74 Recently, as mentioned by Klug in the comments, the “take a picture of every slide” game has caught on fervently amongst some people. They also wonder around and take pictures of posters. I think most of them are Chinese, I dunno, I haven’t seen too many Honkey-assed Crackers doing it, but I imagine that once the Chinese start, white people everywhere will start.
Well, this is gay. It’s incredibly fucking annoying to be sitting in an audience and have three flashes go off every time a slide is put up. It’s also invasive to have your poster’s picture taken. This is cheating, I feel, because intellectual property theft should be done with rote memorization – not digitalization. Now the contents of an entire talk can be digitized and transmitted back to the mother ship by the end of the day and the next morning, an entire lab can be mobilized to start pirating your fresh results.
To this, I say, no photography should be allowed at ACS events! Or any event. If it is, I don’t see the point in showing unpublished data. If there’s no point to showing unpublished data, there’s hardly a point in going to a conference.
UPDATE: A good and reflective post by a Chinese colleague of ours can be found here. Also, my spam gobbler is eating some legit comments from new posters. Don’t be alarmed if your post doesn’t appear immediately.
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The ACS already discourages photography at their conferences. Much like the US’s War On Drugs, the laws are there, it is the enforcement that is sorely lacking.
Clearly, moderators will have to request people who are taking pictures to leave the lecture area and not return. “Discourages” is also pusillanimous verbage. The ACS should make it clear that it forbids,l by threat of removal and castration, photography at the conferences.
I personally do not take pictures of slides, but I don’t understand why some people are so violently opposed to it. If done unobtrusively, ie, by people who know how to turn off the flash and any annoying noises their camera might make, I say “why not?” (For people who don’t know how to work their cameras it is a different story). For one thing, it can free up your attention to actually listen to the presenter, rather than furiously scribble down structures from an overly crowded slide that will be gone in a few seconds.
As to the IP theft–it isn’t theft if you are willingly presenting it to the world. If you don’t want people to know and talk about and use your results, then why are you presenting them? When you show unpublished data at a conference, you are, in effect, publishing it. In industry, all talks and posters have to be OK’d by the lawyers to make sure we aren’t giving away anything we don’t want our competitors to know. You say it is OK for people to remember your results and go back to apply them to their research, so why should it be any different if they have pictures or detailed notes?
I guess you’ve never heard of a Gordon conference?
It’s pollyannaish to assume that people won’t steal your ideas if you present them openly in a conference. Nevertheless, it helps people articulate the new results and get bugs worked out before they go into a paper. It’s a good way to come up with new experiments that would disprove or prove a skeptical reviewer’s critique before he can even make it.
Secondly, it’s unlawful and a violation of copyright to reproduce someone’s power point slides and posters and distribute them to colleagues as well as to just yourself. Some how the notion that posters and presentations are just like music and are the property of the creator has escaped this lazy stupid generation completely.
OrgChemist said: “Secondly, it’s unlawful and a violation of copyright to reproduce someone’s power point slides and posters and distribute them to colleagues as well as to just yourself.”
Most of the people that I know who photograph slides and posters do not distribute copies of them, but they use them as notes to prepare reports to distribute to their colleagues. I know that at least some people will ask permission from the owner of the poster before photographing it, and people are generally happy to grant such permission. Heck, a lot of people give out copies of their posters as handouts.
After reading a poster and talking to the presenter, I could (1) stand there, spending time and taking up real estate in front of the poster to copy down all the details and important information, or I could, (2) take a picture of it in about 1 second and be on to the next poster. After either choice, I would go home and write the exact same report. Why require people to waste time and energy in trivial busy work when we have ready access to digital cameras?
What is the purpose of presenting information at a scientific meeting? In theory, it is because you want other people to see your research, and you want it to be important, and to have some on the research of other people. Some people here sound like they want to present their data, but not actually have anyone pay attention to it, and they certainly don’t want their work to have any value to anyone else. If you don’t want other people to know what you are doing, don’t present it!
