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Impress potential PhD advisor with my work, will it backfire?
I am an international student trying to contact a potential PhD advisor in the US. I believe I have solved an important question in my field. To contact the potential PhD advisor, I will mention that I am working on some important problems and made some progress, that I am interested in becoming their student, and then I attach my resume. I hope to impress them with my work. However, I can imagine it may backfire, maybe they think I am a crank, maybe they become interested and request my work to view it, only to find out it is wrong, and lose faith in me. What should I do?
Update
Thank you for all the answers and comments. I decided NOT to mention my work in the email, just mentioned it in the resume with only the title. I receive positive feedback from the professors.

If you cannot (or do not want to) prove to them that you made progress, I would consider not mentioning it.

I think you should try to get feedback from an expert (anyone local you can ask?) on your work, independent of your application.

Why not publish your solution in a peer reviewed journal. If it is accepted, and if it is important probably people will call you (metaphorically) to join their PhD program.

@lalala, hard to get many things past an editor in a half decent journal without a track record or an institution behind you.

The effect that showing your work to the professor will have is a function of several things:

Did you actually solve the “important question in your field”?

If not, did you make any meaningful progress? Or if not, do your ideas have any value at all (even if they are not novel), or are they complete junk?

Is there a significant gap between what you are claiming to have done and what you actually did?

In the best case scenario, you did solve the question — the professor will surely be very impressed. The problem is that this scenario is also statistically the least likely.
In the worst case scenario, you claim to have solved the question but your solution is complete nonsense. That will certainly leave a very poor impression.
Between those two extreme scenarios lies a spectrum of quite plausible situations in which you did have some interesting ideas, novel or not, publishable or not, and do not make any outlandish claims about solving famous problems but instead show yourself capable of recognizing that you cannot entirely evaluate their correctness and/or importance by yourself. As a professor, I would view such a situation somewhat positively and think that it likely says good things about you. In other words, I would be (mildly) impressed.
Basically the things to keep in mind are that these sorts of in-between situations are somewhat common, and that from the professor’s point of view, their expectations of what a student at your level can come up with through independent work are pretty low to begin with. So showing the professor anything that shows you to be a non-crackpotty, curious, independent-minded student, can be useful, and unlikely to harm your prospects. Good luck!

Interesting take. Do you really think there is a spectrum between solving the question and making no sense? In my experience, it's usually a dichotomy between your two extremes, with all instances being in the latter case!

@Dilworth I agree with Dan - it's just all of the states in the middle are highly unstable and people either find the error in their ways or persist in heresy. More importantly practically, some people learn better by trying to make sense of things they learn and coming up with new ideas which are almost always either well-known, useless or wrong, but for not-so-trivial reasons. Having this spark is great, getting out of touch with other, especially more experienced scientists, and emotionally investing into believing you did something important without a reality check is... Not so great.

@Dilworth the most common situation would be a student rediscovering some correct but known ideas. Less common but also still quite plausible would be discovering new (and correct) ideas that make a bit of progress. In both situations it’s possible for the student to also mistakenly believe they have solved the problem, although I agree that’s less likely. Anyway, my main point is that there are a variety of situations so the exact effect would depend on which one of them is happening in OP’s case.

@NoahSnyder well, sure, low quality work probably won’t impress anyone even if it’s non-crackpotty. I mean, professors’ expectations of undergrads’ independent work may be low as I said, but it’s certainly possible to fail to meet even low expectations. On the other hand, given that you became a professor, one could speculate that the seeds of your future success may already have been apparent in that mediocre undergrad paper. So I think your example can even be seen as supporting my argument (in the last paragraph of my answer) instead of rebutting it.

@Dilworth: I think there's plenty of stuff in the middle of that spectrum.  E.g. when I was an undergrad I had some "paper" with mediocre results about for which groups you could write the regular character as a sum of inductions of trivial reps from nontrivial subgroups. It was probably barely publishable, but not exciting, but it certainly wasn't crackpotty. (The point is it lets you prove versions of Theorem 3 here). (Reposted comment to clarify it's responding to Dilworth and agreeing with Dan.)

@NoahSnyder what do you mean by "versions" of Theorem 3 at that link: generalizations with $S_3$ replaced by other groups?

Yup.  The question is just which groups have formulas like that one.  I don’t remember what results exactly I had.

@NoahSnyder, sure, but that's not what the OP mentioned. He/She mentioned explicitly "important" result that has the potential to "impress" the supervisor, and that can make him/her look like "a crank". Hence, the OP clarifies I believe that they are speaking about a major open problem. There is no known spectrum in this case. It's a dichotomy that boils down to a single point: senseless "proof".

Also, I don't really get this "I'm not sure if my proof is correct!" thing. Any reasonably rigorous person should know, after writing their argument very carefully, if their proof holds or not. But that's a different big argument I guess :)

Yeah, you’re right that “major open problem” is a huge red flag.  I think we don’t really disagree about this particular case (I upvoted your answer), but instead about whether other cases exist on a spectrum with this one.

@NoahSnyder, yes, of course, if candidates have solid results already written they should definitely share them with potential supervisors.

Sorry to say so, but, yes, it may certainly backfire. From my own experience, if I get a PhD candidate claiming they "solved a major problem", I'm very cautious about them, and I tend not to recruit them, usually after seeing their "proofs".  I definitely see it as a strong indication of being a crank, and in every case I've experienced myself  the person was indeed a crank, or at least lacked the sufficient ability of judgment to evaluate basic rigorous scientific arguments.

This is a very good answer. To add to it - in my experience the people claiming that they did "an important discovery" were sometimes lunatics, but most often people with very small experience and ability to rigorously analyze their work. People who do not realize that their work is probably not that great when they see it themselves as revolutionary do not make good scientists. (And then there is a Ramanujan once every 100,000 cases)

@WoJ As evidenced by the Dunning-Kruger Effect

PhDs are not about solving major problems, breakthroughs, etc. They are about learning research methods and making some real contribution to a really small sub-field. You will also need to deal with bureaucratic issues and the financial aspect.
Einstein's PhD was not about general relativity theory, special relativity theory, space-time, the nature of light, Brownian motion, or the photoelectric effect. It was not about any fancy stuff. If was "A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions."
Consider focusing on something that is a good match to you, your situation and your potential advisor/university.

well, that new dimension is something "everyone" knows and uses (daily) in science

@Ben: Einstein's work was nothing about a new "dimension". It was a quite prosaic way of determining the size of molecules. And his method was soon deprecated in favor of more precise methods. Actually he was wrong by a factor of 3.

I know, I just reformulated "molecular dimensions" ;) Well, ok, then he did quite a bad job, they should take his PhD for good.

As you mentioned the key undertone that's going to happen is the professor might think you are a crank. So your first job is to convince the professor you are not a crank. The easiest and possibly best way to do this is to get an expert to vouch for you. If you are able to write something like the below, then it might become impressive:

Dear Professor [name],
I'm a prospective PhD student intending to work in [field]. I work on [topic] and have made some progress during my Honours year. My supervisor, Prof. [name2], recommended I pursue a PhD to develop these ideas further. [name2] specifically mentioned you as an appropriate supervisor. Would you ... [yada yada here's my resume blah blah]

Here Prof. [name2] is indirectly vouching for the credibility of your work. If Prof. [name] knows [name2], then it's even better.

Note that, unless your field is exceptional, for most purposes in the US, an application for a doctoral program doesn't require (or expect) that students contact a potential advisor. Likewise, in most places/fields, an individual professor has no say in who will be admitted unless they happen to be on the admissions committee. Even then, the rules require that they make decisions on the required, submitted, materials.
Instead, what you do is prepare required documents, including a Statement of Purpose, and get good, positive, letters of recommendation. The committee then chooses those that it thinks will fit well with the program and are most likely to succeed.
It is only after you arrive that you need to think about an advisor, and in most fields (some exceptions), the first task is to pass comprehensive exams. Only then is an advisor essential, but by then you have had a chance to meet some people and choose your best option.
The implication of this is that by trying to impress a professor before there is any benefit to be gained, you put yourself at risk needlessly if you are wrong. I suggest that you don't do it until you are already admitted.
True, however, that the process is a bit more compressed for those with a masters at time of admission. But, unless you know specifically otherwise for the program you are applying to, the contact is both unnecessary and unlikely to be fruitful. So, in the general case, you get a chance to sit down and have an actual conversation with any potential advisor.
For more on doctoral admissions, see the answer for the US to this question. In the general case, an email to a potential advisor might well go unanswered or you get a standard/boilerplate reply.

