/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.10416422]

>tfw blacklisted by your own PhD advisor while still a student

[Anonymous No.10416425]

>>10416422
EXPLAIN

[Anonymous No.10416430]

I've had attempts to blackball me too. What happened in your case?

[Anonymous No.10416450]

>>10416425
>>10416430
>be me
>finally get good results after fuck all help
>advisor says oh I forgot I already published this lmao
>angry, but try to ask for more work to do instead
>nah not really lol
>can I work with another student on a paper
>oh nah he just copies my work, he doesn't know anything lmao, don't ask him
>eventually have to ask for outside assistance so I can keep working
>advisor hears about it, blacklists me for mentioning this to other people, complains about me to admin or whatever, publicly refuses to work with me again
>I didn't even say anything about this shit

[Anonymous No.10416455]

>>10416450
this is why you need to get a good advisor for PhD. i.e., don't graduate with a gpa <3.7 lmao

[Anonymous No.10416459]

Just change an adviser. Are you retarded lmfao?

[Anonymous No.10416473]

>>10416455
if anything I've found the top advisors are the biggest ones who pull shit like >>10416450
because they can replace students so quickly they think they can get away with murder, like that famous letter from Carreira

[Anonymous No.10416478]

>>10416450
Tough luck, anon

>>10416459
>Just change an adviser
Not always that easy. A lot of baggage comes with changing advisors, and bad students are known to use it as a trick to blame advisors for their lack of performance.

[Anonymous No.10416488]

>>10416459
This is hard if your advisor is a cunt about it though, and they won't give you good references, or even worse, give you bad ones and complain about you

[Anonymous No.10416499]

>>10416450
Ouch.

>>10416459
In most cases, changing advisors is signing your death sentence in the academic field

[Anonymous No.10416503]

>>10416499
>>10416488
>>10416478
American Unis XDDDDD

[Anonymous No.10416542]

>>10416473
What letter?

[Anonymous No.10416548]

>>10416542
>google
>letter from Carreira
>first link

[Anonymous No.10416561]

Are conditions the same for a PhD in AI at a state school under a 70 year old prof?

[Anonymous No.10416569]

>>10416499
Its not a death sentence, plenty of students change there advisor. Ideally, you should only change your advisor, at most once.

[Anonymous No.10416616]

>>10416561
Old profs are generally better. Make sure you have a second supervisor if he kicks the bucket.

>>10416569
>Its not a death sentence
Not at all, but it makes the ascent steeper

[Anonymous No.10416685]

>>10416450
did you beat the shit out of him?

[Anonymous No.10416716]

>>10416473
>if anything I've found the top advisors are the biggest ones who pull shit like
Good advisor != top advisor. Unfortunately good advisors don't usually have as much grant money as top advisors.

[Anonymous No.10416761]

>>10416499
depends on the field entirely. in biology, changing advisors isn't common bu it's not looked down on. it can be hard to find a new lab but that's purely based on the timeline. grad schools often have a hard cap of 8 years, and if you're four years into a degree and want to change labs, a lot of labs won't want to take someone on who just doesn't have enough time left at the uni to finish a thesis.

[Anonymous No.10416871]

Quite a lot of PhDs horror stories lately. Jesus Christ...

[Anonymous No.10416901]

>>10416871
They're likely to be true. I got mine somewhat painlessly, but don't know how many dropouts, harassment-from-advisor-, burnout-and-end-up-on-happy-pills cases I've seen since then.

[Anonymous No.10416903]

>>10416871
it's what happens when you have the system we have. your position in academia isn't based on how well you treat your students, it's on how well your lab performs on publications. there often is no HR structure to resolve interpersonal disputes. there are very few rules about what advisors can and can't do.

if an advisor decides they want to treat their students like slaves and work them to the bone so they burn out in two years? nothing stopping them from doing that. i can think of at least two well-funded, well-regarded PIs at my institution that do this. if you have a very specific type of personality and mindset you'll thrive in their lab. everyone else withers. your only recourse against this is to change labs and spread the word to incoming graduate students so that people don't join their lab. however, there will still be people who are desperate for a position or don't know any better.

there's a reason most grad students are alcoholics

[Anonymous No.10416913]

>>10416685
No, he seems angry at me though. I was kind of hoping he'd throw the first punch since my bicep is the size of his calf muscles and I really wanted to claim self defense and go postal.

[Anonymous No.10416914]

>>10416422
Niggers

[Anonymous No.10416929]

>>10416548
He's right. If you can't work evenings or on the weekends, perhaps you shouldn't be attempting science. I highly recommend reading the book THE IDEA FACTORY Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation.

There's this quote that resonated with me in that book from Mervin Kelly. It went something along the lines as "Your pay is dictated by your scheduled hours, bonuses and promotions are earned by the work you do outside of your scheduled hours."

