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Is it bad practice to cite online news articles in solely because it's not a "reputable" source (i.e journal articles or even books)?
I understand that this question may be nuanced, so I'd like to provide a personal example which led me to asking here in the first place.
For context, I am currently doing my Bachelor's in IT. Some lecturers in my university heavily prefer academic journal sources for their assignments. On one occasion, I included this reference link to a news story as an example for how AI generated content may be viewed/handled in the future based on the court ruling in the case.
Upon review, my lecturer requested that I substitute the reference for what is essentially the same story, but published in a journal. I complied by citing a journal article (which referenced the same news article), and my lecturer surprisingly accepted the paper. This paper was then published in a conference hosted by my small local university on my lecturer's recommendation as practice/to gain experience.
Needless to say, I am very confused, considering I've seen published journals cite news articles directly. Additionally, all I've done is cite a secondary source, which I've read is not "best practice". A few related questions:

Does the fact of the news article being published in a journal make
it more reputable somehow?
Is there some educational value to be gained from my lecturers' decisions which I'm not seeing here? Or are my lecturers overgeneralizing: (i.e. journal = good, blogposts = bad)
Should I just avoid citing news articles and omit points in my papers
until they're published in a "reputable" source?

I would greatly appreciate if anyone could shed some light on this scenario. Thank you in advance!

You publishing a cite to their work makes their work more relevant. Googling a news article doesn't 'wash the other hand'. If somebody already said what you said, why say it again, other than for the "experience" of how to perpetuate your own industry.

@Mazura "If somebody already said what you said, why say it again?" Because it is useful or necessary information for the reader. We are talking about one fact, not reproducing a whole article.

The news story you cited is clearly reputable. It begins:

Images in a graphic novel that were created using the artificial-intelligence system Midjourney should not have been granted copyright protection, the U.S. Copyright Office said in a letter seen by Reuters.

So I agree with everything you have said. Citing just the journal article would be worse. However, news stories sometimes disappear from the internet, so you should probably cite both.
It would be even better to read the original letter from the Copyright Office (the news story has a link) and cite that. The letter is not a court ruling, so be careful how you describe it.
Answers to your questions:

In this case, no. In other cases, it depends on the quality of the news story and the journal article. Journal articles can have mistakes too.
There might be a bit of educational value. Perhaps some other readers would share your lecturer's opinion, and your lecturer is trying to help you avoid that problem. But in this case I don't agree with your lecturer. This was a serious news story from a reputable agency, not a blogpost from an anonymous author.
No, but try to use the most authoritative and reputable sources you can. However, as you are still a student, you probably need to just do whatever your lecturers demand, so perhaps the answer is yes.

When citing something that's been published online, a customary thing to do is to indicate both the publication date and the "retrieved" date, ie the date at which the author has read it (in case it is edited in the future). Another thing you can do is tag the page to be archived by the wayback machine at the date that you cite it.

It's not that news sources are not reputable. The issue is that news articles are typically secondary sources (when they are reporting on another document or source of knowledge). Journal articles are typically primary sources (when they are the source of new knowledge). In academic writing, we always prioritize primary sources. In tech and science, newspapers are almost always secondary sources unless the news article themselves commissioned their own scientific poll (but even then they usually have another publication for the science poll).
In your example, the court's letter should have been cited, not a news story about the court's letter.
If you are doing a meta-analysis of how news stories cover a topic, then you can cite the story as your primary evidence.

Could make this even stronger: "...not a news story about the court decision, and also not a journal referencing the news story about the court decision."

Yes, it is best to cite the primary source. The first paragraph of this answer is sometimes true and sometimes not. A news story about a big protest march would be a primary source. Journal articles are sometimes primary sources but sometimes they cite a source, which cites a source, which cites a source, which ...

@toby544 good point, I edited it and added that news articles could commission their own scientific poll, which would make it a primary source

I would add that news articles have an entirely different view of what it means to be a source of something than academics are. For journalists, once the author of an article has read something presented as factual (say, in another newspaper), it's as if they magically become the source and can just repeat it as if they learned it first hand. That often means it's impossible to trace where the information originated, all you know is that the person who wrote the article thought it was true. When an academic review article acts as a secondary source, it will at least cite the primary sources.

@BryanKrause Sometimes it works like that, but not always. In high quality newspapers journalists often mention that another newspaper or news agency is the source of a claim. And here is an entertaining article about academic articles that failed to use primary sources: https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312714535679

"In your example, the court decision itself should have been cited, not a news story about the court decision." Assuming you followed the link and read that. Always cite the thing you actually read. It's better if the thing you read was a primary source.

@Ray there shouldn't be a single "thing you actually read". Read multiple sources covering the same thing before deciding whch ones to cite.

@leftaroundabout I just meant they shouldn't use the secondary source, then cite the primary source without reading it first. It's fine to cite multiple sources for a given piece of information.

Nitpick: the example is about a letter from a government agency (the Copyright Office) announcing an administrative decision, not a court decision.

As you suspected, the answer is: it depends. A simplified answer is that a news article can be cited if the point you are making is "this is what is being discussed in the media". It cannot be cited for "this is a fact", because what is a fact by journalistic standards is not a fact by scientific standards.

This is good advice in some cases, but in this case the news article is factual and the journal article just cited it. The news article is actually more likely to be accurate.

There is another reason to perhaps prefer a journal to a news story that appears only on a website: Websites can change, printed journals cannot. While it is true that most journals are now purely online, if you provide a particular an author, data, volume and page/article identifier or doi, it is still the case that someone accessing that will almost certainly be accessing the same document that you accessed.
However, if you just provide a web URL, there is no guarantee that the content at that URL will not change over time, of even continue to function at all. This is often why we add (Accessed on ......) to citations to websites. But that doesn't really help the reader see the original document if it has changed by the time they come to it.
For this reason, if you must cite a news media source, it is better to cite an actual printed news paper (which at least in theory can probably be consulted in an archive) than a website.

It is indeed a nuanced issue. Journalism has another aim than scientific papers. Journalism is good at picking up current societal debate, ongoing trends, recent rulings etc., but does not generally analyse a topic using the best available theory and/or methods. Hence its use in a thesis (or other academic work) should be considered with the utmost care.
In my experience news items are useful to set the context of your work which you will mainly find in the first few paragraphs of the work (page 1 of the introduction). Sometimes they can be used to reflect on the outcomes towards societal relevance (in the closing section).
Media items can also be used in a (formal) media analysis where you used them as primary data points - but that would require a solid protocol for identifying and coding the items. I am pretty sure that is not what you mean.
Following this to answer your questions:
Does the fact of the news article being published in a journal make it more reputable somehow?

Reference in scientific journal. Not per se. If anything, infamous news outlets may receive relatively more attention - e.g. in communication science journals trying to understand things like "alternative facts" than reputable sources like Reuters.

Is there some educational value to be gained from my lecturers' decisions which I'm not seeing here? Or are my lecturers overgeneralizing: (i.e. journal = good, blogposts = bad)

Scientific journals require some structure and have some quality control. Newspapers (reputable ones) also have quality control but have a different purpose; so already should be used in different ways. Blogposts have no quality control which means all information in those should be treated as speculative and hence cannot be used as solid foundation for academic work. They might serve as illustration but not much more.
More directly towards your question. I generally recommend my BSc students to stay away from news items as finding the right use of such items requires a level of academic experience that many undergrads do not have. I am more open for MSc or PhD students to use news sources if they can sufficiently justify it. So I would support the educational message that it takes advanced skills to use media source correctly, and if you do not have attained those yet, stay away from them.

Should I just avoid citing news articles and omit points in my papers until they're published in a "reputable" source?

Depends of the purpose. See my argument above. News articles can be used to indicate societal trends etc. But they do not provide the in depth analysis that are expected of scientific journals. Hence as sources to contextualise your research they can be useful, but to build any academic reasoning they are generally not suited.

As always, it depends, but for me, if a news story refers to a study, unless your paper refers to the "newsy" aspects not described in the original study, or the study is unpublished for some reason (a status which conveys its own red flags), the better part of valor is to find the original publication, read it, and cite it.
When reading about science in the news, more likely than not the news article will be heavily reliant on some news release generated by the press office of the school the study comes out of.  Naturally enough, such news releases are designed to make the lab and the school look more favorable.  They might make the study seem more important than it really is.
An exception, of course, may lie in the newsier sections of publications like Nature and Science.
Yeah, published journal articles will always have some "slant", too, but at least it's slant that could make it through peer review.
All that said, we provide citations so that readers can look at them, and then determine how reliable they may or may not be.


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How should I generate a "personal outlook" when writing a review paper?
This is likely a novice question coming from an undergrad, but recently, I've submitted a review paper to a conference as suggested by my lecturer for academic experience. The topic of the paper is about the capabilities, limitations, concerns, and mitigations of generative AI models.
I've received notification that the paper has been accepted, however, the sole reviewer for my paper has also added the following comments:

This is a review paper, however, the writing style is more like
summarising from other's findings. You should consider a systematic
literature review or some analysis to come out with your own outlook.

and also

Avoid using we or I in the technical paper.

