On abusive advisors (or tells of whom to avoid).
Today, I heard one of the most horrible stories of PhD student abuse in my career.
A #PhDstudent asked me if it was normal for their advisor to insist that their dissertation paper was alphabetical in author order.
The advisor claimed their co-author insisted it be so & would retract the data - if the order were in any other form - thereby destroying the student’s career.
The advisor also claimed their co-author would not share the data - so the student had to work with the outcomes of the analysis & not actually conduct the analysis.
The advisor insisted the student do the work on the revisions & did little more.
The advisor was not doing first-author work.
Now on the job market, the fresh PhD was being asked why they were not the first author of their dissertation papers.
Not on any one of three papers.
They asked what to do?
No one believed the work was their own.
The PhD student felt trapped.
I spit. I cussed. I hemmed. I hawed.
In my discipline, alphabetical author order is rarely seen.
In fact, it’s often a tell of monkey business - insisted on by a first author with a surname that starts with a letter early in the alphabet.
So what could the student do?
Not much. The papers were under review & the advisor would have to agree to change the order.
I suggested the PhD student chat with their advisor and ask for reverse alphabetical order for at least one paper.
I noted that perhaps, the advisor just had not thought it through.
We left it at that.
While we ended the conversation reasonably, this is one of the worst cases of PhD student abuse that I am aware of.
I am still mad.
Advising does not mean you are first author - particularly on dissertation papers - if you demand it, you hurt your students.
So how to avoid a bad advisor?
First, look for tells of misconduct.
If an advisor will not:
(a) tell you where the data is from OR
(b) let you see the raw data OR
(c) let you run the data.
Run away. Run fast and run far.
Second, look for tells of bad collaboration.
If an advisor does not:
(a) have repeat collaborators OR
(b) work with former PhD students OR
(c) place students ahead of them in author order once in a while.
Run away. Run fast and run far.
Third, look for tells of bad relationships with recent students.
If an advisor does not:
(a) give credit for work OR
(b) say nice things about them OR
(c) ever hear from them.
Run away. Run fast and run far.
Advisors should be stewards for PhD students’ careers.
That means:
It is ok that we structure how students support our work - it’s how we teach students skills.
It is ok that we demand our students work on papers - it’s the currency of the job market.
It’s ok that we ask for coauthorship on papers that we advise - the effort isn’t trivial.
But.
It’s not ok that we take credit for our students’ work.
Take your time to pick an advisor that’s a steward.
You won’t regret it.
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