text:
Professor expects me to attend a conference. I can't afford to go,even with 50% funding
I am a first year Ph.D. student. During my master's (which was in a different university), a professor (call him M) and I worked on a paper on banking regulations. Apart from the single idea, all of the paper and results were done by me. We worked on it for a couple of months and tried to submit our work at many journals.  All of them rejected it.  Finally, it has been accepted recently at a conference. This conference is not major league but niche.
Prof. M wants me to attend, but I do not have funding. Initially, he expected me to spend from my own pocket for travel and registration (around USD 2,000). Being a graduate student and living in one of the expensive cities, I am living hand-to-mouth. So, I informed him politely that I am not keen to attend due to my inability to fund myself.  He asked me to apply to funding agencies, or else he is willing to fund 50% of my expenses.
The fact of the matter is that I cannot afford even 50% of the travel expenses.  Out of nowhere, this conference comes up and it further cripples my shoestring budget.
How should I proceed?  I am really hesitant to discuss my financial shortcomings with Prof. M, but if I don't, he'll assume that I can afford the travel.

Re the title: How is Prof. M "forcing" you to go to the conference?

Can you ask your current supervisor if there is the possibility of getting support for the other half of the expenses?

@kasa: Why can't Prof. M go by himself? 1. Prof. M is the senior author in the work; 2. probably earns a lot more than you; and 3. will likely have access to extra grant funds to fund the trip. (Unless this is one of rare instances that a conference requests the first author to present the work).

Why is it so expensive anyway? Maybe this is part of the problem the professor is having. Is this the cheapest hotel and flight you could find (forget about the hotel the conference is in)? In my experience student travel grants don't cover nearly that amount either.

Answers in comments and extended speculations and discussions have been moved to chat. Please read this FAQ before posting another comment. @kasa: Please [edit] any clarifying information into your question.

Some Conference organizers are willing to give quite large discounts, some even waived the full fee in exceptional cases. Ask them. In return you could offer to assist as a conference helper (administrative or physical duties).

You said Prof. M. asked you to apply to "funding agencies." Did you? With what result?

A financial shortcoming is not a disease or something to be ashamed of. Could you find someone else, who is attending the conference to speak on your behalf? And request M to pay for registration, thus saving your travel and accommodation costs. Though I guess my comment is too late now.

Politely if possible - otherwise firmly - tell Prof M that you have neither time nor funds to go to a niche conference on a relatively minor matter. If he bridles at this just go to either your supervisor or the Head of Dept and let them finalise the matter with Prof M.

I am really hesitant to discuss my financial shortcomings with Prof.
  M, or else he assumes that I can afford the travel.

I think you need to get past this. You do not have financial shortcomings, you just don't have money. Working on a PhD without family financial support, with existing student debt, and with limited school support is not easy. I respect you for doing it. Take pride in making the hard choices that involves.
With that attitude, explain to Prof. M that you cannot afford any travel expense, and will only be able to go to the conference if your expenses are fully covered. Check any funding sources he suggested, and ask advisors at your current university if they know of any sources.
From comments: Also check with the conference organizers. They may have scholarships or be able to discount the conference fee, and find free or inexpensive accommodations. You may need to work several angles to align the total cost with the available funding.
If you can't get the full funding you need, tell Prof. M. that you regret you cannot attend the conference. At the worst, you will have to withdraw the paper. However, there are alternatives the conference may permit.

Remote video presentation
If anyone from your current university is attending, ask them to present the paper
Prof M. may be able to get a current student or a collaborator who is attending the conference to present it.

This is good advice, but my gut feeling is that this isn't really about money. The OP seems to have a lot of resentment about their current situation and especially about attending this conference whether or not funding is available.

+1 Addresses the issue at hand, constructively and at the core of the issue. Some conferences also offer travel support (see also Buffy's response).

It'd be good if the OP could get their head out of the finances long enough to realize that the opportunity to present a paper in their first PhD year is an opportunity.  I really like the suggestion to also discuss funding with the current advisor/department, which may be happy to contribute, or at least have some constructive suggestions about finances in general.

Obviously you can't get a discount airfare, but the conference may be willing to waive the conference fee or reduce to a truly token amount, and they may be able to help you with a non-standard accommodations like a dorm room.

@GeorgeM it is an opportunity, but that's not helpful if they still can't afford to go...

@George This may vary by field. In mathematics I was only ever rejected from one conference I submitted a paper to as a graduate student, and I started second year. It's certainly an opportunity, but not at all a rare one, depending on the conference.

@GeorgeM I don't know how relatively important conferences are between my field and economics, but I presented a poster at a conference as an undergrad ... This is not that rare of an opportunity.

@GeorgeM: Note that this student cannot afford meals and to visit a sick family member (by their original question). Attending and than getting sick because of hunger is not an opportunity.

I don't see anybody "forcing" you to do anything. Prof M has given you some reasonable suggestions:

apply for funding
an offer to fund 50% of your expenses.

If the latter option doesn't work for you, you are left with either the first option: apply for funding, or other options such as A) Not going, or B) further explaining your financial situation in the hope that the professor might be able to offer more towards expenses. If you are hoping for (B) it would be best for you to at least first attempt to find other funding, as the professor suggested.

Of course, not attending may have consequences too - you may have to withdraw your paper and look for other ways to get it published.  Well, life has trade-offs.

Agreed. It sounds like the professor is actively encouraging OP to attend a conference to present the work, which is a worthwhile endeavor, and is giving OP some reasonable options.

Late 50s is really really old for a cat however. I bet it would be quite frail indeed.

@NateEldredge: Note that this student cannot afford food if they would go there (as their original question). Staying healthy should always, always be more important than attending conferences.

Your professor has made a generous offer if these were personal funds, I think. Your situation is difficult, I also think. It would be good if you could find a way to go, both for now and for your future prospects, both with the (prime age) professor and in meeting people.
So, the issue becomes funding. The first thing you might do is look for funding locally. It is entirely possible that your university has some funds that can be used to support students in such things. The place to start is with the department head, I would guess. See if there is some travel monies available as they certainly have for faculty. If not in the department, then possibly at a higher level in the university.
You may also belong to a professional organization as a student member. Many of these have travel grants available. You might look there.
Another possible option is funding from the conference itself. Some conferences have some funds for student attendees. In some cases the students serve as "volunteers" during the conference, running errands, but can also attend as usual. The conference web site may have something about this, and the organizers may be able to offer suggestions if contacted.

50% funding is not generous at all. In our department (UK) nobody will expect a PhD student to fund their own trip; they can expect to be 100% reimbursed. In Germany, however, considerable self-funding contribution was expected, but there, in many disciplines, PhD students in half-funded positions are expected to work full-time.

@CaptainEmacs Your comment doesn't make much sense to me. It seems like you are saying "In the UK this would not be considered generous; in Germany it would" at least in your field, and yet you say it is not generous at all? There's also the additional circumstance here that the OP is no longer at the same institution which might put some limits on funding options.

@CaptainEmacs, for a personal-funds offer, it would be generous, I think. That was what I based it on.

@BryanKrause Ok, you are right, I should explain: I found that, in the UK (or at least in my institution) it is considered unacceptable that an employee or student should not be reimbursed fully for a business trip, be paid less than full salary for a job. Retroactively, learning this, the German system for PhD students appears really exploitative. (Of course, one could say, Germany does not take tuition fees, but that's a separate issue).

@BryanKrause I must have missed the OP saying that he is at a different institution? Where does he say this?

@Buffy It was not clear to me that this would be the prof's private funds? I may have overlooked it. Where did OP mention this? The OP's formulation might be ambiguous, but I would have read it that the prof would have funds for half the trip (not that he would pay 50% privately).

@CaptainEmacs The first words of the OP: "I am a first year Ph.D. student. During my masters (which was in a different university)" From several other questions on the topic of conference funding, it seems fairly typical that students often need to find their own funding (incl by applying for funds), especially if they are now at a different institution, though it depends on my field. Certainly in my field I would agree with you, because it is common for students to be funded by professor's grants and for those grants to include travel funds, but this is not the case in all fields.

@BryanKrause Ah, yes, the first line - of course, I overlooked it, thanks. As for funding, before I discovered how it's done in my current institution, I thought it is quite normal as a student to pre-fund conferences, get only half back and only after waiting for months for your expenses. But I must say, seeing it in my current institution done with a proper effort to minimally affect the finances of the people you employ or who do you a service, I realise how cavalier that other attitude is.

@CaptainEmacs perhaps there's a difference between fields or institutions, or something changed over time, but I did a PhD in Germany quite recently (finished 2 years ago) and never heard of a student travelling to conferences with anything other than total reimbursement.

@ChrisH It must have changed then. Or your field is Computer Science. Thanks for the update.

