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1500 questions
63
votes
9 answers

Doing research outside of academia, without a PhD?

I love learning and solving problems (I'm in math/ computer science) and I'm also very motivated. However, I don't have fantastic grades and so I don't expect to get into any top graduate program. This may seem like a discrepancy, but I think it is…
anonymous
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13 answers

Why do people say you shouldn't do a PhD unless you want a career in research?

I know a PhD is supposed to be an apprenticeship for future researchers. But what if you enjoy getting the PhD, but have no intention of doing research in the future? It seems like being a professor is really stressful and there is a lot of…
user40698
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11 answers

How to handle a student's public speaking anxiety when teaching a class that requires presentations?

In one of the courses I'm teaching this semester, each student has to give a 20-minute in-class presentation of a paper relevant to the topic of each class. One of the students has approached me asking to be excused for this requirement, on the…
Koldito
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63
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2 answers

What is expected of a postdoc?

What do different people in the department expect from a postdoc? By different people I mean the advisor, graduate students and PhD students. I know it mainly depends on the job description but there are few basic things that a postdoc must be…
Stat-R
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63
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5 answers

Should I host my academic website under my institution domain or under a domain of my own ?

My institution provides a dedicated storage space to host our academic websites, which is reachable via the institution domain (something like http://people.institution.org/John.Doe/). I try to have a tidy website of a few pages listing my…
strnk
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63
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1 answer

I found a nontrivial mistake in my currently-under-review paper. Should I send a correction to the editor?

I submitted the paper to a respectable journal about five months ago. My field is mathematics, and I'm at the postdoc stage of my career. The proof of one of my theorems is more or less completely wrong. It's not just full of small errors; the…
anon
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63
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13 answers

What should I do after my PhD supervisor calls me a retard to my face?

I am in the 5th year of my Ph.D. studies. My Ph.D. supervisor always likes to mentally and verbally abuse me and some of our group members. This time, I really could not take it anymore and I want to share my story here. I started my Ph.D. program…
Try2GetBack2Academia
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63
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10 answers

Is it fair to desk-reject a manuscript because it breaks relativity?

Every so often a journal I edit receives papers with some kind of claim that, if true, would break mainstream physics. For example, a paper could claim that waves in dark matter can travel at v ~ 1014 m/s. Because relativity has met every…
Allure
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63
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13 answers

How to handle one's own academic misconduct, long after it occurred?

I got my PhD in data engineering in 2014 from a reputed university in a developed country. I am now an associate professor in a well-reputed university. Between my PhD and my current position, I took several postdoc positions in very good…
Alice
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63
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8 answers

How to deal with incompetent PhD student as an undergrad

I am an undergrad who was recruited to join a lab by this PhD student and help her with her thesis, but since working with her I have come to the conclusion that she is incompetent and probably not going to finish her PhD. I often question her…
bobdylano
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63
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11 answers

How can I avoid overuse of words like "however" and "therefore" in academic writing?

I am in the field of computer science (more specifically robotics), and as I am writing, I must actively avoid using the words "however", "therefore", etc... every few sentences. This is especially an issue in proofs, as I feel like every other…
Ralff
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63
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6 answers

What are some examples of famous scholars with low h-index?

The h-index is often used to measure a 'quality' of a scholar, and it is also often criticized as a lousy measure, since there is more into quality than just the number of papers and citations. What are some examples of arguably great and famous…
user2173836
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63
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13 answers

Accidentally leaked the solution to an assignment, what to do now? (I'm the prof)

TL;DR; I accidentally made the solution of an assignment visible to some of my students. How can I now fairly address that problem? A few weeks ago I set a programming assignment to be done using Processing (a graphical programming tool), and to…
user3780968
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63
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13 answers

Professor expects me to attend a conference. I can't afford to go,even with 50% funding

I am a first year Ph.D. student. During my master's (which was in a different university), a professor (call him M) and I worked on a paper on banking regulations. Apart from the single idea, all of the paper and results were done by me. We worked…
user96433
63
votes
6 answers

Our research is being ignored by other research groups

I am doing a PhD in molecular biology where we conduct research on human skin and skin diseases. Our group (EU based) has been in a discussion with another research group from the USA, where we can factually show that our methods are 'better' and…
Johan
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