text:
Has a doctoral degree any value outside of its main area?
The phd area is Computer Science and the other area can be anything - if this info makes any difference...
I am asking from the practical point of view, specially something that can be evidenced by real examples. Some career that requires/rewards the degree despite of being completely outside its scope would be a good example.
I was worried about asking something a little open, but I see it is pretty common by here, e.g. - the opposite of other more harsh communities.

I am definitely not a beginner in research, but I might be missing something while being below a pile of work.

Real-world example #1: when I was a postdoc, I shared a house with a physics grad student whose dissertation involved a lot of numerical analysis. After graduation, he got hired almost immediately by a company that runs business feasibility studies for other companies, largely on the strength of his experience doing numerical analysis.

Real-world example #2: one of my wife's friends did his PhD in French Intellectual History, which is a way less transferable set of skills. Either you get a job as a French Intellectual History professor, or you end up doing something totally unrelated.

I doubt a PhD in artificial intelligence (e.g. image processing (IP)) may have any (competitive) value in artificial intelligence (e.g. natural language processing (NLP)) when competing (for some position) against other people that do have a PhD on NLP... Have in mind that artificial intelligence is a field of computer science and IP and NLP are part of it...

I am happy I decided to post the question. Some comments are really helpful.

related: http://matt.might.net/articles/tenure/

Generally, the answer is "No, the Ph.D. title hardly makes you worth more as you step far from your main area".
Typically, doctorate training prepares you to do research, and by the time you graduate, you will have accumulated research experience in your narrow area. So even in academic CS, you won't be particularly welcome if you did research in compiler theory, and the department is looking to hire somebody in Big Data. Moreover, your compiler theory research experience is hopeleslly useless if you decided to work in medieval German literature or neuropsychology or plant biology. They will hire the specialized Ph.D. in that area any day over you. They will hire a linguist who said they took a CodeAcademy class in Python over you even if the project calls for text mining for unique patterns of word use in XV vs. XVI century.
If you slip out to the big real world outside of academia, you will find that you will have surprisingly little to offer on top of a good MA graduate while wanting a higher price tag. Microsoft or Adobe or any other MakeUpNameSoftMetrics do not develop compilers, and instead they would want you to deliver good quality production code (or, worse, to oversee a team of programmers who do that). So ask yourself again.
Paul said here that Ph.D. develops "the skills to attack virtually any problem very deeply, if given sufficient time". I added emphasis, and I cannot stress this small print enough. My experience in industry is that the deliverable time is often yesterday, and few leaders have the patience for you to develop a perfect peer-reviewed published solution. It may not always have to be quick-and-dirty, but it is always have to be on time, so you need to have a better understanding of what the most important points and priorities in your project are which need to be addressed and accomplished first than academia can teach you.
Virmaior said here that McKinsey happily hires Ph.D.s as consultants. That, of course, is true, but it does not mean that they hire any Ph.D. in any discipline out of charity. They are looking for specific communication and business skills -- essentially for people who made the wrong choice by going to a Ph.D., or had no other pathway to continue with their traning, or in other words who have the mega brains to do really smart work, but may not find themselves happy in academia. The work environment in a consulting firm is anywhere from three to five times as intense as your Ph.D. -- not necessarily in the hours, but more in terms of responsibility. You may be well paid, but you are absolutely required to deliver. McKinsey specifically has an "up-or-out" model: at a time for the regular review, you are either so good that they promote you, or the company will be better off with you working for their competitor. Compare that to "Oh, you worked on this project for two years, and all your mice died because somebody turned the A/C off for the weekend? Ah well. Let's find you another project where I need a qualified technician but I don't want to pay the full time position benefits..." (As a side comment, McKinsey's pricing structure ends up being absolutely, over-the-top ridiculously expensive, may be because they hire so many Ph.D.s that still need to be molded into industry setting.)
To round the picture up, in government of any kind, you will find spending 25% of your time on filling compliance paperwork, be that a job in a public school, an IT support job in state capitol, you name it. This is as far as it can get from being able to come to work in shorts and sandals at noon to work through the night. As far as what Ph.D. is worth there: if you browse some jobs on usajobs.gov, you will find a scale of GS-## (government service at a given level), and the relevant level for a Ph.D. is around 12. I found these two pieces in my area:

In addition to the Basic Requirements:
For the GS-12, applicants must have either (a) one year of specialized
  experience equivalent in difficulty and responsibility to the GS-11 in
  the Federal Service or (b) a Ph.D. or equivalent doctoral degree in
  statistics, biostatistics, computer science, mathematics, or a closely
  related field.

where in turn level GS-11 means

In order to qualify for  Mathematical Statistician, 1529-11/12/13, you
  must meet the following:
Basic Qualifications
Have at least a bachelor's degree that included 24 semester hours of
  mathematics and statistics, of which at least 12 semester hours were
  in mathematics and 6 semester hours were in statistics.
or
Have a combination of education and experience--at least 24 semester
  hours in mathematics and statistics, including at least 12 hours in
  mathematics and 6 hours in statistics, as show in A above, plus
  appropriate experience or additional education.
Minimum Qualification Requirements for Mathematical Statistician,
  GS-1529-11/12/13.
Have one year of specialized experience, equivalent to the GS-09 grade
  level in the Federal service that includes experience performing
  statistical analyses on biological or biomedical research problems and
  conducting reviews evaluating statistical methods, procedures, and
  concepts involved with biological or biomedical applications.

So for that line of work, Ph.D. = Bachelor + 1 year. Don't quote me on this, job requirements keep changing, and I won't even bother putting links as these jobs expire quite quickly by SE standards.
As a silver lining, there are industry jobs where Ph.D. is required. However, these would be leadership positions in research-heavy types of work, and positions would be listed as "15+ years post Ph.D.; experience overseeing 10+ direct reports" or the like. By then, you will have retrained yourself into whatever the job really requires, so the Ph.D. is really just three letters after your name at that point. If leadership role is where your ambitions are, you should start taking classes in Business Administration immediately if your program covers arbitrary credits outside your major department.

Though the topic of your dissertation may be extremely narrow and focused, the process of acquiring a PhD teaches you the skills to attack virtually any problem very deeply, if given sufficient time.  Ultimately, the PhD is just a piece of paper.  The real value of it is the ability to produce something of value to others (i.e. research, a product, etc...).

I realized my increased ability to attack problems, but have not linked it to the ability to attack other areas. Thanks for the answer, rather obvious, but sometimes we need it. I will take a look at the others before accepting.

Honestly, i think @stask's answer is more realistic than mine:)

There are careers where PhD as a degree/piece of paper can be helpful:

Higher education. To be a teacher at a university, by rule, you have to have this piece of paper. It doesn't need to be in the same field as your teaching, though.
Any business dealing with academics as costumers. Be in policy, salesman for a company or a patent attorney, academics will always welcome you much more warmly if you have that three letter next to your name.
Consulting. If you do consulting, especially as a sole entrepreneur, PhD can give a lot of credibility.

Where they will hate it:

If you want to work in IT, many programmer seriously despise PhD people.

For programmers despising it, I never found that to be my experience while earning a PhD. But my PhD is in philosophy... Maybe the despised PhDs in C.S.?

I am not CS, so may be wrong, but seen similar sentiment all around: http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=56

The margin of negativity in that graph is pretty low to warrant "despise." My experience was that they despise theoretical approaches, and PhD in CS usually means that. E.g., "but it's correct according to the theory" regarding a program that doesn't work or compile...

I think your definition of "despise" is somehow off. Yes, many programmers don't value PhDs highly, but I have certainly never talked to somebody who seemed to have anything worse than a slight confusion about my work. And I hold a PhD in software engineering, so I talk to programmers regularly as part of my empirical research.

Also, what this comic probably means is that a PhD does not necessarily help you with finding a programming job, but not because senior programmers hate your guts and think you must be an idiot, but because they assume you may be too expense or even overqualified for an entry-level programmer position,

@virmaior I think the "despise" towards PhDs on CS is the despise towards (alleged) talkers from (self-proclaimed) makers.

@Greg I guess I could be considered a programmer and I mostly agree with that, so I guess a "real programmer" may agree to a further extent.

You don't need a PhD to teach at most community colleges and some SLACs

"

Higher education. To be a teacher at a university, by rule, you have to have this piece of paper. It doesn't need to be in the same field as your teaching, though.
"

No, certainly in UK, to teach, only a Masters degree is required.  Indeed, my father and a number of his colleagues were tenured Oxford university lecturers without PhDs (DPhil in their case).  Nowadays there's an oversupply of PhDs so most university lecturers will have PhDs, but the MA degree was originally the credential required for university-level teaching.

The answer, obviously, contained broad generalizations. Most university teaching positions require PhD by law/regulations, or equivalent experience. Off course, details depends on country, institution and position.

One way to view it as the the PhD is a signal to employers and others of a certain capacity. This signal can in many countries open doors to other work not immediately related to one's field of inquiry. McKinsey for instance hires PhDs as consultants and hires them at a higher rank than others for that.
A parallel can be said about bachelor's degrees -- at least in the US. A lot of work doesn't really take a bachelor's degree in terms of skills nor does it do anything related to that, but seeing that someone could complete a four year degree signals something about the person's task-completion abilities and willingness to slog through areas they don't like (among other things).

