Is it ever okay for a PI to allow others (collaborators or not) to steal the work of his/her student? Especially when the student has spent countless years working on thesis related projects, and having promising results but then only to have them put on the back burner by the PI. Then out of the blue a collaborator who was not working on the topic publishes said student's project. But what's worse is the PI's reaction, "oh well he's very ambitious" or "he's the go to guy of this topic". What does that mean??????
My friends this has happened to me 4 times, yes 4 times and at the end of seven years I have no first author papers and have amassed a huge quantity of data that when I read the papers, I can flip through my lab books and match every result or image.
I honestly do not know what's wrong with my PI but I don't think it's okay to do this or allow it to happen. The only paper I'll have is on a little side project which I had to push forward to get done, because our 'friend' just published my main project, data for which we have been sitting on since 2006.
"Is it ever okay for a PI to allow others (collaborators or not) to steal the work of his/her student?"
ReplyDeleteNO!
Is your PI getting his name on these papers? Are you?
As a grad student one of my experiments went into a collaborator's paper, but not without my consent. My PI took the time to discuss this with me, and it was not part of my main project.
It is in your best interest to get first author papers in lower impact journals, rather than secondary authorship on high impact journals. This can conflict with your PI and his collaborators best interest.
You really need to speak to to a neutral party in the department (or outside).