text:
How can I pass my PhD thesis defense when nothing has been successful?
For reasons I had very little influence on, most of the projects I participated in over the course of my PhD did not produce reasonable results. I managed to get involved in small side projects and publish at least something, but those are not very novel in itself and not "on the edge of knowledge".
The edge of knowledge I pushed is what could go wrong when you are a lone representative of a "service science" in a collaboration, who is asked for input in the beginning, but later overthrown. And in the end, we look at the data together and establish we can't do what we wanted with it. And part of the problem is in fact that my input was not that valued by decision makers.
This take-home message is more of a meta-topic and for sure not the main result of my thesis though.
In my thesis, I will (with a heavy heart) go through those projects and discuss them. Discuss what happened, what we did and what we should have done and could have done. This writing process is a very hard piece of work to do and is taking a toll on me right now. But I am doing it and trying to detach myself from the thoughts of how these failures could end up killing my dreams of an academic career.
In my defense, I am supposed to paint a picture-perfect representation of at least one major project. I don't have any options for this. I got caught in doing small "services" to help my collaborators and starting new projects ("we will do better this time") which always ran into a roadblock (mostly before I even got significantly involved).
I do not want to whine about science in my defense. I do not want to explain what went wrong, to the people who did it sitting in the room with a plan to cheer me through my presentation. But what can I do?
People usually find one "example" of what they did that worked out well and then "blow this up" to be the main point of their defense, while it might only be a small part of the work they did over the years. But I cannot find a single interesting topic with nice results. They are either trivial or failed.
Has anybody done a "fully failed" PhD defense ... and passed? How would one do this?

establish we can't do what we wanted with it — That is a positive result, not failure!

They are either trivial or failed. - If this is true, why does your advisor think you are ready to graduate?

@Kimball Because he does not see them as failed... much like JeffE. They are not "failed for all intents and purposes" and there is not nothing learned from them. The problem is more that it is fairly uncomfortable to have a defense talking only about problems you found. I don't want to be seen as the "one who criticizes research because she couldn't get results".

@skymningen I don't know your research, or your results. But try to be very clear in your own mind about the distinction between useful negative results, and "nothing learned" faliures. Remember that almost any negative result is useful, even if just in preventing somebody else from spending time on trying the same thing.

Also, "I am supposed to paint a picture-perfect representation of at least one major project": NO project is perfect, and if a PhD candidate claimed that their project was perfect - that nothing had gone wrong, and nothing could be improved in hindsight - some exaiminers might be surprised!

The specifics here are certainly best discussed with your advisor. They should know about your discipline, and how to frame results in a way that is suitable for the community.

Has anybody done a "fully failed" PhD defense ... and passed? How would one do this?

For me, it does not sound at all like you "failed" in your PhD. A PhD is a research project, not a product. Ultimately, you (and your committee) should not evaluate your results based on whether they ended up being useful, but based on whether you had a reasonable thesis and a thorough scientific study of this thesis.
That is, if you proposed a novel approach, collected reasonable data, and thoroughly validated your initial thesis, your research was successful, independently of whether this approach then ended up being used in the larger project context. Sure, it would be nice to be able to say that your approach has then helped these other people to do A, B, C, and D, but the real world does not always work like that.
To me, it is mainly a question of mindset. If you yourself consider your PhD "failed" you will have a hard time selling it to a committee. You need to embrace the idea that you did good research, and not measure the success of your own work on factors outside of your control. In that sense, you should defend what you did and why. You can, and maybe should, discuss why it ended up not being used if there are interesting lessons learned, but stay away from political or interpersonal arguments (these can indeed sound whiney). Stay positive and focus on what you did, not on how much other people then liked the results.

I do not consider my PhD failed and I am currently doing well with writing (only problem there is my broken heart as some of those projects I used to be passionate for). Maybe I should just bring up my ideas on how to do it better for each example where something went wrong, without specifying that I did mention those before it went wrong, just making clear that I know how to do better?

The short answer is yes and it is jokingly referred to a "PhD for Effort".  More importantly is why it is ok.
Having projects fail teaches you what a bad project looks like
A big part of the reason a PhD helps you grow as a scientist is because in a PhD allows you to fail.  I am fond of saying "getting a PhD means you have learned how to fail productively".  In a company where they lose money when your experiments don't work, someone will come along and stop you if you are heading down an unproductive path.  That makes the projects more likely to succeed, but it means you never had to figure out where things were going wrong.  By banging you head against the wall for the last few years you have learned what a bad project looks like so in the future you will know when to cut the cord.
You may have actually failed because you are better
There are a ton of papers out there with unreproduceable results.  It has become a big problem for a lot of the top journals.  Sometimes this is due to chance, but at least some of it is due to things like unintentional p-hacking.  It is possible at least some of your projects went wrong because you had better experimental design or because you did a better job of analyzing your data.  If you could only get a PhD for positive results it would be discouraging good scientific practices.
Projects always look less impressive to the person doing them
You have been staring at your work for years.  You know all the ins and outs and all the details.  Of course nothing looks novel or interesting to you anymore, you know every result like the back of your hand.  Try stepping away from it for a little while or getting some fresh eyes on the results.  If that doesn't work, try explaining what you did to to a little kid.  It is easy for things to feel small when you are explaining the details of the experiment, but when you have to simplify things down to the bigger themes you realize how much it ties in to your field.  Some of the best defenses I have gone to were basically just a set of marginally related projects tied together with a good story.
Big picture summary
Even if you didn't get the results you wanted, you became a better scientist.  That is why getting a PhD is part of your "education".  Instead of being disappointed in the results, step back and let yourself get excited.  With fresh eyes, you may realize you have more than you think.

Some of them definitely are unpublished because we decided not to fall into the trap of shady analysis, cherry-picking results or the likes. One is so far not published because I personally stated that I would not be okay with following a specific idea that could lead to (statistically very weak) results from rather bad input data because I consider the method to obtain this fraud or at least deception.

@skymningen Good for you; it sounds like the second section definitely applies. If you really feel like you can't pull together a story out of the results you got (which you probably can) focus on your good data analysis and how it kept you from going down the wrong path and led you to the less flashy but objectively more accurate conclusion. No professor is going to feel comfortable rejecting a candidate for good scientific practices and they shouldn't because it sound like you learned exactly what you were supposed to from your PhD.

@skymningen Also if you want to publish some of those well executed negative results, check out PLoS One.  The journal explicitly has no impact factor requirements and encourages submission of negative results because they care deeply about the quality of the research as opposed to the impact of the results. I know the journal's founder personally and the type of results you are describing is exactly why he started the journal.

+1 in particular for "Projects always look less impressive to the person doing them"


text:
How to better prepare myself for the application to masters degree programs in the U.S.?
I am an undergraduate student in China. I am currently a junior, majoring at Mathematical Economics and Mathematical Finance. My goal is to apply to a graduate school in the U.S. to learn Finance or Financial Engineering.
What can I do now to better prepare myself for the forthcoming application? How can I leave a good impression on the Admissions Committee? Except for higher GPA, GRE, Toefl, what else also make sense? To win a competition? To publishing papers? Or abundant internship experiences?
I know that the website of each school lists some requirements about the applicants, but those words are too general. Obviously there will be so many applicants who meet those requirements. What else need I show make myself outstanding, making them believe I am a good candidate? I am really puzzled.
Edit
I just want to obtain a master degree.
I also want to know that among GPA, GRE, TOEFL, competitions, publishing papers(if possible), good credible recommendation letters, etc, which ones deserve prior attention. It is unlikely for me to be that "superman".
End of edit

@VahidShirbisheh So I wish to be admitted into one of those top programs, which are worthy of the money.

Just some stories to share, I have two friends in the MFE program of CMU (one from NY campus and another one from Pit. Campus). One is from EE but she has lots of valuable internships (UBS e.g.) on finance. The other one is just like you, mathmatical economics field. Very high GRE score, many internships (although not very famous ones)

@perfectionm1ng Thank you for sharing. The MFE of CMU is exactly what I have been dreaming about. Could you provide more details on the applications and admissions of these two friends of yours?

@scaaahu  I am desperate for more specific and authentic answers, and I will really appreciate it if you help me.

