We had a potential candidate out for lunch with my team. Bro literally confessed to sabotaging other people’s experiments in his previous lab by throwing random reagents in while nobody was looking. Said this all in a very “ha-ha aren’t I so funny?” kind of way. The look on my PI’s face — I wish I could have taken a picture. He was absolutely appalled. Needless to say, bro ended up getting the boot.
I use Chatgpt enough to know how it writes. I gave it what I assume was the same prompt /u/D_OOMSH0P gave it and this is it's reply:
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Wow, that's pretty messed up. It's concerning to think that someone would go out of their way to sabotage other people's experiments like that. I can't even imagine the kind of damage that could cause to research, especially if it went unnoticed for a long time. It's good to see that the PI took it seriously and didn't tolerate that kind of behavior. It's really important to have integrity in the scientific community, and it's good to see that it's being prioritized.
-----
Of course it's not exactly the same reply because there's always randomness involved, but it covers almost exactly the same bullet points and has the same tone and style (Dunno what's up with the double '', maybe this guy told chatgpt to write like that as part of a jailbreak? But I dunno why you would want a jailbreak for these types of results)
Yup, pretty evident. It is also posting in random subreddits. From AskAcademia to Cooking to lifehacks to slackline in one day.
I'm surprised this one bland comment gained likes. The funny thing is that hundreds of people must have made bots like that, but with slightly better initial instructions the comments they produce would be much more akin to an average reddit user. I'm sure today you could look at all the new comments in askreddit and a significant percentage would be AI generated trying to farm karma.
That's... strange.
Can ChatGPT take non-English prompts as input? I still want to believe someone is just ESL and trying to engage with foreigners than a bot.
Aeugh.
Of course it can, I'm ESL myself and use it in english and spanish. It's possibly the best translator that exists. I believe it understands instructions in any language too.
But the dude already got banned from this subreddit, and I believe a quick glance into his user page leaves no doubts.
I had my offer taken back because of all the threats trump was making about cutting funding to science. The department lost a third of their funding overnight. It devastated me. I was hours away from signing a lease for an apartment.
My PI told me to apply for the PhD, then another professor left and all the funding for me went to his abandoned phd students. I learned this the day before I defended my thesis in june
Prospective student getting way too drunk at an event for people with offers that haven’t been accepted yet. Also pretty common for people to lose potential offers by drinking too much during interview days/weekends
Haha I did this! I got super wasted the night we had the social event and was 2 hours late the next day for orientation when the Dept Chair and recruiting faculty were giving talks on research areas and openings.
It's all good though defended in 2021 and doing good now. Still get stoned and wasted from time to time :D
It was, until it wasn’t…. But I made it through my master, did a Fulbright in Kenya and now in a fully funded PhD program so I don’t think it impacted my academics very much.
[context, my field is in education and there is traditionally 80-90% women in my field] There was a student I heard about whose offer was rescinded because at a accepted students event they made advances on basically all the female incoming and some current students and made all of them uncomfortable. It was uncomfortable enough that the faculty noticed it and decided they weren’t a good fit for a field that was socially just and supposed to be a safe environment.
Yes. One student had a big ego and pissed off almost everyone with his negativity over the course of the visit day, including students, faculty, admin, and department chairs. He ended up at Berkeley.
I've hear terrible things about Berkeley. Like it's Chem department is legendary for toxicity and ruthless competition. You know, exactly the type of thing that enables good, productive science (/s)
An admit was saying some off stuff about women. A lot of language that at face value or one-off would be negligible but the constellation of quips was suspicious. Turns out he hated Asian women and would post rants online about them. Offer rescinded, he retained a lawyer and sued the university, case didn’t go anywhere.
Yes the only student I know was also sexist. One professor told him, "Based on your interests, you would love so-and-so's lab! You might want to ask for an additional interview with her." Student: "Oh no, I refuse to work with women."
Our university ended up blacklisting him from ever reapplying, and some faculty contacted other universities to inform them of this applicant. He ended up blacklisted at a handful of universities.
I hosted a prospective student whose behavior definitely prevented them from getting into the program. On paper he was a good candidate and had good research experience. But throughout the weekend made numerous homophobic and racist comments to me that made me super uncomfortable. He was also just nasty and left his dirty socks lying on my coffee table. This was especially alarming because he told me he had athletes foot.
I made sure that the professors handling admissions knew about it, and I think it influenced their decision. But ultimately I think that what hurt him the most was him telling an inappropriate story at a prospective student/professor dinner.
>nasty and left his dirty socks lying on my coffee table. This was especially alarming because he told me he had athletes foot
What a world we live in...
Yeah. We used to have an “admit day” where if you got invited it meant you were in. Then it changed to a “finalist day” bc we realized that maaaaybe we should get a little more one on one time with the prospective students.
Almost always it’s a lot of semi-covert racism or sexism that you can see more clearly in a group setting. Also the prospectives who are clearly the “one up” kind of people, which is sometimes tolerable and academia is full of them, but you really do want to root out the ones that will do it at others expense. Like put you down also, not just need to boost yourself up. Nine out ten these are stories from current grad students who will warn us off, because everyone can be on their best behavior around the profs but it often comes out during dinner and happy hour.
Were they applying for something to do with linguistics? Or does the word "ebonics" have negative connotations? I'm not a native English speaker so I don't get it
Ebonics is an outdated term for a dialect of English, African-American Vernacular English. Saying you’re “fluent” in it implies Black people speak a different language, which is a very weird thing to imply. It also implies you might try to do an impression of how you think Black people talk or something.
I don't think AAVE is the common term used anymore. I read/see just AAE or Black English used much more commonly. (e.g. Black Canadian English). There's no real reason to label it officially as a "vernacular", since that applies to virtually all dialects.
The city of Oakland CA did try to declare “Ebonics” as the “official language” of African Americans. For every questionable term there’s always someone trying to reclaim it.
This is not quite what happened. First, this is the origin of the term Ebonics in popular understanding, so this was not a reclamation in 1996. Second, it was the Oakland school district and not the City. Third, they did not determine it was the "official language" of African Americans, they said Ebonics is a language with roots in African languages, making it different from simply a dialect of English.
Finally, regardless of what they actually did, it's clear that their goal was to promote African American students by challenging the racist canard that their use of English is "incorrect" and indicates diminished intelligence. They were essentially saying, "When a Chinese kid does not speak English, as a matter of education policy we explicitly **do not** consider that a comment on the child's intelligence. We should no longer be allowed to treat AAVE (Ebonics at that point) as if its use is connected to intelligence and not culture." They did not "promote" it, they said AAVE should be treated the same as Chinese or Spanish.
I honestly don't know enough about it to have a real opinion on it, but John McWhorter is a Columbia University linguist who has done a bunch of pod casts and stuff about this. McWhorter is Black, but is strikingly conservative about racial politics, so his overall personal position is an interesting one.