Agree with this! As a PhD student, your current department and/or university should have opportunities for you to secure conference funding. I would assume the former prof does not expect that you personally pay the remaining 50%, but instead that your new PhD institution pays the remaining 50%.

Going to a conference as a PhD student is like a business trip if you were a regular employee at a company. And those are of course entirely paid by your employer, and asking an employee to pay for a business trip out of their own pocket would be extremely unusual.
I'm not very familiar with fields where it's customary to publish on conferences instead of journals. But it seems to me that this is also similar to asking someone to pay any journal fees from personal funds, which again is extremely unusual and would typically be paid from research grants. Ensuring the logistics of publication, including how to pay for this is part of the job of a principal investigator, that should not fall on the students.
Your personal financial situation doesn't even matter, it is quite unreasonable to ask you to pay for essentially business expenses from your own personal money. So follow the advice of your professor about applying for money to fund your conference trip. But you can decline to fund it yourself without saying anything about your personal finances.

I would say that the difference to the business trip is that the student's own reputation, not that of the university, can significantly benefit from the conference presentation. Contrary to an employee on a business trip, the student is working mostly for his own future career, not that of his employer (university)

@Marie.P. A student is always representing the academic group as well as themselves on a conference. There are usually multiple names on a poster, among them the supervisor (I'm assuming a field like biology/chemistry here). If the student decides on their own that they want to visit a conference for their own benefit, this is something entirely different than when the supervisor decides that the student should visit a specific conference.

@Marie.P. That's no different from a software developer getting sent to attend a conference by their employer, for which the benefit is largely to the attendee through networking and learning new things, and the employer almost always pays for the entire thing, airfare and hotel and conference.

The answer seems to ignore the fact that the business trip is for business with the previous employer. In the corporate world, such a trip would just never happen, so there is no reason to discuss who is paying it. Academia is a bit different as "spill-over obligations" between institution switches are quite accepted.

@DCTLib I don't think that aspect really changes anything, though it is of course a rather important general difference. Either the previous employer is interested enough in in this to still pay, or they aren't and it doesn't happen. I am comparing this to a business trip for your current employer because it would otherwise not be very comparable, but I don't think this fundamentally affects my argument.

The professor is expecting you to make a serious good-faith effort to obtain funding. Based on your question, it sounds like you have not made any applications or enquiries about funding for conference attendance, but are assuming that there is no funding available (sadly, this is often true, but you are expected to try before giving up).
So, you should do a bit of research into where you might be able to get funding (as well as sources within your institution, you should check whether any learned societies or trusts have professional development funds for graduate students and/or for your area of research), and submit several applications to places where you may be eligible (in your application, indicate that you already have 50% funded -- this is generally considered a good thing by funders). By all means, ask your professor for pointers or leads as to where you might investigate.
Funding applications are a tedious and demoralising chore, but you need to get used to doing them. It is perfectly reasonable for your professor to expect you to make such applications. It is also perfectly reasonable for you to ask your professor to check your applications before you submit them (he/she may be able to offer valuable advice as to how to "sell" your funding application better).
If, after having made several funding applications, you still do not have enough funding to cover the cost, then your professor should be understanding, and should not expect you to pay for it out of your own pocket.

I am making my comment an answer.
I think you should suggest that Prof. M attend the conference and present the paper* for a number of reasons:

Prof. M is the senior author in the work;
probably earns a lot more than you; and
will likely have access to extra grant funds to fund the trip.

You can phrase it along these lines:

Dear Prof. M,
While I would welcome presenting the work at the conference, sadly my
  financial doesn't allow to spend such an amount to travel. Is it
  possible for you to attend the conference and present the work?

Adding to that, and because I have been in this situation, I don't it is reasonable to insist that a student attend conference out of his/her pocket. It can certainly be suggested but not insisted upon. The financial situation of most students is precarious at best, and in my experience there is very little benefit going to self-funded conferences during the first PhD year, in particular for a project that, as far as you are concerned is dead. The only person that can gain from obtaining feedback is your former supervisor.
*Unless this is one of rare instances that a conference requests the first author to present the work.

At the European universities that I have worked, PhD students are seen as employees and thus receive a salary and their conference visits are  paid for by the university. Often research projects have special budget for this. Master students with good and useful results will sometimes also be allowed to visit a conference at the expense of the department. Requiring you to (partially) pay to represent the university at a conference is cheapskating from your professor and degrading for you. Don't do it.
Edit: As rumtscho pointed out I overlooked the university change. Nevertheless, it is much more important for you to publish on your current PhD research, preferably in a journal. You must also ask yourself why Prof. M. wants you to go to the conference. Is he in need to add something to his publication list?
P.S: Did you send in the same paper over and over again, or did you use the reviewers comments to improve the paper before re-submitting it somewhere else?

I suspect OP is in the US and the norms are a bit different there.

You seem to have overlooked the "different university" part. The OP is currently not enrolled or employed by the university of the professor. The old university can decide to not pay the expenses of somebody who is not their student. The new university will usually only pay if the current supervisor signs off on the necessity and pays it out  of his group's budget - but if the current supervisor is not on the authorship list, and if the conference is outside of his niche community (which is common, most people don't do PhD in the same niche as their Msc), he has little incentive to do so.

@rumtscho: you are right, I read to hastily. The actual situation maybe even makes it simpler. Since he started with his PhD I assume he finished his Masters degree. So he does not really have an obligation to his old Prof any more. Being able to write in your CV that your Masters research lead to a Journal or conference paper is a "nice to have", but it is much more important to publish on the results your PhD research.

I understand that this is a situation where you are unsure about your options, as this is the first time you encounter this. Rest assured that it is not uncommon (though of course not nice) that especially young researchers need to beg, borrow and steal in order to come up with travel funds. In order to make your personal life work while preserving some sanity, I would recommend that you implement the following basic rule now:
1) Under no circumstances are you to pay travel expenses related to conference travel out of pocket.
Having this as a basic rule is nice, as it establishes a baseline.
Let me assume that you have already asked at your current institution, and they have declined funding you. This would be normal modus operandi. If you have not, go ask them now.
Now you have to get to work, in order to raise the missing funding. First point on the agenda is to set up a tentative budget for your travel. This should consist of:
1) Conference fee.
2) Travel costs.
3) Hotel costs.
4) Per diem (whatever is the usual amount for PhD students in your country).
Make your budget as cheap as possible, without being unreasonable. Find a 2-star hotel, find a cheap travel option (cheap airline, train or bus depending on location) etc. Once that is done, you write the professor, asking him if he will agree to pay half of your budgeted costs, instead of half of whatever the final bill will be. You should first realize that he is already doing you a favor paying half, as he is not currently employing you - normally it would be your current institution paying. So if he says no, it is not unreasonable.
Then you start cutting in your budget. Write the conference to ask if they are willing to waive the conference fee for a struggling student. This is more common than you might expect. I have definitely waived conference fees for students just for writing me. You can also ask if they have student support options. Then you start looking around for small grants for conference participation. Ask your institution. If you then end up with only a small amount of money missing, you ask your institution again, if they would be willing to pay this small amount - or your current supervisor directly.
Best of luck!

This might be happening more frequently than expected!
In my case (incidentally, a Prof. M too! Same person?) told me to pay everything in advance, and we "would see if the department will reimburse my expenses later, or at least part of them". Also in my first PhD year. Talking to the professor, even explaining my financial situation in detail turned out to be futile.
Taking a formal point of view, your prof can't exactly command you to do that. Of course there will be no talking about penalty if you do not comply - but of course there is an elephant in the room.
The only solution I could come up then was to delay flight booking (only a bit), and to report - completely truthfully - I couldn't obtain transportation any more, even if I found some way to pay for it.
In general, in relationships of dependence I have found it's much better to present (or, in a case of self-defence: silently create) practical constraints like that one than to say "I don't want to go there", or even "I don't want to go in debt". Sad, but true.

"During my masters (which was in a different university), a professor (call him M.) and I worked on a paper"
So a professor from a different university from where you are now asked you to go?
I'd suggest to tell him no, it's not part of your current PhD studies at your new college.

