authorship struggle in paper (professor plagarized my work)

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ninetynine said:
Last year, I proposed and initiated my own independent project. I did all of my own background research, formed my own hypothesis, proposed my own method, and carried out the project. It was under a grant that I received through the undergraduate research center at my school. The results were promising and I submitted them as an abstract to an international conference. I began work on a manuscript and left it sitting for a few months as I was leaving for the summer for an internship.

Obviously, there were areas of the data that had not been done analyzing, since I left abruptly for the summer. Without telling me, my professor then did analysis on MY data, plagarized large portions of my abstract, and submitted it to another journal for publication as a abstract and to a different international conference as a talk.

I'm quite flustered because I clearly deserve first authorship on my project since I did the intellectual thinking behind it, I initiated it, and executed most of it. However, not only did my professor basically steal my project while I was gone (he did not notify me that he was going to continue it during the summer), he also took first author on the talk and the abstract he submitted, and plagarized large portions of my data.

This professor works under my two big PI's, so he's not my PI, but he's technically a "professor." I feel betrayed and stepped on. To get back at him, I sent my manuscript to the lab and let them know about the work I did to initiate the project and create the method for it. How can I:

1) protect my intellectual property
2) reclaim the authorship of the project, when we send out the manuscript that I started?
3) play lab politics and not piss off my professor too much? (he's my teammember, and I need to keep these bridges open).
Click to expand...

If you have no intention of getting a phd and just doing MD, the best bet might be just to let it slide....you dont need to be burning any bridges and you STILL have the first author of the abstract you orginally submitted.

If you're going for a phd, I don't know...
 
I'm going for MD/PhD.

In the future, how can I prevent things like this?

I'm going to make the knowledge of what projects I'm involved in more public from now on, i.e. writing monthly reports to my PI's and send this out to the whole lab so everyone knows that everyone else knows what projects are "mine" and what contribution is mine, so that nobody would have the leeway to do things like this.
 
Consult a lawyer. You can very well ruin your reputation if you attempt whistleblowing at this point. You may have to talk to the PI about it, but note that you are not looking for retribution/money. There was another thread about this a while back. Tread carefully. A misstep would ruin the rest of your life.
 
Compass said:
A misstep would ruin the rest of your life.
Click to expand...

...If your quality of life is determined solely by curriculum vitae depth in this one field...

Yikes.

Do be careful though - I just don't think your whole life is at stake here 🙂
 
I dont know what your supposed to do, but like other peopl said, speak to a lawyer. But I hope that professor reputation gets ruined for stealing a students work. I hope you get your credit & authorship. Good Luck! I hope everything works out in your favor.
 
I don't understand some of you people here.

OP: Stand up for yourself. Consult a lawyer. You already have a dated abstract filed before this professor's submission, correct?

Also, in front of your lawyer, comb through your emails, looking for dates, etc. Ask your lawyer to also file a request for subpoena via a judge on the university's email servers. I'm sure this professor emailed people about his plans on using your project; it may have been something as innocent as "OP is never coming back right? He's going to med school right? Okay, I will take his data..."

HOWEVER, if your university's rules automatically delegate all lab work to the PI, then I'm sure your PI will side with the professor and not you. In either case, consult a private lawyer first. Then consult the legal/ethics department. AND THEN YOUR PI.

If you tell your PI first, and he runs off to the legal department him/herself, then its his/her word against yours. Since you're an undergraduate, get your word in first.

Also, PM me to let me know how it goes. I hope the thief burns.
 
Mattabet said:
...If your quality of life is determined solely by curriculum vitae depth in this one field...

Yikes.

Do be careful though - I just don't think your whole life is at stake here 🙂
Click to expand...

Calling someone out on plagiarism is a serious thing to do. If the professor manages to get the charges reversed because he has clout or has a long-flowing record of great publications, the OP could very well tarnish his reputation and never be able to receive a good LOR from his university again. It's not like "oh, this professor definitely plagiarized, we'll give OP a cookie." If the professor can argue his way around the OP, the OP could very well never have a chance to be an MD PhD because of this one event's consequences.

I do NOT enjoy gambling OP's future away. He needs legal help and support from his school's integrity committee. You hear of whistleblowers being fired all the time. As much as I hate to use movie quotes, especially ones that disregard moral high ground,

"Sometimes doin' the right thing ain't doin' the right thing."

