text:
Unsatisfactory grades for unsatisfactory reasons
I am currently doing Algebra in a college in India. The professor asks students to note down solved examples in class, and then poses the very same questions in the tests.
I don't go to class for these very reasons. Hence, I end up writing alternate proofs for such problems. The professor is incompetent to the extent that he does not understand proofs written by an undergrad, and gives me zero on all those answers.
When applying for grad school, I will have bad grades in Algebra and other math subjects (I suspect). How do I convey the this to the Admissions committee when applying for a PhD?
I believe this is relevant to a lot of students studying in the sub-continent.

A more important question for you (and your peers) should be: how can you go on to do research when you've been trained only to learn by rote?

This is a supplement to aeismail's and JeffE's excellent answers.
I understand it may be hard to drop the class or move to another class for some reasons. For your best interests, it's better to follow the instructor for now.

The professor is incompetent to the extent that he does not understand proofs written by an undergrad.

I have a suggestion for you. Sign in to our sister site Math SE. Present your proofs. See what people think. After you verify your proofs, you'll know your professor is incompetent or not.
If your professor is indeed incompetent, you should seriously consider dropping the class. You don't want to waste your precious time. However, if it turns out that you do have serious flaws in your proof, I would listen to my professor if I were you.

If someone else is teaching algebra next semester/year, just drop the class.  Cultivate a competent faculty mentor that you respect and trust.  Listen to them.  Meanwhile, document everything.
If there are really no competent, trustworthy faculty in your department, do everything you can to move.  In that case, sadly, your department is a diploma mill, and even with the best grades in the world, you're unlikely to get into a good graduate program.
If you can't drop out or move, at least stop skipping class; you're just giving your instructor a legitimate excuse to dock your grade.  Yes, it's childish, but your grades are more important than your pride.

The professor is incompetent to the extent that he does not understand proofs written by an undergrad

Careful.  I also do not understand many proofs written by undergrads.  But in most cases, that lack of understanding is not due to my incompetence.

Let's just say in the open book section of the test, a proof came straight out of the book I was carrying. Fraleigh, to be precise. I copied the proof word for word, although I knew the argument. I just wanted to be safe. And he gave me zero because it was not the method he had taught.

@AyushKhaitan - "one of the best schools in the country" - according to whom? For instance, where does it stand w.r.t a top 25 school as per any of the international rankings (Times, QS comes to mind), and which top graduate program take students from it ?

BITS Pilani is not one of the best schools in India  for mathematics but it is certainly up there for many branches of engineering. Having said this, most professors in BITS will have some academic standard and I would hesitate before calling  them, as well as previous students out for "minimal understanding of their fields"

Unfortunately, this is a classic no-win situation. If you protest about instructors being incompetent, you may come across as someone too eager to assign blame for mistakes to someone else. If you say nothing, then your record may be dismissed out of hand (given how important algebra is in the undergraduate math curriculum). You also don't want to admit that you're skipping class.
I think your best bet may be to take your chances with the poor grade in algebra, but then follow the advice suggested for other people with weak transcripts.


text:
Taking break/vacation during graduate studies/PhD
Do people take time out to go home, meet with family etc. during their PhD?

If yes then for how long and how frequently is it usually?
How does one deal with this with one's advisor?
What are the pros and cons?

Given that one basically has just about 2-3 years in practice to do all their PhD work, I don't understand how anything else fits in the schedule except work. The entire idea of a PhD looks quite scary to me that one is expected to produce cutting-edge stuff in that short a time starting from just standard graduate courses!
PS: the question is general, but if it is field-dependent, I am interested in particular in physics PhDs (theoretical high-energy physics specifically)

The answer is of course, yes. In fact, you need to take a break to recharge your batteries.
The answers to the other questions will depend on what the rules are regarding holidays (which is country dependent). I think that our guys get six weeks annually (where as other countries only offer one or two weeks). Our guys can take them in one chunk, but this is sometimes problematic if there are deadlines that need to be met, or tutorials, etc.
The way to deal with your advisor is simply to ask him with a concrete proposal. It is better that you have not bought the plane tickets before you ask, because that will be perceived as an attempt at manipulation by your advisor, which will damage the trust relationship.
When my guys ask for a vacation I simply ask whether it clashes with anything. If not, I grant it.
The pros of taking a couple of holidays is that you will have time to recharge your batteries. The cons of not taking a holiday is that you can burn out.

It's worth pointing out that things like typical vacation times vary enormously between countries, universities, departments, etc.  In the U.S. math grad programs I'm familiar with, nobody would object if a student took a week or two off per year, but six weeks would be almost unheard of.

Poor buggers ...

My PhD was thirty years ago, and in the UK, so how relevant my experience is these days I don't know. However FWIW I think the only reason for doing a PhD is that it's something you really want to do. Unless you're absolutely fascinated by it, three years of hard work and no money is likely to prove too much for you. I loved the three years of my PhD even though I've only been cited a handful of times and I ended up in a job unrelated to my PhD work.
Unless your supervisor is related to the Grinch they'll let you see your family a couple of times in the three years :-)

I've just learned something about my PI's lineage.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Referee access to a not-yet-public URL cited in a paper?
I am reviewing a publication, in which the authors give the URL of an online tool (data analysis and sharing) they have developed. This URL has apparently not yet been publicized, as searching for it in Google didn't bring any result. Because of that, I'm worried that the paper's authors may identify me as a referee when I go check their website (after all, the logs must be clear). That probably wouldn't be very ethical, but I have no way of being sure they won't do it.
What I am supposed to do about it? I thought of contacting the editor asking for guidance, using a private proxy[1], or logging from an internet café somewhere. Do you have any other suggestions? Or am I just worrying too much?

I don't know which anonymizing proxy service to use, and I welcome suggestions in comments, but that probably isn't particularly relevant to this site.

google hide my ass.

First, I think you are worrying too much. Second, I think it is bad form on the part of the authors. If the material on the website is critical for the paper, it needs to be provided in an archival form that the journal can keep track of. I would evaluate it based on what you have been given.

Maybe a necessary precision: the URL is that of the online tool they developed, which is discussed in the paper, for data analysis and sharing. So, its purpose is to be an online tool, it is not merely material to download. I've edited the question.

@F'x It doesn't matter what the purpose of the online material is. The paper needs to be able to stand on its own.

So, no paper about software unless complete source code is attached? Then customs definitely vary depending on the field… It is very common in chemistry

@DanielE.Shub  In principle, I absolutely agree that all papers about software should require journal-maintained source code.  Unfortunately, in practice, that's simply impossible.  Research software is tangled in too many IP issues (generated by the authors, their employers, and/or software they build on) for that to be in any way reasonable, even if publishers had the resources and expertise to maintain other people's code.  This paper is about an author-created online tool, so of course the actual online tool, in its natural setting (on the web), is an integral part of the submission.

@JeffE I wasn't suggesting the full source code had to be available (although it is useful for reproducible research). What I was suggesting was that the important aspects of the software should be described such that you can evaluate them without access to the software and source code.

In bioinformatics, it is rather common for websites to already be online and even have a large non-trivial number of users before the associated paper comes out. However, for the most part, a paper that explains how to use a website, it is rather hard to separate and isolate the two.

On the technical side, you can use Tor. That's what I do as a reviewer for accessing on-line supplements to blind reviewed conference submissions.

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


text:
PI coauthorship on previous papers
I independently wrote a number of math articles, and published some of them in refereed journals. I wrote the draft of the thesis, and contacted a Prof., and started a PhD program under his supervision. After being accepted, the supervisor

Asked me to change all notations and terminology. I hesitate, because I used the terminology in use in the domain, I kept at minimum new terms, and I already used these terms in the published papers.
Asked me to make him coauthor of some of the papers I haven't yet published, and which I wrote previously, without any suggestion or discussion with him. He motivated his request by saying that my articles need to be polished (ie terminology changed with an invented one), and that even when they will be ready, nobody will accept them with my name only (although I already published some articles as single author).

He is very assertive with these requests, and I feel like he is putting pressure on me. Normally, I would like to have him as coauthor, and maybe it will be good for my career. But I am affraid that he will make my results unrecognizable, and incompatible with the other papers in domain, including my owns. And, frankly, his only contribution is that he suggested to change the terminology.
What should I do?

Say no.  If he insists, find another advisor.

What is his justification for asking you to change the notation and terminology, if what you have used is standard?

In my field, it is very bad manners to ask to be a coauthor like that.

@Tara B. There is a well known theory X, and a generalization, less known, Y. There is a small number of papers in Y, and all use the terminology of X. He says that the reader may get confused because I use the terminology of a more particular theory (X), to a more general (Y). Normally, I would agree, but all other papers in Y use the same terminology and notations as X, so I did the same. He wants to rename every term.

You say "Prof.", but this situation makes me think that the prof. is not yet tenured.

Is your PI also a mathematician, or in some other field?  In some fields, the standard is that a PI is a coauthor on every paper written by a member of the group; but this is not the practice in mathematics.

