text:
Accused of being dishonest for not informing a professor of a clerical error she made
One of my professors returned an assignment that was graded by hand. After the semester ended and the final grades were submitted, the professor discovered that the grade was incorrectly entered in the online grade book as 95/100 instead of 73/100. She is now motioning to have the grade changed and has also filed an academic integrity violation complaint for my failure to inform her of this as she is convinced I must have checked my grade and deliberately not made her aware of the error. But I had already seen the grade on the physical copy and did not see why I should check the online grade. Also, I am not responsible for a clerical error on the professor's part.
Do I have a case if this goes before the academic integrity committee or am I responsible?

I would think you do have a case, and that the situation would never get to a hearing. Stranger things have happened though, so see what your options are for assistance/representation in any hearings.

If you present your case the right way, I also think you have a case. However, I’m not sure that saying “I am not responsible for a clerical error on the professor’s part” would count as presenting your case the right way. That’s essentially saying “even if I was dishonest, you cannot fault me because you yourself committed an error (that did not involve any dishonesty)”. Justice doesn’t work that way. You have a case only if you can create a reasonably credible impression that you actually were not dishonest.

See also this commonly asked legal question analogous to your situation: 1, 2, 3, 4.

So if it were the other way around (73/100 entered in the online grade book vs 95/100 physical grade), would you not have noticed?

@mmeent I don't know about OP, but I have never cross checked a grade in my life. The first time I'd have noticed is when I needed to submit a transcript for an application. Even then, I'd only notice a really big change.

What do the academic integrity rules in your university or program say? If there is an item that students are required to cross-check their results and inform about issues in either direction, you have a problem. If not, I see no reasonable way how the professor would convince an academic integrity committee that this is your problem.

My practice when I was teaching was that an error I made would never reduce a student's grade, but could increase it.  If I were your professor, you'd have gotten the 95% that I typed into the computer.  (I know that is of little comfort, but you should know that some, probably most, do as I did.)

It's perfectly reasonable that you didn't cross check your grades against some online portal. I never did that. Often after an exam, I was too focused on extracting myself from the stress to even look at the papers that I got back. It was better for my mental health to assume the marks were reasonable. Not saying this is good practice, but there are reasons besides laziness for not following up on exam marks.
Do you have a student union? If so, this is almost certainly something they would be able to help you with. If there is no student union, perhaps approach a friendly faculty member, and let them know what's happening.
The professor who insists you are being duplicitous is being unreasonable, so hopefully nothing will come of it.
I also agree with Dan Romik, that you really mustn't say “I am not responsible for a clerical error on the professor’s part”. Dan is right, that it almost sounds like an admission of having looked at the online portal. Furthermore, despite the professor's poor behaviour, you would be better off not saying anything that could be seen as critical of them, or anyone else in the university. Many people are uncomfortable hearing criticism of their collogues, so it may well not get a good reaction.
Have a quick look in the syllabus and student handbook to see if you were supposed to verify your grades in the online portal.
When you are asked about it, simply explain that you did not compare marks with those in the online portal. If you were supposed to check, apologise for the lapse, otherwise, just say that you are surprised that anyone would expect you to check.

Something for the OP to double check is if there in fact is any expectation of checking the grades (university policy, something in the syllabus). Seems kind of unlikely, but...

@JonCuster good point.

When I used "student union" none of the students understood what I meant. Sometimes this is called "student government" or "student government association" instead. YMMV.

@PeterK. Especially because in the US "student union" has morphed on many campuses to refer to a building that contains meeting rooms, dining options, etc...

You likely have a case for several torts, one of which is libel.
I would recommend writing a carefully worded letter.  Have someone with a bit of experience look it over and edit it for you.
In this letter, lay out all of the facts that are not in dispute.  Write it in a chronological fashion.  Start from the basics of what class this is, the current semester, when you took the exam, when you received the graded exam, etc.  Be as thorough as possible.  If you did not check the online grade at all, then mention this.  As well, verify that it is not codified anywhere that you are responsible for ensuring that the grades online and on paper align.  Mention this.  Be entirely truthful throughout the letter.
Make sure to note that knowingly and willfully making false academic integrity complaints is either defamation or defamation per se.  As well, making false claims, without verifying them, is negligent.  If such claims are made, then you have legal remedies and will pursue for such actions.  After all, they are a blight on your otherwise, hopefully, unblemished academic career.
You will need an attorney to tell you if this is defamation per se or not. If it is, and your state recognizes it, then you will not have to prove that you suffered damages.
Once you are done writing this letter, contact a few attorneys in your area that practice civil law.  Most will do an initial consultation for free.  Some will charge a small fee for this, usually about an hour or two of their hourly rate.  If none of them will do it for free, then pay the fee and listen to what they have to say.  Email the letter to the attorney after they agree to an initial consult, since it outlines all of the facts in a concise way for them.  As well, make sure that you have the email addresses of the professor and her department chair, along with the physical mailing addresses for their offices.  Basically, think of everything you can do to make the life of your attorney easy.  You can even start doing your own case law studies through a number of sites; casetext, for example, offers free access for most universities.
If you have a case, then most attorneys will be willing to write and send a target letter on your behalf.  They'll charge about an hour or two for this. It may be a little more if either they have to or a junior attorney has to do a case law survey.
You could certainly send the letter that you wrote.  However, having an attorney send one to both the professor, her department chair, or whomever the attorney recommends is a much stronger response.  It shows that you are serious about these false accusations and will take measures to protect yourself against them.
The professor will do one of two things.  The first is that she will, foolishly, double down.  At that point, everything she says and does will just make your case easier, especially if and when depositions are taken.  The second is that she will, rightfully, be embarrassed, realize that she made a mistake, overreacted, and drop the matter.

Tell me you're an American without telling me you're an American... (no offense meant to the majority of Americans whose first thought in every single situation is not to reach for a lawyer)

@Adam Přenosil: The first thought of the typical American is not to invoke a superior authority, but to worry about the other guy invoking a superior authority. I.e. He doesn't immediately go to "I'm gonna call the cops!" or "I'm gonna sue!" Instead, he thinks "Is the other guy gonna call the cops?" or "Am I gonna get sued?" - Professor Stumblethumbs has already "called the cops" on Alex, who now faces this choice: go as a lamb to the slaughter, or lawyer up.


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How to cite a 50 or more references with the same author and year using author-date format?
I need advice on how to cite sources with the same author or same year when there are too many of them. My citations are Chicago style and I am doing (author, date) format. However, I have about 50 podcasts I analyzed from the same year and I have run out of alphabet letter to use the format (Author, 2020a/2020b etc.)
Does anyone know how to deal with this?

What field? ...

My understanding of the Chicago (author-date) style is that for things like news articles and multimedia, it is often sufficient (or preferred) to refer to them in text. For example, section 15.57: Citing recordings and multimedia in author-date format says "in many cases, however, it will be more appropriate to list such materials in running text and group them in a separate section or discography". This will, of course, depend more on the convention in your field.

If you cite them as a group ("I analyzed a data set consisting of the podcasts [1, 2, 3...]") instead of individually ("In podcast [1], ... whereas in podcast [2], ..."), one option that I have seen is to have a single combined reference, where you group many individual sources together. So you would write "I analyzed a data set of podcasts [1]", and [1] would be a list of all the podcasts. However, whether this solution is appropriate will depend on the style guide for the journal you are submitting to.

@Andrew Yes. In particular since podcasts often tend to be numbered by the authors themselves, this would allow to refer to them by this natural numbering, which would greatly help with readability. Writing something like "comparing episode 19 to episode 23 of [1]", tells me immediately which episodes are compared, while "comparing [19] to [23]" requires me to look up both references, because one of them might be an episode and the other something else entirely.

@mlk I like that way of looking at it -- essentially the podcast itself is like a book, and the individual episodes are like chapters, so the citation references the podcast itself, not an individual episode. Whether or not that works in practice will depend on the journal's style guide of course.

You could use Roman numerals... (Author, 2020i/2020ii/..../2020xi)

Typically when using letter identifiers the next step after "z" is to begin with double letters. You could go "aa", "ab", "ac", etc, though if you have about 50, I'd probably prefer "aa", "bb", "cc", wrapping to "aaa" if you need (I don't know if Chicago style has a specific solution for this case).
If you're publishing this in a journal, though, your choice of format may not matter too much, as you'll need to defer to the journal's preferred style.

Not an immediate answer to the question but I doubt that you need to put these podcasts into your reference list at all. It depends on what you mean with "analyzed" and the customs in your field.
To me, "analyzed" indicates that the podcasts are your primary research material rather than something that you want to refer to because you reuse or report specific results, ideas, or concepts from another publication. In that case, it may be more appropriate to describe the details of which podcasts you analyse and where you got them from in the text only, maybe also with a dedicated table that lists the titles / publication dates / links for each episode, but not include them in the reference list.
However, what is customary in that respect differs by discipline, so I would recommend to ask your supervisor whether you should put these as citations in your reference list.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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I just got invited to referee an article! Is it OK to share this achievement on social media?
I am very proud of this achievement and I am thinking about sharing the email to social media. Is it okay to post it as long as I remove confidential information, e.g. manuscript id, title, author?
Also, if it is okay to post it on social media, can I include the journal name and the editor that sent the email?

