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How to deal with disagreement with advisor regarding research proposal and direction?
I am currently writing a proposal for a new research topic in my field of system biology. This proposal will determine what I will be working on for the next couple of years.
However, I am running into disagreement with my advisor on the viability of the research proposal. I think he is completely in the wrong on this one and I cannot convince him otherwise (after talking to him), and the research proposal is due soon.
Essentially, his vision is that a new method X (of a class of methods) might work "better" than exisiting method Y on our problem. So I should do research on method X for the next two-three years. I should put into my proposal that method X could work "better" than Y.
However, I am convinced that there is no evidence that method X will perform better than method Y on our problem.
My argument is that

Comparing method X and method Y is like comparing apple with
oranges. Method Z is the one that should be compared with method Y.
But it is already known that method Z does not yield benefits as
compared to method Y. In fact, they are the same, just different order of execution.
There has been no evidence that any method X
has performed better than method Y for any related problems.
In fact,
some instances of method X is the same as method Y. So the problem is ill-posed.
Other researchers are already aware of method X, but they do not use it. We can all guess why.

I think the line of research is fundamentally wrong and I cannot convince myself to write up a research proposal on something I disagree with and imagine spending the rest of my research career on. I almost feel like he is trying to fail me, because I read his rationale for pursuing this problem (benefits of method X) and the rationales were wrong or very hard to arrive at a conclusion at the present moment. Plus he is definitely not an expert in method X in any sense.
I am lost as to what to do. The proposal is due in 5 days and I cannot bring myself to write a single word. To be honest it feels like I am writing utter bullshit. I do not have time to quickly check method X (because it is an entire class of methods with some variations) and to compare with method Y in order to come up with evidence that it is indeed better.
Is there anyone out there who had these sorts of disagreement with their advisor on a research direction and how did you solve it?

spending the rest of my research career on — This is at most a proposal for what to work on "for the next couple of years".  With luck, your research career will last several decades.

This is general advice and may or may not help in your current situation. Especially since time is short.
But mostly it is a warning that fighting with your advisor is not often a path to success. Ideally you want to graduate and make your own career untethered to your advisors and their ideas. You want to make your own way. But the realities of being a doctoral student are that the advisor has a lot of influence over and impact on your future - at least initially. Most places, they need to affirm the quality of your work, which means, generally, that they agree with it. Fighting with them doesn't get you there.
There are ways to avoid fights that may be open to you. One is to just go along with the advisor's view until you have the opportunity to substitute your own. Many do this successfully. Others cannot for various reasons. Another way is to find a more compatible advisor, even if it means changing universities, perhaps even starting over. This is an extreme step, of course, and causes disruption. But sometimes it needs to be done for ethical or even psychological reasons. If you are so strong in your views and will not yield, then you are probably better off finding a different path to success as it may not lead through this advisor. Whether yielding in the short term to enable long term success is at all attractive only you can say.
I'd suggest also, that making it a formal fight - going to higher authorities to impose your will over that of your advisor is probably the least safe option. You may win the battle, but be sabotaged for the rest of your career if the advisor also has a personality that will not yield. Try not to get into such a situation. It isn't likely to end well for anyone.
It is possible, for some students and in some institutions, to work completely independently of an advisor.
Finally, I suggest that you look for what seems to you to be the least disruptive path. You know the situation better than anyone here, but beware of the career destroying actions that might lie along the path.

I have regularly had problems with my supervisor regarding scientific direction. I have always known that I write much better than I speak. About 6 months into my PhD I reached the conclusion that its possible that I am not able to coherently convince my supervisor regarding my ideas and reasoning.
This has in fact been pointed out to me by my PhD advisors and also the examination board. In their words, I have an extremely unstructured, abstract and convoluted line of thought. Although, I may reach at the same conclusion, my process is not easy to understand for other people.
So what did I do?
I adopted the show them before telling them process. So whenever I wanted to introduce new ideas to my supervisor, I would generate data for the same, create a presentation and then speak to them. This mostly meant that my supervisor got the point.
In you case, that may not be possible because your application is due in 5 days.
In that case, I would suggest you write up an alternative draft containing your vision of the proposal. Do this, but also complete the proposal your advisor wants you to write. Before submission, when reviewing the drafts send both proposals to him in a politely worded e-mail asking him to review both.

The best advice is to talk to the Program Officer.  You didn't mention which agency you are submitting to.  They have published goals about what they want to fund in addition to individual solicitations.  Have you looked into any of this?  Aside from any ethical decision about how to spend your time, your program officer may just say flat out they aren't interested in a type of work and can save you a lot of conversation and angst.
As a research administrator, I can tell you that hastily written proposals are not likely to get funded to begin with.  There is a lot of administration involved on top of your own writing, and in general you need the administration to align with your project.  If you don't know what your science is, you probably haven't done much with the administration, and that will cost you as well.

Talk to your advisor - either you submit a proposal or you don’t.
Between you, if you both agree to submit, you need to work out a plan of X or Y or even a comparison of X to Y.
So four options:
1. No submission

X
Y
Some combination

Until you two find an agreed path and with time running out, if you don’t then you may well miss this proposal opportunity.


text:
Can I drop the “Lond.” in “Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond.”?
Background
I would like to cite journal articles published by the Royal Society, specifically in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
Apparently, sometimes an of London is included in the name, and I have seen the journal’s name abbreviated as both:

Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond.
  Philos. Trans. R. Soc.

Example
A prominent example is the Wikipedia page of the journal, citing amongst others:

Maxwell, J. C. (1865). "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 155: 459.

Hawking, S. W. (1983). "The Cosmological Constant [and Discussion]". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 310 (1512): 303.

Question
Should I simply remove the of London (resp. the Lond.) whenever I see it in order to be consistent? Or is there any specific reason to include of London in some cases?
Remark on standardized abbreviations
According to Wikipedia, the ISO 4 Abbreviation of the journals in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society series is

Philos. Trans. Royal Soc.

This raises three sub-questions:

Why do I see Royal abbreviated to R. so often? Is it wrong?
What is the correct way of including the series names (such as B: Biological Sciences) in the abbreviation?
Was there another official abbreviation in the past, possibly including Lond.?

My American Institute of Physics style manual (4th edition, 1990) lists it as 'Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London' or 'Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London, Ser. A' (for Series A). Clearly, this applies to AIP journals, not the bio journals. But, check with your journal's style manual.

I wrote to the Royal Society out of curiosity, and received a very helpful answer, along with the permission to post quotes from it here.
So here is part 1, referring to Background in the question:

The answer to the first part of your question is easy. The “Lond” or “London” was dropped from the journal titles a long time ago. Although the Society’s official, legal title is “The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge” we now call ourselves just “The Royal Society” and the journal titles reflect this.

And here is part 2, referring to the Question:

As to the abbreviations, there is a huge variety of these and no single standard has been adopted across all publishers for any journal abbreviation system. For example, "Royal" can be shortened to either R. or Roy.
[...]
Our preferred abbreviations are stated on our journal websites, for example.

And I was even provided with some additional hints:

Most science publishers use the National Library of Medicine (formerly Index Medicus) system. Some use ISO4.
Fortunately it no longer matters very much which abbreviation people use, as citations now use the DOI (which carries all the relevant information).

To complete this answer, I looked up the record entry of Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci in the National Library of Medicine Catalog. The record entry lists 18 alterntive names/abbreviations for the journal, and contains a note explicating when in the past some of the alternative names were in use.
Lastly, some relevant information could be found in the Fact Sheet:
Construction of the National Library of Medicine Title Abbreviations:

If a journal title undergoes minor changes that do not require a new bibliographic record, the existing title abbreviation continues to be used.
Once the title abbreviation has been assigned, NLM and the ISSN Centre do not go back and change a title abbreviation qualified by place name, even if the place of publication changes over time.

So the conclusion is: someone who decides to use the National Library of Medcine Title Abbreviations consistently will abbreviate

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

to

Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci

with a Lond reappearing from its misty past.

This seems to be the authoritative answer. Outstanding!

I really appreciate questions on any of our sites where the OP posts an answer.. It is, in a way, more authoritative than accepting someone else's. Also, far too many people people find an answer and think "well, my problem is solved" - and we never hear from them again. It goes the extra mile to come back and post something which can no longer help yourself,  only those who read the question in future. Thank you! And, let's all emulate this, across all sites

In bibliographies you should always use the standardized abbreviations for journal titles.  It just gets confusing if everyone starts making up their own abbreviations.
(Informally or in talks it’s ok to use well-known but not standardized nicknames or abbreviations like JAMS or Crelle.)
Edit:  I usually use two ways to find the standard abbreviation: mathscinet's journal search and the journal's webpage.  Embarrassingly for my answer, in this case the two sources disagree, mathscinet (subscriber link) gives "Philos. Trans. Roy. Soc. London Ser. B" while the journal's webpage gives Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B.  So you're probably fine either way.

