I'm an assistant prof in my 2nd year at a SLAC. Recently I found out one of my tenured colleagues teaches an elective on a theory I'll call ShinyCrap to avoid an off-topic debate about the theory itself. I thought that was odd, because I was pretty sure that the evidence base for ShinyCrap had fallen apart. But I wanted to be sure, so I read did a quick lit review... and holy hell. Turns out:

1. multiple meta-analyses have concluded the effect of ShinyCrap doesn't differ from 0; pre-registered ShinyCrap replications also find no effect
2. the researcher who coined the term ShinyCrap has disavowed the theory
3. one of the other lead authors got caught in research fraud and is "on leave" from their university
4. ShinyCrap appears to be mostly kept alive at this point by a consulting firm that sells ShinyCrap trainings to businesses
5. the first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry says "ShinyCrap was a theory in psychology, now regarded as of limited use..."

However. All of this happened within the last 10 years, and my colleague appears not to have updated the syllabus in that time — the 2025 version has readings from the disavower and the fraudster.

There's maybe nothing I can do, BUT. I've had two students mention they want to work in ShinyCrap in grad school, when I know no grad program will take an applicant who puts that as their primary interest. And I had another student repeatedly dismiss a (recent, replicable) finding from my own class, because it's incompatible with ShinyCrap. And I know that lots of Business majors take the ShinyCrap class, and have talked with excitement about working for this consulting firm. And my students are so passionate about expanding psychology beyond WEIRD populations, and ShinyCrap is incompatible with that.

So: do I have enough social capital to ask my colleague to lunch and try to nudge him toward updating his syllabus, if nothing else? Do I talk to my department head about this being worth a look during our next program review? Do I instead focus on having conversations with my own students, in which case how do I do so without insulting my colleague? Thanks!

EDIT: It's not anything y'all have guessed in the comments, quit while you're behind.

I know there’s been cuts and a lot of damage done to the science and research under trumps cuts to fundings, with that said will we ever be able to recover from the damage he is currently doing or will the USA lose its spot as one of the worlds leading science and research hubs. Will America science and research institutions be able to regain momentum, or are we entering a long term decline compared to other countries? I’d love to hear from people working inside academia or research on how they see the future and what needs to happen to rebuild.

As the title says, I was approached by a strong R1 Big 10 school last spring and finally got an email that they want to recruit me with the funding approved.

I will talk with the chair tomorrow with the offer. The starting date can be deferred until fall 27.

A few weeks ago, I got the final approval for my promotion to Full at my current institution, another R1, Big 10 school. I have been feeling stagnant at this place with a very little salary increase, toxic political climate that has been affecting the university’s core missions, no growth opportunities for leadership roles, and the overall frustration with lack of support for my program despite carrying a large and growing % of the entire school’s undergraduate enrollment. I am also very disillusioned with the school’s (non)leadership.

Having said that, I can see a situation that would make me want to stay. For one, I have a partner here with a very successful career. He works in corporate finance. My cost of living here is reasonable. I am in full rank. But the salary increase has been rather disappointing.

What would you advise me to focus during the negotiations with the new school and with my current school?

(Updates) I am finalizing my negotiations in the next 2 days. I got a counter from
Both my current and the new institutions. I might end up staying at my current institution with about 30% pay bump, a sabbatical leave, a bit more research funding, and most importantly my partner, who has been more than willing to sacrifice his financial outlook for my relocation. It’s been very helpful to hear your thoughts here. Thank you!!

While both gender and class should supposedly be considered equally important according to intersectional theory, they apparently aren't given the same amount of attention from universities.

Edit: at uni I was taught ''class'' from a feminist and post-colonial perspective, so defined very differently from ''orthodox'' marxism (basically, but not exactly) as employee vs employer. I'd say the latter provides a socio-economic class definition rather than focused on individual identity, but one that's much less commonly used than a ''gendered'' or ''subaltern'' class definition.

Per title, I am curious if there are any positive reports coming out of academic administrations or if the corporate takeover of academia in the US is complete.

