text:
Is it possible (practically, in real life) to pursue two very distinct research interests (e.g. in AI and theoretical physics)?
TL;DR: Is it possible to pursue applied research in AI and theoretical physics after a PhD degree in CS focusing on applied AI (as a professor at some universities)?
Long version:
Hello, I'm a 3rd year undergrad at a university in Vietnam.
I've been wondering about the practicality of the above questions for quite some time but I have not yet been able to decide.
For a little bit of background:
I have a fairly good foundation on CS because I have been doing competitive programming since I was 13. Until recently, I feel that research in AI was too applied (I did some research with an advisor on computer vision recently), and then, I discovered theoretical physics and got the feeling that "This is for me,  my true self".
However, the problem is, in my country, pursuing theoretical research does not really guarantee a stable future career (with good money). So, I'm thinking about doing a PhD in CS focusing on applied AI and self-study physics. After that, I will probably get a position at a university and conduct research in both direction (more focus is put on only one direction, of course).
Can you kindly provide me some pieces of advice for my future career path, or, is my plan possible?
Thank you for spending time reading and answering my question.

Sure, it is possible.  Whether you will be successful, is another matter.  You do well by pursuing what attracts/interest you.  However, given that you are limited by your environment, then there is always sacrifice.  You could leave Vietnam and pursue your interest in another country, or stay, and pursue a more lucrative topic that is not your primary interest.  Alternatively, you could marry the two areas; e.g., quantum computing.  All the best!

You could study physics and move to AI later. Many top AI researchers were originally physicists. It's a very good education, and with your programming background, you will have possibilities. Self-studying physics is difficult, because there is a lot nonobvious stuff that you have to pick up from your profs and peers. Programming has a lot more hands-on resources, and - so to say - via running software, you can do your own experiments. That possibility is very limited in physics. TL;DR: studying physics, moving to AI is - in my opinion - more viable than the other way round.

Are you interested in / willing to combine them? I do not know about theoretical physics specifically, but there is plenty of room for overlap between AI and physics.

@Captain Emacs: I'm also aware of the difficulty of physics, too. But in my current situation, I think taking a PhD in CS is easier since a PhD means I proved my ability to do independent research, not about how much I know about CS/AI (from my advisor). So, I'm considering trying to make connections with other physics students in Vietnam to study with them, and I think I can move to physics after completing the PhD first.

@cag51: I have also finding combination of the two but sincerely, I don't really feel interested by research topics in those areas. Thank you very much for giving me an option!

Its certainly easier if you do it in an overlapping field like robotics, physics experiments controls or similiar. AI or more general computer science is utilized in all those fields heavily.

There has been interesting work (dating back to the 1990s) in using genetic programming to have computers rediscover Kepler's laws of planetary motion (see this for a nontechnical discussion). Surely there is more work that could be done along similar lines. If you have some freedom in your dissertation topic, you could pick one that involves using AI in a problem in physics.

Particle collider detectors are increasingly using AI to reconstruct events.

It is possible (even “practically, in real life”) to do all sorts of things that are very difficult to do, like: publish five bestselling novels; climb the highest mountain in every continent; win a gold medal in the Olympics; become a successful movie actor; etc etc.
The point is that questions like yours (which seem to get asked here regularly) are very difficult to give a meaningful answer to. We don’t know you and what you’re capable of. Some people can do the thing you’re asking about, others can’t. So just asking “can it be done” is a question that, if interpreted literally, has an easy answer that’s not very interesting or helpful (“yes, it can be done”), and if re-interpreted to mean what I think you really want to know (“can I , the specific person asking this question, do this thing?”), isn’t a question that I or anyone else here have the information to answer.
Perhaps the most helpful way of addressing the question is to look at the number of people who can do the thing you’re asking about. Well, I’ll be honest, that number is extremely small. Most people who want a career in academia already find it challenging enough to do one PhD in one discipline and then pursue a position as researchers in that one discipline. And even from among those super talented people who find it a bit easier than the rest and are smart and hardworking enough that they can realistically contemplate specializing in two very distant disciplines, one of which being as notoriously difficult as theoretical physics and being acquired purely through self-study, only a vanishingly small fraction of that already small group will care to invest the time and energy that it would take to broaden their reach in such a way. For those people it’s not really about a lack of ability - more about the fact that it’s an inefficient strategy for becoming successful and maximally realizing one’s potential; but it kind of amounts to the same thing in the end.
Summary: can it be done? Yes. Is it something that I’d recommend to anyone to have as their career plan? No.

Thank you for this advice! I was looking for a truely practical advice from someone who have a lot of experienced since I was too young to set out a reasonable career plan.

I'd like to address what I see as a misconception in the original question.  You wrote,

I have a fairly good foundation on CS because I have been doing competitive programming since I was 13.

But computer science is not the same as computer programming.  Here is an analogy: Computer programming is to computer science as elementary arithmetic is to university-level mathematics.  When you were young, you learned how to do addition, multiplication, and so on.  As a third-year undergraduate, you've surely been exposed to calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, and so on.  No doubt you appreciate that being able to add and multiply is quite different from being able to integrate!
Computer programming is a skill that can be applied in many different fields and in many different ways.  It can be applied to AI, but also to mobile phone applications, accounting software, controlling traffic lights, streaming movies, and lots of other things.  It's a very practical skill, like being an electrician.  Computer science, on the other hand, is more about what we can compute, how fast we can do it, what quality of results we can expect, and so on.  It's more like being a physicist with a deep understanding of quantum electrodynamics.  That physicist may know how electricity works, but you probably wouldn't ask him to wire your house.  In just the same way, there are computer scientists who are terrible programmers.
Given your interests, you might find yourself interested in scientific computing at some point: Writing code to predict the weather, determine the strength of a bridge, simulate electrical circuits, and so on.  Or not.  It can be hard to know where you'll end up.  The wise thing to do is to put yourself in a position where you have the flexibility to pursue your interests.
I don't know you or your situation, so I'm not qualified to make specific recommendations.  Instead I'll leave you with a question.  Suppose you pursue just one field for the length of your career; somehow you never get the chance to contribute to the other field.  Forty years later, which will you regret more: Not researching physics, or not researching AI?

Yes, to be clear to the OP, computer science has more to do with pure mathematics and logic than it does computer programming.

I think you are the one with the misconception, because competition programming is heavily CS based and not like general software engineering. The comparison of elementary to university mathematics is ridiculous as well because general programming requires a lot of other skills such as writing maintainable code and working in a team.

+1 for the question at the end, I think it goes to the core of OP’s dilemma.

@qwr There are many different types of programming competitions. We both have preconceptions about their content and value. If the OP chooses to describe his experience in more detail I will update my answer accordingly. Regarding the analogy, it was not meant to be perfect, just illustrative. I still think it was adequate for that purpose.

From my point of view calculus resembles elementary arithmetic much more than it resembles advanced mathematics :).

All else being equal one can safely assume that AI is likely to have a greater impact on society and bring in more money. I know that's not what the OP was asking about, but we are trying to give practical advice and s/he is young ;-). As an AI specialist you'll likely never worry about paying next month's rent after your BS.

I’d like to offer a complement to Dan Romik’s answer.  Roughly summarising, that answer points out that this is possible, but is a challenging plan, and (for most people) very difficult to succeed with — all of which I agree with.
But I wouldn’t therefore advise abandoning the plan entirely.  Ambition is great!  The important thing with such an ambitious plan is just to aim high, but be aware of the difficulty, and make sure you have a good fallback plan if it doesn’t all succeed.  The thing to avoid is just staking everything on an ambitious plan, with no fallback.
For instance, if a PhD student told me they wanted to work on a particularly difficult problem, I would make sure they were aware of how difficult it is, and I would strongly advise them to also work on some more tractable problem at the same time, so they don’t risk ending up with nothing.  But I wouldn’t discourage them from pursuing the difficult problem altogether.
In your case, the plan you outline has a built-in fallback: you can, at any point, give up on the physics ambitions and just continue with the PhD in AI.  So if that’s a fallback situation you wouldn’t be unhappy with, I’d say go for it on your plan — take the PhD in AI, and self-study in physics on the side as far as your time, energy, and interest allow.  (And it may not have to be just self-study: you may be able to take physics courses on the side, if your university allows this.) And be aware that it’s unlikely, though not impossible, that you’ll be able to get into pure theoretical physics research this way; but the physics you learn will almost certainly be useful anyway, as having a knowledge of a wide range topics (and not just the obvious ones) is very valuable for researchers in any field.

Hmm. Aiming high is great, but you are ignoring the fact that OP needs to first of all make a decision in which general direction to aim. It’s not enough to have a fallback plan, the fallback plan needs to be something OP can imagine themselves being happy with doing for the rest of their life in the overwhelmingly likely case that it has to be adopted. By giving the advice to “go for it” you are encouraging someone who wants to be a physicist to choose a path that will, with 99.99% chance, lead to them never becoming a physicist. “Go for it”? Sure, but only if you understand the consequences.

