That suicide is so unfortunate. As someone who was a PhD student, I understand the perceived gravity of the situation for him. It’s unfortunate he had nobody to put it in perspective.

This is one of the fields that you can easily leave academia for industry or even switch to another academic institution with ease if things start to go bad. Nobody but your own advisor will realistically care about a retracted paper (especially if you do it before publication). And if your advisor does hold it against you, that’s not an advisor you want anyway.

Please, please, please, if you ever find yourself in this situation, just walk away. You are being paid less than a Starbucks Barista to stuff a tenure-track professor’s portfolio with rushed research nobody will realistically care about in 3 years (if it was even relevant to begin with).

A PhD will teach you how to research. 99% of the research that comes out of that process will be useless, incremental crap. Issue retractions, miss deadlines, whatever. The stakes in the CS academic game are so small a complete come-apart as a PhD student can easily be turned into an extended masters degree on a resume.

"academic politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small"

Except the impact on people's reputation, livelihood, and lives are not really small stakes.

I think that quote comes partially from the perspective of someone who doesn't recognize the nature of the stakes because they're different, not because they're smaller - if it was really intended as much more than a snarky critique of academia.

It's not as if everything outside of academia somehow involves much higher stakes. You could basically dismiss the whole of Google or Facebook as being small stakes, following similar logic.

The stakes just aren’t big in the grand scheme of things for academics, even at the top of the field. Beating someone to a major publication means some temporary fame in your circles and a small hop closer to tenure (if you don’t have it). Grant writing will be a little easier and maybe your students will learn about your methods (unlikely if they are undergrads).

In industry, a breakthrough correctly capitalized on can mint you millions of dollars. If you start a company, it could be tens to hundreds of millions. You then are not beholden to an institution or grants and can do what you want.

Just because you have a reputation and livelihood doing something does not mean the stakes are big in the general sense. Otherwise every job would be high stakes for everyone and the term would be meaningless.

The quote came from a professor at Columbia University.

Mmmm. Is that a reference to Billions or did they lift it from somewhere else?

Google "Sayre's Law"

Holy crap! Those allegations are bad, but the student's suicide makes it much worse.

It's all tragic. If anyone ever finds themselves in a situation like Huixiang Chen, you have integrity that the world needs more of, don't despair. I suggest that your first order of business might be to find trustworthy people who can give give good advice, in confidence. Ideally, you'll eventually find someone with clout, who can take over fixing the problems, but the maybe first is to simply get good advice from trustworthy people. In parallel, go talk with a mental health counselor about how you're feeling, since feeling depressed and initially not being able to imagine any good outcome is normal.

1) Crime networks at universities are powerful. If you're at an elite school, whistle-blowing will almost certainly cost you your career, if not more.

2) Trusted sources with both clout and insider knowledge will generally advise you to get out with your hide in tact, and let sleeping dogs lie. That is the strategy I'd also advise to anyone who is not independently wealthy and has a powerful network of allies.

3) Even indication you /might/ whistle blow is enough to trigger blow-back. Be discreet. In particular, don't use university IT equipment for either personal use, or anything related to the situation. If things blow up, the university controls your data. That can give an incredible information asymmetry, as well as leverage.

... and be aware things will get better. At the time, it seems like the world. A few years later, it's old history.

These things won't change without systemic change. Unless universities adopt transparency measures, accountability measures, compensation limits, etc., we'll continue to see corrupt crooks in the admin. And universities shouldn't be able to use NDAs, non-disparage, etc. agreements to cover this stuff up. Simply no.

It's like standing up to a police officers. If you do it, you might get your head blown off. If we change the system, you might not need to worry about getting your head blown off.

Wow sounds like that was the tip of the iceberg. Super tragic.

If someone behaves like the mentoring professor did, they aren't a mentor, they are a crux bringing you down. Burn their reputation, your life is worth more than their "research".

I do understand the pressure this person was feeling, unfortunately they didn't see a way out.

You know how people are protesting the structural policing systems in the US in part because the systems seem like they're built to protect police instead of holding them accountable?

It's been my experience that tenure provides something similar in academia. As a lowly grad student, even in the most outrageous of cases, you aren't likely to succeed in bringing these issues to light. It would take tremendous determination and there's a very good chance you will derail your own academic career.

In most cases you have two options when you run into something like this as a Ph.D. student: A) Stick it out, get the degree. B) Bail.

Unfortunately I don't see folks within the system acknowledging (at least not openly) that the system is broken without extremely tragic events such as this one taking place.

There is an option C): Switch advisors.

As long as the department is sympathetic to the student's complaint, it will accommodate the switch if it can.

Furthermore, there is increasing attention to providing "Faculty Mentors" -- people of faculty rank who are emphatically not the student's advisor, tasked in that capacity with advocating for the student's needs alone. Look within the University for other outlets for your concern.

