It would appear that I (and my laptop) have been fully assimilated. Overall, things are good (save for the realization that I now walk about 10 steps a day, as opposed to, oh, 5 miles while running around lab). I did have a pretty tough time explaining what it is that I do to my family and friends when I went home… especially since I have no idea how to translate ‘intern’, ‘online community manager,’ or ‘social networking’ into Russian. Half the time I can’t even translate it into plain English. I need some assistance with laymanising the terms, perhaps.
This weekend, aside from stumbling through 50 synonyms for what I do every day, I had the chance to catch up with my very first advisor. Both he and his wife work at the NIH and holy cow, did they have some scary stories to tell. Gather round the campfire and make sure you have a flashlight, because these stories really are terrifying.
The first story involved a lab requesting an antibody from another lab in the same department. Quite reasonably, the antibody-holding lab asked what the reagent will be used for. Once informed, antibody-holding lab obligingly provided the antibody and somewhat less obligingly, flooded that project with man-power and scooped the antibody-requesting lab.
No comment from me, not just yet.
The second story involved a lab meeting between two or more (don’t know the details) labs. At this lab meeting, two summer students presented some results from a promising project. The students left… and were promptly scooped by the lab they presented their work to. The PI swore she had no idea that this work was being done in her own lab and said that she is now powerless to prevent its publication.
Here come the comments. A few questions came to mind after listening to these stories (they weren’t really delivered as stories. More like ranty monologues with shaking hands and dangerously-tilted wine glasses). The first question had too many expletives to reproduce here. The second was, “How do you do that?” How do you scoop people you see on a daily basis? I understand that the funding crisis really is, at this point, a crisis. I understand that jobs are painfully difficult to come by. What I don’t understand is when and where ethics and common decency slip out the door.
My next, and slightly more concrete question is, is it ever excusable for a PI to say that they simply did not know what was going on in the lab and therefore cannot be held accountable for it? I know what I think about this, and am curious to see if others see the world as I do.
So to sum up, I am worried. If researchers don’t even feel safe in their own departments, is it any wonder that they are hesitant to use Precedings or adopt open notebook practices? Is this stressful environment temporary? Will it go away if and when the science budget improves?
Last updated:
Tuesday, 15 Jul
2008 - 15:40 UTC
I think that “scoop” is the wrong term.
I see it as theft of a research idea, and if the idea is not acknowledge as a personal communication, then it is scientific misconduct or plagiarism.
I think “scoop” only pertains if there is no communication between the labs.
That’s a fair point, David. Scoop probably doesn’t cover what happened here. But people can be scooped after posters or talks at meetings. That’s is kind of communication, albeit indirect. Believe me, I have heard plenty of stories about post-conference scoopings. But is what happened at the NIH considered misconduct, technically? Are there rules to regulate things like this?
I don’t think that a PI necessarily knows everything that’s going on in the lab. Everyone has, at some point in time, done a project behind their PI’s back. This is done for many reasons—the PI would hate the idea of the project, the PI wants your focus elsewhere, the project has nothing to do with what the lab does, or… as in this case, you’re pulling a watson and crick. While the PI should know what’s going on, it’s unlikely he/she knows everything that’s going on.
And I get that, totally. But is it fair for PIs to be held responsible should something bad come out of it? If, say, a pathogen is brought into the lab and is not given the proper containment or care, or if someone’s work is skirting shady ethics, as the case I mentioned?
Besides which, all work is carried out with grant money. That grant money was given with a specific project in mind. Is it fair to say that the PI should be held responsible for how that money is spent?
Think I have shown my cards yet again. In this case, I do think that the captain needs to go down with the ship. What happens in the lab is the PIs responsibility, whether they are aware it’s happening or not.
I think that if you get an idea from a poster, expand on it and publish it that the poster should be acknowledged.
I see posters as a vehicle for people to get collaborations going. Ideally, if you see a good idea on a poster and want to work on that idea that you should work with the person who put up the poster.
There is no way that the PI is “powerless” to prevent it from being published. She just refuses to do (what I think is) the right thing. Probably because she isn’t a very good PI. Why did the people in the lab have so little good stuff to work on that they picked up an idea from a couple summer students and worked on it behind her back? Only because the PI didn’t have better stuff for them to work on.
