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Are there known cases of leaks in academia?
There are many situations in academia where an entity is entrusted with confidential data belonging to a researcher. A very obvious one is the publication process: the journals are required to keep submitted papers confidential until they are published. But there are also other situations. For example, biologists can submit newly discovered nucleotide sequences to the EMBL database, and they have the option to request the new sequences to be kept confidential until publication. I guess that other disciplines can have similar arrangements.
In these cases, the entity has the responsibility of keeping the data confidential, and a leak can have highly negative consequences for the scientist who entrusted them with their not-yet-published results.
My question is: are there known cases of such leaks? I don't mean just a reviewer mentioning to his colleagues "I have a very interesting paper by X, if the results are confirmed, we may be looking at a cure for [type of cancer]" without further details. I mean high-profile cases where an institution or its employee is more or less "officially" accused of either willful wrongdoing, or of insufficient protection of the information so that e.g. a database was hacked and the information read out.
If there are such cases, what happened? How were they discovered, and what were the consequences for the scientist whose data was made public, and for the institution which should have kept it secret?

Another possibility: a researcher may be using confidential data that is leaked. (For instance, forecasters often work with companies' sales data, who would be very unhappy if these data were to appear on public servers.)

I'm not sure how factual it is, but I've always been told, even from high school biology classes, that Wilkins "leaked" Rosalind Franklin's data to Watson and Crick.

Academic publications are sometimes subject to an embargo, in which information about the publication is shared with the media, but they are restricted from publishing a news article using this information before a certain date.
In this context, leaks are not uncommon. Sometimes the author of the paper is responsible for the leak; on other occasions, the publisher or a news agency may be responsible.
Here are two examples in which the Associated Press broke an embargo:

AP technical glitch unintentionally breaks JAMA Avastin study embargo
AP breaks abortion data embargo

In both of these cases, there were no serious consequences for anybody involved.
In a case that did involve consequences, a researcher published a paper using data that was made available through the NIH, but was subject to a data embargo. The paper was retracted (see the story on RetractionWatch), and the researcher's access to the shared data was suspended:

Upon learning of the violation, the investigator’s access to dbGaP [database of Genotypes and Phenotypes] was immediately suspended pending an investigation by the NIH Data Access Committee with responsibility for the dataset involved and a review by the GWAS Senior Oversight Committee (SOC). Information pertaining to the incident was requested from the investigator’s home institution through the Institutional Signing Official that approved the investigator’s original request to the NIH. After a thorough review of the circumstances pertaining to the violation, the SOC revoked access to all dbGaP data for a period of six months.
All work with data downloaded before the date of the access suspension was expected to cease during the ban. This ban included the Primary Investigator as well as those individuals working with the individual-level GWAS data under his Data Access Request, because they also agreed to abide by the terms and conditions for data use within the Data Use Certification agreement. The period of the ban passed on March 4, 2010, and Dr. Zhang may now submit new requests for access to dbGaP data.

Another data leak scenario was mentioned by Stephan Kolassa in a comment: when a researcher uses private data that is leaked. Here is an example of a case where

the world's largest futures exchange has accused the top U.S. derivatives regulator of illegally sharing sensitive market data with outside researchers who then used the information to publish academic papers about high-frequency trading

Possibly the most high-profile case of data leakage in the very recent past is Climategate, but that turned out to be more of a "hack" than a leak by someone who had legitimate access to the data. In 2009, a server at the University of East Anglia (UEA) was compromised, and material was leaked including more than 1,000 emails, 2,000 documents, and source code, pertaining to climate change research. Many of the emails concerned technical aspects of climate research, such as data analysis. In this case, climate change skeptics argued that the leaked materials showed that scientists engaged in a conspiracy to manipulate climate data. However, various investigative committees reported no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct on the part of the scientists.
The individuals responsible for the breach were not identified. Police said said, however, that despite rumors to the contrary, the attack had been carried out "remotely via the internet" and that there was "no evidence to suggest that anyone working at or associated with the University of East Anglia was involved in the crime."

For a thorough catalogue of such embargo breaks, with regular updates, see Embargo Watch.

This is a little bit different than your question, but I think fits the spirit: there have been a number of high-profile cases of scientists being held in a position of trust and being accused of leaking confidential information.  Two notorious such cases in the United States:

Phil Zimmerman was accused of leaking his PGP encryption algorithm, which at that time (1991) was considered illegal to export from the United States.  He has claimed that the initial dissemination was accidental, which might or might not be credible, given the early stage of development of the internet.  Once he was formally accused and facing potential jail time, he published the source code in a book, turning it into a question of free speech.
Ted Postol has claimed that various US anti-missile systems do not perform as claimed, leading, among other things to several misconduct investigations against a number of other researchers and also Postol himself.  Notably, Postol ended up being accused of violating confidentiality rules with regard to other researchers.  He has never formally been sanctioned, but remains a center of controversy.


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Is it normal for things to be so cutthroat, and what to do about it?
I am a postdoc in mathematics. I like doing math, but I do not feel like I belong to a community, in the true sense of the word.
My vision of mathematical research is that it should be a massive collaborative effort to solve puzzles and publish the solutions, and no one should be excluded without a good reason. Also people should be allowed to openly talk about each others' results objectively without any feelings hurt.
However, in my field, people seem to see research as a competition. They form factions and play the game of inclusion-exclusion and loyalty matters more than truth, so does pride and it is almost impossible to be sure if an error is an error in a paper without making enemies.
People also treat knowledge as private property (within their factions or to oneself) and tend to keep secrets.
There are two types of secret-keeping generally practiced in my field:

When working on a project one would avoid talking about what they are working on and what are the partial results etc. in fear of being scooped.
When the work is done one should avoid proper exposition in the paper or explanation to the public so that:

they can stay ahead in the competition
they can make their results look as non-trivial as possible.

As much as I do not want to force people to disclose their secrets, I value clear explanations and talking to people about my work in progress. But as I do not belong to any faction I seem to be taking a huge risk on my career in doing so.
The fact that everyone is expecting secret-keeping also makes me reluctant to work with them because I do not want to sign an invisible NDA and unwittingly make enemies when I discuss with others on joint projects (and it is hard to set a boundary on discussion). This is not particularly helpful to my current state of isolation.
Perhaps it is just my field that has an environment incompatible with my belief, or perhaps all this is considered normal in any field. Nevertheless do you think this is a good reason for me to seek a different career path than academia?
Is it feasible to make a career doing open research?

We can't tell you whether you should quit or not. Do you have a question we can answer - one that isn't asking us to make a highly personal life decision for you? Please [edit] your post to clarify.

I'd guess the private sector is the same.

Did you consider teaching?  There should be fewer secrets kept in that field.

Or switching fields? Not all mathematicians behave like that community.

This isn't particularly relevant, but what is your area of math research? I am not asking for very specific information - just the broad category.

Here are a couple suggestions for how to revise your question so it is reopened: (1) ask if the secret-keeping you mention is in fact common in math (I'm not even sure it's true in your case, but could be your misunderstanding of the situation---people make jokes about this sort of thing, but most people don't practice it), (2) ask if it's feasible to make a career of doing "open" research.  (Or just ask a new one/ones)

This is a perfect topic for Academia and should definitely NOT be put on hold. A friend of mine was in academia and told me, several times, of its true nature of ruthlessness, academic dishonesty, theft, etc. Unfortunately, this is life. When you come to realize that humans are simply sophisticated animals, many things seem to become clear. Everybody wants to be the next Einstein. That's why they hide their works. The free market economy causes this animalistic behavior. I say "animalistic" because animals in the wild frequently hide the results of their hunts.

@Inquisitive true nature of ruthlessness, academic dishonesty, theft, etc — Your friend has had a very different experience in academia than I have.

Reality is very complicated. It is not one way or the other, often a mixture, and lots of judicious decision-making is required. Some environments are nicer than other, some people more trustworthy than other. If atmosphere disturbs you, choose your environment and the people to suit your taste, there are more pleasant subfields than others.
Careers do depend on individual success, so you cannot just plainly discount people trying to keep their ideas for themselves until they are ready to capitalise on that - success, as measured by hiring committees, is individual, not collective.
Yes, a fully open community is a bit like communism - great if it works, but usually works only to a commune of a limited size, or if the work to be done cannot hope to progress more than differentially faster than the community as a whole  and also if there are no "bad apples" who do not play ball and prey on the goodwill of the group.
That being said, you can encounter very friendly communities, but if that is a priority for you, you need to include that into your criteria for choosing a research topic.

Hello fellow postdoc in mathematics.
I know what you're feeling and to an extent I agree; however, I've noticed that it's very variable in which field you're in in mathematics on how competitive colleagues are. Even in subfields in my main discipline, the amount of infighting and openness varies wildly. In my experience, in the more "puzzle" type research problems people are very competitive, while in the more "theory building" type research problems people are very communicative and open to dialogue.
If you find that your subfield in mathematics is overly competitive and you dislike that feeling, could you try to go to conferences a bit out of your field and see if that new field is as competitive?
My experience is that being in an intersection of various fields, some are much more open and willing to help than others. Some feel threatened by an "outsider" wandering in and others are happy to have another person joining the research landscape as they need all the help they can get. Only one project in my career have led me to need to be less than 100% open on what I am trying to accomplish, but this is very subfield specific.