Mid-to-long term suggestion: You all need to unionize.
As several other answers suggest, you are a junior employee of the university - doing research, which is what a university is about, even if under the tutelage of a supervisor. In many countries, and even in some universities in the US, you would be considered a university employee (at the previous university and at the current university), and as another answer suggests - the trip would be a business trip. However, that requires your employer to reach into their pockets and shell out the money, which they would rather not.
The key point here is that this is not an individual, but a collective problem: All  hD candidates at your university either do not receive expense reimbursement for travel to conferences in which they're presenting, or have to be on their supervisor's good side, to get funding from him/her as a favor. And it's not even the problem with a single institution, because the business trip happens now, and is relevant to your continuing career, but the research happened earlier, at the previous university.
The solution is also collective: Forming a graduate researchers' union (or an untenured/temp staff union involving also teachers). At the single-university level, that is the way you can secure stable funding for everyone to be able to attend a conference several times during your Ph.D., both based on research done at the current university and independent/previous research of yours.
Of course starting a union is not an undertaking for just a single person. But you are now being "burned" by the lack of a collective organizational structure to pursue the interests of the group you're in. Remember this lesson, and try to spend some of your time raising awareness and support for this among your peers. You could also consider reaching out to other unions representing Ph.D. candidates in the US. A particularly inspiring struggle in recent years has been waged by:
https://columbiagradunion.org/
who won the landmark case of The  Trustees  of  Columbia  University  in  the  City  of New York and Graduate Workers of Columbia–GWC, UAW. (364 NLRB 90)

Did you note that they are talking about a conference of their previous employer?

Is he your employer? Then he will pay the expenses for something which is mandatory for this employment.
Is he not your employer? Then he can't "force" you.

I don't see the problem.

Wouldn't it be great if reality was as fair and simple as this?

@gerrit : Why wouldn't it be? His MSc supervisor is not his PhD advisor. His duties have now shifted to his new situation.

If someone wants to change that they should go directly to him and not be so dumb as to try to throw money all around him instead. They sure aren't gonna get their money's worth if they keep that up and he understands it most of that time.

This answer is an example for a really bad communication style. Regardless of it is true or false, its tone basically reads like "You are dumb."

@Hatschu Some students need to toughen up a bit. For their own good... Or they will be steamrolled not only by their current supervisors but also by previous ones and future colleagues. They might well be completely clueless to "softer" communication. Many students are, especially in technical subjects.

I don't see any indication that the student belongs to this group. Moreover, from what I have seen, (1) should be true, but is unfortunately not.

@Hatschu : The student clearly worries about how to please people they have no obligations to. Such students are in danger zone of being used both in academia and industry.

Do a "go fund me". Many less appealing (or deserving?) stories than "starving PHD student" have brought in thousands.


text:
Is it worth going to college when you have no real passion for the subject you will study?
I'm in my last year of high school and about to move on to the next stage, undergraduate programs. The problem is that I don't care about any of my subjects enough to continue them at a higher level. I don't have any of that love for my potential subjects that good students seem to have, which gives them so much motivation.
On the other hand, there's no better time than after secondary education to get a degree. Should I suck it up, continue, and get a degree and better job prospects sooner? Or wait a year and spend more time to try to find something I would really like to study?
Quick note: The universities of the country I'm in don't do a liberal arts style (US style) education. We pick our subject before we go, then study solely that subject for 3 or so years.

Are you in a country where you study a limited number of subjects (ex. UK) or where you can take a lot of different courses (ex. USA)?

UK. I'm in sixth form right now.

You should check out some Uni's that have modular programs...

I don't think they exist in the UK. Also, why the downvote?

No matter what you do, after a few years it's just a job. Pick something that uses subjects you're good at and at least you'll have an advantage. Or take a break from school, get a really crappy low-paying job with no dignity, and roommates who steal your stuff because you can't afford your own place. Find your inspiration for college.

Decision-making is a science, so I'll try my best to stick to the science instead of trying to push you into academia because, well, judging by the name of this place, I'm probably a bit biased. The extent of my expertise in the science of decision making is that I once read a book about the subject. Disclaimers out of the way, this is a short procedure for making a decision:

Make sure you know what problem you are trying to solve. Why
do you want to go to university? A good job, living the uni student life, etc.
Specify what exactly you want to achieve. Do you want a
better salary, a job in an office, a job outdoors, learning to be
independent, living with young adults your age, etc.
Think of alternative ways you can achieve your objectives.
Have an open mind here.
Think of the consequences for each of your options. What
happens to you 5 and 10 years down the road? how certain are you of
those consequences and how can you reduce that uncertainty?
Make a table listing your options alongside all the pros and cons you can come up with during a week or so. Consider the respective weights of each pro. Do the pros and cons of option 1 cancel out, or do the pros outweigh the cons? Also try to put things into perspective. "Is 30k of student debt worth the pros of getting a degree?" becomes "are the pros of getting a degree worth X amount of dollars per month for X ammount of years?" or "are the pros of getting a degree worth living in a smaller house?". Be creative, but also be realistic.
Sixth and perhaps the most important step for your question, make
sure you identify the uncertainties affecting your decision. For
example, how sure are you that you won't eventually grow to like
your subject of study? Try to assign percentages to this. Can you
bear the consequences of not liking the subject? How much debt, and
what will that mean in your day-to-day life? Try finding new data to
fill these uncertainties.

Other general advice:

Don't avoid the decision because it's complex. Avoidance often gives you the worse possible outcome.
Don't be afraid to change your mind in the face of new evidence. If after your first few months you learn or you get a gut feeling this isn't the subject for you, go through this process again.
Keep in mind the heuristics that may be at play, such as the anchoring trap, the status quo trap, the cherry-picking trap, the
overconfidence trap, etc.
Take your time. You would not buy a house after only a few hours of thought. Making choices when you are young is like steering a ship
when you've just left the harbor. The older you get and the farther
that boat has gone off-course, the harder it is to correct it, but
not impossible! But it pays to spend a few weeks, months or even a
year charting your route and getting your heading right. And if you
are completely lost, then you need data, and to get data you often need to
try new stuff, like joining the military to see if you like it.

There are many books about decision making. My comment is based on Smart Choices, by Hammond, Keeney, and Raiffa (2002) and Benjamin Franklin's letter on decision-making sent to J. Priestley in 1772. I also recommend Meg Jay's The Defining Decade. This is a much lighter read than the first book I mentioned, but it will make the consequences of your decisions clear, maybe even painfully so.
Godspeed.

+1. This is a very good answer for just about any decision. In this case, going to college (esp. if you pick a bad subject) is risky, but not going is also risky -- quantifying all possible paths is MUCH better than just missing the application deadline and then having only one path left.

Don't take this as advice about what you should do. But here are three things to think about in forming decisions about your future.
First, whatever you do in a state of indecision, do something that keeps your future options open. Don't overcommit to any one thing if it makes it hard to implement a change of heart/mind.
Second, make a list of all your options, both in education and otherwise, work, travel, writing, etc. It can be a long list depending on your resources.
Finally, if you do go to university, still in a state of indecision, choose a field that is generalist and foundational rather than more specific. The two that first come to mind for me are Philosophy and Mathematics. Both are good for teaching you how to think. A Writing focused program might be another possibility, depending on your larger interests. You can do a lot of things if you can think and you can write and you have patience.

Go into the military.  You'll either hate it and be glad to go back to school, two years later.  Or you'll like it.  In any case, you can learn a trade there.  Plus it gives you something to talk about, later in life.

The UK military's term of enlistment is 4 years, according to a quick Google search I just made.

You might also want to consider getting a trade qualification rather than a university degree, if you're less of an academic type of person. A good plumber or electrician can often make more money than a university graduate, without needing to go into debt to get their piece of paper.
If you're a high school student, you should have guidance counselors at your school that can assist you with this decision-making process, and help provide you with relevant information; you might want to consider making an appointment with them to discuss things with them.

This answer feels very US centric while the OP says they are British, the reality of education, finance and careers varies greatly. And ive never seen a "guidance counselor" in a UK school

I’m an Australian, actually. The fact he said he was British was why I said “getting a trade qualification” rather than “going to TAFE”, since I don’t know what the British equivalent of TAFE is; I think the American version of it is community college, but I’m not sure.

sorry about that. I assumed based on your calling of it high school (its called FE College, or 6th form in the UK). I didnt know Australia called it highschool too. Apologies from assuming wrong. If it helps the rough UK equivalant is a "higher certificate" (a 2 year course that teaches a trade or technology) though it often also requires fees or loans. Though admittedly the UK loans are a bit of a steal given the income contingent repayment plans and usually very low interest rates. You do make a compelling case. Hopefully some of that helps. And again apologies for the mistake.

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text:
When are 2 PhDs in philosophy necessary?
I stumbled on Tom Angier on his UCT page, but this page details his degrees more:

MPhil. in Philosophy (University College London, 1995), PhD in Philosophy (University of Cambridge, 2001),
  PhD in Ancient Philosophy (University of Toronto, 2008).

I grasp that a braggart may like the cachet  of having 2 PhDs. But I'll assume that there are other modest reasons.
Couldn't Dr. Angier have studied in Cambridge, whatever he studied in Toronto, by taking more time in Cambridge?
In general, why'd you need 2 Philosophy PhDs?

