text:
Is there any scientific reference about position of the LGBTQ community in STEM academia?
According to the Nature article "LGBTQ scientists are still left out" there are some "heteronormative assumptions" in the STEM field which artificially suppress the number of LGBTQ people in the field. This view of the sciences¹ doesn't match my own experience and anecdotal evidence. (I have seen evidence of a sexism issue but it is a separate issue from LGBT.) In my (admittedly subjective) experience, people in STEM tend to be more open-minded than any other profession.
The Nature article cites a few studies, but none seems to be directly on-point (one study focused on government workers rather than scientists in academia-proper, and another had results that were not statistically significant and whose authors admitted they had made mistakes). Again maybe I'm wrong, but I would like to see a more relevant peer-reviewed study (gender studies or social science) explaining this problem.
What robust studies exist on the representation of LGBTQ individuals² in STEM fields within academia?

¹ The idea that STEM fields are especially constrained comes up in other contexts, too. For example, according to an opinion piece by Manil Suri published in the New York Times, in science it is also not appropriate to talk about hobbies.
Manil Suri is a famous scholar; his description of the situation in academia is worrying, and gives the impression that behavior is constrained and under close scrutiny.
Being too expressive of personal identity can be viewed as running counter to scientific neutrality. In competitive venues, where complete immersion in one’s field might be the promoted ideal, the mention of an extracurricular pursuit can even be seized upon as a lack of commitment. I remember a young mathematician at a prestigious research institute sharing his love for piano playing after hearing I wrote fiction. “Don’t tell anyone in my department I own a piano,” he requested in the next breath.
This is a shock to me because I perceived the STEM field as most open-minded.

² Representation could measure the percentage of LGBTQ faculty in STEM fields in comparison to other academic disciplines, or something like dropout rates for LGBTQ students in STEM fields compared to dropout rates for other students.

The solution, as you say all the studies so far have flaws, is for you to conduct a definitive study.

@NajibIdrissi No, where did you see or read that?

@SolarMike but I m in STEM, i dont know how to do study in social science.

@Stefan You are essentially saying "I read that STEM people don't like others to talk about their hobbies; does this mean that they also don't like other people to talk about their sexual orientation/gender identity?"

well, improve your knowledge and experience...

https://www.nature.com/news/excluded-intimidated-and-harassed-lgbt-physicists-face-discrimination-1.19614 Im not sure how is done and I m not sure is it suitable

Without having read the article, I would hazard a guess that anecdotal evidence in one country / culture / university / lab may not be representative of the global situation.

@Flyto but descriptive aka qualitative reaserch is real

@stefan yes, but "In my experience..." is not the same as qualitative research.

@Flyto I am not sure. I think it is same

@stefan You just stated in a comment above, 6 hours ago "I don't know how to do study in social science". So give qualitative social scientists some credit, they don't make their careers by writing simply about their own experiences.

@Flyto what is qualitative reaserch if not explaning and collecting experiences?

I'm not a social scientist either. But I think it's more than just one person's experience, in one place, extrapolated to all of STEM worldwide.

yes, yes You are right @Flyto  I wrote incorrectly, not my own only experience also other people from my social and work circle. this is not based on one single opinion

The basic answer is that there is very little hard data. One study that I did find (via ResearchGate - I didn't have direct access if it even exists) is "Factors impacting the academic climate for LGBQ STEM faculty", Eric V. Patridge et al., Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering 20(1) 75-98 (2014).
Several quotes stand out:

Amid the current nationally led campaign to increase the STEM workforce, there are numerous
  institutional efforts to support women and underrepresented ethnic minority STEM professionals;
  however, virtually none of these focuses on LGBT communities.

and

A survey of the literature reveals that
  data-driven research of LGBT communities has been restricted to the social sciences, humanities,
  and health fields; there are only a handful of publications focused on LGBT communities in the
  STEM fields, and none of these are based on empirical data. Qualitative academic discussions
  report that LGBT populations are discouraged from entering the STEM fields because heteronormative
  climates are so widespread (Bilimoria and Stewart, 2009; Cech and Waidzunas, 2011;
  Gunckel, 2009). Our analyses support previous discussions...

The data in this 2014 paper was drawn from a 2010 study. Of some 5000 respondents, 498 were faculty. Of those, 59 were from STEM. After some further down selection, they ended up with 47 STEM faculty.
Points of some interest include:

In response to questions on internal experiences and identity, STEM faculty (n = 47) reported
  the highest level of discomfort across the three questions included in the survey (campus, department,
  and classroom) (Table 3), although these differences were not significant. Notably, faculty
  from STEM departments reported significantly higher levels of professional outness than did
  those from other departments [2(4) = 16.7, p < .01].

However,

the more out a STEM faculty member, the more likely it was that he or she
  was uncomfortable.

and, relative to all faculty in the study,

STEM faculty members (n = 47) were most likely to consider
  leaving their institutions (53.2%)

Further,

Our analyses support the hypothesis that heteronormative climates contribute to LGBQ faculty
  members seeking alternative employment options, and department level analyses suggest this
  closely describes LGBQ STEM faculty.

In addition,

The loss of current and future faculty mentors for LGBQ communities is particularly problematic
  because there are so few resources that support LGBQ students. While there are countless
  organizations dedicated to the development of women and minority STEM talent, there are
  only two national organizations that encourage the development of LGBQ STEM talent.

In Physical Review Physics Education Research there is a paper titled "Enriching gender in physics education research: A binary past and a complex future", which touches on needing to look more broadly than just men/women. However, it does not appear to have any useful data on LGBT in physics.
Much of the rest I can find is online, non-peer reviewed studies. While interesting reading, it is harder to draw conclusions much less figure out what to do.
(As a response to your addendum to the question - it is quite clear that the person described in the New York Times Op-Ed piece was indeed, and sadly, afraid to reveal their piano playing. I can easily imagine that behavior coming from long experience with negative responses over time which have little to do with playing the piano. You might be interested in Gay and in STEM Fields which rebuts some of the points made in the Manil Suri op-ed piece you reference.)

"STEM faculty members (n = 47) were most likely to consider leaving their institutions (53.2%)." Is this all STEM faculty? LGBT faculty? Compared to similar people in other fields? Compared to cishet people in their own field? The choppiness of your quotes makes interpreting some of them difficult.

@StellaBiderman - sorry, I was getting edgy on quoting large blocks of text from the paper. It is a good read as a whole. I will edit to clarify...

85 percent said they felt welcome in the workplace or were treated the same as straight colleagues. OMG, this is helpful it tuns out the thing is possitive

@Stefan - my take away was that, while slightly positive with respect to other LGBT faculty, there still is a long way to go before there are no issues at all...

yes, for sure. constant strugle under current system


text:
What do you do if a person in your group purposely misleads you?
I'm an undergraduate researcher working with another undergraduate researcher in a group. I believe the other undergraduate researcher wants to look particularly good between the two of us for a good letter of recommendation, and she has been doing this to my detriment (giving me false or misleading information on our shared project).
The graduate student that's also working on the project now certainly prefers her and sees me as kind of useless. Of course, I'm going to try to just perform well independently now to see if I can demonstrate my value, but I'm wondering if this sort of a thing is appropriate to bring up, and if so how. I'm only here for a Summer.
Edit:
As an update for whoever is interested, I found a solution. The other students' only incentive is to look good, though thus far it has been to my detriment. I asked the other student openly if they thought I unfairly got the short end of the stick in our last meeting, and she agreed that I did. So then we agreed that if she actively made clear the work that I was doing in the next meeting, that I would do the same for her. This way all our efforts are acknowledged, so there's no need to employ subterfuge, and so there's no drama involved. The grad student acknowledges both our efforts now. A game-theoretic perspective can be helpful sometimes! I'm happy I can proceed together with the other student on our project.

What's the actual question here? Unless you have actual proof that the other student is purposefully doing harm to your character, then isn't a lot you can do.

"I'm wondering if this sort of a thing is appropriate to bring up, and if so how".
I'm under the impression this is a valid question for academia stackexchange, given that many questions here seem quite subjective and ask for an opinion on how to handle uncomfortable situations arising in academia. You've given your answer.

Going forward, get everything from her in writing. Email is OK. And save it all. For example, don't throw out the stuff that is boring, or not misleading, or that makes her look good. Keep everything. A missing email will be seized on to claim you are cherry picking or something.

Everyone seems to be concerned about winning the political game. Just do your thing and if you can't work with the other undergrad, don't work with them. If the grad student is neglecting you, pester them for more assistance. If they ignore you, go to the professor about them.

@ASimpleAlgorithm: As much as I hate to say it, from my perspective academia seems inherently political. There's all sorts of hierarchies within fields - who's a better professor to work with, which research will get more funding, etc.. So as much as I'd like to simply learn about what I love learning about and hopefully make a meaningful contribution to knowledge, I certainly need adequate support, and insufficient support can mean an early end to my career in academia.

@Striker Sure. But that doesn't counter or change my advice. Which was to sidestep the drama and seek the assistance you need to do your research project. Now you seem to be arguing with me because it's apparently not what you wanted to hear. You would rather go to war I take it? Have you also gotten in arguments with the other students when their suggestions were not to your liking?

@ASimpleAlgorithm I think you concluded way too much there. It does counter your advice. I was stating that what you suggest is not possible in some academic environments. You need sufficient support, and playing politics is (unfortunately) sometimes the only way to receive that support.