In some countries, there are some legal implications. For example, in the university I did my Master's thesis, you can only be hired for a maximum of six months, except if you are a student (master or PhD) or you hold a PhD, in which case there are no limits.
Also, it is easier to immigrate to the States if you have one, as it can be used as proof of "extraordinary ability" or be an "outstanding researcher" (granting you priority 1), or at least, "exceptional ability" and "advanced degree" (priority 2).
Source

There's nothing in immigration legislation of any of the countries to say about Ph.D. Some of the countries that have point systems, like Australia and New Zealand, may reward you for higher education, but my recollection of these systems (that I last looked at about five years ago) is that you only get points for Bachelor's degree, and the degree above it does not matter. These countries also have lists of priority occupations that give you extra points, but whether your scientific discipline is among these priority disciplines or not is a game not worth playing. Verify your second hand info.

@StasK actually, they count. According to this, a PhD holder can be considered priority 1 as a person with "extraordinary ability" or "outstanding researcher" looking for tenure; or priority 2, "advanced degree" and "exceptional ability".

yes and no. Outstanding researcher really means a researcher of internationally recognized stature. No fresh Ph.D. graduate would ever be able to qualify as one, you'd need to be 10+ years out, and really have a stellar publication record comparable to that of a good professor in a good school. The mechanism referenced is typically used for non-tenure track (research) staff; tenure-track professors go through the "second preference" and labor certification because their positions are considered permanent, for immigration purposes, as opposed to the research positions (which aren't).


text:
How can a graduate student most efficiently become an expert at his research topic?
Taught courses typically do not reach research level, so there is a significant gap in knowledge that has to be bridged by a graduate student in order to make meaningful contributions to their field. What is the most efficient way to bridge this gap? I could come up with the following possibilities:

Find advanced textbooks, prove all the theorems [if maths] and do all the exercises yourself.
Organize seminars with other graduate students with related interests
Go to conferences or talks given by staff about their research

Is this list exhaustive or is there anything I missed? Which methods of learning are recommended in which situations?
For definiteness, by 'expert' I mean the level necessary to understand current research articles and (in principle) independently reproduce the calculations/proofs.

What is your working definition of an "expert?"  It is hard to describe a path to an outcome that is ambiguously defined.

@BrianP: While your comment is true, I feel like it is somehow misleading.  "How to most efficiently become an expert at your research topic?" is a question that takes one's whole graduate career to satisfactorily answer.  It's fair to say that part of this is to learn to appreciate and unambiguously define the question.  Fair but maybe not that helpful.  I think a more honest answer is: "This is one of the big questions of your graduate career.  You should keep it in mind, but it will take time to answer.  Getting help on this is one of the main functions of your thesis advisor."

I agree with Brian P.  One huge distinction: would you like to be an academic expert or a professional expert?

@Dave: I'm not sure I understand your comment: could you give an example?  In some fields there is a pure/applied distinction, but I view this as part of the choice of the research topic itself and not really the kind of expertise.  But even that distinction is not always applicable.  In many fields, I can't see any difference at all.  What would it mean to be a "professional expert" in Galois cohomology or logical positivism or....?

Here's a(n obviously strictly optional) thought experiment: let me go back in time to when I was a graduate student.  Suppose I asked you how to most efficiently become an expert in the field of quaternionic Shimura varieties.  What questions will you ask about my working definition of expert or academic versus professional in order to usefully answer my question?  I honestly can't think of anything useful to say along these lines, and this is years after my actually having become an expert on this research topic.

Pete, sounds to me like you understand my comment perfectly!

For most disciplines, advanced textbooks still provide, albeit necessary, foundations. Conferences allows you to hear what is new and is as such a good way to know where fields are going. I am not sure what you mean by seminars but discussing new papers and topics is always a good way to advance knowledge. But, the major point is to read up on published papers and to focus on the topic of your thesis. The point of research is to advance knowledge and this means you will, or at least have a chance to, be an expert on the field you are researching. So in my view none of the activities 1-3, or combinations, make you an expert, only your own sweat over publications and own work will do so.

+10 There's no shortcut to reading the papers.

For most disciplines, advanced textbooks still provide, albeit necessary, foundations. — [citation needed] — Or maybe my field is just weird.

In some cases, the textbooks really do extend all the way to current (or at least very close to it) research.  For examples (from my own area), the book Representations of Algebraic Groups by Jantzen will not need much supplement before one can do research. Same goes for Modular Representations of Finite Groups of Lie Type by Humphreys (though calling that a textbook might be a stretch).

The answer to this one is fairly easy.  You read, read, and read.  And when you're done, you read some more.
My thesis was a study of two specific products/types of databases.  Of course, the widely-known "Brewer's CAP Theorem" was a core focal point, so I read Dr. Brewer's paper "Harvest, Yield, and Scalable Tolerant Systems."  I then read the paper that analyzed his paper, which (of course) led me to another.  And another.
I went to Amazon.com and looked for books about the non-relational database I was focusing on, and found five.  I bought (and read) all of them.  I looked at the sources for those works, and read more and more.
I went to a conference in Chicago put on by the software company which created my non-relational database of focus.  I talked with the people who created it, as well as with others who used it.  I took lots of notes, looked through many Powerpoint projects, and followed the sources listed in those as well.
This went on for more than a year.
Fast-forward to now, I (successfully) defended my thesis 11 months ago.  Since then, I have taken a new job (that I was recruited for) as a lead engineer, driving big data projects.  I don't really consider myself an expert, but it is apparent that I understand that material (and database theory in general) better than anyone else in our company.
So again, read as much as you can find on your topic.  Question it.  If you have the means, run some of the experiments on your own.  And after that, keep reading.

"The answer to this one is fairly easy. You read, read, and read. And when you're done, you read some more."  Well, yes.  That was easy to say, and moreover I think it's correct.  It is less easy, however, to do.

In addition to other informative comments and answers, there is a point that appears to me widely overlooked, namely, that it is hard to rush "maturity" or "experience". Yes, one can speed up "experience_s_", but only to a point, since too much so reduces comprehension of them.
In different words, in addition to accumulation, and assimilation, of many, many factoids and ideas, there are ... intangibles, "intuition", all those vague things.
That is, apart from having seen and remembered many facts, genuine experts have so-well assimilated them, have so-well changed themselves to adapt to a subtler viewpoint, that they have "sense" about otherwise-vague situations.
Yes, I am obviously noting that live mathematics is not formal. It is only that the contemporary writing style has various formal/logistic pretensions, not that the practice is that.
As a corollary, I think it is simply not feasible to "become an expert" in grad school, or soon, or... although one must be wanting that to exert sufficient energy to move in the right direction.
(And, as at other locales, I am not a fan of "routine exercises", unless one has nothing better to do. I think "memorization of proofs" is not nearly as good as "trying to see why the proof _has_to_be_this_, but perhaps getting the thing into one's head by "memorization" is better than not having it in one's head at all.)

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How do you assess programming related topics and avoid student cheating?
I am teaching some programming topics to university students (some 300+) including python, sql etc. I would welcome some tips on what's the best way to assess the students and also avoid giving them the chance to copy each other.
So far the major piece of assignment, e.g., in SQL, is to give them a scenario describing an information system, explaining what are users, types of data, relations etc. And they are asked to use sql to implement a database, populate some data, and perform some queries.
The problem with this is that the correct solution is quite standard, so it is often the case that students submit same or very similar solutions. This itself may not be the problem, but combined with the factor that the large majority of the cohort gets very high grades (>70%), I fear that they are copying, but I cannot think of an easy way to find out, or address this.
Does anyone teach similar technical subjects and if so, how would you suggest to fix this?
Many thanks!

I have found MOSS to be very helpfjul in scanning for code plagiarism: https://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/

Thank you for the quick reply. But I think in this case it is a harder issue. The task itself does not have a very large solution space (perhaps I should consider improving this but...) so for example, if two students come up with very similar SQL statements to create the database, while only differ in the data types they choose (both could be correct), I cannot really say this pair alone are a case of plagiarism. But my problem here is that it appears to be the case for a large number of students some i know lacks technical skills, which makes me worry

similar questions are on here : see this one for starters : https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/77429/course-assessment-for-programming-courses

In general, it sounds like your problem is not to find out how to assess whether plagiarism occurred, but rather how to make tests that are harder to plagiarize. I will try to answer to both:
Plagiarism reduction can be achieved  building a database of questions to be leveraged to create "individualised" tests. To elaborate further, you could:

build a database with a number of questions larger than the one you intend to submit to students (as suggested in a previous answer)
build personalised tests by pulling questions randomly from the database above.
randomise the input values of the questions (making up a trivial SQL example: "what is the n_th most likely value in m_th column of table k?" where n,m and k are randomly exctracted).