I will not go into details on how to get a PhD scholarship in US. All I did in my time was look universities up and go through their application process.
Related to what you're saying, it could go into your statement of research.
I would be skeptical to anyone trying to contact me and tell me they solved some important question in a field. Professors in US, and even postdocs get that kind of letters every day. Most of them are from mentally deranged people who simply have no scientific background. But if you're not one of those people, the chances that a potential supervisor would ignore your mail as scientific spam are high, precisely because of those people.
But, I remember I taught some course at a summer school this year. The way it was organized, I got to select the applicants I would work with myself. After I carefully read all the normal things (CVs, letters of recommendation, etc.) I made my final decision based on their research interests as they were reflected in their statements.
They were young people and they were gushing about how much they love their field of study and what interests them and so on, but I only looked at how well they explained what they did themselves and how. And I think I selected the best applicants.
So, if you think you solved an important problem, you should talk about it in your research statement. You should be succinct and honest. Even if your solution is not as great or as important as you originally thought, if you present your main result in a clear and logical manner, with easy to follow arguments, your application will be very good. If you already are in contact with some strong researchers, ask them for a model of a cover letter they sent when they published their work in a top journal. That's how you should present your research result in your statement.
Another thing that comes to mind is that you could have already submitted your research to a top journal, if it is as good as you say. Even if it isn't it's worth getting the opinion of an editor and of some referees. A good published work, at this stage in your career, would help your application a lot.
Finally, if you wish to contact a potential adviser, you could sent them an email saying you applied to their school's graduate program, and given your research interest, and their expertise in your field, you think you would be a good fit in their research group. You tell them what you've been working on, and attach that research statement, if they want to read it. If they are looking to hire a PhD student, they might be happy to have you, especially if your work is as high quality as you think.

"Most of them are from mentally deranged people": there is no evidence to support this statement, and it harmfully stigmatizes mental illness. The answer will be better if that phrase is removed.

@GregMartin can you explain in what way you think the phrase you are referring to “stigmatizes” mental illness? Are you denying a connection between mathematical crackpots and mental illness? Or are you saying that this connection does exist but must not be discussed because it portrays mentally ill people in a bad light? Or do you simply object to the word “deranged”? Or something else?

@GregMartin It just so happens I'm mentally ill myself, and I have done that kind of stuff in during psychotic episodes. Luckily, everyone ignored me. A side effect of that experience is that I recognize people with similar symptoms, when I stumble upon them.


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Appeal the grade in oral exam in Germany
I just received the grade of an oral exam and I do not satisfied with it. I want to appeal, but I am not sure if this is appropriate. Since I am in Germany, I heard that professors can give any grades they wanted to students. I worried that the act of appeal will worsen my mark(or even fail). And I also don't know who to make an appeal to. I don't even know how to review an non-recorded oral exam. Can someone give some advice about how this should be done in Germany university?

It seems to be pretty hard to appeal a grade received from an oral exam at a German university. How did the professor justify the grade? Moreover, in addition to the professor, there usually is a transcript writer, with whom the professor discusses the grade. The transcript writer also signs the grade. It may be worthwhile to talk to the transcript writer first and ask for their opinion.

Before you make any formal appeal, you might want to seek direct communication with the professor. Point out that you're surprised about the grade, and why you think that you deserve a better one. It's not impossible that there is a mistake on their part.

@Marktmeister: often, the transcript writer will be a Ph.D. student of the examining professor, so there is a marked power differential involved. Asking them their opinion can put them in a very awkward situation, so it should be done very carefully.

Being dissatisfied with the grade is no ground for an appeal. Formal or scientific errors in the exam, or significant deviations from the grading of the other students, are.

Here's my experience with oral exams in Germany:

Ask the professor to explain to you how they arrived at the grade, and what they'd expected you to say for a better grade.
Maybe more important about this than the grade you got now is what you can learn for future oral exams.
(When I asked the "lemon squeezing professor" below, he explained that from the grades I got in the labwork exam he was examining "for a top mark", and would not waste time asking me easy questions about the lecture but that he examined my ability to draw field-specific conclusions on the basis but outside what was explicitly discussed in the lecture... wow...)

The burocratic trail corresponds to the importance of the exam. Oral exams with only 1 student + 1 examiner and no paper trail typically end up contributing low percentages to the final grade for the semester and even lower percentages to your Bachelor/Master grades. The next more important ones already had a 2nd observer (usually PhD student or postdoc) though still without protocol.
Everything of higher importance (including legally relevant exams) is done with someone writing a protocol, and in some cases even audio records are taken. This is done exactly in case there is dispute about the grading.

Rather than complaining about the grade in order to get a better grade, I've only met students who asked to have their grade lowered to "failed" so they could re-take the exam.

For the "low importance" oral exams I've been involved with, a complaint would usually have resulted in the offer to have another exam which for sure would have someone writing a protocol.

Back when I was studying, for the low-importance exams in many cases it would have been possible to retake them the next semester/year (sometimes even the high-importance ones, under certain conditions). However, I've never met anyone who did care sufficiently to do so.

As always, the exam regulations of your department are what matters. You need to look them up and/or ask at the exam office.

Grades are submitted to the exam office, and the professor thus cannot easily change the grade. Thus, the risk of getting your grade lowered if you complain to the professor is small. But so is your chance to get it raised: both will likely need a (very) formal procedure with you, the professor and the exam office.

A professor "can give any grades they want[ed]" only in the sense any public servant in government administration can do anything they want to an application/procedure you filed there: professors in Germany are public servants  and exams are one of their public servant duties. Violations of these duties are considered quite serious in general (they took an oath to fulfil these duties).
(Which does not mean that unfair grading does not happen - but it does mean that if you file a complaint about unfair treatment in an exam, that is a serious accusation)

One thing you may consider for future exams: as students, we were allowed to "bring a friend", who would then automatically be a potential witness. If there's a problem with the professor's grading, such a potential witness may make the whole procedure more fair already by just being there.
This happened very rarely, but I remember a professor recommending this for an entirely different reason: so that the friend can find out what kind of exam to expect. I.e., they recommended that we look for someone who'd be comfortable taking us along before doing the exam ourselves.

A last thing is to bear in mind that the perceived difficulty of question and your difficulty of answers may not predict well even a rather objectively justified grade. There are (legitimate) differences in the style how different professors approach the task of examining. Some will ask everyone questions on a similar level of difficulty and then consider the answers, others adjust the difficulty of the question according to preliminary grades and previous answers (I found it extremely hard to judge as a student how such an exam went - but I do know since how a lemon must feel after sqeezing. Got 1,3 btw.)

Would be good to say what scale the "1,3" is on, for your anecdote to be understandable.

@nanoman: it's the usual grade scale used in Germany (since the question is localized): it's a third of a grade below the topmost grade (of grades 1 - 4 for passing, 5 for failure and in some scenarios 6 for utter, complete failure - the lower the grade, the better), 90 - 95 % correct, in words: still very good. There's also a 15 point scale (the more the better), it would be 14 out of 15.

To add to @cbeleitesunhappywithSX explanation, note that the only possible values you can obtain are 1.0, 1.3, 1.7, 2.0, 2.3, ... 4 With the exception of either multiple professors grading you (i.e. your thesis) or multiple courses are counted with one final grade. Then you can also achieve X.5 grades.

I held tons of oral exams in Germany and even had an official appeal. I also served on a committee for these kind of things for several years. This is how it works in Germany:

For an oral exam there have to be written notes taken by a second person. These notes are confidential and are collected in some office (at my uni this is the "Prüfungsamt").
If you appeal the grade you may want to speak to the professor directly first (as suggested in other answers). In case this is unsatisfactory, you need to appeal officially in written form (in my uni, again to the Prüfungsamt). Write the appeal very carefully and explain why you think that the grade in not deserved.
Then some committee (in my case the Prüfungsausschuss) has to have a close look at the situation. Usually it asks the professor for an additional statement.
This committee then uses three documents (and in most cases nothing more): The protocol of the exam, your appeal, and the statement from the professor. After careful examination of these documents if decides.

You will get the result of the examination in written form (and this may take some weeks at least). Note that it is in general rare that the grade will be changed. Professors have some academic freedom which also covers a lot of teaching and grading. However, in rare cases, the committee may decide that the grade was inappropriate. But usually the committee only intervenes if the exam was not according to the rules (e.g. too short, too long, no protocol, no second examiner… what ever the rules are in your place).
So in conclusion: You have the right to appeal. Appeals happen regularly but are seldom (I had to deal with about one every two years when I served the committee, but this may vary a lot). If the professor acts professionally, nothing bad will happen to you (and at my uni the professors are in fact acting professionally).

Students can not use appeals to challenge the academic judgement of their professors. Otherwise,  academic system would be swarmed by students who are not happy with their results and want to change them. Appeals are usually allowed for administrative reasons only. For example, if this was a written exam, and a part of your script was lost before it reached your professor, and you were not awarded marks for something you actually did.
For an oral exam, there is typically not enough paper trail to challenge your professor's decision, unless you held an exam before a committee or you had an audio record of your answers. In any case, you would need to have a solid evidence that you answered all questions correctly. Simply saying "but I did" is not going to be enough.
Finally, the mark for an oral exam also takes in account how much initiative student took during their answer. Consider an example:

Q: Tell us about the multiplication of matrices, please.
A: Well, a matrix is an array of numbers. The numbers can be real. They
can also be complex. Sometimes we write a matrix with symbols instead of numbers. One lecturer wrote us a matrix with dots in it.
Q: It is good, but can you tell us about multiplication of matrices?
A: Yes, of course!
Q: So, how do you multiply them?
A: Well, we can multiply matrices. We need to write them side-by-side. Suppose, I have a matrix A here and a matrix B.
Q: OK, so what do you do?
A: Well, OK, lemme see...
Q: Perhaps, show us a simple example with 2-by-2 matrices.
A: Ah, OK. Can I do 1-by-1 first? Here's A=[a], and B=[b], so AB = [ab], right?
Q: Very nice. Next question.

