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1500 questions
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votes
7 answers

Points to consider when deciding whether to get married during a PhD

Marriage is a recurrent topic in the lives of most PhDs. The meagre pay and the burden of responsibility could make marriage in the middle of PhD look like a terrible idea. But on the positive side, marriage gives one an intimate companion in a long…
Bravo
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Should I accept review requests from dubious journals?

I'm a graduate student with, so far, one published article in a peer-reviewed journal. Since the article came out, I've been receiving increasing amounts of "academic e-mail spam" from people wanting me to attend their conferences, publish in their…
Ilmari Karonen
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11 answers

How can I obfuscate my writing style when I review papers?

Does anyone have any good advice for obfuscating one's writing style when reviewing papers? I have a fear that I would inadvertently use the same turn of phrase in a referee report as in some published work, thus revealing my identity, and I'm…
Charles M. Burgess
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In case of in-lecture quizzes, is it unreasonable to fail students who are late or absent?

I am teaching a large undergraduate class this semester. One day a week (same day every week) we have a quiz. The syllabus doesn't specify at what moment of the class period the quiz will be given. It does say though that students who missed the…
Vika
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3 answers

How to achieve successful collaborations?

Quite often, at conferences or while attending seminars, I will start an interesting discussion with the speaker, first on-site, then later by email, and even though at some point there seems to be some mutual interest, it almost never gives an…
user102
67
votes
15 answers

PhD thesis without acknowledgements

During the process of writing my PhD thesis, I was close to falling out with my adviser, the advice I received from other staff at the lab (including the director) was unhelpful at best. I have since made up with my adviser and have successfully…
CuriousCat
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9 answers

My student published a preprint of our published paper without me as an author

One of my former students uploaded a paper we just published in a top physics journal without my name. The fraudulent paper is now appearing on the Google Scholar search results below the original paper we published in the physics journal. If people…
Sandra Black
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5 answers

How can a layman easily get the consensus view of what academia *thinks* about a subject?

I'm a total layman, but sometimes I have really random specific questions, like What does science say about the transfer of learning, or what is the distribution of different of sexual fetishes in the population, or what do we know about how English…
JCool
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10 answers

What to do with someone that cheated their way through university and a PhD program?

A person I know cheated through most of their science classes while an undergrad. They literally had someone else take the exams, write reports, and do most of the homework. They then took their stellar GPA and not so stellar GRE score and got…
Anton
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3 answers

Has a journal ever switched between being a predatory journal and a reputable one?

There are a lot of questions here on what predatory journals are, and how to tell if a journal is one or not. Are there known cases where a journal has "switched" camps, or where substantial evidence has been presented that they have? That is, has…
Robert Columbia
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9 answers

What do people usually wear to conferences?

I'm going to my first conference in about a month, where I will be presenting a poster. How do people usually dress for conferences? Do I need to dress more smartly than usual? Is formal dress (e.g. a suit) normal? Or does no-one really care? I'm a…
Jack Aidley
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9 answers

What is the best way to deal with cranks?

Imagine you are minding your own business when you receive an email from someone who claims to have discovered the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. He provides some "details" about his theory, then says he wants…
Allure
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10 answers

GPA rounding 2.498 to 2.5. How ethical is this?

I finished this year with a cumulative GPA of 2.498 (pretty low, not gonna lie). The main concern that I have is that when rounding to 2 digits, it will be pushed to a 2.5, and I'm worried that in interviews when I say that I have a 2.5, and if the…
Asking
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14 answers

Bad first month in my PhD

I started my PhD in physics approximately a month ago. Now I am working on my first project with my advisor and a postdoc that follows me. I made several big mistakes for a little task that my advisor gave me, and now I feel really bad. They were…
Guestito
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11 answers

Is it an insult to my US university to not walk in graduation?

I will be graduating with a degree in Software Engineering. I have a 4.0 GPA at this institution (not counting the 3.85 GPA I transferred in with). The institution is awarding me Outstanding Scholar for my degree program/campus/year. I am seriously…
Azendale
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