Hmmm. Why do you suggest "braggart"? Seems both dismissive and presumptuous.

His email is on the website you linked to. Why don’t you email him to ask him these questions instead of asking us to speculate about the motives of a person we know nothing about?

When is 1 PhD in philosophy necessary?

Just reading the two titles, those PhD's each have a different focus.
I assume that the Cambridge PhD is "modern"...
And the Toronto one is prior to some defined date.
This means that Tom decided to augment or broaden his knowledge, perhaps due to interests gained in the first PhD. I'm guessing - only he knows why for sure.

Your wrong assumption may (or may not, as I don't know this person) be that he "needed" the PhD etc.
Many people do PhDs because of interest to explore a new field -- not because they "need" it. There are people with 5 PhD degrees.
Also, why should someone have to study in Cambridge? Maybe he found the place boring after being there for so long or had some family reasons to live in Toronto. Or Toronto was cooler to him at that point. Many people put their private life before their studies.
Or the program in Toronto was just closer to his interests or he felt like the other program could give him an additional perspective.

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


text:
can an unemployed person publish an article
question
what is legally needed to be able to publish an article, in respect to the person submitting the article?
does he/she/it (it for computers) need to be employed by some particular entity or is it enough to have a reasonable idea?

Anyone can publish an article if it is accepted by the editors. There are no restrictions in any reasonable circumstances. Of course, there are places where publishing anti-governmental articles is dangerous but that is a different question.
Editors want to see some "affiliation" for authors, but that is mostly for identification purposes. Others have been named Schopenhauer, of course.
Science and academia generally are driven for the most part by ideas, not by prestige, though the latter gets in the way on occasion. But the ideas of luminaries are questioned as well as those of unknowns.


text:
Impact of Recommendation letters
I am a master’s student of pure mathematics at my country’s most famous university, and recently I have applied to a couple of foreign universities.
Because of the reputation of my university and my high average which is around 19.50 out of 20, and also my master’s project which is going to be published in an accredited international journal, I am optimistic to be admitted for a PhD position abroad.
However, the most reputed and cited professors do not write a letter of recommendation for me because my major is not their area of expertise. My supervisor does not have many citations on google scholar. Will it affect my admission process?

The strength of the letter matters more than the writer.

I don't think that you have much to concern you. You can't get a letter from someone who won't write one, of course, but if your own advisor is on the faculty of such a university the assumption is that his/her word can be trusted.
What you need is someone who knows you well and can speak honestly about your background and prospects for success. Your advisor is best placed to do that and support you. The superstars, if they could be convinced to write, would probably need to say things less directly applicable or useful to you.
You need to put together a good case that you are well prepared and are likely to succeed. Your advisor's letter will help with that.


text:
Is software developed by publicly funded research groups legally public domain?
In the United States, if a university lab develops code while receiving public funding, are they legally obligated to release their source code?

If "public domain" means no license, then - no. Because even GPL is not public domain.

No, in general they are not.
It is true that works prepared by US federal government employees as part of their official duties are in the public domain.  This applies, for instance, to journal articles by scientists at DOE or DOD laboratories.  It does not apply to public university employees (they work for state/local governments) and, as far as I know, it does not apply to computer code.

It can also depend on the specific contract and the specific funding agency. I don't know if there are State laws that also need to be considered, or even university policies. The picture is complex, but as you say, the general answer is no.

All of this is covered by the Bayh-Dole Act. Wikipedia has a good description of it.

All the work done for an employer belongs to the employer (the software belongs to the University, not the research group). The employer, depending on its legal status, might have some legal obligations in terms of copyright and IP of the work it is done on its behalf.  In addition, when the funding comes, it comes with, or without, a number of other specific obligations about copyright and IP.  These are potentially overriding those imposed by the employer (because the employer accepts the funding and the conditions).
So the answer to your question is: check if there are any conditions attached to the funding (which are pertinent only if they fund the project) and if there are any condition your employer needs to fulfil.

Your first statement is too strong. I don't think you will find any US law to that effect. Contract law is what applies, I believe. Some universities claim all IP. Some claim only Patentable IP. Others leave it to the individuals. The reason it is murky is that most university intellectual work isn't done under direct supervision of the university. You aren't told what to study or how to go about it. The genesis of the work comes from individuals, usually faculty. But contracts apply, of course.


text:
Is there a way I can find out why I didn't get a certain academic position?
I'm applying for postdoctoral positions and when I get rejection letters there is no reason given. Is there any way I can tell if there are "red flags" in my application that are getting it shot down? My adviser has reassured me that there is nothing wrong with my application but after so many rejections I am not so sure...If there really is a simple reason, I would like to know so that I can remedy my application.

At what point in the process do you get these letters?

After the department has picked their candidates.

I don't know what the state of competition is right now for positions. Sometimes it is very fierce.

Some people say they sent more than 200 applications... Others said they only sent one - must have been the right day, feng shui or the correct amount of bribe :) Persevere and ask for feedback - some emplyers won’t bother sending any feedback though... Good luck.

I'm amazed they're bothering to send you rejection letters, many post-docs don't even do that, you just apply into the void and never hear back....

Science nowadays is Hell on Earth, overregulated by bureaucrats and shamanism techniques like "scientific measurements" which include "citations", "indexes" etc. Good thing Einstein did not have to measure anything except time-space intervals. He got rejected a lot, btw. Check his bio.

Can you give more details, like which field you are in? Postdoctoral position can mean totally different things depending on your field...

I'm in pure math

80 applications and 3 interviews indeed does not seem normal for a postdoc position. Could it be a combination of your nationality and the country where you're sending applications (like, you're a non-US citizen living in the US or something along these lines)? Maybe you could try to apply for a few positions in another country, just to see if you get a more positive response?

You haven't said how many applications you've submitted or whether you've had any interviews.  It's possible that you're just being unrealistic about how many applications it will take to obtain a position.
In the US, employers are reluctant to say anything about why an applicant was rejected because of the possibility that this information will be used against the employer in a lawsuit.  It's likely that the faculty involved in the hiring decision will be under instructions to not say anything about why applicants weren't chosen.
Furthermore, even if you could get one of them to talk off the record, the likely reason would be something like "other applicants were slightly stronger or were better fits for our needs."  The reason for this is that the academic job market in most fields is extremely competitive for job seekers, and thus most positions attract many (dozens or even hundreds) of very well qualified applicants.  You should not expect that your application will have better than a 1 in 20 chance of being selected for an interview.
If you're making to the interview stage but haven't gotten any offers, then it's possible that your performance in the in-person interviews has hurt your chances of getting the job.  However, you shouldn't conclude that until you've had several interviews with no offers.

Thank you for your help. I have applied to >80 positions and got 3 interviews with no offers. In America they usually don't interview applicants for postdocs. How can I tell if it is the in-person interviews, or exactly what it is that I'm doing wrong?

You probably need to strengthen your credentials, or at least the way you present them.

I don't have recent hard data, but a few years ago I heard of a math TT job at an elite liberal arts college near a major city that got 800 applicants.  I expect some position has broken 1000 applicants.

Even if things are random and I have a 3% chance of getting a given offer, after 23 applications my chances of getting an offer (assuming everything is random) is >50%. After 50 applications my chances of getting an offer is about 80%. My adviser believes that I am a strong candidate and didn't anticipate that I would struggle to get a single offer.

I think 1% is more accurate than 3% for a competitive but not exceptional candidate.

Three interviews with no offers could just be bad luck or it could be that you're not interviewing well.  You might consider working with a career coach (someone with human resources experience and knowledge of academic careers) on your interviewing.

In a few months, after the candidates have been hired for the positions you interviewed for, you can most likely find out who they were and then see how their backgrounds compare to yours.

I'm a little afraid to say this, and it might be hard to tease out cause and effect, but it seems to me that most math postdocs go to candidates whose advisors have some connection to the hiring department. So it's not even random.

@ElizabethHenning The correctness of what you wrote about "some connection to the hiring department" depend a lot on how broadly one interprets "some connection". For example, a postdoc currently working with me had the connection that his adviser's adviser had  been a postdoc in my department somewhat more than 20 years ago. A postdoc whom we just hired, to start in September, has the connection that his adviser and I were visiting researchers at Microsoft. If you include such connections, then not only the successful but the unsuccessful candidates probably have advisers with connections.

@AndreasBlass Exactly this kind of connection, where you prefer a candidate whose advisor you know personally.

@AlexeyB. Note the last sentence in my previous comment. Most of the unsuccessful candidates in my area (the only area where my opinion counts) also have advisers whom I know personally. In other words, tenuous connections like these are so common that finding them in the case of successful candidates implies nothing about preferences.

