You have to remember how academia works both in terms of jobs and funding. His funding depended on his advisor. His future job prospects in academia and to a large extent outside of academia depended on his advisor. Because of this extreme multi-year power imbalance, and near indentured servitude at the hands of most advisors who are borderline abusive to students, senior authors control the publication process. It's true that any author could have stopped publication in theory.. but that doesn't mean anything.

> His future job prospects in academia and to a large extent outside of academia depended on his advisor.

In academia, you're absolutely right. But outside, sorry, no.

I can perfectly understand how a PhD student under an abusive advisor would feel they're trapped. And I'm gonna sound racist, but I've seen the kind of toxicity there is among Chinese researchers in Western universities, and that's probably making this kind of situations even worse.

But I've worked in the industry, and then in academia (as technical staff, never researcher), and now I'm back in the industry, in a team where more than half the people have a PhD (or better).

Outside academia, people either don't give a damn, or know very well how fucked up it can be. Unless you're extremely unlucky and the hiring manager is somehow in the close network of your advisor, nobody will bat an eye if you, as a job candidate, say "academia was not for me, I dropped out of my PhD."

So please, if you read this and feel like you have no options, don't believe that.

I see in the student's words the same deference to authority that I initially see from some students, often Chinese, with whom I have worked.

It takes a long time for some students to understand and trust that I desperately want them to call me out when I'm wrong. Research is a partnership -- even if you don't know much, it is really essential that you ask probing questions and make sure that everyone in the group is standing on a solid foundation. If we are, we'll be able to answer your question immediately and you'll learn something. If we're not, then all of us are about to learn something important.

To second hocuspocus -- yes, there are always options outside of academia. As a side benefit, they'll probably pay better and will let you interact with more professionals more quickly than inside academia.

It's not so simple. Even when I got industry offers, labs asked my advisor about what he thought and now when my students get industry offers, I'm asked what I think. Sometimes this is formal, sometimes it's informal over lunch asking if a former student is suitable for a job. It depends where you are going and who is in charge, but your advisor and their opinion can matter a lot.

If you spend some time talking to past supervisors / advisors you find sometimes negative comments are a good sign.