[Anonymous No.10416933]

>>10416871
PhDs are rough for everybody but almost all the real "horror stories" come from lab sciences. If you're not doing chemistry/biology/experimental physics you have to be a perfect combo of very unlucky and a little bit stupid to end up with a sociopath advisor who ruins your life.
I'm in a fairly large, top-20 math program and I've never heard of anybody like this here. Even the militaristic Russian dude everybody knows is the biggest hardass in the department is not in the same league of abusive as many chemistry students claim to be dealing with.

[Anonymous No.10416940]

>>10416903
My experience matches your post. In my former university, near all tenured staff were locals whose publication record was mostly (sometimes entirely) from "gift authorship" by temporary staff. To preserve the locals' pretence of competency, skilled postdocs were never hired as faculty, but dismissed and replaced in an endless cycle

[Anonymous No.10416949]

>>10416929
>work evenings or on the weekends
Carreira was demanding his postodcs work weekdays 9-5, evenings, AND weekends. He wanted them to be constantly in the lab.
That's not worth it. You're just getting slave labour at that point, the postdocs will have no time to even think.

[Anonymous No.10416954]

>>10416940
holy shit so it's not just me who saw this

[Anonymous No.10416955]

>>10416933
Kinda relieved math isn't like that.

[Anonymous No.10417273]

>>10416499
>In most cases, changing advisors is signing your death sentence in the academic field
wat? Where does this stigma come from? I've never heard of this. You can't reasonably suspect something terrible of the student for this

[Anonymous No.10417276]

>>10417273
i knew a guy who changed advisors twice, the last time in the middle of his fourth year. he was a prick.
that said, he still graduated.

[Anonymous No.10417424]

>>10417273
Depending on the amount of influence your advisor has. Imagine being in a job interview?

-So anon why did it take you so long to graduate from university?
-I-I changed advisors half way through my graduate education.
-Who was your previous advisor?
-Professor X
-Oh wow, okay. Anything you want to say regarding this matter?
-Nothing really, we just had conflicting ideas.

Employer calls the respectable Professor X and hears negative things about anon.

-Sorry anon but we just don't think you are the right fit.

TL;DR
Word gets around fast in the scientific community, especially in your specific research niches. You need to be careful you get don't get blacklisted by your advisor.

[Anonymous No.10417433]

>>10416929
nah, that bullshit needs to die. the only time you should be going in to lab on evenings/weekends is if an experiment strictly requires it or you're doing something super quick to get set up for the next week.

we know a lot more about the relationship between productivity and time spent. mistakes go way up the longer you work over a normal work week and progress falls off.

[Anonymous No.10417481]

>>10417424
Just kill your advisor.

[Anonymous No.10417510]

>>10417481
It's fairly normal thinking about what one might do meeting the supervisor in a parking lot at night or atop the stairs.

[Anonymous No.10417529]

>>10416422
Add me to the list of people who is slowly recovering from working from a seriously shady advisor.

The people at the top in politics and business have an agenda (to maintain their grip on power at all cost), and since they control who gets funded, it's very difficult to make it as a scientist without towing the line, which is more often then not in complete opposition to good science.

[Anonymous No.10417530]

>>10417273
First time I hear this too.

In Greece regardless of the supervisor, dissertations and PhDs are presented to committees of professors that check their validity. Also you choose your supervisor and usually you already know him/her before you start. I think in most unis changing supervisor would also mean changing your subject for the dissertation but unless you fuck his wife or something he would probably provide some half-assed guidance until you're done with your research. I don't know what happens to PhDs in this case though.

[Anonymous No.10417565]

>>10417424
Why would you even mention you ever worked with the previous adviser. For the same reason that if you worked a shit job for a month or so you wouldn't list it on your resume.

And nobody is ever going to ask why it took so long to graduate. Are you faggots really this ignorant of how the real world works?

[Anonymous No.10417614]

>>10417565
>Are you faggots really this ignorant of how the real world works?
yeah they're PhDs lmao

[Anonymous No.10417725]

>Can’t even find an advisor to abuse me

[Anonymous No.10417906]

>>10417725
>>Can’t even find an advisor to abuse me
That's why you have us anon...

[Anonymous No.10417921]

>>10417906
Thanks anon, it’s nice to know someone cares

[Anonymous No.10418469]

>>10416450
what do you even do in a situation like that?

[Anonymous No.10418471]

>>10417565
>
Why would you even mention you ever worked with the previous adviser. For the same reason that if you worked a shit job for a month or so you wouldn't list it on your resume.
Because you probably need academic referees to carry on in your career unless you're extraordinarily talented.