@DanRomik: Absolutely — I don’t mean to downplay the extent to which the OP should be realistic that the full ambition they outline is unlikely to be attainable.  If they are really un-interested in AI in itself, then this wouldn’t be a good plan.  But if they’re happy with the idea of most likely ending up as an AI specialist with a strong physics background on the side, then that lets them keep open the ambition of becoming a researcher in both.


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My native language is English but I was raised in a different country, how do I prove my native language?
I was born in the US and stayed for a little over 2 years, thus English and Spanish (my parents' native languages) are both my native languages. I've stayed in near constant contact with English and never lost the language even if I was raised for the rest of my life in a Spanish speaking country.
I'm currently looking for scholarship options abroad, and most will require me to take an English proficiency test as if learned as a second language (like the TOEFL or IELTS exams), which is not the case. I haven't been able to find any information on how scholarship language requirements work for native speakers and even then, I'm not sure how I could prove that it is, indeed, one of my native languages.
Is there any certificate that I could get to prove that I'm a native speaker? Or would I have to take one of these exams despite that anyway? I'm aware my situation is uncommon so I don't know if any information is available; either way I appreciate any kind of advice or info anybody has on this.

Is this about undergraduate admissions?  Seminary school? A PhD program?  Also, abroad from where?  If you are not in the US, then aboard would include the US.  Please clarify.

Is there any reason you don't want to take the exam?

Language includes reading and writing as well. Was your education done in English or Spanish? Being verbally fluent has little bearing on producing appropriate writings (essays, term papers, etc.).

@Buffy the exam costs money to take and effort to get there if you are not close to a test centrum. I can certainly see reasons to not take it.

Wouldn't "born in the US" be enough? Similar story here but in the UK: no university ever asked me to take any language test once it was clear that I was British, even though I'd lived abroad all my life. If they do, you can always play the "Are you kidding me?" card.

@Buffy I had that exact situation when I came study in the US. The reason I refused to take the TOEFL exam was the racism I was seeing. I was black and the whites students in similar situations to mine were given waivers. I finally convinced them that all the fights I had with them were much harder than the test they wanted me to take, and they had absolutely no problem understanding me.

@JohnSmith, while nothing excuses racist disparities, I'll guess that you put more effort into the fights than you would have into taking the test.

@PatrickT Very little of being born someplace assures proficiency in the language of the place. Particularly for someone who spent only two years there, with parents who spoke a different language, and then left. Certainly a university can choose whatever criteria they want, but that particular one doesn't seem that meaningful.

Answering to various comments: 1)Its about a masters degree in Aisa where they require english to apply. 2) It's a quite expensive exam where I'm from and honestly it would just be easier to not have to present it 3) My education was in spanish, but I had tutoring in english all my life, as well as reading and writing academically on my own 4) Overall it just seems easier to take the exam anyways given the answers I got, but I really apreciate getting answers questions and advice

Thank you to everyone who answered, I think overall it's just easier to take the test, I had little to no information about the topic so it really helped to read all the answers and comments

@AerenMunoz Those circumstances you describe are exactly why these tests are given. You don't have English skills because of where you were born, but because of life-long tutoring and study. For you and others, the way to demonstrate the outcome of that hard work and study to a university who has never met you is with a strong result on a language exam.

Well, I'm a Brit raised in Britain and I had to do an English test to get into a British university. So it's nothing special. Feel glad you are about to do a test in something you know you are good at!

For what it's worth, I'm in a very similar situation: my father is a native English speaker and my mother a native Greek speaker and I was raised a native speaker of both languages, despite having grown up in Greece. However, since I also went to school in Greece, I sat through the same English as a foreign language courses and also took the same tests as my classmates. They were just trivial for me, although I didn't score perfect on the Cambridge Proficiency test, something which is still a great source of  amusement to my father 20-some odd years later.

@PatrickT I bet they required you to have GCSE English at grade 5

@WendyG. Nope. They required nothing at all. I was not schooled in English either. That was back in the 1990s mind you.

It sounds like you're confusing native with primary; or at least the application process doesn't provide a way to distinguish that nuance. My native language is Ukrainian because I was born and lived there till 4 years of age and primarily spoke Ukrainian at home. I would in no way consider Ukrainian to be my primary language these days and would fully understand if their universities asked me to take a Ukrainian proficiency exam.

I know of a British woman, who has lived in Italy for almost 25 years, married to an Italian, her children are bilingual. She's been running a language school in Italy for 15 years, she pays all her taxes in Italy.  She has residence in Italy and yet when Brexit happened and she applied for Italian citizenship she was expected to attend Italian classes and pass an Italian speaking, writing and listening exam. Two years as a baby in the US is nothing. You'll have to do the IELTS or TOEFL. Choose the exam format that you feel more comfortable with.

@Mari-LouA I had a friend with an engineering phd, move to the US had to do an engineering exam aimed at apprentices to get her engineer licence. she nearly got something wrong as it was in imperial and nearly fluffed a conversion.

Is there any certificate that I could get to prove that I'm a native speaker?

That is exactly what the TOEFL and IELTS people give you after you take the test.  (keep in mind most native speakers will not get the top score)
Usually a transcript from an English-language high school or university is sufficient.

Nobody cares what your native language is.  They want to know your current language ability.  Plenty of native English speakers do not have sufficient skills to succeed in a university.  People from English-speaking countries are evaluated with transcript instead of a standardized test.

A transcript from an English-language high school is definitely NOT enough. I studied in a British school my whole life and I still need to take an IELTS (before my undergrad, now while I'm applying for a masters). I do not recall any university in Europe/Canada that waives the IELTS/TOEFL requirement unless you are from an English speaking country.

@AyamGorengPedes that depends. I have a different experience. UBC, a major university in Canada didn't require a TOEFL because I had completed an English-taught bachelor's in the Netherlands (a country where English is not an official language). If I recall correctly, Texas A&M waived the TOEFL too. If you can't afford the TOEFL, it's definitely worth asking the respective admissions departments directly what their policy is.

To the above comments, each university/department has their only policy, which is usually stated on its website.

I was always under the impression that the C2 level specifically refers to an ability to speak the language on a native level. What's the reason most, as you put it, native speakers will not get the top score? (For what it's worth, I'm a native speaker of German who got the top score at TOEFL C1 in Uni, but never had a reason to even attempt to take a C2 course in English)

"Nobody cares what your native language is." I was going to argue that I knew of an exception, but It turns out that the answer to How do companies like Netflix find sufficiently skilled comedy translators to translate comedians like Ricky Gervais into 160 different languages? is that their selection is online test-based (heavy on idiom awareness) and not geographic-based, which 100% supports your answer!

@Sixtyfive I remember C2 level being a long way below "native level". The toefl and toeic are extremely "academic". You can prepare for them specifically by exercising with a book of past exams. A C2 toelf/toeic level proves that you were well-prepared for the exam, not that your English level is even remotely close to that of a native.

@Sixtyfive A five-year old is also a native speaker. Some aspects of C2, as far as language exams are concerned, correspond to the level of an educated adult native speaker in specific contexts (and in other aspects the requirement is below the level of a native speaker) as most learners study a language for academic and professional purposes (and mostly only these purposes require a language certification).

Additionally, standardized exams unfortunately can and often must be learnt explicitly. I know native English speakers who "fail" IELTS because they did not understand the marking rubrics for the speaking portion. They of course speak English perfectly well but they were not saying the things the examiners are (required to be) looking for.

@Joooeey There are many universities that do. E.g. Sweden accepts German high school diplomas with a certain grade as proof. Oddly, no German universities that I came across accept this as proof of English skills.

The simplest course is just to take one of those exams, though, yes, there is some expense of time and money.
Colleges/universities do not want to spend time on customized treatments. What's their motivation? They're not being hostile, it's more like they simply don't have anyone whose job would be to appraise non-standard certification of sufficient English fluency.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, in some cases self-confidence in fluency is more a personality test than a certification of fluency. :) Rather than getting embroiled in such stuff, there are many motivations to just go the standard route(s).

At my institution (CUNY in New York, USA), the criteria for identifying "native language" (and hence exemption from TOEFL testing requirements) is basically that you hold a high school diploma from an English-language speaking country. The web page for undergraduate admissions says this (note different schools even in the same system have varying cutoff requirements):

Applicants on a temporary visa who were educated in a non-English
environment are asked to submit results from TOEFL, IELTS, PTE or
Duolingo. This is one of several academic components evaluated during
admission review.

Similar language is given for graduate admissions:

Please note that if you are an international student who completed a
bachelor’s degree program in the U.S. or an English Speaking country
like the U.K or Australia (India, Bangladesh and Pakistani students
are still required to take the TOEFL exam) then you are exempted from
the TOEFL exam.

See here for a specific list of country-by-country requirements for the undergraduate program. Perhaps the universities you're applying to will likewise have their own specific definitions for this requirement.

one important note -- doesn't that say "bachelor's" rather than high school?

