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Why do so many pure math PhD students in the USA drop out or leave academia, compared to applied mathematics PhDs in the USA?
I notice that many pure math PhD students, doing things like algebraic geometry or representation theory, drop out and enter industry and become software developers. The ones who finish their pure math PhDs also drop out and do things such as blogging, tutoring, etc. These students are pretty "top of the heap" too, attending the top pure math PhD programs like at UC Berkeley and UCLA.
Then I notice that many applied math PhD students typically finish, and also get post-doc offers. These PhD students are typically doing numerical methods for the solutions of partial differential equations.
Why does this happen? Do pure math PhD tracks often lead students to dead ends? Is it too hard, even for the brightest PhD candidates at the best programs?
In numerical PDEs, it seems that just a little progress leads to a PhD degree, e.g. solving numerically a PDE in one space dimension. (I know firsthand of someone getting their applied math PhD from an Ivy League program for solving a PDE in 1D.)
I have friends in both pure math and applied math PhD programs and have noticed this trend for many years now.

Do you have the definitive figures for all institutions or just two of your friends left from one dept compared to one from the other?

I somewhat agree with you that numerical results are often just incremental, but please do not be fooled by PDE dimensions. There are plenty of equations, where even an 1D-result can rightfully be considered a major breakthrough, though they might look deceptively similar to others, where completely solving them in n dimensions is just a textbook problem.

I voted to close and think this question is highly misleading in its premise. You give no evidence that any of what you wrote is true, nor does much of it even ring true, for example I know of no algebra PhDs who left academia to do blogging and/or tutoring. So, we can have an opinion-based discussion and hear some random anecdotes, but I suspect at the end of the day we’d be none the wiser (and possibly we’d be less wise for having a false impression that we know something that isn’t even true).

... However I think there may be some legitimate, on-topic questions here, e.g., about whether the job prospects for academic jobs are better in applied math than in certain areas of pure math. Some people may be able to dig up statistics about this. It would be good if you could edit the question to make it more focused on such things.

It is quite apparent in my department that the algebra students take significantly longer to graduate on average than the applied students, and I notice significantly more exhaustion and dissatisfaction accumulating on that side as well.

You also seem to be somewhat disrespectful of the numerical PDE people. Do you have an objective framework where you compared algebra phd's and PDE phd's and PDE phd's were much worse? If not, I think it may be appropriate to remove your remarks about them.

Isn't a PDE in one dimension an ODE?

Do they shift scope when doing post-doc? I used to joke that I could have submitted my PhD thesis as Operations Research for an Economics degree, Applied Mathematics for a Maths degree, and Theoretical Computer Science for an Engineering degree. That gave me a wider scope for possible postdoc positions. (OTOH, software companies often like people who can think in abstract patterns and structures, so algebra is a good qualification.)

@user110869:  Ah.  That's what I would call 2 dimensions (x and t), or 1+1 dimensions if you want to differentiate between elliptical & hyperbolic problems.  Perhaps math terminology is different than what we use in physics, though.

A useful data set that might shed light on this question is the annual survey of new doctorates in the mathematical science that the American Mathematical Society conducts.  It provides information on post-doctoral employment of new PhD's by subdiscipline within mathematics.

@user110869 OK, then how do you define "little" progress if it is equally difficult to achieve? The number of pages it takes to write up, or what?

@user110869 Yes, agreed. I work in physics (which one might call an applied math field) and the trend you have pointed out is absolutely clear, all along the spectrum from formal mathematical physics to engineering-adjacent fields, as well as to the people I know in math. I suppose it's rude to point it out explicitly to people working in the purer fields (and faculty may become insulated from the student experience and not even know) but that doesn't make it false.

I upvoted not because the question is "good", but because it does reveal very common prejudices and misconceptions, which do deserve to be addressed.

"various similar questions on mathoverflow" - citations needed. Also, it seems you are extrapolating heavily from small sample sets, unless you want to actually make precise the scopes and evidence for your claims. "Many I have seen" does not actually equal "many", in itself

Since there is no definitely data available so far, we (as scientists) must be aware that "students who choose pure math for a PhD are the weaker ones" is among the possible answers.

Short answer: Nearly everyone going into a pure math PhD program does so with the intention of becoming a tenured pure math professor at a prestigious institution, and there aren't very many of those jobs. so few, in fact, that being bright and good at math are not guarantees of getting such a job, and you're effectively rolling the dice at the end of four or five years. But there's really nowhere else to do pure math, so you still have a large number of students going after a much smaller number of positions.

Only my personal experience, but I hope it will help you a little bit:
I am almost in the exact situation you describe in your question. I finished my PhD in Algebra (coding theory, lot's of linear algebra and representation theory) and am now working as a software developer. As a fun fact, this wasn't always planned. When I started my PhD, I was still dreaming about getting a PostDoc and ending up as a tenured prof at a prestigious university.
For me, personally, there were three reasons to take this step:

The PhD was quite hard and taxing on my mental health. Having a rather theoretic topic, you sit at your desk all day and try to come up with an idea. There is often no way to track progress for a long time, as you either have a clever idea or you don't, you can't set up a step by step plan to see if you are doing ok for such things. There is also always the fear that you simply won't have the right idea before your time/funding runs out. Due to that reason, I decided already some time before finishing it that I will run from academia without looking back as soon as I am done.
Closely related to the first reason, I wanted to do something more applied. I found a job where I can use my skills to really help people/the climate/... (our company develops AI solutions for agriculture, allowing farmers to better use resources and minimizing the need for pesticides).
I still plan to become a professor, one day. But after that experience during the PhD, I'm aiming for a position that is more focused on teaching and applied research (e.g. with industrial partners). For this, at least here in Germany, you need some years of industry experience.

I have seen similar stories from people in all areas of mathematics, not just algebra.

It’s amazing how similar your situation was to mine. I would add to point one, that it also gets incredibly lonely doing research in a highly theoretical field. There were only a handful of folks I could converse with about stuff I was thinking about all day. I even started talking to myself a lot.... this wasn’t the fulfillment I had imagined entering grad school.

#1 is a very good point.  I found out that while I'm pretty good at solving problems, I'm lousy at coming up with problems that are worth solving.  So it's much easier if I work for people who'll say "Hey, we need this problem solved, and we'll give you a bunch of money to do it."

@jamesqf: I have a bunch of problems that need solved! Sadly, I'm also blessed with a minimal amount of The Root Of All Evil. So, not only do my problems not get solved, but I also don't get to be Evil. (*sigh*) :-(

@Dirk Do you think it is because time has changed? Many people who are professors now got their PhDs before the internet boom and the subsequent explosion in tech. There are almost impossibly many problems dealing with technology (in domains such as robotics, artificial intelligence, computer architecture, network protocols......)that are equally as intellectually challenging, and often times financially rewarding in an increasingly expensive world. Maybe the PhD that primarily deals with theoretical research has ran out of its uses.

Well, it's been more than a couple years for me since grad school, but I can add my personal experience to what is appreciably a rather subjective question.
Of my group of students at a pure math department, with a few world renowned old timers, I would not say algebra was considered the harder path. On the contrary geometry and analysis students, such as those studying general relativity or geometric analysis, such as stochastic differential equations over manifolds, were generally seen as having more brass. Ironically geometry and PDEs are closer to what's studied in "applied math" but this was a pure math department and numerical analysis was not studied.
The students I knew doing algebraic subjects, such as number theory or topology were more successful. One of whom got a post-doc at MIT, doing cetegorical homotopy theory and such.
But I think your point of view applies to the difference between pure math and applied math in general. Of some 15-20 of my grad school friends, most completed their PhDs and eventually worked for Google or in cyber-security or for IBM, such as myself, after perhaps teaching math for 3 or 4 years. I think 5 have settled down as math professors.
The simple answer to your question is just that pure math is very hard. I cannot speak to applied math training, I was not much exposed to it, but from what I understand proving an unknown statement or theorem is not necessarily required, whereas it generally is for a pure math thesis. It is occasionally said in academics that obtaining a pure math degree is the biggest challenge among PhDs. As the decades pass the bar is set higher and higher because math is a progress field and it is being completed. A similar sentiment is often expressed regarding physics and other hard sciences.
So, whether or not a student completes a thesis, being a mathematician is onerous work and requires an emotional commitment to continue at any level.

The low-hanging fruit was picked ages ago, and new candidates have to keep climbing higher and higher to find unpicked apples.