How does one determine what the standardized abbreviation is?

That's what the Harvard or APA standards for example help control isn't it?

My impression from using mathscinet had been that their was a single clear standard for abbreviations.  It appears that I was wrong.  Edited to reflect that.

Some publishers have their own lists of journal abbreviations that they use.  This kind of thing is typically dealt with during the production process after a paper has been accepted.  As long as the abbreviation you use is reasonable and can be recognized by reviewers and editors, you're probably fine.

I totally agree that it is confusing if everybody makes their own abbreviations, so maybe the questions are really "is there an accepted official standard for journal abbreviations", "should one use the official-standard abbreviation even if the journal itself suggests a different one", and "what were these abbreviations in the past"

@BrianBorchers I agree with you, but (un)fortunately I'm responsible for the final version here

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Does the title of a master program make a difference for a later PhD?
I will start my master program soon and can choose between the TU Berlin (Information System Management) and HU Berlin (Computer Science). I want to do a PhD after my master's degree with a specialization in AI. Currently I'm really interested in Explainable AI for Computer Vision.
Does the decision between those two universities — and above all the name of the degree — make an impact for a later career in academia?
I personally think that the TU Berlin (Technische Universität) has a better reputation in the field of computer science, than the HU Berlin. I just don't know if the name of the degree (since it's not directly computer science) will make a difference for my later career. Also, I think that the courses that I can choose at the TU Berlin are far more interesting for the research area I want to pursue.

What's the German names of the programmes?

TU Berlin also has a computer science (Informatik) program. Why are you not doing that one?

I am handling PhD admissions for Computer Science at my university. My initial reaction to a master in "Information System Management" is to be very, very suspicious. That sounds like the kind of degree you get if you want to lead an IT department in a company, not like the kind of master you get as preparation for a PhD in Computer Science.
That doesn't mean I'd automatically reject, I'd at least have a look at the particular courses taken and read the statement of purpose to see what is going on. If the courses at the TU are indeed the better choice, and ideally, if you explain this to me in the SoP, I'd be perfectly happy overlooking the odd MSc name here.
Beyond PhD admissions, the title of your MSc is not going to matter for an academic career.

I know both schools and programs. There are good and not so good points in both. Look carefully at the curricula: which courses interest you more? Look at the professors in the programs, what do they publish? Which are the topics which interest you more? In Germany no one really cares about the name of a program, as universities try to set up "unique selling points" that stretch to the name of a program at times.
Your Master's thesis and the courses you take will be much more important than the title of the program. And as the previous answers have said: Information System Management and Computer Science are two different pairs of shoes.

The title, per se, probably makes little difference, but the content certainly does. Beyond the names, note, importantly, that Information System Management and Computer Science are two very different things. Make sure you understand the difference and choose one that it compatible with your needs.
Look, for example, at the actual curricula in both programs, especially required courses or typical research problems.
For anything in AI and anything in Computer Vision, I'd say that CS is far (far) more appropriate than ISM. ISM emphasizes management and CS emphasizes science. People in those two fields learn very different things, and their careers can be very different. CS is more likely (at least somewhat) to lead to an academic career.

Note that I was once part of a school, within a US university, that delivered both programs and I collaborated with some of the ISM faculty. But our interests were very different.

You already got some good answers, but I think there is one more important point which is mainly a language issue and which should be mentioned - in particular since your main concern seems to be about the name of the program.
Apparently, "Information System Management" in the question refers to this program at TU Berlin. The issue is that the English name of the program probably gives rise to different connotations than its German name, which is simply "Wirtschaftsinformatik". Since the majority of users of this site is unlikely to speak German, here is a brief explanation: "Informatik" is simply the German word for "computer science", and "Wirtschaft" is a quite generic German word which can mean various things from both business and economics.
There has been somekind of trend in Germany during the last decades to take any classical STEM program X, replace a few of the contents with anything related either to business or economics, and then call it "Wirtschafts-X". This often raises some issues and misunderstandings when you try to translate the name of such a program to English.
I think if you apply for a PhD in Germany or in German-speaking countries, the name "Wirtschaftsinformatik" is unlikely to cause you many problems as long as you have taken courses which fit the profile of the PhD that you'd like to do. If you apply in other countries and use the English notion "Information System Management" though, you might want to explain this a bit in your application.
But anyway, the most important thing will be which courses you take. The details of the program at TU Berlin are specified in the "Studien- und Prüfungsordnung" (link; in German). I've only looked very briefly at it, but what would make me a bit wary in your case is, for instance, that all the modules "Machine Learning 1", "Machine Learning 2", and so on, are listed in the list "Fachstudium Wirtschaftsinformatik", but not in the list "Fachstudium Informatik". This might raise the question whether these courses also treat the theoretical foundations of this topic in detail, or whether they mainly focus on applications. The table on the bottom of page 352 shows that a considerable number of credit points in the program are assigned to the fields "Wirtschaft und Management" and "Wirtschaftsinformatik", and only a few are assigned to "Informatik".
I don't know how much theoretical background is typically required for a PhD in artificial intelligence - but it might be worthwhile for you to briefly double-check whether the "Wirtschaftsinformatik" program you're interested in leaves sufficiently many opportunities for in-depth theoretical courses, or whether it focusses mainly on applications.

Thanks for the feedback! I want to pursue the Data Science Track for Information System Management. In this Track your don’t have to do any courses related to business.
I have a feeling, that because the TU is a bigger name on the technology field it’s the better options, even though it’s not „pure“ Computer Science. On the other hand I heard, that the TU is really unpersonal and it’s hard to talk to professors. At the HU that doesn’t seem the case.

@LukasScholz: Thanks for your response! As I don't have much experience in the field of computer science (I'm rather working in pure maths), I should probably be a bit careful not to extrapolate my experience too much. But in case that you want to do your PhD in Germany, I still doubt that this whole "big names" thing is going to matter much for your PhD application. In Germany, you typically have to apply for PhD positions with individual professors (though there are some exceptions). [...]

[...] And since reputation of universities isn't such a big thing in Germany anyway, it's unlikely that a professor who reads your application will really care whether you did your PhD at TU or HU. The reason is that, while there might be a non-zero correlation between the name of your university and your individual research potential, in the German system this correlation is just not strong enough to come anywhere close to reliable proxy for your individual potential. Professors are thus likely to put much more weight on your individual record than on names of institutions.

Good points raised!

@LukasScholz It is unclear from the documentation of the Track requirements are and or are or requirements; ie, it is plausible you have to complete both the core program requirements and the track requriements.  If so, you'd have to take economics/business courses selected from the DA Track choices (which exist from a brief reading).

To emphasize your point about theoretical foundations: to do a phd in CS, having a good background in maths can often be even better than a background in CS...

Does the dicision between those two universities and above all the name of the degree make a impact for a later career in academia?

You mention academia and I can hardly comment on that area (I was in physics).
Just in case, should you switch to industry, anything "management" is suspicious to say the least. "Information Systems Management" is extra suspicious.
I managed varied IT teams and if the "Information Systems Management" studies are studies about how to manage IT (teams/organizations) then they are more or less worthless. After such studies you will not have any relevant experience.
If it means how to manage IT systems then you are basically a sysadmin and then yes, this is cool.
When hiring, I glance at the studies someone did but I am much more interested in the actual knowledge you have (including relevant hobbies). So you may want to consider to exactly explain what that "management" was, especially if it means you have technical knowledge.

There are always subtle implicit impacts of the words we see, but basically the name and reputation of the university will likely have a much larger impact than the name of the degree program. Also, you can always leave the name of the degree programme off your CV, and just say what department awarded the degree. But the main thing to focus on is what courses will you take, who will you potentially work with and get letters of reference from, and what are your chances of getting a publication or other research experience during or immediately after your degree?
Since you mention Berlin: One advantage of coming to Berlin / Germany – you can work at any university in part-time research positions.

German universities have virtually now reputation difference and in Germany it is more important what you actually did (Math, CS, Physics) then where you went to.

I'm old enough to remember when people thought that was true of the UK, and the astonished Guardian articles when data showed it wasn't. Maybe it still is relatively true here.

