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Major revise with three reviewers. What will editor consider after sending revision?
Our paper recently got a "major revision", with comments from three reviewers. Two of them were actually ok, just answers for a few questions and rephrasing of some parts. The third reviewer showed harsh prejudice about our work and their comments  were are all marked with and exclamation mark ("!").
I want to know if at the end two reviewers accept and one does not, what will be the editor's decision, specifically for open access journals?

The third reviewer's comment does not sound that harsh.  Many reviewers, including me, are very pedantic about symbols and notations.     Preciseness and consistency are super important when it comes to clarity!

You can't predict what the result of your paper's peer review process will be. Anything can happen, because it's possible the reviewers will say accept and the editor rejects anyway, or the reviewers will say reject but the editor accepts anyway.
See questions:
Why does editor reject when reviewers recommend acceptance?
Why do editors sometimes accept a paper even if a reviewer recommends rejection?

Your job now is to use the reviews to make the paper better.
Carefully read and respond to all the comments. Pay particular attention to what you claim is a harsh reviewer. Set aside your perception of the tone and deal with the substance. When they are right, make the change. When you think they are wrong, explain why you reject that particular suggestion.
Then the editor will do what they decide. That is their decision, not merely a tally of the reviewers' votes.


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Is it appropriate in the UK to approach a PhD supervisor about funding in the first contact email?
I have already completed my undergraduate and masters studies in continental Europe (engineering/natural sciences, very applied field) and am currently applying for PhD positions starting autumn 2023.
Most of the research projects I am interested are advertised as being funded by private partners. As far as I am concerned one is still expected to pay fees for the PhD despite working on developing technology for these parties. I find this very odd first of all, this is very different to continental Europe, where even master thesis students are commonly paid by the industry partner benefiting from the intellectual property.
I am still interested in applying at two UK universities though as I would find this academically interesting. I have seen there is some competitive funding schemes one can apply to (scholarships by the university), also covering the horrendous study fees for EU students. However, for these one needs to apply together with the potential supervisor.
So I am wondering whether it is appropriate when writing the potential supervisor to mention straight away that one is only interested in the position if an application for funding is successful? I am also wondering how this will be seen by the academic and whether this is uncommon. Taking debt to work on these projects is not an option for me, given offers at other locations where one receives a full salary.

A note of big caution:
I find this very odd first of all, this is very different to continental Europe
you will not travel very far, if you keep on comparing an hypotetical situation favorable to you with the potential situation you are ending up into. What you think will transpire when you talk with PhD advisors, even if you are not saying it, and no one will be amused by a candidate like that.

Funding is essential for a PhD program. Generally, you apply for funding together and supported by the supervisor. Moreover, when searching for a PhD position, normally, the supervisor will know through which channels you can be funded. A PhD student has a salary and does not need to pay the industrial partners. It is the other way around... Please check your sources of information carefully and choose wisely.

What you think will transpire when you talk with PhD advisors, even if you are not saying it, and no one will be amused by a candidate like that. Yes I am aware of this,. Actually the very reason why I asked this question to begin with, to make sure I do not upset/annoy anyone. @EarlGrey

As an academic at a UK university in my experience it would be more unusual to have someone contact me regarding a PhD position who didn't need funding. But I think it's always good to be clear about this in the first contact email.
However, to differentiate yourself from others who are also seeking a funded position it would be great to have researched scholarships which you believe you would qualify for and identify these in your email. This would certainly get my attention. Also make sure to make it clear why the person you are contacting is the right supervisor for you. For example, by noting how their recent research (read some of their papers) is applicable to what you want to study.
There can sometimes be internal funding opportunities available which aren't advertised (yet) that a supervisor could access for the right student. So making a good impression in your contact email is important.

I think it is reasonable to show commitment, i.e. you will do your best to win the scolarship, as well as leaving the door open with the advisor to co-operate to obtain  alternative fundings.
You should ask yourself: do I need the fundings to work with this advisor or do I need this advisor to get the fundings?
Keep in mind that none of the questions is intrinsically right or wrong, but you should aim at very different PhDs advisors depending on your choice: if you have a great idea to develop independently, you need the advisor to get the fundings (any advisor,  actually, to be more precise), if you like the group and the problem tackled by potential advisor X, you need the  fundings to work with the advisor (any fundings, actually, to be more precise, it may be that the advisor and you are able to put altogether a patchwork of funds ... ).

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Finding Post doc position during last year of PhD
I reached to last year of my PhD in mechanical/material entineering in europe. I am not satisfied about my situation. Not good institute, not good recommendation, and not many articles. Thus, I want to really spend my last year to grasp whatever I need for future work. I am 31 years old. Do you think another Phd could be a solution (i know about yhe complexity of procees)? What can I do in last year?
Rrcently I added machine learning to my work but I am in doubt everytime whethet it is for me or not since there are some papers under review with my friend and maybe I could go deep. Any idea?
sometimes I think that maybe with some programming knowledge i can get a job if post doc or another phd is not possible. Thetefore, some coursera certificate I achieved. I am lost

Please search this site. No, another PhD is not a solution. Yes, it is scary to proceed to the next stage of your career but everyone has to go through this.

I felt in your situation so many times.
I would say what worked for me, start looking at the requirements and skills of positions that attract you (the earlier the better), even post-docs. The more you search, the more you will find one that actually requires the skills you ALREADY HAVE. Take your time to build your CV and application for those ones. It will be ok, just apply, and do not get dissappointed with rejections.

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Why don't academics self-publish?
Sure I've heard about Impact Factor ratings that all public universities heed to... but I've also heard that you do peer-review for free, and publishers earn money from letting people read papers, and letting people publish papers as well. Wouldn't it make more sense to simply publish PDFs on own websites? Or just sell them in own webshops?

Who says they don’t? Your premise is simply incorrect.

Try self-publishing and you'll quickly gain a new appreciation of the work that publishers do.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/63951/if-an-author-does-not-intend-to-make-much-revenue-from-a-book-why-not-make-it-o Duplicate?

"Why don't academics self-publish?" ... many cranks do.  Of course, they can do this because they skip peer-review.  Books touting worthless cures for cancer, for arthritis, etc. sometimes even appear on the best-seller lists.

I used to have a colleague who started his/her own conference to publish his/her papers, and earn some $$ from conference registrations.  The conference became reputable, and voila... $ and publication.

It would be much harder to find things of interest to almost everyone. Subscribing to a journal (or having the library do so) is a form of concentration of ideas that makes them easy to find.
And the review process helps people know what is valuable without having to do their own analysis of every paper. Many can rely on abstracts and summaries without having to verify every fact and re-test every hypothesis.
I've successfully self-published books, but the only reason they were successful was that everyone who had any interest in them already knew how to find me and my website. But for those books that didn't have a pre-existing audience? Nada.
Search engines can only do so much.
Note that the world was once like that, say in the 1600's. It was very hard to disseminate new/good ideas and just as easy/hard to publish junk. Progress has been made, though the world isn't perfect.
You can, of course, publish on your own. No one stops you. But you will find only a tiny audience in almost all cases.

I myself do think that people should put their work on their web pages, available to The Universe (=internet?)
I do put online everything I write, and in the last 20+ years have kept a mind about copyright issues with publishers, so that everything is legit.
It is true that, if one is not well-established in one's field, such self-publication scores no status/establishment points... while it still can obviously benefit everyone.
At a certain point, if one is not straining toward tenure or higher-status in some way or other, but has established oneself as a fairly reliable scholar, I think self-publication is the socially perfect thing. (Oh, yeah, nevermind pay-raises...)
Again, yes, if you have tenure, and are not concerned with payraises related to conformity... indeed, publish (!) on your academic web-site. :)

Of course, one should add, that any work that is not Xtremely Conformist will be viewed as something giving an excuse for The Administration to not give you a pay raise. :) Etc. This is not unique to "publication in refereed journals": in my several decades of experience for myself, and observation of others, any possibly excuse will be made for not giving you a good raise. There is no COLA in academe. And so on...

It is not true that no academics self publish, although it is not very popular indeed.
Firstly, the fact that a book is self-published, does not mean that it hasn't been peer reviewed, or that it must be of low quality. I have bought and read two self-published books (this and this) and I found both to be of excellent quality and rather insightful.
Moreover, several people make their lecture notes available on their university websites; this is a form of self publication. Such material can often be better than many published textbooks.
Robert Ghrist has published a book titled "Elementary Applied Topology" on Amazon. I haven't read it, so I don't have an opinion about it. It is interesting to read his blog post "why I self-publish my mathematics texts with Amazon". The reasons he mentions are: (i) he retains all copyright, (ii) he can set the price, (iii) custom style (figures, etc), (iv) good distribution around the world, (v) good quality of production, and a few more.
In the same post, he addresses some of the concerns people often have regarding self publication.
When it comes to papers, arXiv and other similar repositories have become very popular. Many publishers allow the authors to make a preprint of their paper available on arXiv or on university repositories.
Regarding your question about why the academic don't sell their papers via alternative channels, I believe that the majority of academics are simply not interested in selling their papers.