Existing e-learning platforms (Moodle for example) contain all three features abobe, and allow you to collect the student responses in a centralised manner -
 so you don't need to reinvent the wheel.
Plagiarism detection becomes easier if you receive the test answers digitally. For humanities, text analytics would be needed, and I would recommend using off-the-shelf tools. For quantitative subjects, you can cluster students according to the submission time and score received in each test, and see whether some groups of students cluster too closely together (in small classes, no actual clustering algorithm is needed). This will not suffice to trigger punishment, but you can use it to focus on scrutinizing the student's thought process that led to the solution in a face-to-face exam.

thank you. indeed the question is how to make the assignment harder to plagiarise, and it does take a lot more effort to address. I am thinking whether this has been the problem for most practical-based subjects... and certainly taking some elements into exam instead of using coursework/assignment can help

Glad it helped. I added a small description above to make the point that some of the suggestions above are already implemented in e-learing platforms. The problem you are facing is very general, and the solution above applies to most subjects (other than input randomisation, that applies only to quantitative subjects)

This depends also on the effort that you are willing to put on correcting. You could create a database of questions and randomly select the questions (of the same topic) to the students. This will give a set of correct answers that will have to be validated.
EDIT:
You can also always indicate that any test may be have to be orally explained. Once clustered as the other answer suggested you may ask for comments on the solutions.

So far the major piece of assignment, e.g., in SQL, is to give them a scenario describing an information system, explaining what are users, types of data, relations etc. And they are asked to use sql to implement a database, populate some data, and perform some queries.

You can ask them to come up with their own scenarios or pick from an available pool of scenarios. As new concepts come up, you can assign them to implement new functionality into their existing projects.
I have personally seen this approach work best on database and game programming classes since both can have projects that can be iterated upon. Students also get a sense of attachment to their projects which increases motivation by a lot.
However, it does introduce a grading overhead since you have to keep track of the progress of individual projects.  We have done this to groups of ~40 students but I can see it working with proper preparation to 300 students.

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


text:
Can I ask a prof (alumni of my college) to recommend me to another prof for a TA position?
I was looking for a TA position and mailed prof A, who is an alumni of my college, for a TA. He replied saying that he would not be taking any courses this year so will not require a TA. Can I ask him to recommend me to any other prof, who will need a TA?

related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/109835/how-do-i-ask-a-professor-to-recommend-me-to-another-professor-to-hire-me-as-a-te?rq=1 and: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/79820/how-do-you-write-a-letter-of-recommendation-for-someone-who-got-an-a-in-your-cla

It is like a friendly advice. If your friend says, rent pizza from the service X, it will likely significantly increase its chance by you. But actually nothing obligates you to follow his advice. You do this, because you trust your friend, and don't believe that he would suggest it to you if they deliver crap. But it is possible, that you don't like to rent pizza et al, you are not hungry, or you find the offer of the service X bad looking.

Can you do it? Most certainly. Should you do it/is it likely to succeed? That depends on a couple of factors:

Do you know prof A? Does he/she know you? A random email from somebody along the lines of 'Hey, you graduated from my college, please give me a TA position.' will almost always be met with a negative response.
Have you done some kind of work for prof A in the past? If he/she supervised you at your college for some time, yes, you can ask for a recommendation. If not, again, your cchances of a positive response are slim

Those two points may sound similar, but there is a difference with respect to why you might get a negative response:
In the first case, it may be the wording of the email, it may be that there is no TA position at the moment. It is mainly to be seen as a general inquiry for a TA position, that you know that professor is only a slight bonus.
In the second case it is a bit different. You will ONLY get a positive response if that professor has supervised you in the past and is satisfied with the work you have done. After all, a letter of recommendation is basically 'This student is good, I have seen it first hand, if you hire him he will do good work for you.' If prof A doesn't know you, he/she will not recommend you because that is putting his/her name at risk.
With these points in mind and the questions I have linked as a comment to your question, you should be able to figure out if that second email is likely to get a positive response.

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


text:
Should continue PhD or leave after 2 years and no progress?
I need your suggestion on my situation.
I am a second year PhD student in Chemical Engineering in Asian country.
My situation:
When I was admitted to PhD program, I was not given any project and my supervisors suggested me to choose. So, I choose X project for which we had no fundings but one person was working on it. After completing my coursework in first year, I started working on my project but after few months I realized it is not progressing well so I talked to my supervisors and he advised me to  continue to work on it. However, after almost a year also I cannot find that the project is progressing.
Thus I need suggestions on how should I proceed from now on as the projects in our group are very challenging to start over again and complete in another 2 year and in our university we dont get fundings after 4 year of PhD . Indeed,we should pay tuition fees.
Will it be a good idea to leave this university and apply fresh in some other university?
I am afraid my supervisors will not agree to give me masters degree or transfer of candidature from PhD to masters by research.
Please suggest me in this matter.

Kiara, I think you need to change advisor. If he or she doesnt make any effort to provide you funding, it is his fault, also give us more informatrion

True answer: we do not know. It really comes down to the cause of the lack of progress, but from this distance, it is impossible to know the true cause. I would recommend speaking with a trusted advisor -- maybe your supervisor, or another professor that you trust.
Speculation: less than a year is a reasonably short time. Are you learning anything? My experience is that students spend the first year or so just learning the basics, so your advisor may be leaving you to your own devices for now. I would speak to older or former students who have also worked with your advisor to see what they think. In any case, I think a year is long enough for you to address this with your advisor. I would ask him for a time when you can block off 30 minutes for a formal meeting, rather than just dropping by his office, and candidly explain your concerns, and ask him what his plans are and when he sees you graduating. You may want to discuss the technical reasons for lack of progress, but make sure the conversation focuses on your pathway to graduation rather than just the technical difficulties you've faced.
More speculation: I would focus completely on making things work out at your current university, and not think about or mention transferring out. You may consider trying a different advisor if you think that is the problem, but do so ASAP. Leaving with a master's degree may be a good solution if you can arrange it, but (at least in my [Western] experience), it is pretty unusual to get a PhD after getting a master's from a different institution.


text:
Is it a scientific misconduct to change a variable or a function name when citing a math paper?
Is it a scientific misconduct to change a variable or a function name when citing a math paper? The standard name of a function is S, but the author called it E. I want to cite his work, while I use the standard S.

It may be unwise or wise, but why should it be "misconduct"? Are you trying to cover something up or so?

@user111388 no i m listing attempts to solve some mathmatical problem ,so i want the nomenclature to be the same for each attempt

This doesn't sound "evil" at all, so I doubt very much anyone could call this "misconduct".

I assume the reason it could be "misconduct" is because the questioner intends to propose (probably by way of a straw man) to present text as if it's a direct quotation from the paper, but which has the notation change. Both the answers at time of writing say that you should add a note that the notation has changed, so clearly they aren't happy with that straw-man proposal, even if it's not straight-up evil.

I suppose the questioner is concerned that (per the Swedish definition in that article) this might be interpreted as "intentional ... fabrication of ... text ... from another researcher's ... publication". So, an answer to explain either that it is not fabrication to paraphrase, or that it is fabrication but does not distort the research process, would be just the thing here.

It's certainly not a misconduct. Different authors use different notations. I've even seen different notations being used in papers from the same author. If the new name helps the reader understand what the function is supposed to do, or if it's a newer standard notation, then you are perfectly allowed to change it. In fact, I would encourage you to do so.
I would simply cite the work, write the formula and add a footnote on the lines of

¹ For consistency with the rest of the manuscript we renamed the function E in [1] as S.

Or

¹ Note that in [1] the function S is denoted as E.

Moreover, it could be plainly required when citing work to rename variables to avoid clashes of definitions.

Some things have different letters due to their names for the item in different countries, one example is V for volts in English which in France is T for tension - which also can cause confusion as tension is something else in English.
So just cite the work and mention that the author uses E while you use S - a small comment in brackets is usually sufficient, you won’t need a page.
So it is not “scientific misconduct” but it does happen and most people (engineers etc) who work in more than one language tend to be aware and check if needed. They also tend to agree a common standard, but they can forget sometimes.

I wouldn't even mention the change of variable, unless there are particularly confusing circumstances. I assume my readers can figure it out by themselves normally.

I would write something like "In the notation of this paper, eq. (3) from Smith & Jones can be written as...". Note that sometimes changing variable names is not just desirable, but essential: you might want to bring together ideas from two papers that each use 'f(x)', but use it for different things. There is no hint of misconduct here.

@FedericoPoloni You're a mathematician, but in other fields changes of notation can be confusing or annoying, because many symbols have standard meaning or because not all readers are equally mathematically inclined. So, better write a note to warn the reader.

@MassimoOrtolano The question says that the paper being cited is a math paper, though, not a different field.

V for volts in English which in France is T for tension In French the voltage (or electric tension) is expressed as "tension électrique" and usually noted by U (or, rarely, V). The word "voltage" is sometimes used, as an anglicism. "V for Volts" is teh same in both langages - this is the unit. Maybe you meant "V for voltage"? (in whihc case "T for tension" is still incorrect (at least I have never seen T being used as the variable for electrical tension/voltage)

@WoJ well, I can be sure that our prof never went to the effort of "tension electrique", he just said, and wrote, tension - it was clear what he was on about given the diagram and question / theory we were covering.