You are asking to quite distinct questions:
(1) Will the (prestige or reputation of the) institution matter?
(2) Will the discipline-area appellation of the degree matter?
Ad (1) Yes.
Ad (2) Depends on the person. In interviews, I just ask the person a bunch of technical questions to gauge their level of knowledge or accomplishment. I have found that this correlates only very weakly with either the prestige of their degree institution, or "in what" their degree actually was. However, some people have strong black and white opinions of the sort "all computer scientists are idiots" and in that case, it is not so good if your degree says CS.

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text:
What would it mean if a professor of interest (POI) emails me after April 15th asking if I decided where to go for my PhD yet?
So long story short a professor at a school I applied to got in touch a few days ago saying he was "impressed with my qualifications" and asked if I decided where to go for my PhD. What would this mean exactly? My assumption is that I was on the waitlist or "leftover list" and he got in touch. I replied saying that I haven't decided yet and I'd love to attend the school he's at (I didn't really receive any offers this round) and that if he wants I'd be down to discuss this further with him.
I think there's only really one reason why a professor would contact an applicant in that manner, but I'm now wondering if I may have made too many assumptions on my part. Do you guys think my interpretation was correct, or maybe I jumped to a conclusion too fast?

Perhaps they want to know whom to wait for.

Can we assume POI means person of interest?

@TerryLoring Yes, that would be correct.

Also remember procedures and deadlines vary by country and university.

Many U.S. universities have an agreement not to "steal" each other's graduate students after April 15. So if you had already accepted an offer from University A and now University B wanted to make an offer, they would have to ask University A for permission. It's possible that the professor who called you just wanted to know whom, if anyone, he needs to ask for permission to make an offer to you.

Seems to me like you did the right thing. They may really have been impressed by your qualification; or they just wanted to gauge your interest in remaining on the waitlist, to which you replied "yes".
There's little else we can guess the person might have wanted to ask. You didn't burn any bridges and expressed interest. There's little else anyone could have done in your place.

There can be many reasons.
One reason could be that a professor didn't have funding available by the deadline.  Now that they have funding, they are scrambling to find a student.
A second reason could be that they were counting on somebody else to accept the position, but that other person did not commit.
In end end, if you want the position, take it.  Don't worry too much about why you were given the chance.


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What useful teaching/administrative practices do lecturers disclose as additions to the course outline?
There have been a few answers and comments on this site where lecturers have noted some useful practices they implement in their teaching, which they disclose in the course outline.  Usually this occurs when the lecturer wants to put the students on notice of some practice they have that may differ from practice of other lecturers.  Some of the ideas I have read in answers and comments on this site have been good ones, so I would like to collect this advice into one post.
Question: What useful teaching/administrative  practices do lecturers disclose as additions to the course outline (especially where these practices differ from the norm)?

I will get the ball rolling with a disclosure I use in my own courses.  Over the years I have found that students sometimes come to me and point out inconsistencies in my marking, where two students have given similar answers and got different marks.  While I aim for consistency, sometimes I get a case where I have indeed marked inconsistently.  If the lower mark is too harsh then this is a simple fix --- just raise it to the higher mark.  However, if the higher mark is too generous then an incentive problem arises --- do I mark a student down for coming to see me with a marking inconsistency?  My own view (which some may not share) is that I don't wish to disincentivise my students from raising legitimate marking queries, so I have made it a policy that I will leave the inconsistency in place, rather than marking the higher student down.  If the student specifically asks me to correct the mark and mark them down for consistency then I will do so, but I won't do this unless they request it.  To put students on notice of this policy, I include the following section in my course outline:

Review of Marks and Consistency of Marks
The course lecturer will make every effort to mark all assessment items in a manner that is consistent from student to student.  If students believe that there is an inconsistency between the marking of their own work and the marking of another student’s work (e.g., they get different marks for an answer that is substantively the same) then they should raise this with the course lecturer for review.
The only exception to this consistency principle is this: if the course lecturer finds that a student has accidentally been awarded a higher mark than should have applied for a question, or overall, during subsequent inquiry on the matter by students, the mark will not be reduced, except on request from the student.  This is done in order to avoid creating any disincentive for students to discuss marking issues with the course lecturer (i.e., students do not have to worry about raising issues of consistency and then being marked down as a result).

Has anyone ever requested that you mark them down?

@Dave: I can't recall.  I vaguely remember someone asking for me to mark them down, since they didn't want to receive a mark higher than they deserved.  I can't remember for sure though.

I teach some advanced topics and unfortunately, there are times where some part of the class simply would not see any merit in being there. The blame often lies with whoever works on their program, we do have a back and forth with them, but otherwise it is what it is. If that happens, I explicitly give some low-effort options for getting a passing grade: it seems to me that the students end up at least a bit more engaged when having a clearly defined goal.


text:
How to cite that something is *not* on Wikipedia
I am presently writing an article about a certain class of discrete probability distributions, and I want to mention that the distribution is relatively obscure compared to other common distributions.  As an indicator of its relative obscurity, I would like to mention the fact that this class of distributions does not have its own Wikipedia page, whereas other common distributions (e.g., the binomial, Poisson, hypergeometric, etc.) do have their own pages.
My question: What is the proper way to cite this evidence?  Presumably I will be citing the fact that I have performed a search of Wikipedia at a certain time, and that I found pages for various common discrete distributions, but no page for the one that is the subject of my paper.
What I am NOT asking: I am well aware of the reasons that academic papers do not usually cite Wikipedia as a source.  In this instance I only intend to cite it as an indicator of the fact that a topic is sufficiently obscure that no-one has created a page for it.  As such, I am not seeking answers on the general objections to citations to Wikipedia (which I am already familiar with).

Have you considered creating the WP page, then referencing it saying "until this work, (...) did not have its own WP page" and then the edit history provides the timestamp to prove it

academic papers do not usually cite Wikipedia as a source [citation needed]. By the way it’s fine to cite Wikipedia when there is a good reason to do so, and sometimes there is (I cited a Wikipedia article in one of my papers).

Would it not be more interesting to know, how well-known this particular thing is in the professional community and not under general public? Something like the number of Google Scholar hits for your particular distribution and, say, Poisson, might be more helpful.

Alexis' suggestion is probably the most reliable way to back such a statement, but you could also link to a permalink of one of the pages that list missing articles. These may be occasionally outdated as new articles get created, but they're a strong indication that articles listed there don't exist at the time. After a brief search, the most appropriate such page seems to be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles/Mathematics#Statistics.

@Dan Romik: I agree.  Perhaps I overstated, but I wanted to head off irrelevant answers about the drawbacks of Wikipedia.

@Oleg: That's quite a good suggestion.  Would you consider turning it into an answer and adding more detail?  (E.g., how to cite the google-scholar searches)

Instead of citing inexistence of article in Wikipedia (or in addition to it) I'd suggest comparing the number of questions about that distribution in stats.stackexchange versus the number of questions about other distributions. Similar comparisons have often been done in StackOverflow as a measure of popularity of several programming languages.

I don't think one needs a citation for the fact that no citation exists. If you're identifying a gap in the regular literature, you can say something like 'to the authors' knowledge, no study of this kind has been published' or words to that effect and you don't need a citation to confirm that you are identifying a gap in the literature.
I find it highly unlikely that you would be criticised for wording along the lines of 'at the time of writing (possibly give date), no article exists on this topic at Wikipedia' and then maybe give a general citation for Wikipedia as a whole. As Wikipedia time stamps every edit to every article, this is something that could very easily be verified at any time in the future. I'm not sure having a Wikipedia page or not is the best measure of obscurity, but that's a different question entirely.

That is a good point about the time-stamp.  Still, just to be safe, I'd like to cite a search.  It is not just "to my knowledge" - I actually want to do a search on Wikipedia, and then cite the fact that the search did not yield a page for the topic of interest.

Yeah, the 'to my knowledge' wording was in reference to referring to a gap in the wider literature, not the specific Wikipedia article. I'm not sure a citation is really what you're after here though, you can detail a search strategy without a citation, as that is something that YOU have done. Citations are for citing existing work, which is not what you are doing here. I would specify the name of the page you searched for and the time you searched for it.
If you still really want a citation, then cite this as you would any other webpage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_distribution

Also, stating that the WP entry does not exist can be easily verified by the reader.

@Alexis Only until it does. That said, I suppose you can then check the page history.

I agree this is not useful but if you are really set on it you can make an archive.org or similar snapshot of the page not existing, or of the search results.