+1 for very nice distinction of topics prone to competitiveness or not: '...in the ... "puzzle" type research ... people are ... competitive, while in ... "theory building" ... research ... people are ... communicative...'

I'm not totally sure whether puzzle vs. theory is the relevant distinction here, but there's certainly huge cultural variation between subfields and even between research communities within a subfield, and so the advice to try to move towards subfields and research communities that you're more comfortable with is great.

@NoahSnyder I agree that it might be the wrong distinction. I have found the most natural thing that is true in my personal experience. I had edited my response to weaken that as more my own experience instead of a hard rule to follow. The OP must find a natural balance or monitor their discipline for what works for them in their relevant microcosm.

Let me first comment on the 2 types of secret keeping you mention:

When working on a project one would avoid talking about what they are working on and what are the partial results etc. in fear of being scooped.

I agree that this is common to some extent.  However, I think most people aren't really that secretive.  My experience is most people are willing to broadly talk about the kinds of problems they are working on, and share details with people they trust.  I trust most people I know in my field, and imagine my colleagues feel similarly.

When the work is done one should avoid proper exposition in the paper or explanation to the public so that:
1 they can stay ahead in the competition
2 they can make their results look as non-trivial as possible.

I've heard people give this as "advice," but I've always assumed it was tongue-in-cheek.  I usually try to present my ideas as straightforward as possible, but when I actually have to write up things in a paper, I find that writing all the details to make everything correct in generality makes it look more complicated than it is.  When I read a paper where explanations are hard to follow, I assume it is either (i) the author was lazy, or (ii) the author doesn't realize/forgets certain things aren't obvious if you haven't spent ages thinking about that particular problem.
In fact, I've found most senior mathematicians to be quite generous with their ideas because one quickly has more ideas than time to explore them, let alone having time to steal other people's ideas.
Yes, mathematics is somewhat competitive, and some people are more competitive/secretive than others, but I and I think most of my colleagues have found it to be a friendly community where you can be open with a lot of other people.  That said, there are certain fields, and I think certain countries, that tend to be much more competitive than others.  It's possible you would have a better time in a different field, but I suggest talking to a couple people you trust in your area about your concerns.  It could be it is an somewhat of an issue in your area, or it could be that your impression is based on a few unrepresentative experiences/misunderstandings.
As to whether one can make a career of "open research," I think that depends on what is meant.  At this point, until you have a permanent job or attain enlightenment, you probably cannot make a successful research career of only being involved in massive open collaborations like the Polymath projects, though you can be involved in them.  However, if one just means being open with colleagues about what one is working on, then yes, I know people who are very open about their ongoing work.  It is certainly possible to have a successful career like this, though there may be some people you should stay away from.

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How to encourage a math teacher to present material in a more accessible way?
My math teacher speaks like a college professor teaching a Mathematical Analysis course and many of the students (including me) find it hard to follow along. Once a student asked him rather bravely what the application of a power series would be to a question and he just had this "Why the heck are you even asking me this, isn't it obvious" look. Any tips to deal with this?

edited title; hopefully it gets at your underlying question.

"My math teacher speaks like a college professor teaching a Mathematical Analysis course." Um, for all you've told us, that's exactly who he is.  Note also that this site focuses on academia at the graduate level and above.  If you are a high school or college student, you should probably rephrase your question to make it on-topic for this site.  (Though of course graduate students are often confused by their math teachers...)

The ideal would be if students in the class could support each other.  In the example you described, after student A asks about the application of a power series, and the teacher makes the unpleasant face, it could be helpful if student B said, "I'm wondering about that too."
Consider that the teacher might make a face because he's embarrassed that he didn't explain things more clearly.  Who knows!
You may want to let the department leader know how things are going, and request that s/he sit in on the class, to form a direct opinion.
Consider also that sometimes people with poor social skills excel in their field, and display an astonishing ability to alienate or offend people.
In short, don't take it as a measure of your own abilities.  Just let it wash off like water off a duck's back.  Make sure you ask one or more questions each week.  By asking questions, you'll get more comfortable asking questions, and the teacher will get more used to people asking questions.
If you don't understand something, do check what your textbook has to say; but also, you may ask, for example:

I'm not clear about (topic).
Could you explain where such-and-so comes from, in a different way?  OR: Is there a way of looking at this that would help it feel less abstract? etc.

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Can't prepare lesson material. Should I cancel class?
I'm a grad student teaching assistant for a freshmen undergrad non major multivariable  calculus class.
What they didn't tell me is that the second half of the semester is not calculus but "finite math". This week's topic is game theory, which I've never learned myself.
In preparing tomorrow's material, I realized I was getting all the answers wrong from one of the sections, and have no idea how to do the problems I'm supposed to teach. Normally it only takes a day to read the textbook and prepare.
I've been up for hours struggling with the same problems and need to leave in 5 hours to get to class on time - and would still like to sleep.
My school never gave me any training or told me any rules; am I allowed to just cancel class?
I'll take any advice at this point.
Edit: I would just like to say how much I appreciate everyone's responses. I'm running on little sleep, (and extremely new to Stack Exchange so still learning how the site works) but you've all given me great ideas when I was truly stressing out.
Edit/Update: turns out I was not doing it incorrectly, just did algebraic work when I should've used a graph so I considered points that I didn't need to which is why my answers were wrong. I met up with the individual who TAd for the course last semester and that's how I figured out my mistake. I sorta winged it in presentation and got the correct answer, now just have to repeat the lesson for the rest of the sessions.
Thank you all for your input.
Edit (from comment): Game theory is just one week of the course; they have two lectures with the professor prior to one 50 minute session with me. This is the only session with me out of a year long course that has been or will be like this.

sounds like a highly dysfunctional situation.  What I would do is go to class and talk about something I know (filibuster) until I can present any game theory

I would encourage you to roll back to your original question.  I found the edits contributed by @henning stifling and unnecessary.

Indeed, feel free to do as @aparente001 suggests. I believe the question is now more to the point, but you may think differently.

I think this link can help you: http://oyc.yale.edu/economics/econ-159.

Do you know about convex sets/optimization? Game theory requires convex optimisation, so you could start with this.

Thank you all for the suggestions. I wrote the initial post in a sleep deprived, stressed out haste so I'm sure it was poorly written. I do not know about convex sets.

It wasn't mentioned in the course description or syllabus? Sounds like a very strange situation...

Tried to watch the Yale video in the past; too sloooooooooow. Maybe that's my reaction to all videos.

I really liked the game theory course on coursera if that helps in any way:  https://www.coursera.org/learn/game-theory-1/lecture/JOAby/introductory-video

@JessicaB - someone will feel the need to anonymously whine on Facebook if you bring free chocolates to class. You just can't ever win 100% approval, so that can't be the goal

"I met up with the individual who TAd for the course last semester and that's how I figured out my mistake" This should have been one of your first remedies, as it's a fairly obvious step to take. Your actual first step should have been talking to your own boss/manager/supervisor or whoever it is that convenes the course.

Sorely tempted to suggest that you just stick on a video; Game Theory is a very common subject in film - Generating a list of questions (matrixes and pop-quiz type questions) should be a doddle too.

How did you not know at the beginning of class what topics you would be teaching?? Isn't there a syllabus?

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/86953/can-i-learn-while-im-teaching

As I mentioned in a lower comment:I knew that game theory would be touched on, I skimmed the section, realized it involved matrices and have had no problem dealing with the last 9 chapters of non-calculus matrix-related material, so assumed this chapter would be just as easy to deal with - but was obviously wrong. I was just upset that I signed up to TA a course titled multivariable calculus and found out after the fact that there was more to it. The course is also covering linear algebra, probability, counting, linear programming, set theory, multinomial coefficients, etc.

@DVK I'm not saying 100% approval is the goal. I believe cancelling a class last minute would leave you a very long way below 100% approval. I said one student complained on Facebook (my comment seems to have been deleted, though I cannot see why). I don't know the reaction of the 75% of the class who never showed up to a single lecture I gave.

For people suggesting some rudimentary game theory solutions, like a video; keep in mind that game theory sort of falls off a cliff.  When you're first learning about the prisoner's dilemma, it's all interesting and simple.  When you get into the math-y parts of it, it rapidly becomes terribly complex.  Since this is part of a multi-variable calc class, I'm guessing it's much more complex than you're imagining.