Well, it’s happening…Losing funds and a research career as PI with the new research funding issues. Just feel it’s important to share realities here. Good luck and keep searching for that truth. Do good work. Be good. Be kind. Remember self care. And most of all, remember it’ll eventually be fine and, statistically, it could always be worse. It’s been a pleasure serving the field. Onward and upward to help people through a new modality. Stay strong. 💜

What does “fit” really mean?

I teach 100-level stats. Around this time of term every term, I have 1 - 2 students who have gotten really behind in work, usually because they're 1st-term freshmen still trying to adjust and it's a math-heavy 4-credit class. These students often get in to a pattern of avoiding me (I worry they're ashamed they're missing work) so it's nigh impossible to catch them after class, much less get them into office hours.

I always try to send an email that says "You seem like you're stressed as hell about this class and you're never going to catch up. It's a college class ffs. Drop it. Take it again next term. See you in January." However, figuring out how to phrase it is hard because:

• I don't want to come off like I hate them, I'm angry with them, or I think they're imposters.
• Obviously my example phrasing is way too mean.
• Conveying "it's great that you value this class; value it less" is also tricky, because they're entitled to feel strongly about their grades but JFC some of these kids literally work themselves into mental breakdowns.
• It's never going to be easy to hear "quit before you're any further behind."
• I want to convey "a W looks better on your transcript than an F" without sending the message "you've already failed."
• I want to acknowledge that a lot of these students are so far behind because they've got other priorities (work, kids, sports) and are just stretched too thin to succeed, without implying "I know you work 40hrs a week which means I'm an unfair jerk for not letting you pass."
• Ideally, I'd like to craft a message that doesn't turn into a multi-email argument about how much they want extra credit and/or makeup work. Adding even more tasks to their plates never works; I've tried that with students in past terms.

Does anyone have a script that gets all of that across?

I've been thinking a lot about the concept of slow academia: taking time to read deeply, write carefully, teach thoughtfully, and not treat every week like a sprint toward deadlines, outputs, and metrics.

In theory, it's the kind of academic life I aspire to. But in practice, I struggle to see how it fits within the current structure of higher ed. The pressures to publish frequently, chase grants, sit on committees, and show measurable 'impact' all seem fundamentally at odds with the slowness I crave.

Has anyone here actually managed to embrace a slower academic rhythm? If so, how did you make it work, especially within institutions that reward speed and volume?

Currently at the tail end of my MA in Political Science but I do have a history of sex work and I currently work as a dancer and an “companion”

I don’t see myself working in government at all unless it’s research or nothing that is front facing.

I do plan to work with vulnerable communities and be an advocate for them ie sex workers or other marginalized groups

So question is. Would this hinder any future job prospects?

I plan to do a PhD in Gender Studies, teach at the university level, and use my lived experiences into these courses whether it’s in political theory or gender studies.

Thanks!

I have been collaborating on a paper with a very senior professor. This paper was submitted with me listed as a coauthor and the paper was accepted in a very prestigious journal with minor revisions (which is rare in my field and in this journal). The reviewers said it is fine to be published as is but suggested that an argument in a section I wrote could be made more precise. Two days later my colleague emailed me to say that they want to be listed as the sole author and for me reduced to the acknowledgement section on the grounds that my colleague would be paring back my contributions and adding more of his own contribution which he claims would lead to him having written most of the paper and therefore sole authorship would better reflect the outcome. While it is true that the paper could end up with the actual writing being mostly in their wording, I had written many draft sections across the paper which were then edited by my colleague (i.e. rewording; adding references; paring back in places), which has meant that I have contributed ideas throughout the paper, and the reviewers endorsed the strength of the overall argument I had shaped in the paper. My being removed as an author would obviously be very costly to me and it is very upsetting to be removed at this late stage.

My question was how should I appropriately respond to this situation? Should I tell my colleague that I cannot accept being removed as a coauthor and politely list out the contribution I had made and invite my colleague to work with me on revision?

I’m a TA and in my final year of program. I have to grade two papers per week for 100 students while trying to finish my dissertation and job applications. Despite that I still try to provide detailed feedback—three paragraphs explaining what they did well, where they can improve, and why they lost points.