@RonJohn ... or pick from from a novel new fruit tree.

@chux but you've got to find the new fruit tree...

@RonJohn And all the low-hanging fruit trees were found ages ago!

This is also something that is very true in statistics as well (applied vs theoretical).
A theoretical math PhD is (obviously) extremely difficult and most of the topics in it tend not be directly beneficial towards future employment in anything but more work in abstract theoretical math.  While many people think this is what they want to do at the beginning of the degree, the reality of the work is often far worse or different than what they are prepared for.
Now this is hardly an uncommon situation in many of the degrees out there but there's a catch for people in degrees like pure math that isn't true (as an example) for someone getting their PhD in history or literature:  the skillset of a pure math PhD student is extremely lucrative.  When you can either continue to bang your head against the wall on incredibly difficult and esoteric topics, or get an offer the next day for a 100k + paying job in tech or banking, I don't think it's much of a surprise a lot choose the latter.  Often times they have recruiters seeking them out telling and them as much.
The difference for applied PhD's is that the end product is even more lucrative/valued and opens doors that someone with a masters degree isn't qualified for.  If you complete a PhD in something like cryptography or applied AI/ML, you will have career opportunities in Google, Microsoft, blah blah blah, as they are specifically seeking out people who are experts in those topics.  Whereas with pure math PhD's they will still seek you out, but only because people with those degrees also have a skillset they value, not because they care about your thesis on << ultra abstract pure math topic here >>.
Of course there are exceptions, but I believe this is the general reason you see this phenomena.

Yes. Students may have much student debt and tech/banking companies offer a salary that alleviates the burden dramatically, vs continuing in academia.

@qwr (also adressed to eps) Hi, I'm a soon to be math graduate student in mathematics. I have heard the claim before that even pure math PhD's are valued in industry. I believe you, but I am somewhat confsed about this. I do not see how studying some abstract math topic makes you competitive for a high level job in industry. If you don't mind, could you give some general examples of positions that pure math PhD's would be competitive for? Thanks.

@Ovi even if the research topic itself you've done in your PhD isn't interesting for employers, it may still a) involve tools that are just as important for another, applied subject, and by using those tools in the pure setting you get lots of valuable experience with them b) proove that you're in general be able to do novel research. Somebody who's been successful in a difficult (and “boring”?) pure-maths project will with some likelihood also be successful in an applied project, even if the concrete topic has little to do with it.

@leftaroundabout Ah thanks.

@Ovi personally I've seen some pure math people go into quantitative finance or statistics, both of which can offer six digit salaries relatively quickly. It's not directly related to pure math but companies value the problem-solving and technical abilities.

@Ovi higher level math students almost always tend to be very good at abstract problem solving in general, and also tend to have taken enough programming courses to be fairly skilled in that area.  Even if you've never seen a machine learning algo I would guess most people with that background could figure out what is going on rather quickly, and analytics / data science in general benefits from being able to think abstractly and approach problems from different angles.

First, it is not accurate to use "algebra" to refer to broad swaths of mathematics, any more than it is accurate to refer to "pure math", in fact. One immediate objection is already partly related to the issue of the question, namely, these are labels very often used by outsiders to refer to "not what they themselves do", and/or reflections of their own lack of awareness of mathematics outside their immediate competence. (It is not a moral failing to not be a universal scholar, but it starts to become some sort of problem when one loses sight of the skewing that one's own ignorance may engender.)
More significantly, I really don't think that there is any coherent "subject" that is "algebra", for example. And in any case number theory is not a subset of "algebra", nor is algebraic geometry, nor "representation theory" (despite the weird and technically inaccurate wikipedia entry for it), nor... logic? set theory?
Is there "pure math"? Well, depends what you mean, obviously. A very common usage of the phrase is by people who have a limited understanding of mathematics, and use the phrase to refer to things they don't understand, and don't see the point of. Also, some people who are "pure mathematicians" give themselves this label as some sort of idealistic thing. BUT in reality the best mathematics tends to be relevant to lots of things. Yes, sometimes people get involved in "deep background", and due to non-trivial difficulties do not manage, in the lifetimes, to return to resolve the original questions that sent them off on their inquiries.
My 40 years of observation of people working on PhD's in math at good places does not indicate that "pure math" people have a harder time either finishing or getting jobs... except for the subset of those people for whom the label does truly refer to something they've discovered they don't care about.
And, again, the potential relevance of any part of mathematics to things outside of mathematics proper is huge. Category theory to computer science!?! Stochastic differential equations to finance? Elliptic curves to cryptography!?! More elementarily: quaternions and 3D games (not to mention aerospace?!?)
To recap: the framing of the question is unsurprisingly naive, but, also, inaccurate in the current reality. Not so surprising that beginners are not aware. Also, skewed language not only reflects misunderstanding or ignorance of reality, but can limit one's vocabulary so as to create difficulties in having coherent discussions about reality.
(It may be worth noting that in the U.S. some of the "research experiences for undergrads" are (perhaps necessarily) so artificial as to be pretty silly. Maybe fun, fun to be with other enthusiastic kids, but often quite misleading about what genuine contemporary mathematics is, and what "research" in it would mean. But/and it often seems to happen that the people slide into an apparent enthusiasm for an alleged part of mathematics that they give some naive name... and, often, become disillusioned when the part of actual mathematics that has that name is not at all what they thought they'd bargained for.)
EDIT: in light of several (generally understandable comments):
Yes, it's not easy to complete a PhD, and it's not easy to get a job, and in all cases one can easily feel that one has no hope to be any sort of heroic contributor. But may that last bit is asking too much for most of us, in any case.
In my years of observation: the primary determiners of success or failure in completion of the PhD itself, and in getting an academic job, are the advisor ... and, second, the student's attitude.
Seriously, for completion of the degree, itself, it's not that any kind of math is any easier than any other, unless by mischance standards are lowered. And it is not easy to gauge the latter. That is, often, novelty is a valuable thing... even if it doesn't pay off... and serious novelty is truly harder to achieve in topics that have been around for 200 years.
Some less constructive "criticisms" of my earlier remarks seem to hinge on the allegedly obvious esotericn-ness and irrelevance of sheaves... or something... etc. Ok, I have to disagree with this, and claim that such math is old news, and has proven its value in understanding basic things. The possible fact that novices do not understand/appreciate its value... while a significant fact... only makes discussion more difficult.
My own general subject of interest, number theory (and its applications), nicely shows the vacuity of attempted partitioning of "math" into "analysis, algebra, ..." (though, yes, not so many years ago my own university's math dept had a supremely idiotic categorization as the basis for a hiring plan, etc.)
E.g., one of my recent PhD students (Kim K-L) solved a differential equation in automorphic forms that expresses four-loop (if I remember correctly) graviton interations in string theory. Simplistic classification is...?
What I do observe is true, again, is that novices' naive ideas about "what subjects are" leads them often to naive decisions, causing them to lose enthusiasm when the reality catches up... Perhaps a significant difference between "applied math" (maybe the questioner means "modeling"???) and (then???) "proving theorems" is that the bait-and-switch on theorem-proving might be perceived as far worse than in engineering-oriented "applied math".
The amazing thing about (good) math is that it is not only relevant but decisive in so many human endeavors. Whatever one's specialty, if one is _good_at_it_, one will have both specific and abstract mathematical chops, but/and demonstrated resilience to certain sorts of scientific/intellectual adversity. Crazily-enough, not all STEM disciplines teach that.
In brief: not, it's the person and their advisor, not the topic.

I think I somewhat get what you are trying to achieve, but maybe it would be easier to bring across the point if you switched it to be positive (i.e., describe what current maths research (the type the OP calls "pure") is, not just say that it isn't what OP thinks it is). Also, maybe there is some simple misunderstanding going on; I have no trouble understanding what "applied math" is, and can easily see myself calling everything else "non-applied" or "pure" math. This may be naive, but still valid in the context of the question. "Algebra" seems just an example here.

@AnoE, one "problem" is that many parts of "algebra" are applied to things outside mathematics, so "algebra" is "applied". Also, some things traditionally called "applied math" are not necessarily actually applied to anything. Another problem is that often "non-applied" is a label used by people who don't know/see the point of something, often because they don't have the background. Often the purpose is technically subtle, and hard to explain to people without the background. In short, these labels are muddled and not useful, so I don't know what the question ought to really be.