If you consider putting PDFs on websites to be self-publishing, then I, and many other academic scientists, self publish.  Most of the papers are posted on our websites and also published in journals.
In much of academia, a publication does not count towards career advancement unless it is peer reviewed.  The reason to use a traditional publisher is to obtain the peer review, not to disseminate the publication.
ArXiv is a better way to spread work than self-publishing or traditional publishing.

I know a professor that ONLY self-published for a while, because after his Ph.D. he wasn't accepted into any post docs or teaching positions, so he wrote 6 books on the same topic, got relatively well-known, and essentially became an authority on it; after which he got the professorship. His path is quite unorthodox, so they do self-publish, it's just rarer.

Do you maybe have his name handy? Would be great to read it up!

sure, he's Dr. Anton Yasnitsky, and his niche topic is the life and work of Lev Vygotsky


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How to properly criticize/comment on literature without being offensive?
For example, many of the published papers didn't take A into account when running some simulations to calculate B and I am trying to address the importance of A in my paper. How should I properly comment and/or criticize the existing work?
Suppose I say something like this: most of the existing works omit A when calculating B, which can lead to the wrong conclusion. I feel it is too aggressive and offensive. Alternatively, if I say it very mildly, the importance of my work may be not clear to the audience. So, my question is, what is the proper way to stress the importance without being offensive? Also, should I cite some of the papers that didn't take A into account?

I don't believe the first version is aggressive.   Stick to the facts.  Don't sugar-coat just to please authors.  If a work is wrong or has limitation, just say so.  It's OK to say equation A does not consider X; don't write 'the authors did not think of X'.

It is not offensive or aggressive at all. Pointing out other papers' limitations and weaknesses with an objective tune and highlighting your research strength is the common way to organize the introduction part/literature review (thesis).

Just to answer all the concerns about me strongly believing in the hypothesis, it is because it has been tested against many other techniques we used except for the one. Also, I am not saying the hypothesis is flawless. It certainly can be improved.

There is nothing offensive about noting a limitation in an existing method, and what you want to write does not strike me as offensive to begin with.  If existing works didn't take A into account then they didn't take A into account, and it is okay to say this clearly and openly.  Nevertheless, if you want to temper your critique to be as charitable as possible to existing works (which is generally a reasonable idea), you can do this by also stressing the merits of the methods you are criticising before pointing out their limitations.
I once wrote a paper where I developed an algorithm that gives exact results for a problem where existing methods gave only approximations (sometimes incorrect).  In that particular case, my own algorithm was more narrowly tailored to a smaller class of problems than the existing methods, but it worked better in that narrow class of problems.  In my exposition of this algorithm I made it a point to stress that the drawback of the other methods (e.g., giving only an approximate solution) were a result of their greater generality, and that these were still useful methods in broader problems.  In that case it was unclear whether the existing methods were intended to solve the problem I was dealing with, so I merely noted that they didn't clearly rule it out-of-bounds, but only gave an approximate solution that was sometimes in error.  That is the kind of thing we do to ensure that the reader understands the value of existing work, but also its limitations.
Remember that academic research work typically involves innovation over existing methods/knowledge, so ideally new work will bring some improvement to existing work.  This means that there is usually some limitation in existing work presenting a "gap" that is being filled by the new work.  In order to explain the contribution of your own paper, it is perfectly appropriate to clearly articulate the limitations of existing work and the resulting "gap" in knowledge that you are addressing.  Ideally, other researchers will build on your own work in turn and address limitations in your own work.

If you want to say something that may be viewed as negative, simply state it without being too colorful with adjectives and you should be fine. Also, Most universities have writing centers or services that help with this type of thing if you prefer having someone review your writing before you submit it. I've used them multiple times in the past, there's no shame in it and it definitely helps you and gives you reassurance.


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Worried about my progress
I'm a 3rd year PhD student in pure Math in a Canadian university. I feel like in last one year I haven't made much progress. I definitely tried some problems, had regular discussions with my supervisors, but, either I couldn't get any new result or what I did turned out to be wrong. Surely, I read some other topics, gave some talks and attended some conferences/seminars, but that hasn't helped in getting some new result.
I'm starting to get worried that I'm not making enough progress towards completion of my PhD.
The reason I'm worried is because my PhD is only 4 years and I'm already in my 3rd year now, so in above a year I'll have to start applying and if I don't have results then getting a postdoc would be difficult. Let alone the fact how competitive the job market is.
I would like to know the opinions of more expert and experienced people here. Thanks!!

Shouldn't you also be worried about graduation? If you don't have results, how do you graduate?

I don't have the numbers, but I would be very surprised if half of Canadian pure math PhDs (just counting those who graduate) get another academic job, not counting those who return to an academic job in a developing country with a serious shortage of PhDs.  I guess UofT and UBC and maybe McGill might manage to place more than half their PhDs into postdocs, but, even then, statistically speaking, your concern is valid.
However, there really is nothing you can do about it other than continuing to do research and hoping you get results.  If it helps with the worrying, you might want to get yourself some idea of what you might want to do if you don't get an academic job, but there isn't really anything else you can do.
You should know that a substantial portion of pure math dissertations are basically figured out in a week, though it takes a good deal of more time to get all the details completely straight and of course time to get yourself to the place where you can have that week.  Progress is not even.  Enlightenment can be sudden.  In fact, the dissertations that are figured out in a week are usually the best dissertation; the ones where the student methodically works through things and makes gradual progress over a longer period tend to be the boring dissertations.
However, many students never get that week, and failure to get that week can be just some kind of bad luck with the problems you pursue.  It does happen that some people just keep running into unexpectedly intractable problems (and the problems don't get solved by anyone else either, or get solved 20 years later when new methods become available).  When the job market was friendlier to applicants, an advisor could explain and give evidence that you are obviously capable but couldn't get substantial results due to bad luck, but that's unlikely to get you a job nowadays considering there are more very capable applicants than jobs.
It sounds to me that you don't need to worry about graduating, since you could write up your attempts at problems and results for some special cases (even if they are almost trivial) for an acceptable dissertation, but that's unlikely to get you a postdoc.


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Special Issue abstract acceptance
A prestigous journal was calling abstracts for a special issue. I was informed by the guest editor that my abstract was accepted with final paper due dates. I completed my submission and have been waiting almost two months. I was wondering if it is common for rejection in situations like my case.

What is your field?

Energy and environment is my field.

I would think that even though an abstract has been accepted, the complete manuscript will still undergo peer review, a process that is often very long. Two months of review time is quite normal.

Are you sure that was a prestigious journal? I get special issue invitations from predatory / fake journals almost every day. Always a good idea to check with experienced colleagues before signing any publication agreements.

Usually the editors send an expected timeline for the process when there is a special issue. Did you see one in the initial call or when you were informed that you made it past the abstract stage?

Acceptance or rejection isn't predicted by the delay. The editors have asked for reviews from trusted reviewers. They will make a decision on individual papers near the time that the production department needs clear instruction. I'd guess that most rejections will come near that time as the editor(s) consider the relative "worth" of each paper to the whole. But the "production deadline" might be a bit fuzzy in some cases.
I'd also assume that if a paper is definitely rejected you will be notified relatively quickly to avoid requests for information becoming too much of the workload.
And, I'd guess that after two months, editors are still collecting reviews, assuming that the production deadline isn't imminent. Things take time because people are busy with other tasks.
But, no one can predict what is in the minds of the editors or what their work process is. Patience is advised.

I have a hard time believing that a prestigious journal would accept contributions based on an abstract only, but according to your question they did, because they asked for the final version. I think it is more likely that

As Ian said in a comment, the journal is not prestigious, but they used a very similar name as the journal you thought you were interacting with.

OR

They did not ask you for a final version but for a final submission, as Buffy assumes. In this case, they might have a way for you to look at the status of your submission. I have no idea why they were doing a pre-screening of articles based on abstracts, but you should be able to determine this from reading the call for papers. In this case, two months is not a long time. The journal needs to give reviewers enough time and they might not have sufficient reviewers standing by.

OR

The journal is the journal you are thinking about but they were looking for contributions for non-refereed or "lightly refereed" articles, which would not go on your CV among "reviewed journal articles". In this case, they have all they need and this special issue would come out sometimes soon. If you can find the invitation to which you reacted, you can find out what this issue is. However, in my experience, journals are very careful about not mixing refereed
and lightly refereed articles without very clear labeling.

Thank you for your answer! I did get the chance to go back to the posting after your advice. The guest editor primarily accepted abstracts and I received an invitation to submit the final paper through the journal's elsevier page. The posting and abstract acceptance letter stated that the abstract acceptance is not an acceptance of the article and that the article would follow the journal's procedures of review and publication. So, I am able to view that my manuscript is with the guest editor and I guess I just need a bit more patience! Thanks again!