@MikeM -- Good point, I took one slice from the undergraduate admissions page, and one from graduate. Trying to clarify now.

Duolingo, really??

@FerventHippo Duolingo offers a proctored online language test that has been relatively widely recognized especially after the early stages of the pandemic where traditional options were not available. You can't certify your level with XPs.

I would guess that the easiest way is just to take the test and provide your scores when asked. The advantage is that it is the expected and "normal" thing for those applying from a country with a language other than English as the dominant one.
Alternatives would probably require tailoring a request for each institution that you apply to and they may not have an obvious process for dealing with it. Phone calls, pointing to published work, and some other things might suffice, but each case would require some work on everyone's part, where supplying a test score is standardized.
I assume you wouldn't have any problems getting a high score on any of the tests. Costs a bit of money and time, but only once.

"but only once". I seem to remember that some certifications (TOEIC?) expire after a few years.

@EricDuminil both TOEFL and IELTS expire after two years.

Requirements vary by jurisdiction and school, but they are usually abundantly clear. For example, see the requirements to obtain a UK Student Visa, in which you must have an approved SELT certification (such as an IELTS certificate) unless you are from one of 18 English-speaking countries or obtained UK "high school" qualifications (GCSEs, typically taken at age 15–16; or A Levels, typically taken at age 16–18) when you were under the age of 18 (e.g. someone from India moving to a UK school at age 16 and obtaining A Levels).
Notably, the last point implies that people born as UK nationals but who did not obtain GCSEs or A Levels, renounced/overrode their UK citizenship to one other than the specified 18 countries, and subsequently returned to the UK to study, are required to demonstrate knowledge of English, even though they theoretically may have lived in the UK and spoke solely English for decades before changing their citizenship. That may very well seem unreasonable or just plain annoying for such people, but those are the requirements, and you have to meet them.

You could also be a permanent resident of Canada who landed in Canada at the age of 3 months and grew up in an anglophone province and finished all previous studies in English and still be required to prove your English level.

I am from India and know many people who have done all their education in English - kindergarten/preschool to Graduate (say 17-18 years) and whose English is pathetic. Largely this is due to the fact that these people think and converse in their native language (we have many) and dialect (many for each language), with English used only for academics.
So, it does make sense for universities to insist on an English language test. I do not think you will be able to avoid taking this test.

This may be a good answer to why universities have such policies, but does not seem to answer the question asked.

Agree -- the question was "can I avoid taking the test," so I added a sentence that answers the question ("no"). But, this answer would be stronger if you provided more detail on this last part -- for example, did these students in India have to take the test, or was a work around available?

No workaround is available - I do not know of any country that admits students from India without a language test. I am a 'native' English speaker (in the sense that I think, converse, read and write English 99% of the time) and even for a Masters in the US I had to take the test.
I was the first to leave the proctored test center which had about 300 people taking the test, and I found it easy. Did not prepare even for a minute - so as others have stated, for 'true' English speakers these tests are a cake walk.

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Authorship when contribution is removed
I was recently asked to join a manuscript which had been rejected by a journal. My revisions ended up removing 100% of another author's contributions (i.e. a different approach to the statistical analyses). In my field, this author's contributions were sufficient to warrant authorship - now that their contribution has been removed, should they still be included as an author? (To the extent that it matters, we're all perfectly happy to include them because of the work they put into the paper. I'm curious about the publishing ethics)
Thanks!
Edit:
I thought I'd add some more info based on comments/questions.
The reason the paper was originally rejected was due to the statistical analyses. I made two main changes to the statistical methods - one necessary (the reason it was originally rejected), and one optional:
1) (necessary) The experimental design required that a mixed-effects/multi-level model be used. In the original version of the paper, this was not done.
2) (optional) While this question could reasonably be addressed using frequentist methods, I thought a Bayesian method did a better job answering the question.

Presumably that author contributed something beyond merely writing, thus it is ethical to include them.

@user2768: According to the question, the author's contribution was removed, not just the words they wrote.

O. R. Mapper is correct. The entirety of this author's contribution was removed.

@O.R.Mapper I think my point has been misunderstood. An author's written text can be removed from a manuscript, but their scientific contribution to the manuscript goes beyond any written text. For instance, the author most likely contributed to scientific discussion and provided inputs that improved results. Such contributions cannot be removed.

I think I should clarify further. This author's main written contribution was the statistical analyses/results sections. Their non-written contribution would have been the behind-the-scenes interpretation of results. Because we have decided to change the statistical approach, those behind-the-scenes interpretations would no longer be relevant.

@user2768: I understood that very well, and at least from what is written in the question, I think that exactly that is not the case. (At the very least, I think this is an interesting question if exactly that is true, that the entire contribution of the author has been removed. Think, for example, an author whose only contribution was to devise and describe a case study to underline the usefulness of a presented concept or result - if that case study is removed altogether, there is no contribution by that author left.)

@user163778: And, just as a remark: "the author most likely contributed to scientific discussion" - for most papers that I have written, this could be said about virtually everyone in my institute. Of course, everyone talks about current projects, exchanges ideas, provides suggestions, etc., yet (at least in my field) it is not customary to actually list 20-something authors for each paper. Customs in other fields may, of course, differ - maybe the OP should also add a field tag, in case it becomes relevant here.

Can you ask them to add a paragraph or even a sentence about their work, mentioning such work was done but not presented in the paper? This way you can honor your authorship agreement and give them credit for the time they put in.

Did that author contributed to critical review of other parts of the paper?

@user163778 you've mentioned the "author's main written contribution," what about their other written contributions?

@O.R.Mapper I think the question becomes far more interesting when phrased along the following lines: We modularized a research project into isolated modules with the goal of joining those modules to derive a result. One of the modules wasn't needed. Should the researchers that worked only on that module be considered as contributors? We now plan to publish the results, should those researchers be listed as co-authors?

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/73480/19607

Did the experience of the removed analyses influence how the final version of the manuscript looks like? If so (that is, if his non-working analyses brought you to the point of doing the working one) I would say he should be included, as his contribution is still important, even if nothing is left.

Contribution removed author stays. Unless he remotely join the group contributing merely on calculations analysis etc with no different exchange (like I would be sent an equation and solving it , to give an extreme idea of what I mean). Actually I would not remove that coauthor anyway.  I will probably be more attentive in future and that is it.

@Alchimista: "more attentive" about what? That statement sounds as if any mistake had happened so far, which does not seem to be the case based on the question.

@O.R. Mapper I would not say that someone behaved mistakenly as human being, of course. But submitting a paper that has been rejected because having wrong  content that must be 100 percent removed before possible resubmission is surely a mistake.

@Alchimista: The question doesn't say why the manuscript was rejected, nor whether that happened in relation to the now removed content, nor whether anything about that now removed part was wrong.

@O. R. Mapper. If they simply changed approach to how to publish then is even not worth asking. If the part was correct the author of it can be or not author depending on mutual agreement and professional convenience. Without him/her declining, of course he/she warrant authorship.

You need to answer the following question: The paper was rejected. Was this because of the statistical analysis?

Yes, I would say that he/she should still be included as an author. Despite this person's sections being eliminated, it is likely that they contributed intellectually in other ways throughout the project, through discussions, meetings, paper revisions, etc. Even in the rare occasion that this is not the case (individual responsible for that one analysis only), it is not his/her fault the contribution was removed, and one should respect the time spent.

"it is likely that they contributed intellectually in other ways throughout the project, through discussions, meetings, paper revisions" - how do you distinguish that from all the other people who may also have "contributed intellectually" in internal colloquia, group discussions and brainstorming, and everyday talks between colleagues whose desks are just a few rooms apart?

They contributed into it getting rejected.........

As a general rule in life, you accrue good karma if you err in favor of others. If you have to ask yourself whether someone should be included -- for example, because they participated in discussions that still inform the paper; or because you only removed the statistical analysis this person did because you needed to go through the exercise of doing the analysis first before you could realize that that's not the way to go -- then that person likely "contributed" to the paper. That's true even if the actual work that is still in the paper does not include what that person did.
In essence, the price to add someone as yet another author to a paper is relatively small. The price you pay by permanently alienating someone by being hard-nosed is significantly larger.

But you also accrue bad karma by including inappropriate authors, and the question is about the trade-off between these two competing factors.

@DavidRicherby: To be honest, it seems like most of the kind of karma you lose by including authors incorrectly is StackExchange karma...

@DavidRicherby: In appropriate authors are ones who have no connection to the work. This clearly does not seem to be the case here.