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

Congrats! I wish more people would be excited about being a reviewer.
Personally, I would only say the journal's name (e.g., TheAwesomeJournal). For example:

Yay! Just got invited to be a reviewer for the first time @TheAwesomeJournal

I would not name the editor because not all journals have public editors for specific articles.
Edit: I would be okay with listing the journal's name because some resources like ORCID and Publons will list journals you have reviewed for.
Edit number 2: I would not include the email from the editor. Socially, this would be weird for scientists and practically, it makes it likely you might accidentally include identifying information about the review.

@PhilCsar I think the overwhelming advice here has been to not share the email (this particular answer didn't say that explicitly, but it does say "only say the journal name" which does not include the email). Of course, you aren't beholden to advice you get just because you asked, but it's a bit disconcerting to me when someone gets a piece of advice here and chooses to interpret it in an expansive way towards something they want to do otherwise, as if they're only seeking confirmation and not actually reading the advice written.

For a similar social situation in a completely different context, I think it would be totally normal and fine if I email my mom updating her about a vacation I took and she then tells other people about it ("Bryan just visited the south pole and had a great time!"). I'd feel really weird if she pasted my exact email written to her on Facetok or Instatweet: I wrote that email to her, not the public. The information isn't really privileged or private, but the actual document is. I feel like that applies to business as well as personal communication.

@BryanKrause I agree about not sharing the actual email.

Even sharing the journal name is violating the terms of anonymity, IMO. Many scientific fields aren't that big. If someone just announced they became a reviewer for Journal X and my paper I submitted to Journal X just went out for review...

Please do not share the email, that would be unprofessional.
Many journals take great care in deciding what information about their internal operations to make public, and which details to keep private and share only with reviewers and other people involved with decision making. By sharing the email you may inadvertently expose such details.
In general, it seems like a bad habit and in poor taste to take an email that someone sent you as a professional communication, and publicize it on social media, even with details redacted. Perhaps in this situation this will be mostly harmless, but I cannot help but feel that this will be less well-received by your social media followers than you may be imagining.

Not merely unprofessional, but technically illegal. Copyright resides with the sender (though it's poorly tested in courts, anywhere). So always think twice about sharing an email.

@Auspex do you have a citation for the copyright?

@RichardErickson: In the US, you could start with 17 USC 102(a), and then read the rest of the title and note that there is no "it's just an email" exception. For other countries, the Berne convention requires a similar "automatic" copyright as the US provides, but it does permit countries to have more elaborate limitations or exceptions to copyright, so some countries might not grant copyright protection to a simple email.

@RichardErickson here’s an article discussing this question. Filed under “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin without being sued for copyright infringement because their dance is a regarded as derivative work under US law.”

@DanRomik thank you for the link. Seems like an open legal question. Also, it would depend upon the sender's affiliation. Public university emails might be in the public domain (e.g., wisc.edu or uw.edu) whereas a private university (e.g., harvard.edu) might fall into private domain. Maybe we should ask this on the legal stack ;)

@RichardErickson: "Public domain" is a specific term of art in the context of copyright law. As a rule of thumb, it is very hard for something to accidentally become public domain, unless it's really old or specifically exempt from copyright protection in the first place (e.g. works created by the US government). Nothing becomes "public domain" merely because it's affiliated with a public university, unless the author was a federal employee acting within the scope of their duties.

@RichardErickson Here's one that explicitly states the UK High Court has ruled that email "can" have copyright protection: https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/news/forwarding-an-email-can-infringe-copyright But it's the prevailing legal opinion pretty well everywhere that email IS copyrighted, but even the UK court has been a bit wishy-washy about it. In fact, their exception may apply here: an email asking a person to be a journal referee is not actually very original, as the journal must send hundreds of them annually.

No you should not share the email although it would probably not do too much harm if enough details are removed. It is best not to share the journal name either.
A review is anonymous and should stay that way [*]. The academic world is smaller than you may think: someone who knows the name of the journal, date and your field of research may be able to deduce who the reviewer is. Note that your field of research is probably publicly known or can be deduced from the journal name. The date of posting to social media, combined with the fact that many of your social media connections are probably scientists does not help either.
I would suggest the following:

social media: "Whooo! I just got invited to review a paper for the first time!".
CV (when applying for your next job): "Reviewed paper(s) for journal X".

[*] Personally, I would prefer authors to be anonymous and require reviewers to disclose their name, but that is my opinion and not how the review system currently works.

In addition, the editor, who contacted you confidentially, might not appreciate reading about it on twitter (even if their name is not included).

If I were the editor and you posted my email, with or without my name, without my permission, that would be the last time I would ever have any kind of professional contact with you. I would be furious!
I would consider you untrustworthy and unprofessional if I found out that you have been sharing an email I sent you with even a limited number of your peers, but if you actually go as far as to announce it to everyone on social media, you would have burned all your bridges with me. I would never, ever want to work with you again under any circumstances.
Now, I may be a bit on the extreme end here, I know. I dislike social media so this feels particularly egregious to me. However, at its core, this is a case where you are taking confidential communication and blithely sharing it with the whole world! I can't imagine anyone would be OK with that. If you're willing to do this, how can I trust you not to share the information from the paper? How can I trust that you will respect the confidentiality of the review process? How can I trust you, period?
I get that you're excited to receive your first review invitation, I was too! And I shared the fact that I had been asked to review a paper with my friends. I did not share a confidential email though! So go ahead and share the fact that you have been asked to review. This is an important milestone and you should absolutely be proud of it! But don't ruin it by sharing the email, or anything else that can be used to guess who the reviewer of a paper may have been.
If you share the email, the best case scenario is that you will be perceived as immature and childish, and the worst case scenario is that you will be seen as someone who cannot be trusted.

As others have said, do not include anything other than the journal's name.
But if I may offer a - perhaps somewhat controversial - opinion, depending on your field and personality: It's okay and even expected to list this on your resume and platforms like Publons. However, I personally would refrain from posting this on social media. Being a reviewer is a fairly common and standard thing to do as part of your job. Being overly excited about this in public could make you look like a newbie in some people's eyes (which you probably are ;-) ), and you will have to decide whether that hurts your reputation more than it helps. Like a teacher going "Wohoo, look at me, I have just graded my first homework! Aren't I great!" Yes, it is an achievement, but one that is expected in your line of work. I personally appreciate a little humility and understatement in academia, and I ain't no old seasoned academic either. But that's just my five cents...
Also, keep in mind that announcing this around the time you actually do the review, it might telegraph to the authors who you are, especially if this is a smaller, more specialized journal. There are a few people who might retaliate if they don't like your peer review, either by shutting down one of your papers in the future or interfering with your career, especially if they are more established than you. It is not too common, but more common than one might expect among supposedly rational and objective folk.

A possible way of understanding better whether this is something to tweet about, and in which way you might want to do that, is to try to twitter search function, to see if other people post about this, and if yes, in which way.
With a quick search, I found someone posting that thay got invited to review a paper on field X, and they are proud that they are being considered an expert on X by the editor. But I did not find anyone tweeting either about the journal or even sharing more things about the review request.

The journal would know better than random people on the internet what they're comfortable being shared. Send them an email saying that you'd like to share this on social media, and ask them what details they consider confidential and what they're comfortable being public knowledge.

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


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What is the best way to approach professors in China about the possibility of an internship (as an unfunded, international student)?
I live in an Asian country (not China) and completed my master's in Math in June 2020. I wanted to do a PhD in math, but didn't apply in China for session 2022 due to some reasons. I do not believe doing a PhD in my country is a good option due to severe racism and corruption and related issues.
I have been thinking of writing to professors in universities in China whose interests align with mine to discuss the possibility of an internship. This would help me get my foot in the door, and hopefully strengthen my PhD application. However, I don't have funding.
My thought was to send an e-mail that explained my situation in the Statement of Purpose (including past hardships, issues in my country) along with  providing my CV and master's thesis
Is this the best way to approach professors in China about the possibility of an internship? Is this likely to work out (assuming I am qualified, etc.)?
Edit 1: I don't speak chinese

Chinese universities are not very well regarded for PhDs in pure math.  There isn't a culture of truly innovative work.  Are you sure you can't do better?

@AlexanderWoo I think I can , but I have been so much victim of racism and harassment by my own thesis advisor and referees of LOR that my life is hanging to a straw.

