

What Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner taught me about being scooped - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-thrill-of-defeat

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daughart
I think perspective matters here somewhat. If you're scooped as an established
scientist, it is a kind of validation of the importance of your work. If
you're scooped as a graduate student or post-doc, it can be a disheartening
loss of credit for years of work. The difference is the PI gets credit
(rightly so) for the direction of the research, which is validated by being
scooped, while the graduate student or post-doc is blamed for the speed of the
work.

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ssivark
The main reason that scientists' responses to this has changed over the years
is the shrinkage of resources (against the number of scientists). In a field
with many interesting problems to work on, lots of research funding and many
tenure track positions, the loss of one result will affect you much less --
especially if you're already famous and established.

However, the situation today is much more cut-throat!

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IndianAstronaut
My old lab which I left two years ago suddenly sent me some manuscripts to
review a few weeks ago so that we can quickly publish a paper that my
professor has been sitting on. This era is far different from the 50s and 60s,
it is now a publish and perish era. Scooping is a threat to your career.

Also, side note, Sydney Brenner is quite famous also for developing C. elegans
as a model animal system. Open worm is a result of the tremendous amount of
research done on that animal.

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sajid
If you are solely motivated by scientific curiosity then it doesn't matter to
you whether you get the answer first or someone else does. In reality, most
people's motivations are not so pure.

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dlu
I don't know if I could be that selfless and humble and just happy for the
greater good. I hope I would be, but can't say for certain.