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My research supervisor left the university and no one told me
I am currently doing my Masters in a program that has both a practicum component and a thesis component. My research supervisor and I had been working over the past few years on a thesis topic. The last time I spoke with her was at the end of March and we were close to defending a research proposal (I just needed to do a few edits to the proposal). Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic happened, and research was closed down for a few months during the summer. At the same time, I had to adjust to doing my practicum placement online. I didn’t hear anything from my supervisor during the summer and to be honest, I didn’t get in contact with her because I understood that her expectation was that I would get in touch once I had something to share.
In September, I tried to get in touch with my supervisor using her university email and I kept getting an error that it was “undeliverable”. I tried looking on the faculty listing and noticed that I could no longer find her there. I got in contact with one of the graduate student assistants in my program and told them about the situation and they told me to email my supervisor on her personal email.
I finally received an email from her, and she informed me that she left the university at the end of June because her the funding for one of her programs was cut. She also mentioned that she had informed the head of the department with my name and thesis topic and asked them to check in with me. I was never informed about this change. My supervisor didn’t send me an email to inform me when this happened in June and I still haven’t been contacted by anyone from the department.
I have tried to get in contact with a professor at my department and they basically said that I need to get in contact with a different person who would set me up with a new supervisor. This prof informed me that depending on how that conversation goes and who the possible available supervisor would be, I would have the following two options:

start working on a completely new research topic + proposal with a new research supervisor – which would mean that I would have to start my lit review all over again

possibility of continuing my current proposal if someone is willing to take it but knowing that no one has any expertise in that area

Considering that there is no one else in my department that focuses on my topic and I was counting on my supervisor’s expertise to guide me, my only option is to start all over again. This means that I will have to delay my graduation by a year. I feel so burnt out and the thought of having to start all over again is excruciatingly painful.
So, my question is:

Am I right to be upset that no one informed me that my supervisor was leaving/has left? I am not sure if I am justified in expecting the department to have gotten in contact with me by now? And expecting them to not have put the burden on me to figure out who to get in touch with to sort this situation?  I feel like if I was informed in June, I could have started on literature review for a new topic much sooner rather than wasting time on my current topic.

What are my options here? have you been in a similar situation? what should I do? Part of me wants to just push through and start the new project. Another part of me wants to give up on the thesis and just switch to an equivalent program without a thesis.

6 months and not even an email to your supervisor?

What field is this (roughly)? In humanities graduate students tend to be largely independent of their advisors; in sciences it would be extremely unusual for neither the student nor the advisor to contact the other for six months. The norms of your area are probably relevant to your question.

It'd be also useful to specify the country.

It is an MA in counselling psychology in a North American university, A part of me feels like maybe I should have tried to get in contact with the supervisor earlier. However, based on previous meetings with this supervisor and our relationship, this was not out of the ordinary.

Yes, you are very right to be upset (but it won't help you).

@mathworker21 prior to September... ie between March and September. Seems like several agreed with me.

Closing down research due to the pandemic does not mean researchers stop working.

@SolarMike - to be fair, I also would have expected the professor to have gotten in touch with the student, particularly if they are leaving. But, Covid has made for interesting times...

@JonCuster well the OP said clearly "I understood that her expectation was that I would get in touch once I had something to share", so the onus seems to be on the OP's side not the professor.

@SolarMike - So the professor has no obligation to even drop one of their students an email saying sorry, plans change, I'm out of here? The expectation of the OP to communicate with the professor when the research has hit a given point is fine. For the professor to leave without saying anything is, well, weird. But these are weird times.

From one very bad experience with university exam administration I have to say that there is the possibility she notified administration and was told they'd take care of the procedure - and administration didn't. (My experience is that one of the examining professors for my PhD who came from a different institute was never asked or notified by my faculty administration that they'd chosen him for my committee! I was told that he's on my committee some months after the committee formed, and he learned it accidentally from me - super awkward situation. Also had to send him the thesis pdf myself.)

But you don't just notify "the admins", she has been working with OP and supervising them, she owes a personal heads up. How hard is it really? She should have also try to arrange with another advisor in the department, she could even offer to remotely advise/help

"It is an MA in counselling psychology in a North American university," And it's widely believed (by the rest of the world) that Americans don't understand irony!

You have been working a few years on finding a topic for your Master's thesis? Is that normal in the US? Where I am in Europe, writing the whole thesis normally takes six months and finding a topic maybe a couple of weeks (together with more senior research assistants usually).

I think your advisor should have set you up with another advisor before she left. Also she should have informed you, a meeting would be nice. It really is the least she could do, and In my experience this is common (including setting up with another advisor part)

Now, you can find an advisor on your own and defend to keep your topic. You will have to advise yourself a bit but if the new advisor is on board, why not?

Don't you already have a committee for your thesis? Usually there is the advisor but also additional committee members whose topics are somewhat close. Well, pick the second one or the third.

If you are very fond of your advisor, you can try to switch universities - you would be transferring credits (all or some at least), so you wouldn't start over a program per se but of course still you would lose time. And I wouldn't count on your relationship with your advisor considering you haven't been in contact often.

Even if you would have to start over a thesis, can't you find a tangent that can make what you have so far useful?

Check with your advisor more often in the future :)

Also, if you have a good match, starting over might not be the worst idea. A thesis doesn't happen over time, mostly the time here and there you focused and got an insight matters most and makes up the most of the thesis. This time you can try to focus and stay in touch with your advisor and push through! A lot of time is spent procrastinating anyway, and be honest where you currently stand with your current thesis and evaluate your situation (not in semesters but in progress)

I have witnessed people having to switch advisors, topics, start over, change institutions. It happens.

-1 University leadership is responsible for this mess, not the supervisor who left.

Not at all, university never arranges who is advising who, you and your advisor decide together, fill required forms. It is always between you and the advisor. If the advisor can't even take 2 minutes to write an email, it tells a lot about them. Any decent person would have contact their grad student to let them know at least.

Am I right to be upset that no one informed me that my supervisor was leaving/has left?

While it sounds like your subject (counselling psychology) is much closer than mine (mathematics) to understanding human emotions, I would suggest that it may not be productive to think of emotions in terms of "right" and "wrong".  I don't know what your personal relationship with your advisor was, or what the norms/expectations are in your field/department with respect to supervisor relationships.  While in most instances, I would expect a supervisor to let their students know personally if they are leaving the institution, it sounds like this may have been a sudden leave and supervisory expectations for masters theses can be quite different than for PhD theses.  (In math in the US, the former is quite rare.)  To continue...

she had informed the head of the department with my name and thesis topic and asked them to check in with me. I was never informed about this change. My supervisor didn’t send me an email to inform me when this happened in June and I still haven’t been contacted by anyone from the department

With the pandemic and other disasters, I would guess that someone accidentally dropped the ball, so you could be upset, or be understanding, or some combination of both, but I don't think that any particular "choice" of these emotions is "right."
Anyway, after you learned this, did you contact the head of the department?  If not, try this and/or the graduate student director if your department has one.  Presumably your former supervisor's goal was that the head of the department would try to find you a new supervisor under which you can continue your current project.  I don't know how it is in your field/department, but in mine if your thesis was essentially done, we would just have someone else formally complete the supervision even if we don't have an expert in the area.

This right does not mean the right of right and wrong rather means is it reasonable.

@user2617804 Maybe, maybe not.  I don't know what the OP was thinking, but to my ears it is phrased like "am I correct to be upset" or "should I be upset".  In any case, the point it you can think about this from multiple points of view and have mixed feelings about the situation.

This answer is much too generous to the university.

This is a decent answer,  but honestly I gave it the upvote mainly for this line: “ While it sounds like your subject (counselling psychology) is much closer than mine (mathematics) to understanding human emotions...”

Is your supervisor out of academia or does she simply switch the university?
Is there some possibility at your university, that someone external be a second supervisor of a thesis?
If not:
Maybe it will be fine for her if you find some "official" supervisor at your university, without the expertise, but she will be for you there to answer some questions you have? It can be that at the end the work will be published, so this would be also beneficial for her.
I would contact her if such a possibility exists, if yes, I would then start to look for some supervisor at your university who is fine with this.

I also think this is worth while exploring. At some European universities where I have been, the officers doing the administration of student exams (such as theses) very often very helpful and resourceful helping students in unusual circumstances. OTOH, see comment at question...

If your supervisor switched university, you may want to elaborate ways to finish your thesis there.

This was something I dealt with more than once as steward and executive officer for my Graduate employees union.
First of all, your feelings on the matter are completely valid. I know it's a scary place to be, and I'm really surprised that Universities don't have better established protocols for dealing with this. Try not to panic, and don't worry if you don't have a representative. There wasn't much the union could do in these cases except act as an official witness during some meetings.
Secondly, in the cases I encountered, the graduate students were always able to have another faculty member step in and take over as primary advisor. I'm pretty sure they all were able to defend on the same thesis topic they were already working on, mostly on-time. Your thesis is about the work you have done, so it should all still apply, even if the new advisor isn't necessarily specializing in that field. Some academic departments have faculty committees for student welfare or sometimes a graduate student advisory committee. Those might be helpful resources, if they are available. You could also try reaching to any committee members (assuming you have one), department chair's, or any other faculty you've worked with. I find that most faculty are willing and able to help students in their department succeed.
I'll caveat some of this by saying that I only dealt with cases in the sciences where most students were on some form of assistantship funding (either teaching or research). I know that not all departments work the same.