I think this is the best written and most on target "how to get into grad school" question I have seen.

@RenkeCai, please edit your question so it is clear that you want to do a Master's. If so, then the best advice (on top of what you already know like grades, competitions, etc.) is that given by Vahid in the comments -- save money, which may climb to $50K/year if you want to live in New York.

For a master degree, you need to prepare the money.

Aeismail’s answer points out that you need to foster contacts with people who can write letters of recommendation testifying to your potential as a researcher.
This is a definitely a good answer. However, it is hard to get good credible recommendation letters in China. You need to have not only strong academic performance but also strong social background to get them.  The same is true for internship opportunities. When there are more than a hundred applicants competing for 3 internships, the best 3 academic performers with the strongest social background will get them. (The population in China exceeds 1.3 billion).
My answer to the question. How can I leave a good impression on the Admissions Committee? Besides high GPA, GRE and TOEFL scores, (and possibly winning a competition, publishing papers, abundant internship experiences) and good credible recommendation letters, the only thing I can think of is an excellent Statement of Purpose.
Use that statement to convince the admissions committee why you’ll be an excellent student in their school. Why are you interested in finance or financial engineering? What have you learned in undergraduate school? What particular research program in that school you are interested? What do you hope you can learn from that school after you get the master degree from them? What do you plan to do after master degree? Etc.etc. Hopefully, they will be convinced by this statement and then accept you.
This is my 5 cents worth. I sincerely hope experts here who are currently in the admission committees can give us more and effective answers.

Thank you for sharing about SOP. However, some questions like "What do you hope you can learn from that school after you get the master degree from them; What do you plan to do after master degree" really confuse me. In Chinese undergraduate schools we rarely get advice on career plans especially if we want to go abroad.

You also made me come across another question, which I have added to my post.

@RenkeCai You need to figure out what to do and why you want to do them in the future by yourself. No one can help you with that. Don't study something because they are hot (fire in Chinese term). Your future is in your hands. I am afraid I can't help you too much there. You indicate in your user profile you're eager to learn math. If math is what you really like to do, then do math. Don't study financial engineering just because it's hot. Once you figure out why you want to study finance/FE, you'll know how to write your SoP.

As your additional sub-questions, I suggest you to ask another question. GPA, GRE, TOEFL and recommendation letters are all required when applying for admission. If the master program is research oriented, publishing papers is important. If the program is geared toward application in industry, internship is more important. You need to ask another question to get more details, otherwise your question could be closed for too many subquestions (not good fit for stack exchange).

Assuming you are applying to graduate schools for the purpose of obtaining a doctorate, the best thing that you can do to improve your chances is to foster contacts with people who can write letters of recommendation testifying to your potential as a researcher.
Awards and prizes are certainly nice, as are graduate coursework, internships, and other experience. But, ultimately, none of those might provide any insight on your capability to do research. Doing research with members of your faculty (or at other institutions) and getting letters of recommendation from them allows a graduate committee to feel that they're taking less of a risk in admitting you.

Thanks for your attention. But I just want to obtain a master degree. I know those programs are really different from PhD.

You didn't mention that in your question! However, getting good letters of recommendation is still important. The only difference is that they should be tailored toward your potential to be a good master's student in the field you're interested in studying!

One worthwhile strategy (I found when applying to graduate school) is to examine the public profiles of graduate students at the institutions you want to attend.  Graduate students (especially senior ones) often post their CVs online, and it's a good way to get information about what their profile was like when they applied.
Note, however, that it is extremely rare for people to list things like their GRE scores on a CV.  However, many programs list useful aggregate data about their classes (perhaps what you mean by "lists some requirements about the applicants"), but at least in the case of Berkeley/Haas' MFE Program, the information is very specific averages for standardized tests and even work experience/industry prior to entry.  Keep in mind that those are the averages for their class, not the minimums for acceptance, so they're a reasonable target to try and hit.

Since you already know the minimum requirements, I would recommend looking at the references being taught in the top Finance schools in the US. I have a friend who studied Finance in Europe and after coming to the US, he had to start studying another Master's in order to merge his knowledge to what is taught in the top Finance schools in the US.
Then you can write in your CV about the courses you have taken mentioning the references. Online courses, (e.g. from Coursera) are also very helpful for this purpose.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
What is the academic value of a white paper?
I am wondering what constitutes a white paper and what is the academic value of it.
I found some information here but I am more after turning an aspect of a research into a white paper.
Currently, the research is just for internal use. I am hoping the white paper will make it more visible and reach a wider audience.
The other reason is that I can then add it to my CV as a tangible output (if that is possible).
What is a "white paper"?

Some of the things that I have seen white-papers be useful for:

Position papers, manifestos, and other intellectual opinion statements.
Disseminating protocols, techniques, standards proposals, and other things that are useful but "below the threshold" of a normal publication
Seeding discussions with program managers and other potential funders and collaborators.
Date-stamping a piece of work so you can get it out of your queue and move on.  Much better a white paper in an informal repository than a disreputable journal.

Sometimes white papers end up "upgrading" into proposals or publications of various types---sometimes very high impact publications.  Sometimes they even draw a surprising amount of citations.  Mostly, though, they are for the less formal side of scientific life.  A well-regarded white paper sort of statement can change the course of an entire field.
One thing that I think is very important is, for any white paper that you are disseminating publicly, to get it into some archival location.  There are a number of methods for this, from arXiv to standards RFCs to institutional technical report collections.  If do this, it will be much easier for people to cite your white paper, pass it around, and generally disseminate it.  And if it's persistent, you can feel much more comfortable adding it you your C.V...

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


text:
Proper citation for industry resource
Following on from my question here where I develop industry resources under the auspices of my company, I am wondering what would be a suggested citation format that I can include in the publication itself (on the copyright and disclaimer page). This would be a further claim on my authorship of these resources.
An example of a resource is "Ten Key Considerations when Terminating Employees". The resource is available in hardcopy and electronically. My company name and logo appear on the first page. My company can be considered the publisher of this resource.

I mostly refer to industry resources as technical reports, and as I use BibTeX, I use the @techreport citation for that. If they're simply websites, I use @misc. Many citation styles will produce different results in how the reference is formatted, but I can think of the following example (that combines both the report and website, but you could leave the website out if that's not wanted):
J. Baker, 2014. "Ten Key Considerations when Terminating Employees". Technical report of <Company Name>. From: http://website.com/, accessed <date>.
Instead of technical report it could also be 'whitepaper' or 'brochure' or any other type, if you want to specify this.


text:
Grants: how to acknowledge collaboration, techniques from postdocs or students?
Grants for the NSF/NIH/many other government agencies often only allow people who are in "faculty-level" academic positions to be PIs and co-PIs*. When this is true, what is the best way of acknowledging a postdoc/student's contribution to the grant if they wrote large portions of it or made significant intellectual contributions?  In addition, sometimes a postdoc/student has significant relevant experience that a PI lacks. What is the best way to highlight this, both to credit the postdoc and prevent reviewers from raising this as an issue?  (I'm most interested in NSF here, but NIH/others would also be interesting.)
Possible answers:
 - including the postdoc on the grant as a co-author, but not a co-PI (I believe this is possible for NSF)
 - Highlighting the postdoc's skills in the proposal itself/including postdoc's bio.
 - Adding a "letter of collaboration" from the postdoc. (If, for instance, the postdoc is in a somewhat independent position and can't be listed as personnel.)

(* This of course depends on the agency, the institution, probably even the type of grant.)
This question is essentially the PI-side version of this one: What to do when an advisor takes credit for a grant proposal?

Perhaps this can be generalized to other not-PI-eligible contributors, e.g. students, in addition to postdocs.

Fair enough - edited it. I think this is more common with postdocs, but definitely can happen with grads, too.

Regarding "sometimes a postdoc has significant relevant experience that a PI lacks", I have been referred to by name in (successful) NSF proposals I have co-authored to highlight some expertise I bring to the project, e.g.

ff524, a PhD student whose efforts have contributed to the research component of the project, will also be engaged in X. [insert my impressive background in X here]

or

This interdisciplinary collaboration is facilitated by ff524, a PhD student in Department A who has previously worked with PI X in Department A as well as with PI Y in Department B.