This has left me quite confused, as I was always under the impression that research should be based on facts and existing evidence, and I'm wary of expressing any personal opinions in my paper that's too far removed from the reviewed literature, which I believe is what made it come off as "summarizing from the finding of others". The suggestion to avoid first-person pronouns only confuses me further. How would I express a personal outlook without doing so?
An example of what I've done would be: Author A finds C. Findings of Author B also support C. Therefore, we believe C may be a viable solution, though its limitations include...
I'm certain that there are flaws with my current understanding, though the problem is that I'm not sure how to go about it correctly, if that makes sense? This leads back to my initial question: how does one make a review paper unique, and not just something cobbled together and taped up from other papers like Frankenstein's monster?

Congratulations on the acceptance. Ask the lecturer who encouraged you to write and submit this paper.

@EthanBolker Thanks for the suggestion! Interestingly enough my lecturer gave me the same response when I sent him my first draft (except the 'we' part), and the altered submitted paper has received the green light from him previously. At this point, I've posted the question in hopes of knowing if my paper has an "objective" issue that needs to be fixed, or if the reviewer's comments are more so their own preferences, if that makes sense?

Why do you think they are looking for your opinion? They said to do a systematic review or analysis [to support] your own [currently insufficiently supported] outlook. They are not looking for more opinion. They are looking for a deeper analysis.

@Dawn That makes sense! I suppose I initially interpreted it as "your paper lacks your own outlook, you should conduct a systematic review/analysis to produce it", but your interpretation sounds much more plausible in hindsight!

Well, that basically is what they mean. Do some more formal structured analysis of the current state of the literature, not just a literature review. Then you will have findings, not an opinion. Own outlook=own contribution or findings

As for the "I/we" issue: People have different opinions on the matter. Some people prefer the use of the passive voice instead. I personally (along with many colleagues) find papers that use passive voice very difficult to read and strongly advise against it. My recommendation is to ignore that part of the review.

This is a review paper, however, the writing style is more like summarising from other's findings.  You should consider a systematic literature review or some analysis to come out with your own outlook.

This is probably going to be inherently difficult for you, since you are an undergraduate and so you do not have the long experience that a seasoned academic can usually draw on to offer such a perspective.  You are right to be wary of giving personal opinions unbacked by evidence, but that doesn't seem to me to be what the referee is asking for.  The referee says that you should consider conducting some analysis that would come with your own outlook.
I recommend you speak to your lecturer to get some advice on this point.  Your lecturer should be able to provide you with some general advice tailored to this field, and might also be a useful sounding-board if you have some ideas on what perspective you could bring to the paper.  This might be an area where you need to team up with an experienced academic (e.g., as a co-author) to obtain the benefit of their experience in the field.

Avoid using we or I in the technical paper.

This is an unusual suggestion, since use of "we" is both common and widely accepted in technical papers.  Unless this is an actual requirement of the journal style (check the journal page for this information), you should decline to follow this instruction.  In your point-by-point response to reviewers, set this one as an area of disagreement and note that it would detract from the readability of your paper to follow this instruction.
Notwithstanding this approach, make sure to check your paper to ensure that you have been consistent with your first-person pronoun --- it is common to use the royal "we" in technical papers, but you should generally avoid flitting between "we" and "I" unless there is good reason to do so.

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Etiquette when talking to a researcher whose work you do not think highly of
What do academicians need to keep in mind when they are conversing with a fellow researcher whom they do not think highly of? I was reminded of A Beautiful Mind, where Nash (Crowe) says the following:

I imagine you're getting quite used to miscalculation. I've read your preprints... both of them. The one on Nazi ciphers... and the other one on nonlinear equations... and I am supremely confident that there is not a single seminal or innovative idea in either one of them.

This is as forthright as it could possibly get! Suppose there is a situation where you have read a paper in some detail, and are sure that it is not just worth its salt. If you happen to strike a conversation with the author about the work itself, how do you go about it? How do tactful researchers react to this situation?

By the way, I find that there's very rarely any awkwardness in talking with the researchers themselves, unless they are aware of your feelings and push you to explain.  Instead, the difficult situation is when a third party asks you what you think of some work.  Even declining to comment can be interpreted as a opinion, and whatever you say may be misunderstood and then reported to others, so you need to tread very carefully.

Tact: telling a person to go to hell and making them feel happy to be on their way.

I misread the title as "Etiquette when talking about a researcher whose work you do not think highly of", and expected to find a question on how do do polite smack-talk in academia. I was thoroughly disappointed.

"Your work fills a much needed gap in the literature."

Be polite. There's nothing to be gained by being a jerk. It's funny in the movies, but do people really say things like that in real life?
Be diplomatic. State initially that you do not fully understand the approach or the motivation, and then after some discussion state that you do not fully agree with the approach taken.
Be succinct. Point out clearly what you see as being the problem with the paper.
Be constructive. Indicate places where you think the paper/research could be improved, with concrete suggestions of how you would make the improvements.

Alternatively,

Avoid the topic. Talk about the football scores instead. What about those Bears?

I note that "Be honest" is missing.

Deliberately so.

That's disturbing. I want to be able to tell people what I think, even if it's bad. More importantly, I want people to tell me if they think my work is lacking. How can we improve otherwise? Honesty does not contradict the items you list, imho.

Honesty contradicts diplomacy. I'm not saying to say that their work is great if it is not, but don't say it is crap if it is. This may require you to say that it is "interesting", even if it isn't. Realistically, you cannot just go around telling people that their work sucks and how it could be better, even if it would improve it.

You can imply you don't think it's great, and if they inquire further you can tell them -- politely and constructively -- what you think. It also depends on the kind of conversation you are having. "Hey, guy I just met, your paper sucks!" is clearly not appropriate, even if honest.

That's what I mean.

Does this mean if someone is diplomatically and politely talking with me about my work, then they think that my work is crap?

@user13107: That's not a valid logical conclusion.

In any case there is no situation where "be honest" implies "say every thought that enters your head", for all the people who do the latter defend it as the former ;-) So I think it's a great idea to leave out "be honest". It's fair enough to resolve not to lie, but beyond that being told "be honest" might make you say true things that it would be better to leave unsaid (both socially and in terms of giving an effective critique).

"Being honest" is not the same as "stating our opinion openly". Your opinion is just that - an opinion, it's not fact. Also, for quite a few people, "being honest" is something that only works one-way. Your own work be better without blemish if you intend to take apart another person. If you do not want to get into trouble with them, don't talk about work or, if they are unpleasant, stay out of their way altogether.

"Thank you for your useful contribution to the field" seems to be a popular opening in such cases.
And as it might be you, rather than the author, who's got it wrong, then proceeding by the Socratic method can be both tactful and constructive. Start with establishing common assumptions, focussing on those areas where you think the mistake starts: "So I think you started by assuming XXX - have I got that right?" Then continue asking questions, stepping through their methodology, giving them an opportunity to either contradict themselves, or to clear up your own misunderstanding.
Failing that, there's the altogether briefer: "Thank you for your useful contribution to the field. Oh, please excuse me, there's someone over there I've been trying to catch up with for some time, and I must catch them now, while I can".

Having written this in the public domain, I do wonder how long it will be before it's said back to me

Thank you for your useful contribution to the question asked.

Be warned: this is basically the "well, bless your heart" of the academic world.

To understand that a paper is wrong can be much more difficult than that it is right. You might simply not get an idea or it could be badly written, or with rather a typo than an error.

"Could you explain me the main idea of your paper?"
"How can it be related to other research, ..."

or more technically

"I don't understand how does X imply Y, could you explain it to me?" (*)

or if it is about the general approach/philosophy

"Personally, I prefer loop quantum gravity to string theory."

If there is a plain error, there is no reason to hide it. (Otherwise you would value tact over truth, which is IMHO a very bad approach to science.) But still it can be done politely, perhaps using (*).
Rants are rarely successful at anything.
Moreover, judging quality or impact of a work is risky.

For a published departure from conventional scientific professional etiquette, see the survey article “Mathematics and the Internet: A Source of Enormous Confusion and Great Potential,” in which Walter Willinger, David Alderson, and John C. Doyle criticize scale-invariant network models of the Internet. The article is unusual for its polemic, insulting tone. While it is not unusual for researchers to insult other researchers in private conversation, it is unusual to see this in print. Its authors spare no opportunity to criticize their competition, as well as mathematicians and physicists generally, whom they regard as foppish, insular ivory tower aesthetes, whose nostrils are unacquainted with the bracing scent of an expertly soldered electrical connection.
The authors deploy a literary reference to insult their competition:

“What about replacing power-laws by the somewhat more plausible
  assumption of high variability in node degrees? While the answer of
  the scale-free modeling approach consists of tweaks to the PA
  mechanism to enforce an exponential cut-off of the power-law node
  degree distribution at the upper tail, the engineering-based approach
  demystifies high-variability in node degrees altogether by identifying
  its root cause in the form of high variability in end-user bandwidth
  demands (see [33] for details). In view of such a simple physical
  explanation of the origins of node degree variability in the
  Internet’s router-level topology, Strogatz’ question, paraphrasing
  Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “… power-law scaling, full of sound and fury,
  signifying nothing?” [52] has a resounding affirmative answer.”