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Do I have to report all data and how should I deal with outliers if there are too many?
Say I have a hypothesis and then did the experiment 10 times and collected 10 data points. Five of the data points agree well with my hypothesis, but the other five are outliers. I strongly believe in the validity of my hypothesis (which every experimentalist does I guess), but I can't find an explanation for the outliers, or the possible explanations are too many. Can I still publish with five good data points? How should I deal with the other five? I assume it's unethical to not report them, right?
Update: Sorry I didn't make my situation clear. We did use a lot of different techniques to test our hypothesis. The 50% outlier is just one technique we used. But the other techniques we used all converge very well and support the hypothesis. The 50% outlier for that one technique probably only accounts for 10% of the total data points of all the techniques we used. That's what bothers me and my question is

Can I only report data points for the other techniques we used?
If I have to report data for the technique that has a lot of outliers, do I have to find a reasonable explanation for the outliers?

How expensive to do more experiments?

Related, though the opposite problem: Is it unethical/unscientific to omit outlier data in a publication when they are in FAVOR of your argument?

Mother Nature really doesn’t care how much you believe in your hypothesis. You need to care a lot more about what the experiments are telling you about your hypothesis.

If 5 out of 10 data points disagree with your hypothesis, and you still "strongly believe" in it, then I have other concerns besides explaining the "outliers."

What is your definition of an outlier?

“which every experimentalist does I guess” — if anything, it should be the exact opposite. This is why we have a null hypothesis.

If the so called outliers come from a different technique, they aren't outliers but a different population. Outliers are far away values from the same population. Your problem seems to be that the results from one technique (or more) agree with your hypothesis and results from another technique don't, which is a reasonable concern but it is not what you are asking in the question.

If Pere is right, there is no harm to your hypothesis simply by reporting everything you have accurately and in full. Your hypothesis worked under some circumstances but didn't under others. It could still be a useful hypothesis.

It's generally OK to say something along the lines of "experiment X resulted in a considerable number of outliers, further research is required to explain the cause". Sure, if you're publishing to a really top tier journal, they might ask you to go away and do the research, even if it means delaying publication for a year or more. But most journals won't expect you to cover every corner case of your research, as long as the premise is clear. What they want is for someone else to be able to investigate that discrepancy, based on your results, in the future.

You can do whatever you want, so long as you describe the fate of every data point you collected in the paper.  If you need to leave half of them out of your  analysis, the referees will then determine if what is left is valid science.

@BillOnne Right, this isn't religion.

A lot of people seem to be really critical about me believing in the hypothesis and I want to clarify again that, it's only because we tested against many different techniques, and they all support it except for the one that I mentioned here. I am not claiming it's perfect and it certainly can be improved.

You might benefit from asking your statistics questions on the statistics Stack.

@Simon I edited my post.

I have a method for predicting a fair coin toss, by using tarot cards. Sadly, I still have 50% outliers, but if I ignore the outliers, my predictions are always true!

Those outliers may be the only interesting part of your experimental data to other researchers. "All thousand of my patients except Mr.X died within y days of contracting the disease", for example

Yes, you have to report all of your data. You also need additional expertise in experimental design, statistics, the scientific method and Quality Control/Quality Assurance.

Say I have a hypothesis and then did the experiment 10 times and collected 10 data points.

The way this is described, the 'experiment' is your one independent data point. The repeat executions of that experiment do not qualify as additional unique data points because they should be highly correlated... but they arent...

Five of the data points agree well with my hypothesis, but the other five are outliers.

(Sigh.) Half of your data is not an outlier by definition. An observation doesnt become an outlier because it doesnt support your hypothesis.

I strongly believe in the validity of my hypothesis (which every experimentalist does I guess),

Stop this talk right now. This is wrong on every level. As an experimentalist, you definitely do not speak for me. The data does the speaking. Imagine this was a forensics experiment as part of a court case and you were the prosecutions witness and you said this under oath in court. Imagine that for a moment.

but I can't find an explanation for the outliers, or the possible explanations are too many.

Which is it? The hypothesis you do advance has to be testable and falsifiable. Remember, that your different experiments are the data points, and NOT the unique repetitions of the same experiment. You clearly have enough explanations. If you have too many explanations, reformulate the question. over and over and over.

Can I still publish with five good data points?

Of course you can submit all the data. It sounds to me like you have bigger problems.

How should I deal with the other five?

Include the single experiment-with-multiple-repetitions as 'not supporting our hypothesis'. Formulate a testable, falsifiable, defensible, reproducible hypothesis that can be tested and muse on how that should be tested as 'future work'.
Get some help in experimental design, statistics, quality.

I assume it's unethical to not report them, right?

It is unethical yes, but it goes well beyond unethical. The phrase I've heard at work is that you 'know enough to be dangerous'. The path you are dancing around is a mix of fraud and negligence and needs to be addressed today.

Update: Sorry I didn't make my situation clear. We did use a lot of different techniques to test our hypothesis.

Good. These are your 'unique data points'. As written, you only have 'one outlier', not 5. Behold the magic of statistics!

The 50% outlier is just one technique we used. But the other techniques we used all converge very well and support the hypothesis.

Great! Time to submit, pending the new hypothesis for explaining the new/repeat observations.

The 50% outlier for that one technique probably only accounts for 10% of the total data points of all the techniques we used.

Apparently there is a complete lack of uncertainty analysis, statistics, quality control etc. The technical term is 'physics envy' :)

That's what bothers me and my question is

Can I only report data points for the other techniques we used?

No, but you can change the 'resolution' of reporting from unique executions to unique approaches. Changing the 'resolution' of your aggregate data is the best, most common, most defensible, most reproducible way (that i know of) to fundamentally alter (shall we say 'improve') the data you have available.

If I have to report data for the technique that has a lot of outliers, do I have to find a reasonable explanation for the outliers?

You cannot have 'a lot of outliers'. That is contrary the definition of an outlier. You can have 'too many'.
You need something that is testable and falsifiable at a minimum. My personal suggestion is not to 'guess the correct answer' but to advance multiple, multiple hypothesis. If you advance multiple hypothesis, the odds are better you will list the 'correct' one. You want a path forward, this is the opportunity to lay that path. With multiple hypothesis advanced, you have room for natural selection to run its course and let the data select the most robust hypothesis.

Leaving half the data out is scientific fraud. You have to report all data points and if they do not agree with your hypothesis then maybe your hypothesis is wrong.

Thanks for your comment. The 50% outlier is just one part of the characterization we did. But the other 4 characterizations we did all converge very well and support the hypothesis. That's what bothers me the most. And the 50% outlier for that one characterization probably only accounts for 10% of the total data points of all the characterizations we did.

@Simon It's possible that there is a hidden variable that is not controlled that is causing that so called outlier. That's why reporting all data is crucial. It allows us to notice something is wrong, and to find explanation for it.

Scientific integrity requires that you report all the data. Period.
You are then free to focus on the parts that support your hypothesis and try to explain those that don't.

I read the edit. If the model assumptions are correct, it is totally fine to have a situation where a test rejects your hypothesis while other tests (different approaches) do not reject your hypothesis. This "multiple-testing" approach is still safe here as long as you do not reject your hypothesis based on the result of the last "failed" test without any modification of the procedure. It is safe to report the data and result of the last test.
Furthermore, random variation could be the reason why there are outliers, but depending on the nature of the "outliers" (e.g. if they are too far from each other), there could still be potential problems. I still believe you should do more experiments or examine the datasets again to be sure.
Original answer:
In my opinion, don't do that. Do more experiments if it is possible. You can not say that they are outliers if half of these data points disapprove your hypothesis. That is a terrible ratio. It is likely that there is a problem with your experiment/hypothesis.
Furthermore, it is not a good practice to remove outliers without a proper explanation. "Outliers" are not objectively well-defined without assumptions. When someone says that some data points are outliers, they imply the structure of the data generating process (model assumptions), so they can conclude that these data points are too unlikely to be generated from the process. Of course, model asumptions should be made reasonably (according to what we know). Based on this statistical reasoning, they decide to remove the units.
However, if you have no reasonable explanation (model assumptions) to consider the data points as outliers, there is no reason for you to remove them. It is unethical to remove data points just to produce what you want to see rather than to produce the correct result.
Sometimes, "outliers" suggests a completely different conclusion. It raises a different question: "How wrong are the model assumptions?". It's not an ethical problem, but a malpractice (and a waste of resources) to believe that  to assume that the model assumptions are always correct (or not too wrong to be accepted), and ignore the findings. With a proper (reasonable) reconsideration of model assumptions, the correct conclusion can be derived. Of course, it is unethical to modify model assumptions just to produce what you want to see, especially when there is nothing "significant" going on.

"Disapprove" should probably be "disprove".

Probably I used the wrong word in this context, but I follow a strict interpretation of hypothesis testing, so generally I do not say "something is disproved" because  HT cannot disprove/prove a hypothesis.

With five “outliers” out of ten, either your experiments are done quite badly (50% giving wrong results), or your hypothesis is very incomplete. For example your hypothesis might be “mice do x” but the correct hypothesis would be “male mice do X”, which would have 50% “outliers” as long as you use both male and female mice.