You could also use a completely different, arguably more objective, metric for 'obscurity', such as published articles on your topic per year. This can easily be done in many indexing databases. E.g. in Scopus (biological or life sciences) the 'obscurity' of snow algae research could be demonstrated by comparing the number of documents per year to brown algae research.
Search string 'snow algae':

Search string 'brown algae':

Google offers something similar, e.g., https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=snow+algae%2C+brown+algae&year_start=1930&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=5

What is the proper way to cite this evidence? Presumably I will be citing the fact that I have performed a search of Wikipedia at a certain time, and that I found pages for various common discrete distributions, but no page for the one that is the subject of my paper.

You can prove that a particular page didn't exist, for instance, by accessing a particular page (e.g., obscure_distributions) and recording raw result data (which will be authenticated). See my answer regarding a similar question for further details. That said, this is probably overkill, and you should probably be doing something completely different anyhow.

I tend to agree with E. Rei's answer, that "to my knowledge" should be sufficient, and is at least somewhat verifiable by consulting Wikipedia's edit history. However, considering your wish for something a bit more solid, two (independent) suggestions:

Expand the scope of "my knowledge" to include "XYZ experts' knowledge." To do this, post a question online somewhere you feel confident that Wikipedia experts exist...here, on Quora, on Wikipedia, etc. Make a simple statement like, "In the the interest of research I am conducting, I'm seeking a definitive answer on whether English Wikipedia contains an article on XYZ topic. I have done a search myself, but just in case my search technique was inadequate, can others with an intimate understanding of Wikipedia confirm this, or direct me to the article?" Then, you can link the discussion as evidence.
Do the search, take a screenshot of the (lack of) results, post it online, and then cite that.

I think you could really just handle it in article text itself. ("I searched" or "a search was done".)  I would maybe mention a few details (date of the search, English Wikipedia, what different versions of the name you searched on).  I don't think you have to go crazy about the details if it is just a minor point.
You could put details down into a FOOTNOTE ("a" or "b", not a numbered ENDNOTE citation). This gives a little more backup for you, without having to derail the flow of the discussion.  You could even consider to just put some [short] description into the endnote citation itself.  I have seen people put things like "personal communication" or "Superbowl commercial 2005" or the like into endnotes.  Obviously follow formatting strictly when citing normal sources, but if there is some rationale why you need to do something slightly differently, most editors/journals will be fine.  The point after all is to communicate.
P.s.  Practical advice:  Do a Google search of Wiki rather than using the Wiki search engine (it is miserable, too literal).  Also if there is more than one name for whatever it is, than search under all the names.  Don't want to look stupid if there is a page on it but under a different name.
P.s.s.  More practical advice:  consider to do a search in Google science or Webofscience or the like to compare how often the funky distribution is returned versus more common ones (normal, etc.)  It gives more of a comparison than just the yes/no has a Wiki page or not.  You can also look at Google Trends for prevalence on the web (compare to other terms). I believe you can do the same thing even for book text.  See below for an example in field I know:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hC819n9EoFM/UfkIFielYMI/AAAAAAAAAlw/wgwD7GDqfqQ/s1600/screenshot_12.jpg

Cui bono?
As it was mentioned in the comments, the question originally looks for a way to document something is lesser known to general public. Would it not be more interesting to know, how well-known this particular thing is in the professional community? A measure for this is a number of citations, for example.
So, stating something like the number of Google Scholar hits for your particular distribution and, say, Poisson, might be more helpful.
There are quite some papers on the meta- level, so it would be a somewhat accepted aspect of a research paper.
Also, obligatory xkcd:


text:
Is it too early to switch advisors if I just finished my first semester as a master's student?
I'm aware that questions regarding changing advisors have been asked frequently on this community, and I've also asked a few of my own previously. However, after doing some thinking on the answers that I've received and read I felt that I needed some opinions or feedback regarding my situation.
I just finished my first semester as a computer science master's student but have been having doubts about staying in this lab for quite a while. The main reasons that I'm having feelings of doubt are:

Different research interests. When I first interviewed with the professor the research that he said I'd be doing was different from what I'm doing now.
Differences in approaches to research. My professor is more "business-oriented" (for lack of a better word) and only cares about the results (more specifically, I'm doing research in deep learning), while I want supervision on how to analyze those results in-depth.
Differences in values and principles (I'm not sure if this is an accurate way to put it). This is somewhat related to #2, but I've noticed that most of the people in the lab share an attitude along the lines of results-first. This attitude is somewhat understandable, but again it's not exactly how I want to approach my research. I've been ridiculed when people saw I was taking classes in the mathematics department, saying that "you don't need those classes for deep learning."
Lack of supervision in general. My advisor's always attending meetings and doesn't do any research of his own. The most advisory that students receive is either during our lab seminar or right before we're about to submit papers to conferences/journals.

Some of the things that are holding me back from making up my mind are:

Perhaps I'm just having feelings of frustration and don't know particularly well what I really want to do yet, and should give it some more time. My parents (who are both professors themselves) have said that it might not be a bad idea to take another semester to think on my doubts, and whether switching advisors would solve any of those problems.
Money. The lab that I'm at now is the largest in our department (even school maybe), and the professor does do a good job of bringing in government or company-funded projects. The students including myself usually get paid on a monthly basis, and we use this money to pay for our tuition with a bit extra. I'm aware that this isn't typical for our school, and the lab I'm at is privileged in that sense.
Fear of starting over. I'm not sure if there is any objective reason for me to feel this way, as it has only been one semester. I suppose the reason why I feel this way is because I want to get results out within the next two years so that I can apply for PhD programs elsewhere, and switching advisors gives me this massive feeling of anxiety that I'd be throwing away everything I've been involved in until now.

What would your advise be to someone who's just started graduate school and is already having these feelings? Would they be justifiable or perhaps I'm just acting like a child? Switching advisors isn't a trivial issue either, so any second opinions that I may receive are greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Is it too early to switch advisors?

If there is evidence the advisor is not the right person for you, it's never too early.  It's clear from your question that you should switch.

Is it too late to switch advisors?

It depends on the rules of your university, but in the first semester it is probably not too late.  Don't wait until it's too late.


text:
Professor who I requested an LoR from told me to look for someone who knows me better, but would write me one if I couldn't find anyone
I made a post yesterday regarding when I should send a professor a reminder regarding a LoR request. Well, he actually got back to me today and told me that (translated and paraphrased from Korean):
"(small talk) I think it would be best for you to ask someone who may know you better. I'm afraid I may not know you well enough to write a detailed and strong recommendation letter. However, if you can't find anyone else I'd be glad to write one.
"Since I don't know you that well, it would help if you sent me your CV, SOP, and a one-page document laying out what you want me to specify or emphasize.
"Again, I strongly advise you to request a letter from a professor who knows you well, as that would lead to a stronger letter."
So yeah, it's not exactly an ideal response, but was expected. The problem I had is that I'm a MSCS student but am not originally from CS. Being busy with my own advisor and lab/projects has somewhat hindered me from becoming "close" with other professors. This particular professor I asked is one of the three who I've had interactions with a little more than the classroom level (I very briefly worked on a project with his lab mates, but it didn't turn into anything). The other two have stated they would write me letters already.
There is a postdoc in our lab who I've worked with, but I'd rather not ask a postdoc.
How negatively is this going to affect me? I don't think I really have a choice, and I don't believe this professor is someone who would write anything negatively about me, but I guess I would like some perspective from people who have been on both sides. Thanks.

If someone suggests you find another person to write for you it is advice you should take unless you have no other options.
The best letters come from people who know you well enough to speak both positively and enthusiastically about you and your prospects. This professor has some reservations.
But in the case that you really have no other options, then try to follow up with them. A mediocre letter might even be worse than no letter at all, but it is hard to say.

Thanks for the perspective. If two of my letters are strong, but this third one is lukewarm, would that be crippling?

@Seankala Who knows? The prof is nice; the letter will not be great, but it will most likely not be negative. If you just need to pad the number of your references and the other letters are good, it's probably not a killer. Make sure that the others are going to really be strong letters, though.

