Looks like the (sad) background story is here : https://medium.com/@huixiangvoice/the-hidden-story-behind-th...
Posting here instead of a new submission
Posting here instead of a new submission
This is one of the fields that you can easily leave academia for industry or even switch to another academic institution with ease if things start to go bad. Nobody but your own advisor will realistically care about a retracted paper (especially if you do it before publication). And if your advisor does hold it against you, that’s not an advisor you want anyway.
Please, please, please, if you ever find yourself in this situation, just walk away. You are being paid less than a Starbucks Barista to stuff a tenure-track professor’s portfolio with rushed research nobody will realistically care about in 3 years (if it was even relevant to begin with).
A PhD will teach you how to research. 99% of the research that comes out of that process will be useless, incremental crap. Issue retractions, miss deadlines, whatever. The stakes in the CS academic game are so small a complete come-apart as a PhD student can easily be turned into an extended masters degree on a resume.
I think that quote comes partially from the perspective of someone who doesn't recognize the nature of the stakes because they're different, not because they're smaller - if it was really intended as much more than a snarky critique of academia.
It's not as if everything outside of academia somehow involves much higher stakes. You could basically dismiss the whole of Google or Facebook as being small stakes, following similar logic.
2) Trusted sources with both clout and insider knowledge will generally advise you to get out with your hide in tact, and let sleeping dogs lie. That is the strategy I'd also advise to anyone who is not independently wealthy and has a powerful network of allies.
3) Even indication you /might/ whistle blow is enough to trigger blow-back. Be discreet. In particular, don't use university IT equipment for either personal use, or anything related to the situation. If things blow up, the university controls your data. That can give an incredible information asymmetry, as well as leverage.
... and be aware things will get better. At the time, it seems like the world. A few years later, it's old history.
These things won't change without systemic change. Unless universities adopt transparency measures, accountability measures, compensation limits, etc., we'll continue to see corrupt crooks in the admin. And universities shouldn't be able to use NDAs, non-disparage, etc. agreements to cover this stuff up. Simply no.
It's like standing up to a police officers. If you do it, you might get your head blown off. If we change the system, you might not need to worry about getting your head blown off.
I do understand the pressure this person was feeling, unfortunately they didn't see a way out.
It's been my experience that tenure provides something similar in academia. As a lowly grad student, even in the most outrageous of cases, you aren't likely to succeed in bringing these issues to light. It would take tremendous determination and there's a very good chance you will derail your own academic career.
In most cases you have two options when you run into something like this as a Ph.D. student: A) Stick it out, get the degree. B) Bail.
Unfortunately I don't see folks within the system acknowledging (at least not openly) that the system is broken without extremely tragic events such as this one taking place.
As long as the department is sympathetic to the student's complaint, it will accommodate the switch if it can.
Furthermore, there is increasing attention to providing "Faculty Mentors" -- people of faculty rank who are emphatically not the student's advisor, tasked in that capacity with advocating for the student's needs alone. Look within the University for other outlets for your concern.
You're going to be working very closely with your advisor and relying on them for guidance and networking after graduation. If the relationship is toxic and the only options are A or B, think real hard about the upside of B before selecting A.
> (May 22) Withdrawing the paper will cause a big impact to my mentor (Tao Li)
> He asked me that I have to finish it
...
> (May 27, friend) How is the talking with your mentor?
> he refused to withdraw my paper resolutely
> (May 28) He push me to fake, if I can't publish the paper before deadline
> (June 6) I'm done communicating with Tao Li
> The result is he will never withdraw the paper
...
> I had a fight with him. And the police almost came.
> He refused to withdraw the paper resolutely.
...
> My mentor's words are: if I destroy his reputation, he will kill me.
> He said, this is his bottom line.
In academia, you're absolutely right. But outside, sorry, no.
I can perfectly understand how a PhD student under an abusive advisor would feel they're trapped. And I'm gonna sound racist, but I've seen the kind of toxicity there is among Chinese researchers in Western universities, and that's probably making this kind of situations even worse.
But I've worked in the industry, and then in academia (as technical staff, never researcher), and now I'm back in the industry, in a team where more than half the people have a PhD (or better).
Outside academia, people either don't give a damn, or know very well how fucked up it can be. Unless you're extremely unlucky and the hiring manager is somehow in the close network of your advisor, nobody will bat an eye if you, as a job candidate, say "academia was not for me, I dropped out of my PhD."
So please, if you read this and feel like you have no options, don't believe that.
It takes a long time for some students to understand and trust that I desperately want them to call me out when I'm wrong. Research is a partnership -- even if you don't know much, it is really essential that you ask probing questions and make sure that everyone in the group is standing on a solid foundation. If we are, we'll be able to answer your question immediately and you'll learn something. If we're not, then all of us are about to learn something important.
To second hocuspocus -- yes, there are always options outside of academia. As a side benefit, they'll probably pay better and will let you interact with more professionals more quickly than inside academia.
Now consider that there is nothing outside.
Because that's the mindset of PhD students, and more often than not it is also true.
> Only one e-mail response is received. That PC member said the first author of a paper has no right to withdraw an article due to methodology concerns and that if an advisor says publish, they should just publish without complaint.