This is a good way to examine your experiments privately, and may be well-suited for a "future research" section in a paper. However, OP should not write anything purporting to prove such a hypothesis based on the data already collected; new experiments must be run to evaluate that hypothesis.


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How to force a German university to take action against possible fraud?
This case concerns a university in south part of Germany. There is a lady who has a full-time job in this university (she is PI of a group not a professor) and has brought several millions Euro to the university.
Now the problem is this: this lady has left Germany years ago and is living and working in Brazil, but in a very strange way, she still receives her full salary in Germany, and in fact, she is presented in the German university as she is living in Germany.
The case has been reported several times, but administration doesn't do anything. Is there any approaches or suggestions how to force university to investigate this matter?
EDIT 1
One of the people in the university had told the whistleblower that the PI in question is a highly valuable person as she brings money to the university. So, it seems there are people in the university administration that are blending the laws and regulations for her.
EDIT 2
One of her students had informed the office of the ministry of education of the state which university belongs, and the minister is incidentally a close friend of university rector; however, they forwarded the email to the university without any response.
EDIT 3
I just learned that one of her PhD students has filed a civil lawsuit last week. If any result comes out of it, I will update my post.

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There is no way a university would fail to notice that a professor is not present on campus for a long time.  There is no point in "reporting" it.
There is no reason to think a professor has committed fraud or any other sort of misconduct by working from another location.  Most people would consider the professor's employment conditions to be a matter the professor can keep private until she chooses to disclose it.  Employment conditions are regulated by local laws; you didn't mention any that might have been violated.  We do not even know if this professor is a beamtin.
If you are a student at the university, and you paid the university tuition to be taught in person, then you might be able to take action against the university but not the professor.  I am not familiar with German law, but my understanding is that German universities usually do not charge tuition, so I do not see how a German student would get a refund or any other compensation.
Among the top 1000 or so most prestigious professors, it is not unusual to work for two universities that are located in different places.  For example, Carl Wieman worked at University of British Columbia and University of Colorado Boulder at the same time.  Fraser Stoddart works at both Northwestern University and UNSW Sydney.
A lot of scientists work far from their university because it is essential to their research.  Astronomers, anthropologists, biologists, earth scientists, and many more do field work, sometimes for an extended period.

The typical case is that the professor has certain teaching duties, which are pretty much the only part of the job that is actually formally required. Since the Corona pandemic it might actually be possible to perform these remotely, but usually that was not the case. Failing to perform these teaching duties would be the only way to even start any efforts to remove the professor. I know one case that is a bit similar to this one, and that professor is careful to still fulfill these requirements, so no actions are taken as they are very unlikely to succeed.

@MadScientist: moreover, teaching duties may be provided in the form of block/intensive courses in full agreement with university administration/department rather than a series of weekly lectures/seminars. Both employed and verbeamtete professors can negotiate part-time and still be full professor. Rather typical are full professors partly "freed" for a parallel position at some non-university research institute (see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeinsame_Berufung). Or at a foreign university. The total amount of teaching duties can be quite low for the Gemeinsame Berufung, and while I...

... don't know for foreign institutions, I'd expect that there's a lot open to negotiations in the end. (BTW IMHO it would be extremely unusual if OP knew the actual details of the contracts between the professor in question and the university and Land.) @AnonymousPhysicist: I'm not aware that a student at a German university has a right to receive education by a particular professor. They have a right to receive education that follows the curriculum for their course of studies, and the university must provide some professor who takes the required exams, of course.

@cbeleitesunhappywithSX there are certainly explanations that could make this arrangement above board (and we also don't know enough details here anyway). But I've also seen cases where professors simply stay away from their university without any agreement, still fullfilling their formal duties but with clear negative consequences for their expected duties like mentoring PhD students (the one case I mentioned has no PhD students or PostDocs anymore).

@Alice: sorry, yes, I misread. But: in the case of a PI there would be even more leeway for negotiations. I will certainly keep an eye on the newspapers, and if it turns out that there is indeed corruption (and I'm the last one to believe or claim that there wouldn't be corruption in German academia) then it's a good job you help to expose it! However, what I do miss from your side is an acknowledgement that based on what you wrote we on academia.sx cannot go further than saying there are a red flags that raise suspicion - but there's still the possibility that it's actually fine.

I have spent the last 11 years of my life trying to get German universities to act on hundreds of cases of blatant plagiarism in doctoral dissertations. I have learned that German universities are slow to act at best, and will ignore me (although I report in my name and I am a tenured professor) if they feel like it. As mentioned above, there can be many reasons for a person to be listed at multiple institutions, none of which are problematic.
Which part of the university did you inform? Generally, the 'Ombud für guter wissenschaftlicher Praxis' is the right place for reporting academic misconductct. Any other place will probably just delete your email, especially if you are anonymous. But again, living somewhere else is not misconduct.

Privacy is a really big deal in Germany. So it is no surprise that the university says that the employment contact between it and a third person is none of your business. They are probably right; the university will probably get in really big trouble if it violated the privacy of its employees in such a way.

Privacy does not end when someone claims that somebody else has done something wrong. The university may or may not investigate, but they certainly cannot tell you.

I would be careful about drawing conclusions here.
First, it is not that unusual for some people to have multiple appointments (especially if some appointments are not permanent), sometimes in different countries.  For instance the thousand talent program  in China sought to hire non-Chinese academics who in turn did not have to forfeit their original positions.
It is not unusual for faculties or PIs with multiple positions to negotiate flexible working conditions, including employment with third parties, including extended time away from a work site.  It likely has to be reported but if this does not interfere with the current position then what can be done?German law might preclude someone from holding two full-time jobs in Germany, but does it preclude someone from holding another position in another country concurrently with a position in Germany?  Even if German law does not technically allow this, can this be circumvented through a negotiated arrangement?  In other words, it may well be that the situation is known and proceeds with full knowledge of the relevant administrations.
The key point is: is the job of the PI at the German place of employment getting done?  If the answer is no, this is a problem for the employer.  If the answer is yes, there is no problem.
Presumably if the answer is yes - the work gets done via remote supervision or someone acting locally on behalf of the PI - then what exactly are the students “complaining” about?
Now I agree this kind of arrangement does not make the PI or the Uni look good, but unless you are privy to contractual details between the PI and the university, or between the PI and the funding agencies, and that these contracts expressly forbid this, then accusations of fraud are very much premature.  Unless of course the reporting misrepresents a situation that would be against the conditions of the grant or the conditions of employment (but would how you know this?)

are you sure you are sure?  I mean: you know for certain there can be no workaround because you have seen the conditions of the grant (not just 2nd hand information about usual practices)?  No COVID exceptions?  If this is so then the thing to do is to reach out to this funding agency.

dishonest may be very unpleasant but you can’t do much.  If you feel strongly about this alert the funding agency: they might not have a kind view of dishonest people and administrators covering for them, even if their actions are not technically illegal.

If I interpret correctly your question, then the university has been made aware of the physical whereabouts of the lady in question and has decided to not do anything about it. It is unclear whether you have standing, e.g. you are suffering any damages from this arrangement or whether you just think that the university is being exploited or that a law is being broken.
If you think that a law is being broken, it is actually your civic duty to report this to the police. If you think that the lady is being paid out of a grant when she is not doing any work, then you can approach the grant giving authority as a whistleblower.
If you think that there is some corruption (i.e. someone is being paid to allow something illegal and that the authorities are not reacting because they are being fed lies), you could try to involve the media.

"If you think that a law is being broken, it is actually your civic duty to report this to the police." Could you be more specific about what you mean by "civic duty"? For the vast majority of laws, you're at least under no legal obligation in Germany to report it to anybody if you find out that they are broken (there are exceptions for people in certain positions, though).


text:
How to find a balance if I find my supervisor insufficient?
I'm currently working on my thesis. I don't know how it goes in other countries but we don't have much freedom to choose our supervisors. However, I pushed the limits and made a free decision. I made some research and decided to choose the best academician to work and study with. The problem started at this point. I read previous works of the researchers at my department and most of -nearly all of- them were full of grammatical mistakes (in my native language), and extreme paraphrases and frankly they were like high school homework. I realised that there was nothing to do and got in touch with a researcher from another faculty; my request was accepted.
My expectations were, to be honest, extremely high. I'm the only one writing the thesis in English and we don't have any academic writing classes in English; I enrolled on some courses on Coursera, read dissertations relevant to my subject on ProQuest and worked hard to improve my English in general (IELTS Academic Overall: 7).
The first two meetings at the office with the supervisor were disasters. The supervisor didn't read the draft that I put enormous effort into and made extreme research. However, all the supervisor did was talking about templates and other irrelevant (or directly relevant) stuff.
I will ask for a recommendation letter so I think it wouldn't be a smart decision to negotiate constantly. I'm simply stuck. I bought the supervisor's latest book just to see if I think wrong or exaggerate the situation, no I don't, the book is not a book literally, it's like high school homework too.
What would be the best decision to make in this situation?

What would I do if I found a question asked on this stack exchange that had spelling and grammar errors, and complained about spelling and grammar errors? Of course, I would deelyberughtly make some sbellun errors to make the OP feel gud.