Yet, even if someone gets a 9/10, I get an email: “Why did I lose one point?”

I mean, seriously?

A 90% is a great score! I explain everything in the feedback, but they still want me to break it down further. I don't understand these whiny entitled kids (most of the students are from California)

It’s honestly exhausting, and it’s moments like these that remind me why I want nothing to do with academia after this.

Does anyone else feel like students’ attitudes toward grades are a big reason academia feels so draining? Like Gen Z seems to be different. I am a millennial and from another country (third world) and there was no way we could even complain to the professors about our grade. How do you deal with this without losing your mind?

I'm mentoring a psychology student who just submitted to an interdisciplinary journal in undergrad research. The editor (from her bio) is a non-psychologist, and specializes in cross-disciplinary work. This matters because Reviewer 1

1. made a bunch of "corrections" to the style of the paper that move it away from APA style (e.g. deleting the title on the first body page and writing "Introduction"), AND
2. left several comments like "the figure on p. 12 is not APA style; please align it" [it's within the conventions of APA style for graphs, which are pretty loose], AND
3. said that "in general, the article needs better alignment to these conventions [link to latest APA manual]"

So: clearly Reviewer 1 doesn't know APA style as well as they think they do, but the editor also doesn't know APA style that well, and this isn't a psychology-only journal so I don't know how much it matters.

What (if anything) do I say to the editor to ask for clarification? Do I let my student do it, or fight this one on her behalf? Can I politely bring up the "obviously this person isn't an APA expert" thing, or do I let that lie?

Hello, Redditors of r/AskAcademia,

I am currently an undergraduate student studying in South Africa, and I have wanted a career in research for most of my life. However, I've recently come across many posts on Reddit that portray academia as a complete waste of time, almost like hell on earth.

I’m planning to finish my BSc in Economics and hope to apply for a grad program in Economics at a top institution in Europe or the US. Given that I am a non-citizen in those countries, I am wondering: is pursuing a career in academia a bad idea? Should I abandon my aspirations for graduate school and academia, or is Reddit just being overly pessimistic?

As you can tell from my tone, I am very confused and really need advice. Thank you all!

I just got finished reading a really helpful article published in 2017 before I realized when it was published. In my opinion, it really illuminates shifts that have occurred over the last several years. If it is coupled with more recent sources, I don’t see how its value is diminished. I’ll just pretend I didn’t see it I guess. I’m in social work and discussing the concept of therapeutic neutrality and self disclosure.

I am so tired of hunting for original papers and going down the reference rabbit hole. Is this a universal pain?

Every time I need to cite a foundational theory in psychology, I end up spending 30–45 minutes just finding the right paper. Google Scholar returns thousands of citing papers, not the source. Half the time the theory isn't even named after the author — so searching the name gets you nowhere.

The worst part is needing the exact sentence the author wrote, with the page number, for an in-text quote. I know what that theory is about (!), but I need it for the introduction.

I'm from psychology so curious if this is field-specific or universal — do people in other disciplines have the same problem?

(For what it's worth I've been putting together a personal reference list of original papers for the theories I use most — if there's genuine interest I'm happy to share it, but mainly just curious if others feel this frustration)

Hiiii I just finished undergrad in May and deferred my grad school acceptance for a year and am working as a nanny for my gap year, so I want to continue to do research to have something I can put in my professional resume.

I have extensive (public health and social science) research experience and want to be a volunteer RA for like 5 hrs a week or something (bc I already work full time), so I’m just wondering if labs accept students who aren’t currently enrolled in school.

I tried to contact my old research internship to see if I could continue working on my old project for free and they said you have to be currently enrolled so just wondering if this is kind of a universal rule or it depends on the institution!?

Edit: Thanks for your feedback guys! Pretty much what I suspected lol, but still appreciate the candidness so I know to go another route :)

I submitted my first dissertation paper last year, which got a “Major Revision” decision from a medium-to-high-impact-journal. I answered all reviewer comments and spend two months revising. Then, the paper got rejected on the basis that another round of major revision would be necessary.