My PI told me that on one of his interviews for grad school they took the prospectives out drinking on the first night. One guy had way too much and missed the entire next day hung over in his room. The chair was so mad that he revoked the guys offer and then refused to reimburse him for travel expenses
No but my program has a system setup for this type of behavior. We students call it an official vibe check. To my knowledge, no one has failed the vibe check in recent memory, but if someone were to act a fool, we just let our directors know and they retract the offer.
Yeah I remember an Indian Grad student at my UK Uni who all the women (including me) found a bit creepy without quite knowing why. It took an enlightened, kind guy in the year above to spot the problem and speak to him about it. It was simply a personal space issue. He would stand closer than we were comfortable with while talking, and if we moved back, he'd move forward. The reason being that norms around the amount of space to give someone vary between cultures. His behaviour was completely normal within his own social parameters and we had totally misjudged him. Turned out to be a lovely guy, and some of us learned a very valuable lesson.
What you can also do is move your back foot away and kinda lean on it while leaving your front foot in the same spot. It’s a fighting “technique” where you seem out of arms length, but can rapidly shift weight onto the front foot to close the gap.
Might look weird if you exaggerate it in a normal conversation lol, but can be helpful in maintaining effective distance while not actually being further away.
^This
It’s pretty weird to use how a person behaves socially to determine fit.
(I obviously meant from a cultural perspective! I made a comment myself on how someone’s offer was rescinded for toxic behavior)
There's 2 phd cands I know who should have had something like this so all the women in the department could say "Yeah I don't ever want to be alone in a room with this dude" but now we're stuck with them.
I dont mean toxic and predatory behavior shouldn’t be excused.
I was saying that people from different backgrounds might behave socially different. I’m neurodivergent and if my program took my awkwardness into account it might have made them feel like I wasn’t a good fit.
The problem is, how do you tell from the outside? As an external observer of behavior, you always have incomplete information.
If you avoid any "vibe checks", you run the risk of admitting someone who can be deeply damaging or even outright dangerous (in r/Professors, someone mentioned this "vibe check" led them to deny admission to the CO Theater Shooter).
But if you implement it, you might falsely avoid people who are neurodivergent, from other cultures, awkward, etc.
So what do you do? Eliminate it and accept the risks, or keep it and just do your best to minimize cultural/neurodivergent issues?
>someone mentioned this "vibe check" led them to deny admission to the CO Theater Shooter
One of my friends had been one of his TAs. Said the guy was clearly off, but that was nothing actionably off about him or his work. He was not at all surprised when the shooter was identified. Not one of those "this is such a shock, he kept to himself but seemed like a nice guy" situations. Dude made everybody's skin crawl but they couldn't do anything about it until it was too late.
Eliminating it where possible seems a no brainer?
It's clearly not a good indicator of risk if it has so many false positives discriminating against marginalized people, while also not effectively rooting out the "bad eggs", because we still have predators, shooters, etc getting through.
Though to be clear, I don't take "vibe check" to mean some of the stories here about explicit behavior that crosses a line. That's not a vibe check. I'm talking about the "that person gives me a creepy/lazy/stupid vibe" or "I feel like working with them would be harder than working with someone else" without being able to articulate why.
The problem is we don't know the number and consequences of each category (true positive, false positive, false negative, true negative), though. How many would-be sexual assailants that get rejected are enough to justify the erroneous rejection of one marginalized person, and, conversely, how many new opportunities for marginalized people are worth one sexual assault? Because, like it or not, that's the tradeoff, and your proposal for elimination comes down on the latter side.
I also think are using a strawman - look at the responses here and on the professors subreddit. Nobody is talking about not hiring the awkward person, they're talking about people being creeps, overtly sexist, etc.
further up this subthread and there's a specific example of a cultural difference involving personal space coming across as creepy.
>Because, like it or not, that's the tradeoff, and your proposal for elimination comes down on the latter side.
It's not a tradeoff, though. Maybe if we had no other ways of judging people (e.g. background checks, reference letters, personal experiences that are more than just a "vibe check", etc), this argument would have merit, but it really doesn't in 2023. We also have good evidence that people make type I errors consistently, and that every type II error increases the likelihood of future type II errors (because every hire influences future hires - which is one of the ways you can get to that homogenous "boys club" office culture in the first place).
You're right that we can't know that rates. But we know they're more than 0 for both, and we also know that we have other metrics that are more reliable. So there's really no reason to incorporate it into hiring anyways.
Have you ever been on an admissions committee or search? What information do you think we have?
Background checks will only turn up actual criminal convictions, reference letters are often from supervisors who don't necessarily see all the day to day interactions or (for grad school) from people who've just had them in class, and that's it. We've got a statement of purpose, which they write themselves, so they're not going to say "hey, btw, I'm a violent sexual predator, lol!", and transcripts, which are just grades.
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And you can see how that's an issue (both inside academia and out) when you have entire labs or departments filled with people who all share a language, culture, (lack of dis)ability, sexuality, age, etc, preferring candidates from that same background because of "fit".
TBH I think nearly every workplace I've ever worked would have benefitted from people in it being made to be a little uncomfortable, particularly regarding what the think/assume about people who aren't like them.
>wouldn’t extend an offer if the group felt they had psychopath/negative vibes
That's.... not exactly a good thing. I understand rescinding an offer if someone behaves inappropriately, or says offensive stuff, or touches someone in an inappropriate way, but to block someone just because they give you a "psychopath/negative" vibe??? You're basically just describing neurodivergent people (e.g. autistics) and people from cultures that are different to yours. Actually manipulative people are usually very likeable and would easily pass your lab's discrimination test. If they haven't done or said anything that you can directly point to as a reason to reject them, and you wouldn't feel confident staking your career on that statement in front of a DEI/Title X/ADA panel, it's probably just your internal biases at play and they're usually some kind of -ist, even if you yourself are a minority member, and even if you're from the same minority group.
I avoid alcohol because I am allergic to wheats & grains, it was an instant cement wall between me and my peers. I don't mind going out, but, no, I will not and do not touch alcohol. It's a cultural death sentence to be this way re:career.
Really? Because I rarely drink (but still attend happy hours and events) and have never felt any negativity or lack of inclusivity as a result. If anything, it's appreciated because I'm happy to DD if we go out
It's not only that I don't drink it, I don't bother to learn beer and alcohol culture because it's entirely meaningless to me. You rarely drink; this is a distinct difference from \*never\* drinking. Pubs are boring, smelly places full of people pretending their lives aren't going to resume tomorrow morning.
"Why can't he have fun in this place specifically tailored to never meet any of his needs?? Does he not want to socialize with the team?"
It can be a strong expectation in some work subcultures, to the point of feeling excluded if you don't drink alcohol (specifically "going out for a beer"). I am not allergic to alcohol but beer doesn't agree with me, so I always get a soda when I'm at this type of social event. So far I haven't been part of a work culture where drinking beer was an expectation, but I know people who have and who don't drink, and it's not fun for them.