The authors seem to suggest by this literary reference, which would not be lost on readers of the AMS Notices, that a model of the internet that predicts a power law node degree distribution is a “tale told by an idiot.”
The authors suggest that mathematicians and physicists must get their hands dirty, do some engineering and then contemplate the authors’  HOT models of Internet connectivity, which they assert, will be more mathematically interesting “… and certainly more relevant and hence more rewarding than that of the scale-free models of the PA type.” This sentence combines a dubious claim about what mathematicians should find interesting with a swipe at scale-free preferential attachment models of the Internet.
The authors conclude with these remarks:

“In this article, the Internet has served as a clear case study, but
  the issues discussed apply more generally and are even more pertinent
  in contexts of biology and social systems, where measurement is
  inherently more difficult and more error prone. … Although the
  Internet story may seem all too obvious in retrospect, managing to
  avoid the same mistakes in the context of next generation network
  science remains an open challenge. The consequences of repeating such
  errors in the context of, say, biology are potentially much more grave
  and would reflect poorly on mathematics as a discipline.”

Why would mathematics be at fault? The authors do not cite the literature on the independent history of debate over the applicability of power law models in biology and the social sciences, e.g., A Brief History of Generative Models for Power Law and Lognormal Distributions by Mitzenmacher.
Again I mention this as an unusual example in print of what appears to me to be a departure from conventional scientific etiquette.

To add to other good answers: I'd try to avoid "engaging" on such an issue, either directly with the author or with a third party. Anything else risks being interpreted as either being an overt jerk, or merely a passive-aggressive jerk. Only when you are a big-shot of some sort can you perhaps "get away with" being a jerk. But these dynamics are much more reminiscent of grad-school common-room wrangling among first-year grad students than of collective working toward a common good. If you must say something (because you think that others are being disserved by bad work being mistaken for good), I'd advise being extreeeeemely apologetic, and not sounding sarcastic when you say "I'm sorry, I don't understand how ..." and then "Ok, maybe I'm just being dense, but I still don't see..."
Perhaps the interpersonal model that would keep you out of trouble best would be the mental image of a student of yours who has made a large mistake, but with good intentions, and whom you hope to steer back to something more sensible ... or else discover your own error ... but in either/all cases without alienating anyone.
Indeed, here, again, the situation is that you stand to profit by the errors or failings of competitors, so, although on one hand your judgement may be expert, and, thus, trustworthy, on the other hand you have some incentive to be hypercritical, and, thus, mistrusted.
And other parties have some motivation to "stir the pot" just for recreation, so... watch out.

I'm having trouble understanding why a conversation with someone whose work you don't think highly of should be all together different than conversations with others. Sure you may disagree with their work, but unless you are a real leader in your field remember that someone is looking down on your own work (and probably even if you are a leader!).
I've found most academic types to be cordial and get along fine. There are a few "rough" people that seem to bark a lot and act rude towards others, but they get a reputation pretty quick. You don't want to be that person, especially young in your career. Call me naive, but I guess I believe that what goes around comes around.

This could be tangential, but as an Associate Editor of a reasonably good journal, I once received a note from one of the authors:

Reading your comments I found that there is a clear gap between your understanding and
  mine on what has already been in the literature, and what makes the contribution of the paper.
  I made multiple changes following your comments. But I did not follow those that are out of
  context.

with a personal email stating that

I also never have  experienced so much misunderstanding by either reviews or AEs in the history of my submissions.

on a paper that I gave my own review before sending it to other reviewers. So sometimes a rather strong language is being used. This particular author has published upwards of 50, may be close to 100, papers, which is a lot by the standards of the discipline we are in.

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Tips for engineering students applying math in their research
I hold an engineering undergraduate degree in EC. When I went to a good school for my post-grad, I found that research in many EC/CS departments required a lot of core math expertise which my UG lacked. It took me a whole lot of time to accustom myself and complete the courses. At the end of the coursework, I was able to thoroughly appreciate the development of the theory (in my case, real analysis, measure and probability theory).
When working on an engineering problem, I was able to understand fundamental ideas in many papers, thanks to the courses. Yet when it came to using the math for solving my own problem, I found things arduously difficult. In other words, non-intuitive math was well beyond me.
I regularly find top academic researchers in engineering fluently pulling off sophisticated mathematical results in their work. What tips could you suggest for someone with an engineering (or non-math) background requiring mathematical sophistication for their research?

Practice, practice, practice.  Fail early, and fail often.  Don't accept any mathematical claims at face value, even (or especially!) from your textbooks and math professors; challenge everything.  Be shameless about asking for help.  Most importantly, be patient with yourself; math is not easy.

My background is in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, so I cannot comment on EC/CS directly.  However, much of my work is mathematical in nature, so generally speaking I would offer the following:

Do not be intimidated those fluent mathematical results.
In my experience, for every "hit" that has an elegant result there were probably multiple "misses" that did not lead anywhere.
Balance perseverance with distance.
Even techniques that seem ideally suited to your problem will inevitably have challenges,  otherwise someone would likely have published the result already. It is important to stay positive and keep working at it.  At the same time, sometimes it helps to take a step back and work on something else for awhile and give your mind a break.  When you get some distance from your original problem, you may find an insight that helps you to overcome your roadblock.
Read widely.
I am sure you have been reading papers related to whatever problems you are working on, but oftentimes there are techniques used in tangentially related or even unrelated fields that may be adapted to work on a problem in your area.  Even if such studies do not lead to a usable result for your current work, they may lead to inspiration down the road.

Just like in your classes, learning to apply mathematical techniques to research problems takes time and practice. If it is possible, try to scale down your problem as much as you can to something very basic.  Finding a solution to the more basic problem will increase your confidence in the method.  Then you can slowly start to scale your problem back up. By attacking the problem this way, you get a number of small successes that help build your background with whatever techniques you use.  Overcoming the smaller problems can give insight into the issues you may be having with your larger problem as well.

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Is it normal for a PhD candidate to be dissatisfied with their PhD thesis topic, if the field is not hot?
I am a 2nd year PhD student in Germany. I am working on computational mechanics. It is on modeling the mechanical behavior of a composite coating. My background is metallurgical engineering. When I had started with the research, I was very interested in the field. It's a field which was a hot research area a decade back, but now it's not.
As time went by, l have grown unsure of the implications of my research. I feel that my research is wasteful as I would never be able to publish in top journals like Nature and Science. As my research area does not belong to a hot field. I feel that I should have researched a bit more about the research area before coming for PhD. I think I made a poor decision.
All these concerns make me distracted and unenthusiastic about my work. I feel that even if I graduate, I won't be able get any good academic positions.
Are these concerns common among PhD students?

I'm not sure composite coatings were ever published in Nature or Science. Doing a PhD is learning how to do research, hopefully in a general area that will interest you over your career. If you wanted 'hot', mechanical engineering wasn't the path to take...

Yes, it is. Ups and downs, like almost everything in life :)

It is normal for PhD candidate to be dissatisfied with their topic, in any field.

the "modelling the mechanical behaviour of a composite coating" is interesting and relevant. Your difficulty is probably a lack of contact with the right cliché (narrow group) that really need these answers, techniques and other results. As a 'surface effect' you may need to seek out specialist groups in larger industries, or those who specifically apply the coatings if you want to feel 'engaged', but that does not stop it being useful. Seeing the woods for the trees is always tricky.

Yes. In fact, I got saddled with an uninteresting and moribund topic, and it made it extremely difficult to find a postdoc. A PhD program is not five or so years of classwork or independent study; it's preparation for a future academic career. If your topic is not one that's conducive to such a career, then you should change it; otherwise, you're wasting your time.

@PhilipOakley Do you mean a clique rather than cliché?

I think if your field is a "computational" variation of metallurgy or manufacturing or whatever science that has been around for decades, then your competences will stay relevant for some time, and I think that's something to be positive about. As others have said, you're learning how to do research, when you're done with your PhD you'll embark on other (related) projects, and right now you have no idea where that could take you. If you're good, the sky is the limit.

@curiousdannii yes probably - that'd be a 'spell it as you say it' and hope the auto correct is right... ;-)

@anomaly, Slight presumption that 'Confused PhD' wants to be a permanent research academic. Industry could becon. The engineering of reliable surfaces is not a problem that is going away soon. Being able to handle less than glamorous projects is actually a valuable skill!

Is publishing in Nature or Science that important to you? Because, as a scientist, I prefer publishing a paper for real fellow scientists. Explaining to the mass is the cherry on the cake, but definitely not my purpose!

@PhilipOakley: Sure, but the depth of the subject matter and opportunity for full research involved with a PhD program is generally overkill for industry. (Granted, my degree is in mathematics, where no one in industry does pure research, and hardly anyone does anything beyond the undergrad level. It's different for chemistry and engineering, though I'd still say that the main point of a PhD program in any field is academic research.)