We aren't playing ethics theory here. We're playing real world high-stakes poker, and currently, the OP wants to push his reputation into the pot in hopes of outbidding the professor. For all we know, the professor may have a PI in his hand.
 
ninetynine said:
...
This professor works under my two big PI's, so he's not my PI, but he's technically a "professor." I feel betrayed and stepped on. To get back at him, I sent my manuscript to the lab and let them know about the work I did to initiate the project and create the method for it. How can I:

1) protect my intellectual property
2) reclaim the authorship of the project, when we send out the manuscript that I started?
3) play lab politics and not piss off my professor too much? (he's my teammember, and I need to keep these bridges open).
Click to expand...

So you sent the manuscript your prof. wrote up, or a manuscript that you compiled?

I'm not defending the professor, but why did you wait a few months before compiling the manuscript? Was it like a ton of data analysis or something that you couldn't do in the evenings?

In the end, he's a a professor, and I'm pretty sure that if he's like the majority of professors I know, pursuing this further is going to be burning a bridge.
 
if he wrote a new paper, submitted it to a journal, but used your data and analysis, he is the first author. he actually wrote the manuscript, you did all the work. thats how it works with author order. the way you describe it, you should be second.

was the grant given to the bigger PI to employ you/pay for your research? cause then technically the grant is the PI's, and any work you do, is his, and then he can redistribute it anywhere else (i.e. to this professor).
 
well, we had agreed ahead of time that I was writing the manuscript. the thing that bothered me most was that he republished my data after i had already sumitted it somewhere else (with him as coauthor), and did this without telling me. i waited on writing the manuscript because we were planning to do further analysis when i returned. it's ok, i sent the manuscript to the rest of the lab, they like it, i'm getting my credit. so i guess all is well that ends well... i'll let the abstracts slide, since they're just abstracts. thanks for the info everyone.
a few lessons i take away from this experience (maybe they can be of help to you too):

1) when you start a project, others should know your contribution to it every step of the way (not only those you are working on) - i.e. keep the PI and other collaborators updated on your project by sending regular reports, etc. this is proof of your standing and contribution to a project
2) document all the stuff you do so that you have proof of your contribution (lab notebooks, etc.)
3) when you get results, write them up FAST and let others know as soon as you do. never let things sit.
 
ninetynine said:
well, we had agreed ahead of time that I was writing the manuscript. the thing that bothered me most was that he republished my data after i had already sumitted it somewhere else (with him as coauthor), and did this without telling me. i waited on writing the manuscript because we were planning to do further analysis when i returned. it's ok, i sent the manuscript to the rest of the lab, they like it, i'm getting my credit. so i guess all is well that ends well... i'll let the abstracts slide, since they're just abstracts. thanks for the info everyone.
a few lessons i take away from this experience (maybe they can be of help to you too):

1) when you start a project, others should know your contribution to it every step of the way (not only those you are working on) - i.e. keep the PI and other collaborators updated on your project by sending regular reports, etc. this is proof of your standing and contribution to a project
2) document all the stuff you do so that you have proof of your contribution (lab notebooks, etc.)
3) when you get results, write them up FAST and let others know as soon as you do. never let things sit.
Click to expand...

If you really want to, keep a hardbound (marble-type) composition notebook and simply write what you did X days, how long you did it for, and so on.

Either that, or encrypt your data with 256-bit encryption, which I find so much simpler and practical. People who need the data must come through you for the password, because they're probably not going to crack that password within the next 100 years :laugh: (Yes, I do have my experimental data in such an encryption method, simply because it was the only way I could safely carry it on my flash drive)
 
Compass said:
Either that, or encrypt your data with 256-bit encryption, which I find so much simpler and practical. People who need the data must come through you for the password, because they're probably not going to crack that password within the next 100 years :laugh:
Click to expand...

That's only if they use a brute-force method...personally, I prefer waterboarding. Takes about 4-5 seconds to get the password. 👍
 
I don't see the big deal here. He "published" an second abstract on the same work.

Abstracts generally aren't considered publications unless they are followed by the rest of the paper.

You also say that there is a manuscript that has not been sent out yet. If you want to get 1st author you need to relax a bit and discuss this with the professor in question like an adult. Blowing whistles and calling lawyers would be absurd.

I'm also a little hazy on this grant you said you received. Was it a stipend for living expenses or a grant? If you paid for all the materials for your experiment and rented the equipment with your grant money, then yes there is a problem here. However, I don't think this is the case.

Getting 2nd author on something like this is fine and typical for undergrads. I know people who did just as much work as you and didn't even get their name on the paper as an acknowledgment.

Undergrads frequently get screwed like this.
 
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