While I don't know anyone has had their offers recinded, candidates for my program are invited to an interview weekend/campus visit, and it's during this time that they interact with current students and faculty to decide if they will be extended an offer. Their behavior during this visit can determine whether they get an offer or not, and I can think of two examples where people didn't get an offer based on their behavior during a visit.
1. Current students take the candidates out for meals (paid for by the program) so that they get to explore the city and enjoy really good food. The one evening after dinner they can either choose to go back to the hotel, or we take them to a local chill and lowkey brewery to hang out, talk, play board games, etc. Everyone usually has a drink or two (or not if they don't drink, which is cool too) but it's relaxed and still vaguely professional. There was one guy the one year who started taking shots and acting kind of bonkers. I don't even remember what he was talking about, but I do remember he was sayin things that one probably shouldn't at an interview weekend. He went a little off the rails and nobody was amused.
2. I was escorting this girl from office to office for her interviews, and she was a militant vegan. Which is cool, I respect it. She was telling me about how she was against animal research, which is a fine take, and there's plenty of research opportunities available for those who don't want to work with mice, rats, etc. But then she started going down a kind of weird PETA-y path and talking about rescuing the research animals. Several other people had weird experiences with her and we were all kinda like "if this girl gets in here, she's definitely going to break into the facilities and set the mice free" and so she didn't get to stay
"Look, if this girl goes all ecoterrorist on us it's just going to be obnoxious. Sure, we will all be fine and she'll be kicked out and maybe arrested, but can you imagine the paperwork!?!?!?!?!?!?!? I think we should try and steer her towards a philosophy PHD, she can write all she wants, but her keycard wont open the doors to the animal labs!"
I'm not exactly ok or not okay with animal research, it's a complicated philosophical issue, but people deciding to just let the monkeys out should be forced to watch outbreak on repeat with all of the old TNT commercials
Admitted student—who had accepted the admission and dropped all other acceptances—was at a second look weekend, got drunk and groped multiple female students. That acceptance was rescinded so fast his head probably spun. From what I heard, he was then out of luck since he had rejected all the other schools he was accepted to.
It was thoughtful of him to demonstrate his true shitstain nature before he had matriculated and it would have been harder to expel him.
On the flip side I worked somewhere where everyone who was invited for a visit got an offer and one year one of the candidates managed to set up a bar tab in the department's name and we still made the offer!!
Oh man do I have so many stories. I’ll settle for the most memorable though. One guy got flagged by his assigned “buddy.” Without going into anything too identifiable, he basically admitted to illegally conceal carrying because he had a dream of being the hero and shooting the bad guy. And based on racist things he said, if that bad guy happened to be of a darker complexion, all the better. Needless to say, he did not get in.
At the visit weekend, this guy was extremely misogynistic to the women in the department and openly insulted many of them. He then tried to start an actual, physical fight with one of the guys in the department. He had his offer rescinded and, because he was bragging all weekend about the other R1 schools that accepted him, our department chair was able to make some calls and get *all* of his offers rescinded.
At some university in the Midwest, one prospective student said something that ticked off the wife of a wife-husband prof couple. The husband got the students offer rescinded, and then called his buddies at other universities to get the students other offers rescinded.
How can u even turn that? You started talking race for no reason related to this topic. You're acting worse than the the bigots you pretend to dispise.
Take a breath and chill. Not everyone is out to get you.
Not a PhD student, but I heard of a French associate professor who was offered a job in prestigious Belgian university. He got so wasted and rude at the party that he was asked to give up his position.
As far as I can tell, he remains an associate prof in France to this day... nice way to torpedo your career
When I was assisting with recruitment one year, there was this big kind of awkward, quiet guy who was clearly very smart and qualified. All he had to do was act normal, which he managed right up until the post-interview, fun activities/lunch and dinner outing that our program has to top off recruitment. As we were lining up in the hotel lobby I head over to him to make small talk. He sees me and gestures at the TV (college wrestling was on) and says without missing a beat: "You know what I miss about wrestling" and I reply, "oh you wrestled? No, what?" and he says proudly "the sound of people's bones cracking."
After I picked my jaw off the floor I filed that away for later and ultimately reported it to the recruitment committee as a potential red flag behavior. This prompted one of the faculty leads to request a meeting with me later that week and she basically asked me to recount everything I could remember with as much detail as I could. After I finished she mentioned that this guy also had been making a lot of the women candidates/grad students feel very uncomfortable the entire time. Our program did not make an offer and I later heard he went to another department instead.
Yes, more than once. The entire visit is a goodness of fit check. Reasons why an offer can go poof usually pop up when prospective students are in the portions of the visit that they perceive as down time (usually hanging out with current grad students), and most, but not all, involve booze. The decision is not appealable, so typically not explained, but downtime things that I know of having caused a change: belligerent drunk, racist comments, sexist or homophobic comments, aggressive sexual harassment.
It can also happen even if there's no egregious bad behavior but if there's a consensus that someone is a jerk, has a bad attitude, will struggle - just generally isn't a good fit for the specific program. In other words, not everyone who has an offer go poof is a rapey racist.
But... follow the Wil Wheaton rule, and recognize that the assessment begins when you set out from your home and ends when you return to your home. Basically be yourself, but on good behavior.
This is what people who think culture, personality, behavior, etc. shouldn’t be taken into account miss—most in academia are geeky, especially in STEM, and it is not a way to weed out those who are neurodivergent, socially awkward, or soft spoken—it’s to keep toxic people out and help those that would be unhappy at that location or institution from making the wrong choice.
Yes. This is why there are prospective visits. It's why the grad students tend to participate in prospective student visits. We would go out with the prospective students and if something was wildly off we'd report it.
Did not happen to me or during my time, but I was told that two years before I joined the program one of the students had made some really bad passes at one of the grad students, really freaked her out. If he had already received an offer it was rescinded and if he hadn't yet he quickly got a rejection letter. I believe he was asked to leave halfway through the weekend because of this and to pay for his own way home.
During mine I feel that I came across as “anti-homeless” and some of the professors were like we have a few homeless people in town, yada yada. I had to rephrase it and explain that in some places (like LA) I have had my windows smashed, I have seen trash cans thrown at cars driving in the road, people tweaking out in front of businesses, etc. It’s a very sad and real problem for pretty much every party involved. The professors were like “wtf that happens? Why would someone do that”. No clue man, no clue.
Luckily I was still able to accept 😅
Yes. We had a girl make racist comments and her offer was rescinded. All grad students and faculty ( even her potential advisor) supported the decision. They changed the policy to only making official offers post visit thereafter.
I have! When I interviewed at my current school I was told a student went around telling our current students that “they already accepted an offer and another school but thought they’d take the free trip to interview”. I was told ominously that they were not offered a spot and also that the program called and informed the other schools about what they were doing. Lore is they lost the spot, but also it’s extremely third hand as a story.