@AndreasBlass Obviously I know nothing about your situation, but if you personally know the advisors of all your postdocs then this means exactly that you only hire people whose advisors you personally know.

@AlexeyB. If all the applicants are people whose advisers I know, then the people I hire (or, more precisely, the people I rank highly in my list of suggestions to the hiring committee) are people whose advisers I know.

@Andreas Blass: In your department is how it works that each faculty member makes an individual short list based on who interests them and then everyone meets and intensely debates who should make the short short list?

@Gradstudent Each area within the department (my area being logic) is asked for a list of the top five postdoc candidates in that area. These lists are produced in a discussion among the (tenured and tenure-track) faculty in the area. Then the department's executive committee (consisting of the department chair and six elected members of the faculty) decides which candidates get offers.

That could be the reason why I am struggling with getting offers. For every faculty member X there are a number of applicants whose research interests are more interesting to X than mine. Maybe what I am working on just isn't interesting enough.

You do not have the right frame of mind. You are asking a question that doesn't have an answer. People who have positions to give don't need a reason to not give it to you. They need a reason to give it to you. When you ask, "why didn't I get the position?", most of the time, there is nothing meaningful to answer beyond "we gave it to someone else". These days, competition is so fierce that for any position, there is a dozen candidates that the university would be lucky to hire. A choice needs to be made. And since we are not robots, this isn't an entirely rational choice. Hiring someone is a very complex decisions with many variables; who is the "strongest" candidate depends on many different things, like the person's skills, whether the hiring party thinks that you will continue to do good research/teaching, whether your future colleagues think you will be pleasant to work with, etc. In the end, a hair can separate the top candidate from the next one, but the choice is binary. C'est la vie.

What can I do to be the most likely to be picked?

What are things that will convince the committee that I will continue to do good research?


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What are some ways to address inaccessibility of to-be-learned material for research?
Throughout my PhD I learned that there are lots of stumbling blocks that prevented me from getting to my goal of solving some problem. One of them is that some of the things I needed to learn were inaccessible and posed a number of undesirable difficulties. For example, sometimes papers I need to refer to are written in a language I don't understand. Some books lack notation indices, with the result that the book was difficult to follow. Sometimes the papers are hard for non-experts to understand, and I would waste a lot of time wondering what an author might mean. Sometimes nobody at my university knew the answers to my questions, even though they are on "well-known" facts (well-known to the experts but not to the non-experts).  Sometimes I would be given incorrect information from an expert. In many of these cases, I didn't get my questions answered until some expository books on the subject came out. In other words, a great deal of inefficiency can arise that cause unnecessary and unhelpful delays in establishing a publishable result. I think these difficulties are causing delays in my own research. Keeping everything else the same, another researcher who doesn't have to encounter all these blocks would arrive at results faster and would publish more papers, and would be seen as more "exceptional."
How do researchers deal with these issues? For example, how do they learn some material that is hard to learn from reading the literature and books?

Is this about being « exceptional », publishing more papers or how to learn?

Sorry, but there isn't an easy path through the research jungle. You just have to hack away at the obstacles as you find them. It is actually much easier now, with internet resources and electronic publication than it was, say 50 years ago. But inaccessibility of resources and difficult of interpretation has faced every researcher.
Of course, some obstacles don't face every researcher. Doctoral students in the past normally needed a reading knowledge of at least three languages. That requirement made more papers available. My own dissertation advisor (mathematics) wrote, over the years, in five languages himself (Czech, Russian, Polish, French, and English). That language ability made some things easier.
Every student needs the experience of not understanding a paper and working back through the references until the get a feel for what is being said.
Your "blocks" may be different from my blocks, but neither of us is free of the need to just slog it out at times.
But an even bigger need is that a researcher needs to develop insight into the very fundamental nature of a field. The resources aren't enough to guarantee that you will get this, and without it, you won't be able to extend what you find in the existing record. As you hack away at the obstacles in the jungle you also need a vision of your direction and where it might lead you if you keep hacking.


text:
Are young researchers at various universities held to the same standard?
Let's say that Candidate A is at University X, working in the same field as Candidate B, who is at University Y. University Y has lots of faculty working in that area, and an active seminar. Candidate A collaborates with one other faculty member at University X. All the top mathematicians regularly give talks at University Y, which is considered top 5 in that area of academia. Candidate A is hard-working and  just as driven as Candidate B but doesn't get to interact with scholars as much as Candidate B. Candidate B has an easier time with research than Candidate A as a result, and publishes more papers of better quality than Candidate A.
When hiring committees or program directors judge Candidates A and B, Candidate B comes across as better, although Candidate B had a lot more advantages. Are those advantages considered when it comes to getting grants or job interviews? Or is it basically a losing battle for Candidate A?

I don't think you are asking the question that you think you are. If you are asking whether the two will be treated equally in the hiring process only then the answer is that the B probably has an advantage in any situation in which they are the only two candidates and all other things are equal. But all other things probably aren't equal, even including personality and flexibility.
Also, it is entirely possible that A has written an especially strong dissertation and has a great record otherwise, while B has been allowed to coast along a bit in the shadow of the senior faculty.
Also, candidate B can't hold "every" position, so once they (maybe) grab the plum job all the others are still open. And as stated above, the "plum" candidate may turn out to be a "prune" instead.
I assume you ask this because you think you are more like A than B. Otherwise I don't see you asking the question. Like anyone, you need to make your best case for success in anything you apply for. Do the work and make it count. Then you will be taken seriously, even if B is still lurking.

But the title question is different, since you said "at the various..". There the answer would be probably not as what is typical treatment at one place probably varies quite a bit from others, except in the most generalized terms, such as time to tenure. If you meant "from the various..." instead, then ignore this note.

I guess I think that there is a lot of truth to "The rich get richer." I think there is a "snowball effect" whereby people who aim for a career early in life participate in special programs and stand out a bit more than their peers. Then the best universities will hire them because they stand out, at which point the inequality gap becomes wider. They then get the big grants, building on their previous advantages, so that in effect researchers like A are "blocked." I think this is what happens in things like being a professional athlete or musician. I wonder if the same is true in academia.

@Gradstudent Of course it is, which (at the risk of starting an off-topic flamestorm) is the primary justification for affirmative action.

Yes @ElizabethHenning, I would flame you pretty hot for that statement.

To the OP, I don't understand your comment. Pro Athletes and musicians work incredible hours to get what they have. No one give them anything and they are often exploited. I also worry that you are thinking of yourself as candidate A and setting yourself up for failure since you aren't B. Your own success is up to you, not to some flawed system.

@Buffy - For example, becoming an expert in some field is more achievable when being surrounded by experts in the field because a lot of the facts aren't written down anywhere, i.e  not accessible via journals. This means that it will be hard to compete with someone else in that environment.

But universities aren't closed environments.  People with similar interests meet and talk with one another. Whether it is hard or not is irrelevant to you. If you want the world to be a completely level and fair playing field, I have a bit of sad news for you.


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Is it helpful to tell a university that I have admission and scholarship from another university?
I have got an admission letter with full scholarship (i.e. covering tuition fees, living expenses, etc.) from a top university X (ranking under 50) but I want to take care of my grandmother who is not from my birth-country so I want to continue my Master program at that country B; which I don't have its citizenship; so I will be a foreign student and the number of full scholarships (even partial ones for covering tuition fees) at country B are very limited for international students. Also, the university Y at country B has ranking between 2000-2500.
My question is : Is it rude to telling (and emailing) them my admission letter that I have from university X to university Y? And will it be helpful to enhance chance of getting scholarship or quite the reverse?
Thanks!

Yes, but with caution.
The basic premise is, if you're an outstanding applicant, it's conceivable the admissions people at the lower-ranked institute think it's pointless to accept you because you're going to decline the offer anyway. If you've been accepted at Harvard but rejected at Saint Mary's, chances are that happened. In that case you can send them your Harvard acceptance letter and tell them why you really would rather attend Saint Mary's. Similarly, if Saint Mary's accepts you but doesn't give you much funding, then sending them your Harvard acceptance letter with full scholarship is likely to make Saint Mary's add more dollars to your application as well.
Before Saint Mary's makes a decision however, I would not send in the Harvard acceptance letter, because it's irrelevant.


text:
How do hiring committees for research positions view getting "scooped"?
Suppose that an applicant got scooped on a research paper and is applying for jobs. This is reflected in a lack of publications. Is that taken into consideration? Or will it be a huge blow to an applicant's chances to highly competitive jobs?

You can always go to eastern Europe and become ghostwriter out of spite. ;)

@mathreadler Ghostwriters exist and are doing well in the US and western Europe, too. This problem knows no boundaries.

@DmitrySavostyanov of course, but there would be no impact in the face of just staying and doing that.

@mathreadler What's the problem with eastern Europe?

