This is not how you should treat your graduate student,

even if you believe that she is not worthy of your talent.

Recently, I served as the advisor of a graduate student at Duke University. It is unusual to have someone from another university to be the major advisor. But I agreed to do so two years ago because of the unusual circumstance.

The student came to the US from Iran and her first advisor left Duke before she finished her first year. After another year, her second advisor retired. But the advisor arranged fundings for her PhD dissertation. She worked with him for another year. When the funding ended by the end of her third year, she was forced to switch advisors again. This is when her third advisor (let's call him Dr. NC, as from North Carolina) came into the picture.

Dr. NC had no knowledge of Bayesian statistics and no interest in estuary eutrophication (the two main topics of the student's dissertation). I was invited to be on her committee becoming the only one on her committee who actually knew about her work. During the academic year when she worked under Dr. NC, she was constantly questioned by him about the scientific value of her research.

In completing her first manuscript, she had Dr. NC as a co-author because all advisors must be co-authors no matter how much we contribute. But again, Dr. NC repeatedly questioned the scientific value of the manuscript, even as a co-author. He tried to prevent her from going to a conference to present the paper. She did go to the conference anyway with funding from the university. At the end, he insisted that the manuscript be submitted to a journal in his field rather than a more applied field.

While the manuscript was under review, Dr. NC suddenly decided that the student's entire dissertation (including the submitted manuscript) is not worthy of his time and effort. He demanded that she either graduate with a master's degree or change direction altogether. This demand was made in the student's fourth year. She contacted me and her director of graduate studies. We decided that she should form a new committee and continue her research as planned. I was asked by the DGS to serve as her advisor. In the next 15 months, she completed her dissertation and successfully defended her dissertation in July of 2014. She is now working as a postdoc at the EPA.

But this is not the end of Dr. NC's involvement. In mid 2013, the submitted manuscript mentioned above was rejected (no surprise there). She and I read reviewers' comments and we decided that the rejection was mainly because that the manuscript was submitted to a wrong journal. We rewrote the manuscript, removing all materials due to Dr. NC's insistence of a theoretical orientation. We also changed the presentation of the manuscript so that it serves as the lead of her subsequent chapters of the dissertation. When it was submitted to an applied marine pollution journal, it was accepted with only minor revision. Obviously, Dr. NC was not a co-author in the new paper.

After she left Duke in August, Dr. NC demanded an explanation on why he was not included as a co-author. I told him that the paper was rewritten without any of his prior input. Given his prior doubt on the scientific value of the student's work, we believe that he would not want to be associated with the paper. Dr. NC blasted the student and I about our unethical behavior and vowed further actions against us through Duke University and the journal.

I like to share the following to all young professors:

You should treat your students as equals. If you don't like what they want to do, make sure that you explain your reasons. You obviously don't want to advise a student who pursues a topic of which you are not qualified to advise. Either you do not take on the student as an advisee or you convince her/him to change direction from the very beginning. If you don't like a student and dismissed her, you should just forget about her.  It makes you look really bad if you come back to claim credit after the student succeeded without your involvement.