@BillOnne dear Bill, the ones I mentioned were in my native language not in English; I edited the question to make this clear. Thanks for the spot. And this is just a small part of my question.

What level thesis is this?

@Buffy It's a master's thesis

What's your subject? The expectations regarding the language in academic writing vary considerably between fields.

@JochenGlueck to make it clear, the ones I mentioned were grammatically bad enough to understand and when I asked one of the authors he said that he wrote it just because he had to write it and is currently giving classes. The subject is musical composition. He's a great composer though.

What are your plans after you finish the degree? More study? Remaining in Turkey (Türkiye)? Job market?

@Buffy I'll apply for a scholarship to study abroad, especially in the US. Thus I do care about my written work in addition to my musical compositions and concerts given. On the other hand, I might stay in Turkey as well because I'm not in a good financial status. I'm simply running all of these at the same time and I don't know how to find 'a balance' especially with the supervisor in this situation.

You are not in a happy place, and I'm not very happy about having to give the following advice, but I suggest that you do what is necessary to please the advisor and finish in such a way that you get a good recommendation.
While I (and probably most here) would prefer a more assertive solution, it might be sub-optimal for your future.
I would suggest consideration of compromise on all issues except possibly the language of your writing. And even that if necessary. When you have few choices you need to seek, perhaps, the least-bad option. Sad.
Be pleasant with the advisor in spite of it all. Don't push back too hard on things that might cause conflict.
Alternatives chosen by others are changing advisors and even universities in some cases, though that has costs in both money and time, if it is even possible.
Get done. Get away. Find a happier and more supportive situation. Good luck.

Thank you. At the beginning of the first year of the master's programme (it's a two-year programme) I gave an official complaint and report to the institute about the head of the department and our principle as there were serious corruptions. Anyway, the institute answered to my petition writing that 'there's nothing to investigate'. That's why I asked a question here. Otherwise, I would try a more 'assertive' solution but I had already tried it with another, more serious situation and got nothing except removing my chance to be an hourly-paid instrument teacher while studying.


text:
What should I do if I have some evidence pointing out that the results presented in a conference paper might be fake?
During the reading of a paper, published in the proceeding of a prestigious computer science conference, I noticed a logical error in the results presented in the paper.
I contacted two of the authors who are my colleagues (one is a PhD student in the same lab where I am a student) to ask for clarification. After hearing what they had to say, I was under the impression that they mainly tried to convince me that the results were OK. One argument they used was that because the paper was already published in a prestigious conference and passed the peer review, the results couldn't have been wrong. That didn't satisfy me; rather, their answers made me suspicious that at least parts of the results, presented in the paper, are fake (I mean, are not real). Moreover, that the authors tried to hide the problem with the results. Finally, I believe I have strong evidence to support my belief, which, at the moment, is that the results are fake.
What is the normal course of action in a case like this? If someone has some evidence indicating that a paper published in proceedings of a (computer science) conference includes fake results, what should that person do?
Additional information:
It's been more than two years since the paper was published.
The evidence that the paper is "fake" rather than merely wrong is that the method claimed would not be computationally tractable for the claimed data size without some special innovation that was not described by the authors.

" One argument they used was that because the paper was already published in a prestigious conference and passed the peer review, the results couldn't have been wrong." That is a terrible argument indeed.

Fake, or possibly incorrect? Quite a difference.

Is this paper the sort of thing that could be easily replicated? (for example, if the results are based on a simulation or benchmarking of some code)

Echoing @JonCuster's comment, it is surely important to distinguish "fake" from "incorrect" (not to mention intent...)

"One argument they used was that because the paper was already published in a prestigious conference and passed the peer review, the results couldn't have been wrong." - is this actually the argument they made for why they think the results are OK, or was it more like their explanation for why they aren't concerned that the results might be wrong, after listening to your argument and not being convinced? You are alleging fraud, which is a very serious charge, so I hope you have better evidence than "I believe the results are wrong but neither of us found the other's arguments convincing".

related/duplicate: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/44998/what-to-do-when-the-claims-in-a-paper-are-proven-to-be-wrong

related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/183662/advisors-paper-fundamentally-flawed-what-do-i-do/183668#183668

It is always safer to ask a question -- "I'm not understanding this point, can you clarify" -- than to challenge. That avoids either accusing the other person of being wrong or making a fool of yourself if the error is yours. And clearly, if you're saying "some evidence", you aren't in a position to challenge directly and get a publication credit out of it...

When did your reading of the paper and error discovery occur ? I ask as there would be questions relating to your slowness in reporting the matter if there is a long interval between error detection and its reporting.

The first thing that strikes me (and nobody else seems to have addressed) is this: you are a student.  This could possibly be a very serious issue, and you should not try to handle it by yourself.  Is there someone else around (eg your supervisor) who will listen to you and whom you trust?

I read your addendum by reviewing the edit history. My conclusion is that you have made a logical error by assuming that, because a problem is NP hard, therefore no instance of it can be solved efficiently unless the instance belongs to some restricted subset of the problem space for which an efficient algorithm exists. This is of course not true; NP-hardness is a property of a problem, not a problem instance. From my own experience, sometimes your algorithm may just "get lucky" and find a solution faster than you might expect for some specific instance of the problem.

For a concrete example, I wrote a branch-and-bound algorithm for a combinatorial problem where the algorithm's complexity was like 2^O(n^2), and the algorithm would take days or weeks when the problem size was 15, 16, 18 or 19, but for 17 my algorithm "got lucky" and found the solution in under a second. As far as I could tell, there was nothing special about the case n=17, it's just that the algorithm incidentally found a good solution early, which allowed it to reject the vast proportion of the search space which could not contain any solution better than that one.

There are two questions in the scenario that you posit.

Is there a real error in that conference paper, as you seem to think ?

(Let's put to one side whether the error is an honest mistake or a deliberate attempt to deceive since this would be almost impossible to prove and any effort to do so may well signal a sort of false vindictiveness on your part.)

If an error really is there, what should be done about it ?

This erroneous conference paper should only be a real concern to you if its assertions are likely to be a problem to you in your own anticipated published work for your doctoral thesis.
If it's not a particular issue to you in your own work,i.e. if it's just something wrong that you noticed in another person's work, then you just note it and proceed with your own studies. You should do nothing about it until after your next position is secured.
If it really is going to become an issue with the reasoning that you are adopting for your research and the eventual assertions coming from your own work, then you will have to address it with your supervisor. It then becomes a matter for your supervisor to consider.
There are sensitivities involved here since the authors of the erroneous work were (or still are ?) in your own department. But it is your supervisor's job to negotiate a way through these sensitivities that is at least fair to you.
Given what you have told us so far, that is as much as I can advise for now.
And please change your SE name to something that will not cause you or your organization to be identified by readers here.
You can ask SE Academia moderators to remove @ references to your name.

It seems unethical to me to let other people use incorrect results that you know are wrong (which will obviously cause them to either mislead others or waste lots of their time) just because it isn't an issue for you. Obviously that only applies if you're pretty certain that they are wrong, but still.

@Voo  That is a single perspective. Here is another: it seems unethical to me that a Y2 PhD student be the one to first publicly identify errors in a colleagues' papers and to press for its correction lest others expend time and resources on it; it is not strictly their responsibility, their omission in not doing so will not be held against them as this publication 'passed' more senior research faculty and a PhD student has far more pressing things to do with their work and free time. Academia offers many booby traps for earnest people. Let's not get OP snared in one. If it really is an error.

"other people aren't doing anything either" is not an excuse. But yes absolutely - not doing anything is the most convenient and easy solution - unethical solutions usually are, that's why people pick them.

@Voo  Several faculty in OP's department saw this paper before submission for the conference. Far more combed through it at the conference and when reading the printed proceedings. We still do not know if any person other than OP sees a real error here. Thomas Schwartz and kaya3 - who are au fait with computability - offered possible explanations. OP can discuss all this with trusted colleagues. But if there still is a real error it is still not OP's place to report it to his supervisor unless it has an impact on his own work. Would any of us ever do our jobs if others did it for us ?

Certainly OP should only take action if they have a high degree of certainty and after excluding other possible explanations. Which might very well not be possible and that's fine.  The unethical part is the "I know it's wrong, but I'm not doing anything because it might impact me". Inaction that causes harm to others because it's more convenient for you seems pretty clear cut.

The unethical part is the "I know it's wrong, but I'm not doing anything because it might impact me". Inaction that causes harm to others because it's more convenient for you seems pretty clear cut.  That's where you and I part company then. I know several people who did the inconvenient thing in academia (and elsewhere) for your sort of reasons. It cost all concerned a lot. Some lost their future in academia. Others had to change profession owing to CV impact. OP comes here looking for advice on the right thing to do. But he expects to preserve his doctorate and his academic career.

