text:
How to politely ask for at least acknowledgement when I help people?
In recent years, as a PhD student in West Africa, I have helped several undergraduate and PhD students who were stuck with some particular problems to the point where they were barely to leave (I can't go into more details for obvious reasons). Sometimes, I had to spend weeks with their particular problems at the expenses of my own work. However, every time one submits his/her Master thesis / publish an article they never include me in acknowledgements but I never told them to do so because I thought that's obvious. Or maybe because I don't like to appear like an arrogant/rude person.
Now, I know this behaviour will never stop. How can I ask for credit whenever I help someone; should I ask him before or after helping him/her?
Some of the PhD student have finished and working as post-docs in Europe. I didn't finish my PhD yet for several reasons: because I have a very toxic advisor. Now I am fighting with huge depression, what next?
Thank you

At this point it's too late to ask for acknowledgements, but it could be worth saying a polite "no" to the next person who asks you for help. Focus on finishing your own PhD from now on.

If you spend weeks helping other people with their problems, you have a problem with setting boundaries. Limit your time of help to 30 minutes per person and week.

In addition to what @lighthousekeeper said: spending weeks on working on someone else's problem warrants co-authorship, not merely an acknowledgement.

Whenever you collaborate with someone on a project, it's good to start an early conversation about authorship and other credit. Nothing has to be especially polite about it: remember that this is someone else asking for a favor from you (even if it's a bit of a coerced favor when your advisor asks you to do it). "No." is a complete sentence.
It's perfectly reasonable to answer with "Yes, I can help you with that, but it will take a lot of effort and I'd expect to work together on the paper and share authorship". If you don't think your effort rises to the level of authorship, you can say similarly "Yes, I can help with that, but please give credit to my effort with an acknowledgement in the manuscript", or afterwards "Here's that analysis you asked for. I don't think this work warrants coauthorship but I would appreciate if you would include an acknowledgement for it." Acknowledgements cost other people almost nothing - it shouldn't require any level of groveling to obtain one, but you do have to make your expectations heard if you want other people to meet them.

You raise several issues beyond the main one.
For depression, see a health professional. It can make a big difference.
For advisor issues, if not resolved, consider finding a better one. It might move you from an impossible path to a possible, if longer, one.
But the larger problem, not just for you but for academia generally is that people aren't adequately taught academic etiquette beyond the bare bones of ethics. Yes, you acknowledge help in a visible way.
I don't have a general solution to this, but you might be able to make a change at your institution by taking some action. One potential way would be to bring the problem to the attention of the administration. One way to make it easy for them is to, along with peers, write up a one page description of responsibilities that can be given to new students, or put on some web page. Utopian that I am, it might have some effect, but at least it moves the conversation from a complaint to a solution. It might be something that advisors could give to new students when the take them on.
But, health care first.

Thank you very much for your valuable answer. Unfortunately in third world countries I can't do anything. I will be fired immediately if I complain.

I had some fear that might be the case. Good luck to you.


text:
How do I refuse to meet again a Department Chair who insists on certain measures due to my non-standard accent causing communication problems?
I speak English with a heavy non standard accent. I'm away from my British university, in a different time zone. No surprise I have to send emails!  In September 2021, my Department Chair — who used to be a barrister — emailed me

In accordance with the complaints you are facing, you must not email any faculty members except my secretary and me, until we have spoken on Zoom to discuss your communication issues.

On Zoom with Chair and secretary, Chair told me he received complaints that many students and staff can't understand my English, I send too many long emails. He asked how I scored so high on the TOEFL.  I replied I'm fully comfortable in English, but admitted my accent is non standard.
Then I found out Chair emailed every department staff about me behind my back  — Chair asked everyone to report long or overabundant emails from me. And the university's Counseling Services  emailed me to offer support with communication disorders. All this unsettled me. Obviously I didn't request or agree these. I emailed Chair to ask if he knew anything. He replied

We notified all  staff members as appropriate, including Counselling Services, of your communication issues and of the steps that you and I agreed to take. It is a gravely serious matter that you have not accepted support from Counselling Services as we agreed. We are now considering the Student Conduct Procedures for you.

As you are not complying with our agreed steps, I must meet with you again. Please book an appointment with my secretary.

I don't want to meet with him or his secretary again, because he's lying and uncivil. His gruff tone  makes me uncomfortable. I replied

I kindly request we correspond just in writing. I am not comfortable speaking or meeting with you. I never agreed to your actions, like contacting Counselling Services and sending mass emails about me to department faculty without my knowledge or consent.

He replied

You are required to meet with me and my secretary. All my actions fully comply with what we agreed. There is no basis for your request to correspond in writing. Failure to meet may result in a referral to the Student Conduct Office, sanctions or disclipinary measures, or execution of the Student Conduct Procedures as I wrote in my previous email.

Now what? How do I refuse him? For privacy, I shall not disclose more detail. But I asked many friends and family to review all my emails. They agree if I'm studying on campus, I would email less because I can talk with people face to face. But they found nothing inappropriate, raunchy, rude, vulgar!  My emails are always polite, professional.

OP, you're a student, right?  Undergrad or postgrad?  Do you have any teaching duties?

Can you give some sense of what kinds of emails you have sent and to whom? For example, are you asking professors that you are taking classes with for advice on the course, or collaborating with students on homework? Or are you sending emails to the entire class or department about matters that aren't directly related to the content of a course?

Please don’t write answers in comments. It bypasses our quality measures by not having voting (both up and down) available on comments, as well as other problems detailed on meta. Comments are for clarifying and improving the question; please don’t use them for other purposes. Existing answers in comments, advice, and other extended discussion has been moved to chat.

There is a point of terminology which perhaps does not affect the substance of the OP's story and question, but which may belong better as a comment here rather than comments on every single answer. AFAIK the terminology "department chair" is not common in UKHE management. "Head of department" or "head of school" are the terms I have usually heard during the last 20+ years.

@YemonChoi In fact, it's so uncommon that it significantly endangers the anonymity of the story.

@YemonChoi or it is the result of an automatic translation ...

Thanks for feedback. No time to reply everyone. But I edited post to add relevant facts and remove irrelevant facts.

Edit: I strongly agree with some comments below that this answer may be the one the OP wanted to hear. While this is the accepted answer that may stay at the top, please read all the edits and the upvoted answers/comments before taking further actions.

There is actually a strong argument for corresponding in writing. Both the chair and yourself understood your previous oral meeting differently: the chair now believes that you both agreed that would have to accept support from the counseling office, and you believe to have never agreed to anything of the sort.
Oral meeting with no written summary may leave misunderstandings even among native speakers. It happens often in both professional and academic settings.

Dear Chair,
Our previous video meeting led to a misunderstanding. I have not previously agreed to these steps, not during our video meeting or at any other time. I am not sure why you would think we both agreed to this.
This misunderstanding during our previous video meeting is the basis for my request to resolve this issue in writing.

Edit: While your request for corresponding in writing regarding this matter appears warranted, I suggest you take any help you can to develop your skills. The counseling office thing does sound like it could help you to improve your accent or to understand the local expectations regarding email format. Counseling by native speakers to help you improve your English skills, for free, sounds like a constructive resource you should use.
Edit 2: You mention that the Chair is lying and uncivil. Nothing that we can read here can confirm this; it could well be a misunderstanding and that he is not lying, and the quotes from the Chair in your questions are not uncivil. I suggest you assume good intentions from the chair in this matter and work with the resources they suggest; it may well be that they want to help you. You won't get much resolved with a confrontational approach.

thanks. "the quotes from the Chair in your questions are not uncivil" don't they appear harsh, rude, or gruff? they do to me.

Please take the Counselling sessions even if you would rather not, they might use it as a legal excuse to make you look bad.

@cmcv They do not appear harsh, rude or gruff. Just stiff/business-like and not willing to see your side perhaps, but nothing unprofessional or anything.

I worry that taking this advice could lead you in to a trap. It is what you want to hear, not what is best/safest in your current situation. Don't assume you can pressure the chair, even if you are "in the right".

@Jeroen I would say it is highly unprofessional for someone without relevant qualifications and/or expertise to diagnose somebody else with a communication disorder and prescribe treatment for it. He may not have used the word "disorder", but prescribing treatment undermines that. Mandatory counselling should be prescribed if a relevant professional judges that it is in the individual's best interest, and it does not look like that is what's happened here.

I think sending an email in writing after every meeting to summarize the way you understood it, is a much better way to achieve what this answer is getting at, than to tell the chair you want to resolve the issue via writing and refuse to meet. If I was the chair and got the email in this answer, I would feel you were being uncooperative and disrespectful, which would only end up making the situation more difficult.

@kaya3 Presumably they were just referred to counseling  services, who will make the actual  determination. Basically, they're asking them to do an intake appointment, which is certainly extreme, but could be appropriate.