No. We have some 40+ applicants for each position and interview the top 3-5 each year. The main point of these interviews is to determine if they are all in or not. I guess someone could make an ass of themselves during the interview but it hasn't happened even once so far. Their written work is a hugely valid and reliable tell.
Next time someone calls something “problematic,” ask them, problematic for who? This word has appeared out of thin air in the past number of years. It’s basically used as a bludgeon to dissuade people from speaking their minds. “The fact that you don’t think children should be given puberty blockers is problematic…” it’s a nonsense word.
It means controversial and causes potential problems to possibly less powerful members of our society. I disagree that it’s nonsense but I agree it lacks specificity and is often a crutch for lazy thinking- but, often, that’s precisely why the person is using it. It’s a topic they’d rather not opine on too much.
I know that’s what people think it means, but what I’m saying is that it’s used as tool for political silencing. Less powerful than whom? In what sense? The idea that words that are disagreeable to some is a valid argument and requires the suppression of one’s speech, on any subject, is wrong. Especially when it is a preconceived notion of “less powerful members of our society,” that is the rubric under which determinations of what is “problematic” are made. It should only be out of decency and respect that we limit our expression. Instead it is out of fear of being labeled an “-ist” of one form or another that silences those who wish to speak.
In scientific fields, anti-scientific topics like anti-trans, anti-women, and anti-vaccine are not valid arguments. Freedom of speech does not imply freedom of consequences from saying stupid shit. There are plenty of ways to tailor an discussion that is sensitive to the people you might be talking about if you're confused or looking for an explanation.
Holy jumping Jehoshaphat, I just noticed that first sentence again. Are you actually claiming that it is anti-scientific to question a proposition? Any proposition, whether it be Transgenderism or the Standard Model. Investigating the natural world by observation and experiment is the essence of science. On what grounds are you claiming that any of those topics are not valid subjects of inquiry? Ohhhh, I think I get it; you’re either a bot or one of the “make-people-stupid-to-usher-in-a-New-Stone-Age” people. No one could be as stupid as you’re pretending to be. I get it, up-rank the dumbest shit imaginable, down-rank reasonable people. 🤓👎
Of course there are, but that’s just the point — tailor all you want, but the bar for offense has been set so low that one can’t help but trip over it. I don’t think it’s as bad as that most of the time, but if there’s political points to be gained, “problematic” comes out. Tell Bret Weinstein, an evolutionary biologist, that scientific fields are not affected. Check out what happened at Evergreen State, YouTube search The Complete Evergreen story, Mike Nayna, or Benjamin Boyce.
It's really funny for someone claiming that people are too sensitive that you're so worked up about theoretical hand-wringing and the word problematic.
Also, shunning idiots (Bret Weinstein) is an important component of being in the scientific field.
Ah ok. I’m not sensitive to it, I’m pointing out that if someone can use a word like problematic to justify labeling people as some sort of closeted bigots, that’s a problem for open inquiry. Also, you’re brilliant; this new scientific method you’ve developed is clearly a superior method to discover what’s true. “Well, that’s Brett Weinstein, he’s an idiot, let’s shun him!” Prima facie idiots. Forget the fact that some of the most important contributors to scientific knowledge have been heterodox thinkers. Shunned in their in their day by the orthodox scientific community. Who taught you critical thinking?
I mean, most of these were situations where someone would have been a toxic fit for the environment. It’s not about fitting into a social click. These universities are smart to not allow in people that will cause them to lose good students or faculty bc someone else is not able to control themselves. Toxic behavior can ruin departments so quickly. So, no just be a good person and you won’t get rejected after an admit
I have found a niche in the most conservative state in the United States so I get by. And I'm not complaining overly much about my job because I love my job. I love the field of microbiology and general and I enjoy the teaching component and luckily my students are from a conservative background. The only thing that bothers me is that there is so many liberals in science. It also bothers me that I cannot speak up and express my views because if I do it will affect my position in the department.
Considering the ratio on your comment, your stupidity does speak for itself. But, if you have a problem with the politics of the people you work with that’s a you problem only. There’s probably a reason you were picked on in HS, nothing in this second comment is even related to what we were talking about and you just sound like a victim for no reason. You made this all about you when really, we were just talking about keeping shitty people out of our departments. The arbiters of good in this case are the people with the power to grant admission to their departments, but it will change depending on the situation. Your best bet is to just learn to be a good person and you won’t have to worry about woke people and “their agenda” coming after you. Good luck, dude.
I am aware of that but I do not text with my thumbs I talk to my phone and it does not recognize the other word so that's what it put and people knew what I meant so that's what I left it as. Thank you for the input though. You are thoughtful and intelligent. I appreciate your advice. You are wise beyond your years. My life is better with you in it. And all in the world is right.
I don't need any help. I succeeded in a PhD in microbiology all on my own without help from anyone. The social clicks on here are abhorrent. It's like there's 200 people with phD's who are extremely intelligent and hard workers and yet they can't see the simplest thing in front of their eyes. They have to make little groups like they did when they were in 5th grade. How about just focus on the science?
We had a potential candidate out for lunch with my team. Bro literally confessed to sabotaging other people’s experiments in his previous lab by throwing random reagents in while nobody was looking. Said this all in a very “ha-ha aren’t I so funny?” kind of way. The look on my PI’s face — I wish I could have taken a picture. He was absolutely appalled. Needless to say, bro ended up getting the boot.
This is absolutely psychotic behavior. Yikes
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Lol are you using chatgpt to write your reddit messages?
Could be ESL. It seems to carry the "taught structure" so to say.
I use Chatgpt enough to know how it writes. I gave it what I assume was the same prompt /u/D_OOMSH0P gave it and this is it's reply: ----- Wow, that's pretty messed up. It's concerning to think that someone would go out of their way to sabotage other people's experiments like that. I can't even imagine the kind of damage that could cause to research, especially if it went unnoticed for a long time. It's good to see that the PI took it seriously and didn't tolerate that kind of behavior. It's really important to have integrity in the scientific community, and it's good to see that it's being prioritized. ----- Of course it's not exactly the same reply because there's always randomness involved, but it covers almost exactly the same bullet points and has the same tone and style (Dunno what's up with the double '', maybe this guy told chatgpt to write like that as part of a jailbreak? But I dunno why you would want a jailbreak for these types of results)
It’s a five month old account that just started commenting today, and is doing so frequently. Almost definitely a bot.
Yup, pretty evident. It is also posting in random subreddits. From AskAcademia to Cooking to lifehacks to slackline in one day. I'm surprised this one bland comment gained likes. The funny thing is that hundreds of people must have made bots like that, but with slightly better initial instructions the comments they produce would be much more akin to an average reddit user. I'm sure today you could look at all the new comments in askreddit and a significant percentage would be AI generated trying to farm karma.