@user4052054 There is no problem with eastern Europe. It's nicer than ever. :) You can get more beer for your money, new exciting languages, cool old cities et.c.

I'm a little surprised by the implicit assumption that "scooped" ==> "no paper whatsoever."
It's often possible--and desirable--to publish the scooped work anyway. It might have less impact than it otherwise would have, but it's miles better than nothing. Furthermore, it's unlikely that both papers tackle the problem exactly the same way; highlight those differences in your revised version. If nothing else, replications are increasingly appreciated. This is especially true in trendy areas, where both scooping and dubious, non-replicable results are most likely.
It would be gauche for you to complain about this directly on your cover letter or CV (how would this even work?!). With a publication, however, your references can write:

"Grad Student's main project, characterizing the properties of
  l-Phlebotinum and d-Phlebotinum, was just accepted at the Journal of
  Decent Results. Although his thesis committee praised the work as a
  technical tour de force, it unfortunately attracted less attention
  than it might have after Evil et al. (2018) published similar
  results last December in Science."

Obviously, you'd prefer not to get scooped, but this does demonstrate that you're working on 'hot' problems that people do find interesting, which is better than nothing.

I like that Dr. Evil and friends publish in Science, while the good guy publishes in Journal of Decent Results.

I once got "scooped" while I was in grad school. I referenced the work that came out while I was in progress, modified mine slightly to make sure it emphasized the differences in my work on the others, and got mine published as well. Admittedly, my field (law) may be more amenable to pivots than an experimental field, but in an experimental field it is also far less likely that one researcher's experiment exactly duplicates another researcher's so it should still be possible to emphasize the differences and publish if the question being tackles is genuinely deep.

@CliffAB, just telling it how it is :-)

They might empathize if you somehow decide to mention it somewhere in your CV/cover letter/research statement/whatever. But in the end, you will be judged based on what you have actually produced. "Getting scooped" is difficult to verify if you have no publications. It's easy to say "I was totally going to say that!" when someone else says something clever. It's another thing to do the research well, write it down, iron out the inevitable kinks, fight with editors and peer reviewers to get your research publish... and to do all that faster than your competitors. Unless you can prove that you have great potential, then it is likely that committee will prefer someone who has published papers over someone who has almost published papers.

You may not be able to say it, but your advisor certainly can.

I am afraid that "I've been scooped" during the job interview in academia will be perceived as an upscale version of "a dog ate my coursework" excuse, particularly if a candidate has no publications at all.

Academic jobs usually require PhD, and PhD students are usually expected to publish a few papers during their PhD. At a very least one would expect papers based on PhD thesis.
Scooping is possible if the candidate presented their result publicly but was too slow to publish it. In academia "publish or perish" is an important motto, particularly for early  and mid-career academics. A proven inability to publish results in time is not something hiring committees will particularly like.

The OP didn't say they had no publications. Having a dissertation get scooped is fairly common in pure mathematics, especially if the problem is worth working on. In my view, this is really an advising failure, because it's the advisor's job to know who else might be working on a student's problem. But I have no idea how it's viewed by hiring committees.

@ElizabethHenning The OP also did not say they are the candidate.

@ElizabethHenning I think it's harsh to say it's a failure of advising.  The only way to guarantee that no one else is working on a project is to pick a project that 0 people have interest in, which is for obvious reasons not a great advantage in finding jobs.

Your first point is highly dependent on the University, as well as the discipline. In my discipline, at my alma mater, publications were absolutely not required for a PhD. Having at least one publication obviously helps tremendously for postdoc applications but that’s a different matter. Anecdotally, I was an outlier in my peer group with two publications during my PhD. Both the mean and the median was less than 1.

-1 "A proven inability to publish results in time" is only appropriate phrasing if you're talking about an established pattern of behaviour extending over a significant period of time. All we know is that the asker was scooped once.

Also, since a person's probability of being scooped is at least partly a function of the "hotness" of the area in which they work, and also at least partly a function of the respective environments in which they and their competitors are working, it feels problematic to assign all of the blame to the person individually when this happens. It's not good for a job candidate to use scooping as an excuse for a poor track record, but by no means every case of scooping involves slow work / laziness.

@DavidRicherby Good luck explaining the difference to a selection committee, BTW. I wish they were so understanding.

Getting scooped will only really reflect badly on you if you could have avoided it, e.g. by working harder. If it happens, and you publish your paper anyway, just a bit later than someone else's, it might be a minor negative when applying for jobs (this one paper of yours had less impact than it might have done), but it's unlikely to be a huge blow, particularly if you've published other good papers. After all, at least you independently had the good idea in question.
By contrast, moaning about getting scooped, and using it as an excuse for why you don't have many papers, will reflect badly on you. It will come across as an unwillingness to take personal responsibility when things go wrong for you, which is not a desirable quality in a candidate.
TL;DR: One scooped paper won't kill your chances. A lack of publications overall might well, depending on the job. Having few publications and making weak excuses for why will almost certainly kill off your chances.

My experience is that "scooping" doesn't actually happen. The way one would define it is that you had an idea that you talked about at some conference or similar, and someone else published it before you. But how do you prove that you really were the first to think of this? Oftentimes, ideas are "out there": they follow from the review others have done, and everyone has the same idea.
As a committee, I would call bull shit. (Excuse my language.) If you had the idea first, and just took six months longer than someone else to get it submitted, it seems quite unlikely that an editor or reviewer would know about the competing paper. Both would likely have gotten published. So I agree with the other answer that says that a committee would like call this excuse the equivalent of "dog ate my homework". It just sounds like an excuse.

Not the idea. It was a problem that was posed. Someone else was thinking about it. Maybe scooped is the wrong word. It wasn't that my idea was stolen.

.. it seems quite unlikely that an editor or reviewer would know about the competing paper. What? Practically everyone posts on the arXiv before submitting to a journal.

I think to say scooping doesn't actually happen is too strong, since it has happened publicly before - c.f. the discovery of the dwarf planet Haumea, in which Michael Brown was (arguably) scooped by José Luis Ortiz Moreno.

@ElizabethHenning: That's the point -- everyone posts everywhere. If you're 6 months late in submitting your article, what are the chances that reviewers or editors have seen the preprint? It hasn't found its way into wide circulation yet, isn't referenced yet, etc. And what are the chances that reviewers and editors will reject a paper that is likely slightly different based on the existence of a preprint somewhere for which there is no indication that it might actually be published?

@Allure: Yes, of course it happens. But I would claim with about the same frequency with which homeworks are eaten by dogs: it happens, but it's far more rarely than claimed by our students. Similarly, scooping happens far more rarely than claimed on the Academia StackExchange forum.

@Gradstudent "Scooped" is exactly the right word.

I don't know about your field but, in mine, I'd be surprised if I managed to write a paper where none of me, my co-authors, the editor and the referees noticed that a paper with very similar results had already been published by somebody else.

@DavidRicherby Really? You and the others you mention would know of every paper that's been quietly posted on a preprint server somewhere six months ago, that hasn't been published since (because it's still going through the motions), and that (like your own paper) is likely not revolutionary? I mean, if it's some breakthrough that's being talked about in the community, then sure. But how many such papers do we typically write?

@WolfgangBangerth I mean what I said: between all of us, it would be unusual for none of us to have noticed, given that ArXiv, conferences and people talking to each other all give routes to find out. Especially given that part of the due diligence of writing papers is to actively research the literature.

@DavidRicherby Exactly. This sort of "due diligence" is what I meant when I said it was (probably) an advising failure. In nearly every instance that I personally know of where a dissertation problem got scooped, the advisor hadn't been in regular contact with others in their field.

Don't think of this along the lines of "getting scooped".
A department works very hard to identify and recruit faculty that will be competitive in the academic domain. Anything in your portfolio that might suggest there may be an issue with staying competitive will reflect negatively on a candidate.
These days, developing faculty work very hard to make their portfolio look "right".  They publish like crazy, apply for and get travel awards, compete like mad for "best abstract" recognitions, make sure they're nominated for and lobby aggressively for young investigator awards....
If your portfolio doesn't look like that, the next applicant's might.  Given a choice between the two extreme portfolios, a hot department will opt for the nice-looking one every time.  A not-so-hot department might take what they can get.
If there is something wrong with your portfolio, get introspective, and go to interviews prepared to discuss how you're going to improve it, instead of offering excuses about why it's not so hot.

What characterizes an application that looks right? I should keep this is mind the next time I apply...

@Gradstudent  my assumption is that is will vary by area.  There are fields where work is slow by nature, and pubs few and far between.  I suggest you go look up posted resumes for new young investigators in your field, and see what they look like.