In my mind, this is question of ethics rather than legality. If you want to “cheat” and take pictures of a slideshow that doesn’t (A) violate any courtesy restrictions, (B) annoy the speaker or (C) disrupt the audience, then by all means fire away. I personally wouldn’t take pictures of a slide, but I’d understand why an interested member of the “public” would want to get a copy of the work. That said, I’ll make 2 points:
1. “Unlawful” is not the same thing as “illegal.” Are the PowerPoint police going to come arrest you for taking a picture of the presentation? Probably not.
2. Unless you actually apply for a copywrite, there is no “violation of copywrite.” Publicated data (in the form of a presentation) does not equate to a copywrite.
The statement about needing to apply for a copyright is incorrect in the US. According to US law, one does not need to register copyright in order to receive the full protection of the law. You have copyright protection for your writings/diagrams/etc as soon as they are “fixed in a tangible medium”.
So, yes, this is definitely intellectual property infringement.
The difference is that scientists are generally loathe to bring the law into their daily work. No plagiarized author sues for copyright infringement – instead they rely on the scientific community to shun the plagiarizer.
The above statement is also wrong. IP protection applies in four main categories: copyright, patent, trademark and trade secret. Just because one isn’t violated doesn’t mean that there isn’t violation of the others.
Re copyright: You can’t download an MP3 of the latest Britney Spears song without paying for it, and then claim that since she performed it live at a concert, it isn’t IP theft. Think about movies you download (illegally) from torrent sites – there’s no way you could claim that since the movie was publicly shown in theaters across the country that it’s not copyright infringement. TV shows and YouTube, book readings, etc… Even if someone is presenting something publicly, they still retain the copyright for their work.
And retaining copyright means that you retain the right to control the copying (e.g. distribution) of your work. You also retain the right to control the creation of derivative works. If someone copies your work without your permission, it is a form of IP theft: copyright infringement.
The poster above is referring to trade secret protection, which only applies to “information, including a formula, pattern, compilation, program, device, method, technique, or process that derives independent economic value from not being generally known and not being readily ascertainable and is subject to reasonable efforts to maintain secrecy.” (http://library.findlaw.com/1999/Jan/1/241479.html) The key is that it must have independent economic value, which is why companies so readily protect it. As a scientist, you would need to prove that your work has independent economic value, which may be a difficult case to make. But even if you don’t have trade secret protection, you still have protection of copyright.
This is also incorrect. IP protection comes in four main flavors: copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secrets. Only one of these is affected by public disclosure (trade secrets). Copyright is specifically not affected. Consider whether, legally speaking, it is IP infringement (theft) if you download Britney Spears’s latest song even if she performed it in a concert last year? Is it illegal to download a movie via bittorrent even if it was played in theaters across the nation? Share a TV show on YouTube even though it was broadcast to millions of households? You’d have a difficult time arguing that those were not cases of copyright infringement purely because of the public distribution of the work.
Holding copyright gives you the right to control the copying and distribution of your work. You also hold the right to control creation of derivative works. Presenting something in public does not change those rights.
Only trade secret protection is affected by public disclosure. A trade secret is “information, including a formula, pattern, compilation, program, device, method, technique, or process that derives independent economic value from not being generally known and not being readily ascertainable and is subject to reasonable efforts to maintain secrecy.” (http://library.findlaw.com/1999/Jan/1/241479.html). However, the key point is that the information must have “independent economic value”, which is why this type of protection is sought by big companies. How many scientists are pursuing their work for its economic value?
I gotta know what colour the sky is in your world. In the world that I have lived in I expected that every grant proposal and manuscript submitted to reviewers would be copied and circulated. Every time I presented hot, new unpublished work at a conference it was always with the very real expectation that if it was truly novel and certain people were interested in the work they would go home have a little chat with one of their minions and I would have: a) a race on my hands to publish what I had (happened twice) b) a “collaborator” (happened once) or get totally scooped (happened once).