Let’s hold our horses here for a moment. Unlike the other answers so far, I see three options:

The results are “fake”, e.g. maliciously, knowingly fabricated
The results contain a mistake, made in good faith
The results are absolutely fine and you’re misunderstanding something

Option 1 is an extremely serious allegation and you should make sure you’re certain of misconduct (as opposed to honest mistake). This is not only to protect these colleagues: if you accuse someone (especially in your own group) of faking data, and are later found to be in the wrong, you will acquire a reputation that’s going to weigh you down a lot. Your use of the word “fake” is also confusing: do you mean “fabricated” (getting one number but writing down a different one) or “incorrect” (overlooking a flaw in the calculation and getting the wrong number, but writing it down faithfully)?
Option 2 is very common and you have already done the right thing: spoke to the authors about it. Since it’s your current group, it’s much better at this point to discuss your concerns with your supervisor than to escalate or publicise this. If it’s a mistake, it’s still potentially embarrassing for the group and your supervisor will probably be grateful to be alerted. If on the other hand there is indeed misconduct, and assuming your supervisor is not aware or complicit, it’s in their interest to resolve the situation delicately, and they have many more tools at their disposal than you (e.g. issuing a retraction, disciplining the relevant researchers).
Option 3 is also possible. Since we only have your side of the story, it’s very hard to tell the difference between “they mainly tried to convince me that the results were OK” and (from their perspective) “we tried to explain our results to OP but they’re still stuck on that step”. Can you work through the paper with a peer and see if they also agree with your interpretation? You should try to do this neutrally: “I’m not sure I agree with this, what do you think” and not “This bit here is clearly fake”
Finally: you may want to avoid using your real name when discussing serious scientific misconduct on a public forum.

Good answer! I'd also add that OP not being able to distinguish clearly between 1 and 2 in their question makes me think that 3 is by far the most likely scenario.

OP says it's a "logical error" - this could be important in certain areas of computer science as it could lead to false conclusions. I hope no funding allocations were provided on the basis of any false conclusions as this would make things embarrassing for everyone concerned - although a fessing-up would have to be done if a real error was made. On the other hand the logical error may be harmless and offer no advantage to the research group. If error it was - and OP hasn't passed it to anyone for review yet, it seems.

What a perfect answer

One of the more important lessons to learn as a PhD student or young researcher is to always assume option 3 by default (then work from there). Many posts on this site indicate that few people ever consider it, though. Because it is almost always option 3. Many times I've been in the exact same situation as the poster, then realized my mistake after weeks of swearing to high heaven that I couldn't possibly be wrong. Do not start fights by hurling megaton allegations without serious, serious proof.

@Jerome that’s my experience too. Option 3 is really common, we all get things wrong, and a bit of humility at this stage can prevent a lot of embarrassment later on. There’s a scathing paper review I sent early in my career I can’t ever think of without cringing.

@Jerome "Goodness, I found a compiler error!" Compiler error my ass :-).

Is there a 4th option that is kind of the child of both 1 and 2? i.e. The paper was originally published in good faith under the umbrella of 2. The author has since realized the error but refuse to acknowledge it and continue to defend the paper as accurate. "It was accepted, it can't be wrong."

As mentioned in the comments, there's a major difference between "fake" and "incorrect".
If the results are fake, then you are alleging scientific misconduct. If true, this will have serious consequences and you will need serious proof. The process varies by institution, but here's an example from the University of Manchester. Here misconduct is defined as fabricated results, falsified results, plagiarism, failure to meet legal/ethical/professional obligations like ethical guidelines when conducting human research, etc. If you observe these things then you are required to report the fraud (clause 5.2). There is a person at the institution which you can report the alleged fraud to, to whom you file a report. You are given legal protections for raising concerns about fraud, but you need to bring evidence. Once fraud is reported the university will investigate, and the affected people will get the chance to defend themselves. Needless to say, this will have serious consequences at personal level, regardless of whether the allegations are true or false.
If the results are incorrect, then it's a different matter. The "standard" way of dealing with this is by writing a new paper highlighting the error. Published papers can be wrong, so "the paper was already published in a prestigious conference and passed the peer review, the results couldn't have been wrong" is not true. Here's an example.
In your case, given that the author is a member of your research group, I would expect to start internally. If the results are fake, then I'd talk to the supervisor first, before escalating if it looks like the supervisor is also involved in the fraud. If the results are incorrect, then I'd convince the other author first, or at least the supervisor. If you can convince the supervisor there's a problem, chances are they'll tell you what to do next (e.g by getting more data).

I'm still a bit surprised that a paper was published in JHEP essentially stating that certain particles could exceed the speed of light in a vacuum, is that what the article is implying?

@Tom it was, yeah (past tense since the result has been discredited). https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/14968/superluminal-neutrinos

@Allure I remember that one! It was a faulty optical fibre connection right? Even the authors didn't "believe" it, but there comes a point when you need to publish what you observe or everyone is going to hear rumours anyway. Particularly with a collaboration that big.

@Clumsycat That makes sense I suppose.

@Tom The manuscript was never published.  The last paragraph of this answer https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/111137/36194 sums it up best.

@Tom I think a more precise statement of your initial comment would be "We don't think that these particles can travel faster than $c$, but that's what we measured and we can't find any error in our measurement, so what the hell?"

@llama OK yes, I looked into it and I see what you mean now, thanks.

Confronting them or fighting with them is not going to get you anywhere. Not anywhere positive, anyway.
But you can always write a follow-on paper that improves/corrects the error and submit it, perhaps to the same journal. It will force you, however to completely verify your claims. That would be one of the valid ways to proceed if you were at a different institution.
The other alternative is to create a note pointing out the error, and the effect on the conclusions of the paper and send it to the editor. This is a little bit less work, but you still need to be very sure of your arguments.
And if you are alleging "fake" rather than mistaken conclusions you need to be especially certain that you've got it right. But if you can find the correct result, then you don't need to charge them with misconduct. The community will do that if they see the alternative.
Having been published in a prestigious journal isn't proof of correctness, of course. There are plenty of counterexamples, both in technical and non-technical publications.

OP wrote of a conference, which is more important in CS than journals (unfortunately). So there is no next issue. This happens far too often in CS with no good forum for discussing problematic results.

Conference papers are almost the standard form of publication in computer science.

The follow-on paper (or correction "letter" to that journal if they publish such things) might be a way to absolve the department for this thing - if error it be. Please consult with an honest academic in the university you attend before making any decision on action. If finding a member of faculty that you feel you can trust is not possible, it's best to let the matter be sorted out after your own doctorate is finished and you get a position elsewhere.

To add to the other answers, let me expand on Option 3 of the great answer by Ottie: Consider the possibility that you are wrong. You spare us the details, but of course details matter to make a decision on the fact. If I understand you correctly, you base your belief that the results are wrong because they seem to have solved an NP problem in reasonable time. Strictly speaking, an instance of an NP problem, even a very large one, can still be solved in reasonable time. Also an instance can have a property that can be exploited or can be solved by a heuristic and the solution can be verified as optimal in polynomial time (that is actually the definition of NP, a problem can be verified in polynomial time). What I am trying to say is that it is very easy to draw a false conclusion based on the fact that something is NP. The story of encryption based on the insolvability of the knapsack problem comes to mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle–Hellman_knapsack_cryptosystem. As you can see, you would not be the first one to believe falsely that something is computationally infeasible.
If you want to move forward from your obvious frustration with the authors and the paper, you should go through their explanations again, assuming that it is correct. If you want to involve someone else (after announcing results to be fake the authors are probably out), you should follow the advice given to you and asking in help understanding each step. It might be that there is a relatively minor error, such as claiming a sub-optimal but close solution to be optimal. Only after making doubly and triply sure should you escalate to your supervisor. If the supervisor does not react, then you could go to the university level or use one of the publication checking outlets that you have been told about. This is to make sure that you (1) do not make a false allegation that (2) could have serious impact on your career at your institution. If the supervisor does not find a problem, you have the choice to believe the supervisor's judgment or not. If not, you are making a strong statement and strong statements need strong proof.

Based on the OP's addendum in the question's edit history, I think your answer is the correct one. OP has made a logical mistake by supposing that "NP hard" means each individual instance of the problem cannot be solved efficiently.

I suspect that this is true, but we do not know. OP could be onto something.

I'm a fresh graduate and am not very experienced, but your question doesn't seem to be difficult to answer. You have two options: (1) you can do nothing, and (2) you can start a fight. To start a fight, you have two options: (2a) you can fight in the battlefield of research journals by publishing a critical article or a comment, and (2b) you can fight by lodging a formal complaint with the universities the authors work at.
The article was published in the proceedings of a conference, which means that publishing a comment there isn't an option. And I don't think that a journal will accept an article whose purpose is to criticize a paper published in conference proceedings. This means that Option (2a) is unavailable unless the authors publish the same results in a journal.
Option (2b) should be used only if you can prove that the results were fabricated.
At any rate, you should think twice before starting a fight. Ask yourself the following two questions: (i) What's in it for me? In other words, is this worth spending time and making effort, or is it better to focus on my own research instead? What will I gain from this fight? (ii) Do I have a proof? To use Option (2a), you have to have a proof that the results are wrong. To use Option (2b), you have to have a proof that the results were fabricated.
I personally would start a fight only if someone published results contradicting mine.