[Anonymous No.10418488]

yet people believe everything a scientist says

those faggots are more likely to be influenced by political interests than anyone else - they literally depend on them to get funded and survive

[Anonymous No.10418512]

>>10416473
Been there, got a TA position where the professor was saying the person I was replacing hadn't finished his masters, but had me meet him (even went to his and the professor's homes) 2 years in literally only credit I had left was thesis, dude left me to try and had me train his next grad student and switched departments. At the time felt like I was milking an opportunity but realise in retrospect that I got played

[Anonymous No.10418544]

>>10418488
academics are the worst, it seems as though they wait until they hear the rules and then figure out all ways to break them.

>tell my advisor, currently in another state, that I need to have a committee meeting by April
>she's known this for at least 4 months now
>hurr durr can we do it in May I MIGHT have some time available
>tell her no, it needs to be done by April
>long pause
>gets agitated but agrees

Does this shit happen in industry? Why are academics so lazy when it comes to deadlines? As someone who rarely misses deadlines, this annoys the everliving hell out of me.

[Anonymous No.10418796]

>>10416473
i'm the last grad student in my lab
my advisor said if i quit he would slit my throat
at least if i go down everyone goes down with me

[Anonymous No.10418802]

>>10418796
Oh man I wish my advisor would threaten to slit my throat so I'd have a valid excuse to cold cock the old bastard

[Anonymous No.10418858]

>>10417565
Sounds like you've never had a real job in your life lol

Employers definitely ask questions relating to that. Can you explain this gap in your employment? The typical time to graduate is 5ish years anon, did it take so long because you are incompetent?
Employers critically analyze everything you put into your resume or CV anon.

[Anonymous No.10418901]

>>10416903
sissy faggot. take this basedboy shit back to plebbit

[Anonymous No.10418906]

>>10418469
go cry to the "ombudsman" you little bitch
that's what.

[Anonymous No.10418911]

>>10418802
hotheaded prick. people like you need to get stomped out. whats your deal hitting old people

[Anonymous No.10418961]

>>10417614

[Anonymous No.10419084]

>>10416616
>Old profs are generally better. Make sure you have a second supervisor if he kicks the bucket.
Yea he old af, his best days are definitely behind him. He headed one of the best and the biggest labs in pattern recognition back in the day. Now all that has reduced to a sad group of 2-3 people. He's just teaching a few grad courses and chilling. My plan is to just chill for 4-5 years and exit with a PhD and a comfy but shitty SV research job.
Problem is
>he is a pajeet
>ML research jobs are hard to get into even though there are plenty
>it is a shitty state uni

[Anonymous No.10419097]

>>10419084
>he's an old timey "distinguished professor"
>the official title for an empty gun with nothing more to fire
>i met him interning at another uni where he was visiting over the summer
>a few fellow interns were working under him
>over the summer I interacted extensively with the oldtimer
>near the end he asked me to apply for a PhD and said he'd recommend me.
>the fag literally recommended me to his own uni's admissions committee lel
>applied under him itself
>how_the_fuck_can_he_reject_his_own_recommendation.jpg
But all these horror stories are making me jittery.
>am I falling for some scam? He seems pretty sweet and nice.

[Anonymous No.10419105]

>>10418544
>>she
Women are always like that. Avoid working with them.

[Anonymous No.10419161]

>>10418901
t. undergrad

[Anonymous No.10419195]

>>10419097
Possible risks: he has no money and you will TA every semester, or hes a nightmare to work with and this is the only way he can get recruits.

Having a prof's recommendation and promise of a spot in a lab is basically a rubber stamp app tho

[Anonymous No.10419204]

>>10419195
Oh also both of those are easy things to check. Just ask about how he would fund you, his grants are public knowledge. And talk to people who work there about the lab culture. Not just the interns, the other people too.

[Anonymous No.10419540]

>>10419195
>>10419204
Ayy thanks lads. I don't want to count teeth too much ya know. I consider myself pretty darn useless at everything and quite lucky for even being offered something like this. It's like a shitty fisherman catching a turd situation.

[Anonymous No.10419571]

>>10419540
I know it's easy to say, but dont be afraid about asking about that shit. You're the only one with your own best interest first in mind here. You need to always be your own advocate. If you have a top notch advisor they'll also be thinking carefully about what's best for you instead of how you can benefit them, but those type of advisors are super rare.

[Anonymous No.10419864]

>>10419540
Don't be so hard on yourself dude. I'm sure he's a nice guy and you'll do alright.

[Anonymous No.10420206]

>>10419571
Sigh, you're right man. It needs to be done.
>>10419864
Thanks anon. It's kinda weird that getting our shit together always feels just out of reach. I hope eventually we'll all make it, pal.

[Anonymous No.10421334]

>tfw the only programmatic interface to interpret your data is maintained by some pony-tailed german scheißekopf who has convoluted and perverted the original work into something that's uninterpretable and doesn't fucking work and you want beat the fuck out of his dumb ass.