However you decide to formulate the note, please remember not to refer to a footnote with a superscript just after a formula or a variable name!

@SolarMike: you wrote V for volts in English which in France is T for tension."V for Volts" is the unit (in French and English). "V for voltage" is where the symbol for voltage in English comes from (V = R * I for instance). This symbol is U in France (we would write U = R * I). Sometimes the symbol V is used in French as well (though much less than U). "Voltage" in French is "Tension" (or "Tension électrique"). The symbol "T" is not used for anything electrical.

@RossPresser Alessandro Volta... Then you also have Sir George Simon Ohm and André Marie Ampère.

A roughly analogous question here is, "Is it scientific misconduct to give a quote using a different font than in the original?"  Because that is really all you are doing when you use a different mathematical variable to show the same quantity --- you are using a symbol that looks different to the original but represents the same thing.  This is quite common in mathematical papers.  Often the writer will note that the original paper uses a different symbol, mostly so that the reader is not confused if they compare equations across papers.  The only time this would be a problem is if you change the notation to non-standard notation that makes it hard to follow your work.  Regardless, this practice  is not even close to scientific misconduct.

Or: "Is it scientific misconduct to translate a quote to a different language than in the original?" (Nowadays most scientific papers are written in English, though.)

some of the commenters (like avid and Sascha) have pointed out something I'd like to preserve in an answer (because comments may be deleted at any time): sometimes you HAVE to rename variables or functions you cited from other papers, because one of these papers might use a symbol that another paper uses for something else, or maybe you use the symbol yourself. In these cases, it is necessary to rename this symbol to resolve ambiguity.
For my personal perspective as a non-academic: In my opinion, avoiding ambiguity in science is more important than preserving the literal content of citations. In cases where preserving the literal content of a citation may introduce ambiguities with the rest of your paper, it is better to resolve the potential ambiguity and clarify the change from the original source. There are already other situations where changing cited content is not considered academic misconduct, like correcting poor translations with a footnote to indicate what has been changed, indicating typos with [sic] and editing out irrelevant partial sentences using [...].

The letter used to denote a function is, at least in principle, irrelevant. It's fine to rename it however you want. In fact, such renaming is often necessary to maintain consistent notation throughout the paper: It's OK to call a function F if a reference is calling it G; it's not OK to call a function F in one section and G in another section.
As an aside - during my BSc and MSc, it was a running joke to occasionally use the most obscure symbols for variables, including a variable denoted by a picture of a boot. It was widely acknowledged as valid (also by the faculty), although in academic practice it's probably preferable to stick with Latin and Greek letters :)

Only if you claim that what you write is actually a quote would that be wrong.
If you have a good reason to use a different notation it may possibly aid the readers understanding to mention the difference. Such a reason may be found in the fact that the context in which you write differs from that of the paper you cite. For example, in an electrical engineering journal you may way to use j rather than i for the square root of minus 1, that being conventional in electrical engineering, and similarly a mathematician might use f to refer to a frequency where an electrical engineer would use a lower-case omega. Or possibly the paper you cite goes into complications that have no place in your writing, that necessitate a more complicated notation that is not justified in your context.

It's hard to imagine a situation where the author ("A") might have a problem with you using a more common notation, but I can think of a possibility where they might - if they were using a less common notation on purpose, to make some point.
Suppose, for example, there's some silly dispute over who published what first (which happens sometimes in math), and A calls it 'E' to assert that some "Prof. Evanoff" did it first. In this case A might be miffed if you just denote it 'S' while citing them, and might even complain that you mis-quoted them. Just mentioning in parentheses the fact that A denoted it 'E' in the paper that you cited, as other have suggested, should prevent this scenario from arising.

You should use what is traditional. The point of any paper—although I did not understand this as a young academic—is to enlighten the reader about your results, not show fealty to one or another predecessor.
You can point out the change of notation in brackets if necessary for readers to understand if they compare the papers. It will probably be obvious. I added a footnote to my first paper, pointing out the discrepancy in notation between the fundamental paper in the field and the later paper I was then citing, but also that the authors of the second paper had themselves gotten confused and made a notation error interpreting the first paper, fortunately irrelevant to their results.
Needless to say, this footnote represented several hours of bewilderment on my part, especially since neither of the papers I was reading were in English.

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


text:
Is it ever appropriate to correct a non-native teacher's English?
Four of my Japanese teachers are, as you would expect, Japanese, and they all speak English fluently. But now and then, there will of course be slip ups: I often see small grammatical errors in one sensei's handouts. They don't affect the quality of the communication, but is it appropriate to point out these errors to the sensei?
I know that if I were in Japan, I would always want for native speakers to correct me if I made a mistake; more so in the written form. However, this particular sensei has been at my uni for something like 20 years, and her English is perfect in all other regards; I wonder if it wouldn't be a little insulting to point out otherwise negligible written/spoken errors. Nonetheless, I'd like to know what some teachers think.
EDIT: When I say my sensei's English is perfect, I mean that she is able to communicate effectively, not that her speech or writing are free from grammatical errors. Like any non-native speaker who hasn't learned from a very young age, she will sometimes say or write things that sound jarring in English grammar.

Funny that, in asking a question about correcting written English, I made a typo and forgot a question mark.

You can ask the professor through a hypothetical scenario, possibly. Ask them if it is appropriate for you to correct John's English if he writes something wrong. In Chinese culture, criticism is okay as long as its in private (i.e. saving face so as not to embarrass the person in front of a group).

Mind your subjunctive mood: "I know that if I were in Japan...." (Nobody's perfect.)

There's only one rule: ask! I've been in many countries and speaking many languages, and I haven't really noticed any cultural or national trends. Individuals differ wildly. Some highly appreciate being corrected (I'm one of them), some take great offense. I always ask people before I correct them. If they seem genuinely appreciative about it, I keep correcting them. If I sense differently, I don't do it again.

I think in both the OP and @Cory comment, it shows mistakes are common.  Even as an English speaker, plenty of times I use incorrect grammar or misspelled words.  If it doesnt cause problems in communication, and you are not their English teacher, I dont see the point of pointing out mistakes, as it most likely is not a one time thing.

IMO it would be insulting. If you understand what she has said then she's communicating just fine. In my opinion correcting her would be pointlessly rude.

IMO, "non-native" is gratuitous; if you would correct someone's English, it shouldn't matter where they are native to.  Also IMO, "native" speakers are not always good enough when it comes to formal academic writing (grammar as well as style), or even necessarily ahead of "non-native" authors.

This sort of issue rankled me constantly. I happen to be a native speaker of English, just not American (or white). Americans would correct my small mistakes which they would not correct with people who they consider "native" and white. Please don't jump onto that grammar-nazism because you want to feel somehow superior.

I guess, like others have said, it depends on the person. As a foreign language learner, I want to be corrected when speaking in the language I'm learning. Ditto Japanese students I've talked to who are learning English. But I'm also a noob in my first year, not someone who's spoken the language fluently for a couple decades. So I can appreciate that a sensei is not a person to correct lightly.

By default, I wouldn't correct his/her mistakes. Be careful when dealing with different cultures, something which is meant to be nice may become hurtful from another point of view. If of course he/she asked to be corrected, then there's no question :)

It depends on how much interest she has expressed in being corrected or trying to improve and how close your relationship with her is.  Any corrections should be generally mentioned to her respectfully and in some form of one-on-one conversation.
If she has asked in class for mistakes to be pointed out, then I would not hesitate to offer the occasional correction.  Frequent corrections are probably not welcome.
If she has not expressed interest in being corrected, I would only mention corrections if the mistake could potentially lead to misunderstandings either in message tone or content.
A gray area might be if the mistake is in formal communication (e.g. grant applications) and you work closely with her.  In that case, use your own judgement.

In Japan, correcting a teacher's mistake is pretty unwelcome and humiliating. Several visiting professors from Japan are complaining that American students are very impolite: they ask questions. Serious. Even asking a teacher a question is an insult (they feel like they are being tested or mocked). Since your teachers are not visiting ones, but people who have lived for years in the country, I assume they are far less sensitive to American ways of teaching and communication and more open to being corrected. However it is hard to guess, and potentially it can hurt an otherwise good relationship.
So if your teacher has indicated that he/she wants to improve his/her English, feel free to help. Otherwise I would let it go. If you really think it is necessary, try to do it as indirectly as possible like during a short chat when you ask him/her how he/she learned such good English. Some praise always helps. If the answer is that people helped by correcting and teaching, then you can spin the topic into the direction if he/she needs any help in proofreading. Good luck.

You say that her English is perfect in all other regards. There may be grammatical errors in the handouts because they are written in a tight schedule and she has different priorities (e.g. writing papers, grant proposals, etc.)
The point for me is: do you think those errors are due to some lack of knowledge about English or just lack of time? Do you think she could spot those errors by herself if she cared and could find the time for that? For how many years are the handouts going to be re-used?
That makes the difference, IMHO.
On the one hand, if this is all due to lack of knowledge about English, then providing this knowledge would be welcome.
On the other hand, if this is because she doesn't care and/or doesn't have the time for that then pointing at it and forcing (or suggesting) her to spend time and take care of that is going to be perceived negatively.