You're going to be working very closely with your advisor and relying on them for guidance and networking after graduation. If the relationship is toxic and the only options are A or B, think real hard about the upside of B before selecting A.

Or D), blow the whistle and get out of academia.

as international students, there are far more limitations, paperwork and deadlines than just switching advisors. also, the problem of heading. angry one professor , and their clique will be angry at you

what dept are you in where faculty wouldn't support each other? surely the powerful faculty usually are the ones with the grants coming in, sometimes funding the other faculty (at least the dept/university).

This is incredibly sad. I'm not familiar with academic research, was the option to withdraw the paper before publication not available?

His mentor (one of those involved in this fraud) refused to withdraw the paper, according to the translated messages with friends from the same link above.

It isn't up to his mentor to withdraw a paper for which he isn't the first author. It doesn't even require a retraction as it wouldn't be published yet, albeit, withdrawing is still frowned upon

It seems like Huixiang did not feel comfortable overriding his mentor's preference. All quoted remarks below are Huixing, except the one explicitly marked "friend."

> (May 22) Withdrawing the paper will cause a big impact to my mentor (Tao Li)

> He asked me that I have to finish it

...

> (May 27, friend) How is the talking with your mentor?

> he refused to withdraw my paper resolutely

> (May 28) He push me to fake, if I can't publish the paper before deadline

> (June 6) I'm done communicating with Tao Li

> The result is he will never withdraw the paper

...

> I had a fight with him. And the police almost came.

> He refused to withdraw the paper resolutely.

...

> My mentor's words are: if I destroy his reputation, he will kill me.

> He said, this is his bottom line.

You have to remember how academia works both in terms of jobs and funding. His funding depended on his advisor. His future job prospects in academia and to a large extent outside of academia depended on his advisor. Because of this extreme multi-year power imbalance, and near indentured servitude at the hands of most advisors who are borderline abusive to students, senior authors control the publication process. It's true that any author could have stopped publication in theory.. but that doesn't mean anything.

> His future job prospects in academia and to a large extent outside of academia depended on his advisor.

In academia, you're absolutely right. But outside, sorry, no.

I can perfectly understand how a PhD student under an abusive advisor would feel they're trapped. And I'm gonna sound racist, but I've seen the kind of toxicity there is among Chinese researchers in Western universities, and that's probably making this kind of situations even worse.

But I've worked in the industry, and then in academia (as technical staff, never researcher), and now I'm back in the industry, in a team where more than half the people have a PhD (or better).

Outside academia, people either don't give a damn, or know very well how fucked up it can be. Unless you're extremely unlucky and the hiring manager is somehow in the close network of your advisor, nobody will bat an eye if you, as a job candidate, say "academia was not for me, I dropped out of my PhD."

So please, if you read this and feel like you have no options, don't believe that.

I see in the student's words the same deference to authority that I initially see from some students, often Chinese, with whom I have worked.

It takes a long time for some students to understand and trust that I desperately want them to call me out when I'm wrong. Research is a partnership -- even if you don't know much, it is really essential that you ask probing questions and make sure that everyone in the group is standing on a solid foundation. If we are, we'll be able to answer your question immediately and you'll learn something. If we're not, then all of us are about to learn something important.

To second hocuspocus -- yes, there are always options outside of academia. As a side benefit, they'll probably pay better and will let you interact with more professionals more quickly than inside academia.

It's not so simple. Even when I got industry offers, labs asked my advisor about what he thought and now when my students get industry offers, I'm asked what I think. Sometimes this is formal, sometimes it's informal over lunch asking if a former student is suitable for a job. It depends where you are going and who is in charge, but your advisor and their opinion can matter a lot.

If you spend some time talking to past supervisors / advisors you find sometimes negative comments are a good sign.

> In academia, you're absolutely right. But outside, sorry, no.

Now consider that there is nothing outside.

Because that's the mindset of PhD students, and more often than not it is also true.

From the link that someone else posted in this thread http://pbzcnepu.net/isca/timeline.html

> Only one e-mail response is received. That PC member said the first author of a paper has no right to withdraw an article due to methodology concerns and that if an advisor says publish, they should just publish without complaint.

Well thanks for that, I'm confused about the relevance of an 'advisor' to a paper from the perspective of the PC or publisher, or how they would even determine who an advisor is. Do IEEE/ACM have rules for this or is this part of the alleged fraud?

While true, you absolutely need your mentor support. Without it you wont graduate and you likely wont be able to switch mentor.

It is of course good to have the support of your supervisor, but if the relationship breaks down then you shouldn't feel that your graduation is at risk because of this. I think most universities will have a policy on changing supervisors that favours the student? Whether or not this affects your future career I don't know.

Is there a follow up to this story? Did the professor get investigated ?

I did some digging. It seems the prof is still under investigation but is currently active at his institution.