@Sylvain Peyronnet: It is Prof., tenured, in fact with a high position.

@Nate Eldredge: He is mathematician, with a large number of papers (coauthored). I am not member of a group or research project conducted by him. I am not paid by him. Anyway, I wrote the papers before meeting him.

One of you has to convince the other about the terminology. If you cannot agree, go your separate ways.

We cannot tell you what the best decision is, but I get the feeling from your post that you already have some course of action in mind: politely decline, with your arguments, and if he insists too much, find another advisor. I would agree with that being the best solution for you, but only assuming that your assessment of the situation is correct.
Don't take it badly, but I have seen it happen before. An established researcher gives advice to a newcomer (or more junior researcher), who disagrees and concludes that such bad advice can only be motivated by self interest. That sure is one possible explanation, but another might be that the advice is (partly or fully) correct, but the student doesn't recognize it (yet). Take a second look at his advice... There can be good reasons to suggest nonstandard notation: trying to make the paper more appealing to the community of another field, by using their notations. Or making the case that existing notation doesn't properly cover the cases considered. Or maybe what you consider standard notation actually isn't, and you are currently using a notation used by a prolific research group (bias in your reading list).
I am not saying that it is your case. I'm only saying that you should seriously consider it before taking any action.

Thank you for your balanced answer. He does not propose to use an existing terminology, just to invent a new one. But I see your point.

From a purely objective point of view, I would say that co-authorship should be granted only if someone has a scientific input to the paper (such as significant reworking, polishing (whatever that is) is not enough) or if the prospective co-author is the originator of the ideas in the paper (also a scientific contribution).
In your specific case I can see that the professor could be part of a paper if he puts enough work into it. I think it is very unattractive to force oneself onto a paper the way it sounds in your case. On the other hand, you could consider whether having a "big name" on your paper could benefit you in the long-term? I know co-authorships are viewed differently in different fields so I dare not say what would be appropriate in your case.
The nasty part of the story is of course what might happen if you do not put the Professor on your papers. That is something which only you can assess. But, you could possibly get some insights by talking to others who knows the situation in your department/research group.


text:
What is the proper etiquette when my advisor asks me to add non-contributing authors to author list?
I am currently working as a post-bacc research assistant in theoretical physics group. I have been working on my current project for a couple of years, and it is finally finished. I have been going back and forth revising the paper with my advisor. I have performed all computations and simulations of the paper by myself with much guidance from my advisor.
On a recent version of the paper draft, my advisor commented on the author list. I had put myself and first author and them as the last author. They mentioned that they want to send the paper to other experts in the field to have them take a look and to add them to the author list. My advisor mentioned that this is oftentimes helpful to get a paper through review  more easily.
When I mentioned waiting for edits or comments from the aforementioned experts, he clarified that they won't actually give feedback or contribute to the paper. They will just put their names on it.
He did ask if I was okay with this, but I suspect he was not genuinely asking and was asking as a socially polite way of informing me he plans to do this. He put this question in one of the comments on the most recent paper version I sent. Since I have not finished the corrections yet, I haven't needed to respond, but I'm planning to send the revisions on monday, so I'm hoping to come to a decision by then.
I was wondering if this is normal and I should just agree to it and not make a fuss? I am also wondering if this is normal practice in academia? I am new to this process, as this is my first paper that I am writing as first author. What is the etiquette in this situation?
My situation is notably different from the situation discussed in How do I handle a "fake" co-author? because the individuals who would be added to the author list are more experienced in the field, of higher rank than me, certainly able to understand my work, and are just generally above me.

I'm not clear on why you think this is different from the linked question?

Hi. What did you answer when your advisor asked: "He did ask if I was okay with this"?

@Stef Hello. He put the question in one of the comments on the most recent paper version i sent. since i have not finished the corrections yet, i havent needed to respond, but im planning to send the revisions monday, so hoping to come to a decision by then.

@Relativisticcucumber My advice would be: raise your concerns and don't lie (ie don't say you're okay with it if you're not). But if your advisor insists, fighting them all the way is not in your best interest.

You say no, they did not contribute so they are not authors.  Go higher if necessary and report it, this behaviour needs to be stopped.  Science will be undermined if we allow this behaviour.

As mentioned in the answer by @Ben, gift authorship is unethical. It's misconduct. There's no question about it.
That being said, adding co-authors won't really harm you. You will still be the first author. Whether the paper is co-authored by one co-author or a few co-authors doesn't really matter. What's counted in your CV is the number of first-authored papers and the total number of papers. When you apply for academic positions, it won't matter how many people that paper is co-authored by. Actually, adding big names to your article would even make your CV more impressive. And even though this is misconduct, who could complain about it?
As you are a post-bacc research assistant, I think it might be a good idea not to make a fuss at such an early stage of your research career. Your relationship with your advisor is important.

UPDATE: The comments below stress that unethical behavior might harm you. I agree that there's a risk, but you have to weigh that risk against the risk of worsening your relationship with your advisor. From the practical standpoint, the risk of getting harmed by gifting authorship is minimal, because the only way others may learn about it is when you, your advisor, or the co-authors talk to other people about it. And even if they do, it is highly unlikely that anything bad happens. Adding co-authors who haven't made any considerable contribution isn't something very uncommon among researchers I have worked and talked with. Sometimes this is done for "political" reasons, and sometimes people exchange such "favors" from time to time. You include me as a co-author, and later I include you as a co-author. Also, adding a big name to the author list is like getting their signature of approval, which can help get your paper published in a high-profile journal. While technically misconduct, such practices are part of life, albeit possibly not in all countries and not in all research fields.
Remember, your advisor is going to write recommendation letters for you and may help you with their connections, so it's important to remain on good terms with them.
If you really dislike the idea of gifting authorship, you can tell your advisor something like this, "I don't like the idea of adding those people, but if you really want to, I don't mind." This will help you understand how strongly your advisor wants to include them. Who knows, maybe he or she doesn't really insist...
At any rate, please note that my answer reflects my own personal experience, which may have been affected by my country of origin and my research field. In Japan, we generally avoid worsening relationships at all costs, especially with the advisor. I understand there may be different views or strategies of achieving success in academia.

If you get caught in unethical behavior, it will harm you.

Later it might come to light, that a co-author with a giften authorship was involved in other unethical practices. This might back-fire pretty badly.

@TerryLoring Thanks, I've added an update to address this

@usr1234567 Thanks, I've added an update to address this

It doesn't matter if unethical behavior harms you. It harms other people. That's why it's unethical.

+1 for the thoughtful answer to a complex question.

I feel like this answer is helpful because I was particular to not ask what the ethical choice is, but rather, what the etiquette is. Thank you.

@TerryLoring I would argue the advisor is engaging in unethical behaviour here; the OP's only choice is in which fights to pick. You can't fight everything and the balance of power in a student-advisor relationship is not in the student's favour.

He did ask if I was okay with this, but I suspect he was not genuinely asking and was asking as a socially polite way of informing me he plans to do this.

I recommend you take your advisor at his word and avail yourself of the opportunity to let him know that you have concerns about this course of action.  Adding authors to an academic paper who do not make any substantive contribution is "gift authorship" and it is generally agreed to be a form of academic misconduct (for discussion, see e.g., O'Brien et al 2009, Martin 2013,
Jones and McCullough 2015, Macfarlane 2015, Teixeira da Silva and Dobránszki 2016, and Khezer and Mohan 2022).
Gift authorship is unethical and it also should not affect the prospects of the paper in review (since most reputable journals use blind review anyway).  Gift authorship is rarely investigated and acted on, but in principle, if you were to do this then you and your advisor open yourselves up to legitimate claims of academic misconduct.  Aside from this, adding additional authors who have not added to the paper dilutes your own credit on the paper and it would negatively affect any author-adjusted citation metrics that evaluate your research contribution.  (This is not a reason to reject having coauthors where it is actually beneficial to the paper, but it is an adverse consequence in cases where you add people as gift authorship.)  You are right to have concerns about this and you should communicate them to your advisor.
While it is reasonable for you to talk to your advisor about this and state your concerns, you might find that you are in an institution in which there is pressure to provide gift authorship, and if that is the case then you will need to decide how much you want to push back on this practice.  Hopefully your initial discussion with your advisor will allow you to gauge their attitude and the attitude that prevails in the department.  If it were me, I would hold my ground and avoid adding gift authors to the paper, but I recognise that people sometimes try to go along to get along.  Before you make your decision, I strongly recommend you read C.S Lewis's excellent essay The Inner Ring about the method by which people are pulled into the service of corruption:

And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face —that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face— turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected.  And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit.  It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school.  But you will be a scoundrel.

As a "post-bacc research assistant" this might not be the hill they want to die on.

@JonCuster You might be right, you might be wrong. Difficult to answer in general. Not even trying to do the right thing, is bad.