I would like to add on top of the answers of @aparente001 and @Anonymous Mathematician.
So, first thing, in 5 hours it would be very hard to come up with something solid that you would be comfortable lecturing about; thus I second the suggestion of doing some review and exercises for now.
My opinion is: you can do it.
If you have been teaching calculus so far, chances are that you are a very competent student. You can learn almost at the same time as you will be teaching. And this does not have to be a stressful experience, I would say you can be upfront with your students and let them know that you are learning at the same time as them (they already know that you are a student too).
Actually, this can be beneficial for both parts: you) are learning a new topic and because of that you better understand the difficulties that students may come upon; they) have a TA that understands their difficulties and that is able to explain things in a way that a student would learn (it may not be the best way, but I would say that is OK).
In the case they make you questions you do not know how to answer, again, be upfront: say that it is a good question, you will think and research about it, and you will explain it later, either in the class, e-mail directly to the student, whatever you prefer.
In order for this to work, like mentioned in the other answers, you have to talk to your supervisor and let him know that you were not prepared to lecture this topic. Ask him for help about learning those concepts, or a reference to whom could provide such guidance.

Thank you for your response. I have a pretty good rapport with the students, and worked with most of them for their first semester of calculus in the fall ending with great reviews. I think being upfront with them is a good idea. Your response was a bit of a pep talk, and I'll admit I needed it.

That's very bad advice: telling the students that you don't know what you're talking about either just never works. The day after you will have 90% drop off rate or, even worse, 100% attendance with nobody paying a penny of attention to what you are saying.

@GennaroTedesco I disagree with you. I have experienced that both as a student and as a lecturer. It may depend on how you say things. You should not say: hey guys, I know nothing about this. That is not what I meant. It seems the OP is a good lecturer, from his reviews. If there is a topic that he may not be so comfortable, it does not mean that it lacks confidence. Conversely, I have had teachers which did not admit they may lack knowledge, the students can smell the lack of confidence, and the class becomes a boring and awkward experience.

To clarify, I did not suggest for the OP to explicitly say he does not know. Instead, I suggested something in the lines of I'm learning this at the same time as you, and when confronted with questions that he does not know the answer, that is a good question, I will think and research about it. The key here is to avoid using the negation and, of course, be sincere.

I've been in this situation as a student, and I couldn't take they instructor seriously. It's insulting to charge students for a class being taught by someone that has no knowledge of the topic. They should definitely not admit  that's what's happening!

Gotta admit, teachers who admitted they didn't know the material was a cue for me to check out. I was extremely busy in college, had a hard time making it to class in the first place some times, and this would just tell me that I was wasting that effort getting there since I apparently could learn just as well just reading the book.

I've been up for hours struggling with the same problems and need to leave in 5 hours to get to class on time.  I doubt there is anything in OP's contract that would require that he stay up all or most of the night.

@Kat You'd rather be lied to???

@JeffE I'd rather they got a competent instructor to teach instead.

@Kat Teaching is not just about knowing everything about the topic. It is mainly about conveying the knowledge from the teacher to the students. The OP seems to be competent in doing this (see comment about previous reviews). He also seems to be competent gathering knowledge from other sources. In my POV, this makes a good instructor. The fact he just learned what he is teaching should not be the issue here. I would like to refer the answer by JeopardyTempest which, I believe, also addresses a similar POV.

When I was teaching assembly language and learning it at the same time (as a tenured professor of mathematics, not a TA) I told the students up front. The best of them were on board (and one wrote better answers than mine on my first exam). I sensed that the weaker ones wanted to write the Governor to complain, but they stuck it out. I don't think they suffered.

@iled I agree. I've certainly had knowledgeable instructors that were terrible at transferring that knowledge, and that's no good either. But you can't transfer knowledge that you don't have, and you can't teach beyond the book if your only knowledge is from recently reading the book. You need both knowledge and teaching ability to be an effective instructor. Students don't go into massive debt for a talking version of a book.

@iled Some knowledgeable people might be bad instructors (certainly true), but someone who just looked through the text book a few hours before can't be a good instructor. Teaching a topic well requires intimate knowledge not just some coarse general idea. At least in Math or engineering. That said it's still better being honest, than trying to fake your way out of it - that never works if your students are even semi-competent.

@Voo I agree with you. I also believe that there is a middle ground here: for instance, I could read a wikipedia article about some topic that I don't know, but that I know the underlying fundaments, and then explain it to someone else in my own words, whom could not understand the topic by reading the same article. Something like that could potentially work for a freshman non major topic covered in one week, do you agree? :) Please, do not take my words in this answer and comments as absolute assertions.

@kat Oh, of course. But you wrote "They should definitely not admit that's what is happening," strongly suggesting that if it is happening, you'd rather be deceived into thinking otherwise than to have the instructor admit their ignorance. I expect most students would rather know the truth.

@JeffE I'm not suggesting they lie and claim to be an expert. I guess it would let students know not to bother attending class. I don't think OP admitting they're clueless is going to garner the sympathy and understanding that iled suggests it will, is all. They may as well just cancel the class, imo. No students will take them seriously.

For reference, here's an older question where we discussed telling students about your lack of experience in the subject in detail: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/75226/should-i-tell-students-that-its-my-first-time-teaching-the-course

Use tomorrow's class for review of what's been covered so far, including problem solving.  Then go straight to your supervisor.
Do you have a graduate student employee union?
Edit (after having read the additional information in a comment -- which I just incorporated into the question):
The additional information gives me a different view of the situation than I first understood.
Now that I've gotten this fuller picture of the situation:

Prepare your discussion sections more in advance, so you'll notice in good time if a particular topic needs more careful preparation.
Try a different resource, and/or ask the professor or a more advanced student for help understanding the material.

We do not have a graduate student employee Union

@user71118: Clearly you don't, as any half-decent union would not stand for this kind of travesty. Sending people into class without preparation and with them not even having gotten an overview of what they're supposed to teach at the beginning of the semester. Not to mention the fact that the teacher/lecturer in charge should have known better than not to check whether his/her TAs have studied the subject matter at all.

I've learned that my school is overall quite unorganized. The Dean used to require that all TAs have an entire semester of training (since most have never taught in any form before) prior to beginning work. But the departments decided they did not want to pay the TAs for their time and cancelled the training. Over winter break they asked me two days before the winter Intersession semester started if I would TA a separate multivariable calculus course for engineering majors, the course was 6 days a week and I would find out the next days topic 6pm the night before. Very hectic and annoying.

@user71118 - The lack of training is pretty typical, I think, but not the rest of what you described.

@user71118: Seriously, you guys need to form a union. If the situation is so bad it might not even be that difficult. I mean, it's super-difficult and demanding always, but in your case it seems to be quite doable. What country/state is the university in?

You almost certainly aren't supposed to cancel class arbitrarily, just because you feel like it.  If you admit that you are cancelling class because you weren't able to prepare adequately, you'll look bad.  If you have to cancel, your safest option may be to pretend you aren't feeling well or have some other extenuating circumstances.  Aside from the dishonesty, that will put a lot of pressure on you to catch up in time for the next class.  (If you cancel because of illness and then have to admit you really aren't prepared to teach this material, it will look terrible.)
Instead, I'd recommend the following priorities:

If you can sort things out in the five hours before class, that's the best option.  Do you have any friends who have taught the class before and could help?  That would be far more efficient than trying to figure it all out yourself while in a panic.
If you can't prepare in time, can you rearrange the material a little?  For example, you could insert a review of what you've done so far before you move on to game theory, or you could start by introducing just the aspects you understand, and delay the hard parts until next time.
If you are completely stuck and can't figure out any plan that won't humiliate you and waste the students' time, then it's probably best to call in sick and then work as hard as you can to catch up.

Thank you for your response. I could not sort it out in the few hours. I'll probably work with your second option, I was able to work through the first few problems so I could at least start there.

-1 for suggesting to lie.

@AnoE I "love" the way that twelve people have upvoted your comment but only four actually agreed with it enough to downvote the answer.

Guess there is a scale of escalation for these things, @DavidRicherby. ;)

@DavidRicherby: Some people's downvotes are not publicly displayed by the system =)

@DavidRicherby Some people might do the math this way: +1 for the first option, +1 for the second option, - 1 for the third = +1 so upvote anyway, I but also upvote the comment so it gets shown even when comments are collapsed and highlighted with a colorful number of upvotes.

This is a terrible answer, both practically and ethically. This would not be artibrary cancellation. The best option is not to "sort things out" a few hours before having to teach something you haven't studied. etc.

@DavidRicherby This question is on the "hot" list on other sites, so a lot of people (like me!) are coming in from other sites without the reputation here to downvote, but enough to agree with the comment.

@mattdm Ahhhh, excellent point.

I think it would be better to cancel class without a stated reason than to lie about being sick. That sets a bad precedent.

Downvoting based on the suggestion of lying about being sick is so idealistic, I feel like only someone who has never once been in the labor force could do it.

@Jeff I just downvoted for suggesting lying about being sick. I worked full time for 32 years.

@PatriciaShanahan I wasn't making a literal statement, but I encourage you to explain why anyway.  The answer doesn't suggest it's a good strategy, but the OP has already put themselves in a place (5 hours before class with a need to sleep in there) where no good strategies apply.