You can also fight by complaining (not via a paper, but simply via e-mail with the relevant data attached; if you consider this to be your 2a, then sure) to the journal editor, right?

@justhalf yes, sure, you can, I'm just unsure what the editor could do then. Btw, the paper was published in conference proceedings, not a journal

There are many fake results out there, most of them are never denounced or corrected. People who blow the whistle through the official channels (journals, institutions) often suffer more than the fraudsters. Official procedures tend to take years, and to waste an unreasonable amount of your time even if you ultimately prevail. See Leonid Schneider's blog for many examples in biology and medicine.
Fortunately, there are ways to raise concerns without jeopardizing your career. In particular, PubPeer allows you to publicize your remarks anonymously.
You do not need to be sure that there is fraud for raising concerns, provided you do it in a professional manner. After all, it is the author's job to explain their results clearly and convincingly. If their work is correct they should be able to easily answer your concerns.
Asking people who suspect scientific fraud to be absolutely certain and to go through official channels, is one way to make sure that most fake results will never be corrected.

Whether your suspect simple error, outright fraud, mind control by nefarious evil forces, or whatever, the best way to challenge results is to attempt to replicate them.
If you faithfully follow their methodology, use the same input, and get the same output, then you'll have learned something.
If you get different results, then you can publish those results, and third parties will take note and get involved.


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Professor not teaching
I have a professor who is teaching two-credit medical terminology course. This course is being taught at a public university in Montana.
She taught the first class session we had with her, and now just sits in the back of the class room “filling out work notes from being a PT,” and is now having the students who are taking course teach the rest of the material for the semester.
My question is, is this okay and legal? I am paying to be taught by the expert in the field, “the professor,” not a student trying to learn the material. I am not also happy with forking my hard-earned money to have the professor do nothing but fill out patient notes during class time.

Go to the provost.

Hi B406, sorry you're having that problem. I edited your question a little to make it more readable. I also assume you meant a medical "terminology" course, and not a "terminally" one.

Having students explain material to each other is a perfectly normal and reasonable pedagogical technique. "Teaching a class" is not synonymous with "giving a lecture".
It's not clear to me from your description whether your instructor is using a method like this (if so, I'd expect them to be monitoring and providing feedback, even if they aren't lecturing) but you do not recognize this as an appropriate way to teach/it is not your preference, or whether they are actually not teaching.
If they are actually not teaching and spending the instruction time completing other tasks, then as a commenter suggests there will be avenues in your institution for managing complaints, and you can file one. It's likely to be helpful if multiple students share your concerns. Be polite and specific in your complaint to have the best chance it will be handled seriously.
Unfortunately, it's very unlikely that you have any legal recourse besides taking your money elsewhere. If they won't make changes and you are not happy with the instruction you're receiving at a given institution, your only other option is to apply to become a student elsewhere.

Yes, this is a perfectly valid teach methodology. If she is in the room to correct errors and prevent misconceptions, the students will learn the most when it is their turn to prepare the talk.

I feel like your last paragraph is a bit condescending. Surely you know that for the vast majority of students (especially somewhere thinly populated like Montana) it is exceedingly difficult to just "pack up and go to another university" after having one bad course.

@AzorAhai-him- Better after the edit? My intent is to be realistic about what the options are if complaining about it doesn't solve the problem (as well as suggesting one should consider carefully what the scope of this problem is, especially if it's been mischaracterized here).

I mean, I guess?

The real question is how much you are learning this way. The only thing that matters in the end is not how much time a professor spent at the blackboard herself but whether reasonably hard working students who diligently do all assignments (the rest do not count and have no real say in the matter) master the subject. If yes, I do not see what is there to complain about. You are paying for an opportunity to learn, not for a show in some particular format, and if it is there, all contract obligations are met IMHO. If no, then yeah, there is something to be corrected, indeed, and you may have a good reason for bring this issue up though I would start with bringing it up with the professor herself. Just try to be constructive then and start your sentence with "I believe I would learn more if ...". Go higher only if you meet total lack of understanding at this level and if you meet the above criteria in italic (if you don't meet them, look in the mirror first and correct all problems there before accusing anyone else of anything).
By itself, the technique of letting students make a class presentation on a regular basis is actually a good idea and I use it a lot myself, especially in graduate courses, though I prefer not to switch to that format entirely. I normally use 2:1 ratio (for every two hours I'm talking, I have 1 hour when students are talking). But the optimal ratio may be discipline and subject specific, so I wouldn't be surprised if 0:1 were chosen by somebody under certain circumstances.
With all that said, I do know of some cases where professors turned their classes into some meaningless activity where students were being occupied with some tasks requiring no attention from the professor and in the end everybody got an A for just being there, which, IMHO, only aggravated the problem. So it is really impossible to tell much about your particular situation without knowing more details.

It’s almost certainly not okay. Teaching is part of a professor’s job and a significant justification for the salary that they receive. Now, it is true that there are contexts when “teaching” is not synonymous with “lecturing”, as another answer points out. However, that fact is not as relevant as the other answer makes it out to be, for two reasons:

Those contexts are fairly limited. In a generic undergraduate class at a generic university, it will be assumed  and expected that a professor will spend a significant proportion of her classroom time actually lecturing, barring very specific reasons why a different mode of delivering instruction is justified and makes more sense.

More importantly, the absolute bare minimum that will be expected of any professor in the US is that during class time, they are actually doing something related to the class. Being physically or mentally absent from the classroom for extended periods of time, and particularly working on other things like answering emails or writing up notes that are unrelated to the class, would not be acceptable behaviors for a professor at my university, nor, I’d be willing to bet, at OP’s university or any self-respecting institution.

To emphasize the last point, even in a setting where a professor is implementing some system where students explain the material to each other, a conscientious professor would still listen in on the discussion and be on standby to correct inaccuracies, point out important points the presenter has failed to mention, make clarifying remarks that push the discussion along, etc. Basically the professor is still running the class and is still in charge. To be working on unrelated things and letting students run the show without even paying attention to what’s going on seems to me like a clear dereliction of duty. So no, it is not okay.


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Will PI salary provided by a research grant be deducted from their university salary?
(Considering the fact that this question is specifically about the UK academic system,) this webpage says

Applicants are expected to spend an average of at least 50% of full
time working on the project and the employment costs for this effort
would be covered in full.

Assume that a lecturer is supposed to be paid amount X by their university to be a full time employee. Now assume that individual gets a government-supported (does it matter?) grant in that they claimed that they spend 30% of their full working time. If the grant's period is a year, is it correct that the university will not pay 0.3X of that salary since it is supposed to be compensated by the grant?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/56861/nsf-two-ninths-salary-rule-vs-nih-model

The grant funding goes to the university, not to the individual PI. If the grant budget includes 30% of the PIs time, the university will then use that money to cover 30% of the PIs salary, while paying the other 70% from other sources.
There is no direct impact on the PI. They still get exactly the same paycheck as before. (The existence of this funding would be an argument towards getting promoted though.)

There is some "direct impact" on the PI, at least in theory: they can use the fact that 30% of their salary is paid from the grant to argue for a corresponding reduction in the amount of teaching and administrative work allocated to them.

There might also be travel money included, an indirect benefit that wouldn't affect taxes (in US, anyway). Likewise equipment in a few cases.

@avid I'd count that as indirect. It will vary between institutions, but I really wouldn't count on that approach working out. I'd expect the reply to be that this is just a shift from university-funded research time to UKRI-funded research time, and that teaching and admin remain constant.

Don't know specifically about the UK, but there usually are some semi-shady ways how a PI can use grants to boost their actual salary (at least a little). But this answer describes what happens in by far most cases.

@Buffy I'm only addressing having PI-time funded by a grant, not other benefits of having a grant in the UK.

@xLeitix: Could you supply an answer to discuss those ways, as well?

@Arno Unfortunately you're probably correct. A more accurate statement may be "they can use the fact that 30% of their salary is paid from the grant to argue against any increase in the amount of teaching and administrative work allocated to them."

@avid A senior-ish leader at the university will already have had to write a letter to the funding body, promising that reduction in teaching and admin loads, to get the grant awarded in the first place.  Sometimes they're lying.  Sometimes the referees work out that they're lying.

@DanielHatton Hahahahahahaha. No senior-ish person at my university has ever promised any such thing for any of the 5 grants that have funded parts of my salary. As recently as last year the BBSRC should have been paying for 40% of my salary. But noone promised, nor did I get, anything like that much time for the research.

@User I feel that would barely be related to the question as asked, and I don't know the mechanics well enough. One example would be grant-specific rules as Ian mentions, another would be setting up a one-person company and having it join the project as a partner.

