^ claiming ownership, not honorship...
Do people really steal paper ideas? Serious question
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I hate this so much. I had a number of ideas for multiple papers but the dataset wasn’t there. I took over over 6 months to collect over a million observations from multiple sources.
I present one of the working papers at a conference and soon after get two unsolicited emails asking to share the data. I’m sorry but no that’s just ridiculous to give out something worked tirelessly for months to get.
What kind of data is it? I am guessing there is a good chance the person who "owns"/"created" the data might already have the same idea. I hate when I am working with some data and have several ideas on what to do and go present somewhere and then someone tries to weasel in on the data. This can be just as bad as "stealing
someones idea"My advisor doesn't want to contact another guy and ask for data because he's scare this other guy will steal the idea he has. No quality data then. In fact, he's even regretting sharing with me the essence of his working paper. WTF! Does this stealing s**t really happen?
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I've had ideas stolen. People invite to give a seminar. Want to talk about new ideas and possible collaborations over lunch. Then radio silence. A year later, they have a WP with what I came up with over lunch. I have plenty going on, but if you're an ideas person, keep them close to your chest unless you want them stolen...
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Almost 20 years ago, I had a couple guys -- call them Herr A and Herr B -- email me asking why I was doing procedure X in a paper when everyone knew that fact Y precluded X from being interesting.
Being naive, I wrote back and helpfully explained that Y was not a fact and I had a paper in progress -- a few weeks out -- that would show that Y was not a fact.
Several weeks later, I received a paper to referee by Herr A and Herr B that had done a super quick and sloppy job of showing that fact Y was not a fact. I notified coauthors and sat on the paper for a while before telling the journal editor what had happened. The editor rejected the paper from Herr A and Herr B. Several weeks after that, my coauthor received the same paper from Herr A and Herr B to referee for another journal. Again, my coauthor sat on it for a while and then let the editor know what was going on. Between us, we managed to bottle the paper up for at least 6 months, by which time my paper was out and under review.
Crime doesn't always pay.
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It pays in finance 19 times out of 20.
Almost 20 years ago, I had a couple guys -- call them Herr A and Herr B -- email me asking why I was doing procedure X in a paper when everyone knew that fact Y precluded X from being interesting.
Being naive, I wrote back and helpfully explained that Y was not a fact and I had a paper in progress -- a few weeks out -- that would show that Y was not a fact.
Several weeks later, I received a paper to referee by Herr A and Herr B that had done a super quick and sloppy job of showing that fact Y was not a fact. I notified coauthors and sat on the paper for a while before telling the journal editor what had happened. The editor rejected the paper from Herr A and Herr B. Several weeks after that, my coauthor received the same paper from Herr A and Herr B to referee for another journal. Again, my coauthor sat on it for a while and then let the editor know what was going on. Between us, we managed to bottle the paper up for at least 6 months, by which time my paper was out and under review.
Crime doesn't always pay. -
Almost 20 years ago, I had a couple guys -- call them Herr A and Herr B -- email me asking why I was doing procedure X in a paper when everyone knew that fact Y precluded X from being interesting.
Being naive, I wrote back and helpfully explained that Y was not a fact and I had a paper in progress -- a few weeks out -- that would show that Y was not a fact.
Several weeks later, I received a paper to referee by Herr A and Herr B that had done a super quick and sloppy job of showing that fact Y was not a fact. I notified coauthors and sat on the paper for a while before telling the journal editor what had happened. The editor rejected the paper from Herr A and Herr B. Several weeks after that, my coauthor received the same paper from Herr A and Herr B to referee for another journal. Again, my coauthor sat on it for a while and then let the editor know what was going on. Between us, we managed to bottle the paper up for at least 6 months, by which time my paper was out and under review.
Crime doesn't always pay.All because of papers see adult playing games. They stole from you, they didn't thank you.
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Post your ideas in code, so stupid people can't see the point at first. And post them on multiple public archived sources. This works very well if you can think through, and not in, time. Would you believe me if I told you I can figure things out in any time combination/orientation order? So I have quite the advantage over bugmen. Quite the advantage!
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Oh, and I am not joking. Some academics do steal job market candidate's papers and take advantage of student's publishing inexperience to rush their paper through the journals quicker.
I know one faculty who does this with literally all their students, even the ones that leave academia. It’s the academic equivalent of being a slumlord. You can tell I do not think highly of this person
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I have been told by HRMs that ideas are cheap, the implementation and publishing is what's hard. Later in the same conversation they shared a story of a PhD student from an MRM who "happened" to have the same idea as one of their HRM friends. Because the HRM friend is more experienced and efficient, he would have published faster but was nice enough to include the MRM student as a co-author. All of this was told with a straight face. And it is a different case from the one extensively discussed here. The HRMs were from ties at mit.
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I have been told by HRMs that ideas are cheap, the implementation and publishing is what's hard. Later in the same conversation they shared a story of a PhD student from an MRM who "happened" to have the same idea as one of their HRM friends. Because the HRM friend is more experienced and efficient, he would have published faster but was nice enough to include the MRM student as a co-author. All of this was told with a straight face. And it is a different case from the one extensively discussed here. The HRMs were from ties at mit.
Similar experience with b-school professors