+1 for the reuse aspect. If it's a script or handout which is going to be used again (if you don't know, just ask or compare with a student from last years class), it's worth making a list of the typos and giving it to her at the end of term. Then she can decide whether she wants to spend time on it when she prepares for the next round, which I presume will be during a less busier time than in the middle of classes.

She's the head of department, so she's busy. I was hyperbolising with 'perfect', but she's fluent such that mistakes have never caused a serious problem or miscommunication. AFAIK the handouts aren't reused, but I'll check.

The teacher has been there twenty years now, which is plenty of time to learn a language. She is a teacher at a university, communicating in English. Her English "is perfect in all other regards", and these are "otherwise negligible written/spoken errors".
At this point, I think you should forget that she is Japanese, forget that she had to learn English as a foreign language. She's way past that point. It's insulting to consider her as someone who is learning English. Native speakers aren't perfect either.
So the question becomes -- would you correct a teacher if "now and then, there will of course be slip ups", if they were a native speaker?
I feel you wouldn't, based on how you describe the mistakes.

This should be the correct answer. 2 decades is a long time; this person is likely just using the English they are comfortable with.

I would say it is more polite to ask first if your teacher is fine with being corrected. After all, we do not know who is gonna be offended by this seemingly "unoffendable" thing.
I have met a native English speaker, who asked me if I am okay if she corrects my English so as to make my English more natural. Frankly, though I do not care that, I appreciate her asking before acting.
To me, it is a general etiquette to ask before act. Indeed, you can only win the recipient's respect if asking first.

Different cultures look at such corrections in different ways.  I won't pretend to understand all of them, and I know I'm misunderstanding some, but tread carefully.
In some cultures (though not Japanese culture, I think) corrections in public can be considered humiliating.  Say what you want in the privacy of an office, one on one, but not in a group of people.  In some cultures, what an elder has to say carries much weight, and correction from a younger person must be handled delicately.
In other cultures, politeness is key, and some things can just be considered rude that an American would never imagine to be so. It took me some time interacting with students before I realized that the answer to yes/no questions is yes, because no is rude, and I think that putting someone in a situation where they have to say no might be rude too.  I find that avoiding yes/no questions in situations like this helps.  For example, the answer to "can you do this?" is "yes", but the answer to "How well will this come out if you do this?" might be "it might not work at all"!!
I imagine that a sensei who has been teaching language for decades is used to just about every interaction there is.  If you're interested in Japanese, though, I'd approach this as an opportunity to learn about cultural sensitivities.  Approach your teacher with this, explain that you understand that there are different sensitivities  with respect professional interaction, lay out the issue, and ask how this would be handled in Japanese Culture.
Japanese experience is TREMENDOUSLY VALUABLE in the worlds of business and technology.  The more you learn, the more valuable you become.

I've talked to several Japanese students, and by and large their attitude has been 'Please correct me at any point'. But a sensei is a different kettle of fish. So the transparent approach is a good idea.

No, it is not appropriate and additionally not a good use of class time.

If you could not understand what your instructor said, ask for clarification.
If you can offer the instructor a correction, then you probably understood what they said, and therefore, you do not need to waste your class time and the time of your classmates on corrections.
Be aware that error correction is not as simple as you may think. It is unlikely that the teacher would benefit from having a student correcting them in such a setting. If your goal is to improve the class sessions, you are not going to notice a significant improvement in your instructor's overall English ability, as a result of your corrections, unless they are only using a very tiny range of language during your lessons.

Directly confronting a teacher infront of others can be seen as an attack.
I would advise against this especially towards people with a Japanese background because in Japanese culture showing conflicting opinions is generally regarded as rude and is so implied in a very polite way instead. Also, respect is important so correcting a teacher might be seen as attacking the authority of the teacher.
Confronting the teacher in private might be a better alternative as long as the teacher is open to this, it is done so in a polite way and is not done too often to annoy the teacher.
Indirectly correcting the teacher by bringing up the correct way to say the thing the teacher made a mistake with is also possible.
If doing so, I would advise to not bring up the mistakes, instead only the corrections, and not too often as it could be seen as condescending.
However, this can be a better way when cultural differences mean that being conflicting is taboo.
In any case, it is best to be polite and careful about what you say.
As a side note, the Japanese and English languages are very different(much more than just vocabulary) and I can say from experience that going from one to the other is a big hurdle. Even if you do succeed in getting the point accross they might still make the same mistake because it is awkward to them and hard to get used to. Pointing out a mistake that can be easily corrected generally won't be taken negatively because it is of benefit, but pointing out a mistake that won't might just cause annoyance and so should be proceeded carefully.

Unrelated, but I would pronounce 'ball' in Japanese as booru (ボイル). But yeah, this situation is never going to pan out. When we talk in lessons, we talk about what we're told to talk about, and it's not as if the senseis join as at the pub every evening or eat at the next table in the tea shop. Would be a nice idea in a school environment.

@LeoKing actually, it is ボール.

Genuinely what I meant to type. Writing kata on my phone is a pain ._.

@LeoKing no worries. Also, the poster probably mean "baleh" as "volley" or バレー (volleyball is written バレーボール).

As stated by ddiez I am talking about the translation of volley ball in Japanese which is pretty much the same as ballet. This word is not of Japanese origin and words not of Japanese or Chinese origin are often regarded as English so is a typical example of where confusion may and does occur.

Oh yeah, I understand the conversion from English to kata, I just thought you were translating 'ball' as 'baleh' which made no sense.

@djechlin What I provided was a basic example which could be applied to anything so the one word comment is irrelevant. Yes, if it is very badly done then it might be taken negatively, but if done directly in front of people it might be taken as an attack which I view as worse especially for people of Japanese origin.

I changed my answer to provide a clearer picture of where I am coming from as my previous answer was short with no background.

In your class, will you lose points on an assignment for grammatical and spelling errors?  If so, then you are not being rude by pointing out these mistakes.  My advice is to mention these errors one-on-one – absolutely not in front of another student, and show as much respect and humility as possible.  You don't want to embarrass your teacher.

First of all, the down votes are ridiculous.  I was an academic advisor at a university.  In my years working there, I never once heard a professor say that they were upset because someone corrected mistakes on a handout, presentation, or exam.  It's all about professionalism.  The professors I worked with, were true professionals.  Some were not native English speakers.  Nevertheless, they did not allow their native culture to interfere with their classes.  They knew they were here in the U.S. and ajusted accordingly.  I had several ask me cultural questions, so I know this first-hand.

@djechlin.  I respectfully disagree.  Education is a two way process.  Of course, students are there to learn from professors.  However, professors are not infallible.  They too learn from their students, as learning is a lifelong endeavor.

Having worked at a university and being nearly finished with my own master’s degree, I expect more from a teacher with 20 years of experience. I expect an even higher level of professionalism. Where is their credibility as an educator, if they are not open to being corrected? I have politely pointed out errors that my academic mentor has made.  He has 25+ years of experience, a PhD, is the chairperson of the department, and most likely next in line to become dean of the college.  He accepted them graciously and thanked me for pointing them out to him.  He is brilliant, but not infallible.

The original post was about a teacher with 20 years of experience at that university.  If you're going to down vote me for logic...  Yes, I have spent several weeks in another country (twice), immersed in its language and culture - visiting my wife's home country.  However, I was not a teacher there for 20 years, so my errors were expected.  That is the important, relevant distinction here.

Good teachers are definitely open to being corrected, as long as it's done in a respectful tone. Those who are not open to constructive criticism or who allow their ego to take precedence over what is best for their students, should seek employment elsewhere. Some of the professors I worked with previously, taught at a college of education. I’m done debating this issue with you.  Good day, sir or madam.

authors: Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні


text:
How to respond to a reviewer's comment when he is asking for experimental data but your paper is based on theoretical calculations?
We submitted a research paper in physics.
In this paper, we take structural parameters from the experimental work and then perform simulations using density functional theory and present our results. No one has performed similar calculations or experiments before through which I could validate my results. One of the reviewer’s comments is:

Main problem of this work is a lack of the experimental data that could validate relevant calculations and which would be very important especially in actual case, at least from my point of view. Why?

My question is how should I respond to this comment?

What validation work have you done? I understand that the novel parts of your paper can't be directly compared to current experiments, but are there other results of your calculations that can be checked?

Is simulation possible? Can you simulate based on your theory and show similarity to what has been measured previously?

we take the structural parameters from the experimental work and then perform simulations and present our results.

Does your paper make any predictions that could in principle be checked experimentally, even if that is not practical or was outside the scope of your planned research ?

If you have clarifying information, please do not post it in a comment, but [edit] your question. I edited in some information (please check whether this is correct), but I fail to make sense of: “The structural parameters are present there but not the rest of the calculations like electronic, optical properties etc” What does there refer to? How can you contrast parameters with calculations?