@Striker Just a question, not a conclusion. An unanswered question as yet.

@ASimpleAlgorithm "Now you seem to be arguing with me because it's apparently not what you wanted to hear." No, I'm discussing because I disagree that what you suggest is the solution for nigh all of these cases. "You would rather go to war I take it?", No, I'd rather contribute to the group like I have been trying to, although now independently and with more effort.  "Have you also gotten in arguments with the other students when their suggestions were not to your liking?" If I disagree with someone I'll explain why and we discuss what's correct, if that's what you mean.

@ASimpleAlgorithm Even if you say they're just questions, stating your presumptions in the questions reveals conclusions you drew btw, i.e. "you would rather go to war I take it?".

@Striker "suspicion" would be a better word. Every story has two sides after all. I don't consider this much of a discussion if its what you mean. Perhaps you could add additional detail about this particular situation, that would be more convincing than a broad characterization of the ways of the world? Likewise I can assure you that there is not a scarcity of good recommendation letters. And that if the grad student is tasked with assisting you, they are not at liberty to choose not to, just because they prefer someone else. They have their own supervisor to answer to.

@ASimpleAlgorithm If you'd like to know more details about my case, I'm happy to open up a chat and repost those details. I feel somewhat uncomfortable permanently leaving these details on a public forum, and also we shouldn't have extended discussions in comments.

Unfortunately it happens, not just in undergraduate research.
What you should or could do strongly depends on your evidence and the perceptions of other people involved, here supervisors. However, assume you are right and you have evidence, still then supervisors often do not like to hear you complaining about someone they like or value. You will not change their minds easily.
So my advise would be to follow what you expressed already. Just perform well independently. But also make sure that your work and effort is visible. You may need to step out of your comfort zone and be more extrovert and assertive. If you do not occupy your space, others will.
You can see this as an excellent learning opportunity to improve these skills. Try to park the negative emotion for now if it does not help. Do not deny it but promise yourself to assess it later. Experiment with different behaviour and approaches and consider it as a training in personal leadership. After the summer make a list with behaviour you considered effective and less effective.
Wish you all the best.

If you contemplate taking action, you must document the advice given. Save everything and record conversations if needed.
However, and I think this is more important:
Verify any advice give and take it as very tentative until you do. One way to both verify and make the problem known is to share the advice with a faculty member, stating that you aren't sure it is correct and if the prof can give you guidance. Don't think of this as "blowing the whistle" or "ratting out" the others, just express doubts about it and ask for clarification. You needn't even specify where the advice came from initially, but you can say if asked.
But if you take it as a learning opportunity you might even benefit. If you think its wrong or if you have reason to doubt the source it is good to find the truth. For yourself, not for justice or any other reason. Even misdirection can sometimes lead you to the correct direction if you are skeptical, which you should be in any case.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Were predatory journals widespread before publishers of reputable journals introduced the "author pays" model?
After reading yet another news article about predatory journals/conferences and how they weigh on the finances of labs in some countries, I started to wonder the following. Were they widespread before publishers of reputable journals started introducing the model where the author pays to have their paper open-access, the so-called "gold open access" (a name I dislike very much, but that's not the point)?
Indeed, I would expect that before that (which seems to be a relatively recent development, maybe less than 10-15 years ago...?), labs would have been much more reluctant to pay for the publication in a predatory journal, because that would have been a surefire way of telling that the journal was junk. And if a researcher had to pay from their own pocket, then I would expect the practice to be much less common, simply because fewer people could afford it.

Here is the news article in question, though it's in French, behind a paywall, and probably doesn't contain anything new for someone acquainted with academic publishing. It's part of a big collaboration with other international journals, so you may find other articles about the same subject in your language.

Don't know what kind of answer you're hoping for. There is no such thing as a predatory subscription journal. So either the first open access journals were predatory and reputable publishers followed, or vice versa ... it should be obvious which it is.

@Allure I am looking for answers from academics on whether 10-15 years ago, predatory journals were such a big deal, and whether the timeline coincided with the introduction of "author pays" by big publishers. If you have nothing but a condescending "it should be obvious" to contribute, please abstain. Moreover, I believe that in such discussions, it would be unethical for you not to reveal your affiliation with publishers (yes, I remember who you are now).

I think No, becuase they were bind with Scopus or ISI

The articcle you linked has nothing to do with your question. It is news that appear first time in teleSUR

@Stefan I cannot make sense of your first comment. For your second comment, I am not sure why you say the article has nothing to do with my question, since they are both about predatory journals & conferences. As I said in my comment, the article is part of an international collaboration and appeared simultaneously in several different journals (including Le Monde which I linked to, Norddeutscher Rundfunk, Süddeutsche Zeitung, The New Yorker...), so you may have seen it elsewhere before, yes.

@NajibIdrissi before, all journals were regarded trough database. it would give credibility to it.

IMO the answer to your first question is "yes" because I remember getting spammed by them before certain people with blogs belatedly discovered that some publisher were BadGuys (having been previously unaware that so-called NiceGuy publishers are also somewhat extortionate). I am somewhat older than you, of course, and I have moved in less illustrious circles

Here is the piece in German, with an unfortunate insinuation that the scientists who publish in predatory journals are the main culprits: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/wissenschaft-tausende-forscher-publizieren-in-pseudo-journalen-1.4061005

@YemonChoi I also get spammed, but I only started doing research about 4-5 years ago, so I lack perspective. At the time I was just told it's normal and to ignore it.

Najib, they were probably less widespread, but I think that is more to do with the growth of the internet than with OA factors. Predatory/vanity publishing, in various forms, goes back a long way. And as Dmitry points out in his answer below, when you look at worldwide research activity, it is the "publish or perish" imperative which seems the bigger incentive for the existence of low-quality APC charging journals

"labs would have been much more reluctant to pay [...] because that would have been a surefire way of telling that the journal was junk." -- This is assuming that any paid journal was and has always been a junk journal. I do not think this is true for most fields of research.

Decades ago, in mathematics, there were usually "page charges" paid by authors, or by authors' grants, or by authors' departments. This was for reputable journals with good refereeing... The cessation of page charges in those journals is perhaps 20 years old.

English language article about today's commotion in German media: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-sees-sharp-rise-in-fake-science-journal-publications-report/a-44742014

Anecdotally, a significant proportion of journals on post-Soviet space in 90s were quite happy to publish literally anything as long as author covers the "publication costs". The peer-review was either very light or non-existent (e.g. authors could invite their friends to act as a referee). This was used by some high-rank officials to secure the publications required for their academic degree, which gives a bearer a certain level of prestige even if they never practice science.
This happened before any OA was introduced in Europe/USA and it is still happening now. The existence of predatory journals is probably more driven by the publish or perish principle, than by OA.

I think the last sentence is exactly right and should be writ large in neon letters or shouted through megaphones

I don't doubt that "publish or perish" is certainly the main driving factor. My question is rather about the scale, and the how. Some of the numbers quoted in the article sound crazy (50% of all published papers in Kazakhstan in 2013, 32% in Indonesia in 2017...). This doesn't sound possible if the researchers have to pay for all of this from their own pocket, but maybe I'm wrong about that. (And the article says this is weighing on lab's finances. Though maybe not as much as journal subscriptions.)

“authors could invite their friends to act as a referee” — cough PNAS cough.

What you’re essentially asking is what happened before the digital publishing revolution that started around 2000. Before then, it was hard to be a “predatory” journal, because you would still be expected to produce a physical volume that could be deposited in a library. If you just took the authors’ fees and didn’t produce, you’d be exposed much more quickly as fraudulent.
So while there might be some that tried it, the opportunity cost was too large relative to the potential profits to make it as lucrative as it is now.

A predatory journal isn't necessarily fraudulent in the sense that it doesn't produce a product; Printing some magazines doesn't make a journal non-predatory.

@Cubic My guess is that aeismail is saying that producing the actual physical volumes would cut so much into the margins of the predatory journal that there would be little point in running the scam. That's how I understand it anyway.

I don't understand why they are called "predatory journals".  Academia has a publish/perish mentality.  Some under-performing academics are destined to "perish" because of low publications.  Some business creates a journal to solve the problem.  The academic puts a few publications in "The Journal of Crappy Research" into his/her tenure file.  The University grants tenure b/c ultimately they don't have enough money to retain a productive researcher.  (1) Who cares if the "Journal of Crappy Research" actually produces a paper volume.  (2) Who is the victim of the "Journal of Crappy Research"?

@emory Academic publishing has the ostensible goal of advancing knowledge. "Predatory journals" are predatory as they don't care and are only out for money. If they were up front about being pay-to-play, it would be one thing, as people would ignore it (including during tenure review) as vanity publishing. The problem is they deliberately pretend to have editorial control and peer review while not bothering. The victim of the Journal of Crappy Research are the naive readers, submitters, and tenure committees (and university funders) who are deliberately mislead about it being peer-reviewed.

@emory That's not really directly relevant to the question/answer, though -- feel free to post it as a new question. If we don't already have it, "What makes 'predatory journals' predatory?" would be an excellent addition to the site.

@emory An obvious answer to 2 (even accepting your premise that the university is for some reason totally okay with a researcher paying for publications to pad their CV) is "whatever other party the university would've spent the money on if they hadn't spent it retaining a researcher who deserved to perish".