Gift authorship is misconduct; some fields, such as medical research, have cracked down on this.  Social acceptability probably varies by both field and institution.

"most reputable journals use blind review anyway"
Many reputable journals in theoretical physics with which I am familiar do not use blind review.

E-mail to supervisor: "I am sorry but I cannot add those co-authors, because I have learned from reading these papers (references given above) that is is considered scientific misconduct, and that is not how I want to start my scientific career". So, refer to higher powers that are beyond your control and to scientific ethics, which you are just now in the process of learning. It is not your decision to leave out 'gift authors'. It's a scientific standard to not even think about it.

@JonCuster My issue with this is that it creates a culture of junior people not doing anything in these situations as they think it will harm their career.  Go to whoever is higher in the university and report it, basic standards of scientific research are at risk if we allow this behaviour.  Science will be undermined.

@Tom - for better or worse, understanding risk is always part of a decision. The Op is in a tough place, sure. Only they can determine the possible risks and their appetite for it.

It is not common practice. I was never asked to do so and have never heard of it in my proximity. Maybe I am lucky that I was at a institute with a professor with high moral standards.
Try to keep your personal moral standards alive.

Not sure that this really answers the question.

@user438383 It is an answer to "I was wondering if this is normal and I should just agree to it and not make a fuss? I am also wondering if this is normal practice in academia?", isn't it?

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


text:
How to prove episodes of academic misconduct?
My former PhD supervisor asked me different times to produce false results, including complete fabrication from scratch of otherwise non-existent results. I always managed to get away from that and I have never published nor submitted anything falsified. However, I still think that this must be reported, partially because he may do that again with other students. Also, the other coauthors (including professors) have never known about this.
Unfortunately, I have no written proof of his behavior, not even email, as he has always asked me in person.
How can I proceed in such a situation?

Are you currently in a safe employment situation in which he cannot hurt you?

@Buffy OP has no proof. Without evidence, this could end up in a nasty slander/libel/ suit. Evidence is required. Evidently, we like to believe OP, but of course if hearsay were acceptable, a vindicative former PhD student (not saying OP is one!) could just create endless trouble to their former supervisor.

If these allegations are indeed true, previously fabricated results are probably published somewhere. In many cases fabricated results can be distinguished from actual ones with a statistical (or other type of) analysis. There are also a few websites dedicated to this kind of fraud detection, and you could possibly enlist their help.

It would be legal to record conversations in some jurisdictions. If you want to go hard, look up what the law is in your jurisdiction.

@CaptainEmacs this isn't hearsay. Hearsay would be if somebody told OP this happened and then OP tried to turn the supervisor in. It is still a potential issue that the supervisor would be believed over the student though.

Is there any sort of anonymous whistle-blower/ethics department at the university that you could report him to and request an investigation?

@Kat You are right, it's not hearsay, I used the wrong word. I meant it is spoken word against spoken word, not sure about the legal term.

At my university, there is a compliance hotline which exists to receive reports of incidents like this and protect the confidentiality of the reporter. See https://research-compliance.umich.edu/research-integrity . Googling the name of your university with keywords like "compliance" "research" "integrity" "misconduct" might help you find something similar. Another good keyword, if there are human subjects involved, is "irb".

@TimB: where I am, we have ombuds services/persons/committees for scientific integritry. Both on institutional and national level, see my answer.

Your original "get away with [doing] X" means "successfully do X without getting caught". You want "get away from", meaning "avoiding", as in my edit.

Going against the grain a bit...are you absolutely 100% sure that you were asked to commit fraud? Not that I am skeptical that such a thing occurs, but I am skeptical that someone would announce it so blatantly, even if not in writing. There are many, many legitimate reasons to simulate results that are not real data, such as when testing a method or implementation. The unethical part is to represent these results as if they are collected data, not producing them.

If a professor wants to falsify data now, the professor probably falsified data in the past.  Look through previous publications by that professor for data that is obviously falsified.
Plagiarized images are the most commonly detected form of fabrication.  Not all image reuse is falsified data, but if two publications present the same image data as if they were recorded separately, this is proof of falsification.
People who falsify data are likely to engage in other academic misconduct, such as plagiarism.

Proving anything without evidence is very tricky. You can easily find yourself in a difficult situation.
However, it is likely that you are not the only person your former supervisor approached with such requests. Your best chance is to find others who can back up your claim with their independent accounts. Find the list of the former PhD students of this supervisor and try to get in touch with them to see if they have something they want to share.

Or possibly someone in an ethics department at the school can help with this?

Proving anything without evidence is impossible.

@ThomasMarkov You have a point that "proving" and "evidence" is equivalent. I guess the answer means "Getting this behaviour to be punished without evidence...". And that's not a foregone conclusion. In some situations it is relatively easy to get people punished on scant evidence. Here, it's not. So, if Dmitry would change the "Proving" into "Getting .. punished", the statement still stands and is probably more meaningful.

Witness testimony is a potent form of evidence.

You yourself say you have no proof.
Without evidence, this could end up in a nasty slander/libel/ suit. Evidence is required.
Evidently, we like to believe you. However, there is a reason proofs are required.  If hearsay were acceptable, a vindicative former PhD student (not saying you are one!) could just create endless trouble to their former supervisor just by inventing accusations. Ethics always has two sides.
All you can do is to avoid working with him. If you are in a group that wishes to collaborate with him, you might consider going as far as to express your dissatisfaction with his working style. This will cost you political capital, but is better than to outright accuse them of fabrication (and it's clear that you won't work with them no matter what).
They are devious and clearly know how not to leave traces, there is very little you can do until they get caught out in some blatant mistake. If it is an important/active topic, this is likely to happen sooner or later.

Your last paragraph reminds of Tolkien: "But it is said: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger."

@Buffy Tolkien again: “Ask not the elves for advice, because they will tell you both 'yes' and 'no'.”

This does not answer the question.  The question was about how to get proof, not what should be done next.

@AnonymousPhysicist You say "The question was [...] not what should be done next." - However, OP's last sentence was: "How can I proceed in such a situation?" Furthermore, my answer boils down to "wait, and, if sufficiently substantial, the fabricator will be caught." You may disagree with that advice, fair enough, but it is an answer to the question.

@CaptainEmacs You need to read the whole thing in the context of the title.

@AnonymousPhysicist Yes, and that's why I added the "wait and see" comment. I think it is a response to the whole question. Not satisfactory, but I do think it applies. Many fabrications (or wishful thinking) may take decades or centuries to be unmasked (think Millikan, Galilei). Or they make a mistake at some point, and then you can pounce. Again, that can take many years.

@CaptainEmacs they're more likely to be caught if someone actually reports them. Even if nothing becomes of it this time, the next complaint may be taken seriously since it's not the first. Or maybe someone has already reported them and OP reporting as well would cause something to happen. Or maybe simply being reported will cause the supervisor to think twice about doing it in the future, which would still be a big win.

@Kat Agreed. Assuming that there is not an option for retaliation. To be honest, the hard part about fabrication of data is proving that it was intentional rather than an error or a misunderstanding. People who are shifty have an unbelievable repertoire of - let's call it - realigning the facts. It's not just a matter of reporting and forgetting about it, you really have to deprive them of any wriggle room. It's like playing chess with eels.

@Kat I should add, I like Anonymous Physicist's solution in trying to find anomalies in images. Could be repeated images in separate experiments, or evidence of tampering. This is probably far better than any evidence relying on the spoken word, as it refers to published, documented and vetted work. It's much harder to argue about misunderstandings here, and the scrutinious public much larger.

Separately, if we're talking legal stuff, it'd seem like whistle-blower laws may apply (depending on where this is).

@Nat Yes, that's the theory. The practice is quite different. While the protections have improved, there is a career cost to whistleblowing as according to the well-known motto: "Love the treason, hate the traitor." I believe that the best way is to find inconsistencies in data, manipulated images etc. as Anonymous Physicist suggests. Catching such in a published paper is in flagranti delicto and furthermore natural to the scientific process. Or you send an external investigator such as in the case of the "N-Rays". But that was as consequence of publications.

I'd like to suggest a middle ground between the "get evidence then act" and the "stay back" answers: where I am, universities and research institutes have an ombudsperson for scientific integrity, and we even have a national Ombuds Committee for scientific integrity.
You can contact the ombudsperson (local or national) about concerns you have about scientific integrity/misconduct and they deal with this in a strictly confidential manner.
Now, while the ombuds system primarily aims at mediation in what is called questionable research practice or remediable misconduct, i.e. lighter cases of misconduct whose effects can be "healed", they can initiate an investigation into the so far only alleged case of serious misconduct (FAQ #5). And even if they'd have to conclude that they cannot (yet) initiate such an investigation based only on what you tell them, your case would be on record, and if more people file similar complaints, at some point there will be sufficient indication for the university to properly investigate the case.
This procedure will be safer for you than trying yourself to find confederates or trying to obtain proper evidence. Also, I'd suspect that the evidence you can get will likely stay thin in the sense that it likely won't be of a quality that can stand in a court case* (since we're talking serious scientific misconduct, this most likely would go to court: the professor has too much to lose to take a plea). In contrast, an investigation by the university has a much better chance to turn up the quality of evidence that is needed here.