Essentially, the reviewer is saying, you cannot/should not propose a new theory in a vacuum. One of two approaches apply:

Do you have a new theoretical approach that will explain observations that existing theoretical approaches cannot yet explain? Demonstrate this categorically by taking the experimental results modeled with the existing theories to model with your new theory. It seems that you argue that this is not the case for your theory. So ...

Do you have a new theoretical approach that points to new insights not yet measured by any existing experiments? State concisely what experimental measurements will be needed to validate your theory. You infer that this is your case.

Being somewhat aware of DFT and its applications as well as being experimentally inclined, I must say tangentially that I cannot trust that absolutely no experimental results (e.g. from spectroscopy) exist anywhere that can in some way validate your new theory, even in part. Alternatively, I cannot trust that your theory has absolutely no relevance to direct new experimental approaches in order to validate it (e.g. again spectroscopy).
In summary ... Einstein's Nobel prize was for a new theory that explained oddities in experimental observations (the photoelectric effect). Einstein's theories otherwise were put forward with proposals for experiments that might test their validity. You are being asked to do one or the other as well.

Density functional theory has its shortcomings, most of which are well known (bandgap issue, delocalization, etc.) and thoroughly discussed in the literature. If you stay clear of these traps, plus show that your calculations are converged (k points, basis set size, etc.), then there is no reason why you could not make your case: the theory has been extensively validated for many materials. However, if you touch one of the soft spots of the method (dispersion, charged defects, whatever) then you need to provide higher level of theory calculations (from simple corrections all the way to diagrammatic methods and quantum Monte Carlo). An expert reviewer would be aware of the limitations and point you in the right direction. However, if the reviewer is an expert regarding the material class in question but has no experience with density functional theory in particular (e.g., because s/he is an experimentalist) then it is your responsibility to argue why the level of theory is enough, based on examples and evidence from the very extensive literature. And remember that if the referee raised the question, it is likely that a reader of your paper will too, so you need to consider whether these justifications should also make it to the manuscript, not only the response letter.

I would probably respond that, while the note is a good idea for future work, the current work rests on foundations. Some validation of theoretical work only comes years after first proposed. A lot of Einstein's work comes easily to mind. Also Stephen Hawking and anything to do with the Grand Unified Theory. Or even gravity, I suppose.

It's probably right in principle, but not a good idea to respond with Einstein/Hawking etc., or OP could end up on the "crackpot index". Better to explain why it is ok to have a purely computational model at this stage (e.g. formulate hypothesis for an actual experiment, simple model for a complicated phenomenon etc. - note it's tricky to argue for computational models if they are very complicated, so much of this argument relies on the fact that the model should have few parameters)

@CaptainEmacs, I just use those as examples to explain the context. I agree it would probably be a mistake to say that in a reply. "Good idea for future work" is enough.


text:
Publishing research using only high-school mathematics
I performed some research yielding useful information.
I only used the mathematics that I learned in high school; I did not use any program or any scientific experiment.
Is it possible to have my research accepted by a journal from Elsevier, even though it is my first research?
Can a reputable journal accept research with simple equations?
I’m 18 years old.

You should read this question and answers How to write a white paper for a non academic and see if that answers your question. Can I write a paper out of a simple idea may also be relevant.

Depending on the problem you have been working on also this question might be relevant I believe I have solved a famous open problem. How do I convince people in the field that I am not a crank?.

I suggest you expand beyond Elsevier.

In what broad field does this research belong?  Depending on this, it is not impossible to have some interesting things to say with a little bit of conditional probability or basic differential equations. On the other hand if it is in maths or physics there's little chance that you have found something not already well-known.

You don't need credentials (or age) to publish mathematics in a reputable journal. You need a paper that is acceptable to the editor with advice from a set of reviewers that they depend on.
But in general, a math paper needs to be "interesting" to mathematicians. It can be interesting in one of two ways (at least). The first is that the result is new and non-obvious. In particular something that might be applied to other lines of thought to continue advancing the art. Classical unsolved problems, while not new per se become new if a proof can be devised.
The second way that a result can be interesting is when its proof is new in some way, even when it already has another proof. It doesn't need to use advanced techniques, but it needs to combine them in some novel way to arrive correctly at the result. A new way to attack an old problem can lead to other advances.
In many ways new proofs are more important than new results, since the insight that produces it can, perhaps, be applied to other problems in the field. My dissertation had such a proof (though quite advanced, in that case). I had two different proofs in hand, but one was quite different from the standard way of attacking the problem at hand.
You can certainly submit your paper to a reputable journal (Elsevier or other), but it is up to them what to do with it. You might hear back from the reviewers that it is trivial, in which case it is just a good learning experience of you and perhaps an incentive to continue. The first "paper" I ever wrote was like that, and not published. There was something that I didn't know about (math induction) that made the work rather trivial. But it was fun and induced me to follow the math genie wherever it went.

An example: The Four Color Theorem, has a proof that is unsatisfying to a mathematician since it depends on an analysis of a large number of cases in which a computer was used as part of the solution. While accepted, it is more brute force than elegant. A solution that depended only on simple ideas would be highly valued. Many people my age (old) worked on that for a bit and thought about it a lot but didn't have the insight required to crack it.


text:
Is it right to ask my advisor to let me prepare my defense talk alone?
I'm a math major and I'm finishing my bachelor thesis. I was lucky enough to find a hardworking and caring advisor to work with.
I'm very grateful with him for his guidance but, during this time, I noticed he likes to give a bit too much guidance and sometimes restricts my creative freedom.
He suggested me to prove some results and I successfully proved them while also developing related examples and ideas on my own.
When the moment to put everything on paper came, he wanted me to explain some of those results in the way he reached them. When I try to explain something, he interrupts me every five minutes (no kidding) saying things like "it should be better if you start motivating this in this way",
or wants me to change the structure/order of the argument (when my initial structure is also correct). He likes to state the same thing two or three times and elaborates a lot, but
I prefer to state things clearly and only once. Sometimes we discuss for hours minimal details like the placement of commas or my election of words. Since I get tired of the conversation I just change what he asks me to.
I managed to include all his observation on the writing while trying to add my personal ideas, but now that I need to prepare the talk for
my defense I would like to have the freedom to plan it completely alone.
Being honest, the only two people who will actually be listening to me will be my advisor and my mom: one of them knows everything backwards, while the other is already happy with me getting a degree.
Then why can't I explain the content of my dissertation in my own way? I also find more difficult to explain the ideas following my advisor's line of thoughts instead of mine.
Taking into account that I will be presenting work done by me and him, I don't know if it's right to ask for total freedom to prepare and give my talk.
Is it right? If yes, how can I discuss it with my advisor without looking like an ungrateful person?

Do I assume correctly that this is in mathematics? Re "When I try to explain something, he interrupts me every five minutes (no kidding)": I find it a bit surprising that you find an interruption every few minutes too much. If I explain something (in direct conversation, not during a talk), either to a colleague or to a student, and am not interrupted very frequently, I will soon be concerned that I completely lost the other person and that they just keep listening out of politeness.

@JochenGlueck yes, it's a math thesis. I hadn't thought of it that way. Maybe I'm too used to a "classroom" environment, when someone talks and explains what they deem important while the others listen and ask questions at the end.

I think switching from "classroom style communication" to "conversation between experts" is just a difficult thing to learn. I vaguely remember the situation when I wrote my Bachelor's thesis (about 12 years ago): My advisor liked the maths in my thesis, but during one of our meetings he strongly criticized some of my writing and he also seemed quite unhappy about the (quite inefficient, I think in hindsight) way how I explained ideas and arguments to him. [...]

[...] After the meeting I was in such a bad mood that a postdoc (who had also attended the meeting) found it necessary to reassure me that I shouldn't worry since "those are simply things that everybody has to first learn when they write their thesis". Things turned out quite well regarding the thesis. Two years later the advisor of my Bachelor's thesis became my PhD advisor and, after a while, essentially let me do whatever I wanted to.

"He likes to state the same thing two or three times and elaborates a lot, but I prefer to state things clearly and only once." Good mathematical writing does indeed require you to elaborate things a lot and sometimes repeat yourself, rather than leaving the work of thinking through the consequences of what you said to the reader. What you, as a novice in the enterprise of mathematical writing, think of as "stating things clearly and only once", is quite often not going to be perceived as "stating things clearly" by the reader, so I would recommend taking his advice to heart.

Summary: The main point of supervising your thesis and talk before you deliver them is teaching you how to do these things. Forsaking the supervision entirely is going to the other extreme. Rather, try to convince your supervisor to tune down the micromanagement.

Then why can't I explain the content of my dissertation in my own way?

The ideal is this:

Your supervisor is far more experienced than you at scientific writing and presentations. Many bachelor students go into their thesis with barely any relevant experience.

By receiving constructive feedback on writing your thesis as well as preparing your talk before delivering them, you learn a lot about writing theses and giving talks, respectively. Retrospective feedback is far less efficient because implementing the suggestions is a major part of the learning process.

Good supervision balances between teaching too little and micromanaging them and explains its recommendations, e.g., why a certain argument structure is bad.