I gotta know what generation you live with. Copyright of intellectual property has been a defining concept of Western Civilization in various forms for centuries but this generation is the turning of the tide. This generation has such a new view of copyright that it may not survive intact. And this attitude is simply reflected in how people behave in science. It is hypocritical to have an ipod stuffed with music that you did not pay for and then resent a lack of respect for YOUR work.
If you post, present or blog something unpublished you have less than three months to publish it (if it is of any interest to your colleagues). Gomberg’s Prerogative was a simple suggestion at the end of his paper on the (C6H5)3C radical that people might give him five years free from competition so that he might tie up some loose ends. We no longer live in that world and the colour of the sky has changed. In the immortal words of Homer Simpson “strap yourself in and feel the cheese”.
It doesn’t sound like you did a prudent thing, if you allowed your results to get scooped. You have to balance the need to divulge information with the need to obtain feedback from your colleges before you wrap up for publication. If you prematurely release data and get scooped, two things have happened: Someone naively went off the reservation with shit they weren’t ready to run with and, secondly, someone didn’t have the ethical gumption to keep that information in their pants long enough for it to get into a journal.
I’m all for “free information” and whateverthefuckyouwanttocallit but a lot of people view science as a free enterprise with one very real goal: stay funded and employed.
“It is hypocritical to have an ipod stuffed with music that you did not pay for and then resent a lack of respect for YOUR work.”
Word.
And I purchased all the music on my IPod.
So there.
F*ck the RIAA.. and Metallica..
‘rote’ not ‘route’
-sorry to be a grammar ass
When I photograph a poster, it’s to remind me who the contact is, and get the website if there is one. But yah, taking pictures of slides?
Goodness, stay away from the med. chem. poster sessions, then. Folks from pharma and industry are sprinting around, taking pictures of posters and hurriedly writing down all of the SAR and assay results they can. It is like watching vultures swoop down for a meal.
I just think it’s rude to have a bunch of flashes and shutters go off during a presentation. Seriously, it’s distracting and annoying and people need to stop it. But I wouldn’t go far as to say it’s immoral.
Better question. Is it a bad sign when people don’t take a picture of my powerpoints and posters?
Mitch
Yes, especially if they have their eyes closed during your talk. [Except if it's Sunday morning.]
Only old people with tin types go to pchem sessions, mitch. And who would want all that flash powder exploding everywhere?
The easy fix is for the conference to require PDFs of the slides you are presenting. Then the attendee just goes to the conference website, types in the presentation number, and downloads the slides. I’ve gone to a conference that had this, and I must say it was really nice, especially when you can’t make a talk because of a conflicting talk or meeting.
It’s odd to read people saying they want to distribute information by presenting, but hold on, not tooooo much . . . scribble down notes all you want, but a crappy jpeg? Can’t have that. If you’re so paranoid, or have illusions of grandeur and think your work is so damned special, that you don’t want people to fully immerse themselves in your slides of glory – then here’s a hint: don’t present. Full disclosure or nothing at all. Just like a publication.
(Flash is the rude, and people that use it look like tools. And the only people I’ve seen use it are Chinese or really old Profs that look like they’d have a hard time getting the lid off the Metamucil, let alone turn off the flash. Here’s a tip – the “A” on your camera does not stand for awesome).
Just remember the sage wisdom of Smokey: Remember it, write it down, take a picture, I don’t give a fuck!
You’re a goddamn fool if you think a conference is a venue for “full disclosure.” Maybe toss out a bit of where you’re going and what you’ve found along the way and toss up some data to prove it, but if you give the whole goose up then you deserve to have it stolen.
There may be a point to writing down a clever transformation someone’s done or reaction conditions you weren’t familiar with or a reference, but the whole fucking slide? Do you really need to reproduce the whole slide?
It’s stupid tomfoolery and you idiots can cry alone when your shit is jacked by some Chinese group because they have four times the personnel and pay a third of what you can.