I'm from China and a mathematician, so I think I know the game quite well. It should be possible to do informal unpaid internships; just send them an email. I know a few people who have done these. There are no paid opportunities though. However, there are some problems and serious practical difficulties, so I urge you to reconsider:

Chinese universities are not very well regarded in pure math, so I don't know if getting a PhD in math from a Chinese university is a good path to go down (in fact, if you want a faculty job, most Chinese math departments that are even moderately prestigious want only foreign PhDs! of course there are always outliers, but those are not the norm). If you want to apply for a PhD in a different country, I'm afraid this will help little;

visa policy. Currently China only allow select classes of foreigners to enter, and I'm afraid an unpaid internship wouldn't allow you to apply for a proper visa that allows you in. Normally you'd just get a tourist visa, but no tourists are allowed in currently. No one knows when this would change;

language barrier. Most Chinese universities work in Chinese and Chinese only, and there is no hope of attending seminars, etc., if you don't speak Chinese. You will also have lots of problems living;

trouble finding an advisor. This is actually an extension of 1: some areas (like PDE and geometric analysis) are way too over-represented in the Chinese math community, while many areas (e.g. abstract algebraic topology) are very under-represented. You might have some trouble finding an appropriate advisor. Also, if you intend to work with a big-name professor, chances are they're going to ignore your email. Only a connection would get you in in that case; however, if you have that kind of connections, you might as well consider another country.

Thank you very much for your answer!

First of all, my native language is Chinese. I have never heard of funded internship in Math in China. I am not sure if it exists. Even if it does, I think it's rare.

assuming I am qualified

You assume you are qualified. May I ask you a question: do you speak Mandarin Chinese?
I think if there is some funded internship in Math in China, you have almost zero chance getting it if you don't speak Chinese. I think almost no one would hire an intern who does not speak their local language, not to mention funding. If you apply for PhD or postdoc, that would be a different story.
However, if you are exceptionally excellent and if you happen to know someone who can get you in touch with some big math prof in China, you still have some chance. In that case, you don't need to cold e-mail. A phone call will do it.

No, I don't speak chinese.


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Doing an internship (possibly research-oriented) during a postdoc
I'm wondering what's the general approach to doing an internship as a postdoc?
If you have your own funding as a postdoc and are just interested in doing a short internship in industry (12 weeks) to see what it's like, are there any issues with this? What is the best approach to tell your PI?
Any other issues I haven't thought of?
Thanks!

If it's not related to the postdoc, I would be surprised that you can do it while being employed. The logical thing is to do it before or after the postdoc, or if possible to take a sabbatical from the postdoc (i.e. a pause in the contract).

Also the only "reputable source" which could provide an answer is the HR at your institution, because it depends on your work contract.

As post-doc you are typically an employee of some research institution (which is often also the case when having "your own money"). This poses some duties on you. E.g., you typically cannot work at a competing institution (whether industry or public research) unless your employer allows this. Where I am (Germany), there are also limits on working hours per day/week that limit how many hours you could work in industry in parallel to your usual employment contract - even if the business is completely different from your employer's (in which case your employer must approve of the additional job/internship).
The consequence of this is that you need to talk to your institution about the plan and get approval for this.
If your funding is in the form of a scholarship without an intermediate employer, the terms likely require you to get approval from your funding agency.
The details (e.g. whether you need to take time off) are then negotiated between you and your employer or funding agency.
I.e., you negotiate an additional contract that says you can do this internship.

As one example of a context where this is actually encouraged, and done during working hours:
EU COST Actions fund short-term scientific missions where someone (e.g. a post-doc) from one institution visits another institution, e.g. an industry partner.
(Must meet some other criteria, though. E.g., being cross-borders and being in line with the scientific goals of the COST Action)

I would consider what you wanted to get out of working for free when you have qualifications that would enable proper, paid work. I understand that your postdoc funding might cover this, but that needs to be cleared by your PI, funder and university, etc. I would consider looking into a MITACs scholarships (Canadian, but perhaps there are partner/parallel schemes elsewhere): these are specifically aimed at linking up postdoc research with industry applications.

The general approach would be to begin with a conversation with your PI. If you have your own funding as a postdoc, you generally have more flexibility than if you were paid through say, a grant by your PI. But every lab/PI has a different culture.
The main challenge is that fundamentally you and your PI may have conflicting interests. You desire the internship presumably to build up your skillset and/or network, whereas your PI has time deadlines for experiments and papers that may not allow for you to commit to an internship. If you have a plan for how you can conduct your internship while providing the least disruption possible to the timeline of the lab's goals, you will likely gain more support from your PI. Think about if your lab has any critical experiments, conferences, or field work and if you could time your internship around that.
Hopefully a PI would be supportive of an internship opportunity as long as it doesn't detract from your research productivity. I would go into the meeting with a clear plan of how you will ensure your work stays on track and how you will maintain communication with the lab in your absence. Would you potentially be learning new skills you could bring back to the lab to teach the PI or students? Might the company you intern at have an interest in funding some of your work in the future? If so, that could be a potential benefit you bring to the conversation with your PI.

As long as it it wouldn't interfere with your postdoc duties or deadlines then I can't see any reason why it would be a problem. I undertook additional work, like internships, during two of my postdocs (in marine science) and it greatly benefited my postdoc research because I gained additional skills and learnt to look at my academic research from a different angle. After finding out about an opportunity, I would discuss it with my PI and how it would benefit my career and even help with my postdoc research. They were always supportive of this as long as it was timed outside field work or didn't distract too much from my writing.

It would be a full time internship though (i.e. 40 hrs/week). I would definitely still try to work on research though in addition, e.g. 10-30 hours / week, so the progress would just be a bit slower as a result.


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Should someone with a PhD be called "Doctor"?
Should someone who holds a PhD be called Doctor? Should they not be refered to as Mr./Ms. J.Doe, PhD occupation title? It seems wrong to put a "Doctorate" designation in front of someones name who holds a higher degree. If a person held both degrees, Dr. J Doe (occupation) PhD might be appropriate, but otherwise, I think each, individually, by themselves should hold prominence. Doctor of this ,PhD of that. Does this sound correct?

PhD is an abbreviation. I suggest you look up what it is an abbreviation of.


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PhD student pressured to fabricate data due to bad experiment design
Summary: It took me 3 years to analyze data from one sample (n=1) whereas correct way to perform experiment would be with n>=3. Now my job and funding are in question, since I don't have more time. My supervisor pressures me to fabricate data.
I want to gather all the missing data but that will take another 3 years for same experiment; resulting in failure to timely submit internal evaluation reports, as well as termination of any fellowship. My supervisors are secretly suggesting me to somehow put some imaginary values in at this point, but that feels heartbreaking. So what is the best thing I can do now?
I am a Ph.D. candidate in soil sciences at a small academic university, where I have to do assays about different soil borne microbes such as an antibiotic assay, secondary metabolite, synergy etc. Now before starting my research, I was told to just ask the lab seniors and carry out the experiments. However, I did not have a simple and crisp understanding of biostatistics, and I was not told about what kind of statistics is applicable for my samples. I was tedious about the preparation of chemical reagents and buffers and I kept digging for historically important original papers that lack enough statistical analyses.But I missed that in the future, I will be required to submit statistical analyses that are up to the mark of current trends. I just kept doing simple experiments as shown in previous degree courses, without statistical repeats.
Honestly at this point, I am totally depressed. People all around me are pressuring me that if I do not fill up my dataset with imaginary data, my paper will not be accepted to any journal.
So what should I do in this scenario? I am extremely, severely depressed and go to therapy.
Update to answer questions asked in the comments:

Locale: Some Asian country.

Journals we choose: Very low impact, paid, costly. They prefer jargon rich language instead of too original language that describes how we reach to conclusion. If I write about a too detailed explanation, it would be double checked by my seniors, and at 'safest', they would be backspaced.

Impact of reporting? From word of mouth, perhaps many other people at respectable positions here do (and did at past) this quite casually, and rivalry among them is intense. Except this incident, my supervisors were humanitarian towards me and many other people. Now at this point if I am selected by a rival employer (although that isn't going to happen without the explicit consent of present supervisors), there is no way the rival employers are going to trust a traitor.

People are bloodthirsty for job and career (than actually learning), and they are immoral up to the point of stealing my personal stuff, hiding equipment, tearing journal pages to wrap glasswares, mouth pipetting broths risking own life. Period. Nobody is going to witness me. Nobody is going to get my back. Everybody will disagree with me.

I am under such a point where a PhD dropout seems more respectable than a finished PhD.
Update: Based on few more comments and answers:

Yes I have considered of personal safety - I took a wait and watch strategy for a while.

No, we don't have a statistics office. We have a stat department though, collaborating them might require consent from our department. I will consider this option. Calling the quality checking office is going to instantly identify me, and retaliation.