@R.M. LIU lists 4 publications for Panos Mourdoukoutas  http://www.liu.edu/CWPost/Academics/Faculty/Faculty/M/Panos-Mourdoukoutas - not including his library article in Forbes.  They do not provide enough information to determine whether he published in predatory journals or not.  I take this as evidence that LIU does not care and thus LIU is not a victim.  Moreover there is no evidence that anyone has ever read any of his articles - there are no reader victims.

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


text:
Is it ok for an examiner to hide exam reviews
We recently had our final exam for our bachelor degree and most of us haven't passed it, despite all the hard work we've put into it and the difference in our expectations for the results.
We asked for the reviews of the exams so that we can be better prepared for the next time we attend the exam, but we were declined that right with no clear explanation why. We presented our concerns regarding the the really short time the examiners were able to review the exams (it took them less than 2 days for the works of all the students graduating this year), in which some of the examiners responded with shouting in a really unacademic and aggressive manner.
We also heard about graduates who have had the same problem 2 or 3 years ago, and after making a little noise about it, their assessments have drastically changed in a positive way.
In the rules of our university, there isn't anywhere a rule for not giving review on the examined works, so we have sent a request to the rector of the university for letting us see the reviews of the exams, but we haven't received an answer yet.
My question is, is it ok for the examiners to hide the reviews of our works, and what can we do so that we get to the bottom of this?

Could you please specify which country this is? Rules and expectations can vary significantly between countries

Sofia, Bulgaria.

Normally this sort of behavior by professors is a sign of wishing to hide their own incompetence.

You state "We asked for the reviews of the exams [...], but we were declined that right." If it is a right, then you should be able to point the person in question to the place where it is declared a right. If there is no such place, then you don't have a right to it in the legal sense, though one can probably argue that it would be the "right thing to do" for the professor to give you feedback.

It's more of a subjective view. Anyone can hardly argue that we have that right.

Your language is making it hard to understand a couple of points. Do you mean 'right' in the sense that the university rules explicitly say you have a right to see your paper? When you say 'there isn't anywhere a rule...' do you mean no rule says you definitely can see your paper, or that preventing you seeing the paper is actively against the rules?

Personally I'd suggest not talking funrther about the marking time until after you've done all you can to see the marked scripts. There may or may not be a problem there, but you cannot prove it either way, unless you can demonstrate that the exams were incorrectly marked. Pointing to the length of time will only serve to aggravate the examiners, who seem to be worried about getting into trouble (whether or not they deserve to).

My personal view is that you should be able to get feedback on your exam, though that doesn't necessarily imply getting a marked-up copy of it. But that is a personal view and whether there are rules or not at your university, the personal views of your professors hold more weight than mine.
It may be that there is some fear that giving you this material will make future use of the questions impossible - security through obscurity.
But what is OK in one place is forbidden in others.
But you are more likely to be successful if you ask for feedback on your performance. It is hard to argue that you are not entitled to that.
I doubt that there is fear that you have been too harshly judged in the grading, but there may be a reluctance to do anything that might generate such a charge.
But, as you are aware, without feedback you have no way forward other than blindly guessing.
One possibility is that your grades are being reviewed by a higher authority and so there is a delay. If making a bit of noise has been effective in the past, you might be able to successfully call for a higher level review without seeming like malcontents.

Well, We surely don't want a copy of the exam. All the graduation exams from past years are publicly available on the site of the faculty. We just want some feedback regarding our works.


text:
How should I systematically go about looking for bursaries/scholarships for an internship in the UK?
I am an Indian undergraduate engineering student in electronics and communication engineering. I recently had a conversation (via email) with a professor at the Royal Holloway, University of London. The professor works in my subject of interest, and so I had mailed him asking whether internship opportunities are available for the next summer. I also mentioned that I'm willing to self-fund as far as travel and living expenses are concerned. He said that it might be possible to arrange for an internship, however, he's not sure if he's allowed to not pay me. Naturally, he is a very busy person and told me that it might take him some time to gather more information about my situation. Meanwhile, he asked me to look out for scholarships/bursaries which might be available to me (during the internship period).
Now, being an Indian, I'm not very sure how these things work in the UK, nor am I particularly certain about what he meant by bursaries/scholarships. I did search the net for "funding+internship+UK", but couldn't find anything relevant to my situation. Most of the scholarship schemes I found are meant for undergraduate or graduate students who are going to study there for a period of 3 or 4 years, or for postgraduate researchers. I already mailed the Royal Holloway's international student support and the British Council and am waiting for a response from them. Is there anything else which I can possibly do from my end?
To summarize, basically my question is two-fold:

Are scholarships/bursaries (whatever that means) for research internships (in the UK), at the undergraduate level, available for non-UK students?
If yes, how should I go about looking for them? What are the places I should search first? Whom should I contact first?

P.S: I must clearly mention that I already thoroughly searched my own university's website but it seems that they don't have any funding schemes to support abroad internships. So, probably I'll need to find an external source for funding.

Update: The British Council replied that they do not have anything specific for my situation at the moment, however, I should keep an eye on the "scholarships tab" on their website, for future opportunities.

Research internship funding in the UK is mostly reserved for UK and EU students (I don't know how Brexit has affected this).

In the UK, there is not much funding for non-UK/EU students. There is not much funding for undergrads. And there is not much funding for internships. On top of this, as a non-EU/UK student, you will need a visa to work/study in the UK and unpaid "internship" is not a category for which you can easily get a visa. Tier 5 visa is perhaps most appropriate, but it requires serious commitment from the sponsor (UK university), which they may hesitate to provide.
To summarise, my advice is to look for a more standard route, e.g. an undergraduate course for which you can probably get a bursary from your own country. You can also apply for a paid work employment (e.g. postdoc) if you qualify.

I also mentioned that I'm willing to self-fund as far as travel and
living expenses are concerned.
...
I already thoroughly searched my own university's website but it seems that they don't have any funding schemes to support abroad internships.So, probably I'll need to find an external source for funding.

It's not clear to me you want to self-fund or to find a scholarship.
Tax-free scholarships are only for enrolled students. And you can't just enroll in an undergraduate program in the UK, as they require A-level etc.
I think what the professor meant was to "hire" you as research assistant without salary. But he was not sure if it was legal to do.
Your best chance is to look for some exchange programs, e.g. funding from Indian government etc.
You should also look at other countries. But I would say your chance are very small. Internship positions are often for people with intention to pursue PhD at the same lab. And in the Europe, it is requires Master's degree for a PhD

Internships (unpaid work) is legal in the UK, but it requires a work permit. As  a visa sponsor, University is obliged to provide accommodation, cover utility bills, etc. Often it's too much trouble for them.


text:
How do I tell the professor that I am burnt out and I want to move on
I am a first year CSE grad student. I have been working with a professor for more than half a year now. The topic looks like a deadend and I do not know how to tell him the same. Ironically, he is a nice guy and has supported me all the way through.
My prof meets with me twice a week and brainstorms with me about possible avenues of this research. The sad part, I think, my prof is not sure if a particular line of research of work may be successful or not. I am not looking for a foolproof way of doing research. At least, 5 out of 10 attempts should be successful, I guess. Correct me, if I am wrong. Currently, I just feel like a mule trying to implement his ideas. There seems to be no theoretical justification for why a particular avenue could lead to good results.  I could as well implement my own ideas and probably could have a better success rate.
This is not how I expected my project to turn out. Around 90% of the time, I just keep working on Code (writing code and fixing bugs), without any learning I can take away for future. Only 10% of the time, I just read some conference papers related to this topic. It is just too much of study in a small highly specialized area.
I love to understand new concepts and teach them to others, hence the reason I started out for Ph.D. (so that I can settle down as a Prof).  Now I am not sure if I am preparing myself for a career in academia as most of the time I just keep working on Code - There is nothing new to learn so that I can teach to my future students.
I expected research to be more theoretically enriching but it is turning out to be the exact opposite.
These long hours have already taken a toll on me. I am missing out on the 'enjoy your research part'. When I started out, I had this zeal for research and enjoyed the work. It has been one year.  Now, I just want to publish whatever results I have already with us, in any 2-tier journal/conference, without further go down this route.
But, my professor expects me to keep trying.
Sometimes, I feel I am better off with any supervisor. At least, I can study stuff which I like to.

Why do you assume a success rate of 5 / 10, some do hundreds of tests to find the one that works...

I guess the success rate varies from field to field. It is not number of experiments that matter. It is time and effort that takes in for each one. In my case, each avenue/detour/experiment takes around a month.

it is not the journey traveled, but the destination - find the correct answer is the pot of gold...

What do you want to do?  You mention stopping your current line of research, but then what?

@DavidKetcheson: Oh, I forgot that. I want shift towards more theoretical Math-based CSE research. At least, the downside in theoretical research is that at the end of the day, if my results were not good, at least I have the satisfaction of learning something new. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Sounds like you need to learn how to fail and how to take away lessons from that failure. Have you brought your concerns to your professor? Research isn't all great success and code well most of the time it's determining why the code fairies won't compile your instructions.