@AzorAhai-him- Perhaps, but the chair says OP should have "accepted support" from counselling services, not merely enquired about it. Also, "We notified all staff members [of] the steps that you and I agreed to take" further suggests not only that the chair has told other staff that the OP is to receive counselling, which would be a violation of OP's privacy.

@kaya3 My  point is the chair didn't  diagnose anyone  with anything, they asked them to speak with a counselor. And maybe - "OP has agreed to seek support in resolving issue X" is  not the same as "OP is under treatment for psychiatric condition Y"

There are multiple issues here that I think you need to think more about before you take any action.
First, from a formal point of view, the department chair is your work supervisor (assuming you are considered an employee). A boss telling an employee they need to have a meeting is a directive that normally an employee is required to comply with in most western countries like the US or UK. If you feel “not comfortable” having such a meeting, that’s really your problem and not something that should concern the chair. You may think your request is reasonable, and perhaps it is, but legalistically speaking, you’re probably out of luck, unless perhaps you have some grounds to request an accommodation based on mental health issues. Talk to HR to consult them if that may be the case. The important thing is to recognize that your sense of entitlement about having your request to communicate only in writing met is unwarranted and off-putting.
Second, after reading your question carefully I feel like there are important aspects of this story that you’re not sharing with us. You say that there were “complaints” against you based on your difficult to understand accent and your emails being too long. But the chair’s response is much too harsh to make this believable. He seems to be treating this as a matter involving some kind of misconduct. A strong accent could certainly be a problem but one that would usually be treated with a lot of sympathy and not as if you’ve done something wrong, and an injunction to refrain from any communications with other department members. So, I’m guessing that the complaints might involve other more serious things like harassment or bullying. If that’s the case, the fact that you’re not sharing those details in the question suggest an attitude of denial, which does not bode well for your ability to devise a successful strategy to deal with the situation, or for getting effective advice on this forum.
Third, you straight up accuse your chair of lying. I can’t follow the details sufficiently to determine whether that’s likely to be correct, but for such a serious accusation, my sense is you’re probably jumping to the worst possible conclusion when much more innocent explanations could easily explain what’s going on. Again, that’s not a good attitude to have, and one that is likely to cause you to dig yourself into a deeper and deeper hole if you don’t pause, do some serious rethinking, and correct course.
From a practical point of view, I would advise that you seriously consider either getting a friend with a lot of common sense to give you detailed advice about your situation, or hiring a lawyer.
Anyway, this sounds like an unpleasant business, so best of luck getting it resolved.

There's a lot of good advice here (and I upvoted) but I don't think we can rule out the possibility that the department chair is acting in bad faith here. The chair specifically refers to "the steps that you and I agreed to take", which the OP has no knowledge of, and that phrasing does not suggest generic steps that are laid out in a kind of generic student agreement that applies to all students. The only ways I can make sense of that are (1) the OP is lying about having no knowledge of those steps, (2) the chair is lying, (3) the chair has confused OP with someone else, or (4) OP has ...

... some kind of psychiatric disorder such that he did agree to specific steps but then forgot that he did so. I agree that (2) is rather unlikely, but so are the other options, and it's hard to judge their likelihood relative to each other.

@kaya3 sure. I’m not ruling anything out, just offering some food for thought. I’m guessing the “we agreed to …” stuff is likely due to a simple misunderstanding. Who knows, the chair himself could also have a strong regional accent that even some native British people might have difficulty understanding, etc., leading to confusion about what was agreed to. Or he is indeed lying. Anything’s possible.

@kaya3 "Steps we agreed to" coming from a superior could very well be "Your choices are XYZ, or you will be fired/expelled"; OP is then agreeing to do XYZ if they express they do not want to be fired/expelled. It does not necessarily imply a discussion between peers who have equal say in the matter. It could also refer to agreements that students make as a precondition of being a student.

@kaya3 It's very easy for me to imagine (5) the department chair discussed the counseling appointments in the previous video meeting in a manner he thought would make it obvious to OP that these appointments were required, while the OP didn't realize this. In fact I think that's the likeliest situation based on what we know.

@KevinArlin I suppose that's a possibility, but merely making it obvious they were required is not the same as agreeing it with OP. It would take some very poor communication skills to think OP had explicitly agreed to something without OP even being aware it had been proposed. I'm not sure I agree that it's more likely than the other four possibilities.

I think OP needs to post a sample letter or two that he sent. It's possible for non-native speakers (and actually, natives speakers sometimes) to come across as blunt, berating, accusatorial, or confrontational without meaning to be that. OP seems like they write pretty well, but still there could be examples of just lost-in-translation, either in thought-to-email, or email-to-reader.

@KevinArlin Especially considering that OP comes from a different culture, it's easy for people trying to be delicate to lose their point cross-culturally

This is really no longer about meeting or not meeting. The chair clearly has serious concerns and, if they are not addressed, he seems to be ready to begin the process to have you suspended or dismissed. You really need an advocate on your side here - lawyer, ombudsperson, union representative, someone familiar with the school's disciplinary processes, etc. Bring that person to the meeting (however you end up holding it), and involve them in all further communications with the chair.
It sounds to me like, in the chair's mind, this is more than having an accent or needing to work on writing skills. He's using the sort of language that you'd usually see when someone is sending messages that are so incoherent or troubled that people become concerned about the person's mental health and stability - possibly to the point of thinking that they may be at risk of harming themselves or others, and cannot safely work in the department. The "stop contacting people" sounds like they find your messages not only hard to read, but actually disturbing. The reference to counseling points this way too; "communication issues" sounds like a euphemism.  In such a case, it's to be expected that he might contact other department members to find out if they have had similar experiences with you.
If that's how he sees it, then one meeting with him, whether in person or in writing, is probably not likely to allay those concerns - and avoiding the meeting is going to make him even more concerned.  It might require steps like going to counseling even though you don't want to.  Again, having an advocate seems like the best way to negotiate a solution.  If it's just you and the chair, I think you are just going to continue to butt heads, and that's unlikely to end well for you because he has all the power.
Of course, it is also possible that he just doesn't like you for some unrelated reason (or no reason), and is using the "communication issues" as a pretext to try to have you dismissed.  If that is the case then you really need an advocate if you want to stay in the program.
Involving an advocate or other trusted third party will also let you get an independent opinion on how your messages really look.  If someone you trust also thinks they're disturbing, then maybe you really should seek some help in dealing with whatever is leading to that, be it writing skills or something deeper.  And if a neutral party thinks your emails are just fine, then that will hold more weight with the chair than your own view of them, and even more so if you end up having to appeal to some higher authority.

Why do you think they should have your consent?
Multiple people have complained about being unable to understand you. They're following up on it within the department, to establish whether this is a genuine problem or not. You don't get to say whether they can do this - in fact if you read your department/university's procedures, you'll find that you've already accepted they can do it.
Of course you can withdraw consent at any time - by leaving the university. If you want to stay at the uni, you need to follow their rules which you agreed to.
Why do you not want to do better?
A "non-standard" accent is stopping you from communicating effectively with other people. You've already accepted that. Instead of just saying "we can't work with you", your head of department has reached out to get you help to improve this. That's constructive.
The reason things have now gone bad is that you've refused that help. From their point of view now, this means you must want to be hard to understand. There's no reason other people should have to put up with that.

"If you want to stay at [institution/company/whatever], you need to follow their rules which you agreed to." not universally true. You may have agreed to rules that are invalid.

I agree in general that they do not need consent to take the steps they did. However, attempting to frame it as if you DID provide consent in a prior is where they grossly overstep.

"in fact if you read your department/university's procedures, you'll find that you've already accepted they can do it." That may be true, but the OP quotes the department chair as saying "the steps that you and I agreed to take", which suggests he is not referring to steps mandated by a generic student agreement, but steps which the chair believes (or falsely claims) to have agreed with OP personally.

'you've refused that help. From their point of view now, this means you must want to be hard to understand'  Even if that's true, it might be grounds to stop offering OP any more TA work, but I can't see how it could be grounds to invoke a student conduct procedure.

@DanielHatton The student conduct procedure, from what I can tell of the limited excerpts the OP has given us, comes in because of their reaction to legitimate attempts to help and keep them on the course.

@Graham 'attempts to help and keep them on the course'  If that were the motivation, I'd expect the department chair to talk about poor English in summatively assessed work, not about poor English in e-mails; and about failing grades, not about complaints from students and staff.