In several other university departments where I studied at past, I have collected a lot of conflicts, again, without written evidence. It is not possible to keep the mobile recorder 24 hour on. Whatever, they are not going to issue me any recommendation letters. For sure.

it is unlikely that I will zoom call or network. I have a very little motivation left. I want to choose some rather low paying career such as providing private tuition to children or to teach drawing or guitar or crafting, or to start a career as an animator. This will provide me more creativity and content. I would not require constantly evaluate the moods and intents of others. In future if a new system appears where people spontaneously contribute to research, maybe I will consider that in old age. I am happy with little, and that is enough for me.

I would suggest the scientific community to develop some other technique to prevent or detect  this type of situations. Make it mandatory to submit all photographic/ videographic evidence for each and every claim. Make it mandatory to submit each mathematical details, procedures to making mixtures, etc. Also publishing behavior can say a lot. Especially a prolific amount of publication may be a red flag for predatory behaviour.

System needs a lot other change. Do not mandate Ph. D. for jobs where Ph. D. level skills is not necessary. Also make an outlet for partly incomplete informations to be published, with intellectual properties associated to the students; and unlike peer review by a few referees, let it be reviewed by entire world. let them make comments and collaborations.

Update:

I talked to superviser  and made it absolutely clear that under no circumstane I will execute that suggestion. They agrees to it, sort of. They tells me to focus on "actual work" of pouring and mixing all those, than neatpicking too much with all those theoretical stuff.

I am seeing this type of  misconduct as more of a systemic fault than individual fault, because lot of people talk about 'putting some values' quite casually and are  achievement-thirsty. I maintain a distance with this kind of people because every time they makes me feel ghosted, ignored, ashamed of not completing the curricula 'as intended', or blameshifts when I try to do anything new.

Looks like the Ph.D. memes on social media indeed reflects a lot of unreported truth. Recently I have found a meme regarding n=1 back from 2019 that also indicates somebody else also made a similar blunder.

I have also heard, some of our very reputable professors said the ethics curriculum is very "boring"... that reflects they don't know to teach it an insightful way.

I met a very senior scholar (who is now in no means doing research or academic job though) said me once that there is credit in filling up with data because it takes "knowing the work better than others" so that "only naive people are caught".

Small update regarding demographics: Our former state education minister, currently one of the supreme power, just caught by detectives for laundering money worth approx 300000 USD (at least) while investigating a huge school teacher recruitment petitions and protests. A similar university like us, known to award him a fake Ph. D. degree as well other professors are hiding their opinion about this education minister's Ph. D. guide, and the responsibility is being pushed solely towards his guide. But we all know the rapport and networking among all those professors. This is the level of corruption in the authority to whom we are expected to "report" something.

As well please let me know the consequences of this kind of misconduct

Echoing the first two answers, faking data is the absolute worst possible thing you can do. It is the path to career suicide. It will possibly come out and maybe at the worst possible time.

And, for the record, you seem to have been given bad (really really bad) advice for a long time.

@Buffy I am kind of dumb person who is easily gullible.

I'm going to doubt that. I once had a poor advisor and couldn't see it for a long time (until I escaped) for lack of experience.

@Buffy indeed I have a lot of dreams, and some degree or job wasnt my motivation to come into phd. however I couldnt anticipate a lot of things. Which definitely is my shortsightedness

You are, presumably, a free man or woman with moral agency of your own. You've ended up in an unpleasant situation through what seems to be the fault of your supervisors, but note that whatever you do in this situation will be your own decision and you will not be able to blame it at some later point on your "shortsightedness" or "gullibility" or someone else pressuring you into it.

It seems to me that the real issue here is with your supervisors and their sponsors. Your supervisors seem to be in need to comply with them and not the scientific community or their field. You might feel against a wall here, but perhaps backing up and starting over anywhere else is the best possible outcome.

As well please let me know the consequences of this kind of misconduct Two words: Elisabeth Bik

Can you tell us your country location?

@DanielR.Collins Some Asian country.

Don't fabricate data; 2. Keep all the evidence that your advisor and other senior members who force or imply you that you should fake data!

@SimonCrase That was very eye-opening, much appreciated.

@FrustratedBird Don't beat yourself up for being "gullible". PhD students should be able to trust their supervisors. This is a tough situation you're in, but it's not your fault that somebody else lacks ethics.

Never fabricate data under any circumstances. That is the worst form of academic dishonesty there is, and is unforgivable. The scientific process depends on our ability to build on the work of others, and we can't do that if we can't reasonably trust that work. (Honest mistakes happen, as do poor studies. But if a flawed study is written up honestly, we can judge how much we should trust the results based on the experiments described. We can't do that if the paper contains lies.)

Report your supervisors immediately. They are terrible people and need to be removed from the scientific community as soon as possible to limit the damage they can do in the future and begin mitigating the damage they've already done. Possible people you could report to include the department chair and the editors of any journals they've published in. Try to get written evidence of the suggestion first, but if you can't, you should still warn the chair so people can keep a closer eye on them in the future. The scientific community is being actively harmed as long as they remain within it.

It sucks that you've found yourself in this situation.
If you don't know the chair well, you might want to talk to other professors who you trust (preferably tenured) to get some help dealing with this. Having someone with real clout backing you up could make it a lot easier. One good aspect to come of this: if you successfully uncover people who are fabricating results, you will have made a positive contribution to science by having done so, and will earn the respect of anyone whose respect is worth having.

-1: While I fully agree that fabricating data and selling it as genuine is the worst possible approach, the second part of this answer may seriously backfire. Chances are good that the advisor has a better connection to the department chair than the OP. Also, sending seemingly random emails to journals that their articles are fake is something the department chair certainly won't like either and will escalate. Especially when done either before or in parallel to talking to them.
The other side of the story will sound like: The OP cannot finish their PhD in time, now they are panicking.

@VoodooCode It might backfire. It still needs to be done if we want to avoid having fabricated results in the literature.  The emails to editors can be done anonymously, if the OP chooses.  It probably isn't practical to inform the chair anonymously, but the only way the chair can hear about this and not be enraged that people in their department would suggest such a thing is if the chair is just as unprincipled as the supervisors. And on the off chance that the department is that rotten, the OP's PhD is probably worthless no matter what they do.

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

This sounds more the fault of your advisors than yours for not equipping you with the supervision you need to perform your experiments up to standards.
Do not under any circumstances falsify or misrepresent simulated data as actual data.
Your advisors should help you come up with a solution for moving forward, with the understanding that their own lack of supervision has caused this problem. If their suggestion is to falsify data, well...that tells you everything about their ethics. I would feel that a PhD earned working with those people is worth the same amount as that fake data is. Hopefully you have misunderstood and this is not what they are suggesting. If they are suggesting this, then I have to say they have much more to lose than you do, and if you have documentation of this suggestion and this documentation is shared with the university administration or the public, those supervisors are going to be in quite a lot of trouble.
From a statistical perspective, I do not think the scenario as you describe is as fatal as you make it sound. There may be a standard in the field that samples are collected in triplicate, but nothing about statistics prevents you from analyzing data that are not taken in triplicate. It may be that you do not have enough samples to perform a sufficiently powered null hypothesis test, but performing triplicate sampling doesn't actually give you more samples, it just refines your estimates a bit. I assume you have more than just 1 sample per group total, though; if not, then it seems very unlikely that even 3 would be enough.
Not every project in soil science requires 3 years to complete. Do a version of your investigation that can be done in 1 year. Work with your advisors to figure out what this would look like. Use the work you've already done to make this an efficient 1 year. It's normal in science to have to throw away years of work; often, the time elapsed is about learning the methods and once you know what you're doing it can be performed quickly.

Thank you and I cannot upvote due to a technical glitch. Is there journals that accepts data without statistical repeats??

@FrustratedBird Can you clarify how many total samples you have, and how many different groups/conditions?

Not only the administrators but a lot of "friends" are suggesting to handle the situation with made up data and that is as clear as daylight. It breaks my natural curiosity.

I wont tell actual number of samples here but they are within 10. Now I require to make bar graphs annova students-t etc

Thank you so much for giving me a 'scientific' answer at this dead end situation

I dont have any documentation of their suggestion.

Consult with someone that has a good handle on statistics that you can share your situation with, and get their advice. Based on what you've shared here, I can't suggest anything specific for your next steps. Get advice in writing from your advisor about what you should do next.

Thanks. Advisors say not to talk further on this matter in any form. Only thing I can do is to repeat each and every experiments that will consume another 2 or 3 year. That will mess up my internal assessment and tenure.

Even after I consult a statistics person the only way I have left is to repeat. Maybe 10 repeats. maybe 100 repeats. But repeat is the only way

@FrustratedBird Not every project in soil science requires 3 years to complete. Do a version of your investigation that can be done in 1 year. Work with your advisors to figure out what this would look like. Use the work you've already done to make this an efficient 1 year. It's normal in science to have to throw away years of work; often, the time elapsed is about learning the methods and once you know what you're doing it can be performed quickly.