Presumably one could do the same with postdocs.


text:
Should you choose your committee members or should your advisor?
The question of how to choose PhD committee members has already been asked and answered in general terms, but I have the following more specific questions regarding the choice:

Is it more important that your advisor already know your committee members or that you do (e.g., your advisor knows them but you've never met them before vs. you know the member but your advisor doesn't have a strong or pre-existing relationship with them).
Is it better to get someone in your discipline or someone doing more related work (e.g., if you're getting a computer science degree, you ask computer science faculty vs. you're getting a computer science degree but everyone except for your advisor is from the English department)?
Should you pick people who are already invested/interested in you succeeding or is the dissertation process supposed to be a chance for you to win people over to your side?

There are many ways to build PhD committee, which depend on the local system (country, etc.) and your field. But, here are some general principles that should apply broadly. You need to bring a mix of highly competent yet diverse evaluators, with not too much proximity to yourself or your advisor lest it be thought that you are cherry-picking a partial (friendly) jury for your work.
Regarding your questions:

Is it more important that your advisor already know your committee members or that you do

I don't think it's a very important part of the decision-making. Certainly, you don't want the advisor's best friend (or yours!), that could make people think you're scared of unbiased questioning.

Is it better to get someone in your discipline or someone doing more related work

Here's one of the factors that play a very important part, for me, in picking committee members. First, all members need to be able to have a good understanding of your work. However, it is good that not all of them are precisely expert in particular field of expertise. It helps to have people from other (related) fields, because they will bring a different perspective, and give you the opportunity to highlight not only the very technical details of your work but also its significance for other fields.

is the dissertation process supposed to be a chance for you to win people over to your side?

No. It's good to bring people who don't necessarily agree with you on everything, but you should also avoid as committee members anyone overly critical of your approach of things, unless you know them well and they can keep it under control and agree to disagree. Otherwise, you risk that person actually coming to your defense to win you over. I have seen defenses being “derailed” (though all ended well) by a committee member who was overly argumentative, and it wasn't a nice experience for anybody involved.

You first have to check to see what the university rules are for a Ph.D committee. Many universities have rules that limit the number of external members, the number of members not from the department, the number of members that are not "regular faculty" and so on.
Assuming that you've checked all those constraints, then you should definitely discuss this with your advisor, who will have more experience in constructing committees in your area.
Which brings up another issue: community norms. In your field of research, are there customary roles that committee members play ? that's something you need to discuss with your advisor.
Finally, after all of the above, to answer some of your questions:

Should you already know them?

Not necessarily, although that helps with the first approach. It helps if they're familiar with your work even if you don't know them personally.

Should they be doing research related to your dissertation topic?

Not necessarily, but they should have some connection to your work, otherwise they won't be able to provide any kind of useful feedback for you.

Should they be in your discipline?

Definitely, unless your topic is interdisciplinary and you want the input from someone in the other discipline.

Should they be selected more for how much they'll help you get a job?

That's definitely a factor. It's not a critical factor for all members of your committee, but it can be a factor when looking for an external member. Ideally, if you're able to do some research with members of the committee, they can write a letter for you.
Bottom line:

talk to your advisor and discuss all of this with him/her
Different members of the committee can play different roles. The mix is what's important

This answer was very relevant to the original question, which was closed as duplicate. Now that the question was edited, I think this answer should too (or be deleted).

@F'x Let's let Suresh decide whether to edit or delete this answer.

It seems to me that the answers here address the edited questions as well (should you know the committee members, should they work in your area, etc etc)

I disagree slightly with your answer to "Should they be in your discipline?"  Every thesis committee should have at least one member outside the student's subfield, if not outside their department, as a sanity check.  They should be close enough to understand the vocabulary, but far enough away that they don't wear the same blinders as the student and their advisor.

@JeffE that's reasonable.

Should you choose your committee members or should your advisor?

Yes.
Choosing your committee is a collaborative process ideally, and should take place with input from your advisor, but also accounting for your own preferences.
The first thing you should do is check about the constraints on your committee put in place by university rules. This can be quite complex, and will often limit the freedom of choice you have in the selection process - for example, your hypothetical "Degree is in CS, everyone but your advisor is from English" example is simply outright impossible at the institution I got my degree from.

Is it more important that your advisor already know your committee
  members or that you do (e.g., your advisor knows them but you've never
  met them before vs. you know the member but your advisor doesn't have
  a strong or pre-existing relationship with them).

Someone should know your committee members. That can be you, or that can be your advisor, but someone should know if they're likely to be problematic for this particular dissertation (it's a theory dissertation and they hate theory, etc.)

Is it better to get someone in your discipline or someone doing more
  related work (e.g., if you're getting a computer science degree, you
  ask computer science faculty vs. you're getting a computer science
  degree but everyone except for your advisor is from the English
  department)?

The "perfect" committee member is someone in your discipline doing related work. When those people don't exist, you should probably aim for a mix - you want a committee that can go "Yes, this is clearly a project worthy of a degree in $Discipline", but also people who can provide input on the specifics of your project.
Your advisor can probably talk to you about people who "should" be on your committee for various reasons, including political ones ("It will look strange if Y isn't on your committee...")

Should you pick people who are already invested/interested in you
  succeeding or is the dissertation process supposed to be a chance for
  you to win people over to your side?

Your committee should be people already interested in your success - believe me, even people really excited by your work and interested in you moving forward can cause problems. Someone whose an outright skeptic, and might be inclined to just dismiss the whole project? That is not someone you want on your committee. You have the rest of your career to try to win people over to your side after you have your degree.

authors: Константин Пушкарев


text:
Is it normal for collaborator to rerun experiments himself?
So I'm a few months into my PhD. It's built on top of previous work that has not been published. My supervisors, collaborators, and myself are working on to get this published. Now here's where things get a bit weird for me.
I found some problem with the previous work. Discussed the problem with my supervisors and have fixed them. For the publication, I'll need to redo the experiment.
So far I'm not getting a satisfactory result as it's tricky to get right. Not gonna go into why, it's just tricky.
My collaborator has been impatient with the result I'm getting. So now he has decided to rerun the experiment himself and double checking that he's getting the result I'm getting. Turns out it's quite similar. So now he's trying his own idea he has only briefly disclosed to me and one of my supervisor. When asked indirectly why he's doing this, he said he's just trying to understand the experiment better.
I found this disturbing. Why are you repeating my experiment yourself only to come and tell me you found exactly the same problem and result?
What's everyone take on this? I would like others opinions first before I discuss the issue with my supervisors.

I don't see a problem with this.  Maybe your supervisors thought the idea will pan out, and just want to make sure you have not missed anything.  Aren't three heads better than one?

The entire point of scientific testing and publication is to increase the knowledge people have, and to let others test your work for reproducibility. The collaborator is doing both - being able to say "independent reproduction of the experiment obtained similar results, so the authors changed ... and hence were able to ..." in the paper is a useful addition. It would only be suspicious if they did not tell you about the retest and alterations.

Like others here, I'm perplexed (and a little disheartened) by the fact that a PhD candidate would view independent replication of their research as "disturbing". Why do you see it that way?

While Nij and Nuclear Wang essentially wrote the most important points here, I would like to add that I, personally, would be very satisfied if someone rerun my experiment and got exactly the same result.

I think it is valid to reproduce several times unless https://xkcd.com/882/ ? :)

@ViktorMellgren: I don't get your comment. That comic shows that using a loose confidence interval sufficiently many times will likely result in fluke results. So it is valid and necessary to reproduce several times, which would reduce the likelihood of fluke results being taken for granted.

@user21820, exactly, I just thought it sounded like it. "not getting a satisfactory result as it's tricky to get right" i.e. doing it until the results shows what the author wants.

Isn’t running an independent experiment the way science is tested, and obtaining similar result the ultimate validation of the scientific outcome?

@ViktorMellgren: Ahh that's what you meant. Yep I fully agree!

I think one thing isn't clear. Is your collaborator getting the same UNSATISFACTORY results that you are getting? Independent reproduction of unsatisfactory results can just as meaningful as reproduction of satisfactory results. I would be concerned that what you consider satisfactory may not be reproducible because it is the result of random errors, and not because "it's tricky".