@anomaly there are a few interesting articles about the likelihood of getting a full prof post based on discipline, e.g. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-many-phds-actually-get-to-become-college-professors/273434/ I've also seen some that imply that part of the maths/science/engineering ratio is so that well educated folk are fed into industry. The specialist aerospace sector does use (and need) a lot of research level staff. Often it's the capability not the content that matters, especially 20+ years on ;-)

Wow, I was wondering if the OP was my brother who also suffered the same fate with Computation Fluid Dynamics.

Common symptoms of phd students. Dont worry.

If your major concern about your area of research is that you may never publish in Nature or Science, I'd say academia is not for you. You are after "success", not knowledge.

What hasn't been mention is that a hot topic is more likely to be to be scooped by others before you finish.

Sounds illogical. If it's hot it means that your competitional (computational?) advantage will be gone due to other students fighting over the same cakes as you are trying to get a piece of. More likely to be more of a shortage of people who are skilled in chiller areas.

@JonCuster I would be surprised if metallurgical or mechanical engineers would publish much in Nature/Science, not only in the coating fields.

From your question it seems that the only reason you chose computational mechanics was because it was "hot", and you are now regretting your decision because the field is no longer "hot" and thus it's hard to publish in high-impact journals. This is the wrong approach, not just because it's impossible to predict what topic will be "hot" when you enter the job market. More importantly, as a general principle, you should choose a research topic that you are really passionate about. Since doing a PhD is a long, hard, tedious, and sometimes frustrating experience, you will be miserable if you do not actually love your research. What matters at this point to you is not whether such dissatisfaction is common; rather, you should carefully reconsider your decision to enter the field in the first place and reevaluate your values and priorities. Such introspection will help you decide your next step. Depending on which stage you are in your PhD career, switching to an entirely different field might be the best choice.

My take on this: yes your feelings are normal, but Hotness is overrated (by definition).
Researchers who are only passionate about "hot" topics are, many times, not good researchers scientifically, and professionally. The reason is that "hotness" is not intrinsic to the scientific subject you research, rather an external, almost purely social phenomenon. Hence, people who are after "hotness" have passion to "succeed socially" more than to seek truth and do research.
I use to stay away from hot topics. They also tend to diminish after a couple of years, and then you have to jump on the next wagon.
Remark & reservations: The above it is an ideal simplification of the matter, but still should be helpful to understand my argument.

I don't know. I think there is also something to be said about stubborn professors that still work in the same tired sub-field ten years after everyone stopped caring about it.

What matters is the intrinsic importance of the sub-field. What people "care about" is a lot of times influenced by fads. One has to reflect critically about his/her field, but not in terms of social impact, in my opinion.

Hotness is definitely overrated. Sadly, it's also really helpful for getting a job.

'"hotness" is (...) an external, almost purely social event' - while I agree with your answer in general, I have some doubts concerning this statement. Note that we're probably not talking about "hotness" as in mere wide-spread popularity, like it occurs for clothing or music fashions. There is a social component to how technical/scientific topics become "hot", but a considerable part of this "hotness" is also the combination of successful recent developments and expected breakthroughs in the near future, which is inherent to the subject (in the context of our overall current knowledge).

Many times recent developments indeed make something "hot", but then  not much is left for other people to progress further as more and more people start jumping on the wagon. Also, "hot" subjects tend to be shallower than traditional subjects, due to the fact that they are new.

@O.R.Mapper, in a second thought, I believe that even the reasons you gave are not intrinsic to the science, but social: indeed, the fact that you expect a breakthrough in an area does not mean it is more important than other areas scientifically. It only means that there is a higher chance to "find gold" in that area. But it seems to say nothing about the area itself.

@Dilworth: It can mean that there is a higher chance to "find gold" because the current state of the art provides possibilities in many directions. That seems like it's something intrinsic to the topic. Indeed, it does not say anything about the importance, because if anything, I think it's the importance that is defined by social factors, rather than intrinsic to the subject.

@O.R.Mapper, I think the prospects of finding "gold" is not intrinsic to the topic, but rather a matter of timing: Because we live today, and not in ten years to the future, you have a prospect to find gold; but in ten years from now you wouldn't have the same prospects, though nothing intrinsic to the area has changed.

@Dilworth: Ok, if you do not consider the state of development/knowledge at a given time to be an intrinsic attribute of the area (I did in my above comments), you're right.

Before you do anything drastic, like talking yourself out of finishing, be certain that you're not just having a version of a typical reaction to the length and difficulty of the work.  Granted my field is different than yours, but there's not a single member of my cohort that hasn't go through multiple periods of feeling like their research sucks and they'll never finish.  This happens despite being told by others who would know that the research is interesting, including classmates, conference attendees and advisers.
Are you currently stuck on something difficult or tedious?  Were you excited when things were going well?  Did you recently have to discard a bunch of work and follow a different track?  In other words, could there be a different root cause that has led you to come up with a better excuse than "this is too hard" to stop working?
Only you can really know if you should legitimately consider leaving your PhD program, because there are just way too many factors for anyone else to get it right.  There may be lots of justifications, even including a legitimate "I just don't want to do this anymore", but "because this field isn't as hot as it once was" doesn't seem to me like a very good reason.
If every econ PhD such as myself bailed on research we didn't think would get published in the QJE, AER or Econometrica, there wouldn't be very many economists (queue self-deprecating joke about there being too many economists).

--- Good answer!

I recall working with medical doctors during my Phd who always labelled topics "hot" or "not-hot", which is simply crazy from a scientific point of view but very logically for the one seeking glory and fame. Their aim with their research was to "do something hot" so they could get ontop of all the other ambitious medical doctors in their race to become head of a medical department at a high ranking hospital. They all failed. Unfortuneately science is complicated matters and the likelikhood is that when you achieve glory and fame both your youth and beauty have vanished. Alternatively, a carrier as pop star might seem as a quicker and more secure way of hitting main-stream fame.
A second note about classifying "hot" is always about finding those inventions who are reported in high ranking journals. However, these findings often represents years of hard work of groups of scientists and when finally solved the authors gets credited by others for having found the explanations or proven the theories. At that very instance - that topic is only "hot" in that particular article and chasing "hot" is like chasing the rain-bow.
My advice is to be genuinely interested in the topic you are working on and solve the problems you encounter, report the discrepances you notice or formulate theories to combine results.

Yes, it's normal. I would be shocked if there was ever a grad student in the history of grad school who did not at one point hate their job. I'd be shocked because it would be living proof that aliens exist and walk among us.
Of course, if you want to be tenured professor at Harvard (or, say, Max Planck - let me not be chauvinistic) and thrice Nobel laureate, it sucks to not have a hot topic. Although, consider how a topic becomes "hot" in the first place: A very talented scientist makes a fascinating discovery, and everyone wants to get a piece of the action. Fields are not "hot". Good research makes them hot.
Even if it does turn out as bad as you think, there is more to a PhD than being an academic rockstar and publishing the "next big paper". If you can finish your PhD, it proves that:

You were disciplined enough to go through several years of independent hard work
You could manage your time and the direction of your project effectively
You are an expert in that field (even if your original research is unexciting, it doesn't mean that you don't have very good knowledge of existing research)
You are smart, capable, have good critical thinking skills and so on

These may seem like boring, second rate consolation prizes, but if you think about it in perspective, there are very few people in the general population that can boast having such qualities on par with a PhD holder, let alone combine all of them. These are all very valuable things outside academia, much more valuable than what you happened to publish. Even many hirers of of professors and post-docs understand that where you published in grad school is not necessarily indicative of your potential as a scientist - for instance, rigor alone is not very important for Nature (they care about impact), but in a postdoc candidate, you might be more interested in looking at the quality of the work, not the relevance of the results.

PhD work is one of the most difficult tasks to undertake and the choice of subject for one's thesis even more so. When I started, I wasn't so much interested in "hot" topics in my field of Cybernetics, rather, what problems could be solved. This way, one could circumnavigate the publication process and get quality contributions into the public space. That said, Nature and Science are widely-read journals but also look toward others that have high impact factors, a good metric to see what is being worked on in the community. However, there is one caveat: "hot" topics would have begun to be noticed in the past. When you have noticed this, it is probably too late to get involved--unless you get lucky. What, I think, happens oftentimes with quality contributions to the state-of-the-art in academia is that they are not highly cited but because of the implications of the problem being solved, such papers are pioneering and you must wait a sufficient amount of time, generate follow-up work, and exercise patience in the field. Bottom-line, if you don't love the topic you are researching, it will only make the process harder.

Having done my PhD in germany as well, I can say that there is a lot of flexibility. And being unsure at the end of first/second year is kind of normal. This is not the topic you will be working on for the rest of your life. And PhD is just to show that you can work in a scientific manner. Computational mechanics you can apply to other fields as well. Also it should have direct applications in the automotive industry. Hotness of a subject is definitely subjective and surely not the right way as others have pointed out.
But if it is something you cannot definitely do it, then go ahead and change your subject NOW. Life is too long and two years don't really matter.


