How to Stay Away from a Terrible PhD Advisor | How to Prevent/Handle Harassment During Graduate School

Not all PhD advisors are created equal. Some are genuine; some, truly exceptional; and some, outright creepy and sadistic. The creepy and sadistic ones are absolutely detrimental for your career progression. So how is it possible to identify a bad PhD supervisor in advance and avoid him or her at all costs? Let me share some advice with you today.

Before you commit yourself to any PhD supervisor, also known as a PhD guide or PhD advisor in many countries, try to gather as much information as possible about the supervisor’s previous PhD students and postdocs. What are they doing at present? Who are their employers? Are they employed at all? If so, what salary are they drawing? Are they holding any key positions? If the answer is not very encouraging, then that’s a red flag. Talk with the prospective PhD supervisor’s current group members, but never do this inside his or her lab. Take them out for lunch separately, not as a group, and then ask them a few deep and penetrating questions. For example, how many PhD students were randomly removed by the PhD supervisor? How many of them are in their eighth year of PhD? What are the usual work hours and do you need to work on weekends? Is the PhD advisor open to constructive feedback? Is he or she a brutal dictator? Does the advisor admit and apologize for his or her mistakes? Watch out for obvious red flags. If the PhD advisor has any collaborators, consider seeking their advice. Seek permission to attend a group meeting if possible, just to see how the advisor is treating his or her PhD students and postdocs. Work in the lab. for a few days, just to get a feel of the overall work culture. Then, try to find out something about the prospective PhD supervisor’s research funding. Any good principal investigator should have a sufficient number of grants with him or her. Find out more about the PhD supervisor’s funding history and publication history. How many citations has he or she received so far? Are there any negative citations? A negative citation is something researchers receive when other laboratories are simply unable to reproduce their research work. Try to find out if there have been any cases of harassment, abuse, torture, academic misconduct, data manipulation, data fabrication, etc. You need to be slightly more careful if you are a female researcher. Then, visit websites, forums, or social media groups that rate professors. For example, ratemyprofessors.com. Generally, if a supervisor is horrible, then undergraduate and graduate students tend to identify his or her misdeeds on publicly accessible websites. Finally, ask the PhD supervisor’s students and postdocs if they get any first-hand training in how to design experiments, how to interpret data, how to draft manuscripts, how to write and submit funding proposals, etc. Does the supervisor spend enough time in training and mentoring them? Does he or she meet them on a regular basis? If you see any obvious red flags, then consider doing something else. If not, then feel free to join this absolutely wonderful PhD supervisor’s research group.

What are your thoughts on the above and do you have a good PhD advisor? Let us know.

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