Please meet with your Chair and listen. "Communications issues" is a catch-all, indeed a euphemism, for a broad range of things. I don't think this can be about your English competency (which is exemplary, in your post here) but in the content. Your use of "medacious" in your original headline, a ten-dollar word for "lying", suggests a willingness to share accusations. With the reference to the length of your emails and that the Chair feels it appropriate to involve the whole department we need to consider the possibility that you have been sending long accusatorial rants to a long list of recipients. Complaints have reached the Chair from both the recipients and those whom you accuse, and the Chair cannot ignore these, as he is responsible for maintaining a "safe workplace", which today means far more than having a handrail on the stairs.
As an ex-barrister the Chair is likely to be cautious in his words, but also very precise. He will not make the mistake of defaming you but every phrase he uses will mean something. Listen to him, as carefully as you write to us.
Also be aware that he resents every minute he spends on this and wants it to go away so he can get back to real matters. This can work in your favour if you let it: if he thinks you've heard him, and understand him, and will comply, he will assure his staff that he's fixed this and he will quickly move on. If he thinks you're digging deeper, he will just as quickly solve the problem by giving you the boot.
He will make that decision—or rather, you will make that decision for him—in this meeting.

I think their commnuication is short and to the point. I think they are trying to protect themselves and trying to help you, to avoid you losing your job.
Although you seem to be a stubborn* person refusing this help (which is coming through official procedures), you can still recover from this situation.
Maybe did you get your email hacked and someone sent around indecent material to your colleagues? anything is possible, but you are having a strong non-cooperative attitude. Think about this: whatever approach you have, it reflects back to you.
Final note: it is not the accent your problem. It is the fact that in writing things are much more prone to be misinterpreted. The fact that you can work remotely, in another time zone, does not mean you cannot have in person meetings. Yes, maybe you have to wake up at 3am for a meeting with your boss, this is an HR issue, if they do not allow to reschedule the meeting at a better time for you (let's say 8am, 2pm london time).
* Being stubborn is both an advantage and a disadvantage, please keep in mind this, sometimes you have to use this talent, sometimes you have to let your stubborness disappear.

Stubbornness  can be fine with peers, not so much against superiors - especially those who are already angry with you.

@Buffy you are 99% of the time correct. I leave the 1% off, for the cases when the superior is wrong and so wrong that may harrass you, you need to be stubborn to stand your ground.

Re "...in writing things are much more prone to be misinterpreted", this is absolutely wrong.  It's why verbal contracts aren't worth the paper they're written on.  That's even assuming you're speaking with people who'll allow you to hold a normal conversation.  All too often people, especially those in a position of authority, insist on not giving you time to consider what you want to say,  interrupt you mid-sentence, and otherwise try to dominate a conversation.  Writing, especially back and forth emails, is much more egalitarian.

@jamesqf For a contract, I agree. But for normal day-to-day interactions, not getting to hear inflection and see a person's body language means that a lot is lost with only in-writing communication (one reason why internet comment sections are so infamous!) An in-person meeting followed by a written communication summarizing the main points that both parties agree to is (in my experience) going to be much more effective than only communicating by email.

@jamesqf There are arguments both ways. Dry, written contracts are the norm for contracts, but less dry, emotional communication is extremely difficult via text when lacking other cues like tone of voice, facial expression, etc.

@jamesqf let's put it this way: when you have to understand what to ask, discuss it verbally, then ask it in a written form. If I want to understand if I am going to be fired, I prefer to discuss it verbally, the final definition of the terms of my firing/resignment have to be in a written text. Possibly with reference to laws/collective agreements ;)

I agree with others that the emails you have quoted do not appear unprofessional. I do not think it is reasonable to refuse a video meeting with the department chair.
If your primary concern is misunderstanding during the meeting, then a possible solution is to record the meeting so that it will be clear what has been agreed to. You might write:

Dear Professor X,
I apologize because it appears our previous meeting led to a misunderstanding. My request to resolve issues in writing was an attempt to prevent future misunderstandings.
As a compromise, would you be open to recording future video meetings?

Where I am, this would be considered very aggressive. Colleagues of mine ask for calls specifically so there won't be a documented record of it.

@DanielR.Collins I totally agree that, in many contexts, such a request for recording would be aggressive. However, for someone seemingly about to be subject to disciplinary actions, such recording would likely be in both parties' best interest. I'll admit that, like you, I come from a US perspective, which may be slightly different than what the question author faces.

As has been mentioned further up, simply taking written notes and sending them for confirmation after the meeting is likely more effective than a difficult-to-review video while perhaps not as aggressive.

Communication disorders are really in a different category than a heavy accent. Clearly, you currently have a very poor relationship with your chair and department. I feel that you may not have understood the nature of the original complaints (warranted or not), so I would personally recommend trying to get more information about what the underlying issue actually is. I would suggest agreeing the meet with the chair and take up the counseling, and start off by simply being curious what the problem is without being argumentative or defensive. I agree with others that recording this meeting, attending the meeting with a trusted third party, and/or giving your summary of the meeting in writing in an email afterward are all good steps to take. I think it is worth keeping an open mind, and perhaps there are steps you can take to improve your working relationships. Be willing to compromise and accept olive branches like go to counseling, even if you would prefer not to do so. This is as much about regaining the trust of your department chair, as it is about any direct benefit you feel you do or don't get from the counseling.
Once you have a clear idea of what the precise issue(s) is (are), then you can decide  if you want to challenge the steps your chair is suggesting. Hopefully, there are a series of steps you can take that will calm the situation down and allow you to continue working. If, after the meetings and learning more, you have evidence you are being discriminated against, then take it up with the University or lawyer. But don't take this step unless you can document that discrimination is happening, and be sure you understand what the chair will say in response to allegations like this. If you have misunderstood the situation you could end up burning bridges and losing your place at the University.
If you really are going to refuse to meet with the chair because they are "lying and uncivil," I think you have to consider the possibility that you aren't going to be able to resolve this situation while remaining a student there. From the chair's side, if you are uncooperative they are likely to ask you to leave. From your side, if you genuinely feel the chair is lying and uncivil, why would you want to be a student in that department? However, I urge you to consider the possibility that you are misinterpreting the chair and that they are not lying and uncivil, but trying to help you.

You almost certainly can't get a good outcome by refusing to meet with your department chair, if he demands a meeting, unless you consider expulsion to be a good outcome.
But you are probably entitled to bring an advocate with you. Contact your student union and ask if they have somebody who can be your advocate. Make sure the chair knows that the person you are bringing to the meeting is your advocate and what the reason is for them being there. If you aren't permitted to make a recording of the meeting, take notes during it and share your notes with the chair's secretary afterwards.
Also, make backups of all correspondence you have received and sent regarding this issue, and continue to make backups of future correspondence; if the only copies you have are on the university's email system, then you may lose access to them at any time (or worse, if your chair really is dishonest, they could theoretically be falsified). And in advance of the meeting, request whatever documentation the chair has regarding the steps he believes you agreed to.

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text:
Is Eric Weinstein's copyright protection of Geometric Unity in the spirit of Science?
In (Dr.) Eric Weinstein's Geometric Unity: Author’s Working Draft, v 1.0 he has a footnote on the first page:

The Author is not a physicist and is no longer an active academician, but is an Entertainer
and host of The Portal podcast. This work of entertainment is a draft of work in progress
which is the property of the author and thus may not be built upon, renamed, or profited from
without express permission of the author. ©Eric R Weinstein, 2021, All Rights Reserved.

I am perturbed by the phrase "may not be built upon". Perhaps I do not understand what this phrasing means in context, however prima facie it strikes me as preferring control over the idea rather than its growth.
I do not have anything to add to Eric's ideas, but let's exemplify hypothetically. Let's say that I have found a choice of 'ship in a bottle operator' that accomplishes what Eric Weinstein had hoped for, but also resolves any potential issues with complexification. It seems that in Eric's view, even with citation to his work, I should not publish such a development of his ideas unless he has given it an explicit approval.
Does Eric's stance go against the scientific spirit of seeing farther on the shoulders of giants and academic freedom?

Interesting that on the same page he has this note, he's also infringing on the copyright of Escher, and doesn't even bother attributing him.

The document is dated April 1, 2021.

Shortly before this document appeared, a physicist and a mathematician posted a rebuttal to Weinstein's theory (eg blogged about here: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/03/guest-post-problems-with-eric.html). I wonder if this is related.

He positions himself as an entertainer and declares his work as a work of entertainment, in which case the special aspects of entertainment law, at least in the US, might be invoked, e.g. derivative works. Interested in seeing how this plays out.

The author holds copyright and is, in essence, claiming "all rights reserved". But he can't claim more than what the copyright law protects.
You can't "own" ideas, but your expression of them can be protected by copyright. Patent law gives a limited (in time) exclusive right to exploit the idea, but not ownership of the idea itself.
Priority of discovery is a matter of etiquette, and should be acknowledged, but, again, doesn't imply ownership. Acknowledgement protects against claims of plagiarism.
Most likely here is that if you just avoid copyright infringement you can do what you like with extension. But cite the work, of course.
Note, however, that, for most purposes, copyright is a matter of civil law unless you try to mass produce someone else's copyrighted work. Being in the right doesn't necessarily mean you can't get sued. Some IP owners are relentless with lawsuits and can make claims beyond the law - a form of intimidation. It can be expensive to defend yourself against even an unjust lawsuit.