Here the student won't get full marks for their answer. They may be under impression that they answered the question, but in fact their answer arrived after a lot of prompting, it was incomplete and demonstrated less than solid knowledge of the subject.

" there is typically not enough paper trail to challenge your professor's decision," That depends. In the departments I know, there was normally an obligation to have an observer present to make notes.

@lighthousekeeper Yes, but minutes are rarely taken word-by-word, and if maths is concerned, there are also drawings and equations, and they are typically poorly captured by minutes.

When I was taking minutes, I used dots and things like "(hesitating long time)" to protocol such aspects. Also IIRC, the "paper art" produced during the exam became part of the protocol.

@cbeleitesunhappywithSX You were doing it well, but not everyone is so punctual.  As for the drawings, when you look at them at the appeal stage, it is hard to tell what was produced by student's initiative and what appeared after prompting from the professor. Video recordings are much more accurate, but often forbidden, because ... reasons.

"Students can not use appeals to challenge the academic judgement of their professors." That is just wrong in Germany. There is fundamental right to a possibility of appeal in German constitution. As there is some academic margin of appreciation for the professor that cannot be reviewed by court, the normal procedure is to first make a  "Remonstration" - to formally ask the professor to rethink the grade. It's true this is much more difficult for an oral exam.

This is not true (or at least misleading). For an oral exam in Germany there has to be a written protocol and the grade the professor has given has to be explained by the protocol (not sure if all professors in Germany know this…). Also a student has the right to appeal grades and they actually do sometimes. However, the chances of success are pretty low.

Why on earth should the examiner answer with "very nice" in the end? I think, this is irresponsible. If you say "very good" this mean that this is "very good". I never do this in my exams. I always choose my word correctly. If the answer is bad, I don't say "good" (I don't say "bad" either - usually I just say "let's move on to the next question".

@Dirk It is cultural. Many British colleagues of mine do say "this is nice" without implying that the answer is correct or that they agree with the point made. This is more like "Very nice, we established this, let's move to another question". Professors often don't want to disappoint students during the exam, which is sensible, because students are already stressed, and bad messages won't help them to show their best.

I know - but my point was that it has it's downsides to do so. Also, the question is specifically about Germany, and such politeness is not necessary here :-)

This is just plainly wrong, should not have upvotes and should actually be deleted.

I agree with the other answers about asking the professor why they graded you the way they did, and that it is likely that there was no wrong doing.
However, if after that you truly feel like your grade is unjustified and you were treated unfairly, the student council (Fachschaft) is a good first point of contact. I think your single appeal will not have much of a chance. However, they will know if the professor has a history of such cases, and they rely on a couple of students to actually make complaints in order to take action against them. They can also tell you who at your university you can contact.

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Is it okay to re-render a plot used in another publication?
I found a chart in another publication that I'd like to cite, however it's small and is a dot plot when it should be a line plot (I guess because the data points were non-contiguous and the authors wanted to show that). Would it be wrong/plagiarism-adjacent if I re-rendered the plot with the original data, and cited the original research as well? Is there anything else I'm not considering?
EDIT: The chart is licensed under Apache 2.0

Kind of sounds like the authors were right and it should be a dot plot :) Lines are overused...

Remember that a line plot shows a continuous function, i.e. it shows what values the function should take in the points in between the data. If those points don't exist, then your plot is a bad representation of your data, and therefore, should not be a line plot. You don't make a line plot a surface plot, and you don't make a scatter plot a line plot, these are bad data representation.

Note that the following was written prior to the edit of the question giving the license. I'll leave the answer for future readers so that they are sure to consider all the necessary factors.

You don't seem to be considering copyright. If the copyright is held by another and there isn't a license for what you want to do then you need to ask permission.
The problem with plots and figures is that they can carry a lot of information so the issues are a bit different from quoting a few words when you reuse (or re-do) a figure. That is, fair use has a more restrictive meaning, especially for an important figure.
Note that what you are creating is likely a derived work, and most copyright jurisdictions give those rights to the copyright holder.

A citation will save you from plagiarism charges, but copyright is a different issue.

The chart is licensed with Apache 2.0 which allows for modification and redistribution as long as a copyright notice is included, so copyright is not an issue for me

@Buffy are you talking about the copyright to the chart specifically, or to the whole cited publication (including the data)? Does the copyright usually cover the underlying data as well, or just the specific presentation (i.e., the dot plot)? If OP is deriving work not from the chart but from the underlying data, does it still matter? (I'm not questioning your answer, just want to clarify some things. Good answer =D)

@justhalf, copyright covers creative expression, not ideas, and not things that aren't part of that expression. The data can only be copyrighted if it is published and has creative elements. You can't copyright "42".

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Supervisor has said some very disgusting things online, should I pull my name from our paper?
I’ve been interning at a research lab for 8 months now, putting upwards of 10 hours a week into our project. We find out if our first of three papers was accepted for a significantly-sized conference soon, the next two will come in March. Basically, I’ve put a lot of work into this project and it’s almost over.
I looked up my supervisor’s name tonight because I wanted to read his other papers, but instead I found a lecture he gave a year ago on why homosexuality should be classified as a disease. He said tons of disgusting things in the lecture and I don’t want to be affiliated with him, especially because I’m still in undergrad so I don’t want this following me around forever.
Should I pull my name from the papers at the last minute and lose accreditation for the hundreds of hours of work I put in, or do I leave my name in and risk having a reputation as “that guy who worked with the huge homophobe”, and maybe having a harder time getting into grad school?
Could really use the advice. Thanks.

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I don't think you need to pull your name from the paper(s). You're junior enough, and there are enough odious high-ranking people spouting nonsense online, that people won't blame you.
I WOULD start looking for more mentors ASAP. You need stronger letters of recommendation, as some people are going to question his judgement and ability to objectively evaluate you. Also, this guy clearly has done a bad job managing his professional image, which means he might have bad judgement about professionalism in general. If you learn professional norms from him, this might do damage to your development as a researcher. This is red flag land, and the sooner you can disentangle yourself the better.

The other answers here (at the moment: Well..., Arno, and Libor) give good advice that it is unnecessary for you to withdraw from the paper in most cases.
But there is an exception to this. If the nature of the research is such that the misinformed opinions of this person can affect the results, then you can have little confidence that the overall result is valid. And since you were mostly involved with technical issues, not the driving ideas of the paper, you should consider this.
There have been people in both CS, William Shockley, and mathematics, Robert Lee Moore, who held terribly racist views, but whose scientific work was independent of those views. In a case like that you should almost certainly leave your name, since the work is done. But I would probably disassociate myself from them in future.
But if the field is closely related to those views, then it is much more problematic to be associated with them. But it is the views that you need to disassociate from, not necessarily the person. (But who needs the grief?) You don't have a choice in your crazy uncles, but you do have a choice in your colleagues.

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While I strongly feel that people like this should be ostracized, I think the onus is on their instituations and peers - not on undergraduates. Very few people would blame you for having worked with your supervisor, and should you ever be accosted for it, you can truthfully point out that you embarked on the research internship before learning of his repugnant views.
From a purely pragmatic perspective, having this conference paper on your CV will do more than enough for your grad school applications to outweigh the risk of your reputation being tarnished by association here.
If you feel that you need to do something about the situation, my suggestion would be to signal your own views in other ways. For example, if your university has something like a gay-straight-student alliance, volunteering there and putting this on your CV should get you ahead of any unfortunate associations. Again, I don't think you need to do anything, neither from an ethical nor pragmative perspective.

In light of the (new) post notice, the discussion on this answer has been moved to chat.

Should I pull my name from the papers at the last minute and lose
accreditation for the hundreds of hours of work I put in, or do I
leave my name in and risk having a reputation as “that guy who worked
with the huge homophobe”

You have met a true moral dilemma in life, and it is a big one.
My recommendation is to first examine your own beliefs rather than what others may or may not think about you. See how important your principles are and act accordingly.

The martyr
For those who value their principles above all, there is usually a price to pay. Jesus could have avoided the cross if he had backed down. Gandhi and his followers went unarmed against oppressors who were armed with clubs and received the expected bruises. Such a person is rare. In your case it would involved refusing to "consort with the devil" and simply being prepared to forfeit your hundreds of hours of work.  You should also bear in mind that the other party may believe in their principles to a similar extent - rightly or wrongly. Thus have religious wars been started throughout history.

The human approach
You can consider humans as fallible and usually flawed. You can try to understand where they are coming from and even sympathise where necessary. Often when people are vehement and angry, they are reliving a past battle, maybe a trauma that remains unresolved. As a student hitch-hiker, I was once subject to an attempted assault by a gay man; luckily I escaped unharmed. In my case this did not turn me against gay men because I already had gay friends who were admirable people in every respect. Instead it made me much more careful about hitch-hiking! Had I been younger and not known better, it might have been the start of a prejudice.