Rubbish. Of course there's a subject called modern algebra. It doesn't matter if it's old news. One of the biggest "divides" in math is still whether you trend toward algebraic or analytic tools. And there are departments that specialize in either "pure" or "applied" math. They have a notion of what they mean by saying they specialize. This is all obvious. Why obfuscate?

@BCuster, I do understand that many people think so, both about "algebra" (with whatever adjectives) as "a thing", and that there is some sort of bifurcation between "analytical" and "algebraic" whatevers. I did also once start to believe this, but in grad school found out that these are very naive, and useless, distinctions. But I will not object toooo strenuously if other people are fond of them. It's just that I won't agree with their premises. I do feel a twinge of vindication when people ask why a thing that seems to be pointless is pointless... :)

@paulgarrett well, don't you think that proof techniques developed for homotopy theory or algebraic geometry (sheaf theory etc) is pretty well diverged from those of ordinary old geometry (ie. like John Milnor books) or simple functional analysis? In my experience people that read the one seldom want a conversation with people who read the other.

This answer is just not satisfying -- it avoids discussing an issue that many real students in the field have seen for themselves, possibly out of some misplaced sense of required humility. "Are cars really more dangerous than planes?" "First, it is not accurate to use "cars" to refer to broad swaths of vehicles. Cars are not inherently better than planes, and many people can drive both. Planes even have wheels, just like cars do. In fact, some small planes can even function as cars, and what will you say when flying cars appear? The framing of the question is, unsurprisingly, naive."

@knzhou despite the attempted satire: "are cars really more dangerous than planes?" is NOT a well-defined question, until you start clarifying what is meant. And once again, are we assuming that everything should only apply to the USian context?

@Yemen Choi You’re continuing the same forced humility act... when people talk about cars and planes in general it is perfectly clear what they are referring to. There are a few things midway in between the two that are ambiguous, and it is understood that the question is not about them. There are clearly two distinct clusters within mathematics, pure and applied, and the distinction is clear enough that many universities explicitly split the two. Students have different experiences within them, and we know it.

Yes, there are also subcategories within pure math, just like there are different models of car. Yes, some subcategories are closer to the decision boundary than others. And of course, this doesn’t make the distinction between cars and planes meaningless. If you really held every distinction up to such a perfect standard, you would literally be unable to form sentences at all. I am saying this all, of course, as an applied mathematician (i.e. physicist).

@knzhou My comment was nothing to do with forced humility, and to do with the simple fact that "dangerous" could mean anything from injury to fatality. It doesn't seem fair to ask people to mind-read to discern one's tacit conventions. But to address your point, these things are context dependent as you can happily find out by asking some in Paris VI what they think mathematical statistics is and then asking someone in Newcastle-upon-Tyne

@Yemen Choi I was just trying to write something snappy. OP’s question is far more specific than my model question, but this answer avoided answering purely on semantic grounds, which is what I was parodying.

@knzhou "applied mathematician, i.e. physicist" - oh good luck eliding the two if you go to places where physics is synonymous with experimental physics, or where applied mathematicians should all know the proof of the spectral theorem for self-adjoint operators on Hilbert space

@knzhou Incidentally, it would be nice if you could get my first name right :)

@Yemon Choi Cars might be smaller in Europe but this doesn’t mean it’s meaningless to distinguish cars and planes. You’re again focusing exclusively on edge cases.

Operations research, mathematical modeling, and aerodynamics are applied. The stuff on ncatlab is pure. There may be other subfields that are edge cases, but no mathematics department in the world has my examples swapped. Which is why it’s bewildering to see so many pure mathematicians show up in the comments denying there is a distinction.

@paulgarrett "In my years of observation: the primary determiners of success or failure in completion of the PhD itself, and in getting an academic job, are the advisor ... and, second, the student's attitude." Could you explain what an adviser is "supposed" to do to get a grad student a job? Was my adviser supposed to send me around to different universities to give talks? Because I see some applicants with lots of invited talks and I suspect their adviser set it up.

@Gradstudent, to my perception, the role of advisor has many aspects. Encouraging students who_are_interested  in giving talks is very important. Encouraging students who_are_interested to work on more than one project... to not find themselves only knowing one specialized trick when they finish their PhD, and also to have some refereed publications. Not giving or approving projects that no one cares about (whatever the labels). Not tolerating narrow outlooks...

... in particular, conveying to a PhD student that it's not so much solution of some particular problem, and then repeating that trick in perpetuity, but, rather, sort of a "meta" issue of learning how to cope with all the math there is... much of it very helpful at various moments, if one knows how. Adaptibility.

@paul garrett: refereed publications before applying for jobs?

@Gradstudent, ah, yes, publications before applying for jobs, indeed! Decades ago, this did not seem to be the standard.

@paul garrett: Yes, one senior mathematician remarked to me that academia has changed. My adviser said that publications aren't expected of grad students applying for postdocs. I shouldn't have listened.

authors: Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні


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Why do North American law schools require an undergraduate degree, when the UK's don't?
I'm aware that most NA law schools require an undergraduate degree. For example, Yale's application website states:

You must receive, or expect to receive by the summer of 2020, a bachelor's degree (or the equivalent) from an approved undergraduate institution in order to be eligible to apply. All offers of admission are contingent upon graduation.

In Canada, McGill doesn't require a degree, but strongly recommends it for competitiveness (link ):

While candidates who have completed 60 credits of university study are eligible to apply to the Faculty of Law, admission to the program is competitive and as such, almost all students admitted in the “University” category (see below) have completed an undergraduate degree.

That said, a law degree is an undergraduate degree in the UK. According to this website:

Students have the choice of studying a qualifying law degree at a wide range of UK Universities immediately after high school or after they have completed an undergraduate degree.

Thus a UK barrister or solicitor will spend between 4 and 5 years in university (4 = 3 yr qualifying law degree + 1 yr for LPC or BPTC, 5 = ≥3 yrs first non-law degree + 1 yr GDL + 1 yr LPC or BPTC), while the average North American lawyer will spend closer to 7 years (4 yrs undergraduate + 4 yrs JD).
Many senior UK judges have just 1 3-year undergraduate careers, some not in law at all. For example, Lord Sumption has just a BA in History from Oxford, Lord Phillips, first UKSC President, has just a BA in law from Cambridge, and Lord Neuberger has just a BA (yes, not BSc) in Chemistry from Oxford.
The UK's leading law schools look better than Canada's. The 2018 Times Higher Education World University Rankings ranks Cambridge at 5, Oxford 6, UCL 8; but the topmost Canadian are Toronto (10),  McGill (13). The QS World University Rankings by Subject 2017 ranks Oxford (2), Cambridge (3), LSE (7), UCL (12); but the topmost Canadian LS is Toronto (17).
It doesn't appear that the far briefer university education has affected the quality of UK law or lawyers.
To that end, I'd reckon that to save students time and money, North American law schools ought follow the UK's lead in not requiring UGs.
Note that to simplify this question, I haven't discussed other similar nation-states  like Hong Kong, or asked the analogous question for medical school.

To each institution their own entry requirements...

@SolarMike These requirements apply to entire countries, not just "each institution."

You quote the Yale requirements, is it a country for you? And McGill...

One other reason is probably how the curriculum is designed which will define the required entry conditions...

@SolarMike I'm uncertain why my question isn't being construed charitably? Have you looked at other North American law schools? I obviously can't quote them all.

Is this a historical question ("how did it develop that...") or a present-tense question ("why is it necessary that...") or a forward-looking question ("why don't they change how...")?

@MichaelHomer I'm curious about all aspects.

@Greek-Area51Proposal Michael gave you three options - not just two...

I would be surprised if there is a reason.

@Greek-Area51Proposal "These requirements apply to entire countries, not just each institution."  Not necessarily.  In Australia, medicine could be an undergraduate or a postgraduate degree, depending on the university.

This is a fine topic for a blog post, but unfortunately (1) has nothing to do with Academia and (2) isn't really a question, but more of a persuasive essay. As such, I'm closing this question.