For a more explicit answer, I find it hard to impute a motive to him. The language is a bit strong (stronger than usual), but it has no real world effect other than to reserve all rights. In fact, this is one case where keeping it private might have been a better option, whereas sharing it is more in the "spirit" of science.

For an example, if Newton was working today, he could copyright the "Principia Mathematica", but not calculus.

Copyright is very much the matter of criminal law in many countries. E.g. Czech criminal code 40/2009 §270, "Who infringes... will be punished by jail for up to 2 years and by...

@VladimirF, I'm surprised. I know it varies a lot, but haven't come across that variation.

@Buffy It is mainly targeted against for-profit pirates. Sellers, and manufacturers,  of unauthorized copies of software, music, books and so on. https://www.europol.europa.eu/crime-areas-and-trends/crime-areas/intellectual-property-crime

@VladimirF, I clarified, I hope.

It should be noted that all this notice does is to re-state the rights and restrictions that are already the default ones by law. In other words, it does not actually have any effect.
The rights and restrictions would be exactly the same if this notice was not present.
Also note that everything you write, for which you do not explicitly grant additional rights will have the same rights and restrictions. That is the reason why Stack Overflow, Inc. requires you to license all content you create on this site to them, for example.

Could you please specify in which jurisdiction and according to which source(s) an author has the right to forbid work that builds upon their own ideas? This would strike me as somewhat extreme.

@JochenGlueck Pretty much all jurisdictions, if you take the actual wording and not the one changed by you. Because by changing it you also changed the meaning a lot.

@JochenGlueck: Where in that notice does it say anything about "ideas"? The notice only says "This work of entertainment". The term "work" is a precisely-defined technical term in copyright. The term "build upon", not so much, the technical term for the result is "derivative work", and there is no single technical term for the process, only terms for specific kinds of processes (e.g. transform, modify, translate, recast, alterate, abridge, condense, arrange, …), so "build upon" sounds about as good a term as any. This is part of the Berne Convention, so it should apply to practically all …

… jurisdictions that have copyright at all. All countries that are members of the WTO have protections of similar level, which is pretty much all countries that are "interesting" from a copyright perspective (in that, countries that have not signed either the Berne Convention or one of the WTO treaties, have such a small market that the fact that they don't recognize copyright in the same way doesn't matter). Eritrea, Kosovo, Marshall Islands, Palau, and Palestine are more or less the only ones. Even North Korea is a signatory.

@Nobody and JörgWMittag: Thanks a lot for your replies! I did indeed not pay sufficent attention to the precise wording when I wrote my comment. The original post seems to be concerned whether this notice could be interpreted in a way that prevents others from obtaining new scientific results that rely on the author's ideas, in case that the author does not permit usage of his ideas. I was under a similar impression at first, but I acknowledge that this was due to my merely colloquial rather than legal understanding of the involved terminology.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава

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


text:
Should I write to professors in Europe during the winter holidays?
I am student of an Asian Country who will apply to European Universities (mainly France,  Germany, Finland, Netherlands, Denmark) for session 2022 for PhD in mathematics. So, I thought about writing to professors (email) asking about an open positions and if they are willing to work with me.
I have heard that in these countries there are holidays from December 22 to January first week.
So, should I write to professors(email) during this time and expect that they will reply to me or it is not a good idea to write to them during this time.

There is information about applications for Germany and Netherlands here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/176908/75368

You could try, but I wouldn’t expect a response. Look at the main site of their university to find the actual holiday schedule, and don’t email them before they’ve actually returned to work.
Also, I’d say to hold your fire until you’ve checked their department webpage and their lab webpage for open student positions. I’m not going to respond to a cold email from anyone about a position if it’s clear they haven’t checked our site. And then if they have something open, you should apply to it rather than emailing the lead professor. They have some sort of application system to avoid cold emails.

"You could try, but I wouldn’t expect a response". Why so?

@YannicMuller because they're on holidays, duh. I mean, you might get a response mid-January or so (at least that's when I'm usually getting response to my letters sent during these holidays to professors we collaborate with).

@YannicMuller, maybe I should have said “during” or “close” to the holidays. My main point was to encourage the use of the HR systems likely in place. At most places these days, even a very high-ranking prof that wants to hire a particular person is going to have to put them through the HR system, anyway, even if they’ve pre-agreed to the hiring.


text:
What time of the year should I e-mail professors to enquire about PhD positions in France?
Edit: My question is not a duplicate of following question:How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in Country X? because in answer to this question nobody has answered about the system in France.
I completed my master's in mathematics in  June 2020 but couldn't apply in session 2021 due to personal reasons for a PhD in France.
Now, I am studying some topics and this year is my last chance for getting admission for a PhD.
Before what month must I send my CV and e-mail to the professors whom I want to work with so that I can get selected for session 2022?
I would have started sending them by now, but I didn't because I have been busy in doing some old pending work.
I can't miss this chance.
Kindly guide.

To anyone answering this question: please also update here, if applicable.

You didn't mention the countries. I suggest, however, that you make contact immediately.

@Buffy See 2nd line of my question.

Sorry, missed it. But get the mail moving.

You've already asked a very similar question here. The answer you accepted contains (in the first paragraph, actually) the information that there don't exist  "sessions" or "hiring seasons" for most PhD positions in Germany. By corollary, there is no universal deadline, but everything depends on the individual position. I'm not sure why you ask a question that has already been answered to you.

(Apart from that, some (all?) of the DAAD scholarships which I mentioned in a comment under your related question probably do have application deadlines. Details about those can be found on the DAAD webpage.)

@JochenGlueck I am also asking about france here.

@YannicMuller: Yes, sure (since you haven't received a reply about France to the other question). My point was that you already know the answer for Germany, so it would make sense to remove Germany from the current question.

@JochenGlueck Ok! doing it

Does this answer your question? How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in Country X?

@HermanToothrot There is no answer for France yet in that question, please see this related discussion.

@HermanToothrot There is no discussion on France in it.

As soon as possible.
Most of the positions (financed via the graduate schools) have already been filled, but some advisors who have independent financing (such as ANR grants) might still be looking for candidates to start, say, January 1st.
If unsuccessful, you could re-apply next year. Most PhD students start their contract on October 1st, and the selection process takes place in spring and summer.
Best of luck!


text:
Should I also send a cover letter along with my CV while applying to PhD programs in math
I will apply to a PhD program in math at  French universities for session 2022.
I will write e-mails to  the professors I want to work with, asking if there are open PhD positions in their group. I plan to attach my CV (4 pages long)  along with the e-mail. Should I also attach a cover letter along with CV in e-mail? Why or Why not?

What would you put in the cover letter?

@Jeroen I am not sure, I applied to an institute which was asking for cover letter and CV separately and in that I wrote about why specifically  my branch of Math is interesting to me  and my interest in other branches in math and  my motivation to apply for phd and their institute

This answer gives you some more insights into the application process in France: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/171564/69838, especially this link in the answer: https://www.campusfrance.org/en/how-to-enrol-Doctorate-France. There you can find more about the requirements and procedures. Does this answer your question?

@Jeroen Not really

In my experience, at least when contacting faculty individually, the cover letter is your statement of interest that you put in the body of your initial email. Of course, if the faculty's website has specific instructions for applicants, those whould be followed instead.


text:
When should a masters student write to professors in Israeli Universities enquiring for Funded phd Positions
I am looking for a Phd position in math in Israel as a foreigner. I am from an Asian country.
I have looked at profiles of a couple of professors in Israeli universities whose interests aligns with mine and I want to inquire with them if there is a possibility of working with them by emailing them my CV.
Which part of the year 2021 or early 2022 is the right time (specific month if possible) to write to professors in Israel asking for open funded PhD positions for the session 2022 and if they want to work with me? (So that deadlines are not missed and is not too early)

The first question should be whether such emails are part of the process at all.