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Could undergraduate degree be revoked for minor noncompliance in human subjects research?
With the understanding that universities define "minor compliance" in various ways, I'm curious about whether an undergraduate degree could/ever would be revoked for the use of interview data gathered prior to receiving formal IRB exemption.
In the particular case I'm interested in, interview subjects were current and former elected officials and other "elites" accustomed to speaking publicly about the questions raised during interviewing but nonetheless granted anonymity. The student didn't initially realize he needed exemption given the subjects' backgrounds, but he ultimately sought it from the IRB. His thesis adviser approved the exemption request and said he could still use the interview data already collected for his thesis, although this was contrary to the IRB's stated policy.
The exemption was only granted after the student submitted the assignment, but the student was still awarded his degree. Could the student face revocation of his degree or other repercussions if something like this resurfaced? My sense is that such an extreme outcome could only apply to PhD students, but I'm curious to hear what others might think.

"for his assignment" - course assignments usually don't meet the federal definition of research, and therefore don't require IRB approval per U.S. federal regulation. IRB approval may be required by university policy, may be suggested just so that student will learn about research ethics but is not really required, or may be required by federal regulation if the intent is to "develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge" (and not just fulfill a course requirement). Impossible for us to know which.

(Not an IRB expert - but will hazard an answer since I don't think we have many resident IRB experts)
First, it sounds like this is for a class "assignment" and was not published. In this case, it seems unlikely that this would meet the definition of research as it pertains to such things. The IRB apparently agreed, since it issued an exemption request - this does not mean that it approved your procedure; rather, it means that for whatever reason, it agreed that it was not necessary to approve your procedure. Not sure if this is because what you did posed "minimal risk" or because it did not meet the definition of research. If it gave the latter reason, then your professor is correct, and you were fine to use the data.
Second, there is the issue of responsibility - if there had been an ethical lapse involving this, whose fault is it? Normally it would be the principal investigator of the grant that funded the research. Not sure what changes in a classroom situation -- but, I'm guessing it would be the instructor of record. As you are an undergraduate student (and therefore don't have a PhD), I don't see how you could be expected to perform research without supervision. Assuming you were honest and straightforward with your advisor, thus, I think he would be blamed for a failure to supervise, rather than you being blamed for misconduct.
Finally, degree revocations are exceedingly rare, and almost always tied to evidence of serious misconduct (e.g., plagiarism) emerging after the degree was granted. Doing research without IRB approval does count as serious misconduct; however, you personally are not on the hook per the above points. Even if you were, the cognizant authority (i.e., course instructor) was already aware of the issue at the time and dealt with it internally rather than beginning expulsion procedures. So, it would make little sense for him to say "I know I gave a good grade, but I've been rethinking it, and want to revoke the degree." Normally, a new complaint would have to be raised to even open the question of whether a degree should be revoked.
TL;DR: your degree will not be revoked.


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Combining a conference with a personal vacation
I received a funding offer from a conference overseas (as a PhD student), which includes accommodation and travel. I was wondering whether it is ethical to combine this business trip with a personal vacation? That is, to arrive e.g. a week or two before the conference (and of course pay for lodging in this "personal segment" from my own funds) and just get to know the country where the conference is held? Is it acceptable to email the organizers asking whether I'm permitted to come early? (This is needed to make sure that the airfare for such an early arrival is still reimbursable.)
I understand that this can be treated as an abuse of the conference's money, but on the other hand, it does not make any financial difference if I come earlier (however, see the remark below). And I'm still going to keep attending the conference as my main purpose. Moreover, coming earlier may result in purchasing a cheaper plane ticket (around 200 USD cheaper), in which case the conference's funds will only benefit.

As a PhD student this should be OK (as answered below). For PhDs in corporate or national lab positions, you should look at the relevant policies - for my lab, there are strict limits on mixing business and leisure travel, particular for foreign travel.

All labs I've ever been in, everybody does this. Even faculty (tho they usually take a few extra days and not a week, due to full schedules)

Yes, it is typical to take personal time before or after a conference. Funding from your university would not usually mind.
Conference funds may be a little less flexible, so you should certainly check with them. With evidence in hand it will be cheaper for them, I find it unlikely they would decline.

This is generally acceptable, but might be forbidden in a few places. It isn't an ethical concern, however. As long as you are clear in how you use the funds, properly separating expenses and as long as you fulfill the obligations of conference attendance you should be fine (ethically).
But if there is someone appropriate that you could check with, it might be wise to avoid questions later.
It would, of course, be unethical (and possibly illegal) to use the funds and not attend the conference as expected.


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Are postdocs in the US expected to work closely with a postdoctoral supervisor
In Europe, typically postdocs are hired to work under a professor's research group. This appears to be totally different in the US and some other countries (e.g. Israel), where postdocs are hired by committees. Suppose a hiring committee has 7 members. Are postdoctoral applicants expected to make the case that they are going to work closely and share research interests with at least one of the 7 professors? Let me give a hypothetical scenario from math. Let's say that some candidate for a postdoc just got a paper accepted to the Annals, the topic being Moufang polygons. Nobody on the committee (which consists of a number theorist, a representation theorist, an algebraic geometer, a logician, an analyst, and 2 applied mathematicians) really cares about Moufang polygons. Will the prevailing opinion be, "This is a very strong applicant working in an area that nobody in this department has worked on. Let's pick him/her." Or will they think, "Gee, this person won't interact with the faculty at all since his/her research interests don't overlap." I'm trying to clarify the exact role of a postdoc in the U.S.

It's not uncommon in the US for a postdoc to be hired into a position funded by one professor's grant with the expectation that they'll work largely on that grant.    In other cases, postdocs are funded by larger research institutes or academic departments with much more freedom for the postdoc to work on projects with many collaborators.   There's really no narrow job description that all postdocs fit into.

If this is about math, you should mention that in the title.  Math postdocs are often totally different from physics postdocs.

There is not a single correct answer here.  It depends on the position (even if you are only asking about math postdocs).

One data point (but I conjecture others are similar): In my department, postdoc hiring decisions are made by the department's executive committee. Postdocs have official supervisors, but these need not be members of the executive committee. Before making an offer to a postdoc candidate, the executive committee will make sure there's at least one regular faculty member willing to supervise that candidate. How closely the postdoc and supervisor collaborate is for them to work out and probably varies quite a lot.


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What to do with wrong results in talks?
Suppose one is giving a talk about one's work (in pure mathematics), and another researcher(s) in one's field has published a paper claiming to be an improvement or generalisation of one's result, but one either believe this other paper is wrong, or that it is a trivial consequence of one's own result. Should one:

state this other result in one's talk with no comment
mention the other result with mild doubts (e.g. say 'so-and-so claims this, but I haven't had time to look at the paper properly')
mention the other result and state clearly that one thinks it's wrong/trivial
don't mention it at all / ignore it.

One doesn't know whether the author(s) of the other paper will be at this conference.
Edit: Assume a list of speakers is available but not of participants, so one knows the other researcher is not speaking, but doesn't know if they will be in the audience of one's talk.

Did you discuss this with the other researcher? Usually, the first thing to do on discovering an error or unclarity is contacting the author with a question (usually these things turn out to be misunderstandings, and the sooner they are corrected the better for everyone).

Being wrong and being a trivial consequence of your work are two very different things.  Is there some reason you're asking both at once?

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

First, you should know that since your results appeared first (as you stated in a comment), you don’t actually have a strong self-interest to try to make the follow-up results of the other researcher look bad. In a typical scenario, their publishing something that improves or generalizes your result will actually make your own work look better, not worse, including possibly if their improvement is not trivial (actually a trivial improvement may be slightly more embarrassing to you, for example if they discover that a trivial modification to one of your proofs ends up proving a much stronger result. But even then you’ll get the credit of being the first person who published an innovative new proof technique that was used to prove that strong result). So all things considered, it’s pretty likely that your incentives are actually aligned with those of the other researcher, and being as kind and charitable to them as possible (without compromising your integrity, of course) will be beneficial not only to them but also to you. And remember you don’t have to discuss every private thought you have: you may think the improvement is trivial, but at the end of the day, who are you to say? That’s just an opinion anyway. Consider not mentioning it and letting people draw their own conclusions.
What I wrote above pertained to the scenario of a correct improvement. Coming to the other possibility you mentioned, if you believe the work of the other researcher is wrong, then it’s wrong and you shouldn’t pretend otherwise or feign ignorance but simply be matter-of-fact about it - if you discuss the result, state that you believe it’s wrong along with your level of certainty that that’s the case, without gloating or schadenfreude. Don’t say you haven’t had the time to look at it if that’s not true. But you may consider simply not mentioning the result at all if its relevance to what you are discussing is not high.
Incidentally, not mentioning the result may also end up offending the author if they are attending your talk... it’s a tricky business, academia! ;-) Anyway, good luck.