@Jeff Ultimately, it comes down to my deeply held view that life is a non-zero-sum game. The world works better if people's statements can be accepted without doing a lot of checking. I prefer a world in which I can just tell an employer I'm sick, and be believed without having to get a doctor's note.

Sounds like you took care of it well.
For those considering in the future, I'd say you can cancel class.  There's no need to be very specific in your reasoning for why to the students.
As a TA, I was to make a 4 hour drive back to campus after a weekend away, and my car wouldn't start.  Not much I could do.  Not a situation I was excited to explain.  But not one with much choice at that point.  It means less learning time, which is no good for anyone (if you are properly interested in seeing them learn as much as possible as well!).  But there are all kinds of reasons people cancel class, many where teachers don't want to go into details.  And even some potentially valid ones involved with class preparation (a large project/test you'd built the class time around suddenly disappearing into the computing void, vital class materials not coming in, etc).  It's not something you should consider lightly, but if it's important to cancel class, then it's important to cancel class.  You're fairly unlikely to get significant challenge.  The only ones who really might be in a situation to challenge you are your superiors.  But even in that less likely circumstance, you can try repeating the limited explanation... or give a full explanation (they may not be TOO happy with it, but they'll probably just have to take it, give a warning about being prepared, and move on).  If you you've done your best and you're really convinced it's the best option, you do what you have to do, you take any consequences it takes, and you move forward.  Quality teachers sometimes have to face unhappy individuals, and if it's your fault, that you didn't pay enough attention to the course plan or did not prepare soon enough, you commit to working hard so it doesn't happen again, and then you deal with the current fallout.  You can't change the past, you can only make the best choices in the current.  And if that means canceling classes, so be it.
But, indeed, see if you can adapt your class so that you don't have to cancel to get around the trouble.  Review, cover a topic scheduled for another time, focus on the background aspects that you do understand, show a video, whatever will usefully consume the time.  Usefully being the key word.  Cancelling isn't the worst option.  Wasting time is worse.  Maybe not to how you are thought of, but to the betterment of your students.
If you do have to cancel, try your best to supplement the missed time.  Send out extra homework.  Make a YouTube video lecture.  Put together an application project.  If the students are expected to check electronic medium, you can probably fairly expect them to do it (you could also put a printed copy of your message on the classroom door for any who may unaware come to the classroom).  If they aren't expected to keep track of media, you can probably still reasonably expect them to make up some of the lost time with a bit of extra homework later.  Meet them in the middle, you don't want to swamp their schedule, especially with busywork, but giving them, for instance, a 20 minute video lecture + practice problems posted later in the week when it was to be an hour class probably won't be seen as too problematic for most... and you can be a little more adaptable if there are some that maybe don't have scheduling flexibility to do more extra work outside of class later in the week.  The point is, you try to do your job the best you can, and be supportive to them in doing it, they'll meet you half way.  I believe every student did the replacement work that I sent out for that class that I missed 11 years ago.  Undergraduates usually are so excited to get an hour off classwork, they don't mind doing a bit of extra work at home!
Not understanding material well can be a very dangerous situation.  I saw one of the other answers or comments suggested that being transparent on such shortcomings would lead to revolt, but the alternative, pretending that you know it well when you don't, can be absolutely devastating.  In situations like a preset college course, maybe you don't tell them you're struggling.  But you also work very hard to get ahead of it.  Going in and trying to work a few "simple" problems when you're struggling with the topic is just asking for a mess.  The one thing worse than cancelling class or delaying (or even skipping) material is to come into class and teach it wrong, make repeated mistakes, and absolutely confuse everyone.  We've probably all had teachers come in and absolutely make a mess of problems, and we left understanding the material less than before.  I had a teacher in my major who repeatedly did that.  That's where you lose control of a class, when you pretend to know what you're doing but don't show it.  Your number one job as a teacher isn't keeping the schedule, but making sure you're improving upon any that they learn independently.  As such, in many courses, textbook reading is required.  Indeed, in many courses the the expectation isn't that they're necessarily reading it all the time before class.  But when they do reading, most students should at least a loose handle on the information.  Coming in and making mistakes is bound to destroy that.  If indeed you cancelled class, emphasize to them that this is the one time where the textbook reading is even more necessary, so that you are able to pick up moving ahead next week, and reduce the hit of the missed class.
I've certainly been hit with situations through the years where I had new material to suddenly teach.  As a private school teacher, I often substituted in a variety of courses.  Or in my own classes, like chemistry or history, I offered a little freedom to investigate any topics that particularly interested my students... and ended up doing cram sessions on stomach digestion or Native American tribes.  Students threw new-fangled common core math approaches at me, and occasionally it'd appear so abstruse that I needed to pass on it until next class to not waste time and focus.  No one expects us to know everything.  Even a major professor will get a question they don't know how to answer occasionally, or a problem that they'll manage to struggle with unexpectedly.  Instead of trying to force it, take a step back, tell them you'll look back into it further, and then follow up the next week, or online, (or directly to the student outside of class, if it's indeed an unnecessary tangent that will be more detriment than gain to other students).  Pretending to know something you don't seems the cardinal sin in teaching.  It suggests the students should have learn the same undercurrents of pride and dishonesty.  It may not be quite so fitting for college courses, but there are definitely many teaching situations where you should admit to your students you don't perfectly understand.  It shows them that you're not so different from them and need to work at it sometimes too**.  And ends up encouraging confidence and effort from the students who need it most.
And you did well.  If you're hit with a situation where you're just not making it, don't be afraid to ask for help.  You may be embarrassed, you may even look poor in the eyes of your superior, but it's better to do what is necessary than to pretend.  There's no guarantees you'll get the help, but there's often a wealth of assistance right at your front door if you'll just be bold enough to seek it.
Overall, you adapted.  You fought hard to overcome it, and you kept the best interest of your students at the front.  Decorum be darned, that's what teaching is all about.  And we need more teachers doing that!

This semester, after a few months of teaching a very specialized but little known programming language (INSEL), students were pleased with my lessons but expressed the desire to learn something more well-known.
I know Ruby very well, and could write Ruby code in my sleep. It's not really widespread in academia though, so I feared they would also complain about it. In comparison, Python is probably used in every university on Earth.
For some reason, I claimed "I could teach you RUBY or (whispering) Python, if you want". All the students cheered "YEAH!!! PYTHON!!!!". The big problem was : I didn't know Python at all! The syntax is often similar to Ruby, but that was about all I knew about it.
I had less than 2 weeks to learn it before teaching it. It was stressful but exhiliarating to learn so much new material in such a short time. I used https://learnpythonthehardway.org/ and began answering easy questions on stackoverflow.
I also was very honest with the students, telling them I still had a lot to learn about the language. I also warned them that I very well might not know how to answer a question. If that happened, we would train a very useful skill together : Using Google with the correct search terms, finding the corresponding StackOverflow thread, picking the correct answer and adapting it to our problem.
During 3 full days of hands-on Python programming, it only happened once. Students were happy and learned a lot. They asked very insightful questions, which often helped me learn the language better. Depending on their progress and feedback, it was also easier to adapt the next lesson to their needs.
So yes, you can do it, you just need to be very honest, humble and motivated. Be sure to bring enough material (books or laptop+Internet). That way, if you don't know an answer, you can involve the students in the process of looking for a solution. You will learn something, they will train an essential skill and time will pass faster that way ;)
Good luck!

A few ideas sprung to mind when I read about your dilemma.
1) Skip ahead to a topic that you are ready to handle. That would give you a couple days to keep working on the topic that has you flummoxed. You can always go back to it next week.
2) Buy some time by holding a “review session”. Take a handful of the more recent topics covered, and reexamine those topics. One good way to do this is to come up with a complicated problem that requires a couple different techniques covered. That way, this becomes a worthwhile lesson in how to synthesize some of the techniques recently taught in the class.
3) Try turning this into an active learning exercise. Typically, you would solve a problem in front of the class. This time, have the students guide you into solving the problem. Chances are you’ve got a few bright students in your class that can crack this nut.
Admittedly, #3 is a risky proposition. If the students ultimately encounter as much trouble as you’ve had in figuring this out, it might make for an awkward moment in the classroom. But I have tried this before, and it was successful. (Even if they can’t solve the problem completely on their own, a student might provide a nudge in the right direction that helps you figure it out on the fly.)
If things don’t work out how you’d like, you can still “save face”, as long as you’re able to figure it out down the road and eventually explain to the students what you were unable to solve during the “active learning” session.

Sounds like you or your department is very disorganized. That "winging" mentality is what got you in this situation in the first place. I suggest you change the way you approach things, get rid of the "winging" mentality. Know your sh*t. Teaching is not theatrics, it's not a show. And for the teachers that believe it is about theatrics they're garbage.