"At least, 5 out of 10 attempts should be successful, I guess." That is stunningly unrealistic. Research involves discovering things that no human has done before. My lab and I recently brainstormed ~60 projects. I'd guess that many will end up dead ends; many will lead to new questions, even more interesting than the originals; a few will be straightforward & successful in the short term. But we're excited about all of the projects because, as noted in a good comment above, we are excited about the journey, not the destination. Research is very different than what you seem to think it is!

my prof is not sure if a particular line of research of work may be successful or not — This is a good sign.  If he were sure that the line of work would be successful, it wouldn't be research!

This is a rant, not a question.

What is ironic about this situation?

@JeffE: Haha.. What I meant was an adviser should also get his hands dirty. It should not be that he/she asks his students to be mule boys and keep trying his ideas, without ever trying to derive the equations or writing the code, I mean ever. At least, there should a theoretical justification why a chosen avenue might lead to interesting results - That sort of uncertainity is completely fair.
However, the advisor should not expect ppl to grope in the dark, if we accidentally stumble onto good results. That's like Telsa vs Edison.

@kasa Welcome to reality I guess... (Depending on the country.) You will frequently find that advisers will be more and more pre-occupied with obtaining research grants, admin and courting industry than with day to day supervision of their PhD students as they gain a more senior status. You will also find advisers who will hand out a rough topic and then let the PhD student decide what the work on exactly (a certain experience with certain people in the UK). - The younger the advisor, the more likely he/she is actively involved.

@JeffE Well, not necessarily. For some topics you know that an answer to a specific question can be obtained. The difficulty lies in obtaining the answer. I am thinking specifically of investigating specific chemical reactions or maybe creating chemical reaction mechanisms. All fairly active research areas. Generally the problem lies in the complexity of the whole, so that people will generally chip away at a specific aspect of the problem.

You are in a bad spot and it is difficult to diagnose the disease, much less the cure. It may be that your advisor is inexperienced - some things you say indicate that. But as commenters have implied, some problems worth solving are just hard - damn hard. I once worked on such a problem and had to abandon it, but the professor agreed and we found a better one.
However, it may be that your "best" solution is to find a different advisor. That can be difficult (or impossible) as there is department politics to consider. Some large departments even have factions. The radical solution is to change universities and thus find a different professor with different ideas.
But a student working on an extremely hard problem is itself a problem since it takes time and the student would like to actually graduate before the Sun goes nova. I also worked on problems that were too easy (mathematics) and hence had no real merit. The trick is to find the sweet spot of a sufficiently hard but do-able problem. Not all professors have the ability to to that regularly.
But you need to judge. If the problem is hard, but its solution would be a significant advance and you have the time and resources to pursue it, it can result in a big win. But the win isn't guaranteed.
However. It also sounds like your current advisor is truly invested in you. Two meetings a week shows commitment. You won't always find that in an advisor.
You might try two things. First is to have a conversation about the likelihood of actual success in a reasonable time frame. The other part of the conversation is to try to set a limit on attempts and explore alternative problems that don't completely ignore what you have done so far. If your advisor is, in fact, invested in you and not just in the problem itself, that conversation might be possible.
As a first year doctoral student it isn't yet time to panic, in fact. Significant things take time and focus.

You sound like a perfectly normal PhD student.
Your supervisor sounds okay.  At least he shows up for meetings!
Look out for your own interests, but don't worry so much.


text:
Why does the UK produce so many research papers?
I was taking a look at Scimago Journal & Country Rank.

Is there any specific reason why UK produces way more research paper than that of Germany and Japan?
Note. kindly, don't bring up futile arguments like population doesn't really matter in case of research paper publication (e.g. India), etc.

For starters, check out which journals are indexed in this, and in which language they publish. (Also, the UK's population is hardly "much smaller" than Germany...65M vs 82M)

I can't give a particuarly substantive answer, but I will say that Britain has a strong tradition of scientific research and in university league tables it is second only to the United States - of course, how much credence you give league tables is your decision.

@NajibIdrissi, so chinese people are publishing more english papers than germans/japanese do? also, how about japan't population?

@FourOhFour, which means germany/japan do not have tradition of strong scientific research.

@yahoo.com they both do, of course, but I would argue that the UK's is the strongest. I don't know, but it might be the case that Germany is still suffering from the effects of having a very considerable number of its eminent scientists flee the Nazi regime and settle in other countries.

@yahoo.com Your question seems to massively contradict itself, for what it's worth: "....even though UK's population is much lower? Note. kindly, don't bring up futile arguments like population....". So you raise the issue of population, but also consider it irrelevant. What exactly is your point?

I would really love to see historical figures from before WWII. It would look very different.

@yahoo.com what percentage of each population is in the publishing range ?

Indeed @Thomas I read somewhere that prior to WWII, the main language for chemistry publications was German, not English.

Before Hitler, German universities were considered among the best. I don't think they've ever recovered.

"Showing off" is very much accepted in the US or UK, while generally frowned upon in say France (or Germany for that matter). From this point of view, "bragging" is much more accepted in the UK. There are many contemporary papers that leave one underwhelmed as a reader, wondering why this was even published. Add to that, the good papers are also very easily drowned out by all the noise. Then add in the "diploma mill" "research groups" which you can also find at Russel Group universities...

@yahoo.com ?? Germany and Japan have indeed a strong tradition of research. However in Germany (same as in France), the really good research takes place at research institutes (under the umbrella of the Max Planck Gesellschaft, Helmholtz Gesellschaft or privately run, Fraunhofer) while the main taks of universities is to educate. - In the UK, universities are run as a commercial entity (though they are registered as a charity) and research funding tends to be quite lucrative for getting attention which brings in paying foreign students.

@DetlevCM as if that is not case in germany?

@SSimon, nope. that is not the case in Germany.

@DetlevCM,this is the fundamental reason. you can put your comment in an answer so that i can accept it.

@DetlevCM hard to believe, I dont agree that German universities are bad in publishing and reaserch, I will go futher much and tell that they are one of the nbest in europe

@SSimon where do you think they said German universities are bad at publishing and research? I don't see anything like that in any of their comments.

@SSimon I never said they are bad at research. I said it isn't their main job. German universities exist to teach, not to produce a globally recognised "brand" through lots of research papers. You can have what is effectively a "village university" in Germany with a small research group that is internationally recognised due to the contacts of the professor leading the group. - The really good research is carried out at research institutes. Incidentally, PhD students at these institutes will often have a second association with a university which acts as the degree granting institution.

@ChrisH I appologize it was refered to the detlevcm comment, but I find German universites more realible and fair for reaserch.

@DetlevCM I agree that institutes have more fundings, but I wouldnt disregard reaserch on German universities. Yes ,you are right, but isnt this the case for UK? Insitutes and university merge?

@SSimon The UK does not have research institutes in a traditional sense. You may have "setups" in the university that are called "Institute" but they are a part of the university and effectively just another department. Something like the Max Planck Gesellschaft, Helmholtz Gesellschaft or CNRS just does not exist in the UK (or US for that matter). - Universities in the UK also do contract work for industry. Its hard to get cheaper labour than a PhD student (about 13000 pounds per year plus feed of about 3000-4000 Pounds per year...)

@yahoo.com I wrote a more extensive answer post for you and for others to peruse.

This is an interesting question, but a complex and nuanced one. I do not think that comments or answers of somebody's on-the-spot hypothesis will be helpful, and would suggest looking for academic work on the topic; I feel sure there will be some.

I wish there were similar data for US states.  On the one hand, there’d be a clear signal from population and wealth, but you’d also see some anomalies.  I’d love to know how California stacks up to the UK (half the population, but a strong tradition of great universities).  I expect the answer to be that in any large economy one expects some regions to be the leaders in any particular business, for universities in Europe that happens to be the UK (and Switzerland, which is even better per capita).

I don't have any data to back this, so I'm adding as a comment instead of an answer but there are two hypothesis I can think: a) if most journals are in English, it would be easier for an English-speaking population to generate content; b) the British Empire was the bigger colonial power, so many people from the former colonies (specially India, with a population higher than 1 billion) studied in UK or have some relationship with UK universities

Could it be something like.. hmmm.. most publishers are british?

It is very common for academics to not live and work in the country of their birth, and I would assume that this becomes the more common the more research active they are. Many of the publications from British universities will not have been written by British (born) scientists.
Instead, we see stable loops of the following type:
University X has a good reputation
-> Productive researchers move to X
  -> a lot research gets done and published at X
    -> the reputation of X is good
The UK is home to many very prestigious universities, is not subject to language barriers and has mostly avoided historical disruptions to its research activity.

+1, but also remember the role of funding, which has been reasonably consistent over a long time.

So the answer to the question would be "Because it has a disproportionately high number of good Universities" ?

Does the UK have a higher % of residents with PhDs than other countries?

Many possible factors, but one that we can prove is that the UK has a disproportionate number of the best universities.
The Times Higher Education World Universities list states that the US has 110 of the 200 best universities worldwide, while the UK has 31, Germany has 20, and China has 7. Of course, this definition of "best" will invite lots of controversy, and will not only be based on research metrics -- but it does not seem impossible that the UK has the second-highest number of excellent universities worldwide. With this many excellent universities, we would expect a correspondingly high number of papers.
Why the UK has so many excellent universities is a different question for which it is harder to come up with hard evidence, though the first-mover advantage that @Arno suggests seems plausible. Excellent universities have an easier time attracting excellent researchers, so it's a vicious cycle.
One corollary: why does China rank so high with only 7 excellent universities? Well, in one sense they don't, China has ~20x more people than the UK. But beyond that, not all papers come from universities, and the Chinese government is investing very heavily in R&D.