I recommend you get away from that group ASAP

In order to save your scientific integrity.  As sad as it may be, not only you but science as a whole will likely profit more from you having a career as an active scientist rather than from you becoming a martyr for science.
I may add from personal experience of a milder nature (no falsification, only bad science): colleagues from other institutes/groups did notice both the lack of quality and me not being happy with that. Later on, I was approached about collaboration by someone who explicitly said that they asked me because of the integrity I showed in handling the "bad science situation".

This is a time bomb. If (when!) this is discovered, your career is likely to be seriously affected - whether you actually managed to keep your integrity or not, and even if you have been the one on whose report the investigation started.
I think it is advisable to make extra sure that there is a complete track record of everything you've done, proving there has been no misconduct in your research.
It may be illegal to take copies of your work data home. But it may be possible to deposit copies with the IT department (assuming your supervisor does not have access there); I'd also think about encrypting and signing these backups.
Being able to say that the scientific ombudsoffice has a record of you filing a complaint about scientific misconduct may be another piece to saving what can be saved of your career.

*Consider: assume you had an email openly asking you to falsify data. The moment you openly act on this, your professor would fire or at least suspend you (regardless of whether your complaint is perfectly valid or whether there is a complaint by a vindictive student, the professor would have a perfect case for suspending on the basis that evidently the mutual trust in the employer-employee and professor-student relationships is destroyed). With that, you'd immediately lose access to your university email box. So either you'd find yourself without the "proof", or you'd have to forward it beforehand or print it out. But there's nothing really tamper-proof in such a forwarded email or printout. The hypothetical vindictive student could have fabricated such documents. With a bit more technical knowledge they could even place a file into their email system that looks at first glance as if it were sent by the professor.
Now, a university investigating serious misconduct by one of their employees (the professor), has far more powerful options. E.g. their IT department may be able to show that such an email was actually sent from the professor's account.

"your professor would fire or at least suspend you"  Professors often do not have that power.

"It may be illegal to take copies of your work data home."  At a university?  I do not believe you.

This does not answer the title question.

@AnonymousPhysicist: "This does not answer the title question." No, it answers the bottom line question "How can I proceed in such a situation?".

"Proceed" clearly means "proceed to get proof."

@AnonymousPhysicist: I prefer to answer the question as written down.  Also, you don't have to believe me wrt. taking data home. You can check your employment contract and labour law whether it applies to you/your legislation. More important woud be that OP checks theirs. Where I am, university employees have no other rights than any other employee wrt. taking copies of work related data home. I.e., they need express permission to do so, and the person to ask is the professor/supervisor. Also, a professor has the right here to ban OP from the premises, and while you are technically correct...

... that it would be university who cancel the contract, guess what happens if the professor tells/alleges serious misconduct on the side of OP (such as stealing data or spreading serious false allegations against their supervisor) to HR? They'll at least suspend OP's access to university ressources: office, lab, computer, IT services,... until things are cleared.

I did a bunch of copyediting, but I'd also urge the OP to retract the statements about email falsifiability.  Email provenance often can be proven if technical experts are available.  A quote: "What this means is that the only way this email could've been doctored is if there has been an enormous, nation-state level hack of Google to steal their signing key." from https://blog.erratasec.com/2016/10/politifact-yes-we-can-fact-check-kaines.html even explains how to perform the proof.  And I can vouch for it.  And you get 1 BTC if you provide a counterexample.  And fame.

In some locations, it is legal to record people without their permission or knowledge.  In other locations, that is illegal.  Recording the professor in the act of requesting falsification would give you proof.
If you accuse someone of misconduct and use secret recordings as evidence, you can expect that some people will think you did the wrong thing.

Is there a reason why you split your answer into two?

@CaptainEmacs It's two unrelated answers.

While I agree that multiple answers are valid here, if seldom used, I think this particular course of action (recording) is unwise even if legal.

@CaptainEmacs, at other sites at SE it is much more common to have multiple, independent, answers by the same writer. It is a bit unusual here, but certainly acceptable. It is especially common, I think, at sites that don't mind "listy" answers.

You don't need to do anything covert to record the incident. Just send the prof an email stating what you think you have been asked to do, and asking him/her to confirm it in writing.

@alephzero The prof will deny it, they are careful enough to not put anything down in writing.

@alephzero: ... or even worse, the professor may use this to accuse OP of suggesting serious scientific misconduct

It may also be worth noting that, in the context of recording, the real issue is not one of legal vs illegal (it is generally legal to record anything you want), but of admissible vs inadmissible.  In many jurisdictions, recordings made without the consent of all parties involved are not admissible as evidence in hearings.  So even if it is legal to record, those recordings may not be at  all useful as evidence.

Admissibility is not particularly relevant because data fabrication is typically judged and punished by journal editors, not law courts.  While a fabricator could be charged with fraud, it is unlikely unless lots of money changed hands.

I'll address the underlying issue rather than the question in the title: you don't need to be able to prove unethical behavior to report it.  An email to the department head with details of unethical behavior (what was requested, when, how many times) will at least be noted and likely end up in your advisor's permanent file. Without any evidence for the department to act on this is the most you can request (and for others in your situation who may wish for such communications to remain confidential this is the most that can be done).
In the short term, as others have said, your word against your advisors accomplishes very little. In the long term, this professor is likely to continue the misbehavior and when additional complaints or actual evidence of misbehavior arises from other students your original statement becomes a very strong piece of evidence, and shows a pattern of behavior rather than an isolated incident.

Record him. Hidden Camera, hidden audio recorder... get enough evidence to make it stick. Once you have enough approach other students that you think you might be able to trust and seek out past students. Don't make it so obvious until you can trust them. Then find other advisors that you can trust and so on until you build a network.
You can find out if they are trust worthy by "hinting" at the idea of fabricating evidence or ethics, morality, etc and see how they respond. You don't have to mention any names at the start, just see how they respond. You can make up some stuff like "I was reading a news article where some professor was caught making up research articles to get grants....". You have to "fish" and sometimes act a bit unethical.
You definitely should pursue this because these sociopaths ruin humanity. There are far too many doing these sorts of things and none are being held accountable. Remember, several were caught. They are no better than corrupt politicians and lawyers or cops... in fact worse since they should be more intelligent.
If he is obvious and blatant it should be easy to get him... just make sure to gather enough evidence(think of it was "research"). You can also see who he has worked with in the past because chances are he was corrupted by others.
Once you have the evidence then you can figure out how to proceed from there.
Note though that if you do this it will cause problems for your career. There are lots of sociopaths out there and if you put yourself out their as the "slayer of sociopaths" it will put a target on your back. Of course you only have 3 options: Join them, ignore them and hope they don't ruin you, or slay them!
If you have real evidence of him faking shit on his research papers you can go who ever has granted him $$$ and tell him his data is fake and try to get them to make him pay the money back.
Remember, fake research destroys humanity and is anti-science. People make real life changing decisions based on data. Unfortunately it happens so much now that reality has become fantasy(it's hard to trust anything any more... think of "fake news", "deep fakes", etc). This is precisely because people are so greedy and have no morality and no one stops them.

I gave you the how. Recordings and getting others involved. How else? Magic beam guns and x-ray vision? He could get the guys papers or other peoples papers and show they are fake. He can also do all this anonymously by simply collecting the data, making a presentation that proves they are corrupt, but anonymously, and anonymously submit it to all those that could do something. But without evidence everything is moot cause nothing can come of it. Evidence gathering is the first thing to do.

I presume the downvotes on Stretto's answer (it's -3 after my upvote) are from folks who think such surreptitious recording is illegal. It isn't. Once a crime has occurred, there's case law that shows it becomes legal to do so. Staff were stealing from a locked office, owner used a hidden camera, evidence was found acceptable. (There's also case law going the other way! It's a mixed bag.)

@MatthewElvey Most people are morons, just a fact. The thing is, illegal != unethical. There are many things illegal that are outright ethical. Also many many people do illegal things and get away with it, many of our "leaders" do this such as politicians, judges, cops, etc.  Ultimately only two things should matter: Is it just/ethical/moral and am I willing to accept the consequences. Unfortunately we now live in a time where criminality is starting to be treated as a virtue and ethics a vice.

Indeed.  I wonder if intelligence and moral fiber are positively or negatively correlated.  Good question for Jordan Peterson.