My department is incredibly disorganised (see above comment about my work over Intersession). I have been a math tutor for 8 years for an incredible range of students, privately, as well head math tutor of my undergrad and working for a tutoring company placed in low income public high schools. "Winging it" in that sense was always part of the job as I never knew what type of material, or attitudes, a student would have in a session. As far as my work as a TA, this is the only day I have been unprepared and normally have solutions available to students days prior to class.


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Shirtless picture on the academic page of a Ph.D. candidate seeking postdoc
I will finish my Ph.D. soon and am seeking a postdoc position.
To this purpose, I am creating my page, hosted by my university.
Personally, I don't generally take pictures of myself and don't like to.
There is a picture of mine (from 4 years ago) which I feel is fine,
where I was hiking on a mountain, without my T-shirt.
However, people won't see my nips anyway. I am a male, if this matters.
I wonder if such picture is fine in an academic page,
especially for someone who is trying to get a job.

Get someone with a smartphone to take a clothed picture of you and use that.

If you do keep the pic, don't be surprised if students photoshop you riding a bear and it becomes a meme

@user568458 Sounds like a win-win to me.

I don't really get the point of user568458

@user565739 Don't worry about it, it's just a vaguely-related joke.

You could always just photoshop a shirt on. People aren't going to look too closely, and if they do they'll just assume it's a weird lighting issue.

Do you want to be taken seriously?

@RoflcoptrException: It is in summer, in the south of France. It was very hot, and many people (local french people) hike without T-shirt (in the moutain).

I deleted my thumbnail suggestion because I checked with family members, who all responded thumbs down!  Sorry, @user565739.  However, they had a different suggestion for you -- have a friend take an informal snapshot of you in your work environment -- the more lab equipment, the better.

@aparente001 Thank you for giving suggestions (both the deleted answer and the above comment). I will take a picture, but it won't be with lab equipment though. I do mathematics and we don't have equipment beside sheets, pens and computers.

@user565739 - In that case, perhaps a nice messy chalkboard or whiteboard would make for a comfortable backdrop.

Possible duplicate of What is the effect of a PhD student dyeing their hair blue?

@RoboKaren I agree that it is related, but would disagree with the duplication because a) partial nudity is often significantly more culturally loaded than hair color, and b) hair color is intimately tied to facial appearance and more difficult to adjust than state of clothing.

When I asked the question, I have no idea that this is related to culture difference. I just wonder if this will be unprofessional, in a general sense.

I do not think it is "unprofessional". :-)

There are many very serious professors who include a funny photo in their academic web page, to remind people that they are humans too.

@Nemo or to remind themselves :-)

First, there is no rule that you need to have a picture of yourself on your professional webpage.  Most people do, but there's no rule.  It's nice to have some image that represents you (giving people's visual memories something to hold onto), but that could as easily be something from your research or anything, really.
Second, I would not recommend posting an image of yourself shirtless.  Your page will be looked at by (hopefully) a lot of different people with radically differing cultural and personal backgrounds.  Many of them are likely to have no problem with it, but some may.  When you are in an early and vulnerable stage of your career, it is generally safer to choose a relatively conservative image. Please note that I am not saying: "You Must Conform!"---instead, I am saying that failing to conform can have a cost, and that you should choose whether paying such as cost is worth it to you.
Finally, there is a simple solution that will nullify the question of being shirtless: just crop the picture to zoom in on just your face.

While academics often struggle to separate their professional and personal lives, putting effort into separating out your professional webpage from your personal webpage is important. As a minimum, you should clearly delimitate what is professional and what is personal.
Within the framework of this question, I can think of three situations where you might go hiking:

There are some academic fields where hiking is a “professional” activity (e.g., geology, anthropology, physical therapy, ...). In most of these fields, I believe, hiking without a shirt would be considered unprofessional. If my field involved a lot of hiking, I would include these on my professional webpage. That said, I would likely still not use one where I did not have a shirt on, even if the reason for not having a shirt on was professional.
In the sciences, and maybe other fields, academics often go on “lab hikes”. This type of activity straddles the personal/professional boundary. I would not take my shirt off on one of these hikes and I would not put these photos directly on my professional webpage. I might add a prominent link (e.g., "lab outings") to the photos from my professional webpage.
The final situation are personal hikes. These could still be with colleagues, but they need to be very close colleagues. The idea is that, in the case of a complaint (e.g., sexual harassment), you can “prove” the activity was not work-related. In these cases, hiking without a shirt is fine. Putting these photos on your professional website is a bad idea, but including a link from your professional website to your personal website is fine.

Does blogging count as too personal in my professional website and should be separated? Each post is well-thought and not to ranting.

@Ooker it is probably a new question, but if you are blogging about personal things, it is personal. If you are blogging about your field, it is professional.

@StrongBad The boundaries can be pretty blurry, though, unless you work strongly at pseudonymity.

Your appearance as a professional (which usually includes a collared shirt) will influence your ability to be taken seriously by many employers.  If you are in a technical field, your web presence is of significant importance.  And, as a post-doc, you may be considered temporary faculty.  So, I highly suggest you shave, do your hair nice, and put some nice clothes on.  Take a high-res photo with a white background (any wall will do) that you can crop to the shoulders up.  You can use a photo like that for your webpage as well as other needs (e.g. if you get a post-doc, they may put your photo up on the wall next to the rest of the faculty photos).  If your field of study is "outdoors", and a photo of you hiking is "work-related", I would advise you to also take an action shot (with your shirt on) of you doing work.  However, if you are working at "tropical" university with liberal culture (e.g. in Hawaii) then a shirtless photo will not negatively influence you.

A small correction: postdocs are not generally considered faculty.  They are, however, generally considered "staff" and "employee" and things like that.

@jakebeal no that is what I meant to say.  When I was a post-doc at a state university, we were considered "post-doctoral research faculty".  I've never heard of a post-doc being called "staff".

We were called "temporary research associates" which were part of the overall department faculty.  I think this is usually institution specific.

Post-docs are neither faculty nor staff but classified as "slave."  They should always be seen in a t-shirt or sweater with the name of their university so that they can not run away.

@jakebeal: Postdocs in mathematics are generally considered faculty, certainly by mathematicians but also by the administration to varying degrees. (In fact many departments arrange for their title to be something like "Doob Assistant Professor" or "Szegő Assistant Professor" to help the university keep straight that they should not be treated like postdocs in other fields.)

@TomChurch Intriguing, and very different than any other field I know.  Thank you: I've learned something today.

I didn't know the situations Tom said until I applied for postdoc recently, and it is just called Assistant Professor, which is a job for 2 years only.


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What should I do if the first author wants me to write the whole paper?
I have finished three years of work in a Ph.D. program. I've published one conference paper as sole author, and have recently sent out another paper to a prestigious conference.
I started a project last October with a professor who does not have anything to do with my dissertation. He asked me early on to do a lot of work so I asked him who is the first author, and he said he would be. I've already written the full literature review for this journal paper, and came up with the framework by myself. He has only advised me on it.
Now, I have a clear idea about my dissertation, and I have to write my proposal and defend it this fall. So, the work with this professor is rather burdensome to me right now. So far, he has not worked on it at all. I've written six or seven out of the 15 pages of the journal paper. The main thing left is data analysis. He wants me to do the data analysis and write it up as well, and recently he also asked me to write introduction of the paper. At this point, I thought, he wants me to write the whole paper, which he can edit at the last moment and become first author.
Since this paper does not have anything to do with my dissertation, I do not want to work with this paper anymore. I told him I am busy with my own research, it seems like that he will wait until I finish writing the paper.
What should I do? I do not want to cut the relationship but he is asking too much which I think is unethical. Any strategic advice will be appreciated.

UPDATE:
I talked to the professor and said there must have been misunderstanding about the responsibilities as a second author in my part and as a first author in his part. I said that I understood that writing literature review will meet the responsibility as a second author.
His brief comment on the e-mail was that he wrote a conference paper already, and this journal paper (that I'm working on) is a developed version of the conference paper. So, he did the major work already for the conference paper that is why he is the first author. And he stated that I am supposed to write a literature review and to do the data analysis for this journal paper.
OK. He has integrity in his position. I remember that he said something like this when we started this paper 10 months ago. But the problem was that his position was not re-enforced again, and the lit review I've done took off to a different terain. That means, I did a lot of creative interpretation of the framework. (Sorry, to technical folks. This is social science study using business management theories. The upfront literature review is very significant. My dissertation uses machine learning and NLP stuff. yes, this paper is unrelated with my dissertation).
Anyway, the reason I'm writing this update is to provide the professor's perspective that I've got to learn recently. So the major lesson I've learn through this experience is to keep reinforcing (in emails) about my understanding of my and his responsibilities on this project.

Were the data collected by this professor?

Repeat after me: "Your turn."

data is from the research institute he works. I do not wish to be a first author. I just want to focus on my dissertation.

From everything you say, this professor sounds like he qualifies for last authorship - "senior author": did not do much of the heavy lifting, but directed and edited, and considers the work good enough to carry his name. You should fight to be first author - take it up with the university authorities. Trying to be first author on a paper you did not do the majority of work on is unethical. It is also morally wrong. Get it fixed, or get away from him. You deserve getting credit - if the way you tell it is an accurate reflection of what's going on. Is there an ombudsperson you can talk to?