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Are foreign language requirements beneficial for Physics, Math and Chemistry PhD students in North America?
Senior readers will recall that in North America (USA/Canada) it was required to show a reading knowledge of another language besides English in order to complete the academic requirements for a PhD in basic sciences. It is no longer necessary now in physics and chemistry but other top notch universities like Harvard still have this requirement for a PhD in mathematics. For chemists studying electrochemistry, Russian was recommended, but for organic chemistry German was beneficial. Undoubtedly, German had the largest compendium of handbooks, factual information etc in pure sciences. Gmelin and Beilstein Handbuch were one of the largest databases in chemistry and they still are in the form of Reaxys (A database in Elsevier) since the mid 1700s.
I was writing an educational article encouraging students to explore foreign language publications in chemistry with the help of online tools. A reviewer asked if there is any knowledge difference between those who knew foreign languages and those who did not. This is a very subjective idea.
Do those that have to learn a foreign language for their PhD, especially in sciences, really benefit from being able to read foreign language paper/book/ database/patents?
(I am especially interested in German, French or Russian language literature for research in math, physics or chemistry.)

I am closing this question because it does not ask for general information, but is a survey. Thus there is no base to vote on answers as all answers are equally valid. For example, you can ask for is one of the following: 1) a list of arguments for and against learning a non-English language (where the answers can feature anecdotes, but cannot only be based on it), 2) surveys of how often scientists need non-English languages, 3) statistics of how often non-English papers are cited nowadays. — Please [edit] your question accordingly, trying not to invalidate the existing answer.

The problem with your question is not a lack of specificity but that it’s a survey.

Delete this question please, as it seems that "publishing" a question is far more difficult than publishing in a good journal.

I edited this post to make it not a survey and am reopening

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/118092/40589

Strongly seconding @Ben Linowitz' remarks: "even nowadays" many papers important to me appear in languages other than English, especially French, but also German. Decades ago, perhaps a majority of significant sources of interest to me were not in English, with few equivalents available in English, so sufficiently fluency in both French and German (and, at that time, if I'd known, I'd have studied Russian also). Fortunately, I had (by chance) studied French and German in high school and undergrad, so this was fine.
For that matter, prior to WWII the U.S. was certainly not dominant in mathematics, whether "pure" or "applied", so sources in that time would not have been in English. Whether or not currently papers are mostly in English, it would make me very uneasy to be unable to directly understand older sources. Indeed, when I want to see first-hand origins of contemporary things in pre-1800 sources (or early 1800's) I am happy to have also studied Latin in high school.
It would make me very uneasy to have all that stuff be incomprehensible to me. To ignore it (pretending that everything has been replaced by English-language stuff) seems to me parallel to accidentally acting as though anything not available on-line, or that hasn't been digitized, has ceased to exist. The world is just 20 years old?
So, even though the grad program in math at my university has reduced non-English language requirements, and my eventually drop them entirely, I do encourage my students to not ignore non-English sources. Part of the point is that "Google translate" is often helpful enough so that one can make sense of (small) non-English sources... rather than ignore them. Perhaps use of machine translation software as an "assist" is the best contemporary version of "sufficient fluency".

acting as though anything not available on-line, or that hasn't been digitized, has ceased to exist. The world is just 20 years old? — More accurately: The world did not exist between about 1940 and about 1995.  Most older mathematical literature that can be digitized has been digitized and is available on the web, from places like the German National Library.

Reading German, French or Russian is a nearly useless skill for physics research.  Only very old or obscure research is not published in English.
Physicists do need to be able to work with colleagues with a range of language backgrounds.
 Usually that is not reading.  Speaking Mandarin is an increasingly useful skill.

"Speaking Mandarin is an increasingly useful skill." True, either Harvard or Stanford graduate program allows Chinese as one of the foreign languages for math PhD besides French, German and Russian.

This answer will be a bit different. Back when (back, way back) I needed to have a reading knowledge of any two of French, German, and Russian. I picked the first two. There were interesting current works in French (Bourbaki), older works in German (mostly translated). Russian was an outlier because of the cold war and the split between Eastern and Western scholarship at the time. Lots of things were being done independently in the (then) Soviet Union from what was going on in the US and the rest of Europe.
But I never needed any of what I learned. Bourbaki was interesting, but the knowledge was generally available in English. I didn't need historical works and the 20th century German stuff was mostly available. But recently, I wanted a translation of a mid century Russian paper and can't get it done. Machine translation for math is terrible - really terrible.
Today, just about every educated person in the world speaks and writes in English. I've done a lot of collaborations and conferences in Europe and the language is always English.
But, I'll still suggest the studying a "foreign" language is good for a math student since it trains the mind to think in a somewhat different way than studying math itself does. In fact, I think that it does researcher a lot of good to have a certain mental agility outside the strict confines of their field. A lot of mathematicians use music, actually, to provide something like that. But language study is also a "mental stretcher". I'll note that continental and Asian scholars get this skill when they learn English. It is good, likewise, just for the mental training, for native born English speakers to learn some other language.
At one time Latin was the language of scholarship. Today it is English.

You raised an important point which I am highlighting as well. What to do with machine translations when you have equations in the text. Of course chemical texts are not that full of equations, like a math paper, but machine translation messes up the sentence if an equation or an odd Greek symbol is embedded. Google translate is a disaster in such cases.

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


text:
Should undergrads list affiliation?
If I am simply an undergraduate of an institution, am I affiliated with it? I do not want to lie about my affiliation but also do not want to permissibly lie by putting "Independent Researcher" if I should in fact list my university.

Were you an undergraduate there at the time you did the research, or a significant part of it?  Was the research supported by the university in any way (funding, supervised by faculty member, part of a course, etc)?

Affiliation is in part to let people know how to easily get a hold of you. In that context, it makes sense for an undergrad to list their affiliation.

Yes, if you did the work while you were a student at your university, you should list that university as your affiliation.


text:
Is citing a blog post allowed in a research project?
I'm currently writing an essay on the possible benefits of video games in education for my Extended Project Qualification, and for part of it I want to cite a blog post from Gamasutra written by a developer who makes educational games. My supervisor has previously said to me that I should try to stick to citing research papers or books, as these are generally reputable, and I agree with this. However I cannot find anything in a journal that fits the point I want to make, as I wanted to write about a developer perspective on these kinds of games. Would citing such a post have an impact on the reputability of what I am writing, and therefore impact my grade?

For those who don't know, the EPQ (extended project qualification) is an optional research project undertaken in the final year of compulsory education in the UK (equivalent to an A Level).

When your supervisor said

try to stick to citing research papers or books

he or she most likely meant that you should use reputable and reliable sources of information when writing your thesis, and that most often (in an academic context), these will be research papers or books.
However, if you have another source of reliable information, by all means, use it (after verifying that it is reliable).
I'll give you an example of a scenario where it would be inappropriate to use a blog post as a source of information, and another example where it would be perfectly appropriate. Suppose a student is writing about some system X, and wants to write about the motivations behind the creation of X, but this is not addressed in the research paper about the technical details of X.

It would be a bad idea to use a blog post written by some person unaffiliated with system X, that lacks references to more reliable sources, as a source of information. You have no reason to believe that this post has accurate information about the motivations behind creating X.
It would be fine to use a blog post written by the creators of X, about why they created it. Obviously, they are a reliable source of information on this subject.

You wrote

I want to cite a blog post from Gamasutra written by a developer who makes educational games.

One thing you should be careful of, is to make sure to use these pieces of information for what they are - one person's perspective.

Be careful not to generalize (e.g. "most developers think...").
Also, be careful not to assume this perspective as fact. (e.g. if the post says "Educational games are more effective when Y", don't present this as a statement of fact in your thesis - make it clear that this is just one person's perspective, and explain that person's role for context).

If you're not sure whether you've used the source properly, you can always check with your supervisor for advice.
Finally, the pedant in me wants to note: the question is not whether to cite something, but whether to rely on it as a source of information. Obviously, if you use something as a source, you cite it!

This is fine. Citing someone's opinion is different from reusing someone's results as long as the former is clearly separated from the latter. Find a way to distinguish both kinds of citations in your essay. The former is the data on which you operate, after all.
If your advisor insists of such a separation, consider using footnotes, endnotes, or an extra list (in addition to the bibliography).

Huh? A citation is a citation.  There is no reason to distinguish citation for results versus citation for opinion; that should be clear from your text. And there is no obligation to cite only refereed sources for results, or to cite only non-refereed sources for opinions; peer review is neither necessary nor sufficient for a source to be reputable. Just list the blog in your bibliography like you would any other source.

@JeffE That's what you have to discuss with cqbit's supervisor, not with me, and not with cqubit.