One should perhaps note a disclaimer that Times Higher Education comes out of the UK, and thus may be somewhat biased towards the UK and the west.

Best by what measure? Have you ever encountered UK students? The UK's education is so great, that they have to import a large proportion of their PhD students and academics... - Then ranking include research papers, while non US/UK countries carry out research at research institutes. Look at the nature ranking for research by institution, you will find that CNRS suddenly ranks very highly (they are French).

@DetlevCM I'm not contradicting or confirming your assessments of quality, but they're perhaps less relevant to the claims in the answer. UK universities could still be "excellent" (on someone's measures of output) and have people working there who do good research, without this implying that the education in the universities (or the strength of the UG students) is good

@YemonChoi If you want to say that good research groups exist in the UK, then yes, they do. As in any other country too.

@DetlevCM I just meant to say that your remark "The UK's education is so great, that they have to import a large proportion of their PhD students and academics" - which is shared by several of my friends and fellow UK academics - is not really relevant to cag51's claims. And I used to work outside the UK, and I know people who work in France and in Gemany, so yes, I am aware that the THE tables are, erm, disputable

@YemonChoi I guess it is a rather snarky remark, but let me explain where it comes from: An education systems primary task is to educate the population and nowadays also foster the exchange of people and ideas. If the education system, which includes the universities, is good, one would expect a large number of "local" PhD students. - Again, bringing in people from the outside is great because it brings in new ideas. (One criticisms of the French system of Grand Ecoles is that is leads to 'groupthink' with managers obtaining the same education from the same schools.)

@YemonChoi But if a large number of academics must be "imported" to fill the "gap" in academia, it points to serious deficiencies in the educational system. A system that can only thrive by importing academics cannot be described as good - no matter  how well it compares in any ranking. And while rankings are often very research focussed, it is the education that is overall more important as it sets the foundations for the future.

@DetlevCM thanks. FWIW I actually agree with your misgivings but once again, I think we are veering away from the original question at hand, namely "Why does the UK produce so many research papers"

I believe this is begging the question. These universities are highly ranked to a large degree because of their research output. Arguing that their research output is high because they're highly ranked is therefore circular.

China drops below both the UK and Germany when ranked by citations, rather than documents: https://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php?order=ci&ord=desc When ranked by citations per document the US, the UK, and China all drop considerably (China especially so): https://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php?order=cd&ord=desc

Transforming comments into an anaswer:
One large difference between the UK/US and say Germany and France is that"showing off" is very much accepted in the US or UK, while generally frowned upon in say France (or Germany for that matter).
Having fully embraced the "publish or perish" dogma in the UK (I will guess most applies to the US too, but I have lived in the UK) means that there is a desire to produce as much "output" as possible to create a recognised brand, which hopefully attracts more research funding and international, fee paying students.
This has become particularly clear in the UK in recent times, with an excessive focus on rankings for academic and their work, be it h-indices, "impact factors" and whatever they have come up with lately. (There is a new metric of some sort that one university uses.)
This of course ignores the fact that research often needs time to be appreciated and utilised.
In part, such visibility can be achieved by employing lots of PhD students - and even large "Russel Group" universities are not immune to effectively becoming diploma mills, at least on the level of individual research groups.
Where the system comes full circle, is in the way that research funding is awarded: Often applicants for grants can benefit from showing a large publication record which again promotes the publication of quantity over quality. The simplest visible effect of this 'world view' is the splitting of large bodies of work into individual research papers rather than publishing a single comprehensive piece of work. Since two papers will, to the administration, look better than one.
Another difference between the UK as well as US and say Germany as well as France is the "job description" of universities.
The primary task of a university in Germany of France is to teach - to educate teachers and to train/develop future researchers (or managers/leaders in the system of the French Grand Ecoles).
Research takes place at research institutes which can be private or public.
Examples of such research groups are for Germany the Max Planck Gesellschaft, Helmholtz Gesellschaft of Fraunhofer. In France we have CNRS but also the CEA.
In contrast, the UK universities, though registered as charities, very much operate like commercial entities.
(For those in search of some controversy, an article about the pay of vice chancellors in the UK: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/mar/11/university-vice-chancellors-are-paid-far-more-than-public-sector-peers )
In addition, there is a certain desire amongst politicians to reduce state support for universities - one of the reason for the rise in tuition feeds from 3000 pounds per annum to 9000 a few years ago (around 2011/2012 I think).
As a result, universities are required to provide as much income as possible through their own means. In the grand scheme of things universities have three main avenues to sustain funding: 1) tuition fees, overseas students pay especially well, 2) public research grants 3) industry research funding.
Some institutions also have access to 4) trusts set up by former students who became wealthy or funds collected through donations.
Points 1 to 3 require public visibility of the university, be it to attract students or to justify why they should be funded through work. The easiest way to obtain such visibility is through papers - which in turn encourages the publication of more papers.

This is the answer many people (including OP) want to hear, but it is not correct.

@Thomas I hadn’t even thought of this but upon reflection I think that this is in fact a very large part of the full answer (in addition to what Arno wrote).

This answer can be summarized as "they publish more because they're vain bean counters". Of course, that's what you want to hear if you dislike the UK, but the reality is that there is also a disproportionate amount of high-quality research coming from the UK.

Along the lines of @Thomas ’s comment, this answer seems to be contradicted by the h-index and (to a lesser extent) the citations per document numbers. If the primary reason for the UK’s high research output was that the work is low quality, they wouldn’t have the second highest h-index. Obviously bibliometrics aren’t everything, but it’s hard to look at this data and say that most UK publications are junk in my mind.

China has the most concerning numbers in this regard, though that’s at least partially explained by that many researchers don’t speak Chinese

I think that the UK is probably one of the countries where the cultural bias against "showing off" is strongest. No data here, just a long association with some UK researchers.

"showing off" is very much accepted in the US or UK Wait, what? In the UK I know, ever since a child can speak it is pretty much ingrained in them that showing off is crass. Don't take me wrong, but having reading that line I found myself doubting everything you wrote after it, as it seems rather biased.

This is heavy on narrative and light on evidence. I call [Citation Needed].

@DividedByZero I'm not sure when you lived in the UK, but it cannot have been recently. Do not compare the UK of 30-40+ years ago with the UK today.

@StellaBiderman Indices unfortunately tell you nothing. A paper can be cited a lot because it is bad or because it is good. Comprehensive work can be split into multiple papers which then cite each other because they depend on each other. - Neither of these actions are inherently dishonest, but will skew indices. Such measures also do not work across subjects. Some people talk about journals with an impact factor of 10 or more. Well, for computational chemistry, the best are around 3. The absolute numbers mean very little in the end.

@DetlevCM I live in the UK, and have all my life. In my experience the attitudes toward "showing off" vary somewhat based on geographical area, class lines, style of upbringing, and a whole mess of other things, but I wouldn't describe it as "very much accepted", at least not universally. Of course, it depends what you mean by "showing off"; I'll grant that there isn't the cultural norm of extreme humiity, keeping your head down, andot drawing attention, but the reverse isn't entirely true either. Either way, your answer would be improved by some supporting evidence for its key elements.

@anaximander Try living in a different country then for a change. You should notice quite a difference - and with that I mean live, not just visit over a holiday.

It's very simple - the UK has seven of the top 50 universities in the world, with very strong research departments.  That's why more papers are produced.

@DetlevCM I live in the UK now, and have lived here for the last four years. Prior to that I lived in France. I am not comparing the UK of "30-40+ years ago" to that of today, I'm comparing the UK of today to the France of four years ago.

@DividedByZero And you don't find France much more reserved and humble overall? - I definitely do. (Incidentally, I nowadays live in France since having left the UK in 2016 after about 9.5 years.)

@DetlevCM No, I certainly don't, but if you do that's your opinion. And I have no objection to you sharing your opinion, but I disapprove of the manner in which you have done so in your answer. Opinions should be shared as opinions, not facts.

We speak English
A very big factor, and one not mentioned in any answer, is that the British are native English speakers. Since English is, overwhelmingly, the language in which science is published in (thanks America!), native English speakers have a significant advantage in writing papers and getting them accepted.
It's also a big advantage in attracting good scientists from other countries because they already speak the native language. Whereas when I moved to Germany I needed to start learning German, a German PhD moving to the UK for their PostDoc would already speak the local language because they needed it to publish, read research, and present their findings. This makes both living in the country, and the teaching side of the job easier and more accessible. Learning languages is hard, and takes a lot of time, so already knowing the language is a big advantage. This helps the UK maintain long standing network advantages.

india? canada? australia? south africa?

@yahoo.com Few very people in India speak English at a C1 level. You’ll see that Canada and India both show up on the top 10 list you posted. Only one country can be #3, and I’m sure that Canada also does disproportionately well due to their linguistic advantage. Yes, there are other factors involved but I am sure that Jack is right that this is a big one.

@yahoo.com Australia and Canada do produce impressively large amount of research for their size, while India and South Africa are really not comparable to the UK because they're not first world countries and are much less rich.

.... New Zealand?