In the US the primary reason to go to law school is to receive the credentials and certification necessary to practice law (even if one actually doesn't want to be a lawyer, which turns out to be quite common). The legal profession is easily the most well represented (har har) profession in the entire country, and has extensive power to lobby on behalf of their own interests.
The primary bar that must be met by legal students is, well, the US bar exam, which requires a J.D. in about 45 states. The American Bar Association (ABA) is an extremely powerful professional/lobby group in the US, and in fact is so influential that a section of the ABA is actually responsible for the accreditation of J.D. granting institutions in the US. According to the ABA, "forty-six states limit eligibility for bar admission to graduates of ABA-approved schools". If the ABA wants to require students to play the Hokey Pokey at a World Championship level before studying law, they could very well make that happen.
Interestingly, the J.D. itself has a surprisingly short history, being formally instituted starting in 1962, and the "LLB" (bachelor of law) was considered sufficient to be a lawyer for still more years after that. Before that, one did not even need a college degree of any kind to be a lawyer, and lawyer was like nearly all other professions in that they did not require a college degree to enter into them.
Officially the reasons for this was a concern that the existing 2-4 year degree along with the apprenticeship model was producing many lawyers who weren't fit to serve their clients. Thus the goal was basically to "improve education", or simply to let less incompetent lawyers sully the name of the profession.
Another interpretation is that this was rent-seeking behavior, specifically in the form of economic protectionism of a profession putting up artificial barriers to entry to restrict the supply of labor and thus increase the prices that could be won by those on the inside of the system. Any benefit to clients would be secondary, in this interpretation. This time period saw the rise of using University education as required credentialing of many professions in the US.
You might also note that the sudden adoption of the increased credentialing of many professions happened right around the same time as immigration law in the US was changed and major increases in migration increased supply of foreign-educated and foreign-trained professionals in the US. A cynic might suggest that lawyers-as-politicians voted against a form of labor protectionism in one area, and then turned around and voted themselves unique labor protections to guard them from harm resulting from their other decisions. I would of course never suggest such an uncharitable view of our late, great statesmen. (cough)
I'll leave it to you to decide how to mix and match these interpretations of why things are as they are now.
By requiring additional education far beyond pretty well any other country, the US transformed in about 100-150 years from a country that didn't much care for lawyers, avoided their use, or found them only marginally useful and imported them from England...to a country insisting they have the absolutely most rigorously education, trained, and certified lawyers on the earth. According to the lawyers, anyway :) At this point there is hardly anyone alive today in the US that can remember a time when lawyers were not at the center of public life, or a requirement to conduct any business of significant scale.
Would requiring less education make the process cheaper, and allow more people to become lawyers in the US? Absolutely! Which is why it won't happen any time soon. More elected politicians are/were lawyers than any other profession, so getting them to vote in the debasement and dilution of their own profession is about as easy as getting them to vote themselves into being restricted by term limits. After all, how do you think so much legislation got written and passed that gave so much accreditation power to a private group like the ABA, or required a J.D. (while grandfathering in existing lawyers so they didn't have to go back to school)? I am quite certain there was no grass roots popular movement, with throngs of people taking to the streets to demand that lawyers spend more time in a University.
You could try to get a hierarchy established, where more cheaply educated (and lower paid) workers get less formal education while doing much of the work of the legal profession. Oops, never mind, we already have that: paralegal. If you review the requirements of what it takes to become a paralegal, you'll see it is remarkably similar to what was required of lawyers in the US prior to the 1960s. That is, 2-4 years of college (and it used to be even less), some additional specialized training, and you'd learn the rest on the job. This is but one example of the many ways that the relationship between a University education and the Professions have changed, and college degrees and graduate education have become required to join professions that used to require little more than a high school (secondary) education.
The times, they are a changin' (1964)

Note that a US undergraduate degree is very different from a UK degree. The latter is much more specialized. In UK it is assumed that the general education occurs before the university level.
But in the US, the degree is quite general. Students of, say pre-law also study things like history, philosophy, foreign language, etc. It isn't that different from a History major. The "major subject" in the US accounts for half (more or less) of the total credits required. Even a math major will study all those things in the US.
And, in both places, it is generally believed that a lawyer needs that broad grounding. It is really just a question of where and how it is obtained.

Thanks! 1. Can you please expound "In UK it is assumed that the general education occurs before the university level", but not so in the US? 2. What does this entail? On average, does one learn more in secondary education in the UK than in the US? Or does one learn less general education in the UK?

Can you please respond in, by editing, your answer? Comment chains are
cumbersome to read.

The UK has national qualification exams that certify preparedness for advanced work. On the other hand, several US states don't require a JD to be a practicing lawyer.

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Difficulty with advisor's specialty
I'm a PhD student, nearing the first half of my PhD.
The domain my advisor works in is not really something I love, and I'm more interested in different subjects.
I see now that I didn't invest enough time studying what she does, and it's starting to bite me back.
I didn't study her subject that much because I sort of tried to stay close to stuff I'm more comfortable with, and this results in me not doing much advanced stuff, and not getting results.
But I often regret that what I'm doing with her is not my cup of tea, and try to find ways, or dream of finding ways, to do stuff that's closer to my heart.
I think the situation I'm in right now is kind of a "worse of both worlds", since I think I don't have the full gains of being right in the domain of my advisor, she can't help as much, and we can't really collaborate as much as if I were doing exactly what she does.
My main fear is that I will spend my time doing stuff that I don't really care for, while losing sight from what I would hope to do.
I'm essentially asking the following question:

Should I bite the bullet and invest myself fully in doing what my advisor does, or try to reduce damage by trying to change direction somehow?

The pros and cons that I see are the following:
Pros:

There is hope that were I to really invest myself in her discipline, I might come to enjoy it (I have the fuzzy idea that everything can become fun if you go far enough).
Also, maybe I could still direct it in directions closer to my heart (same problems, but approach it the way I like).
Even though I might not like it, maybe once I got a result or two, I could feel OK-er about trying to change subjects, have more liberty.
It might be that the subjects I fancy from my position would actually be too hard, or boring once I started working on them.

Cons:

Big time investment, with risks that it doesn't pay off in terms of results, and enjoyment.
I'm not that good of a researcher, so it might be that I spend my PhD doing that, and find no time later to work on stuff I enjoy more.

edit: My position so far is quite strongly on the "bite the bullet" side since it seems that's the option that would be least regrettable, and I have a pretty good relation with my advisor.

You seem to have answered it yourself, and I'm pretty sure I agree, though it is just opinion. But I'd suggest that you evaluate your options in terms of what will get you out the door fast and successfully rather than "liking" what you are doing right now. You will have the freedom to follow other paths if and when you successfully finish.
You like your advisor, she seems to be good for you. Too many students don't have those advantages. Working without an advisors advice works for some, but not everyone.
It might be worth having a chat with her, expressing your difficulties and asking for advice on how to quickly gain insight into what she does. Not everyone knows how to provide that, but if she does, it could help situate you quickly.

I would suggest that, should I end up as the OP’s manager, if they do not want to perform the R&D required of their job because they aren’t really interested in it, that may have negative consequences. I’ve done a wide variety of research over the years, and always found things interesting.

@JonCuster I think the assumption there is wrong: I don't think it fair to say that I didn't do "the R&D required of their job because they aren’t really interested in it": I did do research, but not on the main axis of my advisor. But I somewhat agree with the sentiment, and that's why I am reticent to evoke the subject, at least like that.
I fear I would get an answer of the type: "if you're not interested, you shouldn't have taken the position", and/or disappointment.

And thanks for the advice, @Buffy. This pretty much lines up with my view, which is a good sign.

I'll give the standard answer her that applies to the majority of questions posed on this forum: Have a conversation with your adviser. You seem to suggest that she is a reasonably good adviser, why not get her input and feedback to help you make a decision where to go with your degree?

Thanks for the advice. As said in another comment I'm a bit fearful of communicating directly on this issue. I think my hardship with the subject is understood already by my advisor, just from the fact that I sort of diverged in my research. But I did talk about "coming back" to subjects closer to what she does, and that's pretty much the state of things so far (me partially redirecting).

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Techniques or suggestions for people with memory decline to better remember where to find a scientific material?
What are good techniques or suggestions for people on verge of memory decline to better remember where to find a scientific material?
Personally when I read something in a book or in a paper or a website/blog (for example a particular proof of a theorem, a particular approach to a concept, a particular application of a result), I unconsciously assign it with the names of its authors.
When I would like to recall or to see that thing again, knowing the names of its authors is very helpful, since by knowing the name I can find the source very easily even if I have forgotten the title of the source.
This approach works if one has a relatively sharp memory. But as the memory starts to decline (for example by aging), sometimes recalling the author of a source could be difficult. When I forget the authors' name finding the source could be very difficult. Sometimes even with the help of search engines, I can not retrieve what I want.
Are there good techniques that people with limited memory use in order to better recall a scientific source?