Am I right to be upset that no one informed me that my supervisor was leaving/has left?

Yes.  University leadership has an obligation to ensure thesis research is adequately supervised.  Part of that obligation is to promptly inform students that a supervisor has left the university.  This should have happened within 24 hours of departure, if not before departure.  The pandemic is not a valid excuse for a mistake this bad.
You ought to be receiving an official apology and a refund of any tuition or fees you paid for the period you were not supervised.  However, my guess is the university does not have any money with which to make refunds.

what should I do?

I would recommend continuing your current thesis with a new supervisor.  Most academics will be very sympathetic to students in this situation and will want to help you.  If your new supervisor is not an expert in the topic, they should attempt to get you help from other universities.

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text:
Is it common/ ethically acceptable for PhD advisors to propose and supervise topics on which they lack basic knowledge?
I've just graduated in STEM in a small but respected university in Europe. I had two supervisors who hold their PhD in my field.  The aim of my PhD was to utilize a particular chemical compound in the synthesis of various materials. Very little literature is available about the topic and neither of my supervisors had ever published a single paper about it.
I had a tough time during my PhD because I was left figuring out completely on my own how to do research without having a real expert beside me I could learn from. Moreover, I was prevented from asking for help to anyone. Whenever I asked them for help, my supervisors would just throw out some buzzwords or vague explanations to the data I had produced, which were seldom appropriate. Sometimes, I was also given the silent treatment. Back then, I thought that this was the way a PhD is meant to be done. You know "you have to be independent", "your PhD is only yours"....
However, I eventually realized that my supervisors were not those experts they were supposed to be and came up with the reason behind their "hands-off" attitude. I found out they did not  aware of the physical, chemical, and even toxicological (!) properties of the compound I had been working with for the last three years. They were even oblivious to the appropriate scientific terminology and apparatuses relevant to the research topic: one of them was unaware that the term polymerization was also applicable  in the context of inorganic compounds, not just organic or biological polymers, while the other did not know a (very) common technique you are supposed to learn during the second year of your bachelor's degree. As an "expert" of the topic, he should have been definitely knowledgeable of. I could continue with other examples, but my thread is not about shaming my supervisors. Their knowledge and expertise are under their responsibility, not mine.
After my graduation, I left both my supervisors as I felt I had been deceived and lured to work with them. I do not trust them anymore. Right now, I continue to feel as if I were used, exploited and tricked. Probably, my PhD served only as a +1 in their CV. I do not think they were so interested in the project or in my growth as a researcher. At the same time, I do not regret my time as a PhD student. It was a stimulating intellectual experience: I learnt a lot of new things and I met many interesting people during my journey.
My questions are: how "normal" or common is it for a supervisor to put forward a PhD project without any expertise or even knowing the terminology and techniques relevant to it, especially in the STEM field? Is doing so considered ethical?
IMPORTANT: this post is NOT a vent or a blame game. I am not interested in discussing about red flags or the specific behaviour of my advisors. I am sharing my story just as an example to kindle a meaningful discussion.
What I am actually interested in is your opinion and/or experience regarding this kind of supervision style and its possible impact on the professional life of a freshly graduated PhD.
Clarifications:

They asked me to join them in this project as I was one of the top students of my cohort. I know I should have asked more questions to my supervisors when I first met them. But, you know, I naïvely thought that they were experts. Otherwise, why taking the role as a PhD supervisor?

Switching supervisors is not an option here, moreover I couldn't walk out (or run away, as JeffE would say) because I unfortunately realized the lack of knowledge of my supervisors at the end of my project. If I had dropped out from my PhD, I should have paid a hefty penalty of several thousands quid.

I was fully funded by a public institution. Is this the reason why they were not so invested in the project? They would not have lost any of their money.

Also, you may have seen these related questions.

Although you are probably rather upset about the situation now, in years to come I suspect you'll realize that you've gained a huge advantage over others in certain skills that you were forced to learn (e.g. working independently, seeking advice from others not directly connected with you, etc.). Of course, this could have been a disaster, and for others it likely would have been, but in your case you gained a lot from having to go through this. Regarding your questions, I don't know (seems field and country dependent), but in math in U.S. universities, this would be unusual in the extreme.

The following quote from this movie is relevant to my previous comment: "Two little mice fell in a bucket of cream. The first mouse quickly gave up and drowned. The second mouse, wouldn't quit. He struggled so hard that eventually he churned that cream into butter and crawled out." You're the second mouse, and in the process you've learned how to make butter.

It is very common that you do not know the toxicological (or other) properties of a compound you study. It always happen in chemistry research. I also work in interdisciplinary fields so working with experts who do not know what an undergrad student would know is also very common. From your description it is hard to know if your supervisors were not expert in certain questions for legitimate reasons (ie when one studies a completely new, unexplored field or enter a new, interdisciplinary) or they really lacked essential knowledge.

@Greg Unfortunately for my advisor, the compound in question is a well-known pollutant and toxic

@DaveLRenfro: While such an analogy is nice and all, one should also not forgot the third mouse: He had a really good advisor who tought him to make excellent butter which is absolutely extraordinary.

@DaveLRenfro Thanks for your comments. Rather than upset or just tired, I actually have mixed feelings about my whole PhD experience. During the viva I was so insecure about the scientific validity of my work that I even stuttered on multiple occasions. I am still wondering whether I learnt how to carry out scientific research correctly or not.

This does not seem that unusual in engineering from what I have seen unfortunately.

Common and not acceptable, especially if not discussed before starting. I have been in similar situation, left my previous PI after 2.5 years (additional complications on top of all of the above) and joined a program with a PI being an expert of half of my topic and having a commitee and a full network being expert on the other half :) Having been in a similar situation I really admire your persistence and strength.

@Tom and aqua Thanks for sharing your experiences, mates

Actually, the funding of most doctoral students is independent of their advisors, though it varies by fields.

@Buffy At the uni where I worked, it is responsibility of the advisor(s) to provide their PhD students with the funding they need. I am an exception.

Happened to one of my best friends. She was a geographer working with soil. Her adviser was an expert in the same technique, but using minerals, which actually demanded completely different approaches. She took several years and a sexual harassment to realize the mistake. She switched to an adviser who knew nothing about her field, yet they made it work by being honest and collaborative about it. Her adviser did not lie and pretend to be an expert. If yours did, then they knew it was unethical and were ashamed.

I have started a PhD last year in a topic far from my background. I have been naive and I did very little research on my now ex supervisor.
I started and then discovered that he was "hands off", meaning that the supervision consisted in meeting without any very meaningful advice on research. This, together with the my non expertise on the topic, made the experience terrible. I felt that I was risking too much, also because I tried to collaborate with other people but I found hard to do so (he did not want to share).
I would have preferred to be aware of his style. I think that this situation was unethical, because I did not feel confident enough to pursue a PhD in something way too outside of my comfort zone without any interaction with an expert or so. For me a PhD is a journey to become a good scientist, otherwise why should I need to get a PhD if I am already able to do good quality research? But a colleague of mine actually preferred this style, he said that he wanted to "direct" his own research, to be able "to do what he wants". In the end, in general I think that´s unethical to not discover from the beginning the lack of knowledge and that´s not correct to not admit it, but there are people who did well with this style.
I left to join a different university, but I always think that I really admire who was able to do research without any particular support. I think you should accept them as they are. They are people and people are not perfect, but I understand if you do not want to work with them again. I would not burn bridges. Now you know that there are professionals like that and If you want you can always avoid them.
EDIT: I just started the new PhD somewhere else, I cannot answer you yet. I really wanted a supervisor and meaningful discussion with experts who inspire me. But I think you should be happy with your outcome, your independence that maybe came with a price: the feeling of loneliness during your PhD. You did your best where you were, I think you can be proud of yourself and forget the rest.

Thanks for sharing. Your experience is quite similar to mine. In your words, I can read the same feelings of bewilderment and loneliness I felt during my PhD. After this experience, do you feel more empowered to carry out research on your own or do you struggle with the feeling that your PhD didn't give you the skills to be really autonomous? 1 up (even more if I could...)

I can't really judge whether the OP's treatment was appropriate or not, but there are situations in which it would be and, in those situations the answer to whether this is "acceptable" would be yes. I also think it is somewhat common, but far from universal.
The bottom line is that at some point along the line the student becomes the expert in the research topic and leaves the advisor(s) behind. In some situations that comes earlier than in most. The fresh PhD is the world's foremost expert in whatever the specific topic of the research is.
It is also true that in many fields the process of research is distinct from the actual questions asked. In those fields a person can advise another on that process and check that they follow correct process to the end, even without knowing a lot about the specifics. Research questions that rely heavily on statistics fall into such a format, though there are many variations that need to be considered. In mathematics, the validity of a proof can be checked by someone who didn't develop it.
However, for a meaningful and worthwhile advisor-advisee relationship to develop, the advisor(s) needs to be honest about what sorts of help they can and cannot provide. That understanding needs to be reached at the beginning of the relationship and if not satisfactory, then either the student or professor(s) needs to withdraw. Some students (a fair number, but not universal) can excel in situations of minimal specific help. Others (almost certainly the majority) need a bit more. Some need a lot more.
Moreover, a lot depends on what the advisor(s) are willing and able to do to advance the career of an independent student after they complete their work. If they are completely supportive, then there is little reason to be alarmed. The fact that you are exhausted at the completion of your degree is not a valid measure here. Nearly everyone (I suspect) feels that way to some degree.
Red flags arise when you aren't told you won't be helped, or if you are told you will be but abandoned. Other red flags appear when the advisor abandons you after you finish. But having to do much of the work of it on your own, isn't, in itself, a red flag, though it doesn't work for everyone. Be glad you finished successfully. Congratulations.
I'd suggest you reevaluate your decision to leave them behind. It may not be the right decision.