This is exactly what I would say to students wanting a LoR (only I did not write it in Korean first, but your translation is eerily close!). Even with the ones I knew well I would always ask which aspects they wanted me to emphasise. Because then I would only have to translate their informal response (to me as their friend) into officialese and hey presto.
So: this person means well. The letter will probably do its job which in the main is to reassure the recipient that you are not one a mad troublemaker. However, if there is anything else who is able to provide something stronger, he does not want to get in the way of that.
That is all. Proceed as planned and do not worry too much.


text:
Taking an extra semester to raise GPA
I'm not sure if this is the place to ask about graduate admission, so please let me know if the question is off-topic.
I'm currently in my senior year doing my undergraduate degree. I recently made the decision to pursue graduate studies (M.S. CS), but my GPA is a bit low. I will graduate with a double major degree in international relations and computer science. My major GPA will be 3.1/4.0 (cumulative 3.3/4.0), and so I decided to delay graduation an take another semester to raise my GPA (retaking a couple of courses and taking one new one) and also give me more time to prepare for graduate admission as I felt I was a bit too unprepared. After the extra semester (and assuming I do average to well) my major GPA will be 3.4/4.0.
I took the GRE and did well (163V / 169Q / 5.5 AW), but felt that I want to invest as much effort as I can (since this is the only time I'll have, to raise my undergraduate GPA) and then apply when I'm better prepared.
Does graduating late reflect poorly for graduate admission? I wanted to use that time and take advantage of the fact that I'm taking fewer courses during the semester to work on other projects as well.
Any feedback is appreciated. Thank you!

Did any prospective C.S. departments have concerns over your GPA?  The bar for masters students is not necessarily the same as for PhDs.

In general, taking longer to graduate is not a problem. However, your plan of retaking courses rather than taking new courses is a bit flawed. If you take more advanced courses and do well, then your earlier performance on more basic classes is less of a concern. It might not bring up your GPA as much, but taking new upper-level courses (and doing research as you have suggested) will give you more to talk about in a SOP, strengthen relationships with faculty, and better prepare you to do research at a graduate level.


text:
Rushing a paper to be published vs. taking the time and having a preprint by the time of PhD applications
I'm a second semester MSCS student who's looking to apply to PhD programs in the US and Canada this coming applications round.
My field is machine learning, and with graduate applications already being very competitive, I understand that my field is in some kind of hype bubble right now and it's particularly competitive. I hear stories about applicants who have perfect scores and stellar research experience getting rejected from schools.
Although I personally think it's a bit unreasonable to expect master's students to have a first-authored paper by the time of application, it is what it is. And this is what led me to wonder.
I'm working on a research project right now, and my original plan was to submit the paper to a conference on June 1st. That's only about a month away, and my project's still a bit far away from completion. It's a little unrealistic to have a high-quality paper ready by then considering this isn't the only thing I'm working on (other research projects, lab responsibilities, classes, etc.) and so should I just focus on taking more time to raise the quality of my research and having at most a preprint by the time I apply, or is it still worth it to have an official conference publication?
Obviously, this is all under the assumption that my submission even gets accepted. My personal values and principles regarding research itself tell me to do the former (i.e. take my time), but I guess I feel like I'm in a time frame where it seems that having one more line on my CV would help.
There's probably not a right or wrong answer, but I was hoping someone with more experience and insight compared to me would be able to provide some tips or thoughts. Thanks!

I do not think you can get useful advice from someone who has not read your paper.

Hm. I think you should discuss this with your supervisor (or other real-life people). Besides that one cannot really answer like A. Physicist says, advice on the Internet is often biased in the direction of "don't rush and it's better for science if this is a high-quality paper and this would be more ethical". I am not saying this is right or wrong, just that this forum (and probably all other forums, especially those where people write under their own name) is probably biased.


text:
What to do when you're not confident your advisor will be able to write you a strong LoR?
The title is pretty self-explanatory, but let me explain.
The lab I'm at right now is very big. It's around 30-40 people. I'm a master's student that just finished his first semester and am looking to apply for PhD programs this fall/winter so that if all goes as planned I'll start school in the fall of 2021 right after graduation.
The problem is that my advisor is "more like a business person than an advisor," so to speak. He's always attending networking events, meeting people, etc. rather than advising his own students. The few times that he does hold "meetings" with students is when there's something to be discussed regarding a project that brings in the funding. Even in these meetings it's more like a briefing session where the students fill him in on progress rather than him advising us on what to do.
Anyway, long story short I need him to write me a strong letter but I'm not confident he'll be able to. Your advisor is the one who should be the most familiar with your work, but in all honesty my advisor probably doesn't even know what kind of research at least 90% of his students are doing.
I imagine that it would also look a bit strange on the admissions committees' parts if an applicant's advisor's letter lacks quality content.
What should I do in this situation? I have about 6-7 months until applications open.
Edit
Allure brought up a great point in a comment and I'll try to fill up some more details on how the lab I'm at usually operates.
The lab is usually busy grabbing government or corporate grants (as I assume most are).

The professor pinpoints a few that he wants.
The students write up a proposal and bring it to him, which he assesses. Afterwards he meets with whoever to present the proposals.
If the grant is approved then we get projects to work on.
Teams consisting of PhD students and juniors like myself are assigned to different aspects of the project.
The "meetings" that I mentioned are usually the aforementioned teams briefing the professor, with the PhD students usually doing most of the talking. Honestly speaking, juniors like myself usually just sit there and pretend to take notes.

So yes, usually it's PhD students that I'm working close with, and I'm more than certain that a letter of recommendation from "someone who's not even a PhD" aren't acceptable as LoR's.
My anxiety and worry stems from the fact that, as mentioned above, the most detailed and supportive letter should be from one's advisor. However, I have a strong feeling that it's going to turn up to be a generic one like "student X exhibits very strong research potential!"

If your advisor is away most of the time, who actually is working closely with you?

Mostly PhD students. Perhaps I should elaborate a little bit more on how the lab works, as I'm not completely sure if this is normal or not. I'll edit it into the question.

The best practical approach is to try to make it as easy as possible for your "hands-off" advisor to write the best letter about you. Even if they delegate the task to someone else, it will be helpful for whoever is writing to have all the relevant information about you. I recommend at least preparing the following:

A summary of your research accomplishments. If you worked in teams, highlight what you personally added.
A summary of your non-research contributions to the lab. This includes students that you mentored, any responsibilities you took on, other kinds of service to the department or university, and times when you helped others with their research.
A few of your strengths and a specific example for each.

Whether your recommender uses this information is up to them. Having it  can only increase the odds that their letter is more thorough, specific, and helpful to your application.
Finally, having an advisor like yours is obviously not ideal, but it is also far from uncommon. I assume that their mentees in the past have gone on to successfully find jobs, postdoctoral appointments, etc. So maybe your advisor cares more about writing recommendations than you might guess based on their advising style. After all, an advisor does have some interest in the success of their students as well.

First I'd explore the whole situation with the people you work closely with to make sure you know how letters actually work in that lab. They can probably give you advice on what happens. Even better, but harder to arrange, is a chat with a recent graduate.
But, and I'm just guessing here, that the letters in such a place work pretty much like everything else. You ask for a letter. Someone who knows your work (person A) gets asked to actually write the letter or to provide the essential elements of a letter. That is, letters get delegated like all other work. The PI, reviews what A provides may hold a two minute meeting with them. Perhaps all they have to do is ask if everything is OK and then the PI signs the already written letter.
I don't think that is an ideal way to run things, but I'll guess (and only guess) that it happens in such top-down lab organizations. The PI needs assurance that what they sign is accurate and won't reflect badly on themselves, but, and we hope, will also help promote those who do the work.
If it works similarly to that you are fine as long as you are known and respected by the people that you actually work with. But if it is otherwise you need to learn the local rules and processes, whatever they are.


