<story><title>The Suicide PhD Candidate Huixiang Chen (2019)</title><url>https://huixiangvoice.medium.com/the-hidden-story-behind-the-suicide-phd-candidate-huixiang-chen-236cd39f79d3</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>oezi</author><text>The core issue of academic misconduct is the 1:1 relationship between PhD candidate and mentor. The near absolute power asymmetry makes the PhD candidate near totally dependent on the mentor. If the mentor is abusive there is almost no recourse without the PhD candidate losing everything.&lt;p&gt;It is very sad that Huixiang lost his life over a paternalistic, archaic system. And he isn&amp;#x27;t the only one who was badly impacted.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jszymborski</author><text>Most universities have absolutely zero policy or protocol for changing supervisor.&lt;p&gt;I had to do this and even though everyone involved were exceptionally kind people with the utmost integrity, it was made pretty clear to me that if my old supervisor would have launched an even halfhearted campaign against me (they did not), nobody at the university would have stuck their neck out for some junior grad student.&lt;p&gt;And this was primarily b&amp;#x2F;c there is no established process. One should be able to:&lt;p&gt;1. Confidentially state to an ombudsman that you wish to change supervisor&lt;p&gt;2. Have the ombudsman obtain the consent of the would-be new supervisor to take on the student&lt;p&gt;3. Have the ombudsman inform the old supervisor that a decision had been made to change supervisor&lt;p&gt;4. The ombudsman, old, and new supervisors sit down and discuss what projects the student can keep persuing&lt;p&gt;If anyone here is faculty at a university and cares about their grad students, please promote something like this.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Suicide PhD Candidate Huixiang Chen (2019)</title><url>https://huixiangvoice.medium.com/the-hidden-story-behind-the-suicide-phd-candidate-huixiang-chen-236cd39f79d3</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>oezi</author><text>The core issue of academic misconduct is the 1:1 relationship between PhD candidate and mentor. The near absolute power asymmetry makes the PhD candidate near totally dependent on the mentor. If the mentor is abusive there is almost no recourse without the PhD candidate losing everything.&lt;p&gt;It is very sad that Huixiang lost his life over a paternalistic, archaic system. And he isn&amp;#x27;t the only one who was badly impacted.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ywnico</author><text>100% agree, this is the crux of the issue. Pretty much everyone I know, myself included, felt used and taken advantage of by their PhD advisors.&lt;p&gt;The combination of complete control over their students (mainly due to being able to decide when&amp;#x2F;whether they can graduate) and the pressure of tenure and the publishing race makes it no surprise that so many professors slide into abuse. Reporting abuse while still a student is obviously extremely risky, and even reporting it after graduating can cause a career setback by giving up the recommendation letter.&lt;p&gt;I wonder if it would be possible to expand the role of the PhD committee (which is currently pretty much relevant only for the thesis defense) to become a replacement for a single advisor.</text></comment>