"I'm not getting a satisfactory result". So you have a problem with the paper. Oh no, he is trying to help fix the not yet working approach? Maybe he is even trying to understand why, to be able to eventually propose a solution to fix the paper? Sounds really bad to me, not.

i cannot see any probative reason to object to what your collaborator is doing.  i think that if he/she sees you more of a collaborator and less a competitor, he/she would be more open and explicit with you about what they are doing and how that might get to a "satisfactory result" with the subject matter of the research.  maybe if they shared more, you might be able to contribute more.  don't be too much in love with your own theory or your own ideas.  prefer the theory/idea that works best in experiment.

It should not be disturbing as replication is at the core. In practice it can be disturbing.  In a perfect scenario this would go smoothly or even naturally and your question would not even arise.

I don't find that behavior strange at all. If I want to understand problems with algorithms (I don't do experiments with anything other than algorithms) I need to run them by myself and sometimes even implement the method from scratch. It's not that I do not trust other people's code, but if I want to understand all the mechanisms well, it's much easier to get a grip on it when I've done it myself.
The other way round, I do not have any objections if a coauthor of mine re-implements a method I already provided just to see how it works. On the contrary: Usually I benefit from this in one way or another, e.g. by learning new tricks or getting rid of bad programming style…

I can not upvote this enough as rewriting algorithms either by myself or co-authors is such an important aspect of producing an 'as good as possible' algorithm for the final manuscript/paper/study.

When I was a graduate student, I was working together with another student who implemented a rather complicated numerical simulation. To understand it better, and to do some additional experiments with this model, I decided to re-implement it myself.  I was not able to get the same results as the other student.  After a thorough review of my code, I found a minor mistake, and corrected it, but I still wasn't able to reproduce the other student's results.
In the end it turned out that the other student also had multiple mistakes.  We fixed them, and finally everything matched up.
We had two independent implementations of the model we were studying, and finally they were giving the same result.  Only at this point was I fully confident that our results were correct.
Double-checking makes a lot of sense. Mistakes happen, quite frequently. I would never trust a single result, either mine or someone else's, nearly as much as an independently verified experiment.

I have also worked in an environment where it was frowned upon to double check a coworker's work, claiming that "it is a waste of time". In reality, people were afraid that their work would be overtaken or stolen, and they were withholding data in order to prevent others from checking their result. In the end, it turned out that some results I was relying on were plainly wrong, which resulted in even more waste of time in the end.  My advice is to try to avoid creating a toxic environment full of jealousy, like the one I experienced.  Double checking is always a good thing.

In the last years there have been quite a few papers where experiments couldn't be reproduced later. Some people wouldn't want you to try to reproduce their experiments because they know they can't be reproduced.

Great answer, and this is exactly why we shall be a bit disturbed by papers using Wolfram software, given that they claim something like "implementation is not important, you just want to know the result".

I don't see any problem with your collaborators wanting to be sure of things. I also don't work in the experimental sciences but any time one of my collaborators emails me a page of mathematics, the first thing I do is check it line by line to make sure it's really true, and the second thing I do is try to improve it.
It sounds like there's a bit of a communication problem between you and your collaborator. Also, if your collaborator is an established researcher, they might be being a little impatient with you and forgetting that, as a brand new PhD student, it's going to take you a little longer to get things sorted out.
Talk to your advisor, as always.  If you're upset by what your collaborator has done, tell your advisor about it. They'll either explain that things are OK, or agree with you and talk to your collaborator about it.

Is it normal for collaborator to rerun experiments himself?

Not only is it normal, I'd say it is highly recommended if you are able to do so. If not, either be extremely careful about verifying the vailidity of your coauthor's experimental procedure or qualify the experimental results' validity.
I'd also recommend that you endeavour to make your own experiments easily reproducible, so that your coauthors (and paper audience) can repeat them.

I am glad that your collaborator is coming up with the same results.
Are you concerned that your collaborator is attempting to take your ideas and add his own ideas in order to create a new derivative work?  In the setting you describe this sounds like it might be difficult for him to accomplish.
On the other hand, many of the people that I have worked with are too lazy to run experiments independently.  I might be a little bit concerned in your position.
My advice is to make sure that everyone you are working with are aware of his work, try to keep everything in the open so that it is harder to work against you, and to get published as quickly as you can, without sacrificing quality of course.

You took the words out of my mouth. He did not make his intention clear and was not sharing results with us unless i ask him to. Hence I was suspicious why would he do that.

You want as many people as possible tackling this problem: you, your collaborator, your advisor. If there's a potential problem with the result/experiment/paper you want to know all about it and fix it before you publish and have folks either correct you or rely on something that turns out not quite right years later.
You want those people working together (to help each other) and separately (so group-think doesn't shut out ideas(.

Well, scientific experiments are always subject to being repeated and cross-checked by others, so that in itself is not a problem. That's how science works. As for the etiquette of a "collaborator" re-running and double-checking your results, I guess that that all depends on the details. You didn't give much information on this collaborator. Who is he or she and does he or she have a legitimate and valid interest in seeing the experiment properly completed in a timely manner? If, for example, he or she is to be a co-author on a paper based on the experiment, perhaps that person has a legitimate interest in seeing the experimental problem resolved quickly. If that's the case, then I don't see any black-or-white answer to the problem. May be something that you, the person, and a supervisor will all have to iron out. Finally, if the person is pitching in to investigate the experimental problem, it may be a bit damaging to your ego but you should also realize that that person may be able to help in identifying the problem so that you can go on and graduate.

I would consider it unusual in many circumstances, you generally should trust your collaborators enough that you don't need to redo their experiments. It can be very useful to perform independent experiments to get higher confidence in the results, but that would be something that you discuss prior to doing the experiments.
In your case there is an important aspect that changes this. Your experiments aren't working correctly yet. Curiosity about this particular problem with the experiments is a plausible explanation for trying to reproduce your results. And from what I read, they're trying to find a way to fix this issue, and reproducing your results would be the logical first step for that.
You should consider this as useful information, as an independent reproduction also excludes a lot of sources for errors as your equipment, material and people are likely different. So this could help you to find the issue with your experiment quicker.
There is a communication issue here, and as already said in another answer, you should involve your supervisor to resolve that.

Agreed. Actually, it would be useful to know if the collaborator is in a different university. If they were in the same university, it would probably be better to get the experiment working by going to the student's lab and working together. But, if they're in a different city, that doesn't work so well and they could only really do it on their own.

Actually it depends a lot on the domain. If it is computer science, and experimentation means to run some software, it is very common (and should be expected) to redo the experimentation. If it was biology, and experimentation requires a complex & costly apparatus, things are different (but I don't know how)

@BasileStarynkevitch My point of view is from a biological/chemical domain, and the way the question is written does read more like experiments in a lab than running code on a computer to me, but it is not actually stated unambiguously in which domain the asker is working.


text:
I am non-tenured and have been offered a tenure-track position at my current university, but I don't want to stay here long term. What should I do?
I work at a midwestern university in a very small department in a specialised field in the Humanities. I've been working here as a non-tenure track assistant professor, and have been offered a TT position.
I genuinely dislike the place I live in, not for aesthetic or social reasons, but because I have experienced racial harassment fairly consistently since last year (the area is extremely conservative, and does not look kindly on difference of any kind. I'm brown, female and immigrant). It got so bad I had to file a police report against someone who had been harassing me at my apartment. That's not the only instance, though. I've been abused on the streets and told to 'Go back home where I come from, you b*&T*h' while out running. Among other things.
I was offered an extension on my non-TT contract a while back and would give anything to go back to the non-TT track with the possibility of leaving for another TT position outside the university after an undoubtedly difficult application season or two.
I'm happy to continue working here, as I like teaching here, but I can't do this for another 20 years, which is what my department head talks about when he refers to the tenure track. I don't think I can live or work here for that long, no matter how nice it is to be wanted in the department. I've tried approaching him with a long list of the encounters I've had here, and he seems genuinely nice, but also said that there is nothing he can do, which I understand. Most faculty I discuss this with keep telling me to 'forget the racism, it's just a few idiots'. I can't be quite that sanguine about it. They don't seem to understand the psychological effects of living in a place where you run the risk of harassment every time you step out of the house.
And yes, I get that the market is bad. By dint and design, however, I work on a rather niche subject which IS rather marketable.
I am rather anxious about taking this offer, and was wondering what to do. Any tips or advice would be much appreciated.