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How is the applicant's bringing attention to his/her own application viewed if you know nothing about him/her?
Let us assume that a postdoc is applying for a tenure-track faculty position in computer science in an English- or German-speaking country. After submitting the application, the postdoc contacted certain faculty members of the target institution and gave them a heads-up about the application. Now, you are one of the contacted members. You work in the same field, but know nothing about the candidate; you have not cited his/her papers or vice versa, you've never chatted with him/her, and no senior person has spoken in his/her favor or against him/her. What is your usual approach towards the candidate's request for attention? Here are some possibilities:

That's spam. You don't know the sender and don't have time to care; you move the letter to the trash bin and stay neutral.
The applicant seems to be too weak, arrogant, or in despair so that he/she has to speak for himself (instead of his advisor); you decide to vote against him/her.
The applicant's area is near to yours; you decide to take a look at his/her application to find out whether a future collaboration is deemed possible.
You copy-and-paste a boilerplate standard answer. (E.g. "Your research and teaching statements as well as your CV are very impressive! Unfortunately, I'm only very marginally involved into the hiring process. If the hiring committee asks me, I'll bring their attention to your application.") You really don't wish to be influenced but get kudos in case the candidate gets the job.
... (your experience goes here) ...

(An aside: this question is different from How is the applicant's bringing attention to his/her own application viewed if you know little about him/her? : there, you know something, though little, about the candidate.)

For me, such an unsolicited e-mail would have the smell of desperation all over it: an outstanding candidate would probably trust the hiring committee to recognize the merit of his application.

Is there any connection at all? e.g., even if the faculty member doesn't know the candidate, should they know their work? did they cite it? did the candidate cite them? If there isn't some hook, I think an email would be ignored at best.

@lighthousekeeper Thanks! I added "in despair" to the question.

@AJK Let's assume that the field is the only common connection. I've improved my question in this regard.

Why is this question asked twice?

@padawan It is not: these questions have an empty intersection. Here, you know nothing about the candidate; in the other question, something.

@LeonMeier Yes, that escaped from my attention. However, I still feel like them two can be merged together.

@padawan Your feeling depends on the answers. The difference in the answers may well exist (interpreting AJK) or may not (interpreting Wolfgang Bangerth). As for me, I simply read the opinions. If they later (after 1 week or so) boil down to one and the same opinion, I'd probably be happy with a merger. As for now, I'm definitely not.

If you want to send such an email, you could contact someone in the department with whom you have some special affinity, and personalize the note.  Aim to interest this person in not just you, but the specific sub-field you and that person share an interest in.  Make it a friendly letter.  After you draft it, read it over, imagining receiving it ten years from now.  In this letter, you can mention names of people you and that person both know.  To do this well, you will have to spend some time looking over the faculty and postdocs at the target department to choose a person with shared interests, and then looking over the chosen person's CV to get a feel for their research interests, how yours would complement and reinforce theirs, what people you might know in common.  That last one makes it easier for that person to contact a common acquaintance for their impressions of you.  Once you understand what the person's research program has been and what direction this person is going in now, you'll be in a better position to let him or her know what strikes you as exciting about what they're doing.  You can send a reprint or a preprint if you have something that relates.
I'm not exactly answering your question, I'm suggesting a way of doing what you have in mind, that would maximize its effectiveness.
But this type of networking can also be done over time, at conferences and in response to your reading, prior to the application process.
At the application stage, the best use of your time might be to contact the people you have networked with over time, to let them know where you're applying, so they can put in a good word for you if they know someone at one of those departments.

Got it, aparente001. As you said, it's not an answer in the strict sense of the word. But it's tremendously helpful anyway!

My take is that it may not help, but it won't hurt. We get these emails all the time, so you contacting faculty members is not unheard of or out of the ordinary. I don't see it as a "desperation move".
The reality -- understood by all who make hiring decisions -- is that a candidate may be good but will in many cases be ignored if nobody in a department knows the person or has close connections to one of the letter writers. That's because departments get dozens or hundreds of applications for each position, and people -- for better or worse -- need to sift through them to whittle things down to a manageable number of candidates. It is just a true fact that it sometimes takes an unsolicited email for someone to actually take a close look at a file. There is no stigma attached with sending such email -- though there is also no guarantee that anyone will take the time to actually look at your file in great detail.


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What to do with a mathematical article rejected from a journal because the anonymous referee found a simpler proof?
Some time ago, me together with a coauthor submitted a mathematical article to a journal. It was rejected because the anonymous referee found a simpler proof of our main result. He wrote his simpler proof (schematically) in his review. It is indeed simpler, but it is not obvious or trivial by no means.
Also, the simpler proof is only for the main result, which is the main, but not the only result in the article. Other, smaller results are not affected by the simpler proof at all.
Now I am thinking about what to do with this article. I still think that there is some value in our article as it is, even knowing that there is a simpler proof of the main result.
So, I am thinking about the possible options:

Throw away the article completely. Do nothing.

Submit the article to another journal. Include a disclaimer at the beginning or at the end of the article with the full explanation of the situation.

Publish the article on ArXiv without submitting it to any journals. Include a disclaimer at the beginning of the article with the full explanation of the situation.

In the case of options 2 and 3, there is also a question of whether to include in the article the simpler proof itself (not just to indicate its existence, but to give the full proof) attributing it to the anonymous referee. I am thinking not to include it.
Any suggestions about what to do with the article?

Would you consider a fourth option, offering the referee coauthorship and revising the article to include their proof?

Try with other journal and include the simpler proof as an alternative proof. Though you can not acknowledge to the unknown referee.

Which proof offers more insight into the underlying problem? Does either of them offer insight into related problems?

@learner, your suggestion is dangerously close to recommending plagiarism.

Buffy, I think our (more complex) proof offers more insight because it makes a connection of this problem to a completely different and seemingly unrelated topic. But this question about which proof offers more insight is kind of subjective and debatable.

@Buffy, yes you are right. May be the OP can acknowledge anonymous person for the simple proof

It's too early to give up and abandon the paper right now.  You should try to revise it and pursue other possibilities.

@JohnDoe: When you say the referee "found" a proof, do you mean he found an article where a simpler proof had been previously published? Or he came up with an original proof of his own?

@SyntaxJunkie, he came up with an original proof of his own.

Why does there have to be only 1 proof? 1 proof is simpler for 1 purpose, but does not reach far enough into other areas. I'd recommend putting the reviewer as coauthor for the simpler proof and include both with indications of what is useful and when. Highlight the strengths and differences of each approach, but still present both.

But is the schematic simpler proof correct?

Isn't this kind of like rejecting a paper of someone who managed to publish the same thing you're working on before you did?

@JohnDoe. I don't know enough about math research to post advice, but this situation doesn't make sense to me.  The negative reviewer feels the world will be a better place with no published proof, just because he came up with a simpler one?  Isn't any proof, even a complicated one, better than no proof? It feels like he is playing an unprofessional game of one-upmanship with you.  So he came up with his own, simpler proof: So what? Isn't it common for first proofs to be rough and later proofs to be more refined?

I would contact the editor and ask them to contact the reviewer to ask whether they would consider being co-author on a revised paper or at least be acknowledged for the simpler proof.

This is the way to go. A note: If contact the reviewer fails, then it is perfectly fine to acknowledge the source of the proof in the acknowledgements without asking the reviewer. Reviewers should never be able to block a paper from published elsewhere after addressing the reviewer's comments. The only obligation of the author(s) here is to make a reasonable effort to contact the reviewer to coordinate on how to include their intellectual contribution in a resubmission.

I don't like this. Remember, his review of our article is negative. The article was rejected. His review basically says that given the existence of this simpler proof, the article does not deserve publication. So, first, why would we offer coauthorship to a person who thinks that? Second, why would he want to be a coauthor in an article that he thinks does not deserve publication?

@JohnDoe He has reasons the think that your article as written should be rejected by this journal. But he cared enough about the subject to find the simpler proof. That suggests he might respond to a request to collaborate in order to write a better paper with his proof and your other material. I see no reason not to ask the editor to ask.

Please don't assume that the anonymous referee is male.

@DCTLib Reviewers never block papers from being published anywhere, including the journal for which they are reviewing. Publication decisions are made by editors, not reviewers.

@JohnDoe - The reviewer said that the article does not merit publication IN THAT JOURNAL.  That does not mean it does not merit publication in some less prestigious journal.

@AlexanderWoo, it's not like we submitted the article to Annals of Mathematics. It was a pretty average journal by prestige. Is your suggestion now to resubmit to some obscure regional journal?

@JohnDoe The author identified the question and provided a valid proof. In my opinion, the ability to find a simpler proof is not a justifiable reason to kill a paper. This is not on the reviewer's shoulder, though, but the editor's. The editor makes the decision. Second, if the simpler proof is used, the author must be, if at all possible, cited by name, if not known, then anonymously. Offering a co-authorship is the nicest route, and, yes, it would be my first thought. It's just good scientific manners if the new proof is a substantial contribution.

@JohnDoe If they don't want to be co-authors, it's perfectly fine to revise the article incorporating their proof, and attribute the proof to them as [34] J. Pythagoras, 2023, private communication. As others said, a reviewer comment can not block you completely from publishing the paper elsewhere.