The pragmatic
Here you look at outcomes, assess probabilities and make the best decision you can. To go this way you must be very clear what you want out of life. If you don't know the desired destination, you can't find the best method to get there. "Best" doesn't necessarily just mean short-term academic goals.

The Machiavellian
In this case you take sides and strive to come out on top. For example you could denounce the 'opponent', let  public opinion do the dirty work, and at the same time declare your own virtue. When they are destroyed and retreat, you take the field, the spoils of war and the glory. However, unless you are very skilled this can backfire. Suppose the other person is not destroyed. What do you do then? Pretend that you didn't mean it and go back to co-operating? This will only show that your principles are not so true as you made out.

Life is a tricky business. I wish you all the best. Remember what Nietzsche wrote, “Out of life’s school of war—what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.”  I'm retired now and have learned to believe it.
So many people are waiting for things to "turn out right". I believe it is better to see life as a series of challenges to be met, and to meet them. This can actually make life great fun but you have to take risks.

Consider how removing your name from the paper affects You and how removing your name affects the PI (Principal Investigator).
"I'll shoot myself in the foot, that will fix him!".
It's not the responsibility of (relative) beginners in the field to reform the personal habits of researchers in the field. You could do more pre- investigation of future employers, if you like.
Science is about discovering. Even A**holes can discover.

The question isn't about removing your name to get back at the homophobic PI, it's about avoiding negative consequences of being professionally associated with a bigot.

For a real world example, Apollo-era NASA chief James Webb, after whom  the JWST is named was homophobic, but he still got us to the moon

No it sounds like the PI holds appalling views but no one will attribute those to you if you were merely his student. On the other hand those papers are valuable to you and hard to replace. Moreover the removal of your name from them may irritate your PI who, despite his antediluvian views, continue to be in a gatekeeping position in your field. We all have a responsibility to fight bigotry but that shouldn’t come at a cost to our most junior researchers — I suggest you pursue your careers whilst flagging his behaviour to those within and without the university who may be able to respond. Such a lecture would be sufficient to get you fired in many countries were it to be reported in a timely manner.


text:
How is sexism unknowingly perpetrated in academia?
Some sexism is obvious, blatant, and/or deliberate. Fortunately, my understanding is that this kind of sexism is mostly a thing of the past.
However, female colleagues have told me that more "benign", but still harmful, sexism is still very prevalent in academia. In particular, I've heard that implicit assumptions that women are less capable, or more inclined to be teachers than researchers, are distressingly common. As a mathematician, the results are distressingly obvious: most math departments are overwhelmingly male.
What are some ways in which sexism is unknowingly perpetrated by well-meaning people, in academia in particular? And how can those of us who are well-meaning make sure to avoid doing so?

I am curious if this is a duplicate of either http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7430/reading-material-on-working-conditions-of-women-in-academia/7431#7431 or http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1363/women-in-academia

Valid: I agree that formal barriers are probably few and far between. Daniel: I don't think my question is an exact duplicate, but those links are obviously quite relevant and I will have a close look, thank you!

@VahidShirbisheh I'm sure that one reason why they are encouraging female and other minorities to apply is because they want to encourage diversity. This does imply that there is some kind of imbalance in diversity currently.

most math departments are overwhelmingly male may be true. How about other departments?

@scaaahu Good question. I do see many science/math-oriented departments to have more male faculty but my department (business/economics) is quite evenly balanced.

There's a collection of anecdotes about being a woman in philosophy here, and there is also a sister blog called What we're doing about what it's like

One can go through the archives of blogs like Female Science Professor to find particulars of some cases.

You may be interested in this.

What are some ways in which sexism is unknowingly perpetrated by
  well-meaning people, in academia in particular?

I'm not qualified to answer this question myself, but I'll point you to some excellent blogs that detail this, and a tumblr that explores the more general idea of 'mansplaining' (not limited to academia alone)

Female Science Professor
The Accidental Mathematician (in particular, her post about why she doesn't participate in Mathoverflow is quite interesting)
Academic Men Explain Things to Me

+1 Great links. Another Accidental Mathematician post that's well worth reading is Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

One issue I've often heard cited involves having a family.
For students on a traditional timeline in academia, the years from age 22 to 36 or so are critical: you go to grad school, get a PhD, perhaps do a postdoc or two, search for and land a permanent job, and finally get tenure.  You have to be constantly advancing and publishing your research, traveling to conferences and seminars, and generally impressing the community in your field.  Odds are you'll have to make at least one long-distance or international move, perhaps several.  Any delay or gap during this time could permanently derail your career.
Coincidentally, the years from age 22 to 36 are also the best time (biologically) for a woman to have children (assuming she wants to do so, and most do).  And bearing and raising a child can certainly put a major crimp in your ability to keep doing the things listed above.
It's pretty clear that this system was designed for men: men with wives who didn't work and could take care of children full-time.  It's very hard on anyone who wants to be an involved parent, and doubly so for the woman: pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and so on can't very well be delegated or shared!
Universities do tend to have standard-to-generous maternity and family leave policies, which certainly help with this in the immediate term.  What's less clear is whether (possibly male or male-dominated) advisors, hiring committees, chairs, deans, and tenure committees are as understanding in the long run.  If a candidate has a six-month or one-year gap in her research output, and then a slow period afterward as she gets back up to speed and learns to balance her work and family, it's hard to imagine that won't hurt her career, no matter what explanation is attached in her file.  And God forbid she should want to have two children!
So this is a kind of sexism that's not based on any one person's behavior, but on the structure and norms of the community.
(Disclaimer: I am a childless man and have no personal experience with this issue, but I thought someone should mention it.)

Yes, exactly. Further, there would be the anticipation that a women might/will take time "off" to bear children, even if she's not done so yet, ... giving ammunition to people who'll consciously or subliminally discount her future professional output... on the basis of events which have not yet occurred.

This reminds me of one of the 'best' internet comments I have ever read, which went something like 'if women get time off to go have children and be able to come back to work while facing no consequences, I should be able to go live in a shack on the beach playing the guitar and then come back to work with no consequences' - perhaps indicating that understanding regarding maternity leave isn't as widespread as one might like.

Here is an article which talks about some of the issues related to families, gender, and academia. http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/06/female_academics_pay_a_heavy_baby_penalty.html

This problem also appears in many other career professions, I understand. Is academia special in this regard? (I frankly have no idea).

@Blaisorblade - Academia is particularly demanding of time at crucial periods and particularly insensitive to reasons for of lack of output.  Admissions committees are drawn, for example, to "rising stars" who show high and increasing output throughout their career.  Spots of apparently low productivity are black marks that need to be explained, and even good explanations are not as powerful as not needing to explain at all.  The system is equally unkind to others who have transient decrease in output (divorce, lengthy family illness, even working too long on a difficult problem).

Fortunately, in some countries both men and women have the same rights of parental leave, and this is slowly expanding. Then, there is no real difference between hiring a mother or a father.

One of the first thing to do is to realize how we are biased, even when we don't know it. See in particular this reference; the abstract alone is informative:

Despite efforts to recruit and retain more women, a stark gender
  disparity persists within academic science. Abundant research has
  demonstrated gender bias in many demographic groups, but has yet to
  experimentally investigate whether science faculty exhibit a bias
  against female students that could contribute to the gender disparity
  in academic science. In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127),
  science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the
  application materials of a student—who was randomly assigned either a
  male or female name—for a laboratory manager position. Faculty
  participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent
  and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants
  also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career
  mentoring to the male applicant. The gender of the faculty
  participants did not affect responses, such that female and male
  faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female
  student. Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less
  likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent. We also
  assessed faculty participants’ preexisting subtle bias against women
  using a standard instrument and found that preexisting subtle bias
  against women played a moderating role, such that subtle bias against
  women was associated with less support for the female student, but was
  unrelated to reactions to the male student. These results suggest that
  interventions addressing faculty gender bias might advance the goal of
  increasing the participation of women in science.

Moss-Racusin et al., 2012 Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students PNAS 2012 109 (41) 16474-16479; published ahead of print September 17, 2012, doi:10.1073/pnas.1211286109

There exist two answers more upvoted to this question which have no citations at all, one of which the author told us comes largely from her personal experience.  On the other hand this answer cites published experimental research of a moderate sample size and has a lower rating.  At a glance at least, this state of affairs makes little sense, and for that reason alone I'm upvoting it.

Here's a larger study which indicates female candidates as preferred for academic tenure positions by a 2:1 ratio.  http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/04/08/1418878112  Also, in one of the experiments, mothers who took parental leave were preferred over mothers who didn't take parental leave by male faculty members, but fathers who took parental leave were not preferred over father who did not take parental leave by male faculty members.