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


text:
What to do with a paper that got rejected twice by referees?
I am an early career researcher (on my sixth month of my 3-year postdoc) facing a dilemma I don’t know how to resolve. I recently wrote a very short and simple paper, which I have submitted twice. The paper got rejected by reviewers both times: first, on the grounds that the contribution was uninteresting; and second, on the grounds that the contribution was too simple to be valuable.
While the first rejection was not very useful, the second rejection contains a nice and easy-to-implement suggestion. However, when reading such suggestion, I had an idea that——while substantially changing the paper——has the potential to make it much more interesting than it is right now.
To be honest, I do not know what to do with such paper, for its next natural outlet would be far below the two I already tried. As I see it, I have three acceptable options:
OPTION 1: submit the paper to a lower-ranked journal after implementing the easy suggestion; and never bother with the new idea I had.
Upsides: this approach is the one that requires less time and effort on my end.
Downsides: since the journal I would be trying is low ranked, it may signal that I am a low quality researcher, thus making it difficult for me to get nicer publications in the future.
OPTION 2: do not submit the paper, and instead work on the new idea I had by reading the reviewers’ comments.
Upsides: should the new idea turn out nice, I could submit the resulting paper to a decent journal, thus obtaining a nice publication and avoiding the downsides that may come with a publication in a low ranked journal.
Downsides:

The new idea may eventually lead me nowhere, in which case I would have lost very valuable time for nothing.

This clearly takes more time than Option 1, which could perhaps be better used doing something else.

OPTION 3: submit the paper to a lower-ranked journal after implementing the easy suggestion; and work on the new idea I had independently.
Upsides:

I could get two publications, one of them perhaps nice.

The second publication could cite the first one, thus giving me a citation I would not otherwise have.

Downsides:

This option takes more time than Options 1 and 2, which could perhaps be better used doing something else instead. And, the new idea could still lead me nowhere…

This option could still give me a low ranked publication, which could make it harder for me to get nice publications in the future.

Since there would be some clear and undeniable overlap between the two papers, the later (better) paper would be less novel, thus reducing its chances of getting published in a nice outlet.

I really don’t know what to do, and any suggestion would be highly appreciated. If you were me, what would you do and why?

"since the journal I would be trying is low ranked, it may signal that I am a low quality researcher"  I disagree with this.

Thank you for your comment. I can see how one low ranked publication among many nice publications doesn’t signal a low quality researcher; but considering I only have one publication (and another paper under review), I fear it would be a bad signal for me…

@EoDmnFOr3q why not chose option 4, submit to a conference, often a good place for ideas/papers that are to minor to merit a full paper?

In my field, publishing in conference proceedings is not at all common (as far as I can tell).

Is another option also to salami slice this? For example: submit your paper to a lower ranked journal and, while you wait for the reviews, work on the new idea.

@psychcphyscst Thank you for your comment. That’s exactly what I meant with Option 3.

Do you have any co-authors? A supervisor? They should have something to say, and they're likely more experienced in these matters.

Even famous researchers have made comments about getting rejections. It's hard to really read too much into this, and it is not something you can perfectly predict or control. You just have to do the best work and writing that you can and do you best to fit into the journal's scope. Don't give up. Just let it motivate you to work extra hard. Be sure to think about writing style and the human-relation aspect of publishing as I have found those to be keys to solving the "what's worth publishing" conundrum.

I no longer have supervisors, for my PhD is now over; and this particular paper has no co-authors…

Option 1 seems least worthwhile, since the upside is only that it requires less time and effort. Unless there is an urgent or clearly more productive use for your time and effort, it doesn't seem to make sense to me to choose this option.
Option 2 seems to be somewhat risky, since it now becomes a question of all-or-nothing: either you have a 'nice publication' or, in your view, it will "lead nowhere". This seems to be risking the perfect becoming the enemy of the good.
Option 3 again "takes more time" but it's unclear (at least from your question) where your time might be better spent. It is also unclear (perhaps since I don't know your field) why one "low ranked" publication would "make it harder to get nice publications in the future". Again, your thinking here seems quite all-or-nothing (either it's "low ranked" or "nice") - isn't there a good enough journal that might be worth trying for? You can also invest quite minimal time and effort in re-framing your publication to make clearer to the reviewers and editors why it would be worth publishing. Tell the story better and it might capture their attention. Meanwhile, while this paper is being reviewed, you can adopt a salami-slicing strategy. To optimize this, you could frame your new idea publication as building significantly on your prior work. By the time your new idea paper is ready, maybe your other paper will be published. Or you can undertake other research before pursuing the new idea. You just have to build a narrative for your research to optimize how you slice that salami and, importantly for you, to show your development as an early career researcher through your publications record.
In sum, think it is better to have a bird in the hand, rather than two in the bush: you have a paper complete, so keep trying to get it out there. You can frame later work as building on this. From my own experience, my own perfectionism has held me back from publishing simply because I was always waiting and tinkering to get the "perfect paper" rather than just sending stuff out. Once I stopped caring so much, and adjusted my threshold for 'good enough' (70% perfect) rather than 'perfect' (100% perfect), it became much easier and my publications list started growing. You can also use this as a chance to build your resilience to rejection, since it will happen many times in publications, job applications, grant applications, etc.

Thank you very much for your insightful answer and pointing out the key flaws in my reasoning. Re: 1. my field is economic theory; 2. a better use of my time could be (perhaps) working on other projects that I believe are more promising. I understand that your ranking of my options is 3>2>1. Correct?

I believe you are overthinking this. If this is the worst experience you have ever had you are fortunate. Some day you will get even more rejections.
You should write a good paper with the revisions you think contribute to advancing the state of knowledge and send it to a journal that is appropriate. That doesn't mean any particular ranking, it means a journal that encourages submissions of the kind you have and you think will provide thoughtful reviews.
If you think the previous reviewers didn't understand something that makes your paper good, then clarify this in the paper or put an explanation in your letter to the editor.
Keep in mind that editors and reviewers usually come with preconceptions, blinders, and short term thinking. They can have large egos; they think every one should cite their own work.
If you have something good, keep plugging away. Unless you are ready to quit, scrap this effort, and go to something else.
Keep all your correspondence. Someday one of those two journals might decide that another author with the same idea is worth publishing. You can claim precedence.

Thank you for your answer. At this point, I have endorsed many rejections; I just don’t know how to best handle this one! In any case, I understand you would not throw the effort away.

Any of the options could result in publication or not. But a good and reputable journal will be looking for some "impact" of what you write as well as novelty and originality. That seems to suggest the #2 is probably the best option.
If the "new ideas" are sufficiently different from the original, you could do either op†ion 1 or 3 and doing 2 as well, focused on the new ideas.
But 'low ranked' is a judgement call. And 'high ranked' journals are probably more selective in what they choose to publish. Think about the match between your paper and the venue.


text:
What should I do as a TA if the instructor is not teaching properly?
Some background: I’m a TA for a low-level course at a major university on the US east coast. This is my second time TAing this course: the first time, I did it under a professor who has taught this a ton of times and knows his way around very well. This time around, the instructor is a second-year grad student who’s teaching anything at all for the first time.
(I’m a second-year graduate student as well. I was actually offered this course to teach this semester, but I said no and so they dropped me in as a TA, which is fine. I have a great deal of sympathy for the current instructor since in another universe that would definitely have been me.)
I’m seeing a noticeable difference between the two. As a TA, I’m getting a lot of feedback from students that they don't understand what’s going on, that the instructor doesn’t relay concepts clearly, that they’re leaving the class more confused than before. The difference is also clear in the homeworks: we’re reusing the old homeworks with minor detail changes, but they’re struggling a lot more in even basic concepts compared to last year.
My responsibilities in this course are grading, homework fixing, and office hours. I don’t have to teach in this course at all, and I do help those who come in during office hours. Even from my relatively isolated position from the students, though, I’m still getting a ton of pushback regarding the instructor. Should I do more beyond the scope of my duties? If so, what?
Edit regarding those who advised me to tell the instructor: they definitely know about their performance reviews. They pointed out their RMP link to me, and while RMP isn’t the end-all be-all of academic measurement, the feedback there is unusually negative and corresponds with what I’ve been hearing from students. I don’t want to kick the instructor while they’re down, because they already know pretty definitively, and they’re a good person to work with. Just not a good teacher, I guess.

A major university is letting a 2nd year postgraduate student convene a whole course? What is happening there?

@orezvani: This happened to me as a graduate student; please see my answer.  And please see my CV if you want to know which university this was (anyway, a good one).

Can you edit the question to narrow it down to focus on one specific issue you are concerned about?  "is not teaching properly" is very broad -- too broad to be a good fit for this site, and your question seems to talk about overall level of understanding.  You talk about getting pushback, but pushback on what specifically?  Can you pick a single issue that you think could be improved in the course, and focus on that one issue?  Have you had a discussion with the instructor about that issue, and what happened in that discussion?

@orezvani this is standard in my field — in some places it's first year master's students (in my geographic area the accreditation agency requires 18 hours, so only second years can be the instructors of record)

Look at it this way: 'There is a new web application developer who just took over for a senior developer with 20 years experience. The quality of the work has gone down drastically. What do I say?' Of course the quality dipped, and of course this grad student isn't teaching that well. If the university had another option, there is a good chance they wouldn't be teaching at all. The grad student can only do what they can: make the best of the situation, and teach to their best ability. They will be a better teacher in time. No need to compare to someone obviously more qualified.