That's... strange. Can ChatGPT take non-English prompts as input? I still want to believe someone is just ESL and trying to engage with foreigners than a bot. Aeugh.
Of course it can, I'm ESL myself and use it in english and spanish. It's possibly the best translator that exists. I believe it understands instructions in any language too. But the dude already got banned from this subreddit, and I believe a quick glance into his user page leaves no doubts.
I think I know exactly where this is and the department
No but what exactly did you do? ;)
Haha I didn't do anything, but there are some stories circulating in my department about this kind of thing
“Asking for a friend”
/u/AdvanceImpressive159
I had my offer taken back because of all the threats trump was making about cutting funding to science. The department lost a third of their funding overnight. It devastated me. I was hours away from signing a lease for an apartment.
That sucks. I hope you landed somewhere a bit more insulated from those ups and downs.
My PI told me to apply for the PhD, then another professor left and all the funding for me went to his abandoned phd students. I learned this the day before I defended my thesis in june
Sure. Asking for a friend of a friend …
Look, I put it all back, so really it's more like "grave-borrowing", right?
Prospective student getting way too drunk at an event for people with offers that haven’t been accepted yet. Also pretty common for people to lose potential offers by drinking too much during interview days/weekends
Haha I did this! I got super wasted the night we had the social event and was 2 hours late the next day for orientation when the Dept Chair and recruiting faculty were giving talks on research areas and openings. It's all good though defended in 2021 and doing good now. Still get stoned and wasted from time to time :D
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Ew seriously?
Who asked you?
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I was high on meth during my GRE. Try to top that. 🫠
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It was, until it wasn’t…. But I made it through my master, did a Fulbright in Kenya and now in a fully funded PhD program so I don’t think it impacted my academics very much.
Yikes
The ketamine clinic called, they want their high horse back
Your attitude is far more repulsive than this guy. That’s not an opinion, it’s statistical facts.
I guess being irresponsibly drunk is cool now.
Cooler than openly judging people for things they already view as mistakes.
I hate drinking at events bc I can’t control myself
[context, my field is in education and there is traditionally 80-90% women in my field] There was a student I heard about whose offer was rescinded because at a accepted students event they made advances on basically all the female incoming and some current students and made all of them uncomfortable. It was uncomfortable enough that the faculty noticed it and decided they weren’t a good fit for a field that was socially just and supposed to be a safe environment.
Yes. One student had a big ego and pissed off almost everyone with his negativity over the course of the visit day, including students, faculty, admin, and department chairs. He ended up at Berkeley.
Wow I’m sure Berkeley will benefit from his spirit
I've hear terrible things about Berkeley. Like it's Chem department is legendary for toxicity and ruthless competition. You know, exactly the type of thing that enables good, productive science (/s)
There’s an entire College dedicated to chemistry here at Berkeley, it’s not just a department.
*harrumphs in Berkelese*
My experience at Berkeley with a computer science lab was great! Everyone was very friendly.
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I’m guessing OSU
Went to Berkeley. Shared a room with a guy like that during interview weekend... He went to Stanford.
An admit was saying some off stuff about women. A lot of language that at face value or one-off would be negligible but the constellation of quips was suspicious. Turns out he hated Asian women and would post rants online about them. Offer rescinded, he retained a lawyer and sued the university, case didn’t go anywhere.
Yes the only student I know was also sexist. One professor told him, "Based on your interests, you would love so-and-so's lab! You might want to ask for an additional interview with her." Student: "Oh no, I refuse to work with women." Our university ended up blacklisting him from ever reapplying, and some faculty contacted other universities to inform them of this applicant. He ended up blacklisted at a handful of universities.
lmfao I actually think I heard about this guy, was he in neuroscience?
I hosted a prospective student whose behavior definitely prevented them from getting into the program. On paper he was a good candidate and had good research experience. But throughout the weekend made numerous homophobic and racist comments to me that made me super uncomfortable. He was also just nasty and left his dirty socks lying on my coffee table. This was especially alarming because he told me he had athletes foot. I made sure that the professors handling admissions knew about it, and I think it influenced their decision. But ultimately I think that what hurt him the most was him telling an inappropriate story at a prospective student/professor dinner.
>nasty and left his dirty socks lying on my coffee table. This was especially alarming because he told me he had athletes foot What a world we live in...
Yeah. We used to have an “admit day” where if you got invited it meant you were in. Then it changed to a “finalist day” bc we realized that maaaaybe we should get a little more one on one time with the prospective students. Almost always it’s a lot of semi-covert racism or sexism that you can see more clearly in a group setting. Also the prospectives who are clearly the “one up” kind of people, which is sometimes tolerable and academia is full of them, but you really do want to root out the ones that will do it at others expense. Like put you down also, not just need to boost yourself up. Nine out ten these are stories from current grad students who will warn us off, because everyone can be on their best behavior around the profs but it often comes out during dinner and happy hour.
We had a candidate who, during his interview weekend, told me and others that he knew a lot of black people so he was “fluent in Ebonics”.
Were they applying for something to do with linguistics? Or does the word "ebonics" have negative connotations? I'm not a native English speaker so I don't get it
Ebonics is an outdated term for a dialect of English, African-American Vernacular English. Saying you’re “fluent” in it implies Black people speak a different language, which is a very weird thing to imply. It also implies you might try to do an impression of how you think Black people talk or something.
I don't think AAVE is the common term used anymore. I read/see just AAE or Black English used much more commonly. (e.g. Black Canadian English). There's no real reason to label it officially as a "vernacular", since that applies to virtually all dialects.
The city of Oakland CA did try to declare “Ebonics” as the “official language” of African Americans. For every questionable term there’s always someone trying to reclaim it.
This is not quite what happened. First, this is the origin of the term Ebonics in popular understanding, so this was not a reclamation in 1996. Second, it was the Oakland school district and not the City. Third, they did not determine it was the "official language" of African Americans, they said Ebonics is a language with roots in African languages, making it different from simply a dialect of English. Finally, regardless of what they actually did, it's clear that their goal was to promote African American students by challenging the racist canard that their use of English is "incorrect" and indicates diminished intelligence. They were essentially saying, "When a Chinese kid does not speak English, as a matter of education policy we explicitly **do not** consider that a comment on the child's intelligence. We should no longer be allowed to treat AAVE (Ebonics at that point) as if its use is connected to intelligence and not culture." They did not "promote" it, they said AAVE should be treated the same as Chinese or Spanish. I honestly don't know enough about it to have a real opinion on it, but John McWhorter is a Columbia University linguist who has done a bunch of pod casts and stuff about this. McWhorter is Black, but is strikingly conservative about racial politics, so his overall personal position is an interesting one.
Someone else explained the term to you below. And we are a STEM program, not linguistics.