text:
How should I tell my professor that I want to quit my integrated program midway?
I'm currently enrolled in an MS/PhD integrated program (computer science) at a university in Korea and I just started my first semester. My undergrad is at the same university, by the way.
I've always wanted to go to the US for graduate school and took the GRE and everything, but realistically looking at things it was highly unlikely that I'd get into a good program or get funding, which was pretty important to me. That's when I found out about this lab and the professor. I got in touch with the professor and decided to start out as an undergraduate research intern. Everyone at the lab is amazing (very nice, helpful, well-experienced) and the professor is also a nice person.
When I first told him that I wanted to go for my PhD in the US, he advised that from his and the lab's perspective, they usually prefer integrated program students over regular master's students as they're usually at the lab for a longer period of time. I expressed my wishes to receive my master's here and go for a PhD abroad, and he strongly advised that I just finish the entire PhD program here and go for a postdoctorate position abroad.
All of this didn't seem like such a bad idea at first, but I'm starting to slowly realize that this lab may not be the place I want to receive my PhD from - and it's only my first semester.
First off, I'm sure that many professors and advisors out there are the same, but my professor has his own personal research interests and tries very hard to "nudge" (i.e. force) students to work on those projects. This isn't too terrible, I suppose it's how labs work, but the problem is that those interests aren't the same as mine and it's stressing me out quite a bit.
For a bit more detail, the lab I'm at works on deep learning algorithms and applications. When he advertises his lab (he did this to me) he always says that the lab does a variety of research (e.g. bioinformatics, social media analysis, finance, NLP, etc.) and that if you enter the lab then you'll be surrounded by people who are great and have similar interests. His main field of interest is bioinformatics and drug development using AI, and I've recently been semi-forced by him and another PhD student to participate in a project despite me having absolutely zero background knowledge in the material and not wanting to do it.
I've had thoughts of just staying in this lab until I complete the PhD portion of my program (our school allows you to quit midway and receive your master's if you fulfill the requirements) but these days the thought that I need to go somewhere else is becoming increasingly more imminent. In my mind, a PhD is something where you receive guidance and counsel while pursuing research in a specific subject. If my advisor's interests don't align with mine I have a feeling I'd be setting myself up for something disastrous.
I'm still in my first semester, and so I have about 3 more to go and have plenty of time to work hard and plan things out. I'm curious though, how should one normally approach this kind of issue? My largest fear is that he would be very reluctant to let me go and may write a subpar letter of recommendation for me.
Thanks in advance. Any tips or opinions are greatly appreciated.

Directly and honestly.  "I have decided to leave the program and pursue graduate study in the US."  (And if you don't trust him to write a strong letter of recommendation, you definitely don't want to continue working with him!)

Thank you for the reply, I've also been thinking the same thing. If I can't respect and trust someone I definitely don't want to mold my future around them. However, I'm curious: Let's say that my professor does indeed write a dismal letter of recommendation. Would that completely spoil any chance I have of getting into a program? I'm just asking as I understand how important letters are, especially for PhD applicants. Thanks again.

Let's say that my professor does indeed write a dismal letter of recommendation — Yes, a dismal letter can hurt your application, but you can mitigate that danger by asking directly, "Can you write me a strong letter of recommendation?" The word "strong" is absolutely essential here.  It gives him a way to say no if he feels uncomfortable/jealous, and if he says yes, you can generally trust that the letter will be strong.  (Obviously that last inference is wrong if your professor is a lying dirtbag, but if you think he's a lying dirtbag, you really don't want his letter anyway.)

tl;dr: At some point, you have to judge whether the professor has your best interests at heart.  If he does, ask him for a letter and trust that it will help you.  If not, do not ask him for a letter, because it won't help you.

Hi, I offer no advise, only reflection. I'm a PhD Candidate in Korea. Culturally I find the hierarchy challenging. My Prof is a good research, but a poor mentor. He offers little help (that parts okay, I'm fine working alone), he nudges (winkwink) research in his desired direction, he flat out does not listen to or read anything I write, and he often says derogatory sh##. I feel stress and not in a good vibration with the universe. He decided recently to move to a new school (top 3 in SK) and asked if I would join. I didn't. My journey is to be a scientist, not have a great linked in profile

Hi @Epic-tetus thanks for the reply. I just finished my first semester as a graduate student and I feel that I completely relate to your situation. Our professor is also the same, he's a brilliant man but does not put in much intellectual input for anything other than activities that would help his business connections grow. I want to move somewhere else for a PhD, but that's also a separate issue that's been causing some persistent stress. I appreciate the comment very much, though.

Your life is short. Experience different academic cultures, learn from them all. Some will teach you how to be a better researcher ITO funding, running projects, etc. (Your prof) Other will teach you how to best execute the scientific method. It is my OPINION that graduate students should experience different academic cultures. So I suggest you finish your M and move somewhere else, it doesn't have to be the US but I hope that mobility will make me a better researcher. I'm just a student though. I don't know what is better for your future. P.S. mobility is mandatory in most EU grad programs.


text:
What does it mean to co-sign a letter of recommendation?
To provide some background, I'm an MS student (CS - machine learning) looking to apply for PhD programs. I was looking for letter writers, and struggled to find the third.
I have the option of asking a postdoc that I've worked with or a professor who has explicitly stated that he "doesn't know me well enough to write me a detailed and strong letter, but if you have no one else I'd be glad to write one."
My question is, what does it mean to "co-sign" a letter? Many people have advised me that if a postdoc writes my letter then it would be a good idea to have our advisor co-sign it. As far as I know, universities send out requests to submit letters electronically and writers submit the letters online. My dad is also a professor (albeit not CS) and has said he hasn't heard about this ever since letters went online. What would this mean in today's context? Do some fields still request mail-in letters?

Most of this is just a copy of your earlier question. Pleas make this more concise. Make it specific to the new question.

Co-signing something simply means that the co-signer also approves of the letter. For example if I wrote:

To whomever it may concern,
Seankala is a brilliant student.
Sincerely, Allure

If someone else were to co-sign it, it would become:

To whomever it may concern,
Seankala is a brilliant student.
Sincerely, Allure & [someone]

It means that that someone also thinks Seankala is a brilliant student.
Co-signing something doesn't mean one wrote or even helped write it. Here's an example of a co-signed petition. The petition itself was obviously not written by 12,000 people, but you can be sure they all approve of it.

"Co-signing" a letter has nothing to do with being a physical letter.
All it means is that the postdoc writes (at least most) of the letter, and then the professor (in theory) reads it, and also puts their name on it as a way of saying:

I am a qualified professional, and although I don't know the student personally, I support [postdoc]'s endorsement of them if they do.

The postdoc would probably still submit it in the system, and they would show up as the recommender, but if they opened and read the letter, they would see the professor's endorsement.
If both parties agree, it would generally improve your application.

Although I see that in your specific case, the co-signer is your advisor (who presumably already wrote you a letter). In that case, the benefit would seem to be slimmer.

When I was a TA, I cosigned rec letters for people who wanted recommendations from the professor of that course. In that case, the professor wrote the letter but quoted from some sentences I wrote about the student's class performance. So, same as your answer but flipped. The professor had a policy of not solo authoring these letters because they felt they didn't have enough personal interaction (unless they had other interaction outside the course).

A better formulation from the PI, would be "I am the supervising professor of this group and I agree with the things said." There is no need for the "don't know" clause". But getting the PI to agree might be an issue. The post-doc should be the one to suggest it. (For "supervising professor..." substitute whatever is honest. The professor would be just agreeing that the opinions of this post-doc have validity that they recognize and hope others do also.

@Buffy Ah, the quote wasn't meant to be an extract from the letter, it was meant to be the subtext of what's being said. While I agree the prof doesn't need to say they don't know the student that well, that's what is understood from them cosigning a letter written by their supervisee.

Would the benefits reduce to the point that the postdoc's letter would be less valuable than a lukewarm letter from the professor?

@Seankala Hard to say. Depends on how good the postdoc's letter would be. I was probably recommend the professor over a letter from a postdoc in your group countersigned by someone who already endorsed y ou.


text:
Is it still true that CS PhD programs don't do interviews?
I'm currently an applicant and have tried to read extensively regarding this topic. It seems to be the consensus that "interviews are rare for CS PhD programs." However, observations from places like Grad Cafe (not the best source, but there's not really an alternative), anecdotes from other professors and students, etc. all indicate that in reality professors interview applicants extensively. After all, this makes sense since you're basically an employer in charge of someone for at least a few years.
I've also read that in many cases interviews happen mostly for international applicants to assess their ability to communicate in English. However, I've noticed a vast number of domestic applicants (in the US) and international applicants with high TOEFL scores also receiving interviews.
My question is, is it still the case that interviews are rare for CS PhD programs?
I'm also curious where the consensus that CS PhD programs don't do interviews stemmed from, because come to think of it I haven't heard of any professor who would be comfortable with agreeing to advise someone just by looking at their application.

