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1500 questions
91
votes
5 answers

Should I explain to the graduate admission committee why I am older than most prospective PhD students?

Firstly, I know that there are plenty of questions here like this one but hopefully this is not a duplicate. I was born and grown up in Iran and belong to a religious minority (Bahai faith). As you know Bahais are not allowed to attend universities…
Vafa Khalighi
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91
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8 answers

My first authorship is being turned into co-first authorship, what can I do?

I am currently submitting a paper for Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. I worked on this project for the last four years and was the only one working on this project. I had everything going very well. In order to get the crystallization, I gave…
user146290
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91
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5 answers

Why upload to academic preprint sites like arXiv?

The recent question about the legality of uploading to arXiv made me realize that I don't have any understanding of why one would upload to a preprint site. (I don't work in a field where they seem to be common.) Why would one be concerned about…
Matthew G.
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91
votes
25 answers

How to respond to "unfair to write English" comments?

I teach mathematics and computing; for example, our department's discrete mathematics course. As is customary for that course, it's used as the first foray into formal mathematics, including a heavy emphasis on reading and writing proofs throughout…
Daniel R. Collins
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91
votes
10 answers

Is it ethical to tell my teaching assistant that I like him?

I, a twenty-year-old female, have come to admire the graduate teaching assistant for my summer course quite strongly. I'm extremely interested in what he has to say, I always pay attention, never use my phone and use eye contact to show interest. I…
apollogie
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90
votes
4 answers

How to react when a team of colleagues obviously made up some results?

In a recent paper, a team of colleagues published results that are clearly made up. I am 100 % sure of that because my position at the university involves the management of the animals they used in the study, which grants me access to the native…
Cobactan
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90
votes
5 answers

Tutoring is depressing because my students are struggling too much with my exercises. What do I do?

I am a tutor for first year math majors at a European university. By "tutor," I mean that I have office hours that all math students can attend. I am paid by the university. I recently changed universities. At my previous university, where I also…
rain
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90
votes
9 answers

Attitudes towards self-plagiarism

I am planning to write several papers exploring various aspects of the same scientific question. Each of these papers must have an introduction which motivates it and explains the relationship between the problem and what others have studied in the…
morgan
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90
votes
5 answers

What productive academic work can you do with minimal attention in a small (<30 minutes) block of time?

Ok, here is a major issue I have with much of my work (which is experimental/computational research): I am a graduate student, and spend much of my day doing 5, 10, 20 and 30 minute experiments (both biological and computational), which require set…
Danny W.
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90
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17 answers

Is it acceptable for a professor to tell male students to not think that they are smarter than female students?

The situation occurred in the first lecture of an undergraduate course in a STEM field at an university. The professor said that there are less than 20% female students in the class, while the usual ratio is 40% (across fields and different…
B.Swan
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90
votes
16 answers

How to handle lecturer who doesn't let me use my phone?

Inspired by another question where a user asks how to handle students with a phone, my question is from the opposite perspective: what is the correct response when a lecturer asks one to put away the phone? This actually recently happened to me (a…
SAK
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90
votes
13 answers

A student keeps using a native language while asking questions in the class when the course is taught in English

I am assisting a statistics course in a university, and my main job in the course is conducting problem solving sessions. The course is taught in English, and students interact with me in English. However, there is one particular student who keeps…
Peaceful
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90
votes
3 answers

Counter strategy against group that repeatedly does strategic self-citations and ignores other relevant research

There is a group in our small field that almost exclusively cites themselves. Their latest paper has 35% self-citations, which is 80% of the citations within the field. They only reference their own work in talks, presenting it (e.g. to industry) as…
kapibarasama
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90
votes
15 answers

Is there any efficient non-linear note-taking software?

I'd be interested in tools helping to organize thoughts and ideas, especially in a non-linear way (i.e. not as most existing note taking tools, working with lists and bullets, but rather as a post-it application). Ideally, something like the tool…
user102
90
votes
12 answers

Why do researchers need universities?

This is a follow-up question to How are junior professors evaluated for promotion? and probably an even more naive question. If I'm understanding the answer correct, professors need funding to do research, but once they get it, the university takes…
Allure
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