I would agree with dafydd - this is not normal. Given your area of research I am even more surprised given all of the efforts to discredit and smear climate change related research, I would have thought anyone working in the area would be very aware of the need to be ultra scrupulous.
If you have these instructions in writing then I would seriously consider sending them to the head of department as this person is endangering the reputation of the department. If not, or you don't want to, I would tell her that you do not wish to be associated with the paper if it is altered in this way and refuse to make up the data anyway. If she goes ahead or you don't trust her, I would also contact the conference organisers and say you need to withdraw your name (you could claim ill-health or something if you don't want to explain the real reason).
Basically, if/when you get found out on this, if you did do it, then if it's you that's made up the data, this professor would be able to put the blame on you and I imagine it will be hard for you to claim otherwise unless she's left a careless documentary trail. That's your career over before it started. However hard, it's better to make an enemy of this woman now than the alternative. And people get caught - the blog retractionwatch is a educational read on that fromt.
I hope to god this isn't your future supervisor - if so find a different one fast. Most scientists are honest.

The department I work for apparently makes a loss on non research council-funded PhD students these days. We have been told to reduce numbers and raise the threshold on qualifications. I'm quite pleased as there's massive over-production of PhDs in my subject, academic jobs are for a small minority and there's no obvious alternative path unless you do a really policy-oriented topic (soc sci). Given that it feels a bit unethical to persuade UK/EU people to self-fund if they weren't strong enough to get ESRC funding anywhere. And thank goodness they've also raised the IELTS English scores needed by international students as letting people start paying massive fees for a PhD, when their English just wasn't strong enough to have a chance of passing upgrade, always turned my stomach.

If you enjoy your job, I think you would be crazy to leave and start a PhD particularly in this economic climate. PhDs are not after all required or even thought beneficial for very many jobs as many of us on this forum have found out painfully... Perhaps when you've been there for a couple more years, you could persuade your employer to sponsor you to do one part-time if it's something that would be useful in the longer term?

From what you say in your post, it sounds like you favour moving. Are you in a position to move eg no family ties and is the new uni somewhere you could face living in for a year or two? If so, staying with someone you like sounds like the best move, rather than an unknown quantity who doesn't sound like he will necessarily know what a PhD should look like or anything about your topic.

I'd defer and next year apply to as many viable places with funding as you can to maximise your chances (unless you are wealthy and therefore funding while nice isn't essential). I've seen too many people persuaded to start part-time only to find that no funding emerged. A year out gives you time to strengthen your research proposal and to earn some money / get some useful experience.

I think the crux of the problem here if I've understood the post correctly, is that you are an employee being sponsored to do a PhD, which I think gives your employer certain rights to direct your work in a way that fits with the overall interest of the subject (not necessarily though in your interest) that they would not have in the normal PhD student-supervisor set-up. Was there any written agreement when you started regarding the terms and conditions? Basically I think you need to get some legal advice on your position as an employee rather than as a student - are you in a union? Assuming you're in the UK, a UCU union rep would probably be familiar with the scenario and so helpful but if not a member you might have legal insurance as part of your house insurance.
These are the things I think you need to find out about before you jump ship. It sounds from what you say that you have no desire to continue the PhD on your employer's terms, which is understandable, but I would suggest checking whether there are any penalties in not continuing eg repayment of fees (I doubt there will be as it would be far too organised for a university but I do know someone who was caught by such a clause over some professional qualifications he was being sponsored for). If you can afford to self-fund then it makes sense to apply elsewhere. Be aware though that the new university might have a minimum registration requirement that you'd have to fulfil before the thesis could be examined. EQually, you need to check whether you actually have intellectual property rights over the data arising from the grant - this may belong to your employer which might make it tricky to use in a thesis at a new university. The final thing that I think you need to find out about if how safe your job with the university is if you stop the PhD there (unless you're happy to walk away from that as well) - given how vulnerable most university jobs are at the moment, I'd be a little anxious that you might be in danger, especially if you haven't got a permanent contract and the PhD was something specified in your annual review as an objective. Again a union rep would probably be the most helpful in this scenario - I would suggest trying for union or independent legal advice rather than going to HR as a first port of call.
I feel really sympathetic for your situation but I have a nasty feeling that this is something quite complex, (I hope I'm wrong) and that you probably need to know all the ins and outs before you make a decision. Good luck!

fingers crossed!

I don't think the email will do any harm but if you get a non-reply or no reply at all don't give up. Some places have incredibly bureaucratic appointment processes (particularly if it involves several partners or a head office elsewhere). What also might have happened is that one person has been offered the job but not yet formally accepted and they don't want to reject their next preference, in case they need to offer them the job (or better still they really liked 2 people and are arguing to get two instead of one appointments). Some places though are just rubbish and discourteous - my all time record was a university that took 5 months to reject me post-interview for a lectureship and refused to answer any questions in the intervening time.

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My condolences - that's a difficult set of circumstances to deal with.
MMK if you are female, this might be worth a try:
http://ffwg.org.uk/

This might seem obvious, and I apologise if you've been there done that and got nowhere, but does your supervisor know the score? Is there anyway s/he can help? I know it can feel really awkward but if you haven't talked to them, it might be worth it as they might know of very specific small funds for your area of study or whether there had been a precedent in say waiving your bench fees.

I forgot - have you checked whether your access through your ex-university has actually expired? My one from my PhD days still works several years on so it might be worth a try!

Hi Diane,

I have a couple of ideas that might help. If you do a google scholar search with date filters you can at least identify relevant recent articles as you'll be able to access the abstracts if nothing else. Google scholar also displays any freely available copies of the article and in my field, I've noticed that some overseas universities seem to have made their scanned study resources for their students open access, so you might be lucky. Also if you've identified an author, look on their uni website - more and more universities are making e-prints of their staff's publications available free or there will be a link to a working or conference paper that's similar to the finished article. It does take a while but can help. Also check the professional associations running conferences in your field - in mine at least they have a free database of papers given at their annual conferences.
Are you close to a university library - it might be worth seeing how much membership costs and what services it allows you to access. If that's not feasible, certainly my local library will interlibrary loan copies of journal articles from the British library. I don't know how much they charge though.

I think the problem with distance learning PhDs are not that employers look down on them, but rather that it becomes more difficult to access the kind of opportunities that then help on the job market (especially if you are interested in an academic career). You would I suspect have to be extremely proactive. I got a lot from being around other PhD students, particularly the more advanced ones, who were a great source of advice on associations to join, which conferences were worthwhile attending etc and just have sounding boards to talk about my project with. I suppose it's the 'socialisation' into the profession. I also found it valuable to be able to go to research seminars in my dept, see candidates doing job talks for lectureships, and get to know members of staff who weren't on my supervisory team but who still were helpful to me. It's not having a PhD that gets you a job, and the institution that awards it is in general (so long as it's recognised) is less important, than what you put on your cv during your PhD; the skills you've learnt, the papers you've presented, your publications, teaching experience etc. My gut feeling is that all that would be harder to manage on a distance-learning basis. I also think I, personally, would have felt very isolated had I done it that way.
All that said, if you are working in a mental health practitioner environment while doing the PhD, I would think that would be a different matter. That's a scenario where I could imagine it working well. Have you considered registering part-time at a local university but not distance learning? That might work well.

I bet there are very few people on this forum who haven't had a similar meeting, which makes them cringe afterwards. It really is par for the course. What I'd do, if you think it's appropriate, is write up a minute of the meeting noting all their points and then add a 'my initial response to action points' type of document to send them, where you could display some of your reading through mini-reviews and set out your next steps. I think a huge part of supervision meetings is not necessarily the meeting itself, but you showing that you're moving onwards after the meeting. I'm sure if you could send them something that showed you were progressing that would do a lot to make you feel better. Not everyone is at their best in supervisions - one thing that can help is if you prepare an agenda of things you want to discuss beforehand and send it them and then take in brief notes showing your ideas, questions etc so that if your mind goes blank, then you've got a structure for the meeting and something to help you contribute.

I would doubt it. If that was included I would expect it be in the offer letter, but I have never heard of this happening before. Many universities don't even cover the full expenses of permanent lecturing staff moving from overseas.