First of all: Good call to talk about authorship issues at the beginning, rather than only once troubles started! Now authorship issues do occasionally have to be re-negotiated depending on the course the project takes.
There do seem to be potentially two separate aspects in your question:
A. What to do if I have contributed as much as I am willing as a secondary author, yet the first author keeps asking for more?
- Point out that you have done X, Y and Z, and that you are only willing to do significantly more if you are the first author (fundamental reading + commenting remain unaffected of course).
B. I started a side-project, and I no longer want to work on this AT ALL.
- Make clear to your co-author that you have no intention to work on this project anymore, and that this pertains to the future, too. Either give them free rein to continue the project without you (either with you on the author list or not, depending on your preferences); OR make sure you are still available for basic reading/commenting, but simply nothing more extensive.
In both cases, if the coauthor shows a significantly stronger reaction than "medium annoyance", then maintaining a positive relationship to them is futile anyway.

In both cases, if the coauthor shows a significantly stronger reaction than "medium annoyance" ... -- If I were the OP, I would be way beyond the level of "medium annoyance."

Thank you a lot. I sent an email to him that I have limited time availability, and implied Aug is the timeline. His response was, we can discuss the feasibility of finishing the paper by the end of this year. He does not get it.

There is a huge difference between "I'm not doing this now." and "I'm not doing this ever."

@user37874 what happens when you read your disertation? You will not longer be a PhD student, are you still employed by the institution?

@user37874 "Implied Aug is the timeline."  I would not imply anything. You need to be very clear and direct. If you don't have the time or interest to complete this paper, then you need to say that and move on.

Since I suppose bad language is not allowed here, I'll be restrained. Suffice to say, as an academic I think that is a basic professional principle is lacking here: if you, with existing career, wage and pedagogical duties, are writing with a student, they should be first author. Always. Every time. No matter what.
Two reasons: first, you already have all the power and privileges. Students are not there to be consumed. Second, you don't want to be seen to be exploiting someone who is vulnerable to your power over them.
Short answer: this person sounds like a dick. Put them off, finish your PhD, get a job, then tell anyone following on after you to avoid writing with them.

Yup OP should cut his or her losses and stop contributing to it ... the lit review alone justifies secondary authorship. Seems like this Prof can not get funding and is just hijacking students to do all the work.

"Aways. Every time. No matter what." is too extreme. There are fields where authors are simply listed in alphabetical order, for example. Clearly the OP is not in such a field, but the extreme nature of your statement is unwarranted. Secondly, the claim that "you don't want to be seen to be exploiting someone who is vulnerable" is also a culture-specific opinion. There are cultures that are more strongly hierarchical than yours, that would not view the situation in the terms you use to describe it. Your answer is undoubtedly correct for your own academic field and your own country's culture.

The professor is putting it off until you present your dissertation. What happens then? Are you still employed by your institution?
If you have an position somewhere else, congratulations! Just tell him that you have other obligations, and that you will be available for comments and discussion, but your new employer would want you to work on their projects.
If you are going to remain at your institution, and don't have anything else that will pay your bills, you could use this project to improve your CV. I don't know in your field, but only two conference publications sounds on the weaker end (in technical fields in Sweden people usually finish with four first author journal papers after four years). If you don't have anything else (yet), you can ask him to hire you. If funding is not available, you may decide to work with him anyway, but letting him know that your main priority is finding a new job, and you will leave as soon as someone offers to pay you. You may also decide not to work for free, and you could tell him that.
In the case that you decide to actually continue with the project, you should discuss authorship again. You have done most of the job so far, and you have the work he wants you to do as a leverage. You could appeal to his humanity (as if professors had any!) and say that you are in a critical point in your career and need to strengthen your CV.

Practical question: How important is it to you that this paper be published?
If you don't do it, will it be?
If the answer to the first is "very" and the answer to the second is 'no", you're sorta stuck. What's right, and what will achieve the desired outcome, are different things.

I suppose this will have been dealt with in other threads, but the meanings of "first" and "second" authors do vary with discipline.  For instance, in theoretical CS it is most common for authors to be listed in strict alphabetical order by last name, regardless of level or type of contribution.  In the sciences it is more common for the "senior author" (who is primarily a mentor and may have conceived of the problem and the solution framework, but probably hasn't done as much hands-on work or writing) to be named last.  In engineering it can be a bit arbitrary, reflecting the authors' perceived order of importance or some other understanding.  (Though I work in engineering and applied CS, I personally follow the sciences' style, so I am almost always the last-named author in my papers, with my students or other junior co-author(s) being named first even if I have done a lot of hand-holding.)
On the main issue, I find it quite surprising that your professor wrote a conference paper which he now says has been extended, but you knew nothing about it.  How could you not have known?  In most cases the conference paper would be the first point of departure while extending for a journal, and I'm sure this is true across disciplines.

In all this mess you are suffering, I am trying to put myself at your position as I am also a researcher. As you said you don't want to cut the relationship so we will have to be polite as well as have to refuse his work also. Unfortunately I have to ask this - how much will it take to end up all his work? (Sorry to ask but what if, just be strong and complete it and end up with all mess). Next, can't you show you cannot do it efficiently now because you busy in your work. (You can do this by asking some questions about data analysis related to his work again and again and again and again.)
And if we can't do anything with him, do you have any friend/colleague who can help you with his work or what you can do is say your professor to provide you a helping source as you have your work also (say politely) and assign most of the work to source provided by guiding him/her.
If nothing actually working - than just do your work! Only your work will make your profile strong, once you done with the degree from there - nobody can do anything. If you had decided to be in this research field - you will occasionally come across these type of problems or worse. Don't worry! Just take it as a lesson for your future.
And the most important thing - when you are a professor never ever let anything like this happen to your student. I know it's not your problem's solution but this will help any other student in same trap.

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


text:
Why don't papers cite results within their references more specifically?
For example,

An explicit formula for ___ has been derived in [1].
[1]: Alice and Bob, Journal of Academia StackExchange, Vol 1 Iss 1, 2016

Problem is, the paper cited could very well include lots and lots of formulas. The desired formula might just be one of many results presented, and it might not be the central one.
Why don't authors write the reference as Alice and Bob, ... 2016, Equation 12? Even just giving the section name helps identify the relevant part of the reference, and it'd be a great time saver. However, I don't think I've ever seen anyone try this in formal publications. Why?

Journal articles are much shorter than books (usually) so there is less to look through. I have occasionally seen specific equation references, but it is uncommon in physics...

I've seen more specific references, especially in the context you mention of particular equations, though it's uncommon in part because it's rare that any one result in a paper stands on its own, typically the whole paper is necessary and you are citing the whole paper. In fields where direct quotation is common (e.g., in referencing literature or historical documents), it is also more typical to see more specific references. I guess overall I feel like the premise of your question is incorrect.

I personally don't think this level of specificity is necessary.  Even if just a datapoint is cited (e.g. a physical property of a compound), it is not hard for a researcher to skim the paper and check the value.  And in general, you want to glance at the whole paper to get some idea of its strength and/or to see if there is something else good about it.  Note this a different purpose for citation than the nitpicky Wikipedia citing of all facts, where just checking validity is the main point and less to call people's attention to literature.

Perhaps because researchers can find the relevant equation « easily » by reading the reference... If they found it difficult, then they would all put more detail than that required by Harvard or APA in their references...

@SolarMike have you not encountered papers where the same equation is indeed there in the reference, but the notation is so different it takes time to realize it's the same equation?

@Allure is that 100% of the time? If it is such an issue then it would have been addressed by authors "improving" their references... I notice you have not rebutted Brian Krause's comment above...

I also find it odd when such information is missing, at least those places where it is really needed (mainly when cited as part of a proof). I mean, when writing in LaTeX, there is a build-in feature of the \cite command to include this by putting it inside square brackets. As a referee, I point out if I think such should be added, and it usually is.

Sometimes we really struggle with characters count, too! Say I do have exceed that by ten characters. I will immediately remove Equation 12, for instance.

@Alchimista The result of that is that rather than going through your paper and looking for small and unimportant changes to make to remove those characters, you will ask each reader who wishes to follow your argument to go through a paper (presumably of a similar length) in order to make sure they know which result is meant.

@Tobias Kildetoft you don't consider that I said "we really struggle". Perhaps you never fought with characters counting, yet.

I looked through my copy of the American Institute of Physics Style Manual (Fourth Edition, 1990, perhaps dated but I have it at hand). In the section on "Footnotes and references" I find no mention at all of specifying specific parts of a reference (i.e. equation, table, specific page) within the reference itself (footnotes, endnotes, ...).
The only mention of page numbers is "Some AIP and Member Society editors may permit inclusive page numbers (first and last)...", and this restriction relates to the page numbers for the article as a whole (either journal or part of a book).
Now, this in no way prevents an author from pointing out, in the text, a specific equation or table or figure. However, this is not commonplace in my experience (but does occur).