I find remembering what I can't remember is a challenge... :)

You can use note taking to both save the information you later want to recall, and, more importantly, reinforce the learning that helps you recall it.
There is evidence that hand written notes are best for memory enhancement as they engage the brain in a different way than typing (or certainly more than cut-paste).
But you can go an extra step. You can, at a somewhat later date, summarize your notes, which, again, reinforces the learning.
And there is no reason that you can't also capture your original notes and/or summaries in some computer media for keyword searching and such.
This personal database of past readings and thoughts about those readings is better for recall than, say, Google, which searches a larger space than you are interested in and so comes up with un-useful hits.
But the key to it, is to use reinforcement tricks (hand written notes, etc.) so that deep learning is achieved and recall is more likely.
Personally, I prefer taking original notes on index cards. You can always carry a pen and a few cards for making quick notations and for noting questions you might have so that they can be explored later. The cards can then serve as the basis of summaries. See this answer to an unrelated question for more on the concept of the Hipster PDA.

Of course this technique works best if you start it before you need it. But it isn't ever too late. There is a Chinese proverb: The best time to plant a tree is forty years ago. The second best time is right now.


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Do npj and Nature-branded journals have the same reputation such that I can say I published "in a Nature journal" after publishing in npj?
In 2014, Nature collaborated with parters and launched npj, and they state "Nature Partner Journals adopt a modified set of Nature editorial standards". In fact, relatively high impact factors are observed in these "npj" journals but these journals are branded with "npj (Topic Name)" rather than "Nature (Field)".
What's more, the journals like npj Computational Materials (IF~9) and Nature Communications (IF~12) are slightly comparable in terms of the impact factor.
So my question is, do "npj" journals have a comparable reputation to other Nature derivative journals like Nature Materials, Nature Physics etc.? Basically can I say I published in a Nature journal after publishing in npj?

These are two very different questions.

The answer is a resounding no, they don't carry the same reputation. The npj journals are quite clearly on a lower rung of the prestige ladder. You can easily verify this by comparing the impact factors, which is >40 for Nature, and ~9 for npj Computational Materials, for example. It isn't only age either - the Nature Publishing Group clearly has an incentive to offer a range of journals for different topics and levels of impact, while preserving the reputation of their flagship journal.
As for whether you can say that you've published in Nature, see When someone says a paper is published “in Nature”, does that mean it's published in Nature? In short, you're much better off not misrepresenting where you've published.

I'd note that the accepted answer at that link is pretty bad... If you say you published "in Nature" and you meant "in a Nature journal" anyone who finds out the later is going to think you misrepresented yourself. The other two answers address this. I think this is important information to convey separately so the OP doesn't embarrass themselves.

@BryanKrause I'd agree with that, and would also say that the misrepresentation would be even worse if you meant "in an npj journal".

I just mean that the "partner journal" designation makes it more distant from Nature than, say, Nature Physics. I thought the linked question was only concerned with the latter, but clearly I skipped the line about journals that don't include "Nature" in the title.

Yep, sorry, I figured out what you meant a moment after I posted the comment.

No worries. I added a short sentence to my answer to discourage such misrepresentation. I could expand on it, but I think it'd be better to keep this Q&A focused on the reputation/significance difference.

I just understood that my question has become messy by using the word Nature by reading the linked question (hence edited my question). Just specifically wanted to know whether I could say "I published in a Nature journal" after publishing in npj. Of course the IFs would suggest that npj cannot be put together with Nature derivative journals, but does it make sense to honestly say the above?

@avin That's certainly a much more defensible claim, but I don't know if I have a good answer. If you told me that you'd published in a "Nature journal", I might
assume that you meant one of the journals named "Journals [Field]", which I distinguish from the "Nature partner journals". But I don't know if that's the consensus, or if there even is one.


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Is attending (and presenting at) a summit taken as an "honor'' in a CV elevating the chance for tenure-track applications?
I've been selected by my school and an external committee to attend this-year version of this summit. As far as I've been informed up to now, the agenda is attending a bunch of interviews with both scientists and non-scientists to broadcast my research (panelists are supposed to be some Nobel Laureates).
To me, the only potential motivation to attend it would be the case based on which such attendance will be considered as an honor in my CV (something similar to, or even more significant than, what a "best paper award in X conference" does bring to mind). Namely by honor, I literally mean whatever may make my CV fancier than before to entice typical admission committees assessing assistant professorship applications. Additionally, I have to pay half of the commutation cost which is a great repulsive factor if this summit really wouldn't make any sensible impact on my future chance to hunt a tenure-track position.
All in all, would a "presenter at summit X" add anything big to my CV (considering I've some scholarships, an IEEE thesis title, a best paper award, etc.)?

The only potential motivation to attend a conference full of Nobel laureates and others with similar awards in their careers is to pad your CV? I'd hope you go to a conference to share your research and learn what others are working on. If it's only to pad a CV then it doesn't seem to be a very well-designed conference.

@BryanKrause My school is a pretty famous one which regularly hosts such gurus, so I can locally catch them time-to-time without paying 1000 Euros to travel there. By the way, I do NOT seek "padding" but "improving" my CV. You may note that if I wanted to pad, I would attend there and put that "presenter at the summit X" entry in my CV without bothering myself asking this question.

I think this strongly depends on the field.
In pure mathematics, I think nobody would be the slightest impressed by "represented my university in the future research leader summit, which managed to heap 25 nobel laureates into a big pile". It might even have a slightly silly and vain vibe (whereas everyone would be ecstatic about an invited talk at the ICM).
But this could be completely different in other fields; so I think your best guess is to trust the opinions and reactions of the (senior) colleagues in your field.

I would think of it the same as any other conference presentation.  Ask your colleagues, supervisors, mentors, etc, how well they regard this particular conference, and whether they think it is worth your time to attend and present.  But you need to get advice from people who know you and are in your field.
The fact that this conference happens to be called a "summit" doesn't change any of that.

My supervisor's like so-so, and the rest of my colleagues have no idea about it's potential impact. My field is robotics, yet the summit includes presenters from various STEM disciplines.

Well, multidisciplinary conferences are certainly a thing.  But if your supervisor / colleagues aren't impressed by it, it seems safe to say that search committees reading your CV won't be impressed either.

If I were you, I would also consider the connections that you might be able to create at such a venue. If you get the chance to present before nobel laureates, it might just happen that they like your work and know of an open position at their home university.
The more powerful people know your work, your name and your face, the better. There are many ways to land a good position, and sometimes the deciding factor actually is who you went to have dinner with -after- the conference.
So my answer is: go, talk to as many people as possible , and present what you are working on.


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Is it possible to be an intellectual/do research without the internet?
I've been studying linguistics for over a decade now. I've never taken a class, because there are no local colleges that offer a degree in linguistics. I didn't really care though, because I was able to find all I wanted online anyway. I could even talk to other people interested in linguistics.
However, the internet as of late has become increasingly useless. Boards are overrun with trolls which prevents any kind of sensible discussion, the web is filled with fake news and false information, and the number of sites seems to be decreasing. I keep coming up with things I want to research, but have no way to find the answer. If I ask anywhere, my thread just gets overrun with trolls that completely derail the discussion (and that includes this site, I regularly delete my profiles shortly after making them because I simply lose faith that I can ever get anything on having an account on this site).
I've tried to look up actual books, but linguistic books are quite expensive it turns out. And despite having over a dozen libraries in my home town, there's hardly any books in them that talk about linguistics.
I also had a problem doing any kind of research in a research class I just took. I only had a handful of websites I could really find reliable information on (one of them being pew research, which ended up being the one I went to 90% of the time). Its just impossible it seems to find anything that isn't overloaded with fake information, especially when it comes to anything even remotely political.
What I hate about this, is that I liked that I could be a linguist without spending thousands of dollars on a degree. Now it seems, that doing that simply isn't possible. And worse yet, I have no other way to learn about linguistics. I can't afford the books (and I'm not even 100% sure what I should be looking for, the only linguistic book I've ever really heard about was 'The World's Writing Systems by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright'), and there's no college anywhere near me that teaches it. If I can't find information on linguistics online, I just can't go anywhere else. And yes, I've looked on Project Gutenberg, but it only has two books, one of which was published in the 1880s, and the other in the 30s, by a guy that I know isn't 100% reliable (Edward Sapir, if you care).
It feels like I can't be an intellectual anymore. Without the internet, I would just be yet another back-woods hick that didn't know anything about anything. Its solely thanks to the internet that I know anything at all. Without out, I'm lost. I don't know where else I can turn to continue my studies. It seems that I'm destined to become what I would've been without the internet, just another uneducated local living in a pathetic back-water where there really isn't anything of significance. I don't know what I can do to avoid this...
edit: Just because I seem to having people telling me about European Universities: I don't live in Europe, I live in the US.