@IanSudbery At my US institution it is required to attest that you've put forth the % effort on grants you are paid by, and that you have not done other activities with the money spent on those grants. My institution collects these attestations twice a year I believe, not sure if that's specifically required or just their way to comply with a more vague federal decree: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-2/subtitle-A/chapter-II/part-200/subpart-E/subject-group-ECFRed1f39f9b3d4e72/section-200.430

@IanSudbery I mean, I get that your employer is making you commit fraud, but saying so publicly is not advised.  If the grant(s) requires you to spend 40% of your time and you know you aren't going to...  Now, as an employer, having an employee commit fraud in exchange for the employer getting money without ordering the employee to do it (plausible deniability) is a great deal for the employer.  So I can see them not enforcing it.  (And maybe the grant is giving you money without any requirement you actually spend that time on it, who knows).

@yakk there is no fraud on my part. Firstly there is no contract between me and the funder, it is the university that has signed a contract. Secondly if it were anything, it would be breach of contract, not fraud.

One relevant thing here might be that while other answer are correct - the funder reimburses your employer for the fraction of your time its taking off them - some employers will include a bonus payment for the PI. I've got the Wellcome Trust specifically in mind here, but there may be others. On things like the old Henry Dale fellowships (and I believe the new career development fellowsihps) they pay for 100% of your time (and expect you to spend 80% on the research), but they pay for you to be paid at a higher rate than would be standard for a new PI.

I think one important thing to add to Arno's answer is that while there is no direct impact on the PIs salary, there (at least in theory) should be one on their workload. A typical research-oriented Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in the UK is supposed to spend 40% of their time on research, 40% on teaching-related activities, and 20% on admin. In a way, teaching-and-admin duties an academic performs "pay" for their allotted research time.
If that academic then gets a research grant on which they are costed to work for 40% FTE (which covers 40% of their salary), this does not mean they should spend all their research time on this project. In fact, these 40% should be taken out of their overall workload, and ideally out of their teaching+admin workload. This is sometimes referred to as buying out your teaching time.
So in principle, the academic from the above paragraph would go from 40(R)-40(T)-20(A) workload to 100(R) workload (ideally), or at least to a 64(R)+24(T)+12(A) (in case 40% of their combined R-T-A workload gets assigned to research on this new project). The grant money, which goes to the institution, should be used to cover the reduction in the PIs teaching workload (e.g. to hire somebody on a fixed-term teaching-only position).
As mentioned in the previous answers, successfully securing external funding is one of the conditions for promotions as well.

This is discipline and university specific. At places i have worked, you would only get buyout if you secured more than 40% of your time on external grants, and this would not come from hiring fixed term teaching staff (which we try not to do), but by the slack being taken up by those with less than 40% externally funded research time.


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can anyone else submit my thesis behalf of me
I did an undergraduate thesis with my partner. It don't have any missed, wrong or theft information. I was ill and long away from my dorm that time. So I told my partner to print and submit it. He had to sign my declaration page too by my name becasue I could not that time.That paper have two different name signature but by the same perosn. Is this going to be any issue for my degree ? or casue any future problem ?

You've edited this twice and removed the significant information, making the accepted answer incomprehensible.

Please don’t vandalize your post. This is already sufficiently vague that no one could figure out who you are.

The problems I see is that our friend falsified your signature and you did not say so before you friend handed in your thesis. The first should not have happened, that was wrong. You could have solved this a lot easier if you just sent an email explaining your situation before handing in the thesis. You are not the first student who got ill close to a deadline... They would probably have suggested a similar solution, without faking signatures, and it would have all been above board.
So what you did was wrong and it is possible you are in trouble. However, if they know the situation the most likely outcome will be you get privately told what I told you above and they leave it at that. If they don't know the situation, then they may suspect fraud, and you will have to explain it and hope they believe you.

Its probably in the university regulations somewhere that the declaration has to be signed by the person submitting the degree.

Ofcourse, typical sollutions for when someone is ill and cannot hand those in in person, is to allow them to preliminary submit the thesis without that form and the student can hand the form in later when (s)he is well again or to allow some form of electronic signature.

I wonder what happens if someone is too ill to do anything. Could a relative or friend hand in the thesis, of course giving all the information. At an extreme, could you wake up from a coma with a PhD?

I would expect the university to be as accommodating as possible. At the same time, having a family member who is that ill is great way of realizing how unimportant those deadlines are. So in most cases I would suspect an arrangement will be found to freeze the process till the student is well again.

This is a more general answer than is probably required, but may not fit the case at hand.
It is possible and legal (some places, at least) for one person to sign for another, with permission and with a notation by the actual signer. It thus becomes possible for any authority to check on the validity, even though the signatures "don't match". Illness of one party is often a cause for such to occur. My spouse, for example, recently signed an important document on my behalf based on a verbal approval.
But that wasn't done, apparently.
My best guess, however, is that you can work it out after the fact with no consequences by appealing to "authority" whatever that is.
Given some of the now deleted details, it doesn't seem like any fraudulent intent is involved.


text:
How to get two paid affiliations?
I'm a postdoc in the US working under the supervision of a not-very-known PI. Whenever my supervisor gets tipsy, he brags that he has also a full-time job in a German university and receives a 100% E14 salary in his German account. I knew that he is also affiliated with this university as he uses this affiliation together with the US one, but I didn't know that it's a paid one.
If later, I myself want to obtain such a position in Germany besides my US one, what is the common procedure in Germany?

Who knows in your case?  I do  know of one case where someone with a position in Europe (no teaching required, research only) took a position in the US, where he did low-level teaching along with his research.  But it was kept quiet, because the European employer would not have been supportive had they officially found out.  His Chairman in the US was miffed when his research publications mentioned only the European position.

The responsible Landesrechnungshof (state’s court of audit, don’t confuse with Bundesrechnungshof) might be very interested to learn of this.

It might be useful to ask yourself why your PI only shares this information when he’s tipsy (and presumably less in control of his faculties). The explanation is simple: for a “not-very-known PI”, the only realistic path that can lead to such a cozy arrangement allowing a person to draw two full time university salaries involves some form of deceit or subterfuge, as no serious institution will knowingly agree to such an arrangement for an ordinary, non-famous faculty member. So the answer to “How to get two [full time] paid affiliations?” is almost certainly “by lying to both your employers (and it’s very difficult even then)”.
Basically, this behavior is unethical. While it may work for some people in some situations, and while ethical versions of the practice may exist for top researchers (I’m thinking Nobel Prize/National Academy level people), @MaartenBuis is absolutely correct that this could get your PI in trouble and even cost him his job (both of them!) and/or seriously damage his career.

This is not common and could get your PI in trouble. So don't even try it.

@Marteen it’s easy when it’s easy but how do you plan to regularly lecture on 2 different continents?  Of course some accommodations can be arranged but I would not count on even getting hired for a 2nd job while already having another full time job elsewhere.

Yeah, labor laws are much stricter in Germany than they are in the US. On top of that are the regulations of the university. You can have jobs on the side in Germany, but they are limited in time.

@Marteen departments don’t hire.  Deans or Presidents do so unless you have an active accomplice what you are proposing is bound to come out.

I am not going to advise you on labor law, nor should you take law advise from someone on the internet.

What I know about the regulations at my university is that that is not allowed. It does not what country the other person works in. If the university paid for 8 hours of your time, it paid for 8 hours of a rested and fully functional employee.

Similarly there are laws in place that limit the number of hours you work. Once you are employed by a Germany employer, it is the employers job to enforce those. And as i mentioned above, they have good reason to do so.

There are exceptions, but they don't make such exceptions for E14s (basically post docs). If you win a Nobel prize, than arrangements can no doubt be made... So al this sound extremely fishy to me, and not something you should try to emulate.

Possibly related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/189250/how-to-force-a-german-university-to-take-action-against-possible-fraud

@Marteen  Well, we don't know.  At the time, I tried a quick Google News search for any reports of the "civil lawsuit" mentioned in that question, and found no trace.

If it was easy, everyone would do it. But they don't, so I think you should not make it a life goal of yours.
As for your PI's situation, there are two possibilities. Both are predicated that it must be obvious to both of his employers that he's not full-time at work in both locations.

What your PI says when he's tipsy is not actually true.
What your PI says is true, and it's been approved by both institutions. Few people are stupid enough to spend 50% of their time away from work without telling their employers, because employers will pretty clearly, sooner or later, realize that they do. And then you lose your job. So you tell the employer and you make arrangements if the employer is amenable. That might mean being part-time for either or both employers. At least in places where salaries are negotiable, that might still mean that you're drawing a good salary for your half-time work, but that will not be the case in Germany: If you draw a full E14 salary, then you will be expected to work full time for that university. (Whether that university expects your PI to work on location or remotely is a question for them to negotiate.)

There are a substantial number of people in academia who have appointments at two universities. But (i) I would venture that a large majority of them have very long and accomplished CVs, (ii) all but the most stupidest among them will have cleared this arrangement with both of their employers.

What is fairly common for prestigious 2nd positions is that the (German) job goes into part-time or a kind of "hibernation mode". Things like part-time university and part-time other research institution, or E14 hibernates in favor of a research scholarship. Prestigious here meaning that the German university sees a clear advantage to themselves why they should free their employee for the particular endeavour.