If someone can properly answer this, perhaps you can also provide a canonical answer for Israel to this question as well: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/176908/75368

The process in Israel is commonly informal and less structured than e.g. the US process. The nominal scenario is: you contact a potential advisor(s); if they are interested they will tell you to formally apply and tell you if they can afford funding; your application will eventually get to the university's admittance committee which in turn will just reach out to your potential advisor and follow their recommendations.
The "formal" process can take as little as 2 weeks and as long as a couple of months. Further, there is no obligation to start Phd studies at the beginning of the academic year, so I've heard of (non-foreign) students who applied two weeks before the year starts and were able to start on time. I also know about students who applied a couple of weeks after the beginning of the semester, who were admitted as well (maybe their "clock" started ticking at the beginning of that year, so they lost a bit of time).
For international students, you need to allow 2-3 months to obtain student-visa and arrangements, so the schedule should be something like this:

Jan-Mar: initial contact with advisor, check if there's an opening
Mar-May: making sure the advisor wishes you to join their group and has secured funding for you. Good time to start meetings online with the advisor to see that you get along (and for them to see that you are a good fit for them).
June - Formal application
August - Formal university decision
September - VISA, flight tickets, lodging arrangements
October - arrival / school begins

Again, this is very fluid, and you can skip to contacting the advisor at May (but maybe the position will be filled by then and no more funding will be available for you). If the advisor wants you, they can usually make the university admit you out-of-schedule. Do check in your desired university's webpage for international students' information, since some universities might have different rules and schedules.
Best of luck!


text:
In order to write a good email (not generic or close to generic) to prospective phd supervisors, in what level of detail should I read their papers?
This question is an extension of this particular question: Is this way of writing e-mails to professors asking for funded PhD positions to work under their supervision good?
I am a person in an Asian country who plans to write to professors in Europe for a PhD position in Pure Math. I know Europe has a lot of countries and is certainly not a uniform block but I think the way of writing e-mails should be similar to get a favourable response.
I previously sent e-mails that were somewhat generic and was unsuccessful in finding an advisor.
I want to know how I should read the papers of profs I want to work with and write about them in the e-mail so that they are convinced that I have done my work and this is not a spam mail.
I thought about reading the paper of a professor whom I wanted to work with. I could read only 1 paper (16 pages) in 1 month (I am doing some courses in math also), although I understand the paper but I think this is  not a feasible process as by this process I will be able to mail only 3 professors by February. I mailed him and he had already committed to another  student for next year. The papers I read for masters thesis were also quite hard and it took me 4 months to read 3 papers because I had to read other papers also as they used results from other papers also.
So, for other professors I am thinking of reading Abstract, Introduction, Notations section completely, then very briefly seeing other sections (mainly headings) and then reading conclusion section for 2 papers. Is this strategy fine?
But the problem is that in this way I can't write that I have read those papers as that's a lie and if they asked anything from which I have not studied they it will lead to a really bad impression. So, if I just write that my interest align with them then it will be a generic and useless statement. So, how should I phrase the statement when I am reading only what I mentioned?
Also, if you have better strategy on how should I convince them that my interests align with their work and I am a good candidate kindly tell me that also.

@Buffy how? I don't think so.

If you are unfamiliar with their work (have not read their papers) how are you selecting them as potential supervisors? That choice is very important.
For context, I have never emailed someone to work with them or study under them without having read multiple articles they have written, as well as their research pages etc.

There may be a confusion in the language here. You write: "writing cold e-mails which were not replied", and then later: "I came to know that the mails were cold". But the phrase "cold emailing" only means that you send an email out of the blue to someone who you never met before. It says nothing about the tone, or warmth, of the message itself. All the occurrences of "cold" in the linked question refer to this meaning of "cold emailing" as sending an unannounced message to someone who doesn't know you.

@The_Tams I saw their webpages and titles of their research papers to know if the work in my specialization or not.

I am not sure whether I understand the meaning of the blockquotes in your question. Moreover I do not think that I fully understand what exactly you are asking.

@Wetenschaap I meant by "cold emails" not very specific to the person written. I knew that they work in my subfield by visiting their webpages and Reading the titles of their papers but I didn't read the papers. Of course, I never met any if the professors I am gonna write or wrote earlier.

@Christian I have edited the question. Kindly have a look now.

@Buffy I have edited it. Kindly have a look now.

@Buffy Any comment/ suggestionto improve the post is most welcome.

@Wetenschaap I am really sorry man. I was wrong about meaning of the term Cold emailing. Kindly have a look now. I have edited it. I am really sorry.

You can say that you have "read through" their paper.

@user2316602 What if they ask me  specific questions or they ask about what exactly I studied from their papers?

This answer is particular to pure math.
I second most of what Alexander Woo says; indeed as a prospective advisor, I would not expect an applicant to read my papers in any amount of details prior to the application.
Rationale: I understand you are probably applying in many places, with limited chances of success in any particular one. Therefore, the time you have spent reading my papers is anyway negligible on the time scale of a Ph. D. project, so, heaving read my papers does not really make you a more qualified candidate.
We all know that in math, to read something in detail requires a lot of time and effort. Also, papers are written for experts who know background, understand their context and so on, they all have different places in the literature and varying degrees of importance. So, just starting to read a random one of them is not the wisest time investment from the objective point of view. A starting Ph.D. student of mine may benefit more e.g. from reading lecture notes or seminal papers by other people than my own most recent paper. To require someone to read and understand them to apply for a Ph. D. with me is just an unreasonable waste of their time. If anything, browsing abstracts and introductions of several papers will give you a much better understanding of the research of a particular person than reading one of their paper in detail.
It will be clear that you have read my papers only because you decided to apply, and there is no way you can phrase the short initial e-mail so that I can reliably discriminate between someone who really read it and someone who only browsed the title and abstract. Plus, I don't really care, as once again it only speaks to your job search strategy and not your qualifications.
What does speak to your qualifications is prior exposure to the relevant field. If I am convinced of that you have such an exposure that gives you a real head-start, then it is a big plus for your application. So you better focus on e.g. your master thesis topic and courses you have taken in the relevant area, or what you self-studied. If you can then signal that you understand, very broadly, your potential advisor's research area and how it is related to what you have done before, that's already very good.

can you please tell in which country you are professor?

I think you are approaching this question from the wrong angle.  You're worrying about appearances rather than any actual needs.
There are reasons completely outside of the application process for you to read a prospective advisor's papers.  One is because you are actually interested in the contents of the papers.  The second - hopefully a reason on top of the first, not a reason by itself - is for you to learn if your interests are compatible with those of the prospective advisor.
A prospective advisor doesn't actually care if you have read their papers.  What they care about is if any of the reasons in the above paragraph apply, and your reading their papers is a signal about those reasons, not valuable in and of itself.
Now you could "lie" by giving this signal without the underlying justification for the signal actually holding, but then you risk going into a PhD that you actually have no interest in.
Now, this situation is a problem in pure maths, because the subject has gotten so specialized with so much background around any problem that most papers take a lot of effort to read.  Probably a majority of people who finish PhDs nowadays don't really understand the full context of their own dissertations, because they haven't had the time to learn it at their pace of learning.  (It's a by now classical joke that, for the average dissertation, only one person understands the contents, only one person cares about the contents, and they are not the same person.)  That means, realistically, you have to find some other way to find out about, and signal, your interest in a prospective advisor's research other than by reading their papers, and a good Masters student might simply not have enough background to make a good decision for themselves.
(But you might want to reconsider doing a PhD.  The job market is terrible.  Only people who are amazeballs brilliant are getting jobs in developed countries.)

So, how should I prove that our interests really align?

I think your problem is most likely that your application is not strong enough.  Professors in pure mathematics don't generally expect that their PhD students come in understanding specifically what their research is about.

Can you please tell how you are sure about this:"A prospective advisor doesn't actually care if you have read their papers" ?

Can you please give a reply if you have some time to spare?

I'm a prospective advisor, and I certainly don't expect students starting work with me to even be able to read my papers with any level of understanding.


text:
Do US PhD programs prefer applicants without a Master's degree?
The question is essentially in the title. Do PhD programs in the United States prefer it if an applicant does not have a master's degree beforehand? This question is particular to engineering, as I think the answer varies even within STEM.
As far as I am aware, most US PhD programs will accept applicants with a bachelor's degree, and these candidates can earn a master's degree along the way, or if they drop out. I get a slight feeling that programs prefer such applicants, but if so, I can't think of any reason why. Is it because they are a little more raw, and the program can shape the path of such students to  a larger extent? (That doesn't sound convincing to me, at all.)
With a master's degree, the applicant already has some experience of graduate school, and possibly even research. Are there any reasons this would work against them?

Depends upon the specific program. I would check their webpage for the specific program you are looking at.

Also, the answer would be specific to faculty advisors. Some will take PhD students straight from undergrad, others want a master's first, even within the same program.

You might be interested: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/115007/why-is-it-disadvantageous-in-graduate-admissions-to-have-a-higher-degree

@Allure Extremely useful, thank you.

