opportunities like that, trust me.

Well, depending on who is paying your salary/stipend - they usually want work done on the project(s) supporting you.

Yeah it's field and context dependent I imagine. In my experience at least, my advisor doesn't really hold my hand very much, and I like it like that. He lets me work on what I want to work on, and we collaborate on papers together, but nobody's ever forbade me from collaborating with anyone else. In other words, no one "project" that supports me, I make my own projects in my field and assist on some my advisor works on, but my experience may not be the rule.


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"Inaccurate Content in Literary Analysis"
I've received a couple of literary analyses that quotes dialogue and refers to events in the short story that literally doesn't occur. How does one evaluate such submissions?

What, are you teaching them?

Are they generated by an AI bot like ChatGPT? In any case, it seems like these analyses are answers to a question you didn't ask, and so should result in a poor grade.

What are the relevant policies in your syllabus?

Related: Is it plagiarism to reference a fictitious source?