I decided my comment might as well be an answer...
I think the premise is wrong, despite your personal experience: I have seen more specific references in papers. Typically this is done in the text directly rather than in the citation list, as in:

An explicit formula for ____ has been derived as Equation 12 in [1]

In fields where direct quotation or references to literature or historical documents are common, I have most often seen more specific references in footnotes, though footnotes are somewhere between rare and non-existent in my own field.
Overall, however, I would say that it is simply atypical that a specific result stands on its own; rather, the entire paper is required to support a given result, so the citation is to the entire paper. Even if you want to point a reader to a specific equation in a work, it is appropriate to cite the entire work as the source of that equation.

In the introduction section of a paper, such specificity might be considered out of place, since the goal is to provide an overview of what has been done without getting too bogged down in particular details.
In the methodology or main section of a paper (depending on the field), such references might be more appropriate, and I have seen papers that specify individual equations, tables, or figures. There's no reason they couldn't do so; I don't believe that there is any stylistic justification that would preclude it.

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


text:
What should an editor do if the authors have guessed who the reviewers are?
For whatever reason, authors are occasionally able to guess who the reviewers of their papers are. Sometimes these guesses have even gotten published:

"We appreciate the very candid critical insights of 2 anonymous reviewers, M. Gompper, and K. Beard." In Conservation Biology.
"We do not gratefully thank T. Appourchaux for his useless and very mean comments." In ESA.

What is the best way for an editor to handle these not-necessarily-correct guesses, if they are noticed:

during peer review (e.g. in the cover letter or author response to reviewers)
after acceptance?

The authors may find that editors have a long memory and their next paper takes a loooooong time to get published if ever. Hopefully the editors improve for the next paper, but in small fields this may be difficult.

If the authors keep their guesses to themselves, it's no problem. Such comments are the problem.

Grammatically the first example is ambiguous: are you sure that Gompper and Beard were the anonymous reviewers, and that the authors aren't thanking four people?

@Peter, there is no ambiguity. (Albeit, the link creates an underline, which makes the comma hard to see. I've editted to avoid that.)

In the second link it is not at all clear if T. Appourchaux was actually a reviewer.

I suspect this is rare enough that there is no "standard procedure".
If I were the editor, I'd ask for #1 to be deleted as the authors presumably cannot really be sure who the reviewers are (unless they are known to have voluntarily revealed their identities).
I'd ask for #2 to be deleted as it is simply in poor taste.  If they want to complain publicly about the review, they can do so in the "letters to the editor" column (if they are more polite about it), but it doesn't belong in the paper itself.
If the authors make guesses about the reviewers in the cover letter (not in the manuscript itself), I'd just ignore them, or perhaps say something like "Obviously, I will neither confirm nor deny your guesses."
(Disclaimer: I'm not an editor.)

Why do you think #1 suggests M. Gompper and K. Beard are reviewers? Similarly, why do you mention #2 in the context of the reviewing process?

Editors need not respond to author guesses.
Regarding,

We appreciate the very candid critical insights of 2 anonymous reviewers, M. Gompper, and K. Beard.

There is no suggestion that either M. Gompper, K. Beard, or both were anonymous reviewers. Actually, the serial comma suggests they are not. (Even if the comma were absent, I'd perhaps assume authors were unfamiliar with its need.) Similarly,

We do not gratefully thank T. Appourchaux for his useless and very mean comments.

Gives no suggestion that  T. Appourchaux was a reviewer.
(Useful) insights and comments are provided beyond the reviewing process and should be acknowledged.

There might be exceptions -- e.g., if authors are claiming reviewer bias, having correctly guessed the reviewer's identity -- but the OP doesn't provide sufficient details to determine whether that's the case here.

At the very least, the former could be altered two at least change the order to "We appreciate the very candid critical insights of M. Gompper, K. Beard, and two anonymous reviewers." That makes sure that there is no confusion as to whether they are the reviewers.

@Vincent There's really no confusion: https://www.google.com/search?q=serial+comma+jokes That said, I would favour your revision over the original.

Having said that, it seems that the authors have chosen that ordering to convey a weighting. Indeed, M. Gompper comes before K. Beard alphabetically (whereas the reverse is perhaps more natural, alphabetically). So, perhaps the authors considered insights from the anonymous reviewers as the most useful, followed by Gompper's insights, and finally those of Beard.

What gets published:

The paper itself - gets published (if it passed review).
The guesses themselves - don't get published, i.e. the naming of people gets removed from the acknowledgements.
The positive acknowledgements - get published.
The negative acknowledgements - published after editing the snideness out. This kind of oblique comments are not appropriate in a scientific publication.

I would also do the following:

Talk to the reviewers, preferably in an audio conversation rather than an email exchange, to try and feel out whether you believe there was some clear bias in the review which also led to them being found out, or whether it was innocent (e.g. because so few people on the PC are capable of reviewing). This is particularly important in case of a rejection.
Suggest to the authors to replace the negative acknowledgement with a letter to the editors and/or a blog post. Argument: "Do you think that people 100 years from now need to read jabs at dead people within last century's scientific community? It's unbecoming and cheapens your work."


text:
Reviewer signs name on review. Should the editor censor?
Say a reviewer writes something like

This paper is [yada yada blah blah].
Sincerely,
Professor John Smith, Big Name University

Should the editor just forward the review to the authors because Professor John Smith, by signing his name onto the review, is presumably willing to reveal his identity to the authors? Or should the editor keep the review anonymous by deleting the signature?

Just a data point: I have some senior colleagues who always sign their reviews, whether they are positive or negative. Their view is that reviewer anonymity is a right that they choose to waive, rather than a rule they have to follow. This is probably very field dependent though. (My colleagues who do this are Earth scientists.)

What about contacting the reviewer to clarify what their intentions are?

@Nathaniel i'll second that as an earth scientist myself. Many of the senior people around me always sign their name, unless they are forced to be anonymous.

If the journal is structured with a blinded review process, as most are in my experience, I would censor the name as an editor.
Only if there is some sort of explicit journal policy allowing reviewers to unblind themselves would I consider not censoring the name.

This answer relies on the assumption that the blinded review process is fundamentally reliant on compulsory, rather than offered anonymity. At least historically this is definitely not the case, and some people argue that reviewer anonymity is voluntary (others argue more strongly that it’s positively a bad idea). I therefore think this answer’s reasoning is flawed and, consequently, the recommendation is incorrect.

@KonradRudolph See JoshuaZ's answer. The signature of a senior person on a review, especially for a more junior author, could carry an implied threat of "Do what I say because I'm a big cheese and I can crush you".  Anonymity removes that power.

@JeffE You can make this argument but it’s definitely not obvious. And it’s flawed (I’d go even further: it’s flat out wrong): in single-blinded peer review a vindictive reviewer could punish non-compliance with review demands anyway, regardless of signature. In double-blind peer review this gets much harder — but, again, regardless of whether a reviewer wants to sign their review. The fact that a signature isn’t obviously seen as a threat completely removes its effectiveness to work as such.

@KonradRudolph Some journals explicitly have a policy that reviewers may give up their anonymity. In that case, as my answer states, no need to censor anything. As JeffE points out, there are arguments for anonymity regardless of reviewer views. In smaller worlds, breaking anonymity of one reviewer could easily break the anonymity of others indirectly, or at least reduce the uncertainty, as well as the implied threat that JeffE suggests, and the possible quid pro quo that could be implied ("I gave you a favorable review so you might do the same for me").

@KonradRudolph Sure, but a vindictive colleague could also punish disagreement even without being a reviewer.  Eliminating abuse is impossible.  I'm proposing the anonymity takes away a channel inappropriate leverage, and just as importantly, the appearance of inappropriate leverage.  Authors should not feel pressured to accept reviewer opinions because the reviewer is their senior; crucially, that pressure exists independently of the senior reviewers' actual intentions.

So, I have heard of people not censoring when people do so. There have been at least some controversies in some fields where this has happened. See for example, https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-self-aware-fish-raises-doubts-about-a-cognitive-test-20181212/ .  For that reason I would strongly recommend removing the signature. Anonymity is important, and I personally (and other people) have had bad experiences with referees who have deliberately unmasked themselves. A big part of the concern where a referee has deliberately unmasked themselves is that if they are prominent in the field there's a possible implied intimidation or threat of retaliation for results they don't like. Also, it is possible that the file you got was intended for the editor and wasn't actually intended to not be unmasked in the first place. But regardless, editors should do all they can to keep the referees anonymous.

I would also mention to the reviewer that it isn't appropriate to sign reviews. This might result in some discussion, of course.

What were these bad experiences about?

I think the name should not be elided without asking the reviewer. If it is your policy to strictly cut out the identification, you could tell the reviewer that you cannot use their review with an unblinded name and ask them permission to do so. But I strongly recommend to never remove any words (including name) silently from a review.