I can't agree with any general claim that "a fresh PhD is the world's expert in... ." In particular, there is a dangerous aspect of this viewpoint, namely, that fresh PhD's may discover that they are not, in fact, the world expert in their thesis topic, and feel that, therefore, they have failed and are imposters. Especially on a world stage, there are some senior people who understand a lot, and whose experience allows them to nearly-instantly assimilate new things... often understanding a thesis better than did the writer thereof. :)

@paulgarrett, I define "thesis topic" very (very) narrowly. If you define it broadly, you are right, of course. For example, I worked in mathematical real analysis. At the end, I knew a heck of a lot about real analysis, but certainly wasn't the world's foremost expert in that, but for the tiny aspect I did work on, I certainly was.

@Buffy Thanks for your reply. They didn't explicitly say they wouldn't help me but I didn't feel supported either. At the beginning they promised they would help me but they never acted on their promises. However, my question is not about whether I was treated fairly or not,  I am the only one who can figure it out and now it is not so relevant. The real question is the title of this post.

@paulgarrett I agree with the claim. Perhaps the following narrowing gets towards something you'd agree with: "a fresh PhD is the world's expert in the content of their thesis."

@user2768 :) :)

I would usually expect that the a supervisor had some connection either to the application domain, or the technical domain of a project.
I'll give examples from biology, because that's what I do: A PhD might be to use a particular technique, say a new type of microscopy, to study a particular biological process, say  cell division. I would expect a supervisor to be an expert either in cell division, or in microscopy (but perhaps not both).
The best situation would be to have two supervisors, one who was an expert in microscopy and one who was an expert in cell division, but thats not always possible.
I think if your supervisors were unable to give you any guidance, on any aspect of your project, right from the start, then they probably shouldn't have been supervising you. Or at least, not on that project.

Thanks for sharing your point of view.

Have you ever come across a PhD whose supervisors were not knowledgeable of the topic of the project?

I've come across situations where the supervisor knows nothing about the techniques being used, and situations where the supervisor knowns nothing about the subject being studied. The only time i've come across supervisors who don't know something about one or the other in my field is when a student has been moved to a new supervisor after the original supervisor left the institution. I don't know why someone would want to be the supervisor otherwise. I think this might be different in humanities where 1) supervisors are less involved 2) supervision is a burden rather than a privilege.

Thanks for your reply. I really appreciate your explanation.

The existing answers give a good perspective on this situation, but I don't think they directly address OP's question:

How "normal" or common is it for a supervisor to put forward a PhD project without any expertise or even knowing the terminology and techniques relevant to it, especially in STEM?

In short: not common. Some cases when I've seen this happen:

A project deviates from the initial concept because a student insists on a particular approach
A colleague leaves the academia, and somebody needs to take over the supervision of a student
The supervisor might want to branch out to another field out of personal interest
There is a new hot topic in the supervisor's field, and having some work on that may improve the group's chances to get funding
There is a "low-hanging fruit" project which is likely to produce easy publications or help secure funding, but it is not scientifically interesting to the supervisor

Generally speaking, working outside one's primary field usually means less immediate returns for the supervisor (in terms of funding and publications), so in my experience groups which are primarily funded through grants tend to specialize quite narrowly to keep the machine running.
On the other hand, taking more students may be incentivized by local institution rules - the number of total active students, or students with external funding, may be a metric used to judge the performance on the department/group. I think this is most likely what happened here, given your description. Either way, good job on persisting, and don't spend too much time trying to guess somebody's reasons for whatever they did.

Hmm... you say "not common" but then you list 5 possible cases that, to me, seem like they would happen frequently (especially the "new hot topic in the field" or the "low hanging fruit"). I have seen them happen quite frequently actually.

@juod The last paragraph of your answer may be the real reason behind my bewildering phd. Thanks for your reply. 1 up.

Summary:

I don't see anything particularly wrong with the hands-off approach to PhD. This may be a perfectly valid, though maybe old fashioned approach to PhD.
It is not all that common any more to take that point of view, but it is not wrong per se.

However, the expectations/approach should have been clearly communicted. Unfortunately I have rarely met any such communication, and in consequence have to say this is a common and major source of misunderstandings and conflict. (Not restricted to theses, happens will all kinds of projects)

It is also not uncommon that a PhD project goes into terrain that was so far compartively unknown in that group.

It is not uncommon that at the end of the PhD, the PhD student is more expert in the topic of their thesis than their supervisors (the PhD student will not have the breadth of knowledge that the supervisors have, though).

TL - DR
I did my PhD in chemistry in Germany (already a while ago), and it shared some of the characteristics that you list.
However, with one maybe vital difference. When I was requested for the first time to do a review and did not yet feel qualified to do that, my professor basically told me to wake up to the fact that I'm a fully qualified professional with all rights and duties a chemist has - already since when I finished my Diplom (Master). The PhD will later on demonstrate that I meanwhile acquired further experience in doing a several-year research project on my own.
This is AFAIK how PhDs in Germany used to be.
I also know current professors who say that the PhD thesis is an exam where the student signs that it is their own work. They will judge the work of the student, and whenever they have to intervene that means a negative mark agaist the student because the intervention is not the student's own work.
I now contrast this with the "new" way of looking at PhDs, which is bsaically seen as another step in the professional training - implying that without PhD one is not fully trained.
Consequently, a new-style PhD student would typically have an amount of supervision that for the old-style PhD student means they are totally incapable of doing their professional work on their own, i.e. close to failing.
OTOH, this doesn't mean the old-style PhD student is condemned to do lone-wolf research. But it does mean that they are/were expected to pick the experts with whom to discuss things on their own. I.e., I may have said: "I really need to get a pathologist's opinion on my samples as reference. Could you please intoduce me." - "Of course" as opposed to "Dear cbeleites, you really need to get a pathologist's opinion as reference, I'll introduce you to XY".
For strangers in the internet it is impossible to judge whether you did not get adequate supervison or whether your supervisors trusted your professional abilities and gave you the opportunity to show the full extent of your capabilities.

Personally, I rather think the new style PhD students are abused by denying that they are fully qualified professionals (and also by putting them into a very conflict-prone situation where they are told what to do - and are then judged on what they did as if it were their own decision). OTOH, expectations should be clearly pronounced early on (in my experience this unfortunately is rarely done, and it is a major source of conflict, for all kinds of theses, research projects and jobs in research)
Of course, some people do better with closer supervision, while others do better with more loose supervision.

As for the supervisor not being an expert: my PhD was in between vibrational spectroscopy (the supervisor's field of experience) to a medical application and developing statistical data analysis (chemometric) methods. He was expert in neither of the latter two fields, but we had collaboration with the university hospital and the was clear that statistical data analysis is important and that he wanted the group to develop expertise there.
The supervisor at my first "post"doc expressed it even more clearly, saying "I won't be able to discuss statistics with you. I hired you because we didn't have anyone with any such expertise before."

As for the toxicity of the compound mentioned in one of the comments: here I'd totally go with the "old-fashioned" point of view. You were a fully qualified chemist already before you started your PhD. Here in Germany, that includes exams on toxicology and legal aspects of working with hazardous materials. It was your professional duty to check out hazards and make sure appropriate precautions are taken. (Yes, your professor has an organizational duty as well, but it very unlikely that you couldn't have known how to approach chemicals)

I was also lucky in that I met other people during my PhD time who told me that due to the pressure of the PhD, they were completely mad at their supervisor when they handed in - and in hindsight (years later) realized that most of that was maybe less due to the supervisor's shortcomings but rather due to their level of stress.
One of them told me that they had seen many PhD students putting everything they had into their PhD - and then afterwards needing a break from chemistry and research (spoke of someone who ran a shop for a few years before returning to chemical research).

Thanks for sharing your experience. For what I can understand, your supervisor were able to connect you with other experienced professionals. I was not allowed to create my network. As for the toxicological properties, I know it wasmy responsibility to take care of this but I was shocked they weren't aware  not only of this fact but also of the fact they knew nothing about this componund, considering also other aspects and implications of my project I won't disclose here. Anyway, thanks again for reporting your precious experience. 1UP for this comment.