I'd like to add a few points to Arno's answer. This is data from Scimago system, which has been largely run and maintained by the US, UK, and, well, Netherlands where it is based. Countries like India, China, former Soviet Union, etc. have their own systems where their researchers produce massive amount of publications. They are of substandard quality of course because they are hedged from global competition by local bureaucracies and/or language barriers. I'm not sure about India, but China has recently passed regulations that their researchers need to publish at least one paper in Scimago or Web of Science indexed journal to get a PhD and certain academic positions. So expect an uptick there soon, but not great. There are headwinds for non-English speaking countries obviously because of the network effect of English language in science and business. But both Scimago and Web of Science continuously add journals from non-English speaking countries to their rankings.

The UK/west also produces a lot of substandard noise. - The problem of low quality publications is not unique to the non-English world.

@DetlevCM that is very true. And I think this problem is getting worse with the number of publications doubling every several years, but the number of readers not. But you wouldn't believe the scale of it in developing countries where it seems like there are more writers of scientific papers than readers and barely any quality control, other than formatting requirements.


text:
What to do when research is ending up in useless clinical trial
I wonder a bit whether I should have behaved differently. I worked in a institute. They developed "drug candidates" for a disease.
At the end of my PhD I definitely proofed that the binding mechanism is unspecific and the binding coefficients are low (for the whole class of candidates). I was, by the way, not allowed to publish that stuff and PostDocs working there started to get angry in meetings acting like I do crap.
I noticed that experiments from other PhDs were manipulated as well:

Small sample size (1-3 mice)
Repeat until you see what you want
General problems with positive controls

Later, I left for PostDoc and had to sign a confidentialiatity contract. Now one of the besaid drug (candidates) is going into human patient test trials, and I suspect that they take something which will not do anything (good). A subsequent PhD published parts of what I was forbidden. In the initial manuscript a friend send me, my name was missing, than I got one of the last positions, for "previous work". I guess, they got afraid, that I may read it later somewhere. Of course all the initial PostDocs which opposed, were in the author list :D
Actually, during that time I started to write a Review which illustrates all the contradictions in that field in general, knowingly that no higher IF journal will ever take it. I also noticed that many groups in the field are doing similiar fake science and even publish sometimes high (Nature, ..). I once wrote to the journal that one paper is based on a wrong experimental setup without any further answer.
Question:

Is it worth it to write a Review when you actually work in industry and have no institute email anymore
What should you do, if you know that you will lose your job and others their founding if you whistle blow?

Against this idea speaks the fact that you cannot really proof manipulated setups
.. and institutes tend to roll over single persons

The problems you indicate should result in non-replicable results. The way this can be shown is repeat the published experiments as closely to the published protocol as humanly possible, with a correct design, carefully documented, etc. etc., and get different results. That is a publishable result.
Whether such a replication will somehow violate your confidentiality contract is something you need to discuss with a lawyer. My feeling of justice says that it should not violate that, but justice and law are two very different beasts.
Just writing down your experiences, risks ending up in a "he said, she said" situation, which is not going to resolve anything. Moreover there is the legal aspect of you signing a confidentiality contract. Anything legal needs to be discussed with a lawyer, not random persons on the internet.

I do not work anymore on the stuff. I just wonder what realistic options I had as a PhD there. Usually critical PhDs get bad ratings and the influence you have goes to zero. On the other hand everything you discover is used somehow. At the end you have built-up guilt if patients take useless drug candidates which you know will fail. The only winner is the institute, which got public founding for years and new devices. I mean, I was not manipulating stuff, BUT I was not allowed to publish things which were in contrast to other PostDocs and PhDs which is similar.

PhD students are at the bottom of the food chain, especially in such labs, so there is very little they can do. There may be an ombudsperson in your institution you could talk to. Other than that, you could finish go to another lab and do the replications there.  (Notice the institute get public funding not founding)


text:
Would an honest researcher actually have to pay back their salary?
Recently, I read the answer by Hexal to the following question here: Not including student who contributed very little as coauthor of paper and I was scared. Much more than scared, I could not sleep the following night. In the question, a project leader asks whether or not he should include a visiting student who showed "good motivation", but did not contribute anything to a certain project as a coauthor (to one of the project's papers).
There is a downvoted answer with -40, saying that if the student writes that she wants to be a coauthor, the project leader should write her an e-mail:

[...] Therefore, we would appreciate it if you return the salary you received for the internship. Please transfer USD ... to the account ... until .... If we don't see a reverse payment, we feel necessitated to undertake legal steps. Thank you for your cooperation.

Now, this answer is downvoted. I am also not sure if the downvotes/comments are because this approach is not appropriate for the given situation or not appropriate in general.
This scared me a lot. I always thought that one would never have to pay back earned money (except for extreme reasons, like fraud probably?).
Now, I do not plan to not work. But I know some asshole professors who, when their students say that they do something else on their weekends than working, they tell the whole faculty that their student is not working. I've never heard of someone asking back for money, though. However, I am scared now that I will work for such a professor, we do not manage to write a paper together and then they make me to pay my salaries back after some time, which I cannot afford.
So, my questions:

Are such threats something that happens sometimes / often?

(I would probably be scared enough if I got such a letter since lawyers are expensive but) Did students ever go to court because of such a letter and do judges approve this?

Are things like this supported by universities or their legal departments?

I would be interested in answers about the situation all over the world – if this is not possible, I would be interested in Europe and Northern America.

Don't let a crappy answer scare you.

Unfortunately, I cannot estimate how crappy it really is -  one the one hand, it was not seen positively by this community - on the other hand, if it really is so bad as I hope it is, I'd hope there'd be more downvotes/outraged comments..

@user96501 Keep in mind it is 100% downvoted ... the total number isn't so important, lots of people probably didn't even scroll down that far, or didn't want to bother losing rep on a question that was already pretty highly downvoted for this stack.

I guess you can't see it is 100% downvoted, but it is.

Thank you! But then again, I don't know if they downvoted because the answer was ridiculous in gerneral. Thank you for your answer btw!

The number of votes on an answer depends on how many people have read the answer and care about voting. Surely, there are around stellar answers with just a bunch of upvotes and ridiculously poor answers not enough downvoted, but this is how the system works.

Note that Hexal was a troll. S/he was the account of someone else who was suspended for bad behavior, and the "Hexal" account was suspended for a year quickly after its creation. Don't listen to that user.

In most places it's illegal to ask someone to give their salary back even if they didn't do any work.

It's now at -30.  It was a dumb answer, but the idea was just to make things sound scary to the student so she would get distracted and drop her objections.  The professor would almost certainly have no grounds to actually enforce such a request.  And I've never even heard of such a request being made.  Things usually proceed more civilly.

@Mike It is actually an echo from regions outside the 1st-world society/academia bubble. This community is growing in cultural diversity. The practice, unfortunately, exists. See me answer below.

Re: "Now, this answer is downvoted (but not very much)", I think even -4 is very much. Very few answers get down that far, as far as I've seen.

Just FYI, the linked answer is the wrong one (a positively-upvoted answer by Hexal). The link should be fixed.

No, that answer is ridiculous.
In North America, as long as you were working honestly*, the only reason you would ever have to return money is if you were accidentally overpaid (i.e. they paid you more money than you earned).
* I assume you aren't actually trying to commit fraud

Well, a charge of fraud would change that, but it would be very hard to prove. I think, effectively, it needn't really be considered in a case like this.

I've had that happen with travel reimbursement. For salary and an ongoing appointment I expect they would usually just pay out less next month.

@Anyon I actually had it happen to me a few months ago. HR had a few options, including me cutting them a check, them taking it out of my next paycheck, or some fraction over the next up to six months.

Actually, there is another situation when salary is returned...  When I was going on sabbatical, the university made me sign a form saying that if I did not return to my position afterward (for 1 year I think), I would be legally obligated to return the money I received on sabbatical.

@vadim123 This may be true, but I'm not sure it's totally relevant to the questioner's situation ... I think it's fairly obvious they aren't a professor planning out a sabbatical.

I'm not sure about the US, but if similar happened in the UK, they may net even be able to claim overpaid money back depending on (1) whether it would cause "undue hardship" and (2) whether you should have been expected to know you'd been overpaid.

I am afraid demanding for payment return is a last-resort practice in some places.
I feel obliged to add my recent bad experience as a postdoc in China here. Although this has not happened to me, I was informally warned by colleagues that if I displeased PIs badly enough they might find reasons to demand me to return all earned salary. The following passage is an excerpt from my contract (translated directly by Google Translate), where Party A is a university, Party B the responsible PI, and Party C was I.

Party C must transfer all personnel, salary and file records to Party
  A within one month after pitching, and may not boast part-time
      after the servant. If the relationship between personnel files is not     transferred to Party A within 3 months, the salary will be
  suspended.    Those who can not be transferred within 6 months will be
  treated as returned stations and the post-doctoral funds used will be
  refunded in full to Party A." (...)
If Party C submits his / her post due to personal reasons during the
  stop, he / she should apply to Party A three months in advance. After
  Party B and Party B agree, Party C can return his / her seat otherwise
  Party C will need to refund the used funds.

In reading the contract, a Chinese friend abroad wrote the following advice:

Article 2.2) It is a bit shocking, cause they ask you to put how many
  publications you should produce during the 2 years. Keep in mind, if
  you do not meet this criteria, they can do anything they want
  according to the contract. I suggest you to ask how strict this
  article is.

