text:
Statement of Purpose length and bibliography
If the desired length of a SOP is 1.5-2 pages, is it okay to have an extra page for bibliography? (so that I cite books/papers in the formal way)
Clarification: I mean 2 pages of text, plus 1 page of bibliography.

What does "desired length" mean?  If it means 1.5-2 pages feels right to you, then adding a bibliography page is probably OK.  If it means you were given a formal length limit of 2 pages in the application instructions, then this is a risky thing to try.

In my general experience, a statement of purpose rarely needs to be so detailed as to necessitate inclusion of a bibliography. That said, there is nothing expressly preventing you from including a bibliography. On the other hand, part of me is skeptical of the wisdom of including a full-page bibliography in association with a two-page statement. It may seem very much like overkill.
Unless you're citing each and every one of the works in the bibliography individually, I don't see a logical reason to include that many works. I'd stick to just the essential citations needed to explain what you want to do.

I have no intention to include a whole page of Bibliography. What i want to do however, is to avoid citing like "the book Short_title by First_Author" or "[his/her] work published in Some_Conference in Some_Year" and instead append a Bibliography at the end of the Document. My question is about that Bibliography going past the 2 page formal limit for the SoP.

Including a bibliography in order to save on words in the body of the statement is a questionable proposition. Why do you feel that a full citation is really needed?

Well, i need to make a number of references. I think it is messy to cite in a "custom" way, so i prefer following the formal way ( like using bibtex to make a bibliography). But that way, i don't think i can stick to the 2 pages limit (bibtex entries take a lot of space usually). On the other hand, if i cite informally, i could have a 2 page document no problem.

Well, you could use inline citations (Smith, X, Ann Femtography 109, p. 771, 2007) or footnotes, which would probably take less space. Both are possible with bibtex.


text:
Don't like my choice of grad program and don't know what to do
I have a BSW (social work) and have decided to go back to school for MSW; but social work was never my passion. I honestly picked it in undergrad because they took all my credits when I didn't pass the Praxis for Early Childhood Education (missed each by 1 point) and now I'm in the MSW program at Delaware State University but hate it. I feel like I'm just wasting my time; its not something that I am interested in at all. I went back because "its the thing to do" if I want to get money in my field. I'm just lost when I'm in class because it doesn't have 100% of my attention. I am 26 years old and feel like its too late for me to be saying "I don't know what I want to do with my life." What are some other options of programs I could  look into that is somewhat within social work?

One thought...its not really unusual not to know what you want to do with your life at 26! Check out this awesome article. Its all good advice, but my favorite quote is"Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't." (My undergrad English teacher assigned this as the prompt for our final exam!)

I was 30 before I realized I wanted to get a degree in Computer Science.

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text:
Is it normal for a Professor to make unsolicited contact with potential Masters students via LinkedIn?
My friend recently moved to Canada and she holds a BSc from an overseas university. Her school wasn't world-famous but wasn't bad either. For the past year she'd been studying English and preparing for the GRE to get ready for admission into a North American university.
Apparently there is this professor in the US who'd found her on LinkedIn and is interested in having her as one of his grad students. He has been very encouraging, even keeping in touch via Skype while my friend was on vacation. He's told her that if she gets a good score on the GRE he will be able to admit her. He has also made promises of grants.
My friend is married but she is young and quite attractive. While she had a decent GPA her university wasn't all that amazing. Also her command of English isn't very good. All of this is making me suspicious about the intentions of this professor.
I have worked with some very nice professors but none of them took time on a regular basis to voluntarily stay in touch with a prospective student. I could understand why one might look for bright and amazing students on LinkedIn, but the fact of the matter is my friend did not have her full academic records published on her profile (just a few examples of her projects and volunteer work, but no grades or GPA).
Do you find this scenario normal? I am having a hard time giving this professor the benefit of the doubt.

I'm seeing a lot of red-flags. How on earth can he guarantee her admission or grants? Looks like luring to me. Yikes.

Just with the facts you're declaring in your question. This is not at all normal. Either of the following could make sense of this: (1) particularly interesting type of volunteer experience vis-a-vis the professor's research, (2) special language skills, e.g. a rare dialect necessary or useful for research, or less so but imaginable (3) say a minority women engineer from a refugee background. But without those or something in the vicinity, this strikes me as being really weird behavior.

Faculty do not usually recruit graduate students from LinkedIn.  I think this is because they do not know how to or do not have time, not because it is improper.  Offering funding is a common way to recruit graduate students.

@trikeprof "grants" is probably a misstatement of "stipend funded by a grant" which is very common.  It is common for US admissions committees to admit a student on the basis that their application is endorsed by a faculty member who has grant funding to pay the student's stipend.

Have to agree with my colleagues above. Several flags here. Doesn't feel right

Any update on that story?

Are you sure that is a professor, and not some scammer?

The Linkedin channel is unusual, but not suspicious per se. Does your friend have common connections with that professor? If that is the case, she might have popped up in the "people you may know" list that he gets. Or he did a keyword search. The one relevant thing with Linkedin is that he saw a — presumably flattering — picture of her.

He's told her that if she gets a good score on the GRE he will be able to admit her.

On that point again, I'd give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it's a wording issue and what was really meant was that with a good GRE score, admission in the local program is likely.

He has also made promises of grants.

This is rather standard for grad students to have their tuition and stipend covered by a grant.

keeping in touch via Skype

This, this. I have a hard time finding sound reasons for a professor to invest time and effort into communicating with a potential grad student, who did not even apply, by videoconferencing. This being said, Skype offers free international calls so it might be just for this reason.
So, there are sketchy aspects to that story, but nothing decisive. If the position is really of interest to her then maybe she should try investigating further. For example contacting the local graduate program admin and ask about the admission process, ask the alleged funding body for grant criteria, etc. in order to have multiple channels of communications. If she sees mismatches in the prof's story and theirs, that could give an additional warning.

I know some people/labs which use Skype just as an instant-messaging tool. If this is the case here, it might not be that suspicious. Still I would suggest to act with caution.

@Bitwise you are right, plus the call being international cost could be a motivation too. I have amended my answer.

Still, it doesn't explain why a professor would hit on a random potential student in LinkedIn with not even the relevant information attached in the profile. Of course Skype is used as an instant messaging tool but with people that you already know. I have been interviewed through skype, and I chat with colleagues and friends on skype. The only reason to start chatting out of nowhere with a person someone meets in LinkedIn through Skype is if he's hitting on her. Ask her to change her profile photo to that of a guy and see how he continues... ;)

I agree with a lot of the commenters, that this situation as you've described it raises red flags.
However, I do wonder if your friend will appreciate your involvement.  Have you discussed this with her?  There may be more going on here than you're able to describe to us, because you're not involved in the situation.  If you've talked with her about your concerns and she seems receptive, then great.  Otherwise I would tread very cautiously, particularly if you were thinking of using a SE post to make your point after she's disagreed with your assessment.
Regardless, I applaud you for your friendly concern.