I suggest you better focus your question on a specific academic topic, otherwise it'll get closed by peers as either "too broad" or "opinion-based".

I also want to suggest you narrow the title & scope to just refer to studying linguistics without the internet (in point of fact I'm about 40/60 on internet vs. groups & books for research in this area due to my location and the type of linguistic research I do, its a sub-section of my research so no degree but definitely something I have to study, versus computer science research which is about 80/20 in internet vs. non-internet)

If you are taking courses at a university, you should have access to its library resources and those should include appropriate references for the courses that you're taking.  Did you try using your institution's library to gain access to relevant resources?

Also, if you want to know where to start learning something, download some syllabi and then obtain the materials on them through the library. Even a very tiny library can access items through journal databases and interlibrary loan.

Try looking at the web pages of linguistics departments at respected universities, and of faculty there, to get an idea of plausibly-reliable names for sources. As in other comments, the syllabi may often be publicly available, and give you an idea about more-or-less-established/standard sources. Knowing how to filter internet content is an important skill to acquire. General forums may not be what you want! Certainly for math the general chat-forums are not very useful at a serious level, for example, as objective as some might think math should be.

I voted for 'Unclear what you are asking" because this is a rant, not a question.

"I liked that I could be a linguist without spending thousands of dollars on a degree." There are many good universities in Europe where one can study for a very reasonable cost. There are also options for remote degrees (e.g. http://www.open.ac.uk/) and/or part-time education.

You aren't taking proper advantage of your local libraries. Most have access to interlibrary loan through which you can obtain just about any book that exists. Talk to your librarian about your needs.
Academic libraries are best for this, of course, as the librarians are trained in the needs of academics. But even my local town library can get just about anything I require. At the town library you may need to know the actual titles you want to read. At an academic library, a research librarian can actually guide you fairly deeply into topics of interest. Perhaps not to the research edge of the known universe, but part way there, at least.
But if you have internet access, then I've found that wikipedia is a pretty good source for academic subjects, though not for popular culture, perhaps. In particular, most academic articles will have a references/bibliography section at the bottom that can point you to books and articles that might be worth exploring.
Be a bit cautious, though, even with wikipedia. I've occasionally found weird statements about mathematics there. But if it seems weird, it may actually be trolls at work. Normally, however, such things get cleaned up quickly (hours).

Wikipedia makes its edit history available. A statement that has survived a few rounds of editing, without being reverted, is likely to be quite reliable. A new statement, or one that alternates with its contradiction, should be treated as tentative.

Also if you have internet access - ebooks & online journals may be available through your library organization. In case your in a more rural or out of the way location or the journal/book is not available or checked out but can be accessed online through some partnership (I have used this, specifically with linguistics, a number of times with my local & academic libraries)

+1. Interlibrary loan is invaluable for accessing books and articles beyond your own library.

Graduate student here.
First of all, the internet became widely available to the public in the mid-90s. Intellectualism was not born at that time. There were polymaths and geniuses and people who made prolific contributions to human knowledge for thousands of years before electricity was harnessed. Eratosthenes determined the circumference of the earth and its distance from the sun using a stick and a well. In 300 BC Euclid invented geometry and wrote a series of books on it that became the basis of mathematics for something like 22 centuries. Newton basically invented modern physics out of nothing, and then invented calculus as a means to increase its explanatory power.
You can be smart without the internet. But you have the internet, so I don't know why you are asking that question.
Conversely, people who do not have access to the internet are not "backwater hicks." There are a billion people in the world without internet access and literal geniuses emerge from them all the time.
I recommend you not obsess over the qualifications of being an "intellectual" because it's an abstract concept with no actual criteria for judging. I know doctoral students who can't write a coherent thesis statement and I know people who didn't go to college but are senior software engineers. Concerning yourself over whether people regard you as intelligent is a path to the dark side, which in this case is pseudo-intellectualism.
As far as securing reading resources, I recommend you do the following things:
-Determine who the major players are in the field of Linguistics. A simple email to any Linguistics professor at any university will yield this information.
-Go on Amazon and purchase the older editions of the works of those linguists (they are usually dirt cheap and have almost the same information in them as the new, expensive editions). Do this only after searching your local libraries and their ILL systems.
-Read the bibliographies of each of these books and write down the names that keep popping up over and over. Buy or rent the books of those authors.
-Read the footnotes of the books in your possession and repeat the above step.
And no, unfortunately you cannot become a professional linguist without professional credentials. That is to say, you will not land a professorship or become a speech therapist at any respectable institution. But you can get scholarships and do college for free or cheap. I was able to do an 80% ride to a UC school based on academic merit and financial situation. That left me with about $13,000 in federal loans, which were easy to pay off after entering the job market. The PhD program is fully funded, meaning you don't have to take out any loans to pay for it, as long as you agree to be a Teaching Assistant. This applies if you live in the US and are applying to an accredited PhD program. There are also PhD programs in European countries that will literally pay you to attend; most recently I read about one in Sweden or Norway.
As a side note I would also recommend you not ponder upon your own intelligence or refer to people as "backwater hicks" in a post where you're asking for help learning a subject. This is very likely why trolls tank your threads.
Edit: I should clarify that I entered the job market after graduate school, not before, and I strongly recommend taking time off between undergrad and grad school.

In an arts and humanities field, the short answer is yes, although you would be missing out on web resources not published in hard copy, and, given how long academic publishing takes, you may be a couple of years behind the times (because new research tends to be disseminated through conference talks and on the www first, pending the lengthy writing-up, peer-review and publication delays).
The big publishers and the big libraries have entered an unholy alliance to make it difficult and expensive to access material in hard copy, despite the fact that most people find it easier to do focussed study from a book rather than an e-book. Major libraries are moving towards acquiring many titles in electronic format only, and some have gone as far as to destroy physical stock on spurious grounds such as the "double-fold" test (WorldCat record for a book about this) (which overlooks the fact that you should not be folding the pages of a library book in any case). Publishers such as Routledge are making physical books extraordinarily expensive, whilst the equivalent e-book remains at a halfway sensible price. Pearson is going further, and trying to discourage ownership of physical books and e-books by promoting a rental model, which totally undermines the notion of learning being a lifetime pursuit (I often re-read books I bought over a decade ago), not a short-term cramming exercise.
Ultimately, this gives publishers and big tech unprecedented power to censor and make things disappear down the "memory-hole", especially where people and institutions rely on cloud storage platforms.

Why the downvote? My observations about the how physical books are being marginalised by publishers and libraries are essential context for the question and my answer. The capacity of individuals to do research without the internet is being eroded by these trends, which are responsible for the lack of relevant books in the poster's library. Since many people just fail to appreciate the problem until they realise that their cloud-based library has been vandalised by unaccountable censorship and retractions, I considered it necessary to elucidate the issues and provide external links.

-1 because answer is incorrect on many levels. To my knowledge libraries are destroying physical stock because people aren't using it. The link you gave mostly covers newspapers, which use different paper-types compared to books. Digital publishing has many advantages over print publishing, such as the possibility of constantly updating the text, and of delivering a copy to the consumer within a few minutes of purchase. And you can still buy an e-book (of course, it still falls to you and only you to read the fine print).


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Should I worry because I don't have Publications Yet?
Publish...Publish, I am worried about publications as I don't have any yet, I just have few in masters, but was not a good quality, now in Ph.D., I am working on a new topic and to get a significant and validated results it takes times, I focused on developing a model that could really explain the phenomena which are not explained yet by any researchers.
However, as I am apart of the project, all other members are getting papers so fast and every meeting they mention, how their methods are great, I feel low and less confident, maybe I am stupid as I take time.
According to the current situation, I didn't do any success which I think my career in academia is impossible, as I see all successful researchers have tons and tons of citations.
I don't know if I should give up, I bring this to my supervisor, however, he does not care so much, he is not recognized in the field, so it is not a big deal.
I am serious, feel low and lost because of the high competition and I did not have even one good paper yet.
Should I wait or withdraw from Ph.D., I really like research and my topic, what you recommend me to do in that case?
P.S. I am also getting psychotherapy as I am suffering from terrible OCD because of the past experience, I am doing my utter best and fight, but no one knows that in my lab. I am also so ambitious and hard worker, but not intelligent enough as peers that's why I am asking whether I am wasting time in the wrong direction maybe.