Given that the design of US doctoral programs is to enable those with a bachelors to succeed, the answer would be, structurally, yes. But for the admission process itself, the effect, while variable, I expect to be weak - with caveats.
There is, in the US, normally some sort of qualifying process before one formally begins dissertation research. Some places and in most (other) fields this takes the form of qualifying examinations; written and/or oral. There are other processes possible, however, probably more likely in engineering.
But there is likely to be some process and the early part of the doctoral curriculum (coursework, lab experience,...) is designed to make passing the bar possible. Usually the early work also guarantees broad knowledge of the field in general before deep specialization for the dissertation. This will also benefit future academics and prepare them for a career. Note that the faculty is pretty certain of the general knowledge of a student who goes through this long process successfully.
For a person with a masters in hand, the qualifying process is probably still in place. I'd expect that having it waived would be rare. This makes it more difficult both for the applicant and for the faculty to judge whether they have the general knowledge or not.
So, a "preference" is probably too strong. But "extra scrutiny" may well be in the minds of the committee members if that is the process for successful admittance.
On the other hand, if a professor has the authority to accept individuals on their own (and probably to give them financial support), the balance may change in the opposite direction. If a professor has need of someone with particular skills in their lab, then someone with a masters might be preferred, being farther along in their education. But the qualifying bar may still be in place, giving the candidate extra tasks, perhaps.
My recommendation is that if you are already in a masters program, then finish it. But if you are not, then there is little if any advantage in starting one if your goal is a doctorate in the US.

For a person with a masters in hand... This makes it more difficult both for the applicant and for the faculty to judge whether they have the general knowledge or not. Could you elaborate?

For the faculty, it is just that masters degrees vary quite a lot and it is harder to judge course content and grades from other institutions than from one's own. For the applicant it means that some additional time may be required to prepare for the qualifier, whatever it is.

Then, in a way, whatever advantage I may have on completing a significant amount of coursework during my master's may not really translate into a shorter PhD duration, i.e. the advantage of maybe skipping the coursework requirements (since I've already covered it during my master's) is actually not realized?

It would depend on the nature of the qualifier. You might be fine, but do some investigation of places you might apply to to see if they can offer details.

This answer is really about some (and not all) top programs in mathematics, but perhaps it applies more widely.
A number of top PhD programs see their main mission as training future top mathematicians, maybe not just Fields Medalists, but folks at the level of invited speakers at American Mathematical Society meetings (of which there are around 40 a year).  (Note that, with the current scarcity of jobs, we are near the point where most people hired into tenure-track positions with significant research responsibilities have demonstrated potential to do research at this level.  I don't think it is unreasonable for a top 10 department to think of their graduate programs this way.)
Certainly there is some extent to which mathematical potential is inborn, or at least determined before graduate school.  (We don't argue that people with moderate or severe intellectual disabilities can do mathematics research.)  Some minority of mathematicians, large enough to be influential in admissions in some departments, believe explicitly or implicitly that mathematical ability at the level required to be a top mathematician is mostly fixed by the end of undergraduate education, and that mathematicians can recognize such ability with high accuracy.
The logical corollary of such a belief is that people who did not gain admission directly to a top PhD program with their BA/BS most likely do not have such ability and hence should not be admitted.  Most applicants with a Masters degree in the US ended up in an MA/MS program because they did not manage to get into a PhD program, and most of the rest are in a non-top program and trying to get into a top one.
In other words, some people consider a US Masters degree a negative signal that you are not(*) good enough to have gotten into a good PhD program right after undergrad.  (Of course, if your undergrad degree wasn't in mathematics and you solve a well-known-in-its-subfield 30 year old problem while working on your Masters, that's a stronger positive signal of your ability.  (This is a true story.))
Such attitudes have discriminatory effects against people from various disadvantaged backgrounds (including almost all women), which I note here but don't want to get further into.
(*) I want to point out I did not write "were not".

In other words, some people consider a US Masters degree a negative signal that you are not(*) good enough to have gotten into a good PhD program right after undergrad. This is my worry in a way, but an argument against it is that terminal master's degrees are way more common in engineering than mathematics, AFAIK.

Yet another argument is that I feel my profile is significantly stronger after a master's degree, than it was right after my undergrad. This is not due to the degree itself, or the place I got it from, but because I've spent more time on research, and thus have much more experience, which also translates directly in terms of publications.

This answer definitely matches my heuristic understanding of the situation in math. But it's extremely specialized- "Top" Math Depts. considering applicants with terminal US research Masters. Drop any one modifier and I'm not so sure.

I expect that your "slight feeling" comes not so much from the university itself as from its recruiters.  If the university is trying to attract students, it will naturally prefer to have them for a longer program as well.
American students frequently earn multiple degrees.  It is not uncommon to have master's degrees in addition to doctoral degrees.  In terms of acceptance to a program, the more important point may be the scholarship which the potential student has maintained throughout his or her prior academic career, including the GPA for the master's degree(s).  This is important, not for its indication of mastery level so much as for its predictive value to the diligence and study habits of the student.
Ultimately, it boils down to this:  Universities like to have quality students who will well represent them in the future.  When one has studied for a longer term in an institution, one also tends to have built a greater loyalty to it.  It is, therefore, advantageous for the university on multiple counts to have longer-term students.

The idea that US universities prefer students to be there for longer simply isn't true. Master's students pay, but depts pay for PhD students. So purely financially, a PhD completed in four years is cheaper to the dept compared to five. On the other hand, master's students bring in money (but not if they're doing it during the first two years of their PhD).

@AzorAhai-him- If that is the case, where are these free PhD programs? Do you have a link to any?  I have never met someone whose university paid for his or her PhD; albeit, it might be the case, especially some years ago, that professors at a university needed to be upgraded and their costs were covered by their employer (back when university professors were more commonly teaching under a master's degree).

In the US, in the sciences, every PhD is paid for (both a stipend and tuition is covered). If you are paying for a PhD in the sciences in the US, you are doing something really wrong.

@AzorAhai-him- It must not include medical science.  President Obama forgave much of the doctors' school loans--it cost at least $30,000+ a year for medical school not too many years back.  Is that free now, too?  (Maybe I'm behind the times.)

Medical degrees are MDs, not PhDs, that is entirely different. But no, they're not free currently.


text:
How can I convince British university to reverse their refusal to let me remote study?
How do I change British university's mind? I don't want to argue or get into a debate. For privacy, I prefer not to disclose more details. The course isn't science or medicine, so there are not many reasons to study this on campus. I started remote study in Oct. 2021.
Their refusal unnerves me because the university's Health Centre is overwhelmed. It takes months to book one appointment. I heard from friends they can see you just at most twice each term. I prefer my psychiatrist who knows me well. My parents want me to stay at home, so they can take care of me.
Other reasons for remote study
I didn't  mention these yet because they feel less persuasive.
COVID is rebounding in Britain. Londoners ignore mask rules. “Face coverings must be worn for the full duration of journeys on the TfL network, including inside our stations and bus stations,”. This anti-mask makes me so anxious! But is this baleful enough to convince my university?
I want to save money by studying from home, rather than rent expensive accommodation. I'm on low income.
This is the reply I have received from the university:

We are responding to your request for remote study for 2022. As stated
in our email to all students, the faculty prefers students to study on
campus starting from January 2022, except those with exceptional
circumstances that prevent them from returning.
Thank you for providing your psychiatrist's letter to explain your
relevant circumstances, namely your Major Depressive Disorder for
which you are taking antidepressants. We are deeply sympathetic to
your depression. We recognize the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated
mental health, particularly for anyone with psychiatric illnesses.
Nonetheless we are unable to accept your request. The university has a
Health Centre with psychiatrists who are very experienced in and has
regularly dealt with psychiatric illnesses. We have confirmed with the
Health Centre that they are happy to schedule you for regular
consultations upon your return. They also confirmed that the NHS
covers your antidepressants for a very nominal fee. Therefore there is
no sufficient basis that your Major Depressive Disorder  prevents you
from returning to campus.

Is this really a good idea? Presumably the university has not designed this course with 'remote study' in mind. Teaching, resources etc will be optimised for in-person study. Even if you convinced them to let you work remotely, you are likely to get an inferior experience. I would encourage you to explore universities that are actively trying to promote a remote-learning option.

@avid i edited my post. "I would encourage you to explore universities that are actively trying to promote a remote-learning option." not possible. i already paid and started this course.

Are you vaccinated? (Another comment follows in case the mods delete this comment.)

Do you wear masks?

@nobody yes to both. but breakthough infections.

You could attempt to contact other people higher up in the university (I don't know who you've been in touch with) or perhaps the student union/student disability services to see if they can support you to make this case further. But honestly, I suspect that (rightly or wrongly) you're unlikely to convince the university to change their mind, based on the information you've shared here. You then have to make a choice between attending in person and dropping the course. You could explore delaying attendance for a year?

Where do you live/what citizenship do you have? If you need a student visa, it may be against the terms of the visa to study remotely. In this case there is really nothing the university can do (but they should have explained that to you).