Mind that it’s quite common that students find this process unnecessarily tedious when they are first exposed to it and even when the supervisor actually does too little.
That being said, going by your description, your supervisor is micromanaging and obsessing over details. For example, if I disagree with a student on the placement of a comma, I’ll quickly leave it to them to look up the respective rules and either convince me or be convinced.

Taking into account that I will be presenting work done by me and him, I don't know if it's right to ask for total freedom to prepare and give my talk. Is it right? If yes, how can I discuss it with my advisor without looking like an ungrateful person?

In the above ideal model, asking for total freedom is directly going to the other extreme, and thus asking a lot. By declining any supervision of your talk, you are also skipping the intended learning effect. Moreover, a supervisor who tends to micromanage will likely obsess over perceived shortcomings of your talk – and there will be some if you prepare it on your own. If your talk is graded or you are likely to rely on your advisor’s goodwill in the future (e.g., for recommendations), this is a bad idea.
Rather, I recommend that you try to gently push the situation to the intended ideal and tactfully ask your supervisor to:

micromanage less,
focus on the important parts first (as opposed to commas),
help you realise your structure instead of imposing his structure,
provide rationales for his recommendations.

This is certainly a less radical demand than dropping the supervision entirely.
As for how to tactfully broach the subject, it really depends on your supervisor, in particular his experience and priorities. Is he rather inexperienced as a supervisor and open to suggestion, or is he settled in his ways? Does he value the learning effect mentioned above, or does he just want to mold every thesis and talk according to his ideas? The best scenario here would be the respective first cases, which allow you to appeal that you learn more with more freedom.

when my initial structure is also correct

Sidenote: This is a hill I have seen many mathematicians pointlessly die on. Their presentation is the mathematical equivalent of a Yoda condition, yet they refuse to restructure it because it is technically correct. Of course I don’t know whether your structure is good or bad, but correctness is just a necessary condition and does not mean that your writing is good.

Can you provide an example of how to tactfully ask the supervisor to micromanage less? "Can you please micromanage less?" would be a very rude thing to say at least in my Northern European culture.

@FerventHippo: I could, but I doubt it would be of much use, since it strongly depends on the supervisor (I named a few central aspects in the answer), the details of what already happened, and the culture. (Also, I am from a notoriously direct culture.)

Probably not, largely for the reasons others have given.  Also importantly, I think there's something important to learn from: "He likes to state the same thing two or three times and elaborates a lot, but I prefer to state things clearly and only once."
His way is generally better.  When teaching, repetition is an essential technique that teachers use to impart learning.  With the most adept students, less repetition is necessary.  But among smart mathematicians conveying what to them are complex concepts, explaining things more than once, in more than one way, is certainly best practice.

I also support stating several times the same idea in different shapes if you are giving a talk, but not if you need to write it down. I meant that sometimes I'm asked to write the same argument in different ways and I don't like it. I think that, if someone reads my writing and realizes I'm over explaining, they will get bored and will stop reading it.

At the end of the day there are two things at play here:

Your work is your work and it is entirely up to you what you put in it.
It is your supervisor's job to help you make (1) the best it can possibly be. They will also inevitably have more experience in academic writing than you will.

Consequently, they're well within their rights to tell you what they think is better, but it's up to you whether or not you choose to take that advice. If you would like to respectfully decline, there's nothing wrong with that. You should still hear the advice they have to offer though, condsider it, and then decide on whether you want to incorporate it; don't just go it alone.
However, I will council that if your supervisor is also going to be the one marking your thesis, take their advice whether you like it or not. A bachelors thesis is not the time to start trying to make your own waves, it's the time to learn how to walk the well trodden path and get some solid foundations. Play the game, get the marks you need and you can start trying to do thinks your way later.


text:
What to do if you disagree with a juror during master's thesis defense?
I attended a master's dissertation defense and I was wondering what one might do in a situation like this.

Juror: What do you mean by the phrase “previous work” in your thesis text? Is it your previous work or work from the literature?
Candidate: I meant previous work of others, from the literature.
Juror: Then you should say “in the literature”, because “previous work” refers to your previous work.

Upon looking online now, it is not uncommon to use “previous work” to refer to others’ work in this space.
What is the appropriate way to handle a situation like this?
I was only a guest, but I do have a dissertation defense coming and was wondering how would I handle this had it been me.

Blame yourself for the misunderstanding, then fix it
I am assuming here that you are the student who is the writer of the dissertation.  If not, my advice applies to the student working on the dissertation.
You should treat this situation the same way you would treat an analogous situation when referees in peer review misunderstand some aspect of your work (see this related answer).  That is, whenever you receive academic feedback involving a "misunderstanding" of your work, you should blame yourself for failing to make things clear, and then revise accordingly.
The issue here isn't really whether or not "previous work" refers to your previous work or the literature in general.  Personally, I would interpret this term in the same way you did, so I would agree here with your interpretation.  That really doesn't matter.  What matters is that a reviewer misunderstood what you were trying to say because what you wrote wasn't clear to them.  Take this as a shortcoming of your work and revise accordingly --- i.e., revise your discussion to make it crystal clear that you are referring to the literature in general and not just your own previous work.
As a secondary matter, it is useful to distinguish between issues that matter and minor issues that have little impact on your work.  This appears to fall into the latter camp.  Even if you think the other person is completely wrong, assess the importance (or lack thereof) of the issue and pick your battles.

I apologize for not making the question clear enough. What the jury meant was that this phrase cannot be used to refer to previous work by other people. Although the general advice is really good and never heard it put in words. Thanks!

@Ait-GacemNabil it really doesn't matter. For something this minor, you just take the hit, even if the juror is completely wrong, this isn't the time to argue. Accepting such a minor "error" will not affect your chances of graduating, but stopping in the middle of your defense to focus on trivialities certainly might. As an aside, a lot depends on context. There are contexts where previous work clearly implies your own work and contexts where it doesn't. We would need to see the full sentence to know.

Generally true, but only up to a limit. I once had a reviewer that did not understand a standard term of the subject (which you teach to undergrads). Adding clarification or explaining the term would probably been annoying or irritating to the reader.

@JFabianMeier That said, no one will read a master's thesis after it's submitted so it's rather harmless.

Agreed, @JFabianMeier.  I have occasionally pushed back against reviewer comments when submitting manuscript revisions to a journal.  That puts it in the editor's court, and so far, it has never been problematic for me. (I guess I have chosen well when not to do that.)  But a thesis defense is a bit different: there is no editor to appeal to.  If you want to push back in that case then you need to persuade the same committee that objected.

I agree with all the observations made in comments.  There are occasions where it is useful to push back against referees and there are occasions where further explanation may be excessive.  Hopefully my answer represents a reasonable first-order approximation to the ideal approach.

The dialog should go like this:

Opponent/Juror: Then you should say “in the literature”, because “previous work” refers to your previous work.
Candidate: Thank you for this suggestion. I will alter the phrasing to clarify that the relevant previous work is indeed from the literature rather than my own.

and do that.
Your opponent nitpicked, which is their prerogative. You graciously accept the criticism and oblige, no harm no foul. It was not a personal attack and you are not losing face or admitting wrongdoing.

Note: You may need to adjust the level of formality of your speech to what's customary for thesis defenses in your university.


text:
Why not make students reproduce work?
Typically, PhD theses are expected to have novel results. As science advances, it is becoming increasingly difficult to accumulate enough knowledge to begin a project that pushes the boundaries. Original findings are often published as papers before the defense, thus the thesis has become valued for its indication of technical expertise, not the discovery itself.
Since ancient history, redoing the work of masters has been seen as a very effective tool for training. It so happens that there is also a need for reproduction studies, but few are willing to do them.
Why don't PhD theses consist of reproducing important, recent, controversial research? Has anyone tried this?
Note: I am deliberately leaving open to interpretation whether the student would reproduce their own advisor's work or that of a researcher from a different group, and whether the original researcher is to assist in this and to what extent.

"As science advances, it is becoming increasingly difficult to accumulate enough knowledge to begin a project that pushes the boundaries." [citation needed]

I would prefer to advocate for a complementary path that emphasizes reproduction studies and have it not culminate as a PhD. It should be a valued career with appropriate degree.

Completing a PhD means you are a self-sufficient scientist. The fact that you are able to reproduce somebody else's research does not prove it. Unless your area of research is making research reproductive, but I think that's not what you are asking about.

"novel results" is a very badly defined standard. To get a doctorate, you need to come up with a scientific question, a hypothesis, and answer it. A hypothesis can be a well educated guess at a possible flaw in a previous study, why not? A problem only arises if your original question proves to be wrong, i.e. what you checked was not actually a weak spot.

A chapter that does that is fine; I had one in my thesis. It can for example serve to set the stage for your original work. But someone with a PhD has to be able to do more than just repeat the work done by others, and the thesis has to show that capability. Replications are valuable, but a thesis consisting solely of replications won't show what it needs to show.
Instead we should try to find a way to make replications publishable (especially if they show what is already known) and worthwhile for established authors, rather than diminishing its value by delegating it to students.