Yes now I can perform things more quickly

@BryanKrause OP's issue is basically a variant of the common issue described in Replicate or lie. I agree with Prof. Prosser: what OP describes is indeed a fatal issue from a scientific perspective. OP can still fix this but the fundamental issue is as serious a scientific issue as it gets.

@FrustratedBird I doubt there are journals that have number of samples as a submission criteria. What would matter is whether your paper makes a meaningful contribution to the field of study, etc. It could be possible to make a meaningful contribution with your 1 sample experiment - smaller than the contribution with repeated samples, but still meaningful - or it could not. I don't know - I'm not you or your advisor. Just giving you some hope.

@Roland That makes sense as far as the type of error this could be... My assumption that this could be fixed is based on thinking three samples isn't really sufficient to have a good handle on variance, so if three would have been okay then you can do something with one, for example comparing groups of sites rather than individuals. I may of course be wrong, though, not knowing the specific details or field. I'd say with 3 samples using a prior estimate of variance from other data may be just as good (as suggested by Sebastian).

@FrustratedBird If you make up data, you're essentially contravening the entire point of being a scientist. Not only would you be lying for personal gain, you'd also be hurting human knowledge as well, because it'll take time for people to realize that your data is nonsense. And it won't be pleasant for you when they do.

Following up on @BrianKrause 's excellent answer.
Do not present fake data as real.
You might be able to write something useful and interesting with the data you have along with several different invented or simulated data sets that you properly identify as such. Can you discuss the consequences for your work under different assumptions about what the data you do not have might show?
Your advisors might (should?) accept this kind of compromise as an apology to you for failing to instruct you properly from the start.

Thank you very much. I want some more information about consequences of imaginary data and if it is possible to spot these data from real one.

@FrustratedBird Yes, it's possible. No, you shouldn't try to defeat those methods. Just stop even considering it. Every person who has discussed faking data with you will know your data is fake and any one of them can turn at you at any time for any perceived slight.

Thank you so much for encouraging me to keep sanctity of my work. I have too many dreams and at this moment i feel like end of world

There was the infamous fake study about Ivermectin vs. Covid, where someone did a purely statistical analysis of the supposed study and was able to prove that a small dataset was duplicated several times. And once that this statistical fraud was found, they looked at the original data closely and found they were also faked; that's something that wouldn't happen to you.

I'm also going to point out that if it took 3 years to do the experiment, then assuming you're researching something useful then the data is massively valuable and you need to get it written up. Someone else can always spend another 3 years adding to the sample size (or possibly, if you have learnt things which could make it faster and you document them, less time than that), but your "initial" results are still valuable. Just make sure you document the experiment such that its repeatable.

One possibility: Developing a method to measure that particular kind of soil samples may be publishable as method paper, where the emphasis is on the (wet lab) method developed to be applicable to, say, a particular type of soil, rather than on finding out properties of the particular soil. In some cases, I'd say that one can even publish on how to implement (= get working) a particular, new method in another lab. (FWIW, I'm analytical chemist)

I will answer this from a statistical viewpoint and omit any criticism of your supervisors.
You have n=1 but claim to need n=3.
I assume this is a consequence of some statistical tool, which simply cannot be used at all for n=1.
I further assume this is due to a frequentistic approach in this tool, i.e. parameters found by this tool are direct functions of the data.
With this default approach, it would be indeed impossible to come to statistical conclusions, but by altering your approach, we can remove this constraint.
Specifically, we move from a frequentistic to a bayesian approach of your statistical analysis.
For this, we place meaningful prior distributions on each parameter in your statistical analysis.
This makes it possible to infer solutions from n=1.
Your solutions are then represented as a posterior distribution, which represents the uncertainty in each parameter.
This uncertainty will be high for n=1, assuming your prior distribution is broad enough, but the solutions are perfectly valid from a statistical viewpoint.
There are two drawbacks: First, the mathematics can be difficult. It might take you a few weeks or even months to understand this approach and implement it correctly (but this should be better than 3 more years of experiments).
Second, picking decent prior distributions can be difficult. By definition, you can pick prior distributions in a way such your solutions will tell whatever you want. This is a bad approach and people will criticize this.
Instead, you have to find 'what-makes-sense' in your application and what other people can agree on. This can be very tough, but, as a domain expert, you are in a good position to find such priors.
Good luck!

Fellow statistician here. I upvoted your answer, but to be honest, either $n=1$ or $n=3$ sounds like a horrendously too small sample size. Yes, one can possibly salvage something using a Bayesian analysis. Nevertheless, it would have been useful to consult with a statistician before the experiment was even planned. I know, that is not useful at this point in time... but it may help others in the future. Recall R. A. Fisher's quote about consulting the statistician after the experiment.

@StephanKolassa yes, you are absolutely right. My answer is made on the premise of fully accepting the described circumstances.

I think that this answer is the best that can be salvaged from the existing sample data. And for God's sake find someone outside the influence of your current advisers to advise you on this statistical approach. Obviously there needs to be a recommendation in your final write-up for a greater number of samples. No only for reasons of confidence in the final estimates but also to evaluate the efficacy of your Bayesian analysis of singular samples.

@StephanKolassa: FWIW, in a comment to Bryan's answer, OP writes, "I wont tell actual number of samples here but they are within 10. Now I require to make bar graphs annova students-t etc.". So I read that as "1 group with ~10 individual samples". Given that inferences for a mean (like student's t-test) usually recommend a minimum size of around 30, maybe advisers are saying "you should have 3 groups of that size". (And possibly OP's first language is non-English.)

@Daniel R. Collins  If that's what he's got, he'll be fine. I think Student-t for population mean will run with reasonable precision with sample size of ~ 5.  n = 30 is the textbook cut-off for people want to apply Normal stats to the sample mean for "well-behaved" underlying population distributions. But OP can estimate pop variance using Chi-squared distribution if the population is distributed with reasonable "Normality". Anyway he'll have to get pro advice on all this stuff as he reads up on it all.

@Trunk: FWIW, my textbooks warn about using even the z-test (which assumes population variance is known exactly) with a sample less than 15, unless the variable is known to be "very close" to normal.

@Daniel R. Collins  Yes, n can vary a lot with skewness. The correct n value can be simulated for a variety of underlying distributions in tools like Matlab, Mathematica and Maple. Yet it's clear from previous comments that z-tests are not on here: t-tests it has to be. But OP can get more precise guidance on all this from his university's statistics advice center.

@StephanKolassa $n=1$ is a small sample size, but when data collection is very expensive, it may be all we have to work with.

I also usually tell everyone that they need larger sample size to draw the conclusions they'd like to draw. However, there are case studies, and many projects can never acquire more than n = 1 (well, maybe 2) harvest season or locations. Plus, outside the stats discussed here, e.g. developing a wet-lab method to measure something (particular soil) can also be research worth a publication or an entire thesis. In some cases, even getting a particular method to work reliably in another lab may be worth a publication.

The experience you gained in this 3 years is invaluable and it is written nowhere that everybody has to finish their PhD in 3 years. I am not saying this to downplay you, but jus to state the obvious: unrealistic expectations can destroy the mental wellbeing of a person and it will lead to unethical practices (sorry for stating the obvious, and I know that most likely in your culture all these words are just empty words ... they are empty words even in many of the progressive, western mighty countries).

My supervisors are secretly suggesting me to somehow put some
imaginary values in at this point

You have to clearly stand your ground. Explicitly tell your supervisor that you will never produce values that were not measured in the lab. Your supervisor must provide you funding to repeat the experiments. This means fundings for 3 additional years must be secured.
Since this is going to be unlikely, that request must be your "ice-breaker" to fight to get funds for at least 1 year and start the needed sampling for statistical repeatability.
Additionally, you are blocked with your supervisor, but you must defend your integrity: data cannot be faked (not even at a Bachelor degree level). You have to fight because he has to find a way for you to publish, or at least to defend your thesis ("how sure are you about your results?" "our interpretation is supported by the experiments performed in the previous years, experiments are being repeated and when results will be available we will publish in an international peer-reviewed paper).
tl;dr
You have a crappy supervisor. Both at the intellectual and moral level. It is not your fault. Either you win their support and bring this PhD to an end, or you have to start it again in a different institution/country. With your experience, re-starting a PhD will be an experience similar to half a post-doc.
No person is equal to the other, but no one will judge you because it took you 3 years at an institution and 3 years at a different one to complete your PhD.

In my country, there are multiple ways where one can do a PhD without receiving funding from the supervisor, and there are circumstances in which it would be legally impossible for supervisors to provide funding beyond a particular point. Without knowing anything about the system in which the OP is working, I think it's not helpful to claim that the supervisor "must provide" funds for three additional years (and while I'm at it: the parenthetical at the end of the first paragraph makes assumptions about the OP's culture which I find a bit... problematic to be honest).

@Schmuddi it is not an assumption: unless you cannot properly read OP post, it is obvious OP is pursuing a PhD in a non-western country. For such cases, even in your unnamed german-speaking country a supervisor can find the money, maybe formally transferring you to a research institute nearby outide of the university and the like.