"Just not a good teacher, I guess" is a pretty condescending, low opinion on someone who took a job you refused to do, in spite you having more experience in it. Expecting that someone with no experience will make a full course perfect for the first time is pretty naive, as well as judging his overall ability on a first shot (where he may not have any useful feedback, unlike you).

Have you thought about giving feedback to the instructor? By feedback I do not mean if he/she is good or not, but what are the specific problems students have, what would help them, what they are missing, what they misunderstood etc. Students generally give zero feedback to instructors, while you see their test, you get your questions, you see their mistakes they make with the homeworks. The instructor has zero information on all this.

There's a lot of variability in a TA's job from one semester to another.  Variables include amount of a bunch of things, such as drudgery, time put in, negotiation with instructor and/or administrators, initiative, background study, interfacing with students, etc.  But it generally all evens out in the wash, over the years.  Except that if you find that one semester's assignment is regularly taking more than the assumed number of hours per week (for me this was 20), you should bring it up with your supervisor (if it's not clear who this is, ask a knowledgeable secretary, or some department administrator).  If it ever comes to this, it can be helpful to keep a log showing hours put in.  (It doesn't need to be super detailed.)
For the rest of my answer I'll assume that's not the case here, but rather that you're concerned for the students. If you are seriously concerned for them, bring your concerns, with specific examples, to a department administrator.
Now for some ways you might consider providing more support as a TA (note I said consider; and please check specifics with the instructor and the department first -- there is no need to go into a big rigmarole about why you propose specific actions, just ask if it's okay if you do such-and-so):

Give the instructor a brief feedback report after each problem set, to let him or her know which problems, if any, are giving difficulty, and what's tripping students up.  You might want to xerox or scan a representative homework to include as an illustration.
Post solutions to the homework sets (choosing the posting date with care).
Prepare worked examples that will enable the students to do the homework assignments.  Possible formats: handouts, post on your door, post on the web, record audio or video tutorials, distribute via email.
Distribute your notes from the class as taught by the previous instructor (this would require approval from that person as well, of course).
Select an affordable textbook, or a web resource, to recommend to students for supplemental reading.
Attend lectures.  This can help you detect the gaps, so you can fill them in, and also help you tune into the instructor's wavelength so you can complement each other's efforts.  Also, sometimes it is helpful to model for the students how to ask a constructive question in class.
Reserve a classroom if you reach standing room only attendance levels at your office hours.
Schedule a weekly problem-working session.
Assist students in setting up study groups (I'd suggest a maximum of five students per group).
Offer students the opportunity to send you questions via email, with instructions to use a particular subject line (so you can sort them out automatically); check for questions at specific times of day.  This is how online teaching works and it can be very effective.
Make sure you understand the material well enough to demonstrate how to do the homework and to be able to answer the most common questions.  Seek assistance from the instructor, some other professor, or a more experienced student, as needed.

Project a calm, supportive attitude to the instructor.  If you decide to do anything extra, think of it as an investment in your karma.  Be the kind of supportive TA you'll want to have when you are in the hot seat a few years from now.
Note: One semester, I had to do some of these things, and should have done more of them.  It wasn't because the instructor didn't know what he was doing.  He was very experienced and well organized, but his course was HARD.

These are all great suggestions! One nitpick: I'd consider #11 part of the core responsibilities of a TA, not something above and beyond.

I'd bet that the grad student teaching the course knows very well that his or her teaching competences are lacking, and that the students struggle to follow. After all, even if this person has little experience teaching, he or she has a lot of experience being a student, and is thus likely to recognize poor teaching, but unable to do something about it.
But alas, such is life sometimes. The grad student cannot suddenly, by magic, become a teacher with 20+ years of experience. Nor should they be expected to. The department, who already made the decision of putting an untried grad student in charge of a course, is also unlikely to suddenly allocate more resources.
It would be perfectly fine if you did nothing. Nothing is expected of you, you will not be paid for doing more than you are asked, and if you just do it, no one will thank you.
If you feel compelled to do something anyway, here's a suggestion. Go to the grad student and say that it is your impression that the students struggle way more with the material than last time you TAed the course, and ask if there is anything you can do. Prepare a couple of suggestions, stuff that you know could be improved by going over it a couple of times more in lectures. Don't pass any blame, but try to be as constructive as possible.

"the students struggle way more with the material than last time you TAed the course" - please don't say this. Comparisons with other teachers are just going to make the grad student feel inadequate. Just say that the students are struggling in certain areas and that you think they may need extra support. You don't need to say why. (Rest of this answer is great.)

Having been in this situation I understand both sides of the story. But unfortunately your right complaining wont help because the resource allocations are unlikely to change, besides the new teacher needs 10 000 hours of teaching under their belt to be any good.

10000 hours of teaching is nearly 13 years. Total nonsense that a teacher needs that long to be any good - half of that is enough, and in some cases even less.

@user2390246: Good point!

@nabla I agree it is a good point--modify your response to reflect the fact that you agree.

You don't say who you are, but if the course instructor is a second year grad student and you're the TA, I'm guessing you're an undergraduate at the university.  I will assume so, and thus that you are academically junior to the instructor.  (By the way, the person who teaches the course is called the "instructor."  The instructor need not be a "professor" and a grad student cannot be a "professor" at a major American university.  Your fogginess about this also makes me think you're an undergrad, in which case it is both common and forgivable.)
The course instructor is the one who is primarily responsible for the course, not you as the TA.  If you want to help more, you can help more, but I would advise you to think of it in that way rather than as pushing back against the instructor.  Here are some things you can do:

1) Encourage the students to talk to the instructor more, especially about their concerns in the course.

You're holding office hours, but so should the instructor be as well.  It sounds like the students are more comfortable coming to you than the instructor.  Half of that is fine -- i.e., they can and should come to your office hours if that's part of your job and especially if you're doing it well -- but they should also be going to the instructor.  It's not just for them to get extra help from him: by seeing the students in person and listening to their questions, the instructor gets key feedback about how the course is going.
If, as I'm assuming, you and the students are all undergraduates, they are much more likely to want to talk to a fellow undergraduate, and they may even be much more direct in conveying their concerns to you.  Every time a student expresses a concern (or makes a complaint), I would be clear with them that it is up to them to register this concern with the instructor, ideally during the course but certainly during the course evaluations.  (If the instructor is really unresponsive they could go higher, but if they want help with that they should get it from someone higher up in the food chain, not a fellow undergraduate.)  The TA is not an ombudsperson.

2) If your office hours are going well, you can promote them to the students.

Do your best to make sure that every student knows about your office hours and that many of the students find them helpful.  And then of course really try to be helpful during your office hours.  If you want to do a bit more, here is the most natural opportunity to do so: you could try preparing small amounts of course material and presenting them to students in your office hours.  If a student cannot make your office hours, you could (if you want) make a point to meet with them outside of the regularly scheduled office hours.  And so forth.  But understand that if you go over and beyond the call of TA duties, your rewards will probably consist of student gratitude and an internal sense of accomplishment.  You are probably not going to get paid more or formally recognized.

3) You can try to talk to the instructor about the course, but this is a rather advanced technique, and should be done only if you are confident it can be done non-adversarially.

As I mentioned above, it is not your place to criticize the instructor.  However, if you gain information about the students and how they are learning, you can bring that to the instructor.  So e.g. if students did very badly on part of a problem set, the instructor will probably appreciate your pointing it out.  If you think you know why they did badly, you may want to take a shot at explaining why, but think in advance of a way to explain it that comes out in terms of the opportunity for things to be going better for the students, not in terms of telling the instructor what s/he did wrong.
Finally:

4) Understand that it's probably okay if the course is not being taught as well as it could be.  However, if it is being taught truly inadequately -- e.g., if you have good reason to believe there will be many student complaints by the end of the semester -- then I suggest you convey this opinion to a friendly faculty member, e.g. your academic advisor.

Some courses go better than others, and some teachers are better than others -- sometimes much better.  It is not always the case that the veteran professor is a better teacher than the first time grad student instructor, but the good veteran professor is going to be so much better than the not good first time grad student instructor that it's going to seem painful for you to compare the two courses.  But keep in mind that the students are not comparing those two courses; they're just getting the one.  (And there are a lot of other degrees of good and bad in courses that you don't know about.)  Maybe the department is pushing grad students into teaching courses too early.  (But maybe not: in fact, as a second year grad student at a major university on the east coast, I was the instructor of record for a course.  I did a good job -- as the evaluations lay, about as good a job as I ever did in the 8-10 more times I've taught the course since then.)  Maybe they are letting first time instructors hang in the wind too much.  Maybe this particular student is a particularly bad teacher, or maybe he is a generally unhappy grad student and punching time in his last semester in the program.  There are so many maybes, and most or all of them are well above your pay grade.  There are faculty in the department whose problem this is.  If the teaching seems really really bad, then you might try to figure out how to convey that message to the relevant faculty members, and I think you will have more than done your part by conveying your concerns to any faculty member in the department.