This is a shaky ground, as a bizzare negative rating of Doug Spoonwood's answer shows. A entirely positive (in the sense of only trying to come up with a meaningful psychological theory; an economics term here) speech by Larry Summers, then President of Harvard, at NBER conference that promoted gender equality, costed him his presidency... not because he was biased, but simply because the bloody journalists highlighting the event had no clue about math. His argument was very simple: if we look at IQ curves, we see that females have an average IQ about the same or higher than males, and about 20% lower standard deviation. Mother Nature plays conservatively with females while experimenting on males throwing their abilities around. Whichever of these experimental traits the females find attractive in males are worth retaining through natural selection. So if we look at IQ>80 or IQ>100, we see more females; but at top 5% of the IQ distribution (115 or 120-ish on IQ scale), the ratio is roughly 2 males : 1 female. University professors are likely to be even higher on the IQ scales, probably circa 140+, at which point the ratio may be 5:1 (although of course the quality of the normal approximation in the tails becomes VERY questionable). Other examples Summers gave were underrepresentation of Jews in farming and agriculture, and of whites in the National Basketball Association (which may have to do with biological differences in genetic makeup for height, as well as how the proteins are being processed and muscles are built, between races).
In all likelihood, conditional on having received a Ph.D. (probability theory term here), there is little difference between males and females in ability to produce meaningful research. Success in academia is dictated by other personal traits. They are correlated with gender, although again conditioning on high IQ/having finished a Ph.D. may change that correlation structure a lot.
Economists argue for distinguishing between the equality of outcomes and equality of opportunities. Do Nordic countries show greater equality of income because they redistribute more, or because they provide better equality of opportunities? Read here. Is stunning income inequality in Brazil the result of discrimination, differential "circumstances", or what? Read here. Academia, as any other walk of life, should strive to create equality of opportunities; equality of outcomes may or may not follow, depending on whether the individual traits are correlated with whatever we are trying to equate (gender, hair color, height, language spoken at home, etc.). Forcing equality of outcomes will aggravate those who have benign better abilities and make people of lesser abilities lose incentives to strive to do better. (Been there in the Soviet Union, done that, trust me.)
If one claims that "women are better teachers than researchers", just ask: "Hm. That's an interesting observation. We are both scientists; can you give me some references to any peer-reviewed literature on this?" (note that I gave mine above :) ). If they can't, that's a biased accusation you can go with to your superiors (chair, dean, university president). Just like drivers found guilty driving under influence, and undergoing humiliating driving clinics, whoever makes such claims should be made to go the literature on the cross of psychology, sociology, gender studies and labor markets to dig into the issue -- who cares if they are good in math, if they have big mouth, they should learn to control it. Join your local committee on women in faculty, or whatever the name of that could be in your university to make sure you know the ways that the university can protect you against sexism, and make good use of what you learn there.

@Imi It might be a more complicated issue, involving many parameters (intellectual skills are not a single number plus one needs not to forget that there are tastes, desires, etc). And certainly, different scientific fields are different. Sure, it may be very hard to predict expected ratios (especially as there are many factors, also - cultural), but assuming than "it should be the same just because" isn't convincing.
(BTW: I knew in my high-school A LOT more girls interested and good at chemistry than at CS; and now I know a lot more of female chemists than female CS scientists.)

@StasK You raise so good points, some less, but unfortunately (except for the last paragraph) it is not an answer to this question. If you like, you can ask question e.g. "Explanations of gender imbalance in academia, except for discrimination".

@Imi (SE comments are not intended for discussions, let's discuss here: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/9343/gender-issues-in-academia) But in short: the variance part may have its role (I don't disagree with it, just I don't see it as a complete explanation); when it comes to my friends& colleagues - it is only one and anecdotic data point; I don't question other factor (sadly, (again, anecdotic) I saw sexism (and other forms of immaturity) among some CS guys; perhaps more than among any other groups I had contact with).

I thought the gist of Summers's speech was "this is an observed imbalance, we should study what causes it", maybe with an eye towards the possibility of biological factors.  (That would sound reasonable to me, and make his subsequent castigation unjust.)   Admittedly, I haven't actually read it.  Now I will, thanks for the link.

@hunter2, I think that's a fair summary of that speech. So apparently some journalists did get it right, after all.

This is the first time I've heard that feminists are well-known for attacking logic. Perhaps the appropriate response is [citation needed].

@BenCrowell, great balloon argument -- do you really think Summers suffered a blow because somebody looked at how well IRT works for IQ > 150 in predicting success in academia???

@StasK "do you really think Summers suffered a blow because somebody looked at how well IRT works for IQ > 150 in predicting success in academia?" Do you really think BenCrowell said this in their last comment? Since BenCrowell did not, who do you think is actually inflating balloons with hot air here?

@BenCrowell - Maybe this is a matter for Philosophy.SE, but is it "right" for someone to suffer for the wrong reasons, even if they themselves are wrong? My interpretation of the media outcry was that it was basically, "Aaah, he said women are stupider than men! To the stake with him!" The kind of thoughtful response that evaluated the claims (why are bell curves wider for men?  are the tails accurately measured?  etc. etc.) hardly seems like it would generate the kind of pressure to replace him that actually happened. If your point is only that we should feel less sorry for him...well, okay.

What's interesting about the Summers incident comes as how many people responded to his reference to IQ statistics as if it were offensive to women, with no mention of what such says about men.  I mean to say that the relevant IQ statistic also implies that there exist more men with very low IQs than women with very low IQs.  But no one seemed to object to his use of statistics on that ground, though they did seem to his use of statistics which implied that there were fewer women with very high IQs than men with very high IQs.

@DougSpoonwood, I think objecting to IQ statistics is akin to objecting to differences in heights between males and females. These differences do exist, we have some idea what causes them biologically (and sometimes socially), and there is little that can be done with the biological part of it (although arguably the society should equate the opportunities, on the social side of it). One can always argue though that IQ tests do not work well from psychometric perspective, as Ben Crowell brought up in his comment.

@StasK I agree with respect to IQ statistics.  I meant to point out the inconsistency of how people behaved here... they'd notice and complain about what such implied for women in general, but not for what it implied about for men in general.

@AruRay With respect to feminists attacking logic...
here are some sources http://www.amazon.com/Words-Power-Feminist-Reading-Thinking/dp/0415902002/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1411713716&sr=8-2&keywords=andrea+nye+logic http://www.thefreelibrary.com/How+we+construct+subjects%3a+a+feminist+analysis.-a0173229273 http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED371376  Also, the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy says "The central concept of feminist epistemology is that of a situated knower, and hence of situated knowledge: knowledge that reflects the particular perspectives of the subject."  Never mind formal logic!!!!!!

I'm in a Computer Science program at a school that has a heavy focus on engineering fields.  There are only a couple of girls in the program, but they are both excellent students.  I've spent a bit of time studying with both of them, and one in particular has been able to help me with understanding some difficult concepts.
In a programming class that we took, the professor noted that she was an excellent student.  When she went to his office after a test to discuss her grade, he began to preach on women in computer science.  He told her how supportive he was, and relayed a story about sexism, which he condemned.
She expressed to me how uncomfortable it made her to be singled out like that.  She has told me several times that the professors want her to be a "poster-child" and "become a leader".  This is all well meaning, but she simply wants to be a (very good) student, and fit in with the rest.
I am of the opinion that when a woman is in a mostly male field of study, she can have undue pressure put on her by well-meaning staff and peers.  It's almost as if they are told that if they are not a leader, then they are letting other women in their field down.
Until we stop treating women like a rarity in certain fields (even if they are), they will not feel comfortable there.

I think this is an interesting perspective, and useful to consider. But I am not sure what parts of the professors' approach is detrimental. Should he encourage her to strive for normalcy? I think it is important (and a common desire of teachers) to push exceptional students and make them aware of their potential; at the same time to work on making all current and potential female students feel respected

@David I'd think, but by no means know, that she wants to get treated as a programming student, not a female programming student.  That is by no means encouraging a "strive for normalcy", since she can still rise to the top like any other programming student.  A female programming student gets singled out because she is female, while a programming student gets singled out because of his or her programming.

NCWIT (National Center for Women & Information Technology) has an article specifically about stereotype threat in computing.
While that resource is student-oriented, it illustrates some examples of how even well-intentioned comments are indications of stereotyping.

I can't spot a link to this article posted yet:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/12/09/gender_bias_in_student_evaluations_professors_of_online_courses_who_present.html
Someone else showed me the article, but I think the point is worth mentioning here. The original paper is available here, but the report gives the gist:
Students gave significantly lower ratings to the same people (in online teaching where their identity was entirely concealed) where the only distinction was the gender they told the students.

I don't see any indication that the behaviors of the online professors were sufficient similarly with respect to what they said and did in the abstract.  The way the abstract is written it suggests that the instructors knew which gender they were operating under.  Marcotte's article says that they sampled TWO online instructors.   Gender is often very hard to disguise in face to face interactions and it seems dubious that studies like this conducted on people in the abstract tell us that much about how people interact in face-to-face interactions.  And what fields got studied?

@DougSpoonwood There were two online TAs (plus a professor, but that's not important), one female and one male, and each taught one class under their own persona and one class under the other TAs persona. The students being taught did not know whether they were being taught by a male or female, but thought they did. The two TAs also attempted to make their teaching similar to each other, as far as possible. They returned assessment marks at exactly the same times/intervals, but the 'male' classes ranked this as significantly better than the 'female' classes did.