I think I can properly read OP post, thank you very much. I don't think that this subtle ad hominem was very productive for this conversation, so let's be blunt: You claim that you have enough information to be certain that the OP comes from a culture in which talking about unethical practices as the consequence of unrealistic expectations is "just empty words". I consider this claim presumptuous and unacceptable for academic discourse.

@Schmuddi please read the update from OP. And please wake up, there is an horrible world outside the western world (and in the western world it is already rather ugly, see famous scandals in the US, such as Marc Hauser, wihtout forgetting the large hidden numbers, as per in the Netherlands https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02035-2 where aggressive practices imported from abroad conflates with local bad practices...)

"And please wake up". You're a funny person indeed.

Quite obviously, most people suggesting answers in this thread are coming from the western culture and severely underestimate the consequences for you in the case they report their advisor at the point when their career is going through such a rough moment.
Fighting and reporting advisors could be postponed until you are in a safer position. I would suggest this path only if you had enough material for the defense, and they were clearly failing you, which apparently is not the case. Also, in such a situation you would be unlikely to get a reference letter.

You should 100% go to therapy independently of how the story evolves. Therapy is a resource, it's a new empty room in your house where you can relax, get support, and maybe even figure out what to do with the rest of your house. Also keep seeking for support besides therapy. Asking a question here was a right step.

Honestly ask yourself whether you are still interested in pursuing career in science. If not, there is no point in fighting for PhD. And there is absolutely nothing wrong about such a choice. Do whatever makes you happy, self-content, etc. Taking a break could also be an option.

In what follows I will assume that you want to stay in academia.

— What do all great scientists have in common?
— They all had a great advisor.
You advisors are clearly trash, from both scientific and humane perspective, and I can hardly imagine that you will benefit from interacting with them.

If I could give just one piece of advice to young scholars, it would be "find an advisor who is a decent human, i.e. the one caring about his students". How is this applicable to your situation? One option I can suggest would be restarting / transferring to a different PhD program after you find a new advisor. I know people who did this after 2-3 years of PhD, I did this myself after 5 years, and I have never regretted it.

I don't know if you have any circumstances completely eliminating such an option, so I will assume that you would consider it.

Advisor search process tuned to your case:

Look up people in your field and find those whose ex students have nice careers, ideally in universities of higher rank than where they did PhD.
Once you have a shortlist, contact them directly, asking for a zoom talk asap. You need to explain your whole situation and see if they may be interested in you.
Try to talk to professor's current students.

At this point, you may feel like you are a loser carrying the burden of bad experience. **But you are also a tough one!

You have quite a lot of independent (with little support from you advisors) research experience;
You have more knowledge than a fresh PhD candidate;
You are clearly passionate about your science, if you are willing to take the risk of devoting to it more of your lifetime after what happened before.

Who would not want to get such a PhD student???

+n! for wonderful insight into the situation and really good advice. This too shall pass, and it will make a wonderful story to tell some day.

Under no circumstances should you submit fake data. You have data that is useful, that took a long time to collect, and even if your methods were not perfect, you wouldn't want to throw it away.
You could try to learn exactly how bad having one repeat instead of three repeats is. Add this information to your paper. It will likely improve how your data is viewed (you may be able to show that your data is not perfect but still useful) and that information on its own is valuable as well.

Comment: Sorry, I don't have enough points to post a comment. But I'd like to suggest that you should definitely get and read this book...
"Stealing Into Print:   Fraud, Plagiarism, and Misconduct in Scientific Publishing"
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520205130/stealing-into-print
where you'll see that the two most common (among many other) unethical academic publishing practices are (1)fabrication and/or falsification of data, and (2)plagiarism. It also goes into several hundred pages of detail about the issues troubling you. But my (somewhat dim) recollection of that material is that it won't really resolve these issues for you. However, I hope that maybe it'll help you to see that they've been very carefully thought about, documented, and discussed.
P.S. Hmm, I wonder how much of that book is completely honest ( sorry, couldn't resist :)
  E   D   I   T
In reply to the comment "your answer is unclear" below, the op seems torn between the alternatives of (1)behaving in what he feels is an unethical manner, or (2)abandoning his career path. I'm suggesting that, although the book ain't gonna resolve that dilemma for him, it nevertheless provides numerous real-life case studies and in-depth discussions of them. And all that may help the op put his situation in context and in perspective. For some of those cases discussed in the book (as I recall them), it's pretty much similar to the op's "publish or perish" situation. Whereas for others, they're just looking for additional grant money, and don't mind cheating to get it. And lots of cases in some kind of in-between situation. So there's a whole spectrum of ethical-->unethical. And maybe the op can reconcile his "Sophie's Choice" by realizing there are many more people willfully choosing to do many worse things than the choice he's inescapably faced with.

As it’s currently written, your answer is unclear. Please [edit] to add additional details that will help others understand how this addresses the question asked. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.

I've worked in several countries in Asia and I think all the advice about collecting incriminating evidence about your supervisor or reporting them will probably not be helpful in your case. If an issue comes up now or in the future, everyone will work to ensure the survival of a professor and will not think twice about throwing a disposable student under the bus.
All the advice about not ever faking data is gold. You won't be able to live with yourself and if it does come out later there will be a bus waiting for you to get thrown under.
Hang in there; this too shall pass and as @ mavzolej points out you will be stronger and more experienced when it does.
Welcome to Stack Exchange!
There are almost 200 different sites to choose from and one of them is Statistics!
Perhaps this is an opportunity to join a second site and discuss the statistical situation that you are in in more detail. Have a look around that site to see what question asking looks like and then start asking questions.

Is there any way I can say something of significance with n=1?
Is there some subset of the work I can do instead of going all the way to n=3?
Are there alternate analyses I could try? etc.

You can link back to your question here if you want to add some background but mostly just explain your statistical situation.
You can probably find a way to anonymize yourself there (it's a popular site!) and no need to mention soil science or link back here if you don't want to.
Use this as an opportunity to possibly learn some new statistics and to learn more about Stack Exchange - it can really be incredibly helpful in many ways.

apart from 200 stack exchange sites, OP has a stat department in their uni. I would first try to get in touch with PhD/Master students there, unofficially. OP may find out they are all PhD-thirsty students not caring about moral issues to get theri PhDs, or OP may find someone like-minded, who knows, sometimes the luck plays in favour of one's life....

@EarlGrey not every "small academic university" in Asia will have an actual department of statistics and it's often much, much harder to just go knock on someone's door (or the email equivalent) as a stranger and just ask a question compared to western style academy. The implications of saying something like "Hey I need some help a problem I'm working on" to someone you don't already have a research relationship with are usually quite negative while in the west it can be a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

"We have a stat department though" OP's words. Then, I understand the difficulties in talking to other PhDs/researchers/etc. Not easy. If there are no social groups, or at least the understanding that all PhDs are in the same boat (full of ... water), one really need a lot of luck to get in touch with someone supportive. That's why I stated "OP may find" in my words there is a lot of hope and the understanding that a lot of luck is needed, unfortunately.

@EarlGrey  Oh indeed it they do! Yes, excellent advice, all.

Yes, fake data is anathema to the very essence of science.
However, you are a lone crusader with next to no power struggling to survive in a completely corrupted environment. Noble ethics is not going to help you.
"Virtue is its own reward - it has to be!"
You have my most profound commiserations. Maybe it is because I am getting old, but it seems to me that more and more of academia is sinking into this morass of cut-throat careerism and "who gives a f*ck nobody is going to read this closely anyway"

Regarding your PhD keep in mind a PhD is a learning experience. What you have to demonstrate are not results, but the ability to investigate. Demonstrating that something is wrong or explaining you did not get the expected results is a valid thesis. Just make extra emphasis in the state of the art and why your approach won't work.
This will help some other experiment with similar properties to avoid losing 3 years due to poor experiment design.


text:
What is the best way to approach professors in USA and Canada about the possibility of an internship (as an unfunded, international student)?
I live in an Asian country and completed my master's in Math in June 2020. I want to do a PhD in Europe, but I have had some difficulties in finding a suitable position. I do not believe doing a PhD in my country is a good option due to extreme racism and corruption, abuse. These issues had already taken a toll on my mental health and the system is delibrately and very heavily gamed against my group in the country I was born.
I wrote to professors in Europe 3 weeks ago whose interests align with mine to discuss the possibility of an internship. This would had help me get my foot in the door, and hopefully strengthen my PhD application. However, I don't have funding.
I sent an e-mail along with SOP that  explained my situation (including past hardships, issues in my country, etc.) and providing my CV and master's thesis.
Many professors have already replied back negatively due to various reasons and hopes are not high that I will get an internship in Europe.  It was already suggested by answers in this question: What is the best way to approach professors in Europe about the possibility of an internship (as an unfunded, international student)?. But I really want to do an internship. I was also thinking of writing to profs in China but I came to know that they are not much specialized in Pure maths and hence I didn't wrote to them.
A professor of France suggested that I should apply to USA, Canada as this sort of arrangement is more common there and there is no money for internships in France.
Before, writing to  professors in USA and Canada, I wanted to make sure by letting know of your opinion that can such a plan with internship of atleast 2 months and atmost 1 year can materialize in the system in USA and Canada when a student is unfunded?