I haven't heard of any professor who would be comfortable with agreeing to advise someone just by looking at their application — Neither have I.  But PhD students (at least in CS in the US) do not have permanent advisors when they are admitted.


text:
Co-authorship just because a Professor provides me the employment?
I am a postdoc at a European University. However, I am planning to quit my postdoc in a month or so since the research environment and the city life is not to me liking.
Also, I work with a Professor who is very polite, but also very busy with meetings. My salary comes from the project he administers, so he is the boss of the organization and the project.
For the past four months I have been working on a problem day and night including weekends as I found the problem very interesting and challenging. The theoretical part of the work is complete. It is a "complete" solution. He had NO contribution at all in this. Not even a single email exchange. He is too busy with meetings all the time. He is in the department twice a week for two to three hours at a time. I am also managing his master student as he has no time.
He is definitely polite and nice though, but I have not received any input from him other than giving me printed research papers. But he always asked me to give him the PDFs of lengthy derivations which I did. But I am dealing with analytical/numerical Navier-Stokes equation and its variations, so you can imagine how much terse that is. He has the entire theory now with him from my work. He may have been a good researcher in the past but no contribution to this work. And he had no proper publication in the work that I am doing so I am not sure how much he can contribute in writing the paper.
Now remains the numerical part which I believe I can do in next 2/3 weeks. And I have the ability to write the paper by myself when I have the numerical solution.
I talked to him and asked if I can work for him based in another city. He said if it is a week visit, that is fine, but not otherwise. He said it clearly that "I will not pay you to work somewhere else."
I still have a cordial relationship with him. No worries on that part. So, I am going to leave the place and the position in a month or two for sure.
So, he gains co-authorship just because he has the authority to provide employment? What should I do? Please help. I could have continued to live in the city though it was little boring for me, provided I was able to get inputs from my collaborator, or if he had given me necessary freedom to collaborate with other researchers, which he hasn't.

Update 10th June, I have resigned now. This problem has evolved into a new stage. Please post your replies there:
Gifting co-authorship if the topic of research was suggested by my boss?
and
Acknowledgment of funding and adding an affiliation in exchange of permission to use experimental data?

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. @Vikash: Please [edit] information that is relevant to the question into the question. Also, please try to keep your question focussed on what is relevant to the problem of authorship.

Different people would approach this differently. Given that you like to avoid conflict, why not give him authorship, finish your notice period, and leave on a happy note?
I don't think it would hurt you very much to add an author, especially your host. Rather, you are creating a collaboration that may be useful some day.
What you are suggesting, i.e. writing the paper with dual affiliation would actually be a little dishonest, because the work is all done at the first institute. This business of sharing your password and returning salary sounds rather unnecessary, and pardon me, slightly immature. I understand that you consider it the scrupluous thing to do, but let me assure you, it will leave a bitter taste with the institute and/or the host.
As I understand you are leaving because the city doesn't suit you, not because the institute is not supportive. No point burning bridges then, isn't it?

If you cook a meal in 30 minutes for the guests in your home, but I take the credit away from you. How would you feel? This work took 4 months of my time, including weekends. I do not think I would like to have collaboration with a person who cannot contribute actively. He has not even given any idea that I could try. I would not have mind if such an idea had failed. But all the research exchange has been just one way. I have used the office and the computer, no lab or training of any such type. Sorry for being immature, but that was only to convey how confident I am of my claim.

I understand and appreciate your passion for your work, that's great! But three points: (1) your strong feelings about this and your desire to avoid conflict don't really add up, you may not be able to satisfy both. (2) you mention no lab/training- was it suggested before you joined that these would be given? If not, is it possible that you had some unfounded expectations? .

(contd.) (3) I know this varies field to field, but it's a bit strange to me that you are insisting so much on the 4 month thing. From what I've seen around, it takes that much time or more to put up a quality paper anyway (on a lighter note, likewise cooking a meal does takes 30 min or more ;). Coming back, the fact is that if you want to do this without him, you should be willing to take possible backlash. Some people would be okay with that, some less so.

Well he has accepted himself many times that he should more actively contribute to the paper but could not since he is busy with meetings. he often says, he will catch-up, but never did. And he has dropped enough hints that he has a share on the paper, he is boss and so co-authorship come natural. Should I just go upfront and ask him "Could you please clarify if you are expecting a co-authorship even though I have done all the theory and the numerical part, and so I am confident I can write the paper by myself"? he will certainly say, YES. what next?

Or, in order to avoid all these messy conflicting situations, should I just inform the dept that I am quitting. I leave, and publish the paper when I join a new institute after two months? Can he claim later to the editor that it was his idea, his work? He has no proof though. He only has pdf of my theoretical derivation so far. He has got no programming codes and final result yet. they are still with me.

Vikash, I get an impression that your handling of the situation is somewhat immature and possibly contributes to/aggravates the mess. (It may still be good for you to get a supervisor who has more time) Iff he has an intellectual contribution, that will stay with him whether you leave or not. If you are employed for this work, authorship certainly stays with you. However, the copyright of the code is probably (Germany: for sure) owned by the university, you cannot just keep it, not even a copy without their OK. Neither can you take data or lab book with you without OK. Violating these ...

... laws will only get you on the wrong side, so into a far deeper mess.

@user153812 just want to say I admire your calm response in this somehow heated thread. kudos.

I find adding a contributions paragraph (or making the acknowledgements paragraph "Acknowlegements & Contributions") to papers and posters very helpful. I think they also have merit for the reader, providing a better idea whos specialization is what (particularly for highly interdisciplinary papers).
Some medical journals require it, and so far, I've neither met nor heard of a revision calling to cut that paragraph out. Even if that would happen, it means that the editor and reviewers have read it - which provides an outside control instance against gift authorship.

In case we're really talking gift authorship, I think that even of those who'd accept a gift authorship without any second thought if it just involves entering their name on the front page, the vast majority would not type out outright lies about their contribution.
I also assume that potential co-authors do know the rules for authorship, and hesitate to type out ridiculous non-contributions (provided instrumentation) that rather should be acknowledged. However, if that happens, I'd think you may just leave it as it is. Editor and reviewers will see it. They know the power difference between PhD students, postdocs, and professors very well, they'll draw the correctand conclusion. I trust they will also take appropriate action, as the reputation of the journal is directly implied.
They do take action: I've made the experience of being upgraded to co-first-authorship by decision of the editor based on our contributions section.

If your European University happens to be in Germany, the DFG rules for authorship are quite clear and avalable in German and English.
Part of the strategy for quality assurance for scienctific research is that there are ombudspersons for scientific questions.

The question whether or not your professor is entitled for co-authorship IMHO cannot be decided from what you told us so far: while you did not describe any sufficient scientific contribution from their side, but it is still possible that there is sufficent contribution which you do not yet realize.
Please do not get upset, but we're all stranger to both you and your professor. We just know that:

There are black sheep who take or even demand gift authorship.
But we also know that there are students who do not recognize proper  scientific contributions by their supervisors.

Typical candidates for such unrecognized contributions are: questions and possibly short (but to the point) conversations after seminar presentations, over a coffee. A suggested experiment or solution strategy on the hallway. Note: the length of a sentence is not a good indicator of the amount of thought or intellect someone put in to arrive at that sentence.

he does not contribute anything at all, other than placing research papers on my desk. And I never read those papers, never found them related to what I have been doing.

How can you know that they do not contain relevant ideas if you do not read them!?
How do you know he never thinks about the pdfs he asked for? Or never thinks about the topic even without your pdfs?
(Authorship needs scientific contribution plus writing contribution - IMHO at the moment you cannot know that there aren't (going to be) any)

Here are some borderline cases to ponder:

suppose you have an ideal supervisor S and two students or postdocs: ideal researcher I and not-so-good researcher N. S closely follows their work. As S is a good supervisor, they work with least possible disturbance by S. Also, as a good teacher, any guidance is done in a way that the researcher in question is lead to discover the error/solution/correction themselves. S critically weighs all arguments brought by the researchers and pinpoints any weak points. Turns out, N needed some guidance to arrive at their paper, whereas I did not. I basically answered all questions before they were asked.
Questions:  So S clearly has contributed scientifically to the N paper. Is his contribution to I's paper less, solely because I is a better researcher than N? In other words, S doing the same except expressing a few questions to N which he doesn't express to I, does their contribution depend on the contribution of N vs. I?  If so, could (or mabe even should) S ask some questions to I (that are OTOH neither necessary nor OTOH dumb), and thus gain a scientific contribution also to I's paper?
Assume a supervisor S thinks over a problem long and intensive enough to arrive at an idea how to tackle/solve it. E.g. sufficiently to decide that a solution can be managed by researcher R within a reasonable time frame. If S then hands over the task and explains the proposed solution strategy to R who in turn solves the problem, they clearly have a scientific contribution.
Questions: if the S hands over the problem, but for the sake of the improved learning possibilites for R does not (initially - though it is at hand should R not find their way) outline the solution strategy, does S lose their contribution?
Once R knows the task, they avoid any discourse with S, in order to make sure they'll get a single-author paper (i.e. avoid S's co-authorship). Is this a valid strategy for R?