Based on your comment, let me suggest that you may have an opportunity to get your proof published, either by appealing to the editor or, with minor revisions, to another journal.
In mathematics, insight is, in many ways, the most important thing, not the actual theorem statements. If a proof offers insight into a wider class of problems (and you have the opportunity to say this) it might be more valuable in the long run than a "simpler" proof that offers less insight.
My own dissertation includes a proof provided by my advisor (and so credited). I had a different, more standard, proof, but his was very different and unexpected. The dissertation was published in TransAMS and the only questions I remember (this happened long ago) about the paper were about that proof. The overall structure of the dissertation was very interesting and made complete theory, but it was that one proof that excited people.
I don't know if the editor would be open to such an argument, some would not be, treating rejections as final, but if your assessment is correct then (IMO) the paper, including your proof, has merit.
In any case, a revision, stressing the additional insights provided by the proof should be worth a look at least and possibly worth publishing. But, you may have to spell it out pretty explicitly.

I’ve experienced something similar,  but on the other end (I was the referee). The paper I reviewed proved a result that I would consider interesting, but the techniques are well-known and could be done by an undergrad summer research student. However, given that the journal wasn’t particularly strong I saw no reason to reject the paper. The author however insisted that one of his lemmas, which he took 10 pages to prove, was highly innovative and technically challenging. The fact is that the lemma is extremely well-known, with a standard proof that takes half a page. I included the proof in my report and told the author to just use it.
I have also experienced the same thing as an author, but my reaction was not nearly as negative as yours. I once wrote a 35 page paper and submitted to a very good journal. The paper was carefully read and the report was negative, but the referee thoughtfully pointed out that many of my computations can be significantly simplified. I followed their suggestions and it shortened the paper by almost 20 pages! It was eventually submitted elsewhere and accepted, and I am glad that the referee took the time to point out a cleaner proof to me.
It is easy to take things personally, especially when it comes to rejection of a paper that we worked hard on. However, try to appreciate the effort the referee put in to give you a better argument. I don’t think including the shorter proof will hurt anything except possibly your ego. The community at large will almost certainly appreciate a shorter proof over a long one.

As for the first example that you give (in the first paragraph of your response), it doesn't make much sense to me. If "the lemma is extremely well-known", as you say, then there is no need to include ANY proof of it in the article (or in the review).
As for the second example (in the second paragraph of your response), it sounds like you simplified 20 pages of some technical calculations. This is not relevant to our situation, as our proof does not consist of technical calculations.

"It is easy to take things personally"
Yes, especially when somebody refers to hurting my ego. I am taking the last paragraph of your response much more personally than I did the negative review. The last paragraph of your response is borderline offensive.

@JohnDoe since I am open about my identity and you are hiding behind a pseudonym, trying to be combative is in extremely poor taste. I will not be responding to you any further, but if you truly find what I said "borderline offensive" instead of being an angry troll, then I don't believe you will thrive in any professional environment, academically or otherwise.

This is not a reason to not continue to pursue publication further. Make good on all of the feedback you received, and send it to a new journal for publication consideration. There IS a right home for your paper. Do your due diligence and get it published elsewhere!


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Is it a bad idea to submit a paper merely to elicit reviewers' comments?
Some days ago I was talking with a friend of mine, who is currently a post-doc at the illustrious Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) working on humanoid robotics.
He was quite disgruntled because he recently spent a lot of time testing his latest discoveries and writing a scientific paper to submit to an important artificial intelligence conference, but on the day of the deadline, his supervisor asked him not to submit the paper. Indeed, his supervisor felt the experiments were not good enough, or the results were not excellent.
Anyway, he did not want him to submit the paper, and so he did not do it.
We discussed about it and we both stated that, even if the paper and the discoveries were not excellent, they should have sent the paper anyway. The eventual rejection maybe would have come later, by the reviewers, together with the important review notes.
This way, they would have probably got a paper rejection, but they would have been able to treasure the reviewers' review notes.
Instead, with his supervisor initial rejection, they won't get anything except their opinions.
So we thought that his supervisor had a bad idea.
My question is: why did his supervisor suggest him not to submit the paper? Why did he not think about the possibility of getting at least the reviewers' comments?
Is a paper rejection so grave a fact?
Is it so dishonorable to get a paper rejection?

If you just care for the comments, send the paper to colleagues and ask them for comments instead of initiating a full-scale review process.

Here's something implicit in several of the answers below, but let me highlight it.  The supervisor presumably already has an idea of what's wrong with the paper and how to fix it, in which case the reviewer comments are not needed.  Given the amount of time and effort it takes to review a paper, you should ask for reviews only when you feel a paper might plausibly be accepted, or maybe when you fear rejection but can't articulate the reasons or possibilities for improvement.

Also, if you work in a field where your advisor is automatically a coauthor, he may simply not want to submit something with his name on it (or publish something with his name on it, if submissions are double-blind) that is not up to his standards.   Even if the advisor is not a coauthor, substandard work by his students reflects badly on him.

Let's start from the latter questions.

Is a paper rejection a so grave fact?

No. Unless you are not resilient enough and ready to become depressed because of a paper rejection. Happens in early PhD, later it usually gets easier to swallow.

Is it so dishonorable to get a paper rejection?

No it is not.

why his supervisor suggest him not to submit the paper? Why did he not think about the possibility of getting at least the reviewers' comments?

I can't know what the particular reasons were, but here are my own personal considerations in situations like this.

As a reviewer I value my time. I am very frustrated with papers which are obviously substandard and I have to waste my time to deliver a high quality review. Remember, also low quality papers deserve a high quality review. A review is a standalone artifact too and as such it has to be crafted too. Over time we develop a good feeling what is the required standard for a given venue.
My name is connected to a paper when I submit it. You are submitting and delivering a piece of work. Most people with high personal integrity attitude want to deliver only their top pieces of work. I certainly do not want my name to be attached to a piece of work I am ashamed for. Therefore, sometimes I stop myself and don't submit a paper when I know it is not up to scratch. It happens to me quite often.

Notice, as a frequent reviewer, I very well know what the reviewers' response would be. If you are desperate and in a need of a yet another publication, OK, frivolous submissions is a game you can play. If you have a high standard on yourself and your surroundings, playing this game is no good. Delivering good work is what counts, delivering yet another insignificant paper doesn't. In this case we do not speak about rejection on the ground of correctness, or projected  significance, but on the ground of not being up to the minimal standard.
Later edit: the above stance is about subjective attitude to things, therefore point 2 applies also to conferences with double-blind review policy.

When I was 16, I had a rather nice idea for a quantum mechanical experiment. At the time, my theoretical foundations were shaky, and I just wanted to know if there were any flaws in it. Unfortunately, I didn't have any contacts in the physics academia, so I had nobody to talk to. Instead, I went ahead and submitted it, and mentioned that I only wanted input. Here's the mail I received:

Dear Prof. Manish Goregaokar,
We have received your submission [id] entitled [title]
Before entering a submission to the reviewing process, we check
  whether it obeys criteria such as the following:

Is the topic of research suitable for this journal?
Does the paper contain original ideas and new
   results?
Are the arguments and calculations accurate and
   correct?
Is the exposition sufficiently well organized, and
   worded well?
Does the overall quality agree with our very tough
   standards?

I regret to inform you that the editors had to conclude that this work
  is not suitable for publication in Foundations of Physics.
I would like to thank you very much for forwarding your manuscript to
  us for consideration and wish you every success in finding an
  alternative place of publication.
With kind regards,
Gerard 't Hooft Chief Editor
Specific comments from a member of the Editorial Board:
It is not considered a task of the editorial office to evaluate
  unpublished, or unpublishable, research.

(emphasis mine, I have removed references to the specific paper)

If I had not mentioned that I was only looking for input, then I may have gotten a more detailed rejection. However, it is clear from this that the priority of the editors is not to help researchers along, but rather to focus on publishable stuff -- which is perfectly understandable.
Regarding your specific situation (different from mine since you were planning to submit without mentioning that you only wanted an eval): My guess is that the supervisor did it out of courtesy. He did not feel that the editors should waste their time on something which does not benefit them -- sure, helping others is a good thing, but forcing (or tricking) someone into to helping you isn't.
I wouldn't know much about whether or not paper rejection is dishonorable, though.

Reviewers almost universally volunteer their time, and if you are sending a paper that you feel will be rejected because it isn't ready for publication, and/or has serious flaws, then you'll waste the time of a number of people trying to get one or two nuggets of feedback.
Blind review is not the time to elicit feedback on your work; it is meant to ensure a forum for reviewing publishable work.  If you want feedback on your work, make the contacts with the right people who will help you, and don't try to abuse the review system by submitting immature work under false pretenses or with an ulterior motive.
p.s. There are places for work that isn't quite ready: conference workshops.  Many times they are blind review, but with a high acceptance rate and with the hope that workshop attendees will provide good feedback on the work and it can be improved for conference or journal publication.

+1 for mentioning conference proceedings as a way to go with work-in-progress. Another positive fact of this is that in general, you can re-publish results in proceedings later in a journal. Therefore, it doesn't stop you from getting a high-quality publication from your results.