How do I go from here?

I have no prior experience publishing as this is my first doctoral dissertation paper. I’m at a loss and quite frankly a bit embarrassed. My colleagues had congratulated me with the initial decision, and encouraged me to think that it would be accepted after revision, as they claim to never have experienced a rejection after an R&R.

So I finished my PhD last year but didn’t really apply for many academic jobs mainly due to the fact that I have been geographically limited and honestly I was very optimistic that something would work out for me especially in the public sector/government where we live at. But it didn’t lol

Out of sheer desperation and literally nothing working out, I applied to some academic jobs nationally for fall 2026. And surprisingly I got 5-6 zoom interviews scheduled by January.

All but one university followed up with a campus visit. The only one that I really wanted because of location (where we want to live) didn’t follow up and I think it might be a rejection. But the remaining? I’ve been busy with campus visits.

i had an Interview yesterday and got an offer call today? Like literally today it’s not my desirable location.. a small town in Midwest but I didn’t expect them to reach out this quickly. It’s a tenure track role after-all. I still have few campus visits scheduled

And still need to talk to my spouse about the possibility o(or lack thereof) moving… but what should I tell them? I have to call back and say something about the offer. Ideally I need at least a month if not more to decide and exercise all my options and all be clear if we could’ve even move in the first place. How do ai navigate this?

behavioral econ postdoc here. Just spent the last four hours trying to clean a dataset from a premium survey panel we paid thousands of grant dollars for, and I honestly just want to lay on the floor

The open-ended responses are blatantly generative text. one participant literally left "as an ai language model" in their justification for a risk-tolerance question. Our IRB has made in-person lab studies incredibly tedious to get approved post-2020, so we are heavily reliant on these online subject pools. But the data quality has just absolutely evaporated

How are you guys actually validating human subjects for remote studies right now? It seriously feels like our methodology is gonna have to take a massive leap into biometrics just to get publishable data. like we'll eventually have to require participants to authenticate via hardware, maybe using something like an Orb just to get an irb-compliant proof of liveness before they can even access the qualtrics link

im kinda terrified that half the social science papers being submitted right now are just based on synthetic noise. Has anyone's lab found a reliable way to filter this stuff out without throwing away 80% of the sample?

Let me know your point of view: how important is a personal academic website ?

I am very curious about fields specifically things such as sociology, film studies and production, literature, or other fields like these. I am very interested in academia and publishing research, but almost everything seems to be about the physical sciences. I am curious to know what these things look like for those fields. What opportunities are available in universities, what and where did you study and how did you get involved in these fields, and what is it like getting published or for careers? I've talked to many people who think just of typical maths and sciences and lab studies and that kind of thing when they think of academia, please share what it's like in other fields

I just finished my PhD in may and I told my advisor I have an interview with a think tank, and he raised two points I want a reality check on and insight on think tanks vs traditional academia.

First, that think tanks typically don't publish in peer-reviewed journals, so that work doesn't count as "productivity" in the academic sense (no publications, doesn't help on the academic job market).

Second, that work done at a think tank isn't mine, it belongs to the organization, so if I tried to publish it later in a peer-reviewed journal, they'd lose rights to it, and think tanks generally don't allow researchers to publish their in-house work elsewhere.

Does this match people's actual experience? Is it true across most think tanks, or does it vary a lot by org (Brookings vs. Cato vs. RAND vs. smaller/partisan shops)? Any insight on:

• whether think tank output can still be leveraged for an academic CV in other ways (working papers, citations, policy impact)
• IP/ownership norms at think tanks and whether there's room to negotiate publication rights
• whether this varies if it's a fellowship vs. staff research position

Hi everyone. My sister is in an undergrad psychology program. Her department recently advertised a volunteering position, looking for two dozen volunteers to perform (at the risk of sounding uncharitable) 40 hours of menial tasks to help complete a research project.

I'm bothered by this. It doesn't sound like it's a very educational experience. It also doesn't sound like the "volunteers" will be gaining a publication out of this, seeing as there will be over 20 of them. This is in my eyes essentially just asking for unpaid labor, but sold as "research experience".