Sexism can get perpetuated unknowingly in all sorts of was via the law.  I suggest studying the book Legalizing Misandry by Katherine Young and Paul Nathanson to see how this can happen.  The law also has all sorts of effects on what happens on college campuses and how sexism either gets continued or abated.
We know that at present there exist programs for woman to get ahead in academia, because of their gender, but extremely few, if any, in comparison for men. Have you ever heard of a scholarship program that specifically targets boys in the humanities where they are a minority now and have historically come as a minority also?
There exist only three non-religious male colleges in the U. S. There exist many more women's colleges.
There exist women's studies programs, but male studies programs have trouble getting a foothold in academia. Ryerson makes for an interesting example. Sexism, in the form of misandry, has popped up before when a men's group formed.
Women make up the majority of graduates in the U. S. in terms of high school degrees, associates degrees, bachelors degrees, masters degrees, and doctoral degrees. Trends also come as revealing.
Also, some campuses have a standard of "preponderance of the evidence" for rape cases, which in effect eliminates due process mostly for men, but not for women, and such a standard thus effectively consists of a sexist policy against men. Some other policies can unintentionally end up sexist against men as a study of Daphne Patai's Heterophobia makes clear.
Male sports teams getting cut also comes as another way in which a policy has ended up sexist unknowingly.
If you want to avoid sexism in academia and elsewhere you need to care about men in general just as much as you care about women in general.
Sexism can perpetrated by people by having policies that require different standards for people of different sexes.
In order for a male to get student loans in the United States he has to register with the selective service system (which is still a real entity). No female has such a requirement placed upon them in order to obtain such a loan.
Sexism can get unknowingly perpetrated by believing that an educational equity for one sex can qualify as sufficient for both sexes. The Women's Educational Equity Act is one example of this.
Lifestyle, knowledge of one's educational opportunities, and health in general can all effect academic achievement as well as one's ability to achieve academically. I can't speak to the extent of things here, but one person had the following to say:
"As I have said here before, I have worked in higher education for thirty-one years and have never seen a poster or service announcement on any campus aimed at promoting positive lifestyles, health, educational opportunities, etc., for boys and young men. I have seen numerous ones for girls and young women."
Sexism can also get perpetrated in academia via "equity hiring" as Janice Fiamengo makes clear...
"Next came the creation of a shortlist of three or four candidates for interview; some members of the department were keen to stack the list with members of the diversity groups. To this end, there was much sophistry about why a (white) male candidate’s book with a prestigious university press was really no better than — was actually perhaps a bit inferior to — a female candidate’s single article with an academic journal of no repute; or about why a (white) male candidate’s expertise in highly competitive Shakespeare studies was no better than — was actually far less original than — a female candidate’s untested, largely speculative work on an obscure seventeenth-century woman playwright. Thus were well-qualified white men kept out of the competition. Moments of levity occasionally occurred when we were forced into elaborate interpretative dances to determine if a male candidate might be black or Asian or gay, though usually the savvy candidate made that clear in his cover letter.
At the hiring stage, there was the same special pleading. Poor presentations by women candidates were praised as “provocatively unorthodox” or “strategically unconventional” while polished ones by men were criticized as “safe” or “unoriginal.” Women’s mistakes could be overlooked or seen as strengths (“I like that she was courageous enough to present on material that she is still working through”) while men’s mistakes were definitive (“I’m shocked that he could be finishing a PhD and still not know that [minor detail”]). One male candidate who had given the best demonstration class I’d ever seen was criticized by our leading feminist professor — presumably because she could find no other faults — for having never visited England to do archival work, a criticism the poverty-conscious lady would almost certainly never have made of a struggling single-mother candidate. That a man might have life circumstances preventing him from travel seemed not to have occurred to her."
That hiring practices may more often than not, favor the hiring of female candidates over male candidates gets further suggested by this experimental research.
The number of answers which only address sexism against women here, without also addressing sexism against men makes it very clear that you can NOT eliminate or reduce sexism by focusing exclusively on the needs or interests of just one sex.  In fact, that comes as a way to perpetuate sexism.
This document starting at about 532 suggests things goes even deeper than this answer has merely outlined.
The University of York recently withdrew it's intention to mark International Men's Day.
The key to avoiding sexism lies in fully understanding the plight of all sexes and acting accordingly.
And no discussion of sexism in academia is complete without at least some indication of the issues of trans-people in academia.

@DamienIgoe I didn't say anything about rights.  Also, if rights is the issue here, how did the original question even make an allusion to rights?

I've downvoted this response as this comment does not address the issue of whether sexism is unintentionally conveyed.

This response shows that the issue is very complicated. But I don't see why this should go to negative infinity.

@Irwin I disagree. While there are some problems with what he's said on this page (including how he's said it) he does raise a point that is at least worth considering.  I mean, the last point is certainly true; presumably the end goal is equality, not simply a promotion of a historically underrepresented (oppressed?) group.  See also, affirmative action debates (in the US, at least).

It's shocking that out of all of the answers, all automatically assume females are the ones on the receiving end of sexism, and the only post to provide actual evidence and not just feel-good emotions is the lowest rated.

@Keith I wish I could say that I feel shocked here, but I don't.  I will say that the first version of this answer didn't have sources, but this answer has gotten even more downvotes since it did have sources.  I've also added some more content here (some of which I had the comments above, but it keeps getting deleted).

Why is this answer getting downvotes? It is one of the better answers I've seen on this site yet.

It perfectly exemplifies the rampant sexism against males that permeates all aspect of modern western society, @user111187 - You're not allowed to voice concerns about males, whether you're make or female. Hence why in all aspects of life, school, college, work, government, etc., females are treated special and given special privileges, ironically why claiming that females are victims.

Let this answer's score be a grim reminder of today's "equality". Apparently addressing men's issues makes you sexist? This answer is very well-written and has lots of data to back it up. Shame it received so many kneejerk downvotes by people who think only women can be oppressed.

There is a bias — against men — in the recruitment process for tenure-tracked positions.
From a 2015 study :

Men and women faculty members from all four fields preferred female
  applicants 2:1 over identically qualified males with matching
  lifestyles (single, married, divorced), with the exception of male
  economists, who showed no gender preference. Comparing different
  lifestyles revealed that women preferred divorced mothers to married
  fathers and that men preferred mothers who took parental leaves to
  mothers who did not. Our findings, supported by real-world academic
  hiring data, suggest advantages for women launching academic science
  careers.

More details on this study, from The Economist :

Dr Williams and Dr Ceci conjured up trios of hypothetical candidates
  for tenure-track jobs in various fields. In each case two of the three
  were fantastically qualified and one, there to act as a foil, slightly
  less so. They sent the three candidates’ CVs, together with mocked-up
  interview comments about them, to 873 high-level academics in the
  departments of biology, economics, engineering and psychology at 371
  American universities. They tweaked the particulars of each trio to
  match the relevant discipline, and randomised which of the two
  outstanding candidates was referred to as “he” and which as “she”.
  Respondents were asked simply to pick the best of the three.
As the chart shows, professors of biology, engineering and psychology
  all chose female candidates over equally qualified male ones, and did
  so by an overwhelming margin (as high as three to one in the case of
  psychology). Moreover, they made this choice regardless of whether
  they, themselves, were men or women. The sole exception to this
  pattern was economics. In this discipline male professors showed a
  slight preference for men, though females had a strong one for women.
When Dr Williams and Dr Ceci carried out further experiments, looking
  in more detail, they found that the pattern they had discovered held
  up regardless of whether or not hypothetical candidates were married,
  had children or had taken a period of parental leave. These factors,
  often cited as damaging to women’s academic careers, seemed to weigh
  little with the professors in question.
A criticism of the researchers’ method is that the professors knew
  they were involved in an experiment (though they did not know its
  purpose). They may therefore have chosen the female applicant simply
  because they knew they were being scrutinised and wanted to show their
  feminist credentials, knowing that they would not have to live with
  the consequences. To control for this possibility, Dr Williams and Dr
  Ceci also sent out 127 identical CVs—half purporting to be of women
  and half of men—to 127 other academics, asking them simply to rate the
  candidate. Their idea was that an absence of applicants for comparison
  would reduce any pressure to be politically correct.
In this case, too, the women triumphed. Notional female candidates
  scored a full point higher than male ones on a ten-point scale.
  Presented with identical track-records, respondents seemed simply to
  think more highly of women.

I am curious to know the extent of bias in mathematics. It is troubling that the cited article mentions STEM but fails to do the experiment for hiring bias in mathematics.

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text:
What is the relationship between credits and course hours?
Why can courses at the same department have an apparent disproportionality between credits and hours?
For example at my French university my department offers a 12 credit course with 48 hours of lectures and 72 hours of practical work, a 9 credit course with 24 hours of lectures and 12 hours of practical work, a different 9 credit course with 24 hours of lectures and no practical work, a 6 credit course with 24 hours of lectures and 36 hours of practical work. There are also 0 credit courses with 1 hour of lecture, but these are not really courses and are just included in the course catalog as bonus content to make up a bit for courses not offered in the current year. All of the courses I refer to are Master's level.
How are the number of credits calculated? Intuitively, one would suppose that the number of credits should be somehow proportional to the number of hours, but it is clearly not simply: a x # of lecture hours + b x # of practical hours.
Question: What is the relationship between credits and course hours?