Is your country part of this program? If so, you can suggest that as a funding source to your contact! https://www.mitacs.ca/en/programs/globalink/globalink-research-internship

@user2705196 I am not an undergraduate.Will I still be eligible? Also, it's for session 2023 not 2022. I am looking for internships for session 2022.

@Kalneol For competitive opportunities sometimes you have to plan ahead. This program seems specific to undergraduate students. I think it is most likely that there are zero positions available that fit your parameters regardless of how you approach anyone.

@BryanKrause  Ok.

Alright, we've done this question for Europe, China, and the US, and gotten the same answer 3 times. Funded internships for foreign students rarely work out. Let's not do this again for additional countries. Instead, I think you need to revisit your constraints. You say that you need (1) an academic position that is (2) fully funded and (3) in a foreign country. I don't know you and can't judge whether getting such a position is realistic. But you've been trying for some time now and not found anything, so I strongly suspect you'll need to compromise at least one of those 3 constraints.

@cag51 Answer  for US and Canada has not been accepted by me.

@Kalneol Please listen to what cag51 is telling you. "Unfortunately due to circumstances I have no other option" -- with a master's degree in math you are likely to have many options, although they might not be what you were hoping for. If you were aiming at an eventual academic position, please keep in mind that that academic job market is rough (and in the US is likely to worsen) and many people who earn PhDs don't find an academic job. I'm very sorry, but I urge you to prepare for the possibility that your present plans won't work out. Best wishes to you.

@academic I understand you people and believe me the people of this site have guided me a lot and I will be always indebited to all of you and in a point in future contribute to it. I put bounty in hope if someone is willing to shed more light on internship situations in these countries.

@academic I put a lot of effort to enrol in PhD, that's why I said that particular line.

I know you desperately want this sort of internship to exist, but adding a bounty isn't going to change the answer that it doesn't. If someone has this money sitting around they're going to use it to fund a PhD student, not to pay someone who isn't a student to do student-like things. This path is certainly not your only option, as others have pointed out, it isn't really an option at all.

It is horribly untrue that such internships do not exist. I am an undergrad, and I am currently doing a research internship in pure math, in Canada, as an international student.

@connected-subgroup Can you please tell me about procedure to apply by writing an answer. I am in a desperate situation.

@connected-subgroup Can you clarify if this internship is at a Canadian university where you are already enrolled on a degree schene?

Recommendations:

Focus on the research only.  Which means drop any story regarding being a victim of prejudice.  That sends all sorts of red flags. In my opinion, the story of your troubles will significantly lower, not improve your chances.
Be very selective about whom you want to work with. Make sure your research proposal is directly related to their research.  Start a dialogue by humbly asking questions about the interface between what they have published and your interests.  If it isn't a good fit, then chances are that you won't find the best experience.
Think long-term, whomever you select as an advisor will have an impact on your entire career.
Carefully craft a research proposal worthy of a PhD thesis.  It doesn't have to be perfect, but the better the research proposal the better the discussions that will follow.
Be humble and ask for feedback on your research proposal.  That will start the discussion and allow you to ascertain the quality of a potential advisor's feedback, which is a measure of how well you will fit into your advisor's research team.
Only after you have a good discussion, should you ask about the possibilities of funding.
Should your contact be unable to fund you, (s)he may be able to recommend another professor to contact.

To summarize: Your initial goal is to open doors.  This means starting discussions that demonstrate the quality of your mind, which will allow you to network into a funding opportunity.

Unfortunately, in the USA or Canada, funded internships in math are rare to nonexistent. I have never heard of any professor hiring for such a role: in my observation, opportunities for short-term funding are rare, specialized, and are limited to applicants who either have a PhD or are currently doing well in a PhD program.
Probably the easiest way to get your foot in the door here is admission to a graduate program. Admissions everywhere are competitive, but some programs are more willing to take chances than others.
Best of luck.

Actually, only a doctoral program is likely to come with funding. Internships in CS might be more possible, but still unlikely since the professor would need external funding or it.

In order to get a visa into the US, you need to show proof that you are not going to be a burden to the country, i.e. have funds to sustain yourself. This requirement is not unique to the US. You also have to show that you are likely to return to your country at the end of your stay.
If you have substantial means in your country, you can qualify on both of them. But any professor dealing with you wants to know about the visa hurdles.
Second, I assume that you do not need funds. Otherwise, no place I know of would invest money into an intern. Academic projects take much longer than the few month of an internship and as someone being there for a ten weeks period, you would have to be trained and talked to, but you would not be productive to justify the efforts. Even if you can pay for your stay and are not a financial burden on the academic group that you are joining, you would be an investment that is not likely to pay off. Somebody might take you on, but this would be an act of charity.
If you approach someone, professors are in fact quite busy. They will not have the time to read lengthy letters, and they already get their fair share of ill-directed requests from someone wanting to join their group. You need to keep your request clear and simple, and you should not go into the details of your tribulations in your home-country. Most professors read newspapers and tend to be better informed than the average citizen of their country. They will either already know about the situation in general or they will not care. Your motives also do not need to be explained at length. However, even if you write a good request letter, do not let your hopes get to high. Helping someone to get into a Ph.D. program elsewhere is not good for the professor and the institution, and regrettably, most people do not look to do good works, though most professors will really not be able to help you.


text:
Is it ethical for lecturers to give marks based on another criteria other than the one they prescribed?
Is it ethical for a lecturer to give all students in their class full marks for a module when they have not assessed the quality of the assessments?
In one class, students were told they would be marked on the quality of their assignments. However, the lecturer ended up giving the class marks based on whether they submitted the assessment or not. The marks for the individual assessments were not given. The lecturer admitted that the quality of the work was not assessed. (They didn't read through any of the submitted assessments)
This leads to my subsequent questions:

In such a situation, should then the mark recieved by students be seen as credit for the assesment or credit for the submission thereof?

What are the implications for the students when proceeding to the next year?

There is no ethical consideration regarding fairness to students as long as no one is disadvantaged by a change in grading. If grading is otherwise competitive in such a course, then it might cause a disadvantage for some, so it isn't correct to make an absolute statement. (And, FWIW, I consider competitive grading to be unethical in itself. That is, students should be graded on their own work, not that of others.)
One issue, however, is that students deserve feedback on their work independent of grades. If that didn't happen then there is a (possibly minor) ethical concern. But the feedback can come in several ways (questions, office hours, ...), so it, again, can't be determined precisely from what is said here.
However, unless there are some extenuating circumstances, the lecturer is failing in their obligations if they didn't look at the work. That is a separate ethical issue, though independent of the issue of fairness to students. But there are situations that arise in which the only fair result is to give everyone full marks or, possibly, omit the exercise from the grading scheme.
There should be no implications for future courses, provided that the students do, in fact, learn from the exercise, independent of assessment.
The question of how to consider it (your #1) is really just a matter of semantics.


text:
Self-plagiarism in coursework?
Suppose somebody is repeating a class, where the assignment topic is the same every year. Is it self-plagiarism if that person is handing in the same or a similar paper, essay, etc.?

When you publish something, you usually transfer copyright to the publisher.  This means you no longer own the right to your work.  If you self-plagiarise, that means you are violating the said copyright.  For assignment, universities have a policy that forbids students from submitting the same work to multiple subjects; it is not a copyright issue.

@VitaminE Copyright law has only a very tangential connection to issues of plagiarism. It is irrelevant in this context.

Welcome to Academia SE. Please only ask multiple questions per question if you expect that the answers will strongly overlap. I reduced your question to the one question that the existing answers address. Also note that some of your questions were not suited for this site on account of lacking detail (what is a plagiarism form?), being too broad (“What are some examples of self-plagiarism?”), or opinion-based (“should some univerities …” – this site is about how academia is, not about discussing how it should be). If you can fix these issues, feel free to ask your other questions separately.

Does this answer your question? Is it considered plagiarism if I use my OWN answers twice

Usually, the reason for repeating a class is failing the previous class. This means you did not learn enough and should do it again. Don't try to get away with the least amount of work possible. but put in the work, even if you need to repeat something, and ace the class this time. This is how you learn - and learning is the entire purpose of attending university.