I had several professors that were fresh PhD's and going to talk to them during their OH about my frustrations with the course was supremely helpful. I'd guess that most professors are interested in helping their students learn - but if students don't come and say, "We're struggling with the material," then all the prof can do is guess that we were just too lazy to do the work.

the person who teaches the course is called the "instructor." -- It may be different at different institutions, but I've seen non-Ph.D.s called "professor" if they're the one teaching the course on numerous occasions (in the U.S.). I did it myself as an undergrad at least a couple of times. I've never heard any of my actual professors care one way or the other -- unlike some countries (Germany, I think?) it's not a protected title, so it's more about showing respect to the instructor.

@tonysdg: At major US universities, "professor" is an academic rank.  You can be a professor without a PhD, and having a PhD doesn't make you a professor.  But at no major US university (known to me -- what else?) can a grad student be a professor.  Yes, undergrads call grad student instructors professors very commonly (it happened to me a lot).  Undergrads say the darnedest things.  This particular mistake is of no particular significance to them, but it is to others in the department.

@FighterJet: Community colleges are different from major US universities.  In fact one can be a professor at a cc and a grad student elsewhere.  Not that this is so important to the question at hand -- that portion of my answer is parenthetical.    However, that academics themselves are sensitive to fine nuances of academic rank -- much more so than undergrads and nonacademics -- is a real phenomenon.

Out of curiosity: would it make a difference if OP was academically senior or equal to the instructor in question?

@MatterCat I think that if the TA were academically senior, they could offer advice to the grad student without seeming ridiculous. An undergrad TA without teaching experience offering advice to an instructor is annoying, a more experienced instructor offering advice is usually appreciated.

Like Peter I use "instructor" to indicate a person teaching a course (a role) who may or may not be a professor (job title) and may or may not be a doctor (academic credential).

If it came to your attention that students have major issues with the professor, then I think it is better for everybody to talk with the prof. and let him know the problems the students are facing.
You should also ask the students to tell you concrete problems related to the course so that you can transfer concrete complains to the professor. You are not obliged to do so, but this is something that will benefit everyone, especially the students.
There is a good chance that the new prof. (who is a grad student) doesn't care at all (maybe s/he was even forced to teach the course against his will). But still, he should be aware about the major complaints the students have and then it will be up to her/him to fix the situation.

"There is a good chance that the new prof. (who is a grad student) doesn't care at all."  You think so?  I am the Graduate Coordinator of my department, and I've never seen a grad student instructor who doesn't care at all.  "(maybe s/he was even forced to teach the course against his will)." I'm not sure I get what you mean.  Students, like other instructors, teach (when they do) as part of their professional obligations.  They might rather teach less or not at all.  Me too, sometimes, but I'm not being "forced" to teach: I can quit at any time.  So can the students (and sometimes they do).

Being a bearer of bad news can be suicidal.

@PeteL.Clark What I mean is that sometimes grad. students are forced to teach some course they don't want as an emergency solution. Then, the instructor takes a lazy and indifferent attitude which is hard to extract: "You forced me to teach something I have no idea about. Don't complain if I can't deliver a great course". And especially for a grad student (even PostDoc) it is not easy to just quit.

Thanks for the explanation.  In my experience, teaching is part of one's employment contract; one doesn't just wake up one day to learn that s/he is teaching one more course.  Is this actually a common phenomenon in your experience (so that it is "a good chance")?   And even if you're teaching a course that you preferred not to, you still get teaching evaluations and so forth, so "doesn't care at all" seems rather extreme to me.  But maybe it happens in some circles.

@PeteL.Clark It happened to me while at a PostDoc post on a contract that did not mention teaching activities and I was explicitly told during the negotiations that it is not required to teach, unless I want to do so.  It was exactly like that: A month or so before the course I was asked to take a course that has absolutely nothing to do with my expertise. I was not even able to change the suggested textbook! And I saw it quite few times happening before and since. I am talking about Northern Europe, if that means anything.

Pete L. Clark above offers a lot of good advice, though I would cation about talking to other faculty members first, since if this gets back to the instructor it may be extremely awkward if s/he doesn't take that well.
I would encourage the students to talk to the instructor as a group. This avoids one student taking the fall and highlights that the problem is with instruction and not a single student. Then you can offer suggestions about what you observed as working the previous semester or (even better!) encourage the instructor to meet with the previous instructor you TA'd for to get advice.

Sometimes you just have to be the change you want to see in the world.
I had a similar situation in grad school.
It certainly doesn't have to be a grad student in over their head.  It can be an overconfident new professor, a doctorate angry over being denied a professorship, a retiring tenured who has lost interest, or just a professor too busy with other work.
The others are not wrong at all when they say that you don't have to do more, maybe even that it all "evens out".
But you can do more.
And in the end, it's your prerogative.  As a graduate assistant, you definitely cannot fairly be expected to do more (indeed some unrealistic folks can send blame your way, but you cannot generally be driven about by fear of unreasonable potentialities).
It's unfortunately a common way in academia within science. We idealize it as this army of passionate professors teaching.  But it's actually often people whose love is research being required to teach despite a great lack of interest/skill in education.  Or a young professor forced to teach yet another course because the tenured folks don't want to.
And it's unfair on the student.  Especially if it's an important major course.  The fault may well ultimately belong to the university for not having enough faculty in (though that can take time).  But the fault is unfortunately irrelevant to the students end result.  They're not going to get what they need.
You shouldn't have to... and you don't have to!
Indeed, you likely won't benefit greatly from it, and it could make life a struggle.
But you're likely to be in a unique position to help.  If you don't do it, no one likely does.  So if you think you can see and solve problems, don't be scared to step up.
In my own circumstance, the teacher was passionate, just scattered and non-conventional.  My co-TA and I were first year grad students who weren't connected to the professor but had a friendly working relationship with him (he was a longtime special topics teacher and staff member, but did not hold a PhD to my knowledge).  During the lectures, we saw topics that we were passionate about, that are fundamental, and honestly some of the most interesting in meteorology, being mostly passed over. We'd had great professors in our own undergraduate work (at other universities), and we thought it was important that more be taught on the subjects.
So during the regular meetings with the teacher, we casually noted a few details we'd like to see highlighted, and offered upfront to teach a couple days of the course if wished.  He happily welcomed it, and the students benefited.
Because of the wider struggles students were having with some of the other imperfections, we also added extra office hours, tried to grade the homework with plenty of detail, and did a final review pizza session.  You're a recent student.  You know what can help benefit and you can often have a friendly rapport with them.  Use that to your advantage.
And because of your situation, you're also a comrade with the person who is teaching the course.  I wouldn't stress as much about decorum or hurt feelings, like I might with a real professor.  This grad student may well have gotten this class pushed upon him... or didn't recognize how challenging teaching would be... or hadn't yet learned to say no.
Sit down with him and talk it out.  Since you say he knows the reviews are bad, offer to help.  If you wish, offer to help him lay out his course structure/notes better, or even offer to teach some if you're available.  You can also offer him the true reflection of the course he often won't get otherwise (often students, especially newer ones, are fearful/reverent of a teacher, and uncertain what this is supposed to work like.  And so they won't approach the teacher).  You can be the reality source he/she really needs.
You can only do so much.  You won't change the world.  But often in these type of scenarios, there's a not lot others can/will do.  If you're passionate about the material, to see it taught better, to see people get the quality you yourself received, then feel free to step up.  It's a tough choice, one that indeed could stunt your progress elsewhere, be it towards your thesis(?) or in your personal life.  And it's far too often thankless.  But in the end, if you know the reasons you're passionate to see, you'll know what you did, and that you did what was caring and gave your best, and that's what will truly matter.  Once in a while someone needs to be the one to step up for others.

Complaints of any kind don't help much, almost everyone goes through hiccups in the first time they teach something. Teaching is a skill that often improves with time. As a TA, at the cost of your additional time, you may supplement the teaching: (a) conduct recitations just like what MIT and Harvard TAs do, (b) although scribe notes are usually prepared by students, you may volunteer to prepare them from previous semester notes, assuming of course, you took that class some point in the past.