I in fact did as advised by my friend, ask details about the contract and salary pay. They always smiled and said "don't worry" without giving out specific info. In fact, as detailed in the other thread and further unlinked discussions online, I had a number of issues with payment, research funds, authorship, data ownership. In short research funds were not explicated from salary pay anywhere. What I did was to produce the absolutely minimum required until the end, and finally left in the best terms circumstances possible. I thought to taking the "midnight run" several times, but my home country was also in a mess at the time.
Finally I I heard that in Argentina, Brazil, and some other countries, a failing PhD student may be requested to return all received scholarship funds. I think China has a similar rule, but also nobody would answer me directly.

I have seen similar things in Latin America with respect to P.I.s of research projects who do not meet minimum publication requirements; the funding bodies will sometimes seek to get some or all of the money back, including salary. In fact, some funding bodies require P.I.'s to sign an unconditional I-O-U as part of agreeing to execute the project.

@badroit Interesting fact about PIs, though I'd think they earn a base salary plus some extras related to specific projects & quotas. However a student or even visiting scholar abroad under no other salary may be quite limited in capacity of returning earned funds. Demanding funds back from a student out of spite or dispute is a possibility which needs more open exposure & discussion.

@badroit: Do you know how many PIs do not.meet these minimum requirements?

@badroit As a sidenote on PIs, I was friends with a local assistant professor. He told me he had earned a certain grant, and the university kept the funds. So that he started spending funds before actually getting the money, which he says is a normal local practice. Finally he got very upset because the university was implying he "might" not get the funds for no clear reason. This is akin to returning funds, i.e. you get no refund because of whatever reason which might be political.

Cadets who fail out or who otherwise leave one of Uncle Sam's fine military academies "dishonorably" must pay tuition.

I think that the answer suggesting asking for payback was actually intended as a joke. Or if not a joke, as such, then an outrageous response to an outrageous request. Tit for tat.
In the US and some other places there is a card game called Poker that is normally played in "rounds of betting". If a person bets X then the next person has to bet X or higher. If higher it is called "raising" ("raising the bet", "raising the ante"). Often you raise the bet quite a lot to force other players out. They aren't willing to equal the bet ("call the bet"). I think that the answer you pointed to took the request for authorship as a "bet" (or an "opening") and the response was just "raising the bet" to force the first person to retreat. The suggestion was so ridiculously high that the other person would "fold" (leave the game).
That should ease your fears, I hope. On the other hand, reacting by referring to "asshole professors" won't make you popular with your faculty. Rage seldom wins in Poker, either.

Sorry, I have to ask for clarification: Do you mean to say thewhole answer was a joke or that "write that e-mail" was meant seriously to bluff (but to not follow up on that threat)?

@user96501, mostly the concept of "exercising a bit of pressure...". But maybe all of it. The answer was outrageous, hence the down voting. Or maybe, rather than characterizing it as a joke, I might have said it would represent an outrageous abuse of power. I can't see into the mind of the poster, of course.

"In the US and some other places there is a card game called Poker" This made me smile.  Yes, other places like elsewhere in North America and also South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.

@PeteL.Clark What do they call it in Antarctica?

@AzorAhai. Cold

@AzorAhai--hehim For a poker, you need a fire. In Antarctica, there is only cold fish and icy rivers.

tl;dr-  Repaying earned salary is called a clawback.  Usually clawback provisions have to be specified in an employment contract, and they seem pretty uncommon in academia.

This would be a clawback:

A clawback or clawback provision is a special contractual clause typically included in employment contracts by financial firms, by which money already paid must be paid back under certain conditions. The term also is in use in bankruptcy matters where insiders may have raided assets prior to a filing, and in Medicaid, when a state recovers costs of long-term care or covered medical expenses from the estates of deceased Medicaid patients. The aim of the clause is to secure an option for an employer or trustee to limit bonuses, compensation or other remuneration in case of catastrophic shifts in business, bankruptcy, and national crisis as the financial crisis of 2007–2008, and for states to recoup the cost of administering Medicaid services.
The term clawbacks or claw backs can also be used to refer to any money or benefits that have been given out but need to be returned due to special circumstances or events, which are mentioned in a contract.
–"Clawback", Wikipedia [links and references omitted]

As noted in the above, clawback provisions typically need to be specified in an employment contract and are generally associated with particular professions, e.g. financial firms.  I can't recall having seen a clawback provision noted in an academic contract before, though @Scientist's answer describes one such case.
So, unless your contract specifies a clawback provision or your country has clawing back somewhere in the legal code, it seems unlikely that there'd be a legal basis for an employer to demand for legitimately received salary to be returned.

Great, thanks for giving out a specific terminology! Still I think if such clauses are widespread in the 3rd world as my experience suggests, clawback terms are not uncommon but just not often discussed

I (partially) did an undergraduate research project which involved a summer course to be followed by a year of research, and which included a stipend (a couple of thousand dollars per quarter). And I failed out horribly, spectacularly--didn't even pass the five week course. Quit basically at the beginning. Not a high point for me.
When I asked the university if I should pay back the first stipend check, the answer was a definitive "no".


text:
Is it legal to audio or video tape professors while they are lecturing?
Is it legal to audio or video tape professors while they are lecturing?
Why or why not?

Requires permission.  In some locations, it is illegal to record anyone without their permission.  For what is legal in your location, consult a lawyer.


text:
How to determine effectively whether my paper is in scope
Given the title and the abstract of a yet-to-be-published paper, I asked the PC (co-)chairs of several A/A* conferences whether my paper would be in the scope of the corresponding conferences. Surprisingly, I got an unconditional "yes" answer each time, even for really far fetches for which DBLP showed nothing close in the past years. I suspect that the PC chairs wish to lower the conferences' acceptance rates by welcoming my paper and having the reviewers rejecting it quickly for some formal reasons unrelated to the content (since the content wouldn't be that interesting to the reviewers).
Officially, the scope is formulated very broadly for each of the conferences.
Now, what's the right way to get an objective opinion about whether my paper is in the real scope (vs. an official one)?  I'm working completely alone without helpful colleagues to ask.

I don't know of PC chairs who would deliberately "game" the acceptance rate for a conference, especially an important conference. On the other hand, they do want a lot of submissions. Often they want to build a variety of viewpoints and research into the program, so your "outlier" may actually be a good thing to them. A lot of submissions makes the reviewing more tedious, of course, but allows the program committee to build a more inclusive and "interesting" program.
Of course the reviewers will give detailed feedback to the chairs and the conference program committee so the answer you got isn't indicative that you are more or less like to have the paper accepted.
Some conferences have very narrow scope, of course, and I suspect that the answer from the PC would be different if your abstract didn't sound relevant to them.
I suspect that you already have the best advice you are likely to get.
The only caveat I have here is that if the conference is so gigantic that the PC can't really respond to such questions they just have boilerplate answers to all conferences. But usually, someone would take a look at it. Committees are generally big enough that someone will look.

Thx. All the conferences in question have level A or A*, if that helps.

@user49915, all the more reason for them to take the job seriously. The rep depends on much more than the acceptance rate. I added a caveat at the end.

I do know such workshops, in which the chairs would deliberately invite people on purpose to improve their statistics.

How to determine effectively whether my paper is in scope?

If the scope described in the call for papers is too broad and that you don't trust the PC, then one commonly  used option is to look  at the past conference proceedings and see whether your paper would fit.

In other words, you suggest using the mentioned fallback "look up in the DBLP", don't you?

@user49915 I see, I missed it, but you probably want to say clearly you can't access past proceedings as dblp doesn't contain everything.


text:
When quoting books, ought pages be separated as they are on paper?
I agree with this user that reproducing page breaks make quotes less readable, but I prefer authenticity for whenever I cross-reference the book with the quote:

is my preference usual? Are there any famous academics who do this?
Or ought I ignore physical page breaks?
Is there a term for reproducing page breaks?
Is there a term for ignoring physical page breaks?

I've never seen this before, but I can see how this can be justifiable practice, especially if one is just learning academic writing. Would it be useful to replicate an example here?

No. Unless the presentation of the text is particularly important for some reason (maybe the author is drawing pictures with the way words are arranged), you can assume that the actual content is more important than the choices of font size, margin widths, inter-paragraph separations, title font size... that lead to the exact page breaks that occur in the particular edition you are reading. I don't really see anything "authentic" about reproducing page breaks. The authors was probably not even involved in the choices that lead to these particular page breaks.


text:
Is it rational to lose confidence in authors whose books contain many typos?
I make mistakes too as a flawed human. Yet I always lose confidence in and doubt authors (whose native language is English) whose textbooks or journal articles contain glaring typos or orthographical errors. Is this expectation rational or warranted?
For instance, Michael Spivak's Calculus contains many such typos. But I've spotted no typos in David Benatar's books. Here are my assumptions:

The author or the publisher can hire or engage multiple proofreaders (who can be university students, friends, or family members) to proofread.
The publisher permits the author to read a draft of the book before it's printed, to spot any last-minute mistakes. So these typos aren't the publisher's fault.

A math textbook and a mass consumption book will also go through very different publishing processes because one is technical and requires very thorough proofreading; the latter can be proofread by many people.

I'm not sure that anyone can comment on the "rationality" of your response, but I, too, lose confidence in such authors. I found quite a lot in Wayne Daniel's silver edition textbook that I collected them and wrote to him. Later editions are pretty solid.