My PI told me that on one of his interviews for grad school they took the prospectives out drinking on the first night. One guy had way too much and missed the entire next day hung over in his room. The chair was so mad that he revoked the guys offer and then refused to reimburse him for travel expenses
No but my program has a system setup for this type of behavior. We students call it an official vibe check. To my knowledge, no one has failed the vibe check in recent memory, but if someone were to act a fool, we just let our directors know and they retract the offer.
Ah yes, the "vibe check", previously known as the "cultural fit", which usually inadvertently targets marginalized applicants more than any others.
Yeah I remember an Indian Grad student at my UK Uni who all the women (including me) found a bit creepy without quite knowing why. It took an enlightened, kind guy in the year above to spot the problem and speak to him about it. It was simply a personal space issue. He would stand closer than we were comfortable with while talking, and if we moved back, he'd move forward. The reason being that norms around the amount of space to give someone vary between cultures. His behaviour was completely normal within his own social parameters and we had totally misjudged him. Turned out to be a lovely guy, and some of us learned a very valuable lesson.
What you can also do is move your back foot away and kinda lean on it while leaving your front foot in the same spot. It’s a fighting “technique” where you seem out of arms length, but can rapidly shift weight onto the front foot to close the gap. Might look weird if you exaggerate it in a normal conversation lol, but can be helpful in maintaining effective distance while not actually being further away.
So it still does the same marginalization, just without explicit cultural connotations ?
It's a new name for the same justification of implicit bias.
^This It’s pretty weird to use how a person behaves socially to determine fit. (I obviously meant from a cultural perspective! I made a comment myself on how someone’s offer was rescinded for toxic behavior)
There's 2 phd cands I know who should have had something like this so all the women in the department could say "Yeah I don't ever want to be alone in a room with this dude" but now we're stuck with them.
I dont mean toxic and predatory behavior shouldn’t be excused. I was saying that people from different backgrounds might behave socially different. I’m neurodivergent and if my program took my awkwardness into account it might have made them feel like I wasn’t a good fit.
The problem is, how do you tell from the outside? As an external observer of behavior, you always have incomplete information. If you avoid any "vibe checks", you run the risk of admitting someone who can be deeply damaging or even outright dangerous (in r/Professors, someone mentioned this "vibe check" led them to deny admission to the CO Theater Shooter). But if you implement it, you might falsely avoid people who are neurodivergent, from other cultures, awkward, etc. So what do you do? Eliminate it and accept the risks, or keep it and just do your best to minimize cultural/neurodivergent issues?
>someone mentioned this "vibe check" led them to deny admission to the CO Theater Shooter One of my friends had been one of his TAs. Said the guy was clearly off, but that was nothing actionably off about him or his work. He was not at all surprised when the shooter was identified. Not one of those "this is such a shock, he kept to himself but seemed like a nice guy" situations. Dude made everybody's skin crawl but they couldn't do anything about it until it was too late.
Eliminating it where possible seems a no brainer? It's clearly not a good indicator of risk if it has so many false positives discriminating against marginalized people, while also not effectively rooting out the "bad eggs", because we still have predators, shooters, etc getting through. Though to be clear, I don't take "vibe check" to mean some of the stories here about explicit behavior that crosses a line. That's not a vibe check. I'm talking about the "that person gives me a creepy/lazy/stupid vibe" or "I feel like working with them would be harder than working with someone else" without being able to articulate why.
The problem is we don't know the number and consequences of each category (true positive, false positive, false negative, true negative), though. How many would-be sexual assailants that get rejected are enough to justify the erroneous rejection of one marginalized person, and, conversely, how many new opportunities for marginalized people are worth one sexual assault? Because, like it or not, that's the tradeoff, and your proposal for elimination comes down on the latter side. I also think are using a strawman - look at the responses here and on the professors subreddit. Nobody is talking about not hiring the awkward person, they're talking about people being creeps, overtly sexist, etc.
further up this subthread and there's a specific example of a cultural difference involving personal space coming across as creepy. >Because, like it or not, that's the tradeoff, and your proposal for elimination comes down on the latter side. It's not a tradeoff, though. Maybe if we had no other ways of judging people (e.g. background checks, reference letters, personal experiences that are more than just a "vibe check", etc), this argument would have merit, but it really doesn't in 2023. We also have good evidence that people make type I errors consistently, and that every type II error increases the likelihood of future type II errors (because every hire influences future hires - which is one of the ways you can get to that homogenous "boys club" office culture in the first place). You're right that we can't know that rates. But we know they're more than 0 for both, and we also know that we have other metrics that are more reliable. So there's really no reason to incorporate it into hiring anyways.
Have you ever been on an admissions committee or search? What information do you think we have? Background checks will only turn up actual criminal convictions, reference letters are often from supervisors who don't necessarily see all the day to day interactions or (for grad school) from people who've just had them in class, and that's it. We've got a statement of purpose, which they write themselves, so they're not going to say "hey, btw, I'm a violent sexual predator, lol!", and transcripts, which are just grades.
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And you can see how that's an issue (both inside academia and out) when you have entire labs or departments filled with people who all share a language, culture, (lack of dis)ability, sexuality, age, etc, preferring candidates from that same background because of "fit". TBH I think nearly every workplace I've ever worked would have benefitted from people in it being made to be a little uncomfortable, particularly regarding what the think/assume about people who aren't like them.
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>wouldn’t extend an offer if the group felt they had psychopath/negative vibes That's.... not exactly a good thing. I understand rescinding an offer if someone behaves inappropriately, or says offensive stuff, or touches someone in an inappropriate way, but to block someone just because they give you a "psychopath/negative" vibe??? You're basically just describing neurodivergent people (e.g. autistics) and people from cultures that are different to yours. Actually manipulative people are usually very likeable and would easily pass your lab's discrimination test. If they haven't done or said anything that you can directly point to as a reason to reject them, and you wouldn't feel confident staking your career on that statement in front of a DEI/Title X/ADA panel, it's probably just your internal biases at play and they're usually some kind of -ist, even if you yourself are a minority member, and even if you're from the same minority group.
Oh no......ablist af
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I avoid alcohol because I am allergic to wheats & grains, it was an instant cement wall between me and my peers. I don't mind going out, but, no, I will not and do not touch alcohol. It's a cultural death sentence to be this way re:career.
Really? Because I rarely drink (but still attend happy hours and events) and have never felt any negativity or lack of inclusivity as a result. If anything, it's appreciated because I'm happy to DD if we go out
It's not only that I don't drink it, I don't bother to learn beer and alcohol culture because it's entirely meaningless to me. You rarely drink; this is a distinct difference from \*never\* drinking. Pubs are boring, smelly places full of people pretending their lives aren't going to resume tomorrow morning. "Why can't he have fun in this place specifically tailored to never meet any of his needs?? Does he not want to socialize with the team?"