"Incidentally, not mentioning the result may also end up offending the author if they are attending your talk... " Yes, I am also worried about this. Thanks for the suggestions

I either believe this other paper is wrong, or that it is a trivial consequence of my own result

Let me be blunt, if it's wrong and a trivial consequence of your own result, then your result is wrong too. Make up your mind: which is it? Wrong and trivial are not synonymous. The answer differs depending on which applies.
If you believe that the result is wrong.

If you want to publicly humiliate the other researcher, then you can say during your talk that the other researcher's result is wrong. You will not make any friends and will not impress anyone by doing this.
Otherwise, your first course of action is to talk about it with the other researcher in private. Have you even considered that you misunderstood something? Most people are reasonable, and if the result is truly wrong, then you will know how to act based on your discussion. Otherwise, this is a whole can of worms, and the answer depends on a ton of factors.
If for some reason you have not had time to talk with the other researcher, then I would not mention the result at all, and elude the question if asked about it during the talk. If you really don't want to elude it, say that you are aware of a possible contradiction between your paper and the other one and that you are looking into it. (See, that's called tact.) I would also take the opportunity of having the other researcher in the same room to talk about it after the talk, in private.

If you believe the result is a "trivial" consequence of your work.

If you want to insult the other researcher in public, then say that the other word is a "trivial consequence" of your own work during your talk. You will not make any friends and will not impress anyone by doing this.
Or you can simply not mention it at all. If asked, you can say that it's nice to see other people being interested in your own work and finding applications.

Why do you think that it sounds like the other paper predates that of the OP? I formed the opposite impression.

@YemonChoi is right, my paper predates the other one. Sorry if not clear in the question.

Okay, then forget the last paragraph. The rest stands.

It's so difficult to keep up with the hypothetical story as written... This answer is a good stab at the situation... plus 1 from me...

@SolarMike OP is looking for someone to validate their intention of publicly humiliating someone else. I am setting the record straight.

@user106021 I disagree with your interpretation, even if I think the OP would do best not to cause a fuss. Once again, it does seem like you are jumping to conclusions or projecting. How do you know the OP isn't more junior than the people who claim to have improved their results? This seems very possible to me in pure maths

I disagree with this part: "say that you are aware of a possible contradiction between your paper and the other one and that you are looking into it. (See, that's called tact.)" In fact, either you are aware of a contradiction, which means you already verify that this is indeed the case, or you are not. In the latter case, you do not suggest that there may be a contradiction. Rather than tactful that is rude and potentially damaging to yourself if you end up being wrong. Better to simply say that you heard of the other result but have not had time to examine it.

@user106021 I'm sorry that I seem to have annoyed you - I'm not trying to publicly humiliate anyone. Thanks for the advice

OP says "either/or", they nowhere state they believe the result to be both wrong and trivial.

-1 This answer seems overly aggressive to me. "Make up your mind" is uncalled for; OP clearly gives these two possibilities as examples of where he is unhappy/not agreeing with something from another author ("either or"). The repetetive "If you want to insult" seems to be uncalled-for, nothing in the question from OP seems to indicate that he wants a confrontational course. OP knows that this is a delicate issue and is looking for good solutions.

Your answer implies that you know what tact is, but then you fail to use it...

If asked, you could be even more diplomatic by stating that you're studying the paper and have not completed your analysis. I do not believe this to be deceptive, as if you're not completely sure whether there's something incorrect in it, then you actually haven't done so. You might even mention that you are planning on contacting the author with some questions you have.

I read the or as a xor

I lean towards "ignore it".
In addition to the issues of academic politics, there is the much bigger issue of confusing the audience.  They have limited ability to process information (and math is particularly hard, even for mathematicians).  If you mix in a "he said, she said" into your topic along with new results, you end up overloading the presentation.  They will have a hard enough time learning from and following the talk, let alone doing justice to an issue of controversy.  You just don't have time enough for a good exposition of the rival's arguments and your replies.  If someone brings it up in Q&A, deal with it then.
Of course in a paper, you can/should be more all encompassing.  But the goals of a paper are different than the goals of a talk.

Yeah I seriously don't see where the harm is in not bringing it up. +1

Well, I don't want to offend the author if they are there. But I think with these answers I'm also leaning to ignore it, thanks

@Whatif I'm not sure how you feel that saying a paper is crap (wrong, trivial, whatever), to an audience including its author, is less offensive than not mentioning it at all.

This happens a lot in other fields where experiments are fast, like Machine Learning, and there are often several iterations of the same research between the submission date and the actual conference.
If you have spare time at the end of your talk you can mention it briefly, stating that there has been new development in the field since you published the paper but you haven't had the time to focus on it yet, and very briefly talk about the implications of that work w.r.t your own research. It's important to do both, as just mentioning "X also published a paper on this" is not really useful enough to be worth mentioning.
Most likely you won't have the time to talk about it though, and it's fine to just not mention it during the talk itself, and only bring it up if someone strikes a conversation after your talk.


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Are student evaluations of teaching assistants read by others in the faculty?
Are student evaluations of teaching assistants read by faculty who assigns teaching duties to TAs or by the primary instructor of the course for which the TA is assisting?
I recently met the professor whom I was assisting and he said: "...and you got good evaluations last semester...". I was not expecting that.

When I was associate chair for graduate studies (about 20 years ago), I looked at the student evaluations of my department's teaching assistants. Many of the evaluations just got a quick glance to see that the TA was doing OK, but if there seemed to be a problem then I'd look at students' comments more closely.

Less than you might think, because many people are too lazy to be bothered.

You should expect that your teaching evaluations will be available to any faculty members in the department.  The lecturer for the class will certainly have access (and this is important for you, if you subsequently look for an academic position; your evaluations will help them to write you a letter of recommendation addressing your teaching).  Other faculty members may also see the evaluations.  In my department, any professor who wanted to see a grad student's teaching evaluations could get them.  Most faculty members are not going to be interested, but whoever makes the teaching assignments may well review your scores.  Other people may also look at your scores, for various reasons; for many years I reviewed all the grad students' teaching evaluations in my department, to look for evidence of any systematic problems.

I have to disagree with the older answers from Buzz and Brian Borchers.
Access to teaching evaluations is a matter of individual university policy.
At my (flagship public American) university, teaching evaluations are (by default) strictly confidential to the person being evaluated; whether that person is an instructor or a teaching assistant makes no difference.  There are only three exceptions to this default, all of which formally require the permission of the person X being evaluated:

X can give permission to be considered for a teaching commendation.
X can give permission to share their evaluations with their department chair/head.
X can agree to a request for a summary report from the department, as part of an application for tenure/promotion or an award.

For all three of these options, only a summary of numerical scores is actually shared; narrative comments are not.
In particular, I have no official access to the teaching evaluations of either the teaching assistants for the classes I teach or my graduate advisees who are funded by TAships.  Even the faculty and staff who assign TAships cannot see the previous student evaluations of prospective TAs.
(Of course, in principle, anyone can share their teaching evaluations with anyone else, but in practice, because the campus treats the evaluations confidentially, nobody does.)
I don't think this is good policy, but it is long-established and well-defended policy on my campus.

On the other hand, at my undergraduate institution, teaching evaluations of all faculty were effectively public, including narrative comments.  There was a large printed book on the desk at the registrar's office that contained complete evaluations of every class from the previous semester, with numerical scores summarized and narrative comments transcribed (and presumably edited to remove personal information) from the paper evaluation forms.  Every semester, the student newspaper would publish a list on the front page of the ten highest-rated and ten lowest-rated classes from the previous semester.
Apropos to this question: Teaching assistants did not get individual student evaluations; they were evaluated only indirectly through their effect on their class.

+1: For another data point, at my (private American) university, the summary of numerical scores is available to anyone at the university (from undergraduates on up), but the individual score sheets and narrative comments are never available to anyone but the instructor.  (And for this reason the latter are not allowed to be used in tenure/promotion files, since it's not possible to verify authenticity.)

Very interesting!

Yes, in the US context, it's completely normal for your supervisor to read these evaluations.

Here in the UK most GTAs (tutorials leaders) don't get directly evaluated. However, parts of the student evaluation do ask about the tutorials. Students also often complain to members of academic staff ("faculty") directly about the GTAs (and sometimes say good things also, but that is usually harder to elicit).

At my alma mater - Technion IIT in Israel/Palestine, student evaluations had two parts: Numeric scores and freeform comments. The numeric scores were publicly visible, i.e. all faculty and students could see your scores. The freeform comments were either private (only you got them) or were perhaps accessible to senior faculty upon request. I don't know for sure because my faculty's access policy was secret (or at least, was never publicized in writing and I didn't ask).