@JeffL. I actually pretended as though it was a true opportunity and didn't mention anything negative, but advised her to start contacting the respective department and researching this university before getting too hopeful. I used SE to validate my hypothesis of this professor. Thanks for your answer.

You're asking clarification about whether OP discussed the matter with his/her friend. I agree that this is a comment and not an answer to the original question.

@CapeCode I saw that question as a rhetorical one. There are red flags on this situation and one of them being about the OP being "too concern" about opposite sex person being aproached by a third opposite sex person. Would he be so careful if it was a dude? My guess is that he wouldn't.

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Competing Interest while working in private-public partnership
This is a question about work and publications that happen in public-private partnership. I am currently employed by a University, and seconded half of the time in a startup. I am working on a scientific project with outcome that are of interest for both the uni lab and the startup.
The paper is authored by me, colleagues from the lab and the startup. Its a method-oriented paper, explaining a new method of analysis that will be used by the startup for their customers and the lab for their projects. I think that we have competing interest to declare (based on what I saw in the Nature guideline):

I work part time in the startup.
Other authors work for the startup.
I work under the assumption, as other postdocs funded in the same way, that there may be employment from the startup at the end of the postdoc
The published work may financially impact the startup (as it adds a new method in their tools)

So I spoke with my lab leader, and they said that there is no competing interest and we should declare none. They argued that each author affiliation is clear, that the work was conducted objectively, without bias and that we paid attention to the startup influence so there is no problem. Situation escalated as they thought that I was implying that they were doing unethical work. They spoke with our lab scientific integrity officer (without me), and the officer aligned with the leader view rather than mine.
I am a bit lost with what to do, especially with the backup from the scientific integrity officer. It seems that my view on competing interest is too harsh, so any external feedback on this will be helpful.

Details on the founding:
This funding is from the French government and Europe, that allows to hire (at least) postdocs or engineer for projects with a private partner (company, startup, etc).

This measure is intended to preserve companies' R&D investment capacities, support the employment of young graduates and strengthen the links between public and private research. The aim is to preserve or create more than 2,000 R&D jobs by strengthening public-private collaborations.
The State covers part of the remuneration of R&D personnel assigned to this collaboration: company employees working part-time in a research laboratory; employees of a company undertaking part-time doctoral training in a research laboratory; young graduates at master's level or young doctors hired by a research laboratory and hosted part-time in a company.

Source (in french):

https://www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/fr/le-plan-de-relance-pour-l-enseignement-superieur-la-recherche-et-l-innovation-49706
https://anr.fr/en/plan-de-relance/

One competing interest might be that the company wants confidentiality on the results (something like trade secret) and you want to publish. Is there any of that here? Or the possibility of patents and such?

No, not from what I heard at least. The company rely on published scientific results to argue that they are employing cutting edge approaches.

They argued that each author affiliation is clear, that the work was conducted objectively, without bias and that we paid attention to the startup influence so there is no problem.

That's not how conflict of interest works. Conflict of interest means your interests conflict, it doesn't mean that the conflict has caused you to behave unethically. The purpose of conflict of interest disclosure is to provide the information for other people to decide what the impact of any bias should be on their interpretation of the paper. The person with the conflict doesn't get to self-determine whether they were influenced.
If you're employed by a company and are an author on a paper that could affect that company financially, you have a conflict of interest and should declare it. Disclosure doesn't mean wrongdoing. Failure to disclose is wrongdoing.
The only way I'd possibly buy your lab leader's argument would be that by declaring affiliations that include the company and declaring any funding from the company that supported the work, you've effectively already disclosed and do not need a separate statement. However, I see no downside to the highest level of transparency.

Thanks for your answer. The highest level of transparency was one of my argument, I agree that there should be no downside. My two problems are 1) I didnt manage to make it clear as we argue that it was about perception and not self blaming some bias 2) the scientific integrety officer opposition. I dont think I should challenge their authority on that subject.

@cococo You might find it easier to argue that you should communicate to the journal about this: especially if your affiliations already clearly identify you as employees of a company, it seems like it would be reasonable to ask them "Hey, do we need to also write a disclosure statement, given the affiliations are clear?" Then, the journal's opinion will bind your supervisor and coauthors. However, given your junior position and the opinion of the "scientific integrity officer", it also isn't a hill I'd die on, as long as it's somehow clear you are employees of a company.

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text:
NSF Career Grant Eligibility
Is someone who is not a US citizen and doesn’t have a green card but is working as a faculty at a state university in the US eligible to apply for an NSF CAREER grant? I am not sure if citizenship/green card status of a person is crucial to apply for an NSF grant or the status of organization is more important. I have seen non-US citizens applying for USDA/NIFA grants through universities. I am not sure if this is same for an NSF grant.

If you meet the other requirements for eligibility, yes.
From this FAQ:

I am not a U.S. Permanent Resident or U.S. Citizen or U.S. National. Can I apply to the CAREER Program?

Yes. You may apply if you are employed at an eligible U.S. organization and meet the other CAREER eligibility requirements.


text:
How to decline a postdoc offer a few days after accepting it?
I recently received two postdoc offers on the same day.  I accepted one (verbally, in saying "I would like to accept this job offer", but I have signed nothing), but then some additional information came to light that I would not be happy in that role and the other was probably a better fit for me after all.
It is undoubtedly the case that I failed to adequately understand the pros and cons of each role before accepting one of the roles.  I accept this, but it's also my first job,  and frankly I have no idea what I am doing.  If I had a better idea what I was doing then I would have been able to extract this information before accepting one of the roles.  I accept that I have been fairly useless in this decision-making process and I am quite ashamed and horrified by it all (I'm not really sleeping and I've even had nightmares, as ridiculous as that may sound). Frankly, I just want it to end, but I want to make the right decision as it will have a profound impact on my life.  And the right decision for me is to decline the offer that I had previously accepted and go forwards with this alternative one.  At most as it stands I'll have cost them about 2-3 days of time.  It's not as if I've kept them hanging for several weeks or months before finally backing out.  I can already tell my would-be supervisor in the role I wish to decline  is a very decent and kind person and I want to cause them them the absolute minimum undue difficulties and upset.
How unethical is it to decline an offer after accepting it (but without having signed anything)?  How can I go ahead with now going back on my decision and let them know in the best possible way?  Thanks for your help.

If you're sure, you need to act as quickly as possible to control the damage. The PI might not have rejected the other candidates yet.

Whatever inconvenience your late rejection will cause, it cannot compare to the damage from accepting the offer you don't feel happy about. By refusing now you'll minimize the damage for everyone, which is anything but unethical.

Yes you have to be a bit careful doing this sort of thing beyond PhD level

Note that (jurisdiction dependent) contracts generally do not have to be signed to be accepted, so the fact that you did or didn't sign is not a relevant factor. Signtures are used to prove that acceptance took place, but are not themselves the act of acceptance (although the two can coincide).

@Tom Even at the PhD level one should be careful (even more so in countries where PhD students receive a salary).

I think you could maybe get away with it at PhD level, but beyond you likely can't as it will affect your reputation.  Academia is a small world so creating bad blood is a bad idea.

Not a direct answer to your question, and doesn't apply literally, but may apply to the fast-decision-making process: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/155619

Apologize, apologize, apologize. Hope you're not burning bridges (because the word may very well travel), and if at all possible, offer to still collaborate on a project in the foreseeable future (and try to live up to this offer, don't use it just as appeasement).

Being on the receiving end is very unpleasant, and it will have probably cost them more than just 2-3 days; the bureaucratic arrangement, possibly losing other postdoc candidates, having to go readvertising etc. is a very serious hassle, let's not pretend it isn't. Being there, done that.
Nonetheless, you need to take a decision and inform them as quickly as possible. There is no point for you taking a postdoc that you (and ultimately them) will regret. Decide and inform. This is an unpleasantry that is part of life. Yours and theirs.
To contain the damage as much as possible, you need to face it upfront. Good luck!

Hmmm. Did you make the mistake of assuming all was well with only a verbal commitment and telling others they'd been rejected? It might have been wiser to wait a bit with rejections or otherwise organize things so that you can meet the advertised deadlines. But, yes, a fast response is required.

@Buffy Nobody knows how the advertising prof proceeds. Candidates are likely to interpret a hold-off as a no or waiting list and agree to join elsewhere.

+1 Time is of the essence. OP should realize they're now racing with the #2 (or #3, …) candidate accepting an offer elsewhere. An extra hour of a delay can make all the difference between "No problem, we just hired #2 instead" and "We'll have to scrap the whole hiring process and start from scratch because everyone usable already got a job elsewhere.".

@Buffy: Having recently been hiring, I know that the liner notes of the ad read "results are expected by date X, and if you haven't heard by date Y, you can assume the answer is negative". We sent the top candidates their offers within a day or two of the interview. We don't know the OP's situation, and we don't know the situation in the postdoc they should have declined by now. So it's not at all presumptuous to suggest this may very well cause a lot of hassle on the no-longer-hiring side.

Honestly admit you changed you mind, and provide some sort of brief explanation for your change.  Many years ago, a colleague of mine accepted a postdoc and the next day was offered full time teaching position at much higher pay.
He respectfully then backed out of the postdoc offer and explained that the other job offered much higher pay and that was a deciding factor as he had a spouse and children to consider.

Honestly, and quickly...

If you haven't signed anything, or at least been given a written offer, then you may not have an enforceable contract. Changing your mind within a few days will cause only minimal, if any, disruption at the other end.
If they believe that you do have a binding contract, then they will let you know immediately and you will have to deal with that. You could ask to be released from it, of course. But speed is essential.
Just send them something in writing along with an email declining the offer and offering apologies for your earlier statements. You don't really need to say more than that.
They might be unhappy, but would be less happy to have you join them grudgingly.
I suppose there are some places where a verbal agreement can hold legal weight, but I doubt that even then, they would think it wise to enforce it. They likely have other options.

The current disruption (if any) is only part of the global picture. If you are working in a fairly small field, don't be surprised if your next post-doc application is read by somebody who already knows what you did last time around.

"If you haven't signed anything then you don't have a contract in most places" - definitely not true for the UK in relation to employment contracts, and also not true in relation to most types of contracts generally. I'm actually quite surprised to see a claim that a signature is required for a valid contract elsewhere, as verbal contracts take place routinely every day (e.g. when you buy a drink from a shop or when you employ someone to mow your lawn). But I'll concede there are probably jurisdictional differences.

@JBentley, how does one enforce a complex but unwritten contract? Just by arguing back and forth in court about the terms? I assume some sort of evidence is required.

@Buffy This is a topic better suited to law stack exchange, but briefly: (in most common law systems e.g. the UK / USA) for a contract you simply need intention, consideration, and agreement. There is no requirement that any of that be in writing, unless there is a rule of law to the contrary (e.g. the LPMPA 1989, s 2(1)). Whether or not you can prove the contract is separate from whether or not there is a contract.

Also note that evidence can take the form of witness statements, and the standard of proof is balance of probabilities i.e. whichever party the judge/jury believes more (even just a tiny bit more) than the other party, will be the party that wins.

Inform the professor immediately of your change of heart. You will have to try to think of some reasoning, to make the conversation easier, dampen any bruising of their ego and to attempt to maintain a cordial relationship, if possible.
I am concerned that you are overly worried about the fallout of this, based on your question details. Bizaarely the top-ranked answer right now appears worded to heighten your stress. Ultimately the professor, and you, will be better off as a result of your decision, and changes-of-heart like this are a normal part of real life, and any career. For perspective, the professor whom you will be letting down almost certainly has a much more stable place in academia than you do, and many would consider any very extreme reaction on their part to be an indication of lack of character. Most PIs which I have known have been quite realistic regarding the hiring process, and it is common for top candidates to recieve multiple offers. Decision changes happen.
Unless you are in some exceptionally small field with an exceptionally insecure PI at its helm, it is likely everything will be fine for you.

"and it is common for top candidates to recieve multiple offers. Decision changes happen." This glosses over the fact that most candidates will not accept an offer and later change their decision. OP messed up (though surely not in a particular extreme way) and should approach the situation from this mindset.

Everyone I have spoken to in real life thinks what I did is no big deal.  My own (current) PI said it doesn't matter, especially when you consider the sort of things that people get up to in academia.  I struggle to reconcile this with the other replies I've received here, although it's undoubtedly possible that people close to me were telling me what I wanted to hear.  The implication in some of the comments that I'll get a "reputation" and "word will spread"...  it just doesn't ring remotely true to me.  Maybe a different field or a different continent.

@rooms your experiences regarding the comments of your PIs and colleagues mirror with the academic world which I have seen also. I think that the flagellatory additions to some of the answers here are quite unnecessary. Your original question made it quite clear that you already realised that your actions would lead to some degree of immediate inconvenience. You asked how to respond and whether it was unethical, not whether it was inconvenient. Go boldly forth! Your future success will surely depend on your publication record predominantly anyway - not this minor blip!

You have two options:

You stay in the job that you accepted. Maybe it will be fine, or maybe (as you suspect) you won't be happy.

You tell the people you accepted that you are very sorry to mess them around, but have changed your mind. Maybe this only causes them a minor inconvenience, or maybe it causes them a lot of hassle. Maybe it hurts your relationship in the future for a while, and maybe it doesn't. Then, maybe you are happy in this job and maybe you aren't.

There are risks either way. You have to judge which is the greater risk. As others have pointed out, the risk of a bad outcome from option 2 increases with time.

You should just tell the postdoc director you've changed your mind. And quickly, so he can look for another candidate, or call back a candidate he refused. The sooner the better.


text:
Are there general guidelines for including code in a research paper?
I'm a beginning researcher trying to write a research paper , so please bear with some of the really basic questions I might have. I've already looked around for some help online, but the websites I found were vague.
My program is written in perl. Should I include my code in the paper? If so, is there a maximum number of lines? Will people expect me to include all of it in the paper (either in the appendix or in the body) or can I just write out in text the general idea of what it does?

You haven't said what this paper is for (e.g. planning to publish it in a journal? Honors thesis for school? Something else?) - please [edit] your post to clarify this detail.

Also, the StackExchange way is one question per post so I've removed the secondary question about whether to use LaTeX - which has already been covered pretty thoroughly here.

Related: How much code to include in a physics paper?

Related: Including many pages of serialization code and generated source code in Master's thesis?

@user22319: take into account that nowadays many journals allow you to publish additional material online. If the journal where you intend to publish provides this service, you might describe short code snippets in the article and upload the complete source code as online material.

Related How to share computer code?. This might be a borderline dupe.

In general, I would never include code in the "main" paper outside of computer science or applied mathematics. There are very few cases where listing code explicitly would actually improve the quality and readability of the paper. If it is necessary to include the code, I would do so as part of the "Supporting Information" which many journals allow you to include alongside the main publication. I would then describe the features of the code as words in the main text.
Even in CS and math papers, I would still only put pseudocode in the main article, and would save any listings of actual code for the Supporting Information.

The norms and expectations for including code as supporting information vary across fields.
Personally, I would include your code as a supporting information. This allows others to recreate your work.
See resources and references I cited in an answer to a previous question on a similar topic.

Well, I have been writing papers for nearly a decade. And I have never seen anyone including source code in any publication (except in dissertations). Everyone prefers to include a well defined algorithm section in the paper. I think there would/could be two (or more) reasons behind this:

The (main and related) codes are lengthy and take a lot of space in your paper that could otherwise be used for something else.
Everyone who would read your paper might not very good at programming in the language you chose. For instance, maybe I include an FFT script in MATLAB, and it is possible the readers are more interested to see it in Python or C etc. So, in this case adding a code would not add a lot of value in your paper. Therefore, I normally say that the pseudocode language is more universal.


text:
Is it fine to exclude an email salutation for short messages?
I've had a habit of always starting with "Dear Prof. X" but have noticed professors sometimes drop the header past the first reply. For shorter emails, is it polite to omit these formalities from my end? Like "Dear Prof. X, Thanks for the information, I'll make sure to do that. Best, Me" seems a bit cumbersome.

An important thing to note here is that often these dropped headers don't happen because the email is merely short, but usually because the email chain starts to approximate a conversation, i.e. a quick succession of short replies. So the formalities shift from those of writing letters to those of talking in person. So maybe take some cues from there.
In particular, even if it is short, not starting the first message with some greeting would be a bit impolite. The same is true if some time has passed between messages. (You'd greet somebody if you meet them again, even if you just met them yesterday and didn't talk to anyone in between) But a quick ABAB-exchange within a few minutes doesn't really warrant repeated greetings.
And of course, as mentioned in the other answer, when in doubt, just err on the formal side.

For those kind of discussions, Slack is much more suitable than forth and back emails. And then, it's even clearer that you wouldn't start every single sentence with "Dear Prof. X"

@EricDuminil Well, we are talking about academia where for many people email still is the most modern means of written communication. And while I have seen some messengers, I've never witnessed anybody using slack before. From what I can gather it doesn't quite fit the need for academia (i.e. lots of inter-university communication and a general unwillingness of the people in charge to part with money for such things).

We use it internally for our research project at our university, and it works great. We use the free version. That's true, though : we never used it for inter-university communication.

In my experience, it should be fine to drop the salutation given that the other person has done so before you in that same chain. But if in doubt then err on the more formal side. It's always a good idea to emulate the email style of the other person in a one-on-one chain (unless you have some reason for wanting to maintain formality).

I usually find it's good to start and end formally, but for little in-between messages that are around one line and easy to answer it's fine to be informal. Unless the person is really arrogant, they won't find it disrespectful if you do this (especially if they've done it first), although it depends a bit on your relationship to them. Maybe something like this:

You: Dear Prof X, can you please tell me about whatever. Regards, Infinitus.
Prof: Dear Infinitus, here's some information, Signed, X
You: Is that A or B?
Prof: A.
You: Thank you, I'll get on it. Regards, Infinitus.

Good answer, though in the third email (You: Is that A or B?) I would prefer to maintain formality if you don't know the professor well, since that matches the level of formality in their previous message. Once they drop formality, you can drop it as well.

@6005 really depends on the relation and how much you feel as subordinate or colleague

Yes, with some exceptions, especially cultural.
Writing salutations wastes time, they take up unnecessary screen real estate, and reading them wastes time too.
But, some people and cultures expect them, so take a little care.

Same for spoken saltutations. You could save some millseconds by skipping the "Hi" when entering a room. Anyway, when you enter someones room first time in a day or after a longer break you'd probably take the time to greet them anyway. When walking past their room three times in a row while carrying stuff in and out, you don't. Same for emails.

@Mark Exactly. (Albeit writing salutations takes more than milliseconds.)

@Mark "Hi" serves a purpose in allowing people time to redirect their attention towards you.

Is it fine to exclude an email salutation for short messages?

In academia or not, a good reason to avoid short e-mails is to help the receiver know the beginning of a chain is legitimate.

Consider,
Professor Newton,

I'm having trouble with today's assignment [link to a "picture"].

This is does not provide the recipient enough info and has the appearance of some click-on-my-link exploit.

Versus
Professor Newton,

In your lecture about apples falling from the tree to earth,
I did not understand the shift to earth and sun. [link to a picture].

Student name

Certainly one should be careful before clicking any embedded link, yet providing relevant and timely info, along with what-ever courtesies you like, helps the Prof save time in deciding your e-mail's legitimacy.

(I'm in the US - I lived in Canada way back when I was first a grad student)
I don't inhabit the academy, but I did a graduate degree 5 years ago, and I did graduate work a long time ago (way before the advent of email).
I don't think I've ever used "Dear" in an email - ever, and I don't think I ever addressed anything to my research supervisor in the pre-email days with "Dear".  I did always include a salutation along the lines of "Dr. Whatzit" or "Prof. Whosit" in the first email of a chain (or in a memo to my supervisor way back in the day).  Like others have said, it goes away after the first use.
I never expected a salutation in return.  I have no idea if I ever got one.  As you may have figured out, I was older than most of my profs (all but one) when I did the degree a few years ago.

In the US, starting an e-mail with "Dear Dr." is common and polite. In this context, "dear" does not mean "beloved" but rather "important" or "highly regarded".

I see a lot of answers supporting dropping salutations once a particular email chain gets going. But I also don't use them with anybody who I interact with a lot. This includes family members and friends, but also my boss and close colleagues. When I was a grad student it included my advisor and professors that I was in a small class with. But when I email someone who rarely hears from me, I'll start with a "Hi [Name]" or something. When I was a grad student emailing a prof at another university to ask about one of their papers, I would start "Dear Prof. [LastName]," just to be especially deferential since I was a total stranger. I think a lot of people operate this way.

I assume you haven't misdirected emails to AA when you thought you were asking BB the question.  Starting a new email chain with a "hello AA" at least lets BB know that your email autocomplete address accidentally messed up!


text:
Decline promotion because of teaching load
Short version:
After spending 4 very successful years as a postdoc at a top university in Switzerland, I was offered a promotion. However, the new contract comes with a very high teaching load (75%) for at least 3 years. It is also not a permanent position. I am afraid that the new position will limit my future career chances because I'll not be doing much (if any) research during this time and teaching will also not improve my chances in industry. Therefore, I'm considering declining the position.
Long version:
I'm working in a young research group at a top university in Europe (Switzerland). Our professor is still in his tenure-track phase. I am probably the most experienced postdoc in his group and have many responsibilities and significant research output and an outstanding international research network. I'm also personal friends with him.
I'm in the fourth year of my postdoc (which I feel is already pretty long). In my last appraisal interview, I mentioned that I would like to progress with my career toward a more senior scientist-like position. In fact, I do not really have a lot of time to do my own research anymore but am instead supervising a lot of other people's research.
Within the institute, another senior scientist who did a lot of teaching now got a professorship at a different university and I was offered his position. However, it comes with a ton of teaching, more than I would like to do, and in a field that is not really my main expertise.
Thus, in the next years, I will be very busy preparing lectures (and learning about the field). The contract officially lists 75% teaching load. Thus, I will have only very little time (if any) for doing research besides the other operational responsibilities that I have. Additionally, it is not a fixed position but only a temporary contract for a couple of years.
Although the professor basically promised me a great future (he is confident that he can turn my position into a permanent one in a couple of years after his tenure-track ends) I'm not fully convinced. First of all, these are only verbal promises and he mentioned that such a position is not only based on my teaching skills but also based on my success in getting funding for proposals and my research output. On top, our university is trying to reduce costs, thus, I'm not even sure if there will be permanent senior-scientist positions in the near future. (Some professors do not have one). He is also still on his tenure track.
My fear is that I will accept the promotion, will do a lot of teaching in the next three years (which I do not really want to do to this extent), and then not get a permanent position. In this case, I assume that the three years of teaching will not be beneficial for my academic career due to the reduced research output.
Furthermore, I also fear that moving to the industry will get even more challenging (I will then be in my mid-30s). Unfortunately, there is no industry related to my field (we are doing fundamental research in a very niche field of radio astronomy). Thus, for a change to the industry, I would, either way, have to change my focus.
My question is if it is reasonable to decline the position.
I was already playing with the thought of moving to industry and I was already looking for suitable positions (without luck yet but also without really applying for many jobs). There is no time yet to explore my possibilities in industry before accepting/declining the promotion since he needs a decision soon.
If I accept, it obviously means I would stop looking for positions in industry (since I cannot agree on doing a lot of teaching in October but then leave mid-semester or even before the semester starts leaving the institute with nobody to do the teaching) meaning that I am "stuck" in the teaching position for at least some years.
Some colleagues from other institutes I talked to also raised concerns if this position will really be advantageous for my future academic or non-academic career.
The only related question I could find on this side was based on the US system, thus, I would appreciate some more suggestions/comments.

This is a very interesting question. Recommend you [edit] to remove a couple of paragraphs; shorter and more generalizable questions are the best fit for our format.

Do you have any idea of what other options you have coming up in the next year or so? As a post-doc it is high time to move on...

Never take a teaching job if you are not certain you enjoy teaching.  It is bad for the students and bad for you too.

"he is confident that he can turn my position into a permanent one in a couple of years after his tenure-track ends"  His confidence is worth nothing.  Go find data to see who actually got jobs.

Can you please tell us in which country this happens and how exactly the teaching load is measured? E.g., if this is in Germany, I would know a few aspects of the system that are very relevant to your situation, but also very specific to Germany.

Don't take the job. You will seriously hurt your research and in my field (maths) this is essentially the only criterion which good universities use to recruit. Of course you have show you are not hopeless at presenting during your research talk and interview well. The promise is also meaningless, since power dynamics outside of your supervisor control will determine if there is a hire to begin with and who gets hired.

I would personally decline. I went into academia to do research, not to teach. I actually don't understand how some of my colleagues are able to do any research at all given their teaching loads, I assume they are just used to it or teach the same thing again and again every year, but that would just be mind-numbing to me.  My friend took a teaching fellow position after finishing the PhD at the same university and I rarely see him now.

If you feel that 75% teaching load is more than you can handle, don't take the post. This is indeed a very large teaching load, significantly exceeding a more classical 40% teaching, 40% research and 20% admin ratio. In practice, you can expect extra teaching responsibilities which are difficult to quantify (e.g. answering student emails, personal tutor responsibilities, writing new assessments, etc) and extra admin tasks. The combined total will quickly exceed 100% of your full-time contract, and the work will spill over into your weekends and holidays.
The problem with exploitative and unreasonable workload is that it ruins your wellbeing and creativity. Even if you get a permanent contract, and even if your teaching load is reduced one day, you will likely find yourself unable to get back to productive research instantly. With your publication track record damaged, you may find yourself effectively unable to find another academic job, and will be essentially tied to one University and fully dependent on decisions that senior management and admin teams make in relation to its strategic direction.
You may not have a permanent position now, but you have a number of options. If you spend 3 years on a 75% teaching contract, you may get a permanent position, but you will lose other options. I don't think this is a deal worth taking.
Personally, I took a similar deal in a similar situation, because I was on a temporary work visa and needed another contract asap to maintain the continuous immigration track for myself and my family. I would recommend not doing this, unless you are desperate.
I would also add that if you want to succeed in a post with 75% teaching load, you need to mentally prepare yourself to the idea of doing this job very very badly. If doing a bad job affects your self-perception, do not take this post.

On the flipside, it's absolutely possible to have a 75% teaching contract and use considerably less than 75% of one's actual time for teaching. That depends a lot on the circumstances. Big components are course preparation (ideally, one can give the same courses again every year) and grading (ideally, one can informally rely on teaching assistants).

@lighthousekeeper Often, established Profs in the Department benefit from course stability and TAs, while early career academics find themselves lacking both.

@DmitrySavostyanov Could be. These are surely also aspects to take into account when researching the position, and negotiating the offer if one is made.

@lighthousekeeper Offer negotiations are commonplace in US academia and some other places. In Europe, offers for entry-level academic posts often allow for little or no negotiation. In the UK, a new Lecturer can discuss expectations with HoD orally before accepting an offer, but the promises made by HoD do not become a written part of contract and may be dropped (e.g. if a new HoD takes on leadership). Hence, overall culture of the Department becomes more important than individually negotiated parameters.

I think "In Europe, offers for entry-level academic posts often allow for little or no negotiation" is a dangerous generalisation. Europe is a very big place! What you write is true for the UK, but the question is about Switzerland, which has a very different academic culture (closer to that of Germany) where negotiating offer conditions is much more usual.

I don't know which country you are in, so things might be different. But in my country, if you want a permenant academic position, at some point or other, unless you are an absolute superstar, your focus will move away from doing research. Tenure-track (or the closest thing to it that exists), potentially permenant jobs are almost all split between teaching, admin and research, and the "research" part of that is generally obtaining grants, and supervising students and postdocs.
Such positions generally claim to be 40% teaching, but almost everyone spends far more than 40% of their time doing teaching-related activities in the first few years, and research producitivity always takes a hit. I basically did no research related work in my first year, and the only thing I did in the second and third years was to write grant proposals and supervise one student getting started. Everything else was teaching.
If you are on a tenure-track, then this dip in productivity is expected, and accounted for in the measurement of whether you are doing well enough to pass tenure.
However, that is not what a 75% teaching, fixed-term contract position sounds like to me (unless by 75% they mean you will have 75% of the average teaching load, rather than that you will be allocated tasks that nominally add up to 75% of a 1640 hour working year).
That said, I have known people (generally in the humanities) that have taken contracts that are purely teaching roles, but that are part time (say 66%) and have managed to do enough research in their own time that they have sustained their research through that period, and are now flourishing. But boy was it hard for them.

My understanding is the vast majority of post-docs want to do nothing but research and only teaching because their contracts force them to. This is a potential reason why you might not be taken very seriously saying you do not want to do more teaching: because almost no one wants to.

The 75% point is important: it might be worth the OP checking/confirming, just in case there's a misunderstanding, that the '75% teaching load' isn't referring to '75% of the nominal load' of (say) 50% of the work-time.  Because that could be very attractive.

Most answers so far have advised you to trust your gut instincts and turn the position down, essentially, and I think those are generally good answers. But for the sake of presenting an alternative viewpoint, I will suggest one investigative question for you to look into over the next few days and then list some possible reasons to take the position (based on what you find out).
The question is: how well does your institute support teaching positions? Sub-questions include:

How well does the teaching administration run?
Do colleagues collaborate on teaching, provide mentorship to new teachers, and even occasionally write papers on tertiary education practices?
Importantly, will your subject assignment be predictable (that is, will it be straightforward for you to get the subjects you want to teach and will you get to teach them for a few years in a row)?
Are good metrics (student evaluations, test score distributions) considered as plus points in internal job evaluations?

If the answers you find are negative, then obviously you should reject the position. But if you find positive answers, here are some possible reasons to take the position:

Teaching can be fun! The extensive human contact is just good for the soul (for some people), and the knowledge that you are directly helping students can be very rewarding.
Teaching is a very valuable composite skill, and it can significantly enhance a non-academic CV (you can present technical material fluidly to large audiences, coordinate teams of tutors to get the job done, handle time pressures well ...)
You will get a large network of grateful students, many who may in turn help you in the future. You will also widen your professional network with teaching colleagues.
You may even easily reel in potential PhD students if you can bring your research expertise into your teaching.
If you repeat the same subject for a few years, you only need to prepare your material once. You can teach subsequent iterations of the course for relatively less effort.
While there is always some unofficial work, if you are good at setting boundaries with your students, you can cut down on the amount of student question-answering and special-casing you have to do.
And other parts of the terrible admin work (lesson plans!) can be straightforwardly automated with large language models these days.
Teaching can offer "productive procrastination" -- that is, you can work on teaching when you're tired of your research and your research when you're tired of teaching. That can increase your efficiency even further!

Finally, while you are rightly concerned with the decreasing amount of research you will be able to do, you should consider three things:

A continuing academic position anywhere will have some teaching component, and the sooner you learn time-efficient teaching, the better you will be at maximising your research time.
You will be doing less direct research anyway even in a fully research-focused position, as you've discovered for yourself -- you simply have to become more managerial the more people and money you're managing!
The person whose position you're filling did, after all, become a professor elsewhere. I'm sure that hiring committee saw their teaching load and adjusted their research expectations accordingly. What's stopping you from doing the same thing from the same position?

All the best!

You have good answers from the perspective of academia - a few thoughts about industry.

I also fear that moving to the industry will get even more challenging (I will then be in my mid-30s)

This is not challenging, provided that you bring in some needed knowledge (you would then get a more senior position). There may be a problem, though, if you work in research in a niche area because the knowledge is hardly transferrable, and the tools you use are used by others as well, possibly as their core work.
I would advise looking at positions to get an idea of what companies are looking for, especially the ones that may be closer to what you do. You could also try to build some relations right now.

If I accept, it obviously means I would stop looking for positions in industry (since I cannot agree on doing a lot of teaching in October but then leave mid-semester or even before the semester starts leaving the institute with nobody to do the teaching)

From an industry perspective, this is not obvious. What happens if you are incapacitated, say by a bus? It is the role of the university to account for that.
I completely understand your point about being fair (and this is a very good approach morally - I am saying it without any irony or something, I really do believe that) but at some point you also need to think about yourself.
You may want to try to negotiate the load, or make sure the limits are enforced (I would not count too much on that one). One problem is that you do not really have the upper hand.

On the second point, academic contracts often have long notice periods. In general employers (including universities) are fairly lax on enforcing notice, but if you leave them in a seriously difficult situation, you might find yourself in trouble for breach of contract.

@IanSudbery it will depend on the country. In France for instance this is regulated by the labour law and the notice period is up to 3 months (this is hardly negotiable, and only with money on the table - so not applicable for the vast majority of mortals)

Three months would not be an uncommon notice period in the UK, although some unviersities will specify "until the end of the semester". However, as semesters are 4 months long anyway, it seems that a 3 month notice period is likely to cover the rest of a semester in any case.

And most companies will be willing to wait until the end of the semester anyway. That is not a long time, really.

(Too long for a comment)
How long is the postdoc trail in your field before someone gets a tenure-track type or research-scientist position?  Are most new hires offered teaching positions?
How many positions have you applied for and how many interviews did you get since you started this postdoc, and in the last 12 months in particular? If new hires have the roughly the same or less experience as you do, what makes you think the next 12 months will be different from the past 12 months in terms of possible offers?
In other words, if other universities or institutes have not hired you in the past 4 years, what has changed so they would suddenly consider hiring you now in the near future?  Is there new $$ in the field?  Some exciting recent discovery?  Did you recently (or are you about to) publish some stand-out work?
The reality is that everywhere unis are trying to cut costs and are replacing research positions by teaching positions since the same salary buys them 1.5x or 2x the teaching. So while it is wise to take promises for a future position with a grain of salt, and 75% teaching is quite high, can you coldly research the recent job market and assess the odds of you getting a position with 40% teaching in the reasonably near future?
You could of course choose to remain on soft money, with all the associated uncertainties…

And does that soft money have a hard stop point? Many places limit the number of years one can be a post-doc there...

@JonCuster for postdocs it depends on the local rulebook but  for research staff there may not be a hard stop (at least in the cases I know...)

It is quite reasonable to accept the idea of a career in academia that does not involve aspirations to ever more senior positions. Whether you can manage to do that in your current university, or whether you will need to look further afield, I don't know, but I do know of many academics who have managed to achieve (to use an overworked phrase) a "work/life balance". For some people that means finding a position that is part-time; for some it means finding a more senior researcher who understands you, likes you, and is willing to employ you in a notionally more junior capacity while in fact treating you as a valued equal.
I strongly suggest rejecting your current offer. It sounds as if you already know that it will bring you heartache ... by which I mean a sense of very real stress and anxiety that, for many people, leads to a general unhappiness with life or something more serious.
I once worked with a female colleague (her gender being relevant only because she particularly wanted to stay home two days per week with a newborn) who encountered deprecatory remarks from her more ambitious and striving colleagues. They would say, on the Wednesday when my colleague's work-week ended, "Oh, you're so lucky having two days off while we're still here!" Her retort was, "I don't have the days off, and it's not luck. You just have to choose a 40% cut in salary."

I would like to offer an alternate, possibly unpopular perspective to the other answers. If you are not excited by the prospect of spending most of your time teaching, your possible future students may not be excited to have you as their teacher.
Students respond positively when their teachers are excited about the classes and subjects they teach. Alternatively, they will sense if you are only teaching those courses because you have to and not because you want to, and their performance and attitude toward you and the subject may suffer.
If you are not genuinely interested in teaching courses about this subject, I suggest you consider turning down the offer. Not just for your sake, but also for the sake of the students. They deserve a teacher who is invested and interested in the courses they teach.
There's certainly nothing wrong with wanting to spend more time doing research, but it may be in everyone's best interest for you to continue as a researcher instead of moving into a teaching role. In the future, you may get the opportunity to teach something you are enthusiastic to share with students, and then you can re-evaluate that decision.
Just a thought from a former student.

From my own experiences as student, I found that it's three different categories of teachers (in decreasing order of positive student response): enthusiastic teachers, teachers who aren't enthusiastic but care enough to do a decent job, and teachers who clearly don't care. People that fall into the third category should be discouraged from teaching-heavy jobs; for the second category it depends more on the circumstances.


text:
Does the acceptance rate of a conference influence its reputation or rank?
Top conferences such as CVPR, ECCV, etc. typically have a low acceptance rate, i.e., ratio of accepted to submitted papers. Does this give them a high reputation or rank? For example, this year the AAAI conference has more than 8000 submitted papers but only 1000 accepted papers.

CORE, one of the major ranking systems for computer science, takes the acceptance rate into account: (Source)

Characteristics of A* Conferences include that:
[...]

They have acceptance rates that are typically 20% or less, with many more "acceptable"
  papers submitted than can be accommodated in the conference program.


text:
How to find related work in academic writing in the most time-efficient way?
I noticed that, for each research project, there comes a point where I have to consult the literature, and find all the previous research related to the current project.
Unfortunately, I seem to be very inefficient in my approach. I spend a lot of time digging through papers that are really interesting, but only of tangential importance to my current work, just to find the few papers that actually do similar things. (The pile of "cool paper, read when time" just keeps growing.)
Hence, I'm wondering: What is the most time efficient way to get a thorough overview of the literature in a specific niche of a field?

While searching for an answer I came across these questions:
How can I do a literature review efficiently? - This question is quite similar and I liked the approach. I debated with myself if this is a duplicate, but I think it is focused more on how to be sure the search was exhaustive, whereas I'm worried about time efficiency. (Also, I'm a bit curious if things have changed since 2012.)
How to locate most important literature in an unfamiliar area
- The answer provides tips on how to identify what literature generally is important in a field, but I am looking for the most cost effective (least time consuming) way to do it in an area, where I know the broad literature, but not the specifics.

What is the field of study?

@Buffy I'm in social robotics / human robot interaction.

I understand that you are prepared to do the work necessary for searching the literature, but that you are looking for tips that avoid swimming aimlessly and wasting time going down unproductive lines. In principle, this is resolved by having a clear idea of what you are looking for. That way, you don't waste time exploring interesting ideas that are not immediately relevant. (And since it sounds like you are intellectually curious, then almost everything is interesting.)
I have found that one of the most valuable things to focus on in a literature review is theory, which I define as an explanation of the relationship between two or more measurable concepts. So, what you can focus on in a literature review is:

Clarify the theoretical concepts that interest you. A theoretical concept is necessarily something that is measurable, whether qualitatively (e.g. Type A versus Type B versus Type C) or quantitatively (i.e. counts, dates, etc.). This is the absolutely most crucial step to identifying theory.
When you search the literature, you should look squarely for these theoretical concepts. You might not know the measures that exist in the literature at first, but at least you know that you are looking for the parts of articles that talk about measures of your concept of interest.
You ignore anything that does not talk about measures of your concepts of interest. This means ignoring articles that don't talk about your concepts of interest at all, and it also means that even if an article does talk about your concept of interest, you skip the parts of those articles that don't talk about the measures of these concepts. (That said, of course, you should read anything that helps you understand your focal concepts better, even if they don't talk about measures.)

For example, if you want to study conditions that make people feel threatened by robots versus when they warmly accept robots, the key concepts would be:

Concept A: Type of robot interaction
Concept B: Human reaction to the robot

With these concepts identified, then you would search for literature that describes:

Different types of robotic interaction (e.g. personal voice assistant versus hardware robotic device; "machine-looking" robot versus humanoid robot; robot assists work tasks versus robot replaces human job; etc.)
Different ways of consideirng or measuring human reactions to robots (e.g. a scale ranging from violent rejection, such as vandalism, to warm acceptance, such as using the robot many times every day)

The results of the literature review would be a theory that explains how and why certain types of interaction with robots provoke various human reactions. (The theory would necessarily need to be enriched with context such as human personal characteristics, legal frameworks, etc.)
What I gave is a very brief summary and illustration of a literature review methodology that I am still in the process of developing, but I have an older working paper that describes the core principles in quite some detail. Even though I have unpublished ideas on this that are much better refined, the section in my older working paper on searching the literature explains this approach that I summarized in more detail.


text:
Cite Formal Definitions of Standard Problem in Thesis
Should I cite the definition of a standard problem that is widely know by the community in my thesis? For example the travelling salesman problem (TSP) is a very well known problem in computer science (dating back to the 1800s). To ensure accuracy I would refer to other sources for the formal definition, but these sources are very far removed from the original formulation of the problem.
Not sure if it makes a difference but I would potentially using different symbols as some of them could conflict with other uses throughout the document.

It is probably best to err on the side of completeness as long as you don't get so pedantic that you can't be understood. Some people who later read your work will appreciate those citations, even if your committee doesn't need them. Appendices/annexes are good for including some of that sort of thing.
But if you rely on a different formulation than the standard it might be especially useful to be complete. You don't, likely, need to chase the full history back (though it might help situate your work), but at least the immediate ancestors to your work.
Complete, but not pedantic. A balance.
And of course, your dissertation advisor has the best and most relevant advice on this. He or she needs to be happy.

I started to write an answer but @Buffy answered this well.  I'd emphasize that it doesn't hurt you to refer interested readers to some helpful sources for the TSP.  I always try to make it easy for interested but unfamiliar readers to use a paper.


text:
Why do I keep getting bad grades from the subjects that I'm very good at
Okay, I'm an economics student at one of the highest ranking universities in my country. I have 3.9 gpa and I'm also double majoring with mathematics, just started double majoring this semester.
After double majoring with mathematics, everything has changed pretty much. I'm taking a real analysis course in mathematics, and I have one of the top scores in real analysis course. But I can't say the same for economics courses. So here is the thing:
Economics courses is made out of mathematics pretty much, it's just the application of mathematics to the real life. I don't like economics, I actually don't want to study it, I want a career in mathematics, but that doesn't mean I don't study to economics courses.
I study them to, and topics seem too easy to me. I pretty much enter every economics exam knowing everything, I never leave a blank or anything. I solve every single question and I'm 100% sure what I'm doing. But I take incredibly bad grades, just because of the calculation mistakes I do. It's not because I didn't solve the question or anything, it's just because of the calculation.
I still don't get it though. I can't change this, I wasn't doing this previous year, It started this year, and some people relate it to the hardcore analysis course I'm taking. Some people think that's why I fail at practical economics courses, because I've started to think more "mathematically"
By the way, by bad grades I mean like 30/100 in an exam which has an average 65/100, all mistakes made because of failed calculations.
I seriously don't know what to do? These failed economics grades will let my gpa down and will make it harder to get an acceptance to a good grad school. Plus, they also let me down motivation wise, hardly.
I don't know what to do and how to overcome these kind of mistakes I do. But I know that I don't want to study economics. + It's hard to change majors here

Well... maybe  you should start working on your algebra and basic calculation skills. Btw, your reductionist and somewhat arrogant attitude probably isn't helping.

"But I take incredibly bad grades, just because of the calculation mistakes I do." I think you answered your own question.

Sigh. Another close vote because OP happens to be an undergraduate, which is not what "problems exclusively facing undergraduates" means.

I voted to close because this is more of a rant than a clear question.

I have no idea whether that applies to you, and you shouldn't take it as "excuse" for your math skills, but if you're suffering from dyscalculia then you might benefit from different approaches than others to get your math skills up to an appropriate level.

It's clear what I'm asking here. Maybe all of you should leave your EGO aside for a bit

But I take incredibly bad grades, just because of the calculation mistakes I do. It's not because I didn't solve the question or anything, it's just because of the calculation.

Boy that word "just" is dangerous, isn't it?
The unfortunate truth is that you are not good at practical economics, precicely "because of the calculation mistakes that you do".  You don't think those mistakes are important (hence "just"), but you don't get to decide what is and isn't important in your classes/research/work. The people who evaluate you get to decide what's important.
There are many disciplines where the primary goal is to get the right answer, not to demonstrate your "understanding". It doesn't matter whether you grok the theory if you can't actually execute on the fine details. If you didn't get the right answer, you didn't solve the question.
This does not mean that practical economics is less worthwhile than hihg-level mathematics, which cares less about arithmetic skills.  It only means that practical economics is different.  Math emphasizes different details that  you're more comfortable with and that other people would find boring and/or baffling.

I can't change this

Of course you can.  You can do exactly what everyone else does to become good at anything uncomfortable: Put on your grownup pants and practice, fail, listen, practice, practice, fail, listen, practice, practice, practice.

+1 because great answer, but also because I was so happy at seeing the word "grok"

Great answer, thanks! Do you have any advice on how to i prove my arithmetic skills?

+10 I've found that "just" is one of the most pernicious words in a student's vocabulary.  Thanks for the careful deconstruction of it.