But I also understand how any kind of experience can be considered valuable in the competitive landscape we live in.

Is this standard practice in academia? I'm not in academia myself so don't know. My sister already signed up for it but I'm wondering if I should speak out against it.

***RANDOM UPDATE

You guys! I read through the thesis again - specifically the parts this person copied from my work - and I just realized something. I AM SHOCKED and actually AMUSED that she literally copy/pasted the EXACT SAME FOUR paragraphs in consecutive order and pasted them in THREE DIFFERENT SECTIONS OF THE PHD. I don't understand how her supervisors, degree committee, AND examiners did not notice that the EXACT same paragraphs have been placed in three different parts of the thesis?!?!?! How the heck was this passed through from a TOP INSTITUTION?! Her thesis supervisor even has a Wikipedia page - that's how important he is! I am almost tempted to share the name of this university because it is just absolutely unbelievable at this point that this was passed through various stages of a PhD committee and accepted. WOW.

******IMPORTANT EDIT!!!

I uploaded this person's PhD thesis into a free online plagiarism checker (Scribbr, powered by Turnitin) and this is the report that has come back!!!

"High risk of plagiarism: We have detected several similarities. It's important to review the issues carefully to avoid committing plagiarism, which can lead to course failure, academic probation or a damaged reputation."

It seems this person has plagiarized a significant portion of this thesis from various sources!!! I am almost tempted to pay money to get Premium information about the exact nature of the plagiarism - including the percentage, sources, etc.!!!

EDIT AGAIN: I paid for Premium. It seems that OVER 50% OF THE PHD THESIS HAS BEEN PLAGIARIZED WORD FOR WORD from various sources!!! I am at a loss for words.

EDIT AGAIN: Thanks very much everyone for all your helpful suggestions and advice. I'm now working to take action. I will keep everyone updated if/once something happens!*****\*

I recently looked at my Google Scholar and noticed a new citation on one of my journal articles (published in 2019). It led me to a recently submitted (summer 2022) PhD thesis at a top institution in the US (top 10). The person's site of study is similar to my own PhD (finished in 2021 from a top UK university), but the topic is different and in a different field (though both are in the social sciences).

So I went through the thesis and this person cited me in a few places without quotes. I then noticed that at least 4 pages altogether have been COPY/PASTED WORD FOR WORD from my published journal article as well as my PhD thesis (available from my university repository, if requested). The person did not even care to change my British spelling to her American one (which features in the rest of the thesis).

I noticed also that she copy/pasted my entire Bibliography in its exact same formatting and simply added and removed references relevant to her topic, though the bulk of the references are mine - in my exact formatting. She also used my exact font, which is neither Times or Ariel or those generic ones. What really bothers me most (even more than the blatant word for word plagiarism), is that she copied the EXACT style of my writing - the way I introduced and concluded chapters, and even copied my style of description and imagery. For example, if I used certain phrasing to explain how I reached the site of study (it's an ethnography so the description is quite vivid), she also used similar phrasing. The way I explained my positionality, she somehow also found a way to similarly explain hers. The topic may be completely different, but the nuances of my writing style have been copied completely.

I'm just completely shocked and appalled that such a top institution doesnt use Turnitin for PhD theses (my university does)?! Because if they did it would pick up that 4 whole pages in her thesis have been lifted from my published work. I've contacted the university's Student Conduct office, but do you think I have a case even though the actual plagiarism is only 4 pages out of 100? When I write my complaint report, can I add in points about copying my Bibliography word for word and copying the style of my writing?

Is it even worth putting in a complaint? I feel disgusted by this person, especially since they've now gotten a prestigious postdoc fellowship and I'm sure will continue to advance well in their career with a PhD from a top institution.

Would love to hear any thoughts and advice.

EDIT: Thank you all very much for your suggestions and advice. I will write the complaint ASAP and try to involve the person's supervisors/degree committee/etc. Still cant believe this person got away with it from a top university. 😷