The right thing would be to collaborate on the idea and publish it as collaborators.
First story: was the antibody commercially available, or generated in-house/custom-made and not yet published (ie, without the proviso of reagent provision)? If the latter, then the providing lab could argue it was merely exploiting its own intellectual property. The disturbing thing is the lack of intra-departmental communication, particularly when the requesting lab should at least receive acknowledgement for inspiration.
Second story: did the supervisor/lab head of the two students have funding/manpower to continue the promising project (because departing summer students obviously could not)? If so, then the fact that labs communicating in departmental meetings cannot communicate outside of them because they’ve become competitors is unfortunate. Intra-departmental relations may be irreparably damaged in this way. Whether or not the PI in question was in the loop for this pilfered ‘side’-work of members of her team, I would wager she is an author on the resulting publication. If last author, the ‘powerless’ plea is hogwash (and smacks of someone who should work in a marketing department somewhere) because she is the one who sanctioned it.
A scenario of the second variety has happened to me. I was working in the same department as a lab that was doing very similar things to the one I was in. As there had been some skirmishes between postdocs in the past, I decided to go speak directly to the lab head of the other lab and let him/her know what I was doing so we could agree not to clash. The other lab head was very civilized and we had a lovely discussion – and two months later one of his/her postdocs confessed that she’d been asked to do the same experiment and it was well underway.
Surprisingly, I wasn’t that upset. I will, of course, never trust that individual again. But the thing is, if you choose to reveal your plans to a third party you have to accept the fact that the word might spread and others might act on it. Even if you don’t tell someone what you are doing, someone who has sat through one of your departmental work-in-progress talks might casually spill the beans to someone else. It’s almost possible to work in ‘secret’ these days, so I think your own research has to be robust and efficient enough to weather informational leaks or even outright theft. The alternative is to close ranks and not say a word to anyone about anything – which isn’t much fun. (Having worked in industry, I can attest to that.)
I’m not saying theft isn’t wrong. I’m saying given human nature, it’s probably inevitable. It’s been going on as long as research has; even Watson and Crick did it.
We journal editors occasionally come up against issues such as these: if for example an author will not share a “material”. Philip Campbell, editor in chief of Nature, will be talking about at the ESOF meeting this week (on Saturday 19 July). It is obviously a lot more clear cut, as implied by Lee, when the work is part of a published paper, than if it is still part of “ongoing research”. However, issues still come up, for example, what about the code underlying computer programs that are used in analysing data?
Sorry, I forgot to preview. Bold text omitted above:
Philip Campbell, editor in chief of Nature, will be talking about some of these issues from the journal perspective at the ESOF meeting this week (on Saturday 19 July).
David – You are an idealist, my friend. ‘Should’ is a great word. However, it hardly ever lives up to its potential. Many things that should be never come to pass. People get in the way.
Lee – I am afraid I have relayed all the details I had about these occurrences. Regardless of whether or not the antibody was commercially available, the scooping lab behaved in a pretty reprehensible manner. The lack of communication is terrifying, but not entirely surprising given the risks of telling someone else what you are working on.
As for the second story, I also think that the ‘powerless’ bit is nonsense. Especially since this PI decided to take an extended vacation just as all of this nonsense hit the fan and is now out of email contact. All highly suspicious. They can’t submit this paper without her, so I don’t understand how she thinks she is powerless. It all sounds like she is simply not up for any kind of confrontation. A confrontation in this situation is inevitable.
Jenny – I understand what you are saying (I think. not sure, actually), but I see a conflict in it. How can one’s research be robust and able to withstand leaks and impact without being given the time to develop and grow? It seems like one has to be tight-lipped for at least a couple of years before saying anything in public about the work to get it far enough along so that it is not in danger. Theft may be inevitable, but it is also really depressing.
Maxine – That is a really interesting point – how to journal editors handle these situations? Have you (as in the journal) received complaints about papers that were scoopings? As in, I did that first, why did you publish it? I am having trouble formulating my question. Sorry. Does the journal have a place in such conflicts?
Jenny, that is a sad and discouraging tale. Did that episode play a role in your decision to take a sabbatical from research?