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

Related: Just got tenured and promoted, but need to move for family reasons, The etiquette of leaving a faculty position, Proper “notice period” for resigning a tenure track position?, plus probably several others I can't find, on moving on to other institutions after getting a tenure-track job.

There's nothing to prevent you from accepting the TT position (which presumably carries better pay and more prestige) while still pursuing positions elsewhere.  Indeed, having a tenure-track position may improve your chances of getting an offer outside, or may increase the leverage you have to bargain with if offered something elsewhere.  And there is absolutely nothing wrong with accepting the TT job and then leaving (after a year) for another position.  Your department head might not be happy, but this kind of thing is not viewed negatively by the academic culture at large.
In short, I see no downside for you to accept the tenure-track offer.

Thanks, that does help clarify things. I was worried looking for something might mark me down as flaky. But, thanks.

Isnt rule that if you refuse an offer you are fired?

Im not sure what you mean, SSimon. David recommended taking the job offer and going back on the market. Neither the answer nor my comment mentioned refusing an offer. And yes, Im sure in most places that is the case, generally speaking.

In my field, and I’m not sure how universal this is, accepting a position is only a firm one-year commitment on your end.  That is if you accept the position you shouldn’t be still looking this application cycle because you’ve committed to teach next year, but you’re free to find another job the next cycle if you want.

When you leave your tenured position, perhaps also mention that it is due to the hostile environment. It's important that people know that among other things, the local racism makes it hard to attract and keep excellent scientists (and probably other excellent workers).

I agree with this answer overall, but want to note that it might not be entirely so simple.   If the chair or other faculty probe your personal commitment to staying, that could be a little bit uncomfortable.  I don't believe that you should be penalized in your career because of the environment outside of the department or university, however.

I completely disagree of the blanket statement there are no downsides "at large". The asker is in the humanities, but in the sciences and engineering, a TT position comes with startup money to establish a lab. Spending the money and leaving before the department can reasonably recover its costs will burn a lot of bridges, and word will get around to future departments.

I would not just accept that the tenure track position carries better pay and more prestige.  Industry is infamous for "promoting people to management" to get out of paying overtime.  Tenure track does not provide job protection but in fact specifies that the tenure track faculty must be fired within a couple of years absent a successful tenure application.  Prestigious schools have a low tenure acceptance rate and a cynical mid-tier school might try to game their statistics to look more prestigious by converting all their non-tenure track faculty to tenure track and then denying them tenure.

Tenure-track is a commitment from the school to you that in sixish years you will be fairly evaluated and if you are found to match the standards set out be awarded tenure.  The candidate is not promising their career to the school, they are only promising one year.  That said one shouldn’t apply for jobs unnecessarily and one might need to take care in putting out feelers in a way that won’t make your colleagues upset.  But the bottom line is that the school isn’t being promised that if it’s up to standards the candidate will never leave, the school is making the promise to the candidate.

@henning The hostile outside of university environment.  People who talk about hostile work environments can be treated as problem employees; people who say that people outside of work made the location unsustainable.  Be ready to deal with "well, there are racists here too" problem where someone doesn't hire you because they figure you won't want to stay there either (on the other hand, that could be a big plus!)

An answer to the general question (the one in your title):
Tenure track positions should be the default - they essentially mean you don't get arbitrarily fired. So, you've just been offered a regular position. Take it. If you later decide you want to leave, then you'll leave.
Adding the specific information about racism and harassment:
Well, one option you could consider is actively fighting against racism - in the university and in the community. As a TT you'll be in a better position to do this, as well as to promote and support others - students, graduate researchers, teachers (in the university) and public figures / community organizers (outside the university) when they do the same or when they're targeted. Now, I realize not everyone can/wants to shoulder this burden, so it's perfectly^H^H^H^H^H^H somewhat understandable if you decide not to. In that case - still, take the job. Look for another position on the side, and if one comes up - then you'll have a proper decision to make among two concrete alternatives.

I've been abused on the streets I am not sure the university is the place the OP encountered racism. And I am not sure you had lived in that kind of place before. I am a Chinese male. I used to live in the deep south of the US. I had encountered numerous similar incidents the OP did. May I tell you  it's not that easy to live in that kind of place. At least, I couldn't. This is why I left the US.

@scaaahu: 1. Edited my answer accordingly. 2. Indeed, I've not lived there, which is why I didn't claim that was the right thing to do. But - there are plenty of non-white people for whom it's not so easy to just go elsewhere, and they will have to stay and bear it... so it's at least a valid option.

Good points, @einpoklum, I especially mean the one about actively fighting racism. I am active on campus in diversity initiatives, and teach and train on diversity. Increasingly, though, Im realising that some deep-rooted ideas will be resistant to our efforts on campus. And another faculty of color on campus was doxxed for their anti-racism work and needed police protection for a few weeks. All things considered, it seems a tense time to be in this part of the world, and not look and talk a particular way.

+1 for mentioning "Well, one option you could consider is actively fighting against racism - in the university and in the community". Obviously this is a difficult path, and no-one would criticise the OP for deciding not to go down that path, but it is a good option to suggest.

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


text:
Is it okay to give link of my recent paper in the cover letter for a postdoc application?
So I am applying for a postdoc position and I happen to be working on a problem that is quite closely related to PI's interests. I don't just mean that we share the same field/subfield (which we do anyway) but rather the problem that I worked out is an advancement of what he (and some other people) is doing. This makes my case particularly strong since he wants to work on related questions.
Now, I recently uploaded a preprint of my this work and I was thinking that if I highlight this paper in the cover letter for the application, my application would stand out. Including a direct link to the preprint sounds like an option to me. However, I have never seen a cover letter with links to papers. Is this possible and acceptable?

I do this in my research statement.

Can you explain why you think this might be impossible or unacceptable?

While I've only been on the applicant side of things, I expect that it would be fine to include a link. Different PIs will react differently, of course, but it seems unlikely to ruin your application. Just make it clear from typesetting that it is a link. Given that the PI might only look at the printed version you should probably make the link text self-explanatory as well, e.g. using an arXiv identifier. However, depending on the method of submission you might be able to just attach the preprint of interest to your application. I expect that this is the ideal approach, when possible.
As support for using links, see this Nature Jobs blog post

When you’re reading an article online you’ll often find links to relevant content that is outside the article. This technique can be used in your cover letter too. Use links to information such as your research lab website, or your online portfolio and research papers. You can even link to specific papers that have been highly cited or extra-curricular projects you’ve been a part of. Let the employer know that there is so much more to you that what appears on that flat piece of paper!

If you describe why your recent research work is significant and relevant to your application, and if it's significant to actually look at the paper itself, then why not? As someone who reads an application I'd find it quite reasonable.
On the other hand, I've set the key sentence in boldface. If it's not obviously important to go look at the paper itself, then providing the link seems weird at best, or vain at worst.
Caveat: I'm not tenured and don't have experience reading cover letters, only writing a few of them.


text:
PhD without compulsory publications hurting profile
At the University of Cambridge, PhD students are not required to publish papers in order to be able to defend a thesis. One consequence of this is that some supervisors, especially in more experimental areas (e.g., some fields of biology), adopt a policy of deferring all publications until after the end of the PhD, to suck up as much of their students' time as possible for lab work.
This has a detrimental effect on the PhD's career: at the end of the PhD, he/she cannot apply to most positions since virtually all of them require publications. So the student must convince the supervisor to leave extra time for publishing during the thesis, and some supervisors are clearly against it.
In such situations, what can the PhD student do? In theory, if there was postdoc funding available for the student immediately after the thesis, this could be allocated for publishing the accumulated results, but this is not the case.
Is there a way to pressure the university to require such publications, to minimize the amount of "paying technician"1 work? How can PhD students change this perverse incentive system?
1At Cambridge, PhD students in such fields end up paying to work (as technicians), instead of being paid to work, which is a huge incentive for supervisors to keep the status quo.

Don't go to Cambridge?