How do I change British university's mind?

Speaking as somebody in a Swedish university that's currently in the process of "going back to campus", you most likely can't. Even if individual teachers or program managers are sympathetic to your concerns, whether to allow students to study remotely (and if yes, under what conditions and for how long) is generally a political process that is decided high up in university administration, and they will not make judgements on individual student cases. If the policy of your university is that all students need to study from campus, it's likely nothing you say will make them make an official exception for you.
Inofficially, it may be possible to take individual courses remotely. Especially during the transition period, many teachers will likely be acutely aware that some students have valid reasons (health or otherwise) for avoiding campus for the moment, and most universities really don't have all that much say or insight into how individual teachers design and run their courses (so many teachers at the moment choose course designs that can also be done remotely, if feasible for the course). That said, this will likely be entirely inofficial, so you'll have little right to demand accomodations or complain if, for instance, a hybrid course is more difficult to follow remotely than if you were in class. I would also expect that this degree of teacher understanding will wane over time, due to the COVID situation improving but also due to people accepting these issues as the "new normal".

Their refusal unnerves me, because university's Health Centre is overwhelmed. It takes months to book one appointment. I heard from friends they can see you just at most twice each term. I am cared much better at home. I prefer my psychiatrist who knows me well. My parents want me stay at home so they can care me. They don't want me to fall into suicide ideation.

I really, really sympathise with this concern, but it may be time to consider whether interrupting your studies is not the more productive way to protect your mental health than trying to wring out an official exception from a university that is probably under significant political pressure to return to normal studies as soon as possible.

I'm at a UK university, and this answer is spot-on for us, too.

It would also apply completely to my UK university. If you really want to study remotely, the best way is to tell the university you are there, and then negotiate remote accommodation with the department, program head or module lead. You might still be require to be present for exams.

I don't think it would at mine, if the students particular extenuating circumstances warranted it.  There is are appeals panels (I sit on two of them) who would review the decision and uphold the appeal if the reasoning and evidence were sufficient.  However the first step in the appeals procedure is to seek an informal resolution, so the advice to start by talking to the program director is very good advice.

@DikranMarsupial Would an appeals panel really have the power to grant individual students the possibility to study remotely, and how would that work in practice? If some of OP's courses are simply not given as remote or hybrid courses, how would the accomodation work in this case?

@xLeitix I believe so, but it would depend on the merits of the case.  Many universities were able to deliver courses remotely last year, so the methods are known.  However I'd suggest it would be very unlikely set of circumstances, simply because most U.K. universities offer support for students with mental health issues and COVID concerns might also be addressed by a break in studies.  I can't say what an appeal panel would do, just suggesting that the procedure could be used (and to get advice in making the case).

Your University will almost certainly have a formal appeals procedure that can be used to appeal against academic and procedural decisions, such as this.  There should be on-line information on the forms and procedures for this process on the university website.  The student union is likely to be able to provide advice and support.  Whether an appeal is successful depends on the reasons for making the appeal and the documentary evidence you can provide.
Nobody can say what the chances of success are without knowing the detailed reason, which you should certainly not post here!  I would suggest though that saving money is unlikely to be regarded as a sufficient reason.  If you do want to study from home, I think e.g. the Open University would be a much better bet as they are specifically set up for that purpose (so you are less likely to disadvantage yourself by not being on campus).  You might want to consider a transfer instead?

Note that when I last interacted with faculty there, Open University did have face to face tutorial sessions that were fairly local to the students using local tutors. It is one of the ways they achieve high quality. I don't know if it continues, but suspect it does in some form.

thanks. i know there's an appeals procedure. but i  have to give them new reasons. repeating myself is not effective. what new reasons can i convince them?

@cielo it depends on the nature of the appeals process, but it could be that additional evidence in support of the same reasons would be sufficient.  It would be a good idea to seek advice from the student union or from you academic adviser (or both).


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Receiving an award and etiquette
Suppose you win a university-wide award for your research and you receive an e-mail from one of the dean's secretaries with the dean and your department head CC-ed.
Is there an established etiquette for how to respond to such an e-mail?
I was in this situation: I replied all (in two sentences) that this was great news(!) and thanking the secretary for letting me know.
My advisor subsequently upbraided me as an ignoramus and suggested I send very personal e-mails to the dean and department head telling them how much the award meant to me.
Culture shock I guess because sending such e-mails seems vain to me, first of all, whereas I would prefer focusing on it as a win for the team and otherwise minimize attention drawn to it (hence it's great news, full stop), not to mention getting back to work.  (Also, I guess if I were receiving an outside scholarship with funding from a donor, the university would arrange for me to write a careful thank you letter --- which would go out in hard copy --- quite a different scenario.)

Are you faculty?

Mostly likely this depends, among other things, very strongly on cultural aspects. Could you specify the country?

While not entirely outside of what I would do (and did) in similar situations with similar reasoning, you better realize that the equivalent of "kthx" is perceived as a little bit too ungrateful. Whether you choose to convey precisely that or not is up to you. If not, it doesn't have to be a full-blown acceptance speech but engaging in a social dance and adding a couple more sentences telling how happy you are to be provided that research opportunity in the department and yadda yadda is much in order. Share a little bit of that success.

@Lodinn That seems more of an answer than a comment.

A simple reply to the department secretary as you did is fine. They had no part in the awarding.
But you can, and should still, follow up with something more personal as suggested by your advisor. I assume that the award was given by a committee. Use the mail to the administrators to thank the members of the committee for the award.
You were given something of value, even if it only recognizes your good work. Thank them for it. By mail or in person. Physical mail isn't a bad idea in this case, actually.


text:
On the "pedagogical practices, observations, and advances" in an academic job application?
As a part the required statement of teaching associated with an academic job application, I need to explain my "pedagogical practices, observations, and advances". I searched a bit and figured out that pedagogical practices are fivefold, say, constructive, collaborative, reflective, integrative, and inquiry-based. However, I have the following ambiguities.
1- May I explain my experience in all of those five approaches and claim that my teaching style will be a mixture of all of them, or I better pick a subset of them to focus on?
2- What are those "observations and advances" part?

I believe this is asking about your teaching philosophy. It is a combination of all that you believe teaching and learning should be about. If you've had a teaching experience, what downsides have you observed and how best did you solve or will try to solve them, should you have another chance. It gives a complete overview of what you see teaching and learning to be.

Based solely on the common meaning of words, I would think that "practices" is what you do/have done, "observations" is what you have seen/noticed, and "advances" is what you think you do better now compared to your early practice.
As to the five elements of practice you list, I don't see a source, so it is difficult to say if this breakdown is a commonly accepted pedagogical theory or not.  In any case, since it appears you only just searched for it in response to writing the application, it would be somewhat insincere (premature?) to say that your teaching practice will reflect all five elements.  It would be better just to describe your actual teaching practice as it exists, and explain the approach you take to teaching.  If there are elements of overlap with this theory you found (from some mysterious source) then so be it, but don't overdo it trying to conform your description to the theory.
For the "observations and advances" part it would be useful to explain what important things you have observed in your teaching (e.g., what worked well, what went badly, etc.) and how you have improved your teaching as a result.  If you have had any experiences where you tried methods that didn't work, or you changed some aspect of your teaching and got better/worse results, etc., it is worth mentioning this as part of your overall explanation of your preferred practice.  Aside from wanting to know that you are a competent teacher, the admissions committee is going to want to see that you are a reflective person who can take in feedback on your teaching and adapt your methods to improve over time.


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Can I offer to help a collaborator to finish a calculation which he's not having time to finish right now?
I'm a PhD student and I'm collaborating in a project with a more experienced researcher. This is the first time I collaborate with anyone, so I'm new to this. Recently, in the subject we are investigating, there were two related things to be studied. I started one and he started doing the other (we didn't actually agreed to split, it happened naturally).
In our recent meetings he mentioned that although he nailed down what specific thing must be calculated, he's struggling to find the time to do so. Now, since he is much more busy than I am, I considered offering to help with this and carry out this specific computation. Still, I'm afraid if this could be discourteous in some way.
So, when we are collaborating with someone in a specific project, and there's something the other person is doing and that person is not having the time to finish some lengthy/tedious step right now, is it fine to offer to help with it?

You need to mention the nature of the project.  Is this expected to lead to a publication with both as coauthors or is this a joint learning project?

I struggle to see what reasonable person could be offended if you offered to help them with a task they struggle to find time for.

@TerryLoring yes it is expected to lead to a publication with both as coauthors.

Yes, you can absolutely offer to help.

Keep in mind that it is also possible that the time to explain to you how to do the calculation is longer than the time he needs to finish it himself.

Yes, you can help in any way you can. It would seem very odd to me if there were a field or situation in which this would not be proper.
Of course, if you are taking a course and have been assigned specific tasks by a professor it would be different, but you don't suggest that is the case.
It is the nature of collaboration to work together on a project.