Please note:
Wheras I maintain (until you convince me of the opposite) that what I called scientific contribution, are scientific contributions, I consider it a different question whether they are sufficiently large to warrant co-authorship on their own (assuming everyone contributes to the writing, which is also necessary), and one where the answer is very much field dependent.
Personally, if I were a supervisor in the described cases, I'd prefer acknowledgement - but then you cannot count me as I'm not entirely in academia anymore and thus do not have the full publication pressure.

"Could you please clarify if you are expecting a co-authorship even though I have done all the theory and the numerical part, and so I am confident I can write the paper by myself"? he will certainly say, YES. what next?

I'd consider this rather unnecessarily confrontational - particularly as you say you'd like to avoid conflict.
A more neutral alternative would be to tell him you're ready to start writing the paper and whether he wants to become co-author.
If he then says yes, it is time to tie down who is going to contribute what to the paper.
(BTW, This idea is largely not my own: I heard of a similar strategy from an acquaintance, where the student basically said they'd like to have professor as co-author on the paper, and what scientific contribution professor suggests to make)

I will tell you in points. 1) He is a Professor here and heads a research group within the dept. 2) He hired me and so my salary comes from the funding of one of the projects which his research group has. 3) He administers the project. 4) In the beginning he gave me two binders containing like 70/80 papers. 5) Since he is also working for the first time in this particular research field, he has no read them either. 6) I went quickly through them and found that they were not something that I would prefer.

I often pick a paper whose results I can reproduce and then I build my work on the top of it. This strategy give me confidence. 8) Then in mid-January, I found the right paper, say X's paper. I read it and liked it. I went to his office to show the paper.  And then he said "Oh..so this is a joint finding". he had not read the paper in detail. 9) I worked the first half of the theory, send him the report. 10) He never replied any research related in mail. So in meetings he said, he trusts my derivation. Never went through it. But always asked for pdfs which I mailed to him.

A couple of weeks ago, i finished the theoretical derivation. he was very happy with this. 12) I thought this is the right time to ask him for a favor. Actually I am working in a remote location, and the dept is geology but I am a physicist. I cannot talk about my work with my colleagues. I feel like an old duckling. And city has nothing to offer for me. Not much activities are here. Since my work is theoretical/numerical I thought of going to city, an-hour flight time distant and work with physicist, fluid dynamics researchers there. many people had done it in the past.

I talked to him and asked if I can work for him based in another city. He said if it is a week visit, that is fine, but not otherwise. He said it clearly that "I will not pay you to work somewhere else."  14) This shook me. And he has often told me "we should have a meeting. I will help you in writing research proposals. I will extend your postdoc by 6 months or one year". But such meeting never happened in last 4 months. I believe he is just luring me to do more work in exchange of giving financial security.

Well he has accepted himself many times that he should more actively contribute to the paper but could not since he is busy with meetings. he often says, he will catch-up, but never did. And he has dropped enough hints that he has a share on the paper, he is boss and so co-authorship come natural. 16) he comes to the dept like twice a week and stay for max 3 hours. he just says he is busy with meetings. 17) Now my numerical code is ready, plots will be up soon. 18) he has not written a paper on the current research idea so I am not sure how much he could help.

I did not received any help from him. 20) I picked the right paper to begin working. I did the theory, I did the numerical. I can write the paper by myself. It will be 4/6 page long paper and in a journal in which I have got my papers accepted earlier. 21) So what exactly is his contribution? 22) He has not even given any idea that I could try. I would not have mind if such an idea had failed. But all the research exchange has been just one way. Hope I have explained all the events completely.

he will certainly say he wants to become a co-author. 24) He has even hinted he is keen about possible co-authorship in another paper which I am writing with my former PhD supervisor. He has no idea about the topic though. Even then I sent him two drafts of calculation. Never received any comment on them.

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text:
Gifting co-authorship if the topic of research was suggested by my boss?
This is an update of a query that I had asked few months ago: Co-authorship just because a Professor provides me the employment?
In fact I have even adopted some of the suggestions given by @Magicsowon there.
I was advised to make the question to the point, and not include any extra information. This is why I am posting it afresh here with only relevant information and also some new information as the situation has evolved since then.
I have worked as a postdoc in a European university for 6 months. The topic of my research was suggested by my boss and his collaborator, Prof. M. That was their contribution. After that, I went through more than 50-60 papers to find the right paper to build my work on. I have developed the theory and I have finished the computational part. Now, I am writing the paper.
A good analogy would be, it was like going to a conference and there one hears about an interesting problem that deserves serious investigation.
While developing the theory, I sent many drafts containing my derived equations to my main collaborator (my boss), but he hardly commented on them, none useful feedback from him. I do not think he had even read them seriously. Considering that a postdoc is essentially an unsupervised position, and the potential of co-authorship dispute in the future, I sent him a couple of emails asking him to help me with certain aspect of the theory and computational aspect. But, he did not provided any help to me. He had a regular comment during every meeting we had,
"I am aware, I should more actively contribute to the work, but as you can see I am busy with meetings. And I am sure, you can fix this problem."
Also, he did not gave me sufficient freedom to collaborate with other researchers. So, having no help coming from anywhere, I resigned from the job. I had implicitly mentioned to him as well as to the head of the dept. in my resignation email that I had worked all by myself during the 6 months stay at their department, and also that I can do the remaining work by myself. No objection was raised on that from anyone.
Now, I am writing the paper, and my plan is:
1) Write the paper as a single author under the affiliation of the former department where I had finished almost 40% of the work. I cannot gift co-authorship for my hard work of 6-months to anyone as I did not received any major/minor help from anyone. I have checked, this is consistent with the Vancouver recommendations.
2) I will acknowledge my boss and Prof. M in the acknowledgement section of the paper for suggesting me the topic of research. Note: I had just met Prof. M in a conference for 30 minutes or so, we had general discussion about the topic of research. No specific discussion regarding the work I did, no mail correspondence between him and me. However if I am not wrong, he is the actual brain behind the project, and I had tried to visit him and collaborate with him closely. But my boss did not facilitated that either. Also, note that my boss and Prof. M have worked together in most of their papers in the last 2-3 years. And my boss is the director of a research unit in which Prof. M is a member too.
3) I will also acknowledge the research unit of my boss for funding the research.
Is it fair, honest and sufficient? If the paper is published, can he claim authorship by writing to the editor? I am pretty sure he can almost show nothing about the evidence of the contribution other than suggesting the topic of research, if asked.
And the traces of this problem have off shoot to become another problem. See, Acknowledgment of funding and adding an affiliation in exchange of permission to use experimental data?

@ user153812, thank you for reminding me that. But please see over there, I was advised to make the question to the point, and not include any extra information. This is why I posted it afresh with only relevant information and also some new information as the situation has evolved since then.

Vikash, I don't see why (1) you couldn't edit the original question itself , (2) you didn't link the previous question here if not to mislead readers and get new answers, (3) you had to post this from a fresh profile. In any case, let me tell you that I have no jurisdiction here except the one vote, which I stand by. I leave it to the wisdom of other readers and moderators  whether to let this question stand.

Please follow the instruction to merge your two accounts. Thanks.

@ user153812, 1) Could not edit as I am unable to recover that account. I use different emails to log in into academia, stack over flow etc. This time it got mixed-up. 2) Sorry for that, I have linked it now. 3) Had to post this again because I could not recover the previous account and the problem has evolved into a totally new stage. In fact I have adopted some of the suggestions given by @Magicsowon, from the previous post, only after I found that was more rational from my perspective at least. Please read the two posts, you will understand my point, I hope.

@ scaahu, I am trying to fix that.

@ user153812, there is another tail part of this problem that has newly came into existence. See, https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/111034/acknowledgment-of-funding-and-adding-an-affiliation-in-exchange-of-permission-to

@ All, I have linked all posts now. I have also suggested people to reply to the new two links of the problem, since it is not the same problem as before, specially the tail part.

Have you merged two of your accounts yet? If not, please flag the moderators to help you. Or, do you need me to flag the moderators for you? You are not supposed to have two accounts at the same time.

@ scaahu, I tried and I guess it has been done. However I would like to delete the three questions that I posted here. Though I heartily appreciate everybody's efforts to answer here yet things have gone too complicated with conflicting views. I guess it is only me who can and who has to figure a way out of this terse situation.  Is it possible to delete the questions? I tried it, but seems difficult.