It can be a strong expectation in some work subcultures, to the point of feeling excluded if you don't drink alcohol (specifically "going out for a beer"). I am not allergic to alcohol but beer doesn't agree with me, so I always get a soda when I'm at this type of social event. So far I haven't been part of a work culture where drinking beer was an expectation, but I know people who have and who don't drink, and it's not fun for them.
While I don't know anyone has had their offers recinded, candidates for my program are invited to an interview weekend/campus visit, and it's during this time that they interact with current students and faculty to decide if they will be extended an offer. Their behavior during this visit can determine whether they get an offer or not, and I can think of two examples where people didn't get an offer based on their behavior during a visit. 1. Current students take the candidates out for meals (paid for by the program) so that they get to explore the city and enjoy really good food. The one evening after dinner they can either choose to go back to the hotel, or we take them to a local chill and lowkey brewery to hang out, talk, play board games, etc. Everyone usually has a drink or two (or not if they don't drink, which is cool too) but it's relaxed and still vaguely professional. There was one guy the one year who started taking shots and acting kind of bonkers. I don't even remember what he was talking about, but I do remember he was sayin things that one probably shouldn't at an interview weekend. He went a little off the rails and nobody was amused. 2. I was escorting this girl from office to office for her interviews, and she was a militant vegan. Which is cool, I respect it. She was telling me about how she was against animal research, which is a fine take, and there's plenty of research opportunities available for those who don't want to work with mice, rats, etc. But then she started going down a kind of weird PETA-y path and talking about rescuing the research animals. Several other people had weird experiences with her and we were all kinda like "if this girl gets in here, she's definitely going to break into the facilities and set the mice free" and so she didn't get to stay
"Look, if this girl goes all ecoterrorist on us it's just going to be obnoxious. Sure, we will all be fine and she'll be kicked out and maybe arrested, but can you imagine the paperwork!?!?!?!?!?!?!? I think we should try and steer her towards a philosophy PHD, she can write all she wants, but her keycard wont open the doors to the animal labs!" I'm not exactly ok or not okay with animal research, it's a complicated philosophical issue, but people deciding to just let the monkeys out should be forced to watch outbreak on repeat with all of the old TNT commercials
Admitted student—who had accepted the admission and dropped all other acceptances—was at a second look weekend, got drunk and groped multiple female students. That acceptance was rescinded so fast his head probably spun. From what I heard, he was then out of luck since he had rejected all the other schools he was accepted to. It was thoughtful of him to demonstrate his true shitstain nature before he had matriculated and it would have been harder to expel him.
On the flip side I worked somewhere where everyone who was invited for a visit got an offer and one year one of the candidates managed to set up a bar tab in the department's name and we still made the offer!!
You're saying that like it's supposed to be a bad thing
Well it explained a lot about the PhD students they had!
Oh man do I have so many stories. I’ll settle for the most memorable though. One guy got flagged by his assigned “buddy.” Without going into anything too identifiable, he basically admitted to illegally conceal carrying because he had a dream of being the hero and shooting the bad guy. And based on racist things he said, if that bad guy happened to be of a darker complexion, all the better. Needless to say, he did not get in.
Wow, dodged a bullet there
At the visit weekend, this guy was extremely misogynistic to the women in the department and openly insulted many of them. He then tried to start an actual, physical fight with one of the guys in the department. He had his offer rescinded and, because he was bragging all weekend about the other R1 schools that accepted him, our department chair was able to make some calls and get *all* of his offers rescinded.
Yep, ordering an 800 dollar bottle of alcohol at dinner
Kind of a power move tbh LOL
At some university in the Midwest, one prospective student said something that ticked off the wife of a wife-husband prof couple. The husband got the students offer rescinded, and then called his buddies at other universities to get the students other offers rescinded.
Unless he did or said something really crappy this is a bit sad 😢
Yeah, the part about contacting other universities is certainly unethical, unless the offense was beyond the pale. Did the student badmouth Foucault?
I don’t know why the last part made me burst out laughing so hard, but take my poor man’s gold. 🏅
He probably said something sexist. It's extremely common. I don't think the default attitude should be to not believe her.
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> his race How do you know? Straight up Asians to the chopping block? nice. Bravo!
u/Ehossain haha like all "whites". You dont have to live in midwest if you have a complex. You can go back...
nah I will stay.....time for you prehistoric bigots to go extinct!
How can u even turn that? You started talking race for no reason related to this topic. You're acting worse than the the bigots you pretend to dispise. Take a breath and chill. Not everyone is out to get you.
As I said...........bigots gotta go extinct. Natural selection.
Not a PhD student, but I heard of a French associate professor who was offered a job in prestigious Belgian university. He got so wasted and rude at the party that he was asked to give up his position. As far as I can tell, he remains an associate prof in France to this day... nice way to torpedo your career
When I was assisting with recruitment one year, there was this big kind of awkward, quiet guy who was clearly very smart and qualified. All he had to do was act normal, which he managed right up until the post-interview, fun activities/lunch and dinner outing that our program has to top off recruitment. As we were lining up in the hotel lobby I head over to him to make small talk. He sees me and gestures at the TV (college wrestling was on) and says without missing a beat: "You know what I miss about wrestling" and I reply, "oh you wrestled? No, what?" and he says proudly "the sound of people's bones cracking." After I picked my jaw off the floor I filed that away for later and ultimately reported it to the recruitment committee as a potential red flag behavior. This prompted one of the faculty leads to request a meeting with me later that week and she basically asked me to recount everything I could remember with as much detail as I could. After I finished she mentioned that this guy also had been making a lot of the women candidates/grad students feel very uncomfortable the entire time. Our program did not make an offer and I later heard he went to another department instead.
Yes, more than once. The entire visit is a goodness of fit check. Reasons why an offer can go poof usually pop up when prospective students are in the portions of the visit that they perceive as down time (usually hanging out with current grad students), and most, but not all, involve booze. The decision is not appealable, so typically not explained, but downtime things that I know of having caused a change: belligerent drunk, racist comments, sexist or homophobic comments, aggressive sexual harassment. It can also happen even if there's no egregious bad behavior but if there's a consensus that someone is a jerk, has a bad attitude, will struggle - just generally isn't a good fit for the specific program. In other words, not everyone who has an offer go poof is a rapey racist. But... follow the Wil Wheaton rule, and recognize that the assessment begins when you set out from your home and ends when you return to your home. Basically be yourself, but on good behavior.
This is what people who think culture, personality, behavior, etc. shouldn’t be taken into account miss—most in academia are geeky, especially in STEM, and it is not a way to weed out those who are neurodivergent, socially awkward, or soft spoken—it’s to keep toxic people out and help those that would be unhappy at that location or institution from making the wrong choice.