@henning , I don't want to give too much detail about my own bad experience related to this because it occurred in a very small field where the person in question is someone I still need to interact with, but the Quanta article linked above does give one of the sort of examples of what can happen when a reviewer makes a point about who they are and what their opinion is.

@JoshuaZ That's interesting. The article reports a reviewer who waived anonymity. His review strongly criticized a paper that was part of a debate in which the reviewer took an opposing view to the paper. He also had an important stake in the debate. But I don't understand what difference it made that the he signed the review. The review would have been critical regardless, and the author would have improved his study and resubmitted at another venue, also regardless of the reviewer's anonymity.

@henning The concern is in part that if someone is sufficiently prominent in a field they are by non-anonymizing their review potentially engaging in implied intimidation. That's one of the issues. Tangent: I actually had an issue in another direction on another paper where there were multiple reviewers and a technical error resulted in all the reviewers being deanonymized to each other (not to the authors); one of the other reviewers was extremely prominent. My review was in essential agreement with his, but if it had disagreed a lot, I would have been concerned.

@JoshuaZ I see. That makes sense.

@BenCrowell, good point. I've edited the answer to explicitly mention the issue of prominent people engaging in implied intimidation.

There are a few different cases to consider.  First of all, there is the question of whether a journal's policy even allows for signed reviews.  I think that most journals do not have an official policy about this.  However, if there is a strict prohibition against non-anonymous reviews, then the editor should remove the identifying information before sending the report on to the authors (and any other relevant parties, such as other referees who are working on the same paper).
In the more likely event that signed reviews are not outright forbidden, then editor should look at the additional question of whether the referee really intended to make their identity known.  From the report alone, it may or may not be clear whether a referee is intentionally choosing to dispense with anonymity.  If there is just a signature at the end of the report, the reviewer might have added it out of absentmindedness.  If the situation is unclear, the editor should check back with the referee, to see whether they actually intended to include their name before passing that name on.
However, I have seen one review that concluded with:

I choose to sign this review.
[Referee's Name]

In that case, it was quite clear that the reviewer (who was both a very senior person and giving a positive report) was not worried about maintaining anonymity.  In a clear-cut situation like this, a referee can simply send the authors the report without any additional concerns.

This policy seems to encourage signing every positive report with your name...

@HRSE, I'm not sure it does.  My reviewing style is very distinctive.  If I signed a positive report and then didn't sign a negative one for the same author, then it would be very clear to the author who had authored the negative report.  (Probably it is anyway, to be honest.)

If the journal policy is to maintain anonymity then it should not be done, even if the referee has indicated her/his name can be revealed.  The reason is simple enough: if the review is not signed and one knows that John Smith from Big Name University usually signs his reports, then one can deduce the referee was NOT John Smith, which may help the author conclude about the identity of the real referee.

On the other hand, if one is really dedicated to this kind of sleuthing, one could simply ask John Smith, who, being willing to sign his reviews, is presumably also willing to own up to them even if unsigned.

"Should" or "should not" is impossible to answer in the general case. Some journals may have a formal policy one way, some may have a policy the other, and I suspect that the vast majority have no formal policy about what to do with signed reviews.
There is a (small and localized but real) debate over whether reviewers should sign their reviews, and at least for a while it seemed that there was a small movement toward signed reviews. I can say that I've signed reviews and at least in some instances they have been passed on to the authors, so there are some journals and editors who don't have concerns about this.

Regardless of the policy, as has been argued elsewhere, silently changing a referee's report is, I think, not good practice.  If it is to be changed, then it should be done only with notice to the referee.

As ZeroTheHero touches on, anonymity is not a property of an individual, it's a property of a set of people. You can't have a single anonymous reviewer; if of the set of possible reviewers, all but one sign their name, then whenever there's a review that isn't signed, everyone knows whose it is (note my wording does admit the possibility that there are people that are qualified to review but haven't been asked to do so by the journal, in which there would be some anonymity in that people might be unsure as to whether the review is from one of them, but for many papers the set of people qualified to review is quite small). We don't let voters waive "their" right to secret ballot, because if all the voters for Party A sign their names on their ballots, then we know that any voter whose name we don't see voted for another party. Since anonymity is not a property of a single person, it is not the right of a single person to waive.
Now, if you as a journal want to have limited anonymity, that is your choice, but it's not the reviewer's choice.

I was involved as a referee in a case where the authors turned around and invited me to be a co-author, and I've heard of that happening before.  I didn't accept the offer, because the paper wasn't something I wanted my name attached to, but I can imagine cases where it would be appropriate to do so.

Welcome to this site! I'm not sure how your answer answers the question. Did cou sign your review with your name and have you been contacted by the authors?

Even without an author's signature, this is possible; the authors can contact the editor with any messages, including invitations to co-author, for the referee.

I have also done this, but with the editor as an intermediary.

I think the editor should delete it to avoid spoiling the puzzle game of figuring out who the reviewer is.  (Easy one is when they ask the author to cite them.) ;-)

figuring out who reviewed you. Please explain who is that "you"?

@scaaahu "you" will be the author, if the author is also the reviewer then that really is an issue... Other readers are also left with the puzzle... Don’t think it really deserved a downvote...

@SolarMike The question asks what should the editor do, not even a reviewer or an author.

4 "you" and not all the same ...

@SolarMike I was asking the answerer to explain the "you" in figuring out who reviewed you. Which "you" are you talking about?

@scaaahu well you as "you should delete" also you as "you remove » but those are probably the same. Then you in « reviewed you » and lastly you in "ask you to ". Which is 4, but likely only 3 separate entities...

"Easy one is when they ask the author to cite them."
I had a professor in grad school who when reviewing papers would try to find at least one highly relevant paper that wasn't cited which they were not an author of and ask for it to be cited. This was deliberately to throw people off who make this sort of assumption.


text:
What is the difference between predatory publishers and vanity presses?
The University of Sunshine Coast's website gives the difference as:

Vanity publishers are publishers that will charge the author a fee for publishing a book ...
While similar to vanity publishing, predatory Open Access publishers seek to take advantage of the Gold Open Access model, whereby the author pays to have an article available as Open Access on the journal website.

This sounds pretty trivial: vanity presses are presumably willing to publish anything, including journal articles, if paid.
If there is a difference, what is it? If there is no difference, why did Jeffrey Beall create a new term?

I wouldn't describe vanity publishers as disreputable. They provide a valuable service for people who want a small edition of a book for personal/family use. A family cook-book for example, or a personal family history. Normally sales are only to the author.

There is also a third option: self-publishing, which can be used to publish materials when the author doesn't want to use a publisher who wants more control than the author wants to yield. Amazon, for example, has a self publishing arm through which books can be sold to the public. Some textbooks are published this way.

I've always seen the terms as somewhat distinct.
A predatory journal seeks to deceive and create the impression of publishing a peer-reviewed article. I take the predatory journals to always be engaged in a conspiracy to defraud the academic process (where authors can range from stooges to willing co-conspirators). Here, the reason why authors pay can be imitation of Gold-standard open-access or it can be pay-to-play to defraud their employers.
In contrast, vanity presses are sometimes just really low-tier publishers without malice. I don't think they always are trying to create the impression that what they produce is high quality academic work. The failing from an academic perspective of a vanity press is that they don't have robust (or any?) standards for what they will publish in book form and they don't engage in academically sufficient (or any?) editing practices of what they publish. The product on offer is you can say "I published a book". I think the business model here is that vanity publications don't make publishers money, so they instead charge the authors to break even (or make a profit?).
Regarding your point about a vanity presses willingness to publish an article, sure they can print it up for you -- as a book, but I severely doubt they are going to make it seem like it's volume 4 of the international journal of basketweaving and wickerwork.
I'm sure it varies by field, but in my field as I understand it, journal articles in top-tier journals tell us far more about the quality of someone's work than even books in top-tier presses, because presses publish things of sufficient quality that make them money. As you go down the scale on each side, incentives and motives shift, but the article vs. book distinction remains meaningful.

So the differences are: journal vs book publishers, and honest low-tier vs impostor?

That's at least how i interpret the distinction.

In principle they are both going in the same direction but the aim is slightly different:

Vanity publishers are publishing (nearly) everything and the authors
usually have the aim of getting something out (in an academically
looking style) that they would otherwise not get out. e.g. homeopathy
or personal views that are not supported by data and or contradict
current knowledge. They serve the personal "vanity" of the authors. Sometimes the money might not be the primary focus of such a publisher (but often it is) but getting a certain view across is more important. In a department where I worked before one old (and close to forced retirement) professor used such a publisher to get out a (quite weird) book about how to integrate the existance of god with evolution. But yes, as statet in the comments below they can also be used for publishing harmless books/papers for family use e.g. a familiy tree.
Predatory publishers aim to make as much money as possible form
academics by accepting everything and charging open access fees. This might contain legitimate science but a lot of it will not have the necessary standards. Instead of the author's vanity the money is the primary focus here.