If you submit something you previously submitted to any previous class, even if it's the same class you're retaking, it is indeed self-plagiarism unless the instructor specifically allows it, which many do.  If it's not in the syllabus, don't assume anything; you'll need to ask.
If you're retaking a class, resubmitting previous work rather than redoing it can be a poor idea. In an intro computer science class I taught at the University of Michigan where we did allow resubmissions, students often did well on projects (especially if they had strong partners) but fell down on the exams, hurting their final grades enough to force them to retake the course before they could continue.  If they merely resubmitted their work from last time, they got no new practice (instead getting only more out of practice) and tended to do worse, not better, the second time.

Second paragraph makes some especially good points. Practice helps you improve in many things.

Fwiw? A new one for me and not something that makes the answer more enlightening

@PeterJansson  Fwiw = for what it's worth.  The second paragraph is offered as advice, not a rule that must be followed.

INETUAA! Just a comment about unnecessary acronyms and abbreviations. Quite interesting that one would require a completely rephrased answer regardiless if the original was correct. Would rephrasing superceed correctness under all circumstances (remembering that this is an answer provided by the same person)? I am far from sure about the issue at hand here.

@PeterJansson Your comment looks so much like English. And yet, I have no idea what it means.

Resubmitting some non-creative tasks like writing simple program that calculates something can be fine, if you fully understand what it's doing, though even then one can want to change or improve some aspects of it. Otherwise, it can be indeed a lazy move, especially if someone retaking course learned new things or improved their skills. Personally, when I had to retake some course, I had different laborants above me or slightly different assignments, but my biggest problem usually was the deadline. Given enough time (esp. when retaking), it's easy to improve it, otherwise IMO it's laziness.

IMHO self-plagiarism would better be called "violating novelty requirements".
Where I am, such requirements are typically spelled out as submitting "own and novel work". E.g., theses contain such a statement.
Course work over here typically has the requirement to be your own work (or that of a specified group), but novelty requirements are less typical where I am (chemistry, Germany, see below for reasons).
E.g., you cannot submit (parts of) your Bachelor thesis in your Master or PhD thesis. Instead, you can cite the previous thesis as state of the art. You can then also build upon this with novel work which will be judged for the current thesis.
Say, you conduct some experiments for your Master thesis. In your PhD thesis, you can cite the Master thesis as source of (some) data, and present a novel analysis of that data. The experiments will then not be considered part of that PhD, but the new data analysis is.

We don't do essays, though, but e.g. reports on the state of the art about some topic, say, CO2-sensors in a course on sensors.
In that context
a) handing in the same report that got you a fail last year is not a sensible strategy,
And btw., we'd usually say that if a teacher hands out the same topic to report on twice to the same student, it's rather the teacher's fault. Or, rather, we'd take this as an indication that instead of asking for an entirely novel report the teacher asks a "revise and resubmit".
Handing out the same topic twice together with a novelty requirement would create an unfair and ambiguous situation:
b) Well-conducted literature searches in consecutive years should yield highly similar content.
A teacher should not pose grade-relevant work for which it is inherently and needlessly difficult to judge whether the formal requirements are met. In the example, next year ask maybe about methane sensors, but not CO2 sensors again, whether same student or not.


text:
Is it collusion?
Is it collusion to discuss your assignment after you and the other party have both submitted it?
A friend of mine and I want to discuss our assignment after we have both submitted it. The assessment is basically answering questions based on our lecturers and we just want to cross and compare but without cheating. Thus talking about it after our assignments have been submitted.
Is this wrong or unethical? Can it be considered collusion?

Do you really mean collusion? This is not a well defined term in the realm of academic misconduct. Could you clarify what exactly you mean, or do you mean is this academic misconduct in general?

No, it wouldn't be collusion unless there are some special circumstances. Collusion would be working together to prepare the assignment papers.
But, it is best to check with the professor on such things. If there is a follow up assignment or the opportunity to re-do the assignment for higher marks, then there might be an issue.
The professor has their own rules, generally, which might be more strict than the general understanding of such things. Check and be sure.


text:
If I publish a pre-print, will it make trouble to submit in a journal?
A certain journal says very explicitly in their submission guideline that -

"This manuscript has not been published/submitted for publication elsewhere including in local languages or conferences".

If the manuscript has been published as preprint; will this journal consider the article for processing?
Additional question: How common or how rare is the practice for a journal to forbid an article if it has a preprint version published somewhere else?

You can ask the journal to clarify if they aren't clear about preprints; publication practices with respect to preprints vary widely by field and are always changing.

Thank you for searching the duplicate. it answers my question. I have been searching this all over internet and getting ambiguous search results.

Probably why you get ambiguous results is because it differs by journal. Definitely worth asking, it takes little effort for the journal to reply "yes we allow preprints" or "no we do not".


text:
Seeking recommendation letter from faculty member you don't know
I asked a chemistry professor if she could provide a reference for a masters program. I took a course with her in Fall 2021 and although I did well in the course I don't know her well and have hardly interacted with her, other than occasionally asking her questions during lectures, office hours or by email. When I contacted her to ask if she could write a recommendation letter she agreed but asked me to write a letter detailing our interactions. What could I write in the letter?

I don't see much you could write. Telling her about your accomplishments or your experience in the course doesn't address what she specifically asked you, to detail your interactions with her. Many students would have worked hard and done well in the course. It's probably better to ask for a reference from a professor you know better.

Your question suggests that she's asking that you write a letter to her giving the information she'll need for the LOR to the masters program; most of what's below is also applicable for a job recommendation. Such a letter should contain:

Tell her what the deadline is and how to submit the letter!
Include your student number or other identifier and your name as you have applied for the program.
Remind her which of her classes you have taken, and when.
How did you distinguish yourself in that class?
How would you
describe yourself? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses?
She is going to have to answer those questions when she writes your
reference, so the more details the better, but these have to be
things she has observed herself.
What are some of your academic and
nonacademic accomplishments that she may not remember?
What makes her
particularly qualified to write a letter for you? That is, why should
the recipient of the letter value it over a letter from someone else?

She might appreciate it if your letter to her could be easily transformed into the LOR.

One very important one missing from the list is what do you want to do next?... a letter writer has to recommend you for something, it's helpful if they know what for. Sure, a masters program, but a letter is going to read better if it's in sync with all your other career goals.


text:
Impact of 'canned' recommendation letter
If a respectable professor writes the same recommendation letter for all students they recommend, especially when it looks like merely a character certificate, i.e. the professor knows the student X, s/he is good, sincere, hardwarking, qualified XYZ; but does not mention any  details of strengths and weaknesses of the student; does it make a bad impression of the recommended student (X)?

Since a candidate might only get to submit 3 LORs, if one is worthless, that can't possibly be as good as 3 strong ones offering actual reasons why they're such a great candidate. So, yes, I think it would hurt, maybe enough to matter, maybe not, depending on the competition. It's important to carefully choose someone you trust.
As an instructor writing an LOR, there's really no excuse for submitting empty drivel.  But if someone's doing that, I think they're an exception.  I think most instructors appreciate that when you agree to write an LOR, you accept responsibility to take it seriously and put some thought into it.
It's just not that hard to write a helpful LOR.  It's okay for the letter to be formulaic (most are, since we do them over and over for so many students) but it has to provide helpful information beyond just the final grade.
Even if all I know about a student is that they were one of 1000 in my intro CS class and they got an A, I can still write a useful LOR explaining what that A means by providing additional objective information, e.g., specifics about the nature and difficulty of the class, the projects, number of lines of code in them, how the student performed, especially class rank, not just final grade.
To go beyond that, I'll ask the student for copies of their transcript, any statement of purpose or other essays they expect to submit, a paragraph or two describing the sort of career they want, and anything else like awards and achievements they'd like me to mention, even if they weren't in my class. If I don't know them well already, I'll suggest they drop by office hours to chat about the future they want.
This allows me to mention those awards or achievements and report that I've talked to the student, describe their interests and plans, and state that I support them.  I'll close by inviting them to contact me if they have questions or would like to discuss my letter, but that's only happened once.

To add to Buffy's good answer: It also depends on the reputation of the professor.  If a Nobel price laureate writes a letter that means something. Since they get so many requests, they will not be able to write something specific for each person, and they usually will not accept many requests.
Sometimes you are required to provide three letters of reference, but you only have two people that can write such a letter. The third one will be a canned one by necessity.
Committees that screen are made up of people that are asked to write letters of recommendation frequently. They will be able to read between the lines and accept that a canned letter is just saying that this appears to be a good student, but they do not know them very well. If you did an undergraduate research project with one professor, that letter will be important.

This probably varies by place. If LoRs are relatively unimportant then such a thing is probably fine. This student isn't an idiot.
But in a place like the US, where LoRs are quite important, such a letter is just noise to the committee. It isn't exactly bad, but it gives no support where support is needed.
I'd suggest not asking people for letters if they are known to behave like this. Find someone who you trust and who will write you a more personalized and positive letter.

+1 this is definitely indicative of callousness of the referee. But does it put any bad impact about the student who carries that letter??

Individuals with their own biases read these things, so who can say. "Damning with faint praise" is a well known, but not universal, phenomenon.