Your job is firstly to help the students, and secondly to help the instructor. It is not your job to make sure the course is well taught. With this set of boundaries, you should wait for the instructor to ask you for help. And when they do ask for help, help as much as is possible at your pay rate.
Considering this, the biggest focus should be making sure that the students are taken care of. The best way to do this is to empower them to have a stake in their own learning.
I, as a TA who has seen variability in how instructors run a course, I have had to give advice to undergrads about how to cope with such a situation. The advice is as follows:
Specifically, there is a big difference between High School and Universities. In a University, it is traditionally the student's responsibility to learn the material, and the instructor's job is primarily to guide learning. With this attitude, it does not matter if the instructor has a very thick accent, or if the instructor gives horrible lectures.
In situations like this, a student should read and attempt to learn the course material prior to class, and arrive at class with questions that require clarification.  The usual method of just taking notes and cramming before the exam is very ineffective for poorly prepared instructors.
When I have suggested this to students, who probably never considered why instruction in HS different from in a University, I always see the students eyes light up. I suspect that this is because the notion that they are in charge of what they learn, and they can choose their future is an empowering thought. I had one student send me an email several semesters later thanking me for this advice.
However, once I had a student who was only interested in getting the degree, and had zero interest in learning. I assume he copied all the homeworks, and did "what it took" to pass the exams. He very much disliked the idea of independent learning. I tend to let students who think this way complain; they have an issue I cannot address.

My advice to the instructor would be to reach out and ask for help from the experienced professors.
As a second year grad student I taught a summer course when no other instructor was available. I know that I did not do as good of a job as one of the experienced instructors did, but I felt that my performance was decent. I got mixed reviews from the students.
I was able to do as well as I did because the department provided me with a ton of support. They had experienced instructors give me feedback on the tests before I gave the tests. I used a previous instructors powerpoints and notes. I audited the course that spring to make sure that I knew the material. The spring instructor mentored me in how to teach. I taught the course the way it was taught in the spring with minimal changes.
None of those things were my idea. The department basically told me to do things, and I willingly did them. I am guessing that your instructor of record hasn't gotten the same help and support that I did.
Sit down and talk with the instructor about who can help him improve. Avoid the temptation to give advice. You don't know any better than they do. They need to go to people who know.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


text:
In places outside the US and Europe, how do I know if the standard is that one applies to a PhD program with a specific PhD advisor already in mind?
Suppose I want to apply to PhD programs at a university outside of the US and Europe.
How do I know if most universities there follow what the US is doing or what Europe is doing?
Elaboration: How do I know if most schools in the country/state want students to first apply to schools before choosing an doctoral advisor (like in the US) or to first contact the faculty members of a particular schools looking for a doctoral advisor before applying to said schools (like in Europe)?
Example: The UK mostly follows Europe. I heard Hong Kong and Japan follow the US.

It depends on program and scholarship, so this question makes not much sense as incredibly broad.

1) Find a school you want to apply to.
2) Email the graduate admissions contact person in the department.
3) In that email, ask politely.
4) Say thank you.

That's a bit harsh. :) It's not such a bad question as there could be country-specific conventions which I would be curious about.

also: read their website, you never know.

This does not answer my question. I am asking for most schools in a particular country/state. Asking 1 school in singapore doesn't tell me about the whole of Singapore

@gnometorule EXACTLY

But you are not applying to the whole of Singapore.

@Jack it does if you ask about the general practice in that country as well as the practice of a particular school.

@BSteinhurst Okay fine. This answers my question. Sorry I was an asshole. Thanks :) http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v642/shakespeares_sister/apix/twd5-3.jpg

In the US, you would look at a department's website for instructions for how to apply to grad school in that department, and then follow those instructions. The nature of those instructions will let you know whether that school follows the US model or the European model.

My question is not about particular schools. Of course I can always find out by contacting, but what about most schools in a particular country/state?

There's no consistent list of this stuff, so unless you have particular countries you're interested in, we're not going to be able to put every other country in the world into one bin or the other for you.

Bill Barth Okay fine. This answers my question. Sorry I was an asshole. Thanks :) http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v642/shakespeares_sister/apix/twd5-3.jpg


text:
Do I need recommendation letters from supervisors if I have a master's?
Applying for 2018-9 admissions (Missed 2017-8 admissions). Got master's applied math. Want PhD in pure math.
How applicable is the following (source)

a recommendation from someone who only taught a course can mean "this person is a slacker who never bothered to do real work, so they can't find any supervisors to recommend them".
If out of school, delay your application by 1-3 years, and look for work as a lab tech at a university, institute or private company. Make sure not to displease your boss.

if I have a master's?

How might self-study affect applicability? (source)

they can check out your blog, notes etc but probably will not unless they are interested anyway, or it gets hyped up by your letter writers

Contexts:
Application:

I'm allowed only 2 or 3 recommendation letters for some local applications, here in Country A.
Besides research ability/potential, some Country A local applications are looking for soft skills such as leadership, communication, interpersonal, etc

Me:

Bad grades in bachelor's
Bad grades in master's for non-pure maths
Good grades in master's for pure maths
Research: Had a lot of group research projects including a semester-long main research project with 3 supervisors. None of them can give me very strong letters of recommendations

Plan:

Ask 1 or 2 profs in pure maths classes for the research ability/potential. Despite little to no research opportunity apart from problem sets, I have done some of my own self-study and researched/asked about some skipped/not elaborated/unclear/wrong parts in classes (not on this stackexchange account).

Ask boss for the soft skills parts

Why can you not get strong letters from your main supervisors?

@TobiasKildetoft Untreated ADHD, disinterested in finance.  (kinda late since i was focused past 6-7 months on learning to improve my work performance instead of self-study or further grad apps)

If I see you have been involved in lots of supervised research projects on your CV/statement, but that none of your letter writers are any of your supervisors, I will find that a bit weird, but it wouldn't kill your application.  Remember (I feel this has come up in a lot of questions lately), in mathematics research experience is not that important for getting into PhD programs (at least in the US).  What is, is having learned and showing a capacity to learn advanced mathematics (as well as work ethic + motivation).
Edit (in response to comments):

You seem to want to get a letter from your boss, and that's fine, and it may be helpful, but the point is that typically letters from the workplace don't provide too much insight into academic abilities, unless that letter writer is closely connected to academia (e.g., they have a PhD in your field of study).  This is why non-academic letters are usually not sufficient to get one accepted into a good graduate program, and you should get letters from academics as well.  (I would try to get at least 1 letter from a pure math prof from your bachelor's and 1 from a prof from your master's.)
Certainly having done well in advanced pure math classes, and having successfully gone through a master's in a related area makes you a reasonable case for grad school in pure math.  (How much the master's helps depends a lot on the details of program.)  Whether what you've done at work will be helpful in evaluating your academic abilities depends on what you were doing (see also the previous bullet point), but at least your boss can address things like work ethic and general intelligence.

Since I don't know the details of your situation, or what your application looks like, I can only say from what I've heard so far, I car guess there are several programs that would take you, but I'm not sure which ones.  I would recommend applying to a variety of programs at different levels of competitiveness and see where you get in.  It's also a good idea to try asking a couple of your profs advice on applying.

Thanks! (kinda late since i was focused past 6-7 months on learning to improve my work performance instead of self-study or further grad apps) What do you think of a letter from pure maths prof for 'showing a capacity to learn advanced mathematics' and letter from my boss for 'showing a capacity to learn advanced mathematics' ? I worked closely with a supervisor for past year since graduation, and whatever supervisor has to say is better than anything any of my profs could write for me.

In master's we worked in groups a lot but didn't have close supervision at least not as close as I think is the case for PhD students and their supervisors. So grades in pure maths + teamwork from master's + close supervision from past year at work is going to be my pitch for 2018-9 applications. What do you think?

Kimball, is 'In my experience, undergraduate students do not often prove new things in pure math. I wouldn't even say master's theses often contain new results. There are a few main reasons for this.' the reason for 'in mathematics research experience is not that important for getting into PhD programs (at least in the US)' ?

@JackBauer I updated my answer to address your first 2 questions.  For the 3rd, yes, that's the main reason.

Kimball, edit: I meant boss for 'work ethic + motivation'. And of course thanks!!!

Reread. Thanks Kimball! I asked advice from my profs, and advice elsewhere I got is to contact profs at university. Luckily, I'm applying locally.

A UK-based answer: yes, you need the letters. Yes, a letter from a supervisor is worth more than a letter from a module convener (teaching the student as part of a big group) but then it is generally better if this was an advanced class of five as opposed to a Year-One course of 200.
Let me give two examples at the extremes of the range.
I once did have a brilliant student as part of a taught module and he did contribute to lectures by regularly piping up and asking relevant and perceptive questions. He asked me for a letter of recommendation even though I honestly informed him that letters from supervisors carry more weight. I emphasised how exceptional this person was in my experience, and my letter eventually appeared to have helped him get his spot at a top place.
As a PhD course selector, I was also the recipient of hundreds of such letters. They are mostly useless, because of a persistent myth that you are not allowed to say anything negative. (There is of course a difference between slander and an objectively demonstrable weakness, but practically nobody wants to risk trouble.) So you end up mostly ignoring the (often OTT) praises of the student, scouring the letters for any hints of a red flag.
The worst example was a highly notable academic who praised a student to the heavens even though the academic transcript was exceedingly poor, and the project appeared to have been 3 wks spent by the student alphabetising the academic's personal library. This was a recommendation dripping with falseness if not lechery.