Requiring publications for all students, in order to fix things for some students, seems like a bad idea. (Students in some fields may be able to get academic jobs without any publications; some students may be interested in other kinds of jobs that don't require publications; etc.) Why not try to pressure the department/individual advisors instead?

@Azor-Ahai this is unfortunately something that is not clearly spelled out, so prospective PhD students can't know about it. Also, it is specific to some supervisors/areas, so it's hardly if ever spoken about. Once you've invested 3 years of your life in it, you'll try to find better solutions than just throwing it all away.

@ff524 there have been attempts to persuade said supervisors, but they didn't work. I'm hoping there are other solutions I haven't thought about, hence the question.

@ff524 also, I believe that the default should be to publish during the PhD, but exceptions could be taken into account. This would require such dodgy supervisors to actually justify their deviations. Thus, the default would be to protect the students, but allowing for exceptions when justified.

You might want to detail what those attempts were, and what the results were - some people here might have other suggestions. (This question is phrased sort of like "How I can I solve X by doing Y" - I think it would be better as "How can I solve X", and let people propose Y or other good ways.)

Surely the name Cambridge, your supervisor(s)' good name, and their recommendation letters give you more mileage than someone from a lesser known or lower ranking university with publication(s).

"he/she cannot apply to most positions since virtually all of them require publications": This isn't necessarily a true statement.

"Surely the name Cambridge, your supervisor(s)' good name": maybe the name isn't all that good if they follow this kind of practice.

As a PhD student at Cambridge, I am aware that journal publications aren't required in the sense that it is written explicitly that you must have them to graduate, but my advisor would kick me out immediately if I said I didn't want to publish anything in a journal. You need to speak with your division or department head and argue your case.

@anol: "[T]is is unfortunately something that is not clearly spelled out, so prospective PhD students can't know about it." Is it not common for prospective PhD students to visit and talk to current PhD students?  If current PhD students feel that their careers are being held hostage to their advisors, shouldn't they inform prospective students about this?  If current students really feel that their careers are suffering, shouldn't they consider transferring to another program?  Not always easy, but if you got into Cambridge, you can probably get in somewhere else.

@Prof.SantaClaus Oh god, I hope not. (At least, not if the applicant from the lower-tier university also has strong rec letters.)

Programs do get reputations.
And a program that produces good students who don’t have publications, especially if they are a well known school, will still have good placement rates.
Faculty too can get reputations, positive and negative.
Post-doc and hiring committees take these reputations into account when evaluating applications. If we know a school or a particular faculty member produces (otherwise stellar) students who don’t have publications, we’ll use other criteria to evaluate them.
The same thing goes for faculty who are known to write over the top recommendations and those who write acerbic ones. They all get calibrated in the end.
Where it does hurt you is with industry positions as there, reputations aren’t as well known.

I don't know how you can change institutional norms, but with regard to your own career, I imagine that proving you can  publish might be worth fighting for.  That is, you may not be able to publish multiple papers as a student of this advisor, but is there some way to get a single paper out the door?
It sounds like it's worth having a difficult conversation about.  Something like "Advisor, I really appreciate the training I'm getting in your lab.  I feel confident that I'll be able to [stain my own cells, kill my own rats, etc.] on my own, when I have my own lab.  But I want to learn how to get through the peer review process, too.  Can we work on publishing a paper together, so I can see how you work through the process?  I want to learn from your experience while I have the opportunity."  That's one angle.
Another angle (and I am aware that this is a sort of a "pull yourself up by your bootstraps," "work harder" kind of answer, and you're probably already trying to fit 25 hours into a day), is there some way to minimize the amount of time spent doing technical work?  Even another hour a day might allow you to have a paper (at some stage in the review process) on your CV by the time you are applying for jobs. A paper under review would show that you can publish, and that, with your letters and institution's reputation, might get you where you want to be.


text:
Do I have to implement published algorithms in the same manner as the original source?
If you want to optimize a technique used in a given publication, is it considered necessary to use the same programming language and data sets?

Please don't use chat speak in posting here. I've also removed the parts about k-means and movie data sets, since that's particular to your project and therefore off-topic here.

Not really I thought this is academic and asking about the rule of research...Thank you that looks much better

Well, that kind of obscures things, too, because now you have a question asking about references for k-means, and one asking about the need to use the same programming language. At any rate, the questions about clustering, etc., is probably better suited for Cross Validated, the SE site devoted to statistical analysis.

Necessary for what ends, or as imposed by which set of rules?

You don't need to use the same programming language, but it would be wise to use the same data sets (if available), to check that you get the same results and to compare performance.  Of course, you may want to use additional data sets.

It depends on the goal of your work.
If you want to use the algorithm for something else and just as one piece of the puzzle, you are free to implement it however you want. Especially with popular algorithms you will find that mostly only the very basic idea survives. The algorithm itself changes a lot over time with different improvements of various researchers.
If the algorithm itself is the core of your research, you should definitely keep all the same language and data sets to make your results comparable. If you then for example want to try it out in a different language, you should compare it to the original implementation.

I am going to assume that "optimize" means "improve upon" (otherwise the entire question is meaningless).
Then the question is, what do you want to prove? Is it that your algorithm is better? In this case you would be well advised to stick to the original programming language. If you do not, it will be hard to counter the criticism that your performance improvements are due not to your own hard work, but simply to different efficiencies of the programming languages and/or compilers.
Sometimes the goal of the experiments is, in fact, to show the superiority of one programming language over another, see, e.g., http://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/ijoc.2.2.152. In this case, of course you would be free to use a different programming language.
That you should use the same data set in either case goes without saying.

I don't quite get the point of your second paragraph: even when not changing the language, you could always claim that the new algorithm just happens to be better suited for the optimizations performed by the compiler.

@DCTLib. Sure, but how would you prove that? Besides, this would be a very narrow contribution. I doubt it could be published.

No, I meant the reviewer could claim that. Regardless of whether the new implementation is in a different language or not, the engineering part may have been performed in a better way, and so regardless of whether the new implementation is in the same language, the reviewer may doubt that the new algorithm is intrinsically better.

@DCTLib. Have a look at the reference I linked. I believe the author addressed that, although new language features have made the article dated if not obsolete.

It's not totally clear what is the meaning of the phrase "optimize a technique", thus, it is difficult to tell, especially since it is most likely discipline- and, even, context-dependent. However, regardless of the above, technique, by definition, is independent of programming language (at least, IMHO it should be), so my answer to that part is No.
In regard to data sets, the situation is also rather fuzzy, as that also depends on domain, context and, perhaps, other factors. Nevertheless, I would suggest considering using the same data set (so, my answer to that part is Yes), if possible, along with a rather standard approach of splitting it into two (training and test) or three (training, validation and test - so called "three-way data split") subsets (that is, of course, if you perform relevant data analysis).


text:
What is the purpose of an e-book with random verbatim abstracts pulled from journals?
I just found an abstract of mine, copied from a Journal, in an online book titled "Issues in Ecological Research and Application." It looks like this is a free book to download that just has random abstracts from various ecology journals. However, it appears like it doesn't take every single abstract from these journals. This company appears to also do this for many fields.
Actually, it is a bit stranger than full abstracts, it's basically full abstracts broken up with phrases like "journalists obtained a quote from researchers at University '..."
So my questions are, how did my abstract get in such a book? And what is the purpose of such a book? Abstracts are freely available online everywhere. Back in the print days, I could, perhaps, see the purpose of a library owning such a thing, but I can't quite understand what this is used for. Also is this even legal and should I be concerned about such things?

Well, it sounds like it's worth every penny that you paid for it.

I don't know if it's legal (it could depend on what counts as fair use, for example), but I wouldn't be concerned.  I don't see any likelihood that this will harm you.
It's possible that they asked the journal for permission to reprint the abstract, but I'd guess they just grabbed it from the web.  The "journalists obtained a quote" stuff may be intended to make it look like a press release or news article, rather than a reprinted abstract.  One positive side effect is that this makes it clear that the publisher is quoting you describing your work, rather than that you chose to publish an abstract in this venue.
I don't know why the publisher would compile these volumes.  They have no academic value whatsoever, but it's easy to speculate about motives:

If these volumes are assembled by programs scraping the web, then the publisher only needs to sell a handful of them to make a profit.  With thousands of volumes available, they can presumably find a few suckers who will pay for one, or perhaps even careless librarians they can sell subscriptions to.
Maybe the volumes are used for content farming, to try to mimic genuine content and thereby attract web searchers (so the publisher can sell ads or otherwise exploit these visits).
They might also be used to create the illusion of academic respectability for the publisher, by creating a big catalog full of books that look reasonable at first glance (but not at second glance).
It could be someone who is genuinely trying to perform a useful service and simply doesn't recognize how useless this is.