Paper rejections are far more common than one might think. A rejection rate of 50% is not uncommon in most average journals that I know about. In some high-reputation journals it may be over 90%. So rejection is not uncommon. There are of course different reasons for a rejection, some worse than others (incomplete and in approximately falling order): the manuscript (MS) content is not appropriate for the journal; the MS (and/or figures) is poorly formated (to the point that it is hard to follow); the MS has severe language problems; the science is poorly supported by references and/or the discussion; the MS contains scientific errors or misconceptions; and then more shady problems such as falsification and plagiarism.
Now to send in a MS just to get comments from reviewers. As an editor, I really would resent this behaviour. After all what is happening is that the Ms would take up at least one editor and a couple of reviewers (free) time (none are usually paid for the work). There are authors who send in their half-baked manuscripts just to have reviewers help them iron out things they were too lazy or incapable to do themselves. I know such cases personally. The risk is that the paper gets rejected but if not then someone pours in a lot of work for very little credit (which in turn is taken up by someone else).
So from the description above, I would say that the advisor may have done the honest thing and wanted to prepare the paper as best he/she could, you be the judge. It is of course a grey zone when something may be good enough to become accepted for review or just not good enough and head for rejection. Where one draws this line is perhaps personal but it is far better to stay away from the grey zone altogether. I would therefore suggest that discussing this matter with the advisor may prove to be both a fruitful and interesting endeavour.

However, you speak about rejections in general (including hundreds of proofs of P\neq NP and stuff). The rejection rate amongst renown scientists, at least from what I know (I do Math/CS), is quite surely less than 10%. Usually the only good reason for rejection amongst these people is that the result has been published before and the authors weren't aware of that.


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In statement of purpose, good to mention about learning from some professor's lecture notes and books?
In statement of purpose for applying to a PhD program, is it good to mention about learning from some professor's lecture notes and books (not papers, because don't get to read them yet), and finding them helpful?
Will it make the statement more personal and therefore good?
Or is it better not to say so, and rather to keep the essay short?

Why "don't you get to read" a proposed supervisor's papers? If you cannot get access (if you aren't currently enrolled at an institution, for example) to a journal, email the supervisor and ask for a copy of the paper(s).

@Moriarty: I didn't get enough time to read and understand. Also I am interested in the research of several professors, probably more than half of the professors in the department. Is it good to mention all their names?

I would be very hesitant to mention more than a few professors, and Dnorg Spu's answer is spot-on in answering how you should mention them. Gushing praise about a dozen different professors will give an unwelcome and untrue impression of desperation.

You do not want to convey the message, "I am applying to your school because I think Professor X is great."  Everybody knows Professor X is great.  That's why they hired her.
The question is, why should they want you?
A message you do want to convey is, "I am applying to your school because my research goals are well-aligned with existing interests in the department."  If you can incorporate Professor X's notes and books into that story, great.  Otherwise, leave them out of it.

Indeed... but/and, even so, exhibiting awareness of specifics of a given school is better than completely-generic applications, I think.

Agreed.  So maybe I should say: think hard about how to incorporate Professor X into the latter story!  If his notes are an introduction to a generic topic like calculus, it might be hard.  But if they're on a specific, research-oriented topic like astrobiology, it will be easier.

Indeed, if would be a silly gaffe to ooh-and-aah over calculus notes (as nice as they might be), but definitely good (I think) to show appreciation for "high-level", non-generic (as you say) notes. Appreciation for special things.

On the whole, indication of awareness, of taking initiative, is a very strong positive.
On the other hand, if one attempts to do this artificially, to "create an impression", there is risk of "looking silly", to say the least. For example, do not try to mass-produce in an afternoon "awareness of Prof. X's notes and papers" for Prof. Xs at a dozen+ different schools to which you're applying. Such things tend to result in extreme superficiality, and inevitably some silly errors, such as referring to Prof. Y at University Z while purportedly addressing the admissions committee at Univ. W about Prof. X. Good for a laugh at your expense, sure, but, ... :)


text:
Can I mention professors' names in the statement of purpose?
For PhD applications, I have mentioned that I am interested in some research areas. Besides, I am thinking about mentioning some professors' names, so that it shows I have read their websites and I am not just sending out generic statements applicable to many schools.
But is it good to mention some professors' names in the statement of purpose, if I don't know them personally? In what cases is it good, and in what cases it isn't?
For example, is it good to only mention

those whose research directions are aligned with my research interests, or/and
those whose books or notes I have heard of, or better, might have read some parts of, or/and
those who are already established and famous (such as having certain titles), or/and
those that are directing the PhD graduate programs, or/and
those that are heads of the departments?

What will other professors who are not mentioned think? How will you do, if it were you?

I think it's more interesting to reference papers you are interested in, rather than professors. Referencing publications by the group you want to join are a good way to illustrate your knowledge of the field and specifically the group's expertise.

If I haven't been able to read and understand the paper, is it still better not to mention the professors? How much should I mention about the papers, if I will do? Will referencing papers of some professors make my chance with other professors slim, especially when the admission is decided by a committee rather than individual professors?

See my answer to a related question, especially the penultimate paragraph: The only credible reason to "target a particular professor" is if that professor's research interests already mirror your own. If you try to craft the bulk of your statements to different professors in different departments, the result will be much shallower, and therefore much less persuasive, than if you describe your own well-developed research interests.

Make sure the professors are still at the school. You might think this would be an obvious thing to do , but you'd be surprised.

Your statement of purpose should be specific to yourself and your research interests, first. Mention names only when the owner's work is both relevant and pertinent to your research interests. As JeffE stated,

If you try to craft the bulk of your statements to different professors in different departments, the result will be much shallower, and therefore much less persuasive, than if you describe your own well-developed research interests.

Your statement of purpose should paint a persuasive and intriguing picture of who you are, and should not be a hodgepodge of famous names and those whom you want to impress. You are trying to sell yourself and your ideas. Mention those whose work you have both read and found relevant to your research (and perhaps cited in your own work), but avoid name-dropping solely for the sake of impressing those who may read your SOP. That said, you should tailor your statement of purpose to the specific department you are applying to. This may include mention of the work of individuals in the department, or those whose work has informed their research. How much of this you should do is a judgement call on your part, and you should lean away from appearing to name-drop for the sake of making an impression.

I'm bewildered that anyone might think this was a good idea. It's gauche.
Mentioning a professor's name doesn't show you've read their website. And showing you've read a professor's website doesn't really say much anyway.
Namedropping? Leave it out.
And as for mentioning books you have heard of: surely now you are joking. Just in case you are not: that's beyond gauche, it's crass.

While I agree that for the most part it isn't particularly useful to mention professor's names, if you have directly come across (and perhaps cited their work) in your own research it might not be as bad an idea.  I do agree with just about everything here though.

You can certainly mention professor's names that you don't know personally, but have relevant research. Many professors in top schools especially rely more on the application pool that comes from the admissions committee. If you pass that step then your application will be handed to the specific professor you have mentioned. Of course knowing them brings a benefit, but it is not the only way to get their attention.


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Interview strategies for faculty positions - to focus on their research or your own?
What's the best approach for talking to faculty that are in distant/unrelated areas during a campus visit for a faculty position?
Is it preferable to show that you are interested in their research and open-minded about learning new things by asking them about their research, or to try to focus on your own research and the expertise that you offer?

When you have a meeting with a "distant" potential colleague, you should let the interviewer determine the initial flow of the interview. The important thing is to not spend too much time trying to figure out if this is just for information, or if you're being "tested" in some way. (The answer is, yes, you're probably being tested.)
Sometimes, the interviewer will want to talk about his research, to see if you are willing to think about new ideas, and how to fit them into your work. Sometimes, they will want to talk about your research, to see how well you can explain your ideas and work to people outside of your field. And other times it will fall somewhere in between these two extremes.

And sometimes the conversation will turn to other things: teaching, student mentoring, funding opportunities, department/university politics, the local real estate market, hobbies, etc.  They're interviewing you as a potential member of their community, not just as a fellow researcher.  You're interviewing them as a place to work and live, not just as a place to do research.

@JeffE: You're right; the external interviewer may want to talk about other things beyond the scope of merely research (or teaching).

To add to this, sometimes asking about the non-research aspects sends signals about interest level, which can be very important. If I get the impression that an interview candidate is "going through the motions" I might be inclined to support making an offer to someone who I think might actually be interested in coming.

I guess it depends on context. On my academic and industry interviews, I tended to save the more "social" questions for mealtimes. There it seemed like a more appropriate time to talk about non-work-related activities!

You'll typically have between a half-hour and an hour to talk with them. In that time, you should be able to cover a number of different topics:

Your background (briefly)
Your academic experience, if any
Why you're interested in working in their department
Their research focus
Their ideas for future research focuses
Ways you could fit into their department

Of all those, the only ones you could probably skip is 1. Everything else is pretty crucial to getting a good idea of what the department's research agenda (if they have one) is.

Not sure it's necessary to do (3) or (6) for a faculty position.

@Suresh - I completely misread the question. Thanks for pointing that out.

Usually the interviewing faculty have already seen the candidate's CV, so (1) and (2) are also not necessary.  (But be prepared anyway.)