SCOOPED.
The one word that strikes fear into the steadiest of scientific hearts. Being scooped is every researcher’s nightmare. It can feel like a bolt of lightning out of the PubMed sky or it can be the long-standing threat of a known competitor. There is the complete and utter “stop and go home” scoop, or the partial “pick up the pieces and run with it” scoop. Either way, while the scoopee celebrates, the scooped is left with some tough choices. Continue with the work and try to fill in the holes left by the scoopee? Try to publish what you have in a lower profile journal? If not too much work had been invested to date, do you walk away from the project altogether? There is not a fun (or easy) choice among them.
No one is safe from being scooped. Even in a relatively calm field such as HSV-1, it happens – and it happens often. I, for instance, was scooped on a project in my 4th year. That project was my baby. It was my very own. I thought it up, planned it out, convinced my reluctant PI that it was worth a shot and I was off. I was so excited about the science, about the implications and future directions, about the certainty (in my own mind) of the hypothesis being correct. As it turned out, it was indeed correct, as confirmed by a JBC paper about 9-12 months into my work.
I did not see it coming – my scooping was of the lightning bolt variety. The paper was not from an HSV-1 group, which explained why I had not seen any abstracts at the meetings or heard mumblings of their work in progress. After the shock, tears (and hangover) wore off, I was left with a pile of conflicting emotions. On the one hand, I felt absolutely vindicated and justified in my choice and pursuit of the topic – I was right! On the other hand, my work was, in a lot of ways, for naught. I was relatively lucky since my pet project was not my main focus. I bid it a bittersweet farewell and embarked on the project that would eventually become my Ph.D. thesis, a little more sure of my ability to come up with valid scientific questions. The rest is (or will soon be, I hope) history.
Anyone that’s ever been scooped, raise your hand. Join my club.
you are very lucky to be able to convince your PI the value of your project. though the project was scooped, you gained valuable experience from this process…
Adding to the above comment.
You must have learnt many things.
Frustation will mature zou and make more tough.
This experience which you have descibed you will also make you think another novel idea and such a novel idea that nobody in the world would think of ! I wish you a grand success in your PhD.
Random – It wasn’t easy – she made a lot of faces, but relented in the end. She was always very good at giving me enough rope to hang myself with (and then swooping in for the rescue, thankfully). It really was a learning experience, in retrospect.
Vineet – If frustration is the marker of maturity, then I am more mature than most centenarians :) Thank you very much for the well wishes and encouragement, they are much appreciated (and timely).
Great post! And so TRUE!
I was scooped near the end of my PhD. The paper was already written and just going through some last minute revision.
Like you say, there are no choices apart from giving up or picking up the pieces. I did the latter, but it was painful nonetheless.
Good luck to you until the lightning bolt strikes again…I guess we all have to be prepared!
I was scooped in project that while I was working at a biotech company. We were encouraged to do work that would push some boundaries (not directly related to drug discovery). For instance, working on problems in yeast biology that would enhance our analysis capabilities when applied to human data. I convinced people to allow me to hire a student to do a particular analysis on yeast evolution and was scooped by a group at the Broad the following year (publishing was slowed by the loss of the student to the end of the summer).
Ah well…vindication felt nice. It’s not such a “lose-lose” situation. That ‘being the first’ cowboy aspect of science always devalues people who come in second to publishing something. It’s one of my pet peeves. Just because something was published once doesn’t mean it’s right. Having a follow-on paper showing you were in the process of getting done isn’t a bad thing. How many papers have you seen that are said to be basically unreproducible? I’ve run into more than a few. Usually something isn’t accepted as fact until there’s been a lot of corroborated evidence. The “Scooped” thing is a symptom of cowboy science…resist the urge to despair. :)
I agree with Deanne – being the first one to publish something shouldn’t devalue other people’s work that might be similar or identical. We find (from our own experience) that the big journals no longer consider your work “novel” enough, once someone has published a similar idea. Thats just unfair.