If this bothers you, you could bring it to the attention of your publisher.  If they didn't authorize the use of the abstract, then they'll decide whether they can or should do anything about it.

But it claims to be a free download here.  I think it's got more to do with your points 2&3 than 1 - perhaps on the way to trying for some gain.

Looking at their sites and related content, it looks like #1 and #4: they appear to run a system that creates algorithmically-generated news digests, and are now applying it to academic publishing as well.


text:
Removing unreal/gift co-authors previously added because of academic bullying
Someone under my pastoral care asked me the following, wishing to remain anonymous: I had published several papers with my so-called supervisors before, during my PhD, both of whom never actually contributed a single word/idea/method/anything of value or even read or edited those papers; nor would they have been capable of contributing a single word in the first place. As a PhD student I was implicitly coerced to include their names as gifts as honorary co-authors or else I would not have received any institutional support (namely residence permit and contracts).
Now I have come of age and emancipated myself from that abusive relationship and become an academic myself. I badly want to remove these unreal authors' names from my publications to end this history of abuse and set an example for fighting against academic bullying and harassment!
How would you suggest someone do this!? I am aware of similar questions such as this one but none of them exactly cover the case of the unfortunately very common 'extorted gift authorship' phenomenon.

What field does this refer to? Standards vary. Math is very different from big science fields.

@Buffy: This is an interdisciplinary domain involving math, computer science, and a domain-specific area of work generally called the "built environment"; so yes, it is not medicine or pharmacology so this type of fraud is just a supposedly innocent type of fraud that is not supposed to harm anyone and so it is very common in this field.

Frame challenge: if your goal is to correct an abusive history and to lobby against this sort of academic arrangement, you can accomplish that by describing these past circumstances publicly and possibly repeatedly. Literally removing their names from the publications is a different goal (and an understandable one), but given how taxing and unlikely it will be (as Wolfgang Bangerth describes in their answer), you might consider this alternate route to your stated goals.

I upvoted, because it seems a relevant question to me. But I advice to follow Wolfgang's and Buffy's answers.

Don't seek vengeance, or try to change history. It's totally sufficient to help make sure it doesn't repeat itself.

Water under the bridge. Move on.

Is there anything else to the story than being implicitly coerced into including some authors in your paper that didn't actually contribute? If not, it would be greatly exaggerated, and quite disrespectful to anyone who has been abused or bullied, to call that a "history of abuse", an "abusive relationship", "bullying" and "harassment". Contributing to fraud and aiding those abusing the publishing process (but not abusing you) simply because you believe this to be the best/only way to get published would be none of the above things.

@NotThatGuy: do you really think a foreign PhD student on a temporary visa who is underpaid has the power to say no to any indecent proposal, whether academic abuse or other forms of abuse? I think I have to have made the case abundantly clear (and I would expect it to be clear to a fair observer) that the victim of the abuse is not to blame. A person of high status takes advantage of the disadvantages of those lower in the pecking order. What else needs to be explained? I suppose that is a familiar story that is generally referred to as abuse of power.

@FatherGeppeto Whether or not someone has "the power to say no" may be an important part of whether or not something is abuse, but it's not the only criteria. Otherwise one could argue that being "coerced" into wearing pants is also abuse. We all do things to fit in, that we may not have wanted to do in our ideal world. Which is not to say we shouldn't challenge those things, but certainly there's more to something being abusive than that. And I also didn't say they are "to blame", but rather merely that it doesn't seem like it should fall within a reasonable definition of "abuse".

This will be an unsatisfactory answer, but my suggestion is to focus on the future rather than the past.
To do what you want to do is going to be an endless task where people will be reluctant to do what you suggest from beginning to end, with no guarantee that it will actually happen, and generating ill will all around. Fundamentally, publishers will not want to do what you want because they have published a paper as is under the assumption that authorship was legitimate. To change that after the fact will require proof that authorship was fraudulent. I can only imagine that your co-authors will not be willing to sign corresponding legal affidavits so the question becomes: How will you provide this kind of proof? The point being that publishers will want you to prove that these other people shouldn't have been authors, rather than them to prove that they deserve authorship.
It is probably easy to see that this will not be an easy process, will require millions of emails to be written and read, possibly lawyers, and a process at the end of which everyone is aggravated by the amount of time and money lost. Whether you can actually succeed with the quest remains questionable, but for sure everyone (editors, your illegitimate co-authors, the legitimate co-authors that will be dragged into the process, university administrators who might have to deal with this) is going to be unhappy and you will have a dozen or two well-meaning colleagues and friends less than you had before.
So I get why you want to do it, but my advice is to not do it anyway because the costs in terms of money, time, and friendships are going to be too high. Rather, my suggestion is to focus on what you can achieve: Be a role model, and set ethical standards for those around, going forward in your interaction with your colleagues and students. That is a worthwhile use of time and energy, and it will win you friends.

I hope that the OP does not find your excellent answer to be unsatisfactory. To hear from experienced academics like you that it is good practice to "forget the negative past and look forward to a positive future" should be an encouragement to peacefully move forward.

This might be the right action for any individual actor, but hurt 'the academic world' as a whole. Apologies for the comparison, but this reminds me very strongly of rape allegations, where I know someone personally who didn't speak out because she was afraid of it being a 'her word vs his word' scenario. The thing though is that without speaking out you never discover that N other people likely had the same encounter with the person in question.

@DavidMulder I don't read this as "don't speak out".  Absolutely you can speak out about those people; but whether you take legal action unfortunately does (in all cases) depend on your chances of success.  If it's as intensely damaging as rape, many people will pursue this anyway (and I applaud them for it).  The OP simply is not in that situation though - any rational person can clearly see that the imagined slight against them is trivial.  If the OP thinks it's that serious, then frankly the OP needs to get out more.

@DavidMulder The main difference is that rape is a serious crime, while being a shitty supervisor and receiving undeserved authorships is something non-academics won't even care about. Besides, going in prison is a pretty sizeable stick, while here the worst punishment could be removal of co-authors' names from papers. So, even IF it works in the best way, the person was successfully knocked down by few papers and several citations... and nobody even notices as they still have hundreds of papers and several thousand citations.

@ZizyArcher Fraud and Rape are of course completely different. The social backlash you can get when you accuse someone of rape is indeed on a completely different level as just sharing your knowledge of someone's fraudulent behavior. Regardless, as I was saying: "This might be the right action for any individual actor". My main point was just to acknowledge that this becomes harmful when one assumes the recommended behavior would be a universal law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative).

@Graham Just for your idea, only around 30% of sexual assaults get reported (I think I heard that's the lowest rate of any serious crime). Regardless, I absolutely read this answer as suggesting "Don't speak out, (let them do it to future victims) and just be a better role model for your own students"

@DavidMulder That largely depends on how much you consider the OP to be a "victim" and how much you consider their supervisors to be "abusers".  The OP has suffered no harm, neither physically nor mentally nor morally nor professionally.  (I don't think this is even open to discussion based on the question.)  On the contrary, they have received financial and professional benefits directly due to the support of those honorary co-authors promoting their work.  At most this is a trivial annoyance. And that's even before we start asking whether the OP's assessment of their supervisor is correct.

@Graham Okay, if you want to frame it as 'The friend of the OP is one of the abusers' (getting the financial and professional benefits in return for participating in the fraud) and the victim is the scientific community, then yes, maybe they indeed aren't the victim. Considering they were in a position of 'weakness' however I take some issue with not considering them victims. "And that's even before we start asking whether the OP's assessment of their supervisor is correct."... and my comparison with rape has just gotten even stronger and more painful

I wished the association with rape had not been made above -- it's hard to get out of that connection again in continuing the debate in these comments.