What I find especially egregious about the antibody scenario is that they didn’t tell the lab that requested the antibody that they were going to do the same experiment. They let them waste their time and resources doing research that the antibody producing lab was going to publish first. They stole the idea and then tricked them into wasting effort instead letting them know they were stealing the idea and let them work on something else. They stole the idea and stole the time that was wasted on it.
Anna, I don’t think of myself as an idealist, just an honest person, as honest with everyone else as I am with myself. I have no difficulty at all in coming up with good ideas, my problem is getting the resources to implement them. There is no shortage of good ideas to work on. I know what my limits are, and what they are not. I have no difficulty accepting those limits and accepting that other people have different limits and in giving everyone credit for what they have done.
Keeping from getting “scooped” is one of the reasons I have started blogging about autism being an evolved adaptive feature caused by low nitric oxide. I did write it up and submit it to a journal, and the editor returned it (without sending it out for review) with the only comment that it wasn’t “interesting” enough. I realized then that the ability to understand ideas that are not quite in the mainstream is relatively rare and that most people simply are incapable of doing it. Attempting to find people that are among editors of journals is a poor use of my time.
So following Sun Tzu’s advice I put myself in the position of not being able to be defeated by publishing my ideas along with the reasoning behind them. I am trying to collaborate with senior people in the field, but so far, no one is able to understand it well enough to appreciate it.
The difficulty that people have in understanding that certain ideas are wrong is quite fascinating to me, and has influenced my thinking considerably. I think what it does is cause cognitive dissonance and people shut down and are unable to think about it in any kind of rational way. This is what Galileo ran up against with the heliocentric hypothesis of the solar system.
The fundamental trade-off along the autism spectrum is the “theory of mind” vs. a “theory of reality”. The ability to understand and manipulate humans to get what you need (theory of mind) vs. being able to understand and manipulate physical reality to make tools, weapons, get food, etc. from physical reality (theory of reality).
People who play the competition with other humans game really well are those that are good at “theory of mind”. Those who come up with lots of good ideas are good at the “theory of reality”. Competition of the first type is zero-sum. Competition of the second type isn’t.
I heard a story about a girl (friend of a friend) who when she was ready to write up her MSc thesis ended up doing some Google searches related to her work and found a paper in an obscure non-English language journal, written by a past member of her lab, that included figures that SHE had made, and her name was nowhere on it. The paper had to be retracted, and of course the ex-lab member was not too happy to do that. Eventually he DID retract it, but the reason he gave to the journal was that the MSc student needed the data to graduate. THEY WERE HER OWN DATA!
Phew, sorry for the delayed reply. Turns out that people with real jobs are no less busy than those in lab :) Who knew.
Eva – I suppose all is well that ends well, but I cannot even imagine the heartache that poor student went through. It is kind of scary how common these stories about intellectual/academic theft are. Everyone knows someone who has gone through it. As if science wasn’t difficult enough on its own…
A mate of mine got scooped after a conference. His PI ended up not getting tenure due loss of publications! He dropped out after (finally) getting his PhD and is now a lawyer… completely broke his spirit because they trusted the lab that stabbed them in the back. Two careers ended due to a theft of really mid-level (i.e. not paradigm shifting) data…
Conferences are so odd, aren’t they? You are supposed to share data, discuss, brainstorm and all that good stuff, but conferences are hardly a safe place to do it! I have heard of PIs giving lab members directions to copy down the sequence of a newly discovered/characterized protein when it’s flashed on the screen during a presentation. Guess what they then did with the sequence they assembled from everyone’s notes? Really makes one think twice about presenting anything remotely interesting (or even mid-level, as in your friend’s case) data.
On the upside, I am sure your friend is making waaay more money as an attorney than he ever would as a scientist. Silver linings…
Yeah, but he also now has waaaaaaay more debt :) (law school running around $150k nowadays)
…and two kids… I think the poor chap is as broke as I am despite his healthier paycheck!
Ooof. That part didn’t occur to me. We are so spoiled by having our (biomedical sciences) grad school paid for, aren’t we. I forget that most people have to shell out absurd amounts of money for the pleasure of being tormented for X number of years.
Another thing is “professional tax”, at least here in the States. Architects, Medical Doctors, Lawyers… all pay $200-$800/yr TAX on their profession!! So… Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh don’t let the government find us in here!!