I'm sorry you're having a difficulty time during your PhD and glad you're getting local help. However, your question Should I wait or withdraw from Ph.D., I really like research and my topic, what you recommend me to do in that case? is specific to you and off topic for this site.

Maybe it is off-topic, but I am lost and tired.

If I recall your question history, you have not been in this lab very long at all. It takes time to get things up and going - you don't just start cranking out papers from day 1.

Yes, thats true, but in reality, i have been more than two years and expecting to have one paper at least.

Dear Monika, I am very, very sorry that you left this website!!!!

Until your supervisor starts worrying, I wouldn't start worrying. Pure paper count isn't the best measure because some topics yield more papers and others much less. For example 2018 Nobel Laureate in Physiology & Medicine, James Allison, has a h-index of 127. Meanwhile 2018 Nobel Laureate in Economics Paul Romer has a h-index of 49. This doesn't mean James Allison is 3x more accomplished than Paul Romer; it just means they're from different fields. In the same way even if your labmate has published 3 papers and you have zero, it doesn't mean they're 3x as capable as you.
Your supervisor knows what is expected of a PhD student at your university. If you are performing badly, he/she will let you know (or it will come up during a performance review). Until that happens, it's not time to start worrying.
If you are really concerned, you can ask your supervisor if you're making expected progress, or ask him/her to set some targets for you to strive for.

Start writing a paper. Focus your efforts towards publication. If you want to have your options for after the PhD, publish as early as possible. And do not expect your supervisor to be the one who calls for action.
Do not give up, go for more.
You maybe could join research seminars, hopefully, available at your University, about how to publish, so you can start giving yourself a good and real idea of how is the process of publishing. It is not about who is the smartest or about luck, it is about a process that sometimes we are not exposed to, so we have no idea how to accomplish but has nothing do to with your intellectual capabilities which there is no doubt you have, for this indeed if it was not the case, your supervisor would have already told you.
But for the publishing part, take the ownership of the process and start writing.

I have some drafts, but still not completed my research is complicated and interdisciplinary and takes time. I am writing a proposal for workshop and also I gave talk, but those nothing

Also I am 28, and i am getting therapy which affects on my concentration and confidence, I dont know, I feel so much low.

I would say just make a plan and work for it. Do not worry about other colleague's plans, each of us we have different projects and out timings are completely different. Just make your realistic plan according to the nature of your work and go for it. But do not give up, and be patient, research is like this. Just follow the goal and do not give up.

A question you might ask yourself: Do you really need to have publications for your goals? (If it is not a requirement for your phd or supervisor or if you don't want to stay in academia, maybe you don't need any.) If no, you can just work on your big project (if your supervisor is fine with it) and relax a little bit! Often the people who publish a lot are under a lot of pressure because they want to stay in academia, whereas many PhD students who know they will leave academia can enjoy their research and live a good work-life-balance.
If your big project works out, you have good material for a publication -- if not, well then at least you tried!
Don't make your happiness dependent on other people (or their success)!


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How to deal with a research internship manager with very bad English?
I am a computer science student in a research internship. My superior is technically a professor, but I work with a PhD student. My goal is to help them run experiments to finish their thesis. They are not my manager, but I am still supposed to do what they want, and I could not find a better term, hence the title.
This PhD student's English is very bad, to the point that I sometimes cannot make sense of their messages and instructions, though I'm close to bilingual (neither of us is a native English speaker). It is slightly better in person, but I don't have many occasions to talk to them since they are working remotely for the time being.
Constantly asking them to repeat can get tiring for both of us, and I don't want to start a conflict. Pointing out that their English is simply unreadable is likely to come across as insulting too. Furthermore, I know that their experiments have a tight deadline, and I would like to help them meet it, but this constant miscommunication prevents me from working efficiently.
If it matters, the professor who oversees us agrees that it is difficult to communicate with this student. I worry that coming to the professor to complain about it could be seen as agressive by the student, and as an attempt to justify delays by the professor.
How can I deal with these unreadable messages and very unclear instructions?

It is the professor's responsibility to make sure that the instructions you are given are clear and understandable, and besides it's in their interest to make sure that you are able to do your job. So you should definitely talk to the professor about this issue, preferably giving a few examples and explaining clearly and objectively why it's a problem for your work. As you are clearly aware, it's not a matter of criticizing the person, it's matter of finding a way to work efficiently.
On a more diplomatic note, I assume that this PhD student has to write papers and will certainly have to write their PhD in English, right? So it's also crucial for them to improve their English level. Maybe you could suggest helping them at the same time: when their instructions or explanations are unclear, you would propose a better phrasing or point out why something is a mistake. The idea is to avoid that the PhD student feels bad about the whole thing, and this way they can appreciate that you're also doing some effort to make things work.

To be able to suggest different phrasing, you have to understand the original message...

I have read part of their papers, and the English is barely better, some sentences just don’t make sense and are missing words. I considered suggesting changes, but I was again worried that it could come off as patronizing or insulting. Thank you for your advice.

"will certainly have to write their PhD in English": not necessarily: not all universities in non-English speaking countries require PhDs to write their dissertations in English.

I'd add to this that the PhD student is probably also keenly aware of the problem and would like to resolve it! (and may also feel really bad about it) Sometimes I suggest falling back to written rather than spoken communication, because sometimes peoples' written English is better. It sounds like this isn't a helpful option in your case, but... best to approach this in good faith - everybody wants an improvement, so how can you change your communication strategy to work better?


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How to get into computer science research as a college student
So I saw this article on getting into computer science research; it helped me but I still have questions more relevant to my position.
I'm getting ready to start my sophomore year at my university. I'm a computer science major (software engineering concentration), good GPA; I'm also thinking about doing a minor in physics, and minimally my masters in either computer or electrical engineering. I've been programming since the beginning of high school, and I know (based on my college classes) that my skills are strong. I have a lot of projects on Github and a personal tech website that shows my skills.
I'm very interested in getting into research, I feel like that's really my thing, but I don't really know where to start. My question is basically how should I go about it in a college environment. I'm assuming that getting to know my professors would be best; would it be a good start to contact past professors and maybe my upcoming ones for this fall? One professor I had in my first semester was in research so I feel like that would be a good start. Or should I go to my advisor first? I want to start looking now, but school starts in a few weeks so I could always wait till then.
Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!
PS: Apologies in advance if the tags or anything isn't right; first time posting here...

The first problem you will have is coming up with a problem worth exploring. If you don't yet have much experience it is a very hard thing to discover. So, yes, talk to one or more professors, perhaps your advisor, about what sorts of problems they are interested in.
Perhaps they can get you started with some part of their own explorations, or give you a problem they have set aside for lack of time to explore it.
In your first time out, it may not be vitally important that  you actually come up with results. Learning the process may be enough. But who knows. Maybe you learn something that can be published.
In fact, some problems worth exploring don't really have accessible solutions. They may be beyond the current state of knowledge to solve. The same is true in math, of course. It is very difficult to predict in advance whether a problem is actually solvable with the resources available - including time.
Eventually - many years - you will probably develop the insight to see the problems that are unsolved, but solvable, and also worth the effort to explore. But like anything else, that takes practice. Start with someone who has already been there to help guide your initial steps.

In your first time out, it may not be vitally important that you actually come up with results — Let me say that more strongly: In your first time out, you will not come up with results, unless you are extraordinarily lucky.  But that's fine; nobody expects you to come up with results your first time out.