But regardless, I did not mean to imply staying silent. There is a difference between having success by speaking out and having actual success in getting authors removed. The principal difficulty with the latter is that the authors signed a legal affidavit that their paper submission satisfies the usual ethical standards. Overturning this is not the same as a "he says she says" case.

@DavidMulder I'm not sure why you chose to compare it to rape. Me, I compare it to a spoilt child whining "I didn't want to wash my hands but my big sister made me. Mummy, tell her not to." And the scientific community isn't suffering because the co-authors are signal-boosting a paper they consider worthwhile, which otherwise might never have been noticed. That's their contribution.

@WolfgangBangerth That's why I was apologizing whilst making the comparison. I sincerely think there are useful similarities, but I did realize the dangers of making such a comparison from the start  . Regardless, I think we're in agreement (I agree with you that actually getting a name removed is unlikely given any individual's actions).

@Graham I have few words for you defending authorship fraud. I have never heard of a field where 'signal boosting' would be a valid reason to be a paper's author. As far as I am concerned authorship fraud is exactly the same as plagiarism (In both cases you claim you authored something that you actually didn't author). If plagiarism is reason enough to kick people out of the scientific community, then authorship fraud should be all the more reason to kick them out as soon as possible.

@DavidMulder Indeed, but even a very direct legal or disciplinary action against the bulliers may be more sensible and more likely to succeed than trying to remove authors from a paper without the former happening first. If the people need something that calls for punishment, do something that makes real sense  and has potential to stop them for the future. Removing them from one paper is not such a thing and will be extremely hard to achieve. If you want to stick to your rape analogy, you do not punish a rapist by removing their name from a paper or from some movie credits but through police.

@DavidMulder It is totally normal for a supervisor to not be closely involved with their student's work; but the supervisor is certainly involved with setting/approving the project, monitoring progress and methodology, and promoting the work afterwards.  This is the "signal boost" I mentioned.  The student here is suggesting they have literally never spoken to their supervisor during their entire PhD.  This implies gross negligence from the university institutionally, from the supervisor personally, and also from the student who (if this is true) is not aware of how to work with others.

@DavidMulder ... You can argue whether the supervisor's contribution is enough to warrant co-authorship, of course, but this does not make it fraud or plagiarism.  It is very common for students to underestimate their supervisor's input - it's possibly the top theme on this board.  Which is where I come back to "asking whether the OP's assessment of their supervisor is correct".

If, as you say in a comment, this is very "common in this field", then you are probably stuck with it. It is difficult to overcome common practice in a field, even if it makes little sense. It is probably impossible for an individual to overcome on their own due to the likely and possibly severe blowback.
If you have enough standing in the field to absorb that blowback then you might make a stab at it, but an early career individual could be damaged I fear.
So, my suggestion is to let it go as a matter of self preservation.
One thing you can do, however, is refuse to accept gift authorship in any form when offered.
I'm surprised, honestly, to see that this happens in a math or CS related field. Like you I don't like the practice.
Note that in some fields, supervisors and PIs are so "honored" because they provide the environment, such as a lab and the funding, that makes the research possible. Though they may contribute little to an individual paper, they set the overall framework in which it becomes possible to do the research leading to that paper. I still don't care for the practice, but understand that it is common and accepted in some fields.

I agree with the general tone of your answer, I would like to stress that the "because they provide the environment, such as a lab and the funding, that makes the research possible. " is usually (and ethcially) taken care with the fact that if you work in a lab, you are probably working on some continuation of past experiment/ideas, so you provide citations to the lab's publications. In fact, to have always the Lab PI in the authors'lists can even be counterproductive (if one really really wants to do an objective evaluation based on citations, and one filters out the self-citations...)

I will not repeat the points made in the excellent answers by Wolfgang Bangerth (it is too legally complex to deal with; just focus on the future) and Buffy (let it go and resolve never to do unto others as they have done unto you), both of whose perspectives with which I wholeheartedly agree. I do want to add a complementary point, though.
I, too, have a couple of coauthorships from my PhD days that do not merit it (though not as bad as your case). Thankfully, my supervisor was a genuine and very active coauthor, but there were a few other professors in my program that got their names on some of my and my colleagues' papers whose names should not be there.
I hope that I am not reading too much into your question, but if your feeling is something like what mine has been, there might be a sense of dishonesty when you look at your list of papers and you see a name that you know ought not to be there. If that is your case, then I will address how I address the unease of conscience. In my case, my CV is my CV and so I list the publications to which I know that I honestly contributed. If ever a particular paper comes up in discussion, then I will be honest and admit that some coauthors did not do much and that their names are only there because of PhD student pressure. So, with that, my conscience is clear.
Remarkably, such a scenario has never come up--not even once--concerning any of these papers. That is, no one has actually asked me about these specific papers such that I have needed to explain their background. One reason that it has never come up is that I do not have any vengeful sentiment that I need to "expose" these professors. So, I do not look for opportunities to bring it up. And none has ever come up.
So, echoing the advice of some other respondents, I recommend that you leave the past in the past and look forward to a future career where you can be an example of how to properly respect your junior colleagues. Beyond that, I strongly urge you that when you learn of junior colleagues being abused in such ways, you do your best to intervene to prevent such abuse from being done to others. That way, the past negative experiences that you have suffered can have a productive outcome in you being an advocate to prevent such behaviours from being repeated by others.

@FatherGepetto, I will address the anonymous person under your pastoral care in the second person, as though they had asked the question.
Proof?

I had published several papers with my so-called supervisors ...

Are you claiming they weren't your supervisors? Likely not. So let's call them your supervisors. If you are claiming you weren't supervised, that would be a different question.

... during my PhD, both of whom never actually contributed a single word ...  or even ... edited those papers;

Maybe that's true, but - can you prove it?

never actually contributed a single ... idea/method ...  or even read ... those papers;

Even if this were true, this is effectively impossible to prove about your supervisors.

anything of value

Perhaps that's what you believe, but - they supervised you. Naturally I don't know any of the details, but a case could well be made that they contributed through you, their supervised junior.
Should that be enough to entitle them to authorship of your papers during your Ph.D.? Perhaps not. But - that's debatable. And many would argue the answer is that it does.

nor would they have been capable of contributing a single word in the first place.

Not only is this effectively impossible to prove, but is also rather slanderous of a claim. People could sue you for saying that - at least in principle.

Bottom line: As far as any adjudicative entity can tell, you might just be lying because you had some sort of a personal quibble with these people; and even if you were to present evidence for the more provable parts of your claim, it would probably not be enough to merit a finding that their authorships should be stricken from those papers.
I'm sorry for the harsh tone, and it's quite possible that you were used for aggrandizement by your supervisors and that they shouldn't have accepted their names being added to those papers, but - this harsh tone is what you'll probably hear when you make your demands.
Motivation
With respect - I question your motivation here. You write that

I have ... emancipated myself from that abusive relationship

but it seems that you have not quite done so. You are still hung up on relationship with these advisors, not focused on moving forward in your academic career - nor even on improving supervisor-supervised power relations in academia in general - but rather on what could be described as personal vindication.
Even if you were to achieve your goal and remove your advisors/supervisors as co-authors, very little would have been gained except possibly emotionally. You will likely not even have affected a change in these people's future treatment of supervised graduate students.
So have you really

Now ... come of age

? I doubt it. This endeavor seems like the misjudgement of someone who has not come of age. You seem to want to expend extensive effort and place yourself at all kinds of risk and adversity - to right a wrong, perhaps, but in a way which will have very little effect other than personal emotional benefit.
You also use rhetoric like "so-called-supervisors" and "unreal authors", which suggests you're rather distraught about this still.
What can you do instead?
You write that:

As a PhD student I was implicitly coerced to include their names as gifts as honorary co-authors or else I would not have received any institutional support (namely residence permit and contracts).

If you can establish this coercion indeed occurs, that is a matter which is much more likely to be effectively actionable.
Consider discussing this with other (current or former) Ph.D. students; faculty members who disapprove of this practice,  if you know any; the junior researchers' labor union (if your university has one); the university ombudsman, comptroller or self-inspection body if one exists; and finally, perhaps the press. But - don't focus on your individual supervisors. Instead, make this about the general problem of coercion.

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

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава