text:
Troubles in Doctoral Studies
Currently I am on the second year of my PhD. I started more than a year back and I doing phd in basic science and I am not from basic science.
My problems are:
I don't cope with the ideology people have in my work station. So, I ended up having issues with them.
I lack quiet a bit of knowledge on the subject area.
I lack communication with my supervisor.
Now, I supervisor wants me to quit but I don't. I still want to try even if it's just getting harder and stressful.
I am an open person and have strong personality. I like to make changes about me and on my surroundings.
I don't really know what to do, since if I loose the position now I will be into more trouble. Since I don't have any safety net.
I also will not be able to prolong my residence permit in Europe also if loose the position, which is also a reason that I don't want to quit now.
I am passionate about everything that I do. I have enough will power as well, but being with my supervisor is getting too hard. My study mentor have suggested me to sick for another supervisor but to keep the position I have to find someone from the department. Hopefully there is a possibility there.
Unfortunately, my supervisor is highly known scientist and he told me that he will write everything on my reference letter, which means it will be much harder to find something later.
Please let me know what you all think about it.

What do you mean "I don't cope with the ideology people have"?

Though I am sympathetic to your plight, this seems to be a "Here's my situation, what should I do?" question rather than the kind of focused-but-somewhat-general questions this site is designed to answer.

What do you mean by "strong personality"? "Strong personality" if not accompanied by "excellent results" means "outstanding levels of trouble".

I think this question is actually a collection of many separate questions that should be split up. e.g., one about the ideology (whatever you are referring to), one about the communication issues, etc. And possibly, some of these items have already been answered in other questions on this site.

While @user18244 suggested a viable option, I would argue that switching fields may not be worth the effort, as the poster may run into similar issues regardless of which field s/he studies.
Problems that I can glean from the post:
1. Amateur with lack of direction wasting an expert's time: OP is coming at a PhD level into an unfamiliar subject area. I can see how this might seem annoying to a highly known scientist who is serious about his work and his students, expecting them to be as focused and dedicated to the field as he is. This may contribute to the resentment i.e., "Why don't you quit, that way you would stop wasting my time and yours?"
2. Staying in the country as the main and only reason for pursuing PhD: Despite being "passionate about everything", lack of coherent reason for pursuing advanced study in this particular area, except for unrelated practical reasons such as visa status and desire to remain in a particular geographic area. This alone does not usually cut it as valid rationale for pursuing advanced study for most academics.
3. Personality/cultural issues: As OP suggests, "I...have strong personality. I like to make changes about me and on my surroundings." As a student, you are naturally in an inferior position in relation to the faculty. A student's first and foremost role is to be a humble, dedicated, agreeable, adaptable and quick learner who causes minimum problems for the faculty (read: takes the least amount of time to advise and direct, and in return performs the highest quality work s/he is capable of). When a student's assertive personality causes them to fail to meet this expectation, this may earn the student a 'reputation' for being a "loose cannon" who is out of control and creates more problems than s/he solves. This is not a position you want to find yourself in.
Given the above assumptions, I would recommend the following strategy:
1. Carefully consider how your personality may be causing some of the issues you are describing. Try to find the problem with yourself first, and only then turn to others (better yet, stop with yourself, for now). If you feel that you could possibly express your strong personality a little less strongly when this does not seem helpful in your interactions, try to think objectively about such situations and see how you can change your attitudes, responses, opinions, etc. in ways that would eliminate this as a possible cause of disagreement and discomfort on the part of your supervisor.
2. Fix the communication. Focus on developing the following qualities: humility, respect, patience, and politeness. This will go far with communication with any professional colleagues, and academic faculty are no exception. This is difficult, but one place to start may be to have a conversation with your advisor with the main goal of asking questions and listening, not talking. Be honest and say that you are struggling, but are passionate about this field and give specific examples of topics or theories that interest you (hint: there should be some alignment there with your professor's interests!). Ask for feedback on what strategies you could apply to be more successful in your studies. Ask for guidance, direction, and advice on how to communicate better, study better, and work better so that you could succeed and catch up to your peers. Do NOT argue with anything you hear, but thank the advisor for their time and effort in giving you their feedback. If they say "I think your best strategy is not to waste my time and quit your studies ASAP", ask "I appreciate this, but IF there was just 1% or 5% chance that I could succeed against the odds, what do you think I should start doing immediately to make this happen?" You want to turn the conversation from a diagnosis of current situation to a prescription for how to remedy the situation toward a better future state. Good Luck!
3. Prioritize your studies above all else. This is difficult, but necessary if you truly want to catch up to your peers and "grow" in the eyes of your professor. Study hard and study all the time. A favorite show on TV? Nope, you have a paper to write or book to read. Great weather outside for a picnic? Walk for 30 min, then go back to your homework. A friend's birthday party? Show up for 1 hr, then head to computer lab to do more data analysis or whatever you need do there for your professor. During the first 3 years of grad school I have often sat in the office late (very late!) getting home after midnight, only to return back to work next morning at 8am. My reward was a reputation of a very hard working and reliable member of the research team, who could finish the tasks that were given to him with quality and on time. Achieve THIS, and it is 100% guarantee that your advisor's opinion of you will change for the positive. Good luck!

There is no clear question here. However, the fact that your advisor wants you out and that you lack knowledge will make difficult for you to finish your PhD. Hence, switching fields to something in which you have background is your best option.
The fact that your advisor is well-know probably means that he supervised many students and have a lot of experience meaning that asking you to leave is not an uneducated decision.


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What should be included in an extended abstract (CS)
I've been tasked with writing an extended abstract. I'm studying computer science (CS) and I have had a look online for an idea of what an extended abstract should contain.
So far, I gather that it should contain roughly 1000 words, excluding graphs, diagrams and references. It also appears that it should contain an introduction, and some preliminary results as well as address the what, why and how questions.
I was wondering, could someone provide me with a bullet-point-style breakdown of what an extended abstract needs to contain?
As an example of what I mean, here is how I would break down an abstract:

Define the topic
Describe the problem that the topic is facing
State why this research is important and what it provides
Describe the main contribution of the paper and summarise the conclusion
Describe future avenues of research

Is 5 typical in CS?

@kimball the number of points it took to list my personal breakdown of an abstract just happend to require 5. It's an example.

For an extended abstract, you can omit 1.

https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-write-an-extended-abstract

http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1351/what-is-an-extended-abstract

The content may include the following, some of which may overlap with the points you have mentioned already.

Definition and scope of the topic
The problem you are to focus on the topic
If the problem was faced before, describe the state of the art.
If you are introducing the problem, express the importance of it.
Discuss the methods and novel techniques to be employed
Highlights of the results obtained
Possible future enhancements and further work in progress

Some extended abstracts also allow the use of references, consult with the publisher/conference committee for any clarifications.
The extent of explanation on the above points is confined to the constraint of the maximum length prescribed by the publisher/conference committee you wish to submit to.

Some journals/conferences limit the main body to a single page...

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Writing a postdoctoral fellowship proposal
This is not going to be a specific question and may be off-topic for this site: I'm looking for advice, tips, or a template for writing a fellowship proposal.
I'm in my first computer science postdoc, in the UK, and have been encouraged to to apply for a postdoctoral fellowship in the US.
However, I have no idea what a fellowship proposal should look like. I been reading online and it looks like there are 3 basic components: the abstract, the main/body text, and a 'bigger picture' closing paragraph/summary.
For now, I am mostly concerned with what should go into the main/body text. As I understand it, this sectino should describe:

why the proposed research is important (describe problem, how the research will address it or fill a gap in knowledge, define project scope, etc.)
what my goal is (clearly stated research questions + objectives)
how I will achieve my goal (discuss experiments, techniques, data collection methods, etc. and include a month-by-month schedual)
what the expected outcomes are

Does that sound right? Any tips or even better, an example application that I can look at?

How fellowship applications should look like depends MASSIVELY on what fellowship you are applying for.

Does this answer your question? How do postdoc proposal and PhD proposal differ?

Another possible dupe: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/70861/research-proposal-for-postdoc-applications

For each fellowship look carefully at the the
information provided in the announcement for
the that fellowship. While the core part of your proposal
might
be the same for each individual fellowship, do not try to
write one proposal for all the available positions.

You know why you want a postdoc specifically at University X.
Make sure you explain appropriate reasons clearly.

You probably have a pretty good idea what your qualifications are for the position at University X. These qualifications may be similar for all your proposals, perhaps with emphasis on how
you think your qualifications are particularly
strong for the CS Dept. at University X.

Now for the aspect in which many proposals fall short. What are the reasons the Department or
specific people in the department might be particularly interested
in you? You should provide clues. Why does the department offer postdoc positions at all? If you read
the announcement from University X carefully, you may find that
they have given clues.

Writing this proposal is worth special attention.
Looking back many years to where I got my doctoral degree and where
I did my postd0c, I think it is fair to say the latter had the major
impact on my career.

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Trouble with advisor in final Ph.D. phase
I am a 6th year Ph.D. student in the sciences. The typical duration of a Ph.D. in my program at my institution is 5 years. I am months away from finishing the last component of my research; however, issues have arisen.
I am having strong doubts that my advisor cares about my success in my future career. In addition, she is forcing me to graduate in 2 months. While I myself would very much like to graduate as early as possible, I am faced with a series of challenges:
1. There is unfinished research work. While I'm not trying to solve the problem at hand completely, I do wish to produce something of quality, and for the manuscript under preparation to have a reasonable chance of being accepted.
2. I wish to spend adequate time preparing my thesis.
3. I need time to prepare postdoc and job application materials.
While someone as capable as my advisor may be able to finish all these in the time allotted, knowing myself, these tasks will take more than two months for me. And yes, I've discussed this with her many times, and she has been quite adamant about not financially supporting me after two months.
Recently, she has also asked me to withdraw my paper in a respected international conference, which has been accepted and selected for a meritorious award.
My specific questions are:

As a student, I may not understand the rationale of the decisions of my advisor, who is not only technically competent but abreast of the research community. However, I am having strong doubts that my advisor is advising in my best interest. I've had several arguments with her about the remaining work and I feel even if I do somehow defend my Ph.D., we will be on negative terms thereafter. Is it uncommon for Ph.D. students to leave on less-than-amicable terms with their advisor?
One of the options I've thought of is changing research advisors. However, I'd rather not change my research topic - the scope of my dissertation research has been approved my Committee after all. So, is it likely that a faculty member would be willing to serve as the Chairman of my committee in a topic only peripherally related to his/her expertise? As my advisor is senior in her field, I'd think a junior faculty member is unlikely to take on this role, in avoiding any run-ins with my advisor. Are there other considerations I've missed that may discourage a senior faculty member from agreeing to be my Chairman? (The university department is usually able to provide funding to students in their final semesters, so financial support may not be an issue.) And my committee members are either junior faculty or close collaborators with my advisor, so I doubt any of them would be willing to replace my advisor as the Chairman. Should my new advisor approve of my work, he/she may also serve a reference, which I will very much need for my upcoming job search.

Thank you. All advice is surely welcome.

In my humble opinion, it is the best interest of a 6th year PhD student of a typical 5 year program to graduate as soon as possible. If your advisor is forcing you to graduate, I cannot say she is not doing it in your best interest.

Why did she ask you to withdraw the conference paper?

Changing advisors in your 6th year is not an easy thing to do without a very, very good reason. It's not clear to me that your situation qualifies.

It sounds like your advisor does have your best interests in mind (after all, it sounds like she already funded you one year longer than required to), but that the two of you have different perspectives on your level of success and your job prospects.  For weaker students who aren't going to get a top postdoc, it's definitely very much in the students interest to graduate as soon as possible and not to spend too much time being perfectionist about the thesis.

@NoahSnyder Based on this advice, I'd advise the OP to have a open and frank discussion with his adviser about what they think his chances are PostDoc. As much as it would suck to hear, having your adviser tell you that you're a weak student could avoid potential disappointment later on.

What happens if you don't finish in 2 months?

I'm sorry to hear about your situation. I had to change my Ph.D. advisor (and I'm very glad I did), but it was in the early phase of my dissertation process. I'm quite surprised by your "discovery" about a potential of your advisor not caring about your career. Firstly, it is unlikely (why would she "tolerate" you for 5+ years then?). Secondly, if your advisor would truly not care about your career, it should have been pretty clear early in your collaboration, so either your assumption is not true, or you paid no attention to this aspect at all, which is quite difficult to believe in.
Anyway, in regard to your potential actions. I strongly recommend you to consider all possibilities to avoid changing your advisor, considering how far are you in the program. Changing an advisor is not only a administrative / logistical nightmare, but, if it would require you to start your research from the scratch or almost from the scratch, it would be extremely depressing, to say the least.
If you could save five years of work and life by defending your dissertation and graduating, even if parting with your advisor not very amicably, I would say that it is worth a serious consideration. The two obvious dangers in this case would be: 1) being able to defend dissertation successfully; 2) potential problems with obtaining a recommendation letter from your advisor (she could either decline, or give a negative or not so positive one). The second aspect is quite important, as your postgraduate applications, not listing your dissertation advisor as a referee, might raise quite a lot of eyebrows, with potentially negative consequences in regard to your postdoctoral offers / career.
You have to carefully think about all these (and other) aspects, consider feedback from people here and your own environment, but, ultimately, only you can decide the best course of action, based on various details, known to you only, as well as your gut feeling, as some new research suggests.
Regardless of what you decide on the subject and how you part with your advisor, I wish you to successfully graduate and achieve your professional and personal goals in the future. Be strong in staying your courses, but flexible in ways of reaching your destinations. Or, as Lao Tzu has said,

Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist
  it.

One possible compromise would be to look into whether your school has some kind of "filing fee" option.  That is, at many schools you only need to pay hundred-ish dollar fee in the semester that you file your dissertation, rather than paying the usual (thousands or tens of thousands) in tuition and fees (which are the main reason you need to be funded through the school rather than at another job).  That way you could have another month or two to polish your thesis but your advisor wouldn't need to fund you.

I'm a bit curious about the down vote.  Is there something problematic about this advice?  Seems like a possible win-win.

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Re-using a paper from one class for another?
Last year, I wrote a 10 page term paper for a geology class that focused on the geochemistry of certain rock deposits.  I received an A on the paper.  This year, I'm taking a geochemistry class at a different university and have to write another thesis paper.  This assignment has the same criterion as the other paper did and the topic I wrote on before is on of the allowed topics.
Would it be acceptable (morally and/or academically) to submit a slightly edited version of the first paper I wrote in the new class?
The paper was not published/distributed in any way (to my knowledge), and is entirely my own work with proper citations.

Whatever you do, be fully open about it. If you open your new paper with a preface that it is (almost completely) identical to the previous paper, it is not (self-)plagiarism. However, it may still be rejected. Ask your instructor

Yup, looks like I'll be re-writing the paper, thanks!

Almost invariably, the answer to "Is it OK to submit X for a class assignment?" is "Ask the instructor.".
You do need to ask yourself whether your objective for the geochemistry class is to get a good grade, or to improve your knowledge and skills in the area of geochemistry, or both. Even if the instructor agrees with recycling the old paper, you may get more out of the class if you pick a different topic and write a new paper.

I totally agree. I've "recycled" the papers betweeen courses many times. I always asked the instructor whether I can reuse my own work and I got the task that was based on the previous work. Sometimes I've used 80% of the old one, sometimes I had to add 80% of new work.

+1 for the purpose of a class. If it's beyond "Press button, get grade", re-using a paper represents a missed opportunity.

Since you said it has not been distributed or published in any way, you probably wouldn't have any issues with plagiarism in that regard. However, in my experience, teachers expect unique coursework for individual classes. Thus, it becomes a matter of coursework integrity/ethics. To be fair, I am not saying it is flat out wrong to reuse your assignment, but it might not be aligned with your school's code of conduct or academic integrity policies.
PS. If you submitted your assignment online, it likely would be added to a plagiarism database which might be matched when you submit this assignment.

I did not submit it online, but this is what I was concerned about too.

Academically it is probably not okay if you don't at the very least ask. Many guidelines for self-plagiarism specifically mention submitting coursework completed for one class to another. E.g.

U Texas requires you to seek instructor permission first.
Roosevelt University
U Oklahoma
U California Davis

For example, to quote the UO guidelines:

SUBMITTING THE SAME ASSIGNMENT FOR DIFFERENT CLASSES Submitting the
  same assignment for a second class violates the assumption that every
  assignment advances a student's learning and growth. Unless the second
  instructor expressly allows it, submitting an assignment already
  submitted for another class is a form of academic misconduct. This is
  also known as self-plagiarism or recycling work.

I wrote the original paper for UC Davis, and the other will be for Stony Brook university (summer school), both prohibit re-using papers without permission.  Since the geochemistry course is summer school, I don't think they'll allow me to re-use a paper and not work as hard.  NB my actual reason for wanting to re-use the paper is to save time to prep for the GRE which I take the day the paper is due.

I am taking a criminal justice degree, in my intro class, in one unit we had to write a paper on 3 areas of Policing, Courts, and corrections.
In unit 6 we are asked to do the same thing ina the bibliography.  I was told whenever using your own past work, talk to the instructor, they may make you change a certain amount of it or cite it or re-use it if you are in the same class and its in 2 units it's considered stacking and therefore not plagiarism.
Anywork reused any course without instructor feedback on reuse or re-writing parts is a must otherwise it becomes plagiarism even if it is your own work.  That is taught in College Writing 101.  I hope that helps.

I did recycle an essay paper report once. In my poetry and theater classes, two courses required an essay. I turned the same paper in to both professors. One course was 'The Spoken Word', an introduction into elocution or dramatic speaking. The other course was in the same department of education. I believe it was 'Introduction to Poetry & Drama'. They both gave me a high grade of A. Now I know it was immature to assume the professor need not know that I had already used it for the other course.

Your answer is interesting, but it might be worth while adjusting it to more directly answer the ‘would it be acceptable...?’ question. Your final sentence suggests it would or wouldn't be acceptable (which is probably true!), but you don't commit yourself one way or the other. Of course, if you mean ‘even after considering it, ... it still depends on the situation’, then that's a further reasonably defensible possibility.

As far as I'm concerned this is perfectly fine as long as you make it clear that this paper is heavily based on a similar paper written on your own for another course. And includes any citations required by your academic institution.
This is also heavily dependent on culture of the country/school and the opinion of the person grading the paper. So if you are not sure just explain your opinion and ask what is the correct course of action. This way you will know exactly what the prof expects/prefers and there is no question regarding your intent (did you believe you were doing nothing wrong, did you not know and hope it will work, did you know you were wrong but counted on not getting caught, ....).
You might even be told that doing the same thing twice is a waste of his and your time and your old grade accepted or tips on how to improve your old paper and turn it in for a better grade if you wish or get another assignment.

I agree that it's ethical if you make appropriate disclosures.  However, if the instructor didn't want to allow previously written papers, it's quite possible that the instructor will still give you a zero on the assignment - not for any ethical violation, but for failing to meet the standards of the assignment.  So while this advice will save you from doing anything unethical, it may not achieve what you actually want.

You are right. I left out a few important bits from my answer. Editing now. Hope it's better.

This is what my university says:
Cheat/Cheating: means to seek to obtain an unfair advantage in an examination or written, oral or practical work, required to be submitted or completed for assessment in a course or unit of study and includes the resubmission of work that has already been assessed in another unit.

I actually ran into a similar situation to this in my course work.  Though this was within the same university.  There was a subject that came up to write a paper on that I wrote a really good 20 page essay on for another class.  I asked the teacher if it would be ok if I used this paper again since technically I am the one who wrote it and there shouldn't be any issues about copying other people's work.  She told me that I can QUOTE my previous paper, quote my previous thoughts, but she still wanted to see my original thinking.
So basically, I ended up writing something to the effect of:
In class HUM405, I wrote a paper called "Rocks rock!" in which I discussed the ideas of _____________.  In this paper, I ascertained that the studies found the data to be inconclusive.  "insert a quote of your thoughts from this previous paper" (cite your paper).
That way you still are creating an original piece of work while able to use your last paper to do most of the heavy work for you.  You might even find that the paper you wrote a year ago has some incorrect conclusions or that you didn't do something correctly.
You would be able to even state how, in this paper I said that XXXX would be the results but actually, I found that this isn't true and here is why.  Then provide the new research to show why your previous paper was actually wrong.  You can still use the same references as long as you cite them because you are more than likely going to cite them again anyways.  The key though, the teacher wants to see your original work.
When they check for plagiarism, each paper gets scanned into a database that is cross checked across the country.  This way, any paper submitted regardless of college is verified to be original.  More than likely, your paper is already in that system that you previously wrote.  If you were to submit it again, there is a good chance it would come up.  Even though it is your own work, the teacher will probably talk to you about it and depending on how nice the teacher is, could still mark you for plagiarism or even a 0 for the paper.   So talking to them and telling them upfront what you would like to do would be your safest bet.


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Are there any guidelines for labeling axes in plots/graphs when the "unit" is "number of people"?
I have read the question Are there any guidelines for labeling axes in plots/graphs? and related answers and they cover the case where the unit is from the International System of Units (SI), but what about when the graph shows information about people?
I am interested in medicine or in psychology where a lot of graph are related to number of people, is there any wide adopted guideline?
What is the right word to use?
People?
Person?
Individual?
For example if person were a unit of measurement I should write 10 person and not 10 persons because for SI units we do not use plural forms.
In the same way, in a axis label I should write person and not number of persons because we usually write meter (if not abbreviated) and not number of meters.
And then, what is the short form for person? I see sometimes pax but as a short form for passenger of an aircraft.

For aircraft, the number of passengers is often “self loading cargo”...

Does "Population" work?

You always have to distinguish between the quantity and the unit.
All the quantities referring to a number of entities have unit 1, so you don't need to put any unit after the number.
About how to call such kind of quantities, you're actually relatively free to decide, depending on the specifics of the case at hand. You can certainly call a quantity that counts certain elementary entities X as number of X. But, in case, don't use amount of X because that has a specific meaning in chemistry.
Examples of quantities called number of X can be found e.g. in the IUPAC Green book:

N is the number of identical (periodic) events during the time t. (p. 13)
bi gives the number of electrons which occupy a given orbital energy level εi (p. 19)

Even better, if that number is a recurring quantity in your paper, label it with a symbol and use that symbol to label the axes: "Let nr be the number of people who always wear red trousers [...]".


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Template for follow up mail after no response for a letter of recommendation?
I am currently applying to graduate school and trying to gather some solid letters of recommendation. I already contacted three professors (almost 1 month before application deadline) and 2/3 gladly accepted. The third professor that didn't reply at all already wrote me LoR one year ago so I don't see why he wouldn't like to do it again. How do I ask again without being pushy? Can someone help me what should I write in follow up mail?

Even one month might be pretty short.

Not really @AnonymousM

"The third professor that didn't reply at all" Please note that Covid is not gone yet.

There is probably no template, and it would probably sound insincere anyway. Apologize for asking again so soon, but remind them that there is a deadline. If they can't write for you or don't reply, move on.
But, you might also ask their department whether there is some reason they can't reply.
And look for an alternative.
Also see: How should I phrase an important question that I need to ask a professor?


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Coauthor removed from the manuscript
I was in a manuscript which was not accepted in the first journal. They resubmitted it to an other journal and left me out without telling me a word. They reproduced my data with the protocol I gave them (what I developed actually) and now they are telling that my data were not used and I was not contributed enough to be a coauthor. They told it after I saw that the paper was published without me… The previous boss (who is in the manuscript but not working any more) promised me a few years ago that I will be a coauthor.
What shall I do?

Just to make it clear to you: reproducing your data does not give them the right to remove you as a coauthor.  Eg, if I prove a theorem, and my colleague reads my proof, and then recreates the proof, they can't go around claiming they proved that theorem and not attribute it to me.  That is plagiarism.

Hi, I am sorry to hear about that. I am not an expert, but just to say that if you are willing to contest this, I think the most precious evidence is that first rejected submission to a journal, with your name on the submitted paper -- which the first journal can confirm. If your coauthors published similar material afterwards without you mentioned as an author, and without your approval, this should be very clearly suspicious to anyone investigating this from the outside.

Exactly this is what happened. They just replaced my experiments with theirs (they claimed they have found enough data on their own so they do not “need” my data) The result is the same. So in this version “I did not contribute enough” to be an author and there was “no reason to put me in”…I gave them my protocol a few years ago which they used but “sharing expertise is not a reason for a coauthorship, whit this reason they shoud include the whole institute to the author list”    They just left me out behind my back without contacting me…

Just a clarification question without suggesting anything yet. What is the role of your data for the whole paper? I can imagine several levels: 1. The data is the very message of the paper; 2. The data is the starting point and therefore essential for subsequent analysis, but analysis is straightforward; 3. The analysis is non-trivial and data is merely used for the illustration of it;  4. Paper has multiple messages and the data is used to support one of them.

It is not the main message but it was one of the starting points many years ago. I was thinking it would be interesting to measure, I developed a method and it worked. They worked a lot in the paper so the figure they used is a part of a figure. Therefore I did not exept something else but be in the middle in an unimportant position. But this would be important for me. They asked for my protocols and they reproduced my data. In the first version of the manuscript my data points were used. They just replaced them.

Update: nobody writes me back from the editorial board… My actual boss told me that I cannot do anything if they used “different” measurements not mine… even if they just reproduced my data

There are two avenues. The first is to complain to the journal's editors that you were improperly excluded. This might help or not.
The second is to complain to the administration (department or dean level) that academic misconduct has occurred in leaving you out. This might help or not.
But either of the above will make the problem more public, which will raise hackles among some, possibly helpful (or not). Be prepared for some blowback.
Also, enlist the help of the "previous boss" even if they aren't working anymore. In some situations such people will be listened to. I probably have some influence with my former employer even ten years after retirement, for example.
Your name here sounds female. I certainly hope this isn't another case of all too frequent sexism and the negation of the contributions of women.

Thank you for your comment. I tried to confront him that it was not ok to remove my authorship behind my back. He thinks “my data points” are not included (they reproduced my data) so he “did not have any reason” to keep my authorship… and yes, I am a woman…

Offensive that they did that. There have been a couple of instances at least where women didn't get Nobel Prizes but their supervisors did, based on the woman's work. And I think the situation was similar. Reproducing data doesn't imply that the intellectual contribution wasn't used, or how would they know what to reproduce. Good that you are elsewhere now, at least (if I read it correctly).

@Mnopqrs I would just add to Buffy's answer that in case the editor or institution ignores your point, you can threaten to make the issue public to put pressure on them.

Great answer but I'm confused about the last paragraph. How do the 13th through 19th letters of the alphabet indicate sex? Did I miss something?

@SamDean, an earlier name was originally used but changed for reasons of confidentiality.

Actually I did not used my exact name before (for example I used my second surname so noone can find the group in pubmed etc) - I was new here. First my question was delated and I had to change my name to get it back :-)

@Mnopqrs, the mods and some of the rest of us try to be protective of new users. Welcome to the site.

Thanks :-) the answers really helped me that I have the right to feel bad about the situation and do something about it. I wait a few days of the answer of my previous boss and if she ignores me I will go to the next step. Actually I dont think she will help,   I lost a first place in a paper where I worked ca 80% and a coauthorship in a second paper during the years I worked there (because of “political reasons”) The only reason that I am still in science that I love research and the work itself.

Negation of contribution happens to men as well. I have seen it first hand (and it was done by females btw)! And according to my experience in academics (theoretical CS, Europe) gender/sex is not an issue here, I know this might be different for you, but just to mention. It is 2022. I think you should rule out other possibilities, reflect your relation in the team. If sex might be really the cause, I am really sorry that such things matter in your team.

The funders would be a third option in many cases

As someone who has been through this situation myself, the way you respond will depend on how many bridges you are willing to burn.
If the author's university has a Research Integrity office (or similar), the best way of having it resolved is to contact them with a complete description of your claim, including any evidence or communications you have had with the authors. Most institutions will carry out an investigation (or at least, a preliminary investigation) for research misconduct and advise you of their findings. This process may take a long time.
However, this approach will almost certainly have the effect of ending any working relationships you have with the authorship team, so going down this pathway is one you should consider thoroughly.

Do you mind giving some details on the outcome of your case? This could be quite relevant to the question.

I lodged a formal complaint with the University.
After 16 months (and being asked to submit some additional information) I received a notice saying my supervisor was found to have committed research misconduct, would be sanctioned, and they recommended the paper be retracted.
My supervisor subsequently contacted the journal and requested retraction, but then left to a different institution.
I contacted the journal directly and sent them the misconduct findings, they said they'd investigate.
The paper remains online and unretracted to this day. :)

Sorry to hear that. I dont know if we have such an office. I contacted my previous boss who promised me to be a coauthor (I have the email where she promised) and I am waiting for the answer. Is it possible to include a coauthor after the manuscript is published? I do not want any bad for them, no retraction etc. I just want to be in the paper somewhere in the middle. This guy (who is a young boss now) was bullying me all the years I worked there, I think this is just a part of it. I hoped he changed the last years but apparently not…

Several journals have a procedure to change the author list after acceptance of publication. For instance name changes of authors are common after legal name changes (marriage/divorce/ or various other reasons). Add/removal of authors is also possible and publishers have a way to update the various databases.

The editor of the first journal that rejected could help:
Fortunately for you if you wish to escalate, there is a clear paper trail here of your contribution that can be confirmed by the editor of the first journal. Having the editor of a similar journal in the same field confirming your allegations should go a long way into pressing the editors of the second journal to investigate and resolve the situation.
In practice, if I wished to escalate this, I would

Write to the editor of the first journal to ask if they would be willing to confirm your authorship in the submission they handled; and if they would agree that you forward your correspondence with them on this matter to the editors.
Once you have this, forward your email correspondence with the editor of the first journal to the editors of the second journal, with the senior authors of manuscript and the editor of the first journal in the CC field:

Pointing our that my research contribution on the protocol used in the published version of the manuscript;
Asking whether my name was had been somehow mistakenly forgotten from the author list of the published version, and how that could be fixed.

The paper trail is on your side here. As others haved said, you should be prepared that escalating this will annoy and possibly burn bridges with your senior coauthors: They will be caught red-handed by the editors of the two journals for misconduct. The idea of the phrasing of the second bullet is to give some space for your coauthors to save face by working towards adding your "forgotten" name to the published version.

The fact that they reproduced your data is irrelevant.
Please contact research integrity officers, or the equivalent, at the institutions where the authors in question work. Present your documented evidence.
If the work was funded by some funding agency contact them too. They care about good scientific practice.
Writing to the journal editor can also be useful. This adds publicity to the case and helps to make it known in your research community.
I would avoid any direct contact with the authors, dean, head of a department, etc (in this point I disagree with Buffy's answer). This will put you in the begging position with a frustrating outcome.
You said "I do not want any bad for them, no retraction, etc. I just want to be in the paper somewhere in the middle." Not very likely to happen, but do you really want to be surrounded by people who steal your results? A much more realistic goal would be to exert some pressure on them so that this does not repeat in the future.

I already contacted the last author who was a former colleague and he thinks it is ok what he did. I do not understand why they replaced my experiments with similar ones, why did it “hurt them” that I am on the paper. But my protocols were useful…  He told that he did not get the email in which my previous boss promised me to be a coauthor. But she is on the manuscript and did not tell anything about that I am not on it. I am just very disappointed in mankind… I would not do the same with anyone in such a position…

@Mnopqrs As I said, do not contact them, do not beg. It will just make you frustrated. There are proper ways to resolve the situation. They are indicated above. Read this article: https://retractionwatch.com/2015/11/30/a-retraction-watch-retraction-our-2013-advice-on-reporting-misconduct-turns-out-to-have-been-wrong/ Your situation is a bit different, but the strategy is the same.

@Mnopqrs I do not think it is a good idea. Of course, there could be a lot of other circumstances, like you are being a good friend of the director, or the director already being extremely dissatisfied with them.  Other than that I do not see any reasons to contact the director. You still have two more options which I mentioned.

I will contact one of the editors of the journal. I have found someone in the website who is living in the same country where I am now.

@Mnopqrs It is ok, but I do not see any particular reason for your choice. Why not the editor-in-chief or lead editor?

We do not have any research integrity office :-(  I contacted someone from the ethics and they dont do such things…

No response from the editor


text:
Is it bad to finish your talk early at conferences?
I was invited at a conference to give a contributed talk. I was given 12 minutes to speak and 3 minutes for Q&A, but to keep my talk simple I didn't go in details (probably I spoke faster also). In all, I finished the talk in ~10 minutes. I know this somewhat disturbs the flow of the schedule, but it also gives more time for discussion.
What is the general impression in such cases? Is it bad to finish your talk early?

On its own it’s neither good nor bad, although if you can deliver all the necessary details, without rushing, in a shorter amount of time, then that’s a good thing I’d say.

@user438383 If you want to find the good in purely objective measures, time is not the only one. Let's say a researcher trip to a conference costs 2000 £/$/€ to deliver a 15 (12+3) minutes talk. If you use 2 minutes less than your allocated time, you are wasting 2 minutes, about 250 £/$/€. It is like buying TV advertising time and then leaving more than 10% of the time a blank screen.

@EarlGrey: No offence, but if one spends 2000 bucks (in my case it would even be taxpayers' bucks) to go on a conference and believes that the only return on investement were these 12+3 minutes time for a talk, then I'd say that ones' rationale with respect to conferences is seriously flawed anyway.

Nobody will have noticed.

I have been to hundreds of conference talks and have never once thought, "Gee, that one was too short." The converse is most definitely not true.

People are almost universally happy when a speaker finishes a little early. :)

@JochenGlueck Absolutely agree. I am 100% against finding objective measures to define quality. But if one has to be anxious about time, let's provide anxiety from the money side as well!

@EarlGrey: I see. This kind of sarcasm resonates well with me - at least as soon as I have identified it as sarcasm... ;-)

If you had finished in 3 minutes it would probably have been very weird. But 10 minutes instead of 12 probably wasn't noticed by anyone.

Ask for and take questions and, if you can answer these questions, then answer them.

@EarlGrey ispeakers get paid for the ideas they bring, not the time they take

@David no one gets paid. Everyone at a conference pays to present their own ideas, to listen to others ideas, or both.

Getting the timing on a talk exactly right is difficult, and it’s much better to go short than long. So I wouldn’t worry about it. Similarly ending a 50 minute talk at 45 minutes is totally fine. Plus it gives people more time for questions.

Conferences can also be pretty intense. I appreciate a very good, shorter talk that gives me more time to decompress between talks much more than a talk that goes over and really - for lack of a better work - sucks.

Agreed. It might be a little bit of an issue if you take way less time, as in (ballpark) at least 50% or 15 minutes less than in the scheduled time, or if the reason you took so little time is that you rushed too much (I should know, I tend to be guilty of this particular sin...). Otherwise, finishing slightly ahead o time is no worse (and sometimes is better, if someone else had gone overtime before) than finishing right on time.

Agree, 15 minutes early on a 50 minute talk is too early. Opinions on 10 minutes will vary. 5 is great.

I personally target half time. No joke. If im scheduled for an hour, i target end of prepared remarks in 30 minutes. If the audience is engaged, its more time for discussion. If not, they can end early. In my experience the response and practical eventualities are overwhelmingly positive.

Do not overthink about the past. What has been done, has been done.
The only feeling about the general impression you gave is the feedback you got from questions from the audience, at the talk or from "chit-chat" you had after your talk. And we cannot judge them, because we were not there.
The outcome of a talk at a conference can be that you raised the interest of

many people;
some people:
very few people;
nobody.

There is no such a thing as a bad impression. Scientists and researchers are too busy and quite good at forgetting, being focused only on things relevant to their own research.
If you have the feeling you left a bad impression, because of no questions or very simple and courteous questions, let it go. You can be 100% sure that even if you presented deeply wrong results, a couple of weeks afterwards no one will remember about them. So the worst it may happen is that your talk went unnoticed.
Now, focus about what you learned, not about the impression of you from "the others".
You learned that you can give a talk without much details in 10 minutes.
Therefore, you know that next time you can go into details for at least 2 minutes. Or you can spare 2 minutes of simple things and of introduction and go into details for 4 minutes.

I agree that this almost certainly didn't leave a bad impression (because of finishing 2 minutes early). But there certainly is such a thing as leaving a bad impression with a conference talk...

@user2705196 yes, there may be an instantaneous bad impression. How long does it last? Would you remember name and affiliation(s) of the bad impressing speaker after one month?

@EarlGrey You are likely to remember the bad impression, if the person shows up on a stack of postdoc applications.

@TimRias I find very difficult to depict a bad presentation after years of PhD work (and maybe some postdoc) as a self-standing thing, it must be supported by equally bad publications disseminated along the years.

If you're in academia I'm sure you've heard the old adage 'every talk is a job talk'!

I still remember one exceptionally bad talk from the 1980's. But I've forgotten lots of other bad talks. And, as far as I'm  concerned, finishing a talk a bit early is a good thing.

"There is no such a thing as a bad impression." <- Oh, yes there is. Of course, people account for how speaking at a conference is scary and stressful, but people can and do make bad impressions.

@einpoklum yes, there may be an instantaneous bad impression. How long does it last? Would you remember name and affiliation(s) of the bad impressing speaker after one month?

@EarlGrey : Depending on how bad the impression is. If you reach the conclusion the person is a hack and makes unfounded claims, you would likely remember that for quite a while. In OP's case, there would be no bad impression, just noting that they are stressed out.

Life is too short and too interesting to cling on all the crappy things and the bad impressions.

Most folks perform faster than they rehearsed, due to nervousness.Presenting is a performance.
Over time you'll learn how to allow for this, how to set time-check points in your presentation so you know if you're ahead or behind, and how to bring yourself down to a more relaxed speed.
Call it a learning experience and don't worry about it. It's happened to all of us. I once blasted through an overseas business presentation that I expected to take all day in the first hour; now that is embarrassing.
And remember: If you finish early, calling for questions from the audience will often consume as much time as you let it.

I am the other way around. I once gave a keynote lecture that was supposed to take a bit longer, and only got through one quarter of my presentation... We all had a good laugh about it.

Rehearsal. And knowing how to manage interruptions, sometimes. Again, it's a skill that one learns; some of it can be taught but it takes practice.

As there are very often speakers who take longer than they are supposed to (and thus either cause delays or take time away from questions), it is not very disturbing to have someone speak a bit shorter.
Also, if you managed to say everything you wanted to say in a slightly shorter amount of time, that is fine, as you did not fill your talk with unnecessary extra words.

It's hard to say without seeing the actual talk. In fact, the opposite could be more likely: presenters squeeze in too much and end up talking too fast, missing the main points, leaving no time for questions, or going over the time. So finishing a couple of minutes early could be quite refreshing.
If you'd like to improve for future talks, here's a checklist, which I used after hearing a professor snore during my statistics talk:

Practice and time the talk (but no reciting by heart, please!). If it takes 10 minutes for what you plan to say, leave it, or add a bit of extra.
Have some optional points/slides, which you could skip during the actual talk.
Get feedback on your practice run—to help with content, clarity, pacing, etc.
Likewise, ask people after your conference talk, although they might be too charitable.
Think of a question to ask the audience afterwards. (What do you think of my approach to...) This could start the discussion or fill the time if people run out of questions.
Decide what you like about others' talks and what you'd improve. Was an early/late finish a problem?

There are plenty of things you'll improve with each new conference.  (That snoring disaster turned out quite valuable.) But there isn't any need to worry or strive for perfection.

I know this somewhat disturbs the flow of the schedule, but it also gives more time for discussion.

None of these are serious issues. But I will claim that speaking fast is a problem, especially if you're also trying to "squeeze in" material. When you first hear about a subject you're unfamiliar with, some kind of novelty, the points and arguments require more time to sink in. Now, even 15 minutes is not enough, but try to artificially slow down your speech; and leave an informative slide (e.g. with a diagram or chart) up for longer than you need to describe what's on it. Take less short-cuts in your rhetoric and with your formal argumentation - even at the price of saying less things / going into less detail.

PS - I have this problem all the time, even after attending a bunch of conferences already. So, I might as well preach this to myself :-P

I came here to say this. That OP finished talking a couple minutes early is in no way a problem IMO, but it could be a symptom of a more important problem, that of speaking too fast. (Yes, I'm prone to this also.)

A 10 min talk with 3 minutes of actual Q&A is no worse for the scheduling of the conference than a 12 min talk with 1 minute of actual Q&A. And a 10 min talk with 5 min of Q&A is better for scheduling than a 12 minute talk with 5 min of Q&A. -- So I wouldn't worry about schedule flow when you're asking about giving a shorter talk.
Going too long is an obvious problem -- if you're too long you short-change other parts of the schedule. Going too short isn't necessarily an issue. You either leave more time for Q&A, or you give people a slight bit more time to discuss things privately with their neighbors.
Instead, I'd worry about the content of your talk. There's a certain expectation of "substance" for a 12 min talk. Depending on your presentation style, you could hit that at 12 minutes, but you could certainly also be efficient and convey all that in 10 minutes. There are also people out there who could drone on for 20 minutes and still not reach that point. The issue with short talks isn't the time in and of itself, but rather that it's harder to put enough "substance" into the limited time period.
Note that "substance" here is effective substance. Rattling off a bunch of facts in rapid succession isn't effective substance, as no one listening can take it all in. You need to be able to communicate the substance, and that actually may involve presenting less, but slowing things down such that the audience can actually take it all in properly. But on the flip side, slower isn't always better. A concise delivery of points can be more effective than a detailed belaboring.
My recommendation would be to look at your presentation not from a time perspective, but from an effective communication perspective. Did you manage to cover enough "substance" in your talk for a 12+3 timeslot, or was it too thin? Was your delivery an effective communication of that substance, or did you hurry through it too fast/too ineffectively?
It's sometimes hard to gauge from the podium, but the attention of the audience is often a decent proxy. If you've covered the points you want to, and the audience is engaged throughout, then you've done well. If they've checked out at 7 min because they can't follow, that's bad. (If there was someone in the audience you trust for honest evaluation, I'd ask them for their opinion.) You can also sometimes get a sense of how the presentation went from the Q&A. If there's a bunch of basic questions you covered in the talk, then you may have gone too quickly and lost a bunch of people. If there's basic questions you didn't cover, you need to add detail. If there's a fair number of interested, advanced questions, you've probably done well. If there are close to no questions, then either you've bored everybody (so they no longer care), confused everybody to the point where they're afraid to ask questions, or did such a great job that you've addresses all the issues. (The last tends not to happen in practice.)


text:
Post-docs cannot be PIs: should a place-holder PI be included?
I have a situation similar to the question asked
here,
with some differences.
I am getting ready to submit an NSF grant proposal
(as a PI).
On this project,
I'd like to work closely with a post-doc researcher,
Dr. X, in another university,
whose expertise is quite important
for the success of this project.
My original plan is to have a sub-award
for the other university
and have Dr. X as a co-PI.
In the proposal we highlighted the important role
Dr. X will play.
Without Dr. X, this proposal will be quite a bit weaker, and probably require a complete rewrite.
We just found out that Dr. X's university
as a strange rule:
Post-docs cannot be PIs, even for sub-awards.
This university's research office
suggest including a tenured/tenure-track
faculty member as a PI (of the sub-award),
but internally, Dr. X will be considered a PI
and (presumably) has reporting responsibly.
I imagine this must be a common situation.
I wonder how is it usually handled?
Would it be reasonable to include a PI
(of the sub-award) whose main role is to be a place-holder?

The important difference between the situation I have
and that describe in the other question
is that I (tenured) will be the PI,
so there's no problem there.
The only problem is with the sub-award
(Dr. X cannot be the PI of the sub-award;
someone else in the university must be the PI,
and Dr. X could be the co-PI).

The figurehead puts their reputation on the line, of course. Make sure they understand that.

@Buffy, yes, we'll make sure they understand that.  That leads to another question:  Is it insulting to ask someone to just be a figurehead?

Probably you ask them to be a "monitor" or "mentor" as mentioned by Wolfgang Bangergh.

Subaward or not, someone has to be the PI at the other university and if (as is commonly the case) the postdoc can't be that person, then you need to find someone else to fill that role. So yes, go with that approach, and make it clear in the narrative that the PI you chose has no real role other than formal oversight (and possibly mentoring).
But while we're talking, why do you want to with a subaward? Subwards cost unnecessary money because both universities take out some overhead. If you already have someone who needs to fill the role of PI at the other end, why not go with a collaborative proposal?

Will the narrative in which "...the PI you chose has no real role other than formal oversight..." hurt the proposal's chance?

@Timmy I believe that generally speaking if you honestly and faithfully explain what you are doing, then reviewers accept that. But people are good at smelling it when they are being misled, and it is probably a good idea to not try and weasel yourself out of describing what you are doing. Of course, it all depends if that PI draws a salary: If they are, you will need to explain why and what for. As a general rule, good proposals explicitly describe what each participant will be doing.


text:
PhD advisor is pushing me to do a project which is doomed to failure
I am in a STEM field, my advisor is a theoretician, and my work is mostly experimental. My job is to implement an idea that exists purely in theory and see how it holds up in practice.
Recently, my advisor asked me to look into doing an experiment based on theory which he had published several years prior (but which was itself not substantiated by any experiments).
I initially had reservations, as I felt the paper he had published used a model which was simply not realistic enough to be useful in practice, and that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to run experiments to prove his theory. I did not voice these, as at the time, I was a very junior student who knew very little, so this was just my gut telling me that this probably wouldn't go well, but I might as well try and see what happens.
After spending a lot of time (roughly 8 months) implementing his ideas, and testing them first-hand, I came to the conclusion that his model does not work in reality for a multitude of reasons. He seems convinced that I am doing something wrong and has even harshly compared me to others, saying "if I gave this task to X, they would have easily done this experiment in a week". While I could have believed such a statement at the start of this project, I am now convinced, based on my own expertise, that he has no idea what he is talking about, as all the work he does is in theory-land, and he has never done experimental work before, and doesn't understand fundamental differences between theory and practice. But he is adamant and told me if I don't finish this project with good results to meet a certain deadline, then he would probably have to stop supporting me with funding.
Three big problems:

He has a big ego, and is convinced his theory holds in real life, even though he has no experimental experience.
It's just me and him on the project, so there is no unbiased third party that is also an expert on the topic whose advice we could use.
He is operating from a sunk cost fallacy: "I spent so much time and effort on this student so he better produce something rather than spend all this time to get a negative result. Might as well get rid of him, so give him an ultimatum".

Is it time that I finished working with this professor and his doomed projects ?
I see little recourse, given the circumstances, and am curious what course of action other intelligent people would take in such a situation.

What is the question of this post ?

"After spending a lot of time (roughly 8 months) implementing his ideas, and testing them first-hand, I came to the conclusion that his model does not work in reality for a multitude of reasons."  -- Does this mean that you designed an ran experiments to test the hypothesis, and that you've generated hard data that do not match the model predictions, or does it mean something less??

Might as well have said that you're in physics.

I would change advisors. You two are clearly not compatible.
Leaving aside the particulars of the case, I think you need to find an advisor who is also an experimentalist.
Of course, you want to do this as diplomatically as possible, especially if your advisor has a lot of power in the department.  You might want to talk to the department chair. But programs want graduate students to succeed.  Even if not for emotional reasons, then for practical ones.  Having students not graduate looks bad.

I hate to suggest it, since I doubt it will help you, but showing definitely that some approach fails can be as valuable to the research community as showing that something succeeds. It is the truth of it, as best we can determine, that matters.
I worry, though, if your advisor is implying that you have to verify their underlying assumptions, rather than truly researching the question even if it results in a refutation.
You don't seem to have a trusting relationship, otherwise I'd suggest you talk it over with them. You can judge the wisdom of that approach.
But, I have to agree with Peter Flom that a new advisor might be your best route to success.

In the long run, academia will not honor your work if it somehow looks bad, even if this is not your fault. Your advisor should not be the only person in the room with an ego.
Don't just comply with what you think is an unreasonable demand. But be tactful. Both of the above comments contain good advice, I think.

A negative answer is also a useful answer itself. Why could you not just provide some 90% C.L. rejection of the theory or its certain rules as the output of your experiments?
Describing the theory itself, detailing experimental methods, providing statistical analysis and summary, and giving conclusions and future outlooks is already good research. Moreover, you can complete this task with ideas of experimental setups, how to verify results using other approaches, etc. It's hard to recommend what to do without domain information, but overall, work is done; you just need to validate results, discuss with your supervisor in a good manner, and publish a paper. Who knows, perhaps the experiment was incorrect and will be proven in the next 20 years, or perhaps you will be proven correct soon.
Negative results are also results; science is not only about positive results.
Some physics' domains publish exclusion regions with some C.L. because they didn't find anything, but what they found was something where the region is not possible to happen (exclusion region).
Good luck with your research.
Let us know how things evolved at the end.


text:
Applying to same school for a different grad program
I applied to school A for law school and got rejected. Now I'm planning to reapply but for a different grad program. Will the school have all my records from the law school?

It would probably help to clarify what you really want to know. As it is, I can't imagine any reason why this would matter except that you expect the two applications to show inconsistent information and are wondering if they will catch you, which I hope is not the case.

Only they can say. But even if they do it should have no affect on your chances. People can be better prepared for some things than for others. People can have a better record in some things than in others. Programs can be more or less competitive than others.
Unless you ask, just assume they do. But rules will probably make it hard/impossible for them to use things beyond what is in your application for that individual program (US view).

If by Rejected you mean that you did not get into Laws, they will not have any records besides that you were a student who try to get into the Laws program, meaning they will have your basic information and maybe an aspirant number in their database.
However, if by Rejected, you mean that you were in Laws and then get kick out of the program, then yes, they will have record of your grades.


text:
To leave or not to leave academia if you do not fully love what you are doing but are proficient at it?
So I know that the choice to leave or not academia is a fully personal choice. What I would like to hear is your experience. Basically, focusing on the web I think that there is a strong bias on one side, i.e., not leaving academia, since mainly tenures or people staying in academia make posts on this. And also on the other side as people having decided to leave academia write posts on "how bad academia is".
My personal curiosity is whether one could carry on the academic path if the subject that he/she is studying is not his/her passion but he/she is pretty good at it. It's like a return to normality. Is it true that only highly motivated people can get a tenure? I mean...every Professor love and has always loved what he/she is doing?
Thank you

Isn't it like every job? You like some of it, you loath some of it. Leaving a job is also related to knowing what the alternative might be. I think that the question is too opinion-based to be answerable.

I see your point. Let's say I would like to know if there are also academic Professors that carry on doing their job though they do not love the subject that they are teaching/researching on but feel, rather, interest in it (the point being "should anyone be passionate about the subject he/she is willing to become Professor of?).

I suspect that "being good at something" and "being passionate about something" are highly correlated. But I would struggle to find where the line is between "being interested in something" and "being passionate about something".

Here's some perspective from outside elite universities.

Whether one could carry on the academic path if the subject that he/she is studying is not his/her passion but he/she is pretty good at it.

This may be largely irrelevant after graduate school: Generally, one has broad freedom in choosing research topics (more so after tenure). If you don't find one topic very interesting but find yourself quite good at it, then likely you will find another set of problems on which your unique skill set will make you a good researcher.

Is it true that only highly motivated people can get a tenure?

If by "tenure" you mean tenure in any (accredited) university (in USA), then no. Plenty of people who are not extremely motivated get tenure every year. Obviously, you do need the energy and drive to do decent job in at least 2 components among Teaching, Research, and Service (and the social skill to be not totally annoying). You don't have to love these.

...every Professor love and has always loved what he/she is doing?

Again, if you include all professors from all universities, then the answer is definitely no...... at least in the naive sense of "love".


text:
Undergrad Research for Online Students in Math?
I’m looking for research projects that I could join as an undergrad in mathematics. I’m going to a school that is more well known in the UK but not as well known here in the US. It would be cool if there was open source or crowd sourced math research projects and I think that would be something interesting to put on a resume given you actually do a portion of work. But are there any options for someone like me going to an online school at a non-notable university?

Are you going to The Open University?

@edelweiss Yes I am.

I believe that, as a student at Open University, you have tutors for your classes; someone you can interact with. Present this issue to one of them and ask for help.
They may not be able to help you directly, but should be able to pass your request up the line to the professor responsible for the course. Those professors are well connected (worldwide) and might be willing to find you someone to work with.
Your tutor would need to give a good recommendation for you, of course.
I know some of the CS folks there and am pretty sure they would respond well to such a request in their own field. And they have the worldwide contacts to make it happen.

Caveat: My information is quite old now. I hope the local tutor system is still in place. And for other online systems this advice might not be feasible but I'd guess it would be similar at FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany.


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Course of action to change fields after a PhD?
A little introduction: I've done some research in interferometry during my MsC, and from then on, my MsC thesis was on optical fiber sensors, then I worked for two companies in sensorization with optical fibers, and now I am enrolling on a PhD on that very subject.
I like photonics, but I feel like I'd want to try something different. I had the option of getting a PhD in quantum optics but decided on this one, in the end (mostly for logistic reasons, and I liked both themes).
Now, I am not sure whether I will have trouble changing fields (within photonics) after specializing so much in one, especially being my research very engineer/application focused and not so much in slightly more fundamental, or even experimental physics.
I've seen similar questions from time to time, but my specific question would be:
Have I specialized too much to change my field after a phd, and what course of action should I start taking NOW in order to keep my doors open after a PhD?

Photonics and QOQI are so closely related I can't believe you're really asking this.  People often switch from AMO to solid state or nuclear after 3 years or so,  so yes,  you can handle a change to such a similar subfield.

Sorry for the late reply.
Yes, I am aware that the fields are somewhat closely related. What worries me most is having a very applied/engineering background (working on experimental physics mostly on the application end, with close relationships to companies) and trying to shift to experimental physics on slightly more fundamental research.
My question is not whether I am able to do it, I know I am. It's more whether there will be any demand for someone of my background, even in a related field.


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Will I be facing entitled students everywhere?
I work at a small regional university in the United States. Teaching takes up a significant portion of my time and energy, but I still enjoy it. I primarily teach undergraduate courses in math and computer science. The pay is not great, but I feel like I'm making a worthwhile contribution.
However, in recent years, I've noticed a growing number of entitled students. By that, I mean students who expect academic success without taking personal responsibility for achieving it, and who expect instructors to act as their personal tutors. While these characteristics are technically separate, they often go hand in hand.
When I first started here, I would encounter one such student per year. Now, I see them in every class, every semester. They really detract from the joy of teaching and sometimes make me question if my efforts are worth it. I've been considering moving to larger public or private universities, most likely within the U.S.
My question is: is this increase in entitled students a local problem specific to my university/region, or will I encounter them no matter where I go?

What level (within the undergraduate level) courses do you observe this behavior most often? Were you teaching the same course in the past when you would see fewer such instances? Is this a pattern across all your courses?

Sounds an awful lot like the Millennial Job Interview, even though that's already 6 years old. Are you telling me the next generation is even worse!? ;-) -- Kind regards, your boomer

I don't understand why this question depends on individual factors. It's unrelated to me or my university. I'm specifically asking about the situation elsewhere.