@Bwdphd: they did introduce me, but conferences were probably more important for the network, and it was not that often that we were both (or more people from the institute) at the same conference. Not allowed to build network is bad, though. One unfortunate, widespread but also somewhat understandabe exception to this is: I often see that PhD students with interdisciplinary topics are sent to conferences about their application topic, and then are not allowed (because there's no money left) to attend e.g. data analysis conferences. Wrt lab safety, we also once had a waking up on biosafety.

Nothing bad happend, but years into one project someone suddenly realized that we should have had Hepatitis vaccinations from the beginning... Difficult to say there who was to blame, since we all had been to the work health services, and even if chemists and physicists don't know about biosafety, the work health doctor should know.

Thanks for your follow up! The hepatitis thing you are talking about is REALLY distressing...

I am going to go against the current and say that this is not so uncommon and also not so unethical.
Research is a moving target. New tools and methods are continually being developed. Professors and PIs might take interest in some of those new methods, either because they look promising, or because funding institutions support research on them, or because the PI simply likes them. It would be very inefficient if PIs had to become experts in every new method before they are allowed to hire PhD students to work on it.
So it will happen sometimes that the PI is an expert in the general field, but not in the particular method to be investigated. The PhD student then has to learn about this method, and usually also explain it to their supervisor. The supervisor will still provide useful input regarding which problems to solve, settings to consider, etc., but the particulars of the method will mostly be left to the PhD student. I actually had this experience during my PhD, and I am happy about how it taught me to be independent and come up with ideas by myself.
Of course, not every PhD student will be happy to have so much independence. I have heard many colleagues express the opposite opinion: they are happy to have close guidance and as many people as possible with whom to discuss the topic. This is why, as other answers have mentioned, it is important that the supervisor sets the right expectations at the beginning.
However, I think that your interpretation of the situation may be too negative. You write:

I felt I had been deceived and lured to work with them. I do not trust them anymore. Right now, I continue to feel as if I were used, exploited and tricked.

I do not think you were used or exploited. You were paid to learn about a topic, and maybe help introduce this knowledge into the department. It seems that your supervisor was the one who secured the funding, and they chose you. It is also reasonable to assume that, if you were one of the top students of your cohort, the supervisor relied more on you to be able to work independently and take the "difficult" project, the one in which the department has less expertise.
So I suggest not to take it too personally, and focus on the good things that came out of it. I do not think anyone had the intention of tricking you.

Thanks for your point of view. I cannot disclose further details but my supervisors had literary no idea of what I was researching on and they didn't disclose before starting my PhD. They lacked the very basic concepts needed to work in the field. I really enjoyed my PhD journey but I feel like I just collected data explained them with some buzzwords. I know I was paid to do research but I thought I was also supposed to be taught how to do research properly by experts on the topic through meaningful discussions and interactions. 1 up for this answer.

It happened to me and wasn't ethical.
I had my own grant, my MSc advisor suggested a specific group at another uni and I set up an interview by phone. There I went.
So for the prof/group it was basically some free TA ("max 120h/year" said grant) and another face at lunch/seminars, at the cost of workstation and desk. I had total freedom from interference (haha), could travel whatever I wanted within my own budget. Plus I went to some conferences important to the group where I wasted my time but I suppose I learned by observation how to benefit from attending/ how things are run/ ... .
This was a waste of my time, and lasted 18m until another group with their own open position (=their money invested) hired me; yes this other group found by talking with someone at a relevant symposium I went to.
I guess it happened because there were more math PhD grants than the market could logically fulfill late 90s, so many industries were digitizing etc. That combined with a small EU country, what I wanted to do didn't have a suitable group (over the border had, I later realized, but I doubt the grant was portable) though there were some a better fit.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I also had to attend meaningless conferences and workshops completely unrelated to my research topic.


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NIH: What is a "resubmission"?
I need to understand the difference between the "success rate", "award rate" and "funding rate", the metrics used by the National Institute of Health as summary statistics for their research grants.
I have found this article but I still can't understand.
In particular, the article talks about "projects" and "individual application submission" as if they were two different things, like in this passage:

We calculate success rates this way because historically we have been interested in the success of a project or an idea getting funded, rather than of the success of the individual application submission

Another article that I found is this one, which details the mathematical formulas for the three metrics.
The difference between "success rate" and "award rate" is that the former has in the denominator "applications submitted (excluding resubmissions in that fiscal year)" and the latter has in the denominator "applications submitted (including resubmissions in that fiscal year)"
So my questions are:

What is a "resubmission"? How is it defined?
What is the difference between "projects" and "individual application submission"?

A resubmission means you submit, don't get the grant but do okay (you can actually resubmit any score even a non discussion, but whether it's likely to be a winner the second time is maybe questionable. Though it's also not too strange to submit a vastly improved proposal and still get a worse score. Different reviewers different result), then resubmit to hopefully get a better score with reviewer feedback. It's a new application but for the same project. Ordinarily you can only resubmit once, after that you have to design a new grant.
A project or idea is a project or idea. It's a thing you want to do and want money to do it.
An individual application is an individual application. You submit one when you want money, and then you either get money or don't. You might have more than one application for the same project or idea if it doesn't get funded on the first opportunity.
I don't think any special terminology or definition is being used here, just words in their common meaning.

bryan, since you seem knowledgeable about this, can you edit your answer to clarify these points? (1) As I understand it, for example R01 grants can be either investigator-initiated  (The NIH was doing nothing and I bother the NIH to get funding) or  solicited via a Request for Applications (the NIH issue a RFA, with a timeline, and I apply to it). Is the "resubmission" thing valid for both cases? In case of a RFA, do I have to resubmit inside the timeline given in the RFA? (2) What is the point of a resubmission if I don't get the grant? What do I change? .....

..... In a resubmission, what do I change to get the funding I didn't get the first time? The timeline of the project? The amount awarded? The research methodology? I promise to put in more effort than what I promised the first time? That such of thing?

In any way, thanks for the answer :)

I don't know NIH rules, but it seems possible (to me, at least) that a given project might actually have several funding requests for different facets. If so, "submissions" could be rather larger than "projects", even without resubmissions. I'd expect that HIH projects, especially, can be quite large and complex, with many actors.

@Buffy For this context those would be separate projects.

@robertspierre  The NIH website is very helpful for these things, check the link in my answer. 6th bullet point for your first question. For the rest... A SE Q and A and especially a comment is not enough space to explain "how do I get an NIH grant". I would suggest working through your university grants office and at minimum consulting with someone that has previously been NIH funded.

It means in the first pass your proposal didn’t get tossed in The Pit by the review committee, has merit, but not funded this time through.

@Aruralreader You can actually resubmit any score even a non discussion, but whether it's likely to be a winner the second time is maybe questionable. Though it's also not too strange to submit a vastly improved proposal and still get a worse score. Different reviewers different result.

@BrianKrause, your additional info is correct and, in my opinion, a valuable contribution for the OP.


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How can a present software-engineer (with experience of 5 years at least) turn into a physics professor?
There are often many people who switch careers midway. Some from software engineering to a product management role which is quite popular given relevance of previous career to current career. Another example is software engineer to a data scientist. Some might be less relevant but still have the same corporate setup, for example, a software engineer to supply chain engineer. Some might be irrelevant like software engineer transitioning to teaching high school physics but transitioning is still easy. Some might be super irrelevant and 'risky' like software engineer with 5-7 years of experience, going to study masters in physics then a PhD then couple of postdocs and finally becoming a professor in say high energy physics.
I exactly wanted to know about the last case, how can a present software engineer with >4 years of experience in software engineering, pursue physics and establish a successful career (PhD, post-docs, then professorship) in physics academia.

I don't really understand your question.  You learn enough physics (if you haven't already) to get yourself admitted to a graduate program, do good work as a graduate student, then apply for postdocs and eventually a permanent position.  What else is there?  If you want to know how to guarantee success - well, in life there are no guarantees, especially when there are more people - all of whom could follow the rules if there were any - than jobs.

@Alexander Woo: I too found this question strange (although there seem to be quite a few here like this), and I was tempted to answer with: "Spend the next 6 to 12 years (depending on present background in physics, and success shortly after Ph.D.) studying nothing but physics, all the while earning 80% to 90% less (if you're very good at physics; otherwise, expect at least some negative "earnings", especially in the first few years getting an undergraduate background in physics) than you're probably currently earning."

One way is to not do the PhD/post-doc/professor route, but go into software engineering for physics-related applications. Lots of software being used from the fairly mundane to some very cutting edge stuff.

Just do the standard route. Being a few years older won't make a difference.

There is absolutely no obstacle preventing software engineers from transitioning to academia. The sole reason you never see this happen is because they just can't stand to give up 90% of their salary for a few years.

It's worse than @knzhou says because the salary will be lower for your whole career.