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What steps would an amateur scientist have to take in order to get a scientific breakthrough published?
I would like to know from an academic standpoint on what steps that an amateur scientist would have to take in order to get his/her scientific breakthrough published in a major academic journal/scientific magazine.
Say that this person is outside of academia, he/she has no college degrees, and he/she has stumbled upon a scientific breakthrough by chance after years of doing self-study, research, and experiments with a particular scientific area of study.  Also, say that this person has a job with a modest salary so if they will need to raise a lot of money to get it published, they will have to get it from an angel investor or from crowdfunding.
Although I understand that the odds of such a person coming up with a scientific breakthrough is very slim to none, I still would like to know the process that this person will likely have to follow if he/she wants to get it published.
For example, would the first step be that this person should take be making an appointment with a college professor in order to get a professional opinion on their scientific breakthrough?  If so, what guarantee does the amateur scientist have that this college professor will not try to steal this scientific breakthrough?  Should the amateur scientist insist that the college professor first sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement?
Would the second step be that the amateur scientist meet with another college professor to in order get a second opinion and again have that professor sign a NDA?  What would be the 3rd step, 4th step, etc., etc.
Although there are probably many steps in the process of getting it published, I'm interested in just the major steps that will likely have to be taken.

this will depend very much on your field, but preprint on arxiv would be a first important step before showing it to too many people. If it needs a lot of time to reproduce your results showing it to some experts you trust is an option. Poster on conference is another option.Signing non-disclosure agreements sound plausible, but is probably unpractical for possible readers.The question is also what a scientific breakthrough is? Publishing a paper in top-tier journal, a patent, getting funding...Are you looking for fame or a job in academia. For an amateur you are already quite hypothetical ;-)

@user847982, thanks for those tips. I will look into them tomorrow. To clarify, the scientific breakthrough that I'm referring to would be something that the scientific community says cannot be done and/or has not been done yet.

@user847982, to be truthful, I want both fame and money  :)

@user847982 While I agree with you, OP should not that many fields do not routinely use preprint arxiv.

One should note - last I checked you would need someone to vouch for you to start publishing in arxiv.  In fact, even after I'd put many things on arxiv, I needed someone to vouch for me to put something in another part of arxiv.

If it truly is a breakthrough then even with almost no advertising it could get noticed and then published. See the anonymous 4chan user that solved a decade math problem

If you seek the "professional opinion" of an expert on your work, and especially if you ask them to sign an NDA, be ready for the answer "sure, my consulting rate is $200 / hour".

If you are breaking laws of physics get ready to be laughed at. And more broadly, be prepared to be told you've made a mistake. Not saying you have, and you've acknowledged the unlikelihood, but just be ready for it. Lots of people think they found something new and really didn't.

@user847982 An amateur with no academic connections is not going to be able to post to arXiv without first getting an endorsement. The site has had gatekeeping for a decade now. Largely because of the large number of amateurs who think they've made a breakthrough. HRIATEXP talks about experiments which is promising if the field is physical, but still leaves a lot of room for misunderstanding.

There seems to be a lot of feeling here among answerers that professors are out to get someone or are ready to pounce and steal, or that they're movie-level dismissive of new ideas. I don't think there are too many "can't be dones" in science or engineering these days. There are "unlikelys" that might need some strong convincing, though. But it won't just be the prof asking for that. That said, a lot of so-called discoveries are well-known or mislabeled, and people are going to be looking for that.

@FedericoPoloni For physics in particular there is a cheaper service: https://aeon.co/ideas/what-i-learned-as-a-hired-consultant-for-autodidact-physicists

@Fadecomic To be fair, there's a pretty solid class of "can't be dones" in physics which could also fit with OP's comments; such as perpetual motion.  The bar for proving it can be done is incredibly incredibly high; yet it is often proposed (not to say that's necessarily OP's idea).

If your experiments involve human or animal subjects be ready to redo everything unless you have asked for ethical approval beforehand.

I smell a trisector!

Hmmm. What would Zefram Cochrane do?

@dmckee, that is good to know. Now the question is how do I go about getting endorsed by a college professor, or perhaps even by a group of professors, within the field that this scientific breakthrough pertains to?

The process for getting an endorsement to post to (a sub-set of) arXiv starts with looking up the rules on arXiv's site and obtaining a list of endorsers in the category you wish to post to. Then you contact one of those people to start a dialog.

@dmckee, okay, I will look into that. Thanks.

What is you goal here? Be published and recognised, or make money out of what you found/invented? For the latter, a patent is probably a better option...

@jcaron, I want to be published and recognized. I am considering getting a patent on a device that I'm currently trying to design that would function on the working principle of this scientific breakthrough.

The title question is answered by "write a paper and submit it to a journal". The amateur scientist doesn't need anything special to do that.
The questions in the text deal with a separate question, which is whether or not the breakthrough actually is a breakthrough. In this case getting a professional opinion is certainly going to be helpful (see Kaveh's answer to a related question for the process). It's easy to deal with the "threat" of the professor stealing the idea: just establish precedence by, e.g, attaching the manuscript to an email with a timestamp. If the professor tries to steal the idea anyway, he would be breaking some deep-rooted academic norms. If it's proven that he's plagiarizing, he can get into serious trouble.

my main concern is writing and submitting a paper that may end up sitting on someone's desk for X number of months or years. I want some kind of guarantee that my paper will be reviewed within a certain time period and knowing who the people are who are reviewing it so I can notify them for a status update(s).

While this is true in theory, both paragraphs seem a little idealistic to me. Journals are likely to give short shrift to purported "breakthroughs" from amateurs. As to getting senior professors in "serious trouble", that is easier said than done.

@HRIATEXP Welcome to the club! That's a common problem for everyone (just see how many questions there are on this site about late reviews). The answer remains though: you have to write a paper and submit it to a journal, because that is the way results are communicated.

@cag51 I'd be surprised if stealing someone else's ideas doesn't lead to serious trouble - http://higheredprofessor.com/2017/08/07/can-tenured-faculty-member-fired/, "In addition, academic issues such as research misconduct or plagiarism could fall into this category. Ultimately, conduct of this type is more than just something a president or dean doesn’t like (i.e. disagreeing with a policy position), but behavior that nearly everyone in higher education would agree is unacceptable."

@Allure "borrowed" seems to happen quite often, going by questions on here, see https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/95682/72855, and https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/117843/72855  just for two examples on here...

It's difficult to write a good academic research paper without having had some training in writing research papers.

E-mail can be forged, I'd suggest sending a copy of your work to yourself using registered mail, then sticking the sealed envelope in a safe-deposit box to be used as evidence if it comes to that.

@NoahSnyder Probably no harder than legitimately coming up with a true scientific breakthrough without having kept up to date with published papers in the field.

@pjs, that is a good idea and I am going to do that as a first step in the process of getting my idea published something in the future.

@pjs, oops, I meant to say 'sometime in the future'

I have a few suggestions which may be field specific.
First, check out arXiv. It is sometimes used as a place to "park" research prior to peer-reviewed processes such as journal or conference submission. Some authors (who are usually already "big names") publish there and accrue citations, too. Although, as pointed out in comments, you may require some academic input to pass through arXiv's requirements to post. There’s also technically nothing to stop you "publishing" on your own website (or github!), but your work may receive little attention there.
Second, you must be sure that your contribution is novel. Absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence and all. The reason you might get a desk rejection is because it’s too easy to dismiss an author with no affiliation and therefore unlikely to have access to a sizeable body of literature. Journal subscriptions can be fairly expensive. If you’re affiliated to an institution, you often get access to many journals that you wouldn’t pay for as an individual. There’s still a reasonable number of publications that aren’t open access. You might get some access via library membership (worth checking). An (appropriately) extensive literature review with citations should overcome this barrier.
Third, journals may publish your work with no costs to you, but you will probably have to pay for open access. That means you’ll sign over copyright of your work and, if you don’t have a subscription to that journal, potentially be unable to see it (unless you paid for open access - fees I’ve seen are 3-4 figures).
Fourth, you should be aware that some journals want you to recommend reviewers. There are some questions on here regarding that already, so I won’t go into the politics of that.
It’s worth getting an academic on board simply to navigate the world of academia and increase the chances of getting published. Alternatively, can you patent it? That would protect your idea even if you choose not to profit from it.

Again, people truly outside academia can't just post to arXiv. The site has gatekeeping and outsiders need an endorsement to post.

Thanks @dmckee. I’ll edit to take that into account.

@Pam, I have made a drawing of a proof-of-concept device that can be used to demonstrate to others why its working principle would be a scientific breakthrough. I am currently working on designing a prototype device that I can build in order to provide hard physical evidence that this device will do what I claim it will do. As to whether it can be patented would depend largely on it actually working.

@Pam, also, I have already shown this proof-of-concept device to a professor at a local university and that person has told me that its working principle is very sound scientifically and that it should work as expected.

@HRIATEXP Patents in the US do not require a working prototype (https://patents.stackexchange.com/q/5378). They only require a novel, non-obvious, and useful idea.