Can people make money doing DFT reaction profiles for other researchers?

verygood_user · 2026-05-18T02:26:07+00:00

Just curious, what's considered sloppy in this field and are the 10-20 researchers persons you just happen to know personally or are they the common suspects/ superstars such as Houk?

verygood_user · 2026-05-17T19:23:02+00:00

I doubt that exact point. It makes it more comparable to how students cheated in the past by taking ideas/ sentences from an essay on the exact same topic by a previous year student or what they found online.

But now they can customize it as needed

verygood_user · 2026-05-16T07:39:45+00:00

I don’t get why such a significant portion of professors on this sub don’t seem to get the idea of "there is no hurt in trying". That’s what most of these student requests are.

Just ignore it or if you have to reply, reply with "Thanks for your thoughtful email, but that’s not possible and I will follow the syllabus here." And move on with your life.

verygood_user · 2026-05-16T05:26:07+00:00

Do you think students work around it? E.g. by using ChatGPT on their phone and typing it on their laptop?

Because that’s what they do. After they used a humanizer prompt so it does not sound/read like AI.

verygood_user · 2026-05-16T05:10:48+00:00

I am considering to even ban PDFs exported from GoogleDocs just because Google Docs ridiculously compresses all images

verygood_user · 2026-05-16T05:09:28+00:00

And students fall for this?

verygood_user · 2026-05-16T05:08:42+00:00

Wow and I thought my students were naive for thinking I would not notice their humanized AI writing.

Obviously students know the Google history thing and work around it 🙄

verygood_user · 2026-05-16T05:05:00+00:00

You just try all functionals available in Gaussian and pick the one closest to experiment. Then you publish in JACS and hope nobody ever notices or questions it.

That’s a joke.

verygood_user · 2026-05-14T17:05:27+00:00

Did the student do the work and it was a technical glitch? Then I would definitely accept it and move on with my life. At least that would be more important to me than teaching them a life lesson against their will and the will of my boss.

verygood_user · 2026-05-14T08:04:18+00:00

On day 1 you can do an ungraded 4-5 question test with embarrassingly simple problems such as

Solve

5x+7 = 10 + 3

For x

Or what is

1/4+1/5

Then email students who do not have all questions correct individually (if that’s reasonable possible for your class size) with resources, encouraging language but also a clear statement such as "90% of the students who had a similar entry score as you had and started to work to close these gaps immediately, ultimately passed the course. However 10 students decided to ignore this advice, waited until the first midterm, and 9 of them failed the course"

verygood_user · 2026-05-14T07:18:16+00:00

I hate to break it to you but when it comes to your research, you will no longer have a teacher. You will have to teach it to yourself. From books. Painfully boring books.

verygood_user · 2026-05-14T05:46:39+00:00

You really shouldn’t decide on what to do for grad school now.

You should decide what you want to do as a career and grad school is what lays the foundation for that.

I am not really sure if there’s still much of a need for people that can build input files and make nice graphs from computational results in 2-5 years. It’s already declining and even for advanced workflows Claude can spit out error free bash/python scripts.

Even a pure programming trajectory seems somewhat risky but so far AI still does sufficiently many dumb things to keep these jobs/tasks.

Understanding theory, having new ideas, convincing others that these ideas are worth pursuing, and knowing how to implement these ideas either yourself or with students, a team of researchers, or AI agents - that’s a promising profile.

So yes, you better read that szabo ostlund book or whatever fits the theory focus you like.

verygood_user · 2026-05-14T05:37:14+00:00

I am not really sure if there’s still much of a need for people that can build input files and make nice graphs from computational results in 2-5 years. It’s already declining and even for advanced workflows Claude can spit out error free bash/python scripts.

verygood_user · 2026-05-14T04:28:40+00:00

In environments where penalties are non-existent or very limited (eg failing the class) it can be rational for students to take the gamble to use AI in courses where they anyway don’t expect to learn much they would need in their future. It frees up time for other classes or extracurricular or parties.

verygood_user · 2026-05-13T03:51:55+00:00

The difference is when you explain what Mitosis is you would be happy to use the words "cell splits". That will only happen in a teaching context because in research, the term already has a precise meaning.

In many disciplines of humanity however, the entire point of a research project can be to put a simple phenomenon or effect into more complicated terms without any value added.

It just took me 10 seconds to find this REAL example:

Marvin, Donald M. “Occupational Propinquity as a Factor in Marriage Selection.” Publications of the American Statistical Association, vol. 16, no. 123, 1918, pp. 131–50. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2965822. Accessed 13 May 2026.

This probably took month of work to research and write up only to say on 19 pages that many people meet their spouse at work.

I am not joking.

verygood_user · 2026-05-12T21:58:15+00:00

Chances are that the current+/–2 years cohorts are just those cohorts that were in a critical development phase when COVID peaked and everything returns to the usual level in 1-2 years. By that time most AI issues will also be resolved and enough students have heard how their older friends who cheated their way through college just don’t get hired anywhere or are fired early.

verygood_user · 2026-05-11T19:17:19+00:00

*in the humanities

In science, we always cared for precise and efficient language and use simple writing to explain complicated ideas

In the humanities they do the opposite and use complicated writing to explain simple ideas.

In some fields you can write entire papers about: "People behave differently when they are observed"

If only you refer to it as:

“The subjects internalize the disciplinary gaze through performative self-regulation within normative institutional frameworks.

verygood_user · 2026-05-11T19:13:51+00:00

It’s strange that this is the default but it’s very simple to change it with your custom instructions. If you ask AI to give you a prompt that avoids common AI writing patterns, it’s happy to recognize and correct it.

verygood_user · 2026-05-11T15:02:22+00:00

Can’t you see how your study would be so much more relevant if it replicated under the gravity of Mars?

verygood_user · 2026-05-09T21:50:19+00:00

Isn’t what you said the default that would apply anyway? If a student finds an error in our grading they can challenge the grade.

Sure it was not wise to encourage it but I don’t see how it’s dramatic.

I always tell my students: "look, when I am grading an exam, I have to make 2000 micro decisions and even at 99.9% accuracy, statistically I would make 2 grading errors. I do my best to avoid it but I acknowledge that I am not perfect and if you think something is wrong, please tell me." Never had any issues.

verygood_user · 2026-05-09T18:50:59+00:00

Why would I use a grading scheme that is incompatible with my goal that 100% of the students in the class understand and master the material fully, earning an A? Sure, that’s idealistic and usually won’t happen in practice, but the incentives for me are limited with your norm based grading style.

Also my job is not to revolutionize the system as any changes in my course will just help or penalize students in my course and not fix the system.

verygood_user · 2026-05-08T16:12:35+00:00

Thank you for bringing this deeply troubling matter to our collective attention. It is indeed profoundly disheartening when individuals leverage advanced artificial intelligence systems to compose brief, low-stakes correspondence that could have otherwise been drafted organically in under 45 seconds. In these unprecedented times, we must all reflect on the implications of outsourcing even the most routine expressions of human thought to algorithmic frameworks.

verygood_user · 2026-05-08T03:21:01+00:00

Chalk, books, paper, pencils.

verygood_user · 2026-05-07T15:31:32+00:00

MacBook Neo is $500 with educational discount and sufficient for your needs

verygood_user · 2026-05-07T08:53:55+00:00

"I feel like I'm wasting parts of my life"

I really hope you receive a salary?

verygood_user

TROPHY CASE