@AlexanderWoo, my question is to just hear out different views/opinions, experiences of themselves/ others in their life on this career change. I didn't quite understand this point of yours :  "If you want to know how to guarantee success - well, in life there are no guarantees, especially when there are more people - all of whom could follow the rules if there were any - than jobs"

@DaveLRenfro, plan is to continue working while studying undergraduate physics. But yeah I understand that physics pays much lesser that software engineering. Especially during the doctorate and post-doc phase.

@JonCuster, thanks for your input. But I want to get to know the whole breadth of physics properly. What you suggested might work for some people, but there are many out there in various professions currently but wanting to study physics in its whole breadth and considerable depth. Then choosing a particular physics branch like say HighEnergy Theortical physics for further research. Just jumping into a cross disciplinary field right away may make them still wonder Should I have pursued physics properly ? OR worst yet they might be actually happy with their current job also.

@knzhou, thanks for your input. So you say we don't see many such switched examples because of the salary factor. Nice point. Still as you said there's no obstacle preventing software engineers from transitioning to academia via standard route, except that they might be a few years older.

My earlier comment was probably a bit too negative (beneath the surface). If you are making a fair amount of money now and save it wisely, it might not be much of an issue, at least if you're rather indifferent to keeping up with the Joneses. Also, once you're in graduate school (and beyond), you might be able to use your software background to your advantage. Finally, even if you decide to bail after doing some undergraduate work, you'll still learn some physics, which even if not useful, still good for understanding our world.

@AnonymousPhysicist, true what you said. It'll be like that for the whole career. The price you have to pay for the joy of doing what you like and independent research.

@DaveLRenfro, thanks for your wonderful input, to hell with 'keeping up with the Joneses'. I'm not like that even now, Haha. But I needed money till now due to various personal/familial reasons, hence I chose software over physics. True what you said, Both in positive and negative scenarios, I would've either used my software background to advantage or would've exercised my passion for physics without being guilty about suppressing it in the future.

@Hari - I was thinking of one possible interpretation of your question.  Given what you've said you wanted, I don't think this question is a good fit for StackExchange; it's intended to be a place for questions with definite factual answers, not a discussion forum.

@AlexanderWoo, Okay sure. I've accepted the answer given by user2705196.

If you want me to delete the question, let me know, I'll go ahead and delete that.

Your situation does not sound fundamentally different from any other university graduate.
Your work experience will possibly give you some technical and time management skills that others don't have, but you'll just have to put your skillset to good use like every other graduated student.
Note, that going to graduate school for the sole reason to become a professor is a bad idea. The odds are extremely slim. So if you're not enjoying the process/path you'll likely be disappointed. If you're loving doing research with very little income go for it!

Thanks for your inputs. I've planned this as different milestones. Milestone1-> Masters, Milestone2-> PhD, Milestone3-> 2 postdocs, Milestone4-> academia. For now I'm determined to complete till Milestone1 for the love of physics. I can switch back to software or allied careers if it doesn't go well for various reasons (I sincerely hope this'll not be the case). From Milestone 2 it'll a roller coaster ride, I'll definitely continue physics or settle for cross disciplinary fields involving physics. I think I'm in 'Love doing research with little income' category, let's revisit after Milestone1.

Some of the 'various reasons' being societal/familial/personal pressure for a partner. Getting discouraged due to less financial benefit in the career. Figuring out masters  that the aptitude/interest in physics was misjudged (Grass looks green on the other side !!). I've just spelt these out for sake of discussion. I'm well aware of these and made this choice. I hope after Milestone1, my passion for physics either fuels up a lot to proceed further or dies down, not troubling me for the rest of my career or still exist but save me from the guilt of not trying out physics as a career,


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Should I consider not reporting a grade on my transcript?
I'm an undergrad student. The grading scale in my university is designed like 4.0, 3.5, 3.0... Due to the pandemic, our school gives us a chance to select the S/NS grading option, I kept a very good overall cumulative GPA, but this semester there's a class I got 3.0 (all the other classes in that subject are 4.0 on my transcript), I want to replace that 3.0 grade with an 'S' (means satisfactory) on my transcript. However, some of my friends don't think it's a good idea since it will make graduate admission officers guess my grade for that class. My question is if I want to apply for the doctorate programs, how important is the transcript? Is it a good idea for me to replace the grade to avoid dropping the cumulative grade? If I replace the grade then I'll be eligible to graduate with high honors. Any comments/suggestions are appreciated.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/35240/potential-impact-of-pass-fail-vs-letter-grade-in-elective-courses


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How can I appropriately call my professor?
I'm an undergraduate student in a research group. I'm a little bit confused about how can I call my professor appropriately. The graduate students in the group just call him by his name, but I think it would be a little bit rude for me to do that. I want to be more polite, but I also feel like it's a bit weird if I add 'Dr./'Prof.' every time I'm trying to call him. Any suggestions about what I could do?

Have you asked the professor how they would prefer to be addressed? And which country are you in?

See also https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16886/after-initial-contact-how-long-should-i-address-a-professor-as-dr-smith-or

@astronat Thanks for the comment! I'm in the U.S. No I haven't ask my professor about that


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I have 14 F's on my transcript and I am finishing late. Do I have any chance of getting accepted into a master's program in Germany?
Because of multiple factors including depression, attention deficiency, laziness and immaturity I've managed to accumulate 14 F's during the first two years of my computer science education. I'm finishing a semester late and I'm currently on my last semester. For context, I come from relatively poor European (non-EU) country and my university is considered pretty decent in my country.
Starting from third year I believe I changed myself for the better and so I managed to pass all my classes and more or less catch up to my peers. My GPA is currently 3.0 and I'll most likely graduate with the same GPA. I'm not an exceptional student in any way and I don't have any amazing projects to redeem myself. With my level of (un)success, I am aiming for average universities at best.
While I realize that I've pretty much destroyed my chances of pursuing higher education considering all my failures but I wanted to seek more opinions before I completely give up on it. Thank you.

You might read this: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/324/how-do-you-get-a-bad-transcript-past-ph-d-admissions Good luck to you.

@academic Most of the advice there doesn't apply to MSc admissions in Germany. For example, MSc students in Germany don't work with an advisor (except for the last semester), and there is no comprehensive application process with letters, interviews etc.

Your chances might be not that bad. MSc admissions in Germany, specifically in CS, are not highly competitive. In fact, universities have an incentive to admit and keep as many students as possible, since the number of students has an effect on how much money they get.

I see, thank you for your input. Does this apply for free/public German universities as well?

@ArmutElma Yes, mostly for those. I don't know much about private ones (they play a rather minor role)

When I mention money, I mean the money flow from the government/taxpayer to the universities, not tuition fees.

Ohh thanks for the explanation, I get it now.

While your chances seem pretty slim, perhaps you could work through a sponsor who believes in you and your potential. Perhaps a local professor with whom you have done well and who knows your background would be willing to "go to bat" for you.
Sometimes such people have contacts around the world and are, themselves, respected enough that a colleague, even in a distant place, would believe them enough to take a chance on your success.
But, pursuing advanced work in the normal way is very unlikely to lead to success. People do, however, recognize that others can turn their lives around.
In some places this won't work because of admissions policies, but it might be acceptable in others. Ask locally for advice and help and see what happens. You will, of course, need to be able to assure a "sponsor" that old difficulties won't come back. Good luck.

Why do you think the chances are slim in Germany?

I was thinking more generally, actually. It is a lot of bad grades that need accounting for.

Could you maybe write into your question that you are thinking more generally? The last time I checked, most German universities had as a condition for a Master studies a completed suitable Bachelor's degree. (And I believe, in an ideal world, this should be enough and no accounting for bad grades should be neccessary.)

Thank you for your input. I assume that my CS professors might help me in that regard.


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What is the best way to approach a professor for "formal" guidance/advisorship when they have no proficiency in the topic?
My situation is as follows: I have studied and completed a maths degree from a very prestigious and competitive university. I have then worked a few years as a mathematician and have then decided to change fields and become a doctor (physician). Now I'm getting to a point where I have to create (another) masters thesis.
I'm planning to create and publish something, which most likely none of the professors at my medical university (which is a lower tier, non technical one in terms of research) know or understand anything about and would like to turn this in as a masters thesis.
My university allows this (counting a published paper as a master thesis), however I'm not sure how to approach a professor in a non intimidating/threatening way and in such a way that they will be ready to "sign with their name".
Their support is purely formal, i.e. they only need to sign their name since my work will be checked by the editors of the journal, however the amount of professors that are at the university is very limited, and as such I'm trying to figure out the best way to go about this.
What is the smartest way to go about all of this?

Ask one of the professors you know how to go about this. Perhaps they will just sign on. It's probably better to do this when the work is (mostly) done, so they know it's a real project and not just your hope or fantasy.

Thanks for your answer. The issue I'm most worried about is, if somebody decides not to sign on, I'm afraid the others might decide also not so sign on simply because the other professor didn't. Should this happen then I'm stuck with no advisor at all (and thus the thesis can not be submitted). The work is mostly done. I have yet to submit the paper to the journal but I'm fairly certain it will be accepted and published.