You probably have to ask your department staff this question.  I don't think there are any universal rules on how the number of credits for a course is determined.

In the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) one credit point
equals 25-30 hours of workload and you are supposed to do 30 credits
per semester or 60 per year.
The number of ECTS credits assigned to a particular class is not
directly related to the hours in class but to the total workload for
the class.
For example, the master thesis is worth 30 ECTS in most German
universities, yet there is 0 class time for it. On the other hand, I
once took a chemistry lab course with 6 credits => 150-180 hours
workload of which 120 hours where time spent in the lab, which was ok
because you can't really do much at home except finishing that day's writeup and taking a look at what is planned for the next day.
In your examples, subtract the class time and you're left with around
180-240 hours of self study (reviewing the material, doing homework
assignments) for the first three classes and half that for the last one
- so the 9 credit classes seem to involve more self study and less time
in class.
That's perfectly fine as long as the overall workload is between
25*credits and 30*credits hours.
Since your university is in France, I want to mention that France has
specified the workload for 1 ETCS credit point to be 29 hours.

Although only your school can tell you why that specific department has that system, I can give one answer.
If credit is determined by amount of work needed, the larger work is equal to larger credit.  It is independent of time spent in class.  In your situation, it could mean that some classes do not need extra hours in class, but extra hours outside of class, which is then factored into credits.
A good example of this is in Art/Design/Architecture schools (maybe music and dance as well).  In Fine Arts/Architecture, there are usually classes called "Studio" in which they are nearly twice as long as other classes.  So, an engineering class (history class or programming class in the same department of architecture) may have lecture 3 hours twice a week, for 3 credits, and a Studio class will have 6 hours twice a week for 3 credits.  The perceived workload is thought to be equal as the Studio class naturally requires more time in a studio than at home reading.

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text:
How to effectively take notes when the professor reads off their lecture notes or presents slides?
I am looking for some advice on how to take notes effectively when the professor reads off their lecture notes or presents slides with marginal explanations. My preferred format is to have textual notes that I took myself, as I find that writing things down helps me remember and understand the material better. However, in these cases I struggle to keep up as I have to both write down stuff and follow the explanation, while the professor instantly has everything written down and only has to explain it. If this can be of any help, I am the first year of a PhD in mathematical economics, and I usually use a notetaking app and a tablet with a pen to take notes.
The two situations I encounter most often are:

The professor has really good lecture notes and reads off them while lecturing, writing some stuff on the whiteboard, adding explanations but not changing anything major from the notes.
The professor has really good slides and presents them and writes notes on them using an electronic whiteboard.

In the first situation, I find it challenging to decide what to write down and what to leave out since the professor is essentially reading from their lecture notes. Moreover, while the professor adds some explanations, they are usually marginal, and the bulk of the material is already in the notes. On the other hand, if I do not write down anything, I am afraid I might miss some crucial details or examples.
In the second situation, I find slides to be space-inefficient so I would prefer not to take notes on the slides. However, the professor can present complex mathematical formulae and derivations without writing them down, which makes it hard for me to follow and understand the material if I have to first copy the formulae and then write notes around them. Sometimes I screenshot the formula and paste the screenshot in my notes, which is not too uncomfortable to do on my tablet, but I still find it quite inefficient.
I would appreciate any advice on how to take effective notes in these situations. How can I avoid copying everything down (or not avoid it, but do so efficiently) and still capture the essential material?

What you are trying to achieve here is very sensible. If your professors are sensible it's maybe worth explaining the problem to them and ask them directly what they suggest you do. They might have good suggestions (and might even adapt their lecture style...).

It might help some folks if you add a note where your program is located in the world, and what kind of institution?

I would ask the professor to make their slides available the day before the lecture. If they agree then download them as necessary and print them out.
If they permit it, you can also record the lecture (voice only, perhaps).
During the lecture, use the printed slides as your notebook, writing on them as needed.
But the key is that after the lecture (same day if possible), review your notes and extract the key points from them in another, cleaner, notebook. Annotate these with page numbers from any available text.
The summaries become your main review documents, but keep the messy slides you annotated for reference when needed.
Recording alone may be enough if they won't publish the slides.
But explaining to the prof how helpful the slides would be for learning may be enough to get them to go along. Even if they make last second changes to the slides the previous version would still likely be helpful.
Note that the revision step aids learning. We learn (deeply) through repetition (along with feedback).

If getting slides beforehand is impossible, another technique is to read the material from a textbook prior to the class, making notes as you go about what isn't totally clear. Then use those notes to guide your listening and note taking during class, perhaps asking the prof when your prepared questions don't get answered in the lecture.

They already make everything available. So your idea is still take notes on the slides and then just revise them afterwards? I tried doing that, but I just don't have time between 6h of classes a day, problem sets, and graded homework. Maybe I should spend less time on the problem set, but then again, doing them is the most cost-effective way to study.

Six hours per day seems like too much. How many days a week is that?

Monday to Friday. Sometimes it's 4, sometimes it's 8, but I just checked and that's the average.

That seems outrageous for a university program. How many courses?

Five courses, but two are electives so we only have three hours a week each for those. The remaining three have 6hrs pw each, so that makes for 24hrs pw, to which we add tutorials, which are other 6hrs totals, and you get 30hrs a week of classes.

@kmf why are you taking electives during a PhD? At least at the places I am familiar with, this is nonsense.

I don't know what's your definition of "electives", what they mean here by elective it's two courses that you can pick from a list, in contrast to the "core courses" which you have to take.

Here is what worked for me (20 years ago when tablets were not yet invented):
If a professor used slides, I would print them "4 up" and take notes right on the slides. That way, it wasn't very space-consuming but still leaving me enough space for all the notes I wanted to take. Plus, I could easily identify the important slides afterwards: typically, the amount of notes on a slide was correlated to its importance.
If a professor had a script or book that did not leave enough space for notes, I took some blank sheets with me and only took notes on those, always adding a reference to the book or script (chapter, page, formula, whatever seemed appropriate). Of course, having a pyhsical book / script and physical sheets allowed me to place them at approximately the right place, so I would stumble across them when revising. I can't tell if your tablet and notetaking app allow for something similar.
In general, I tried to take as much notes as possible without losing track of the lecture, because taking no notes often made me lose focus. However, I would never copy stuff that was already in the lecture notes or slides, as that was what I considered inefficient.
Have you tried different apps? I have only recently started using a PC with touchscreen during my teaching, and the first thing I did was to try different programs that allowed annotating PDF documents with a digital pen because the differences turned out to be huge.
Finally, you might consider not only downloading the slides before the lecture but also skimming through them and taking screenshots of the larger formulae ahead of time. That way, you could focus on actual note taking during the lecture and not on technicalities.


text:
Made a huge mistake in my bachelor's thesis
I recently submitted my thesis and also defended it successfully. But then I found mistakes in the statistical analyses of my research.
When I was doing my bachelor's there was no biostatistics in my curriculum. So I didn't have a grasp of statistics at that time. That is why during my research my co-supervisor did the statistical analysis of the data. I started doing an online course on biostatistics, and decided to check the data of my thesis. And I found that my supervisor had made mistakes while doing statistical analyses.
After this discovery I contacted my supervisors and they told me that, "you shouldn't worry because nobody is going to read your thesis." But the real problem is that I am going to apply for masters at different universities, and the admission committee of universities will definitely ask for my thesis. What if they read my thesis? Should I make corrections in the soft copy or not?

Are you the sole author on your thesis?

Do you really think admissions committees have time to read a whole thesis? I find that they require your thesis as part of application packages very unlikely.

No, my classmate and I are the author of the Thesis.

First of all, are you sure that the analysis is wrong? Was it confirmed by your supervisors when you reached out? In general, it is more likely that you cosupervisor knows more than you do after a single online course.
Second, are you sure that the admission committees will ask for a copy of your thesis? Personally, I was asked for a copy of my thesis when I applied for a PhD, but not for master programs.
If the thesis contains a significant error and you are asked to provide it, you have two choices:

In the thesis I have seen, the student is usually expected to have done all the work (under supervision). If that is not the case, as in your situation, it may be good to include a statement of contributions, where you clearly explain who has done what. By stating that somebody else has done the statistical analysis, you can hope/expect that the errors do not reflect poorly on you (again, assuming that the thesis is indeed flawed, that you are asked to provide it, and that somebody reads in detail enough to spot the error). Including such a statement, if not present already, might be a good idea even if you go for the second option.
You fix the error, and when you are asked for your thesis, you provide the fixed version mentioning that you are sending them a revised copy that fixes the mistakes you have found after submission and incorporating the feedback you have received.

I'd be very surprised if anyone asks to read your undergrad thesis for PhD submission. But if they did I would add an erratum, or a postscript spelling out what happened and what the effect was.
To me following things up like this, admitting the mistake, and discussing and outlining the consequences would be a massive plus in the column of any PhD applicant.

Asking for a thesis when applying for PhD is not uncommon from my personal experience, at least in different countries in Europe. But OP is applying for a Master, so the situation is probably different.

First, relax.  Take a deep breath.  Take another.  And relax again.
Second, as others have said, it is pretty unlikely that anyone on an admissions committee will ask for your thesis or hunt it down.  It's even more unlikely that it will be read with anything more than a cursory skim, and vanishingly unlikely that someone will try to replicate the statistical analysis from the data you provide.  People just don't have that kind of time on their hands.
So unless it is a truly howling error, visible from a brief skim, you're probably okay on that account.  (There are types of statistical error that obvious-- using a blatantly wrong type of test, for instance, so it is not impossible.  But someone does have to be really engaged as a reader to spot these things.)
Third, remember, you are talking about an undergraduate thesis, not a published journal article.  You've done your best, which was good enough to satisfy whoever assigns grades.  I will not defend bad statistical analysis, but I will absolutely defend a person who makes a good faith error at the unpublished undergraduate level.
Fourth, even if this were a published article, you would unfortunately be a statistic yourself:

Of the 157 articles published in radiology journals, 10 had no statistical errors, while 147 had at least one statistical error. The most frequently encountered error was “errors in summarizing data” with a rate of 66%. This was followed by “incorrect representation of P values” with a rate of 42%. The least frequently encountered error was “statistical symbol errors” with a rate of 3%. There was no statistically significant difference according to impact factors.

Radiology journals!  Rife with statistical errors!
Finally, what I would advise you to do is to redo the analysis on your own, and hang on to the results.  It's the right thing to do.  It builds character.  It builds an ethos of learning from your mistakes, after which you can resolve at least never to make that particular mistake again.  If necessary, it gives you something to talk about if an admissions committee does ask you about it.  (And some interviewers like to ask questions such as, "Tell me about a learning experience you had," or "Tell me about a difficult experience or challenge you had."  This is a great anecdote for that situation.)
And not coincidentally, it will make you feel better.


text:
Is the reference letter from PhD supervisor important in the future?
I just submitted my doctoral thesis yesterday. I finished my project two years ago and published it in a high level journal. My supervisor asked me to give the co-first author position to a postdoc, although there isn't any input from her. After a long time of struggeling, I agreed, because otherwise she will not support me in getting my degree smoothly and will refuse to write a recommendation letter for postdoc applications. After that, she still asked me to do many experiments. These experiments are for her funding, for other colleagues, and all not related to my project. She took four months to finish proofreading my thesis. Actual working time on it is not more than 24h. Now she asked me to come back for experiment after I start my postdoc training, otherwise she will not support me in the future if I want to find a scientist job.
She said she would not write me a reference letter if I didn't come back. Now I am leaving for postdoc training. So I want to know how important the letter is for a job seeking? Any advice?

I want to know how important the letter is for a job seeking? Any advice?

No, a letter from your supervisor is not essential in most normal circumstances to get academic jobs. You do need good letters from senior academics. But getting a job depends on many factors, and having your supervisor as a reference is only a tiny one, and hardly an essential one, if at all.

Yes, a letter from your supervisor can be very important until you land a permanent position, say as junior faculty. But if you have a sufficiently rich CV then it matter less.
But, I think you are clearly being abused. The steps you take should be "away" from this person. Alternatively they need to be stopped from this sort of unprofessional behavior. And, unfortunately, you probably aren't in a position to make that happen without hurting your own future. Pretty much everything you describe is misconduct.
If she is funding you at the moment, however, she may be right in asking you to do some things unrelated to your project since they won't interfere with it now. Such things could be benign, and even advantageous, if they weren't accompanied by coercion and threats against your career.

I don't think the student needs the professor's recommendation, but I don't see where he/she is "abused" here. These are usual arguments that occur in work environment, and nothing exceptional here. Not giving a reference is not nice, but it seems reasonable if the student decides to stop their involvement in a long-term project. (Adding the postdoc name is unethical indeed, but not an abuse.)


text:
Example of educational theory not taken in account in e-learning software?
In some papers I read some pedagogical experts claiming that e-learning software such as Moodle, blackboard, elluminate, etc. are not good because they don't take enough of educational theory into consideration. But there is a lack of examples in those papers.
Can someone give me some example of educational theory not taken in account in e-learning software? Thanks.

Perhaps the best source for examples would be in the citations included in the papers you read.

@RoboKaren are you sure this is the right question you wanted to indicate as a possible duplicate?

I'm sorry. I don't see at all how the question asked above look like to the one pointed by the link given above. They are totally two different questions having absolutely nothing in common.

Sorry, wrong flag.

Measuring learning is hard. LMS help automate part of a pedagogy, but they don't provide enough high level features to add value to instructors at a learning level. An analogy might be a word processor, even with grammar and spelling features, won't add much value to the dimension of writing a good research paper. In Moodle, for example, there is no feature to help you create good distractors (common misconception answers) in multiple choice questions, since it's curriculum- or even cultural-specific.

Moodle and Blackboard & co are learning management systems, not e-learning software that is sometimes (but not always) built into such an LMS. There is indeed a lack of educational theory behind many e-learning units, for example, the learning goals are not clearly defined, the target group is not specified, the evaluation of the learning goals (if stated) does not actually match, etc. And there are many side issues (hidden curricula, usability, etc).

Playing Devil's advocate: isn't software just a tool?  What is the educational value of a dry erase board, or a desk?  Nothing without the teacher to write on it and the students to sit in them.  Seems the e-learning platforms are just that -- platforms.  It's up to the school or department or instructor to put them to good and proper use.

Moodle's Workshop activity tries hard to automate some theory. But its usability is terrible, and there's little documentation on how to design the content of a Workshop to add pedagogical value.


text:
How to determine whether a position is "faculty-equivalent"?
I am considering taking a position as a "junior assistant professor" in Japan. There are certain international fellowships to which I may apply, but they require that the applicant does not hold a "faculty-equivalent position". One in particular is Switzerland based.
I do plan to ask the fellowship contact directly how they determine faculty-equivalency. However, I prefer to be as informed as possible before asking them directly; that way, I can best pose my question. For instance, it may be that the fellowship office does not have a simple definition, but may ask for several pieces of "evidence" that I am not at a "faculty-equivalent position". This would be similar to the NIH having a list of "evidence" that an early career candidate is not yet independent.
I am curious to know opinions from the academic community on StackExchange: What, in your experience, typically constitutes "faculty equivalency" (voting rights, salary, tenureship, etc.)? I am hoping to hear these opinions so I can start collecting "evidence" (possibly some that the fellowship committee may not have defined yet but would welcome) that I am or am not of "faculty equivalency".
Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

In my field (particle physics) positions considered as "faculty equivalent" positions are usually non-university permanent (or close to that) positions.
For example, in the US at national labs, there are several named fellowships and when applying to them they might state something like "this position is considered equivalent to an assistant professor at a university".
The idea usually being that the person in this position would be hired into a permanent position at the end of their fellowship, e.g., as a staff scientist.

At least in my mind, the threshold between "non-faculty" and "faculty" is tenure or tenure-track. If a position is tenured or tenure-track, then it is a faculty position, otherwise it is a non-faculty position.
Salary is not relevant as it varies widely between countries, and in some countries postdoc are paid better than early-career faculty to account for job instability. Voting rights vary even more widely between countries, and you can see everything between "faculty has total control over the whole university's operation" and "faculty have barely any say over their working conditions".
But of course, you don't want a general answer, you want to know what the fellowships you have in mind consider to be faculty positions. You would have to ask them. I don't understand why you would ask random strangers without even saying what the fellowships are. Sorry. Read carefully whatever call for applications, FAQ, information documents... you have, and ask whoever is in charge.
There are some subtleties. Sometimes it is possible to hold a temporary position that is considered equivalent to a tenured position. Like "visiting professor", "invited professor", "partner professor". This is much muddier and again, you should ask whoever is in charge of granting the fellowships you want. But typically they concern either people who are already otherwise employed as faculty, or who are external contractors who have a day job and teach / do research on the side. These people wouldn't typically care about whether they satisfy the criteria for a (postdoc, I presume) fellowship.
I do not know the Japanese system at all and I am only going off what I read at Wikipedia (I'm being honest so you can judge if it's worth anything). It seems that you are talking about the position called "Kōshi". It definitely sounds like a faculty position from what I've gathered, but again, I'm no expert. Ask Japanese academics and the institution that grants the fellowships you are interested in.

Could the downvoter explain? Should I have sugarcoated "don't ask random strangers, ask the people in charge" more?

Thanks. I did not down vote. I should state that I do plan to ask the fellowship contact directly. However, I prefer to be informed as much as possible before asking questions. I could not find a consistent definition upon searching the internet, so I thought I may garner more knowledge to help me appropriately form my question directed to the fellowship contact by asking on academia.stackexchange.

For instance, it is possible the committee does not have a solid definition themselves but may ask for several factors as "evidence". They may consider me eligible if I take the initiative to inform them something about my position that renders it not "faculty-equivalent". However, I may not know to inform them of such factors if neither them nor myself considers it from the start. Gathering more information in advance increases my chances of discovering "evidence" that my position is not "faculty-equivalent" that I can be prepared to present to the fellowship contact.

I'm downvoting because many faculty are not tenure track, including in universities that do not have a tenure system.