This surely depends on the context. Asking a student to reproduce Newtonian gravitation wouldn't contribute anything of substance. The theory is very well-founded. However, if there is a disputed or controversial result, like the discovery of an alien signal, then replicating that with a different setup would surely be of worth.

I mentioned in my answer that replication is often worthwhile, but that does not mean that a dissertation consisting solely of replications is right. The purpose of a dissertation is to show that the student can be an independent researcher. For that the dissertation should contain some original research.

Yes, "redoing the work of masters has been seen as a very effective tool for training." but the Ph.D. dissertation is not training!  It evidence of what you have learned from the training.

But Bachelor and Master thesis are training. Should we do reproduction in those?

@Sumyrda - You could ask this as a Question (re Masters).

@Sumyrda: "But Bachelor and Master thesis are training." [citation needed]

@Sumyrda I think the exact same answer would apply for Bachelor/Master theses as well.

@Sumyrda The official rule at my university was that a diploma (~master) thesis must show that the student can work scientifically at a level that is state of the art. No more, no less.

Reproducing and repeating results are not the same thing. Reproducing a previously-published result definitely a valid means of knowledge production, and so would be fine for a Ph.D. However, it should follow the scientific method. In particular, the new contribution should use a different method, or environment. Merely repeating  the experiment or work can show that the method is self-consistent, but reproducing the result in a different context is one of the key tenets of the scientific method.

Even plain repeating an experiment is worthwhile, and good practice, as the psychologists are now starting to find out. However, the question is: should we allow for dissertations that consist solely of replications. When we define replications narrowly, then my answer would be a firm no, even though they acan be useful, the dissertation does not show what it needs to show. If you broaden the definition, as you propose, then I see more room.

@Maarten Not only psychologists are finding that one out. If anything psychology is ahead of most other fields, where replication studies are just as rarely done, non prestigious and hard to publish. If we did similar experiments in biology or physics I doubt those filelds would fare any better (as a computer scientist I'd honestly put my money on computational biology "winning"). Still I agree that a PhD thesis should be original research. There have been calls for requiring PhD students to do at least one reproduction study though

I agree with all the other answers that a PhD thesis should still be original research. Still it is obvious that science in general (although clearly psychology is in the spotlight at the moment) has a problem with reproducing results.
This shouldn't surprise anyone - the process is set up in such a way that reproduction studies are hard to publish in good journals and non prestigious even if you get them published. All incentives are for researchers to not waste time on such studies but try to get novel results.
There have been a number of proposals on how to solve this problem, but one proposal in particular seems similar to your idea:

in order to receive a Ph.D. in psychology from any accredited
  institution in the United States (and perhaps in other nations as
  well), it is a requirement that one will have (1) conducted a
  high-quality “direct” replication of a major finding in their area
  (i.e., the area upon which their original doctoral research will be
  based); (2) written up the replication attempt to professional
  standards, no matter which way the data come out, and (3) made a
  good-faith effort to publish the paper in one of a growing number of
  high-quality online journals (such as PLoS ONE) that publish reports
  of well-conducted, valid experiments regardless of their novelty or
  their perceived “importance.”

A tragedy of the (academic) commons: interpreting the replication crisis in psychology as a social dilemma for early-career researchers
So you'd still do your novel research for your PhD thesis but be required to also conduct a high quality replication of some work in your field.

Replicating a study only shows that the original study wasn't a fluke or fake. That's police-work. ;-) Reproducing the result (or refuting it!) after varying certain parameters you have identified to be possibly critical is totally science.

@Karl You're making my point. What you rather dismissingly (hopefully unintentional) call  "police work" is at the core of the scientific method (which makes it "totally science" by definition). It's one of the pillars of science and absolutely undervalued and the whole scientific community is suffering because of this. Yes expanding and altering a hypothesis is important (and oh so much more prestigious and interesting), but if you don't make sure that your assumptions are actually valid you're building houses on sand.

Don't get me wrong, police work is very honourable. But if you go and repeat a study 1:1, without working out your doubts and misgivings and taking them into account while doing the actual work, then you're a police officer, not a scientist. Or neither, actually: The police officer would restrict himself to looking only into the suspicious parts.  ;-) Or, putting it another way: If the original paper looked flawless and is totally convincing to you, would you be tempted repeat it? You'd just fall into the same traps as the original authors and never find the error, if there was one.

@Karl Indeed, it's essential for the proper working of the scientific method to redo that perfectly fine looking study. Look into the reproduction study done in psychology which was all over the news. Many of the results that couldn't be reproduced were published in top scientific journals, peer reviewed and looked "flawless" to others for years. There are so many ways that empirical studies can be distorted that there is just no replacement for other people reproducing the results.

That something which is essential to the basic principle of science is regarded so lowly ("not a scientist, just a police officer") is sad and has horrible consequences for the whole field. We've already seen the consequences in psychology and to a lesser degree in biology, but that's just because nobody has really looked into other areas.

I still say that in many if not most cases, you will simply fall into the same traps as the original authors, and your effort was futile. Nobody wants to waste his time and money, and that is why nobody does that. The recent fMRI scandal is a good example. Those guys knew what was wrong, and designed the test to prove it. They understood statistics, and knew most of their colleagues don't, but all use it blindly, because there is a software package for it.

@Karl Those are two different things. This is not about finding errors in the theoretical parts of a paper (which is also also very important), it is about making sure that the empirical study can be replicated. There are millions and millions of things that can go wrong (or cherry picking results, or...). The psychology study is a clear evidence that this happens all the time at least in psychology, but there's been similar signs in medical research and other fields (just none as exhaustive).

@Karl Falling into the same traps is a sign of bad science and bad training in itself.  This is not a problem of replication studies but of human beings and economics.  The "waste of time and money" is a matter of perspective.  Most funding agencies and less-than-scientific humans intrinsically want cool, new things now.  This want is independent of whether or not the maximum benefit would come from getting something less cool and less new later.  Science is not supposed to be governed by wants but by facts and unbiased observations.  Practical reality just refuses to go away is all.

If you just replicate a study, without using your own knowledge to add further, orthogonal test to the validity of the conclusions, then you are not working scientifically imho, sorry. Actually you won't be working at all, because you will never get any funding for such waste of time and money. If you can't, because you lack a specific expertise, then leave it to someone else, and do the things you are qualified for. A study where nobody is able to find weak spots is either a wonder or irrelevant.

While I agree with @Superbest on the hardship of producing novel results on the boundary of science, this issue satisfies for most of the things in the world now. Indeed, the novelty in the cinema and movies is very hard due to the production of hundreds of movies in the world just in one year.
But, how we can response to this problem? Just stop, redo and reproduce the old things again and again?
The pure original ideas appear scarcely in the academics and cinema (e.g.). But the hybrid ideas would be built from the pioneers of the past.
The most published works (or even produced movies) are hybrid and not original ones'.
The reproducing published works is an essential step for creating novel and potential ideas from the deficiencies of those works.


text:
Will reviewers focus on mistakes in references such as missing fullstop or not italic?
I am new to this research world and very confused.  I submitted the manuscript to a journal and a few hours after I submitted it, I realized that I had made some mistakes.  While I was working on editing the format, I accidentally changed everything back to non-italic.  I then italicized many places where it was needed, but not in the reference list. When I looked at the reference list after sending the manuscript, I noticed that mistake and some punctuation mistakes. I sent a new version later, but the day after the editors wrote to say that the manuscript had passed the desk stage and the originality check and would be sent to the reviewers.
I asked about the version they checked and it was the first version.  The editors told me that some errors can be corrected in later stages.  However, I am worried that my manuscript would be rejected due to this technical error.  Please tell me your thoughts on this.  This is not a top rated journal and it is my first research. Some professors told me that this should not be a fatal flaw.
Thank you.

As a reviewer, I've occasionally mentioned inconsistencies in formatting of the references, but never as a reason for rejection. More generally, anything that can be trivially corrected is no reason for rejection.

Unless the formatting errors (or choices) make the paper extremely tedious (or distracting) to read, it is a non-issue

Very relevant; https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3977

Trust your professors on this one: not a big deal. You even asked the editors and they said it was not a big deal, and these things can be corrected later! Everyone is in agreement.
If your manuscript has flaws that make it difficult to read, reviewers might comment on that and it might reflect poorly on the paper overall, but reference formatting is entirely a style. Different reference formats are different and the people reading your paper don't need a particular format to evaluate the work. Either the editorial staff will fix the formatting or you'll be asked to submit a corrected version if your paper is accepted. It's extremely unlikely this will impact the opinion of the reviewers at all - they'll be focused on the content of your work.
In the future, use a citation manager for your references that automatically formats them for you, to save you time, avoid mistakes, and make it easy to switch between formats as you unavoidably will need to submit some of your work to more than one venue.
I also like to always let a fully ready project sit for a day or two before doing the final submission - a little bit of time can help you catch and fix some of the little things. If you have a submission deadline, that might mean you have to hold yourself to having everything ready a day or two early so you can review again before the actual deadline.

Also, if you can, use a source-code control system or something similar. That way, you can go back to a previous version. Prefer something that you can use to diff two versions (see the differences)