Thanks @Buffy, yes that is not the case. It is not coursework, we are jointly working on a subject which will possibly lead to a publication with both as coauthors. I was unsure if I could offer help because he started to work on that part of the project already, but the intention would of course to be helfpul.

Offering is indeed fine. However, one thing to avoid is having it come off as an attempt to "steal" someone else's project/glory. If the collaborator is another graduate student, this was their first/only shot at a first-author paper, and you take over enough calculations to switch the balance of contributions, they might well get upset. But if you're already the intended lead author, the calculation is a smaller part of the paper, or (as in your case) the collaborator is a more experienced researcher, this should be less of a worry. All in all, having an idea about the collaborator's goals helps in knowing how to approach them and phrase the question.

it's very good that you explain how context is important here. The other researcher is far more experienced than me, and we are working together in this project. In the end, when we come to publish it, both will be coauthors (don't know yet about who will be the lead author but I don't really mind if it's not me). There is nothing to be stolen, I'm just trying to show good will and be helpful to them.

@user3115001 Then I think your collaborator will be delighted by your offer to take some tasks off their plate. I would be, anyway.

Also another possibility is if the collaborator can't be bothered to do it, and is just dragging his feet so that the other one does the calculation.

One very important point is that "he nailed down what specific thing must be calculated". This implies that he has already made a key contribution, and if so then there is no problem with helping him with other things like calculations, as any key contributor already deserves authorship.


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On the request to see the content of the recommendation letters which are issued to support my tenure-track applications
I am applying for a tenure-track position in a university located in California. While sending the auto-request emails to my recommenders, I just noted that the following information is automatically attached to each request email:

Please read the University of California's confidentiality policy
regarding external letters of reference.
Although a candidate may request to see the contents of letters of
evaluation in accordance with California law and University policy,
your identity will be held in confidence. The material made available
will exclude the letterhead, the signature block, and material below
the signature block. Therefore, material that would identify you,
particularly information about your relationship to the candidate,
should be placed below the signature block. In any legal proceeding or
other situation in which the source of confidential information is
sought, the University does its utmost to protect the identity of such
sources.

In this regard:
1- If I request to see the contents of the letters, will my recommenders be informed by the university regarding my request?
2- When may I raise such a request (for example, any time after the submission, or after the delivery of letters, or ...)?

Not the DVer, but frankly you just don't want to ask to see the letters. Notifying the recommenders would be a question for the specific university policy. And there likely is a last date to request, since many places will have a defined retention time for such material. But, again, why would you want to go there?

I beg to differ - I question the utility of such a request. Since policy seems to allow the request, there is no doubt about the ethics/morality/legality of said request. More bluntly, if you want to know what your recommendation letters say, have a heart-to-heart discussion with those doing the recommending. If I found out somebody requested my letter and never spoke to me about it, well, they would never get a letter again.

"Since policy seems to allow the request, there is no doubt about the ethics/morality/legality of said request." - Not sure that follows. In the first place, there are indeed illegal policies, but even assuming that the UC policy is legal, ethics and morality are quite different issues. I don't know the answer to OP's questions, but I upvoted because I think they are interesting.

May be duplicate with: What is actually confidential in communications in state universities?

So you would assume a not-stellar recommendation is your advisor’s?

@JonCuster speaking of ethics and morality, I’m curious, why would you want to retaliate against someone for requesting a document pursuant to a legal right that they have? Why should they be required to have a heart to heart talk with you to avoid such retaliation? I’d suggest that if you are really concerned about them exercising their legal rights in this way, the ethical thing to do is to refuse to write the letter in the first place and explain that this is because you find the UC’s policy unconscionable.

@DanRomik - clearly I'm not communicating clearly. When I write a letter it involves quite some discussion about details of the posting they are applying for, what they are looking for from my letter vs other letters, and so forth. And they get to see edits as the letter comes together to check that it still fits their application plan. I deliver for them, just as I've delivered the past $n$ years they have worked with me. But, if you don't trust me to deliver, don't ask for a letter of recommendation. And don't go around me to see the letter - all you have to do is ask.

I’m a current faculty member and former department chair at a UC campus, and somewhat familiar with these policies. Here’s my “insider’s” take: it is not in the University of California’s interest, nor in the interest of other job candidates, nor even in your own interest (although you might disagree about that), for the answer to your questions to be publicly known and easily accessible online.
It’s not really a great mystery however. If you email a representative of the campus you’re applying to, I’m reasonably confident they will give you a straightforward answer.
Also, please don’t rely on speculation from people who do not have specific, accurate information related to what you’re asking about. The information posted so far on this page is largely inaccurate.

Your recommendation in the second paragraph may not work because if I anonymously ask such questions, it is quite unlikely that they take them into account. On the other hand, I would not like to reveal my identity (thereby, asking as a known applicant) because I don't know whether or not they (sooner or later) inform my recommenders about my questions. Put differently, the answer to my first question is critical in that whether I can safely contact the intended campus using my name.

@User you may be able to obtain this information in other ways that don’t involve posting on a public forum. But as for emailing with questions, I can’t imagine anyone on the receiving end of such an email thinking it’s appropriate to gossip about it with your letter writers, or with anyone else for that matter. Even in the unlikely event that they did that, your question is a completely legitimate one about university policy and the disclaimer text you saw appended to the email to the letter writers. I don’t see how asking about this is anything to be ashamed of. Well, good luck in any case.

Overall, thanks for the hints.

IANAL but I assume that the text is in accordance with a FOIA style law.  If so, then anyone can FOIA the external letters of reference in support of your application.  The university has identified the parts of the letter which it will provide and which it will not provide in response to FOIA queries.
FOIA requests are themselves government records and can be FOIAed.  If your referees want to know if you requested their reference letters then they can FOIA that.  This would require them to continually poll the University with FOIA requests because if your FOIA request was received after their request then your request would not be included in the response to their request.
If the University has a policy of notifying referees about such requests (relieving them of the need to poll) then it is almost certainly written down somewhere and you can FOIA that.  However, policy can change at any time.  So maybe you would need to similarly poll the university.
If you do FOIA their notification policy and determine they do not notify references and then FOIA their references you can never be certain that (1) your referees will not FOIA your requests (but you could FOIA their requests about your requests); or (2) the university will not change its policy - and they could even change it retroactively.
It is fun to think of some of the absolute absurdities involved (e.g., you could FOIA for FOIA requests about your reference to determine if your referee has learned that you have learned what they wrote about you) but I recommend that instead

Use referees that you are positive will provide a glowing reference.
If you want to read the reference, discuss this with your referee ahead of time.

There is no right or wrong answer to the question of whether references should be confidential, but there is a right and wrong answer to the question of should you solicit a reference from someone which you have a combative relationship with.
TLDR

They might be informed.  The university has not promised you confidentiality.
You can request at any time.  However, I would put off that request until such that as your tenure application has been denied.  Just as the university has not promised you confidentiality it has not promised to consider the request negatively against you.


text:
Are university internal, password protected ANONYMOUS discussion forums truly anonymous?
Here I ask just about a university's internal password protected discussion boards. They are for university students and instructors.
Because you must log in with your university details and password, can't "anonymous" posts be traced and deanonymized, if the university legally needed or wanted? Wouldn't PhD's in computer science know how to unmask the identities of these anonymous posters, if a university legally authorized them?

That would depend on the design of the specific software platform being used, wouldn’t it? I don’t know how you can expect a completely general answer. But broadly speaking, it’s certainly the case that when a student is logged in to their account, they may have doubts about whether their posting is truly anonymous, which may not be easy to assuage. (For example, if the platform was Facebook, I wouldn’t trust the anonymity even if I wasn’t logged in.)

If you really want to know, a good way to find out is posting a link to a Pornhub video on the forum and see what happens.

Btw, computer science in theory for PhD is not the same as information security in practice.

It is extremely unlikely that university forums are completely anonymous. Universities are legal institutions, and must comply with national laws. In many countries, institutions are required to store user data for a few years in case the police or government needs the data for criminal investigations. There are actually very few email, VPN, etc. companies that can truly claim to provide full anonymity, and in order to achieve that, they must not just encrypt user data end to end, but their servers must actually be set up to not store any user data in the first place.
Therefore, you should always assume that everything you write in such a forum is liable to be stored somewhere, along with your user info.

There's probably a degree of separation - at the simplest one database saying that the user logged in on a particular IP address at a particular time, another saying that an IP address posted a comment to the forum (the log may really be of Single Sign On tokens).  Then they'd have to want to combine the two, and they probably retain the right to do so in cases of undefined "abuse".  But by default the instructor running the board shouldn't have access to the names associated with comments.