The short answer is YES, and the higher up you go on the "prestige" ladder, the worse it gets.
I did my MS and PhD at R1 institutions and later 2 postdocs also at R1s, and during that period worked on dozens of courses as TA. I am now a tenured STEM professor at a regional public institution. It was my experience, and that of everyone I know with a similar range of working experiences, that students at the community college level rarely act entitled. Oh, they have lots of problems, specially with not knowing academic social norms and missing deadlines, but entitlement is not one of them. Then as you go to the regional colleges, the national colleges, and the Ivies, the entitlement builds up to a point that professors are outright scared of students and pretty much give the grades away. You have not seen entitlement until you are the recipient of a phone call from a PARENT demanding to know why you gave their prince/princess a B. And the administrators are behind the parents! Everyone knows professors in the Ivies that give every student an A, because they otherwise feel that it's impossible to deal with the entitlement.
At the regional-college level, what my colleagues and I call entitlement is stuff like students constantly missing deadlines and asking for extensions as if that were an automatic thing you get for the asking. Students complaining if you don't give them a detailed study guide. Students using the phrase "I was confused" as a incantation that is supposed to make all of their mistakes go away, e.g. "I was confused about the homework, so I didn't submit it" is something I hear 10 times a week.
I think a lot of it has to do with COVID. The students you are seeing now are the ones entering high school as schools went online, and all deadlines became optional.
But yes, students acting demanding is the status quo, and it is everywhere. But I think it's just an annoyance. There are plenty of effective strategies to deal with them, and soon you learn to look at people in the eyes and say "no."

This is quite surprising. Is there any difference between public and private universities in this regard?

I left academia just before COVID hit, so my teaching experience is a bit outdated, but this sounds nothing like my teaching experience at a handfull of European universities. The entitled students made up less than 1% of my students, with the exception of my expeditions to a few 'University Colleges', which are not in any way universities.

The only time I got a call from a parent, I explained that I could not discuss the student's performance without a FERPA release.  Never got a call back.

@Servaes, I'm not familiar with how European universities operate. Do students have to pay high tuition fees like their American counterparts? For many of my students, the total cost of tuition and other expenses will be almost equal to their annual salary when they start working. I wonder if the feeling of being paying customers affects their attitude.

@Timmy It varies from country to country. Where I taught, tuition fees were about €2k/y, and all nationals got an annual grant of about €5.2k/y for the first five years of study, and access to interest-free loans of up to roughly €10k/y. As a student, living costs are about €10k/y on the cheap, or up to €15k/y if you're really living it up. For reference, full-time minimum wage is about €20k/y. Many students have a side job and graduate debt-free. Working weekends or summer jobs is sufficient for that.

@Timmy Also, I not once had any interaction with a student's parent, and I would be thoroughly confused if any parent contacted me: All my students were adults. Matters between the student and the university are none of their business.

Rather than letting the inmates run the asylum, consider looking at this as a broader teaching opportunity
Judging by the wide variety of sources reporting similar phenomena, this appears to be a problem affecting academia in the entire Anglosphere at least.  Anecdotally, there have been a number of articles written in the last twenty years making similar observations of rising student entitlement in academia.  It has already been about fifteen years since Twenge and Campbell (2009) discussed the "narcissism epidemic" and showed evidence of rising rates of narcissism and general over-entitlement in society.  If anything, the emergence of social media appears to have accelerated this phenomenon, and it has probably also reduced attention spans, which contributes further to the problem.
Aside from general rising rates of entitlement among younger generations, there are also some factors specific to academia that may have increased the sense of entitlement specifically within this field.  One of those factors is the fact that university education had broadened significantly over the generations to encompass a far greater fraction of the population, and many people who now go to university are people who would not previously have made the cut, and they have a poor understanding of the expectations of work in academia and the distinction between tertiary education versus secondary education.  Many also have poorer executive functioning than past generations of students and their consequent displays of entitlement may act as a method to seek special consideration to dampen the negative effects of lack of executive functioning.  Another factor is the corporatisation of universities and the more customer-centric ethos that has arisen in this environment, including the creation of administrative roles that are incentivised to support student demands irrespective of the academic merits of those demands.
I can certainly understand how this detracts from the joys of teaching for many university lecturers, but bear in mind that it also creates a new teaching opportunity insofar as it allows you to teach students to better understand the expectations of tertiary education and the broader professional skills that they should master to be successful in later life.  Personally, I see it as worthwhile to view rising student entitlement as a knowledge problem that can, in principle, be corrected by good teaching --- students may be entitled because they come into university without a realistic understanding of how it is distinct from high-school or what the professional standards are in this environment.  Through your words and actions in your teaching, impart to this new generation of students the proper expectations about what tertiary education is and what it requires.  This can be part of a broader teaching ethos where you consider your teaching to encompass the imparting of general professional standards and skills in addition to merely teaching the content of your particular courses.  This is something I try to do in my own teaching and I find many occasions where unreasonable student expectations and poor professional skills can lead to a fruitful discussion of how students can be professionally successful in later life (e.g., how to manage deadlines, compose emails, deal with critical feedback on work, etc.).  I also find that it is possible to frame this discussion in a positive and inspiring way that many students respond positively to --- frame it so that you are imparting the special "secret formula" to your students for how they can get a leg-up on their later career by uplifting their professional skills and practice.  Students probably see you as a professionally successful person, so use that to your advantage.
Now, while this can be seen as a knowledge problem in essential terms, I will certainly concede that this "lack of knowledge" can be aggravated by a degree of intransigence on the part of some students, possibly even a degree of intransigence that was absent a generation ago.  Some students are quite entitled and do not respond well to instruction about expectations at university.  This might require you to be the "immovable object" in the face of the "unstoppable force" of generational change.  Ultimately, students will respond to the incentives they are confronted with, and if they are not rewarded for their entitlement (e.g., by giving students higher grades or other unreasonable assistance when they complain) then they will eventually adapt to the new reality and grow into adulthood.  Perhaps I have an advantage being a curmudgeon, but I've never found this to be a big problem or be too disheartening in my teaching --- I just see it as an important part of teaching that adds value for my students.  Ideally, teachers in secondary education would have prepared our students better, but alas, they left it for us.  Someone has to teach them to be adults so we might as well take on that task before they get into the workforce.

Although I relate to many sentiments in this answer, it puts a strong emphasis on a single person. A university is an organisation, and actions of one are only effective if they are supported by the environment. If your university converted to a customer-oriented corporate business, and you are the single person trying to maintain high teaching standards and remind students of their responsibilities as adults, this won't lead to anything except personal burnout.

@DmitrySavostyanov: Sure, but as with many answers on this site, the hope is that a wide group of academics read this answer and it encourages them all to contribute to the solution.  Also, to some extent the burnout is a matter of perspective and expectation --- many academics are willing to correct the same basic calculus errors for twenty years without feeling burned out by it, so why should correcting basic attitudinal errors in relation to professional skills necessarily be any different.

I don't find the "broadening" explanation persuasive. It seems like this would mean more working-class people in universities, and they would have received a stronger work ethic from their parents. "Elites" are more likely to have been born with a silver spoon and have expectations that things will come easier to them.

But maybe the claim is that universities previously only accepted top students, who had to work hard to achieve those grades, and now they're accepting B and C students who didn't learn good study habits.

@Barmar: That is a fair observation; I have edited the answer slightly to rephrase my observation.

I wonder if the general "rising rate of entitlement" comes from things like "everyone gets a prize just for showing up", which is intended to boost children's self-esteem.

Thank you for your response. Being just one part of a large system, I may not know my individual impact. Nonetheless, I find this inspiring and will gradually apply many of the lessons provided here.

I have taught at a US school and can agree that some students are entitled.
I have taught in Europe (Sweden) for many years, and entitled students are almost unheard of.
I think this is not really due to culture; In the US, people pay large fees for their education while universities here are free. It simply does not make sense to complain about something you do not directly pay for.
But the student body is quite different - I have several people above their 50s in my first semester math class, so the average student tend to know how to be responsible for their own studies.
Again, since there are no tuition fees, there are no parents in the background financing the studies (and thus pushing expectations on their students in the same way as in the US).