You should not have confidence in any textbook. The purpose of science is that we don't trust, but see if we understand the argument made in an article or book, and then decide for ourselves if we find that argument convincing or not. If the argument can be clearly understood, then to say that an argument is not convincing because there are typos, does not sound very rational to me. However, if the typos makes the argument ambiguous or hard to understand, then you cannot reconstruct that argument and you cannot make up your mind whether that unknown argument is convincing or not.

I think the rational conclusion, once you've found an unpleasantly large number of typos, is that there are likely to be other typos that you didn't catch.  So read the rest of the book with that in mind, but don't extrapolate to the point that you think the authors are idiots.

Your assumptions are faulty. Unless a book is self published, it is the publisher only who hires reviewers, and, more importantly, editors. They are too expensive for the author to engage. A text that sells for about $90 USD returns about $5 USD to the author and sells between 0 and a few thousand copies (with a few exceptions). The cost of the textbook prep is all up-front other than reprinting.
For many (most?) people, proofreading your own work is nearly impossible. If you made an error when you first wrote it, it was because of some slip of the mindset. Thinking one thing and writing another. When you go to re-read it you actually read what you thought you wrote, not what you actually wrote. It is the publisher, and more important, the reviewers who should catch these since they read it with a fresh mind. The author isn't perfect but he/she is innocent here.
Some authors and publishers will pay bounties for errors caught by readers so that they can be corrected in future printing (and editions). Donald Knuth famously did this for The Art of Computer Programming.
Many authors an/or publishers will also put errata lists online where readers should be able to find them.
Typos are annoying, of course, and the other qualities of any given work have to be sufficient to overcome that annoyance.
But it is the publisher of the book that pays the upfront costs of editing, review, typesetting, etc. They (publishers) earn a ton of money for this and are responsible when it goes badly. While reviewers often work for free, editors don't. They are employees of the publishers.

It is very rare for a book of several hundred pages to have fewer than 10% of the pages not requiring changes. To get reviewers to fix typos is not realistic; it is the publisher's job to do so (unless the book is a CRC).

@Allure, yes, I should have said editors. Reviewers catch some, but it isn't their job. A textbook will have an editor skilled in the topic of the book and also in the use of language. I'll update a bit.

You can proofread your own work—if enough time has passed that you don't remember in your head what you're trying to say. Sometimes it really helps to think you're reading someone else's manuscript at the proof stage.

@aeismail, actually I'm living proof that you can't do it. Or, I can't do it at least. Our thought patterns are quite ingrained. It is why we can  succesfully give a lecture without notes. Even months later, you will likely miss things you wrote earlier. I've caught whoppers, though. But not the subtle things. If you are missing a not in a sentence you may just gloss over it knowing what you said earlier (but didn't write). Don't make the problem seem less intractable than it is.

In the preface of many (if not most) textbooks, authors often write: "Thanks for those who helped to proofread my manuscript …". The publishers or the copy editors generally are not subject matter experts. They cannot catch those errors that are of technical nature. For example, they do not know what "Cauchy Sequence" is. (I steal one of your answers on Math SE). They may think it is "Catchy Sequence". I think it is ultimately the author's and the reviewer's responsibility to find and catch those errors.

Proofreading is a skill - and one develops it starting with any assignment / project leading up to final year projects and possibly research papers and books - one trick I found to catch spelling errors is to read each line backwords - this seems to “force” the eyes/brain to look more at the words...

@scaaahu: they do not know what "Cauchy Sequence" is --- My guess is that often this gets changed by non-math editors to "Cauchy's Sequence".

@DaveLRenfro, my experience is that a content editor works in a narrow subset of books and generally gets to know the lingo. I doubt they could follow a math proof, but they also have access to google like everyone else for technical terms. They tend to learn the terminology of that field. The markup that goes back to the author shows the changes and suggestions clearly enough so such things are fairly hard to miss. They aren't "failed English majors". But changes unchecked by the authors would be a problem, of course, as are changes impossible to notice.

The veracity of a work is independent of the author's English. Second, the writing of even native English speakers can include many typos. Have you ever seen exams for which the instructor awarded bonus marks because of a critical typo in a question? This can happen even though the exam has presumably been checked by many people. Therefore the short answer is no, it is not rational.
If there are lots of typos, then I would hold it against the publisher first before the authors. It's true that the authors get to read the final files of the book before it goes to press, but it's also true that the publisher will have staff whose job is to catch these errors before printing. No human can catch every error, but they should still catch most of them.
However, it must also be said that this is not necessarily fair, because there's no way to tell what happened during the production process from the outside. For example, if the authors signed a contract to provide a camera-ready copy (CRC), that's effectively an agreement that the publisher will save on publication costs (like performing copyediting) and, in return, they'll provide the authors a higher royalty. If the authors provide a typo-ridden CRC then the authors are more at fault than the publisher.

Publishers rarely have anyone competent to catch genuine content errors.

@paulgarrett you don't say! I know people who couldn't read calculus symbols working on engineering books for example. Even if the publisher hires engineering graduates, there's no guarantee that they will remember much from university either. Also from the PoV of the publisher, catching these genuine content errors is not likely to increase sales of the book by much, which means it's not worth paying higher salaries for these highly-skilled people. It's a tough world out there.

Actually, the editors (content editors) I've worked with have been highly skilled, though not content experts themselves. But the reviewers of a work should catch an author who doesn't know what he or she is talking about.

@Buffy did you work with full-time employees of the publisher or with academics who are working with the publisher?

@Allure, in my case, reviewers are normally academics, but editors are always employees of the publisher. I can ask a friend to edit a manuscript, of course, but that is not the same.

@Buffy whoa, which publisher is this? It sounds like a publisher I will want to join.

@Allure, as far as I know all major publishers of CS textbooks. Wiley, McGraw-Hill, etc. I've never seen an exception though I quit dealing with them years ago. The problem for me wasn't the process, which was good, but the fact that after about 2 years they don't promote a book anymore (at conferences and such) so it falls into disuse. That is, they should be marketing, but don't.


text:
How to tell my supervisor I won't use the data that a colleague prepared?
I started a postdoc about a year ago. At the time of my hire I was told another postdoc was preparing the large dataset I would eventually use. In the meantime, I was to run some sample models and develop a method on some small test data.
Ten months later when I finally received the data, it was a mess of a spreadsheet (extremely long column names, no column names, typos, no documentation) and I also began finding errors in it immediately. For example some merged in values had been multiplied by 2 or 2.5 or 2.25. Nobody could explain what happened so I spent nearly 2 months redoing those values.
It gets worse. I started checking the other columns and realized some "no data" indicators had been averaged with measured values. This produced large negative values which should have been a red flag for that data. There were other similar sloppy errors in the data. I've tried to be extremely polite with the other postdoc but I'm not getting a lot of help from this person.
I've spent nearly 3 months cleaning up the mess and I continue to find problems. My budget is nearly up (I have about 3 months left) and I'm being asked to start writing and prepare a draft in the next three months. I worry there are more problems with the data that I'm not seeing because the person who prepared it did not have high attention to detail. It was also prepared by hand in Excel and not well documented or not documented at all. I don't want to put my name on something that uses data that is potentially full of errors, especially since I'm early in my career. I've voiced these concerns somewhat indirectly to my main supervisor and he is nothing but reassuring and even defensive of the data. Another colleague, not the one in charge of the project, agrees with me.
What should I do?

Saw a very very similar Q a while back, but found this : https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/101765/72855

You have come across an important lesson in research: if the person or organization providing your data is not responsible somehow for that data being correct, it won't be. Collecting and preprocessing new data is an iterative process with lots of restarts as you discover that common techniques need to be adapted to the particular dataset. If someone just hands you data they didn't have to test or validate anywhere, what you get is their first failed result. If they touch the data to do anything to it at all, they almost certainly did so incorrectly; if there is a sign, they probably created sign errors; if they did any sorting, they probably did not sort the labels and values consistently, etc.
As for how to proceed, there's another unfortunate lesson here for anyone in a mentored research position: you should generally do whatever your supervisor wants. I don't mean behave unethically if they push you to. But to change your focus to doing the best with what you have rather than letting the perfect be the enemy of the "at-least-you-did-something". Honestly your supervisor probably has a better grasp of the big picture. I.e. getting a result out to show the funding agency you were productive, getting a notch on your CV, and such outcomes, are the critical ones. While a wonderful research result that drives the science world vertically is probably out of reach already. You can however adjust how you present the data in your paper, e.g., focus on the methods not the results, or put some mixed validation results and note not all of them worked properly, caution that your data may be flawed as one possible cause, and so forth.

While the advice of A Simple Algorithm is sound, I'd add that you can, in fact, let your supervisor know that the data you got "isn't ready for prime time." Be prepared to show why and what you see as issues with it. You will, I hope, then get advice that you should probably follow even if you don't agree assuming you want to preserve the relationships.
It isn't necessary to blindly go along, nor is it necessary to scream and rant. Just point out the flaws and why they will negatively impact the work. It is possible that the supervisor has some influence to get the data improved that you don't have directly. Of course, one option is that  you get the improvement dumped on you, which isn't fair or ideal, but it will result in better work in the end.

I don't want to put my name on something that uses data that is
  potentially full of errors

You are right.  Do not publish if you do not think the data is correct.
Next time address the data quality at the start of the project.

Q: how to tell my supervisor I won't use the data? A: next time do it at the start of the project. Probably good advice, but not an answer that helps OP.