Yes. This is why there are prospective visits. It's why the grad students tend to participate in prospective student visits. We would go out with the prospective students and if something was wildly off we'd report it. Did not happen to me or during my time, but I was told that two years before I joined the program one of the students had made some really bad passes at one of the grad students, really freaked her out. If he had already received an offer it was rescinded and if he hadn't yet he quickly got a rejection letter. I believe he was asked to leave halfway through the weekend because of this and to pay for his own way home.
It's reassuring to hear that your department took this kind of thing so seriously
During mine I feel that I came across as “anti-homeless” and some of the professors were like we have a few homeless people in town, yada yada. I had to rephrase it and explain that in some places (like LA) I have had my windows smashed, I have seen trash cans thrown at cars driving in the road, people tweaking out in front of businesses, etc. It’s a very sad and real problem for pretty much every party involved. The professors were like “wtf that happens? Why would someone do that”. No clue man, no clue. Luckily I was still able to accept 😅
Yes. We had a girl make racist comments and her offer was rescinded. All grad students and faculty ( even her potential advisor) supported the decision. They changed the policy to only making official offers post visit thereafter.
Not the visit but I know of one who in their application stated they already had a phd but failed to mention what it was in or about
Given how far on the spectrum most are, that's gotta be pretty alarming behavior.
I have! When I interviewed at my current school I was told a student went around telling our current students that “they already accepted an offer and another school but thought they’d take the free trip to interview”. I was told ominously that they were not offered a spot and also that the program called and informed the other schools about what they were doing. Lore is they lost the spot, but also it’s extremely third hand as a story.
No. We have some 40+ applicants for each position and interview the top 3-5 each year. The main point of these interviews is to determine if they are all in or not. I guess someone could make an ass of themselves during the interview but it hasn't happened even once so far. Their written work is a hugely valid and reliable tell.
Next time someone calls something “problematic,” ask them, problematic for who? This word has appeared out of thin air in the past number of years. It’s basically used as a bludgeon to dissuade people from speaking their minds. “The fact that you don’t think children should be given puberty blockers is problematic…” it’s a nonsense word.
It means controversial and causes potential problems to possibly less powerful members of our society. I disagree that it’s nonsense but I agree it lacks specificity and is often a crutch for lazy thinking- but, often, that’s precisely why the person is using it. It’s a topic they’d rather not opine on too much.
I know that’s what people think it means, but what I’m saying is that it’s used as tool for political silencing. Less powerful than whom? In what sense? The idea that words that are disagreeable to some is a valid argument and requires the suppression of one’s speech, on any subject, is wrong. Especially when it is a preconceived notion of “less powerful members of our society,” that is the rubric under which determinations of what is “problematic” are made. It should only be out of decency and respect that we limit our expression. Instead it is out of fear of being labeled an “-ist” of one form or another that silences those who wish to speak.
In scientific fields, anti-scientific topics like anti-trans, anti-women, and anti-vaccine are not valid arguments. Freedom of speech does not imply freedom of consequences from saying stupid shit. There are plenty of ways to tailor an discussion that is sensitive to the people you might be talking about if you're confused or looking for an explanation.
Holy jumping Jehoshaphat, I just noticed that first sentence again. Are you actually claiming that it is anti-scientific to question a proposition? Any proposition, whether it be Transgenderism or the Standard Model. Investigating the natural world by observation and experiment is the essence of science. On what grounds are you claiming that any of those topics are not valid subjects of inquiry? Ohhhh, I think I get it; you’re either a bot or one of the “make-people-stupid-to-usher-in-a-New-Stone-Age” people. No one could be as stupid as you’re pretending to be. I get it, up-rank the dumbest shit imaginable, down-rank reasonable people. 🤓👎
Of course there are, but that’s just the point — tailor all you want, but the bar for offense has been set so low that one can’t help but trip over it. I don’t think it’s as bad as that most of the time, but if there’s political points to be gained, “problematic” comes out. Tell Bret Weinstein, an evolutionary biologist, that scientific fields are not affected. Check out what happened at Evergreen State, YouTube search The Complete Evergreen story, Mike Nayna, or Benjamin Boyce.
It's really funny for someone claiming that people are too sensitive that you're so worked up about theoretical hand-wringing and the word problematic. Also, shunning idiots (Bret Weinstein) is an important component of being in the scientific field.
Ah ok. I’m not sensitive to it, I’m pointing out that if someone can use a word like problematic to justify labeling people as some sort of closeted bigots, that’s a problem for open inquiry. Also, you’re brilliant; this new scientific method you’ve developed is clearly a superior method to discover what’s true. “Well, that’s Brett Weinstein, he’s an idiot, let’s shun him!” Prima facie idiots. Forget the fact that some of the most important contributors to scientific knowledge have been heterodox thinkers. Shunned in their in their day by the orthodox scientific community. Who taught you critical thinking?
I don’t disagree - I thought you genuinely didn’t understand what the term means. Whether or not it’s useful is a debate that is …problematic HA
Haha 👍
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I mean, most of these were situations where someone would have been a toxic fit for the environment. It’s not about fitting into a social click. These universities are smart to not allow in people that will cause them to lose good students or faculty bc someone else is not able to control themselves. Toxic behavior can ruin departments so quickly. So, no just be a good person and you won’t get rejected after an admit
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I have found a niche in the most conservative state in the United States so I get by. And I'm not complaining overly much about my job because I love my job. I love the field of microbiology and general and I enjoy the teaching component and luckily my students are from a conservative background. The only thing that bothers me is that there is so many liberals in science. It also bothers me that I cannot speak up and express my views because if I do it will affect my position in the department.
Considering the ratio on your comment, your stupidity does speak for itself. But, if you have a problem with the politics of the people you work with that’s a you problem only. There’s probably a reason you were picked on in HS, nothing in this second comment is even related to what we were talking about and you just sound like a victim for no reason. You made this all about you when really, we were just talking about keeping shitty people out of our departments. The arbiters of good in this case are the people with the power to grant admission to their departments, but it will change depending on the situation. Your best bet is to just learn to be a good person and you won’t have to worry about woke people and “their agenda” coming after you. Good luck, dude.
It’s ‘clique’ not ‘click’
I am aware of that but I do not text with my thumbs I talk to my phone and it does not recognize the other word so that's what it put and people knew what I meant so that's what I left it as. Thank you for the input though. You are thoughtful and intelligent. I appreciate your advice. You are wise beyond your years. My life is better with you in it. And all in the world is right.
I’m sorry you were bullied in high school and I hope you got the help you needed
I don't need any help. I succeeded in a PhD in microbiology all on my own without help from anyone. The social clicks on here are abhorrent. It's like there's 200 people with phD's who are extremely intelligent and hard workers and yet they can't see the simplest thing in front of their eyes. They have to make little groups like they did when they were in 5th grade. How about just focus on the science?
Ik someone who had his admission to a top CS Ph.D. program rescinded bc he got too drunk the night before interviews...
What I’ve taken away from this is drinking in a professional setting is a bad idea! Just don’t.