Full disclosure meaning “If you discuss it or show it during your talk, then let the audience take it home with them – if they want to.” What do people have to hide? You ALREADY SHOWED IT! If people are afraid of having their projects “stolen” then they shouldn’t be discussing or presenting it in the first place. If you present, then you already know your IP position is rock solid or your paper is just about finished and ready for publication. At worst other groups get a month or two head start before the JACS ASAP comes out.
Nope, I got to agree with Poopsmith here. Just because you are presenting, doesn’t mean you’re in full disclosure mode. There is no fucking way that a presentation is equivalent to a publication.
Maybe the profs like Bercaw or Hoveyda can present published stuff that is rock solid, but a student or post-doc needs to present interesting unpublished stuff that can attract the largest audience. The ACS is supposedly for presenting newish stuff anyways. It’s gotten to be the way it is now for many people (paper already in review before you present) because of people like you who ruin it for everyone else. And how the hell do you know you’re going to have a paper in review if you sign up for the talk six months before the fact? It doesn’t work that way if you’re a grad student and there can be setbacks.
You need to present the good results because you want to make contacts and you want all those potential post-doc advisors to see how brilliant you are. If you’re presenting the same shit that’s already been published, they will have read it and won’t come to your talk or they’ll be disappointed. My potential post-doc advisors read my papers, so there is no point reiterating (although others will be happy I guess). A presentation is a quick collection of burbs from which you can take an idea and apply it in your own chemistry. An abstract idea of using a certain catalyst or a certain ligand for example in your own chemistry. Copying the whole thing and doing it yourself after you see a presentation is WRONG.
If someone is sitting there and taking pictures, it doesn’t make me think that they are lifting abstract ideas, but that they are copying the stuff digitally because they are planning to scoop me and are then going to continue on doing research on my project. I know that someone taking paper notes can do this too, but it is different and they don’t really have time to get every little bit (unless they are copying my ‘easy to understand’ slides that is). I don’t feel very good talking with the guy with the digital camera afterwards since the voice in the back of my head is always stronger. If somebody wanted to, they could take over my project and get some publications out of it since I’m the only one in my group who works on it and I’m winding down. I would prefer it be somebody from my group and that I’m second author though.
You need to present to get your name out there, but you shouldn’t expect to be fucked over in the process. There should be a one year rule of not lifting stuff from these presentations. If you lifted it, your paper doesn’t get accepted in an ACS journal.
So let me get this straight: scribbling furiously with pen on paper is OK, but a photo is not? Got it. I fail, though, to see the logic in this. Again, if you are afraid of someone “planning to scoop me and are then going to continue on doing research on my project” then don’t present. It’s just that simple.
“An abstract idea of using a certain catalyst or a certain ligand for example in your own chemistry. Copying the whole thing and doing it yourself after you see a presentation is WRONG” but writing it down and then using the catalyst would be OK? What difference does it make how that person remembers it? Honestly – I’m not trying to be difficult, I just don’t see the logic. If you don’t want people to copy your work, don’t show it to them. Talking about your unpublished work as a means to get your name out there has certain (very small) risks such as someone copying your work, and if it’s not worth it to you, then don’t present.
What about people with photographic memories? I say we ban them from all ACS events, much like card counters are banned from Vegas casinos. Just kidding of course.
But, the ACS has a policy. It should be enforced. Besides, it’s just plain rude and annoying – and I can’t see how anyone has the balls to take a photo of a slide. We just need one presenter, after the flash goes off, to say “Hey, no photos. Please stop.” That person will definitely be remembered in a positive way.
Does it or does it not stand to reason that the more instances there are of your presentation, the more likely you are to get scooped? Giving a talk to 40 people is a small liability – Most people, however, would think it is stupid to put their unpublished shit online for any number of people to access. It’s about controlling your information beyond the confines of a conference.
I get your point – and you are 100% correct.
But what sane person would post their unpublished work online? If someone wanted to, they can recreate and post your presentation online – with or without crappy photos, but I don’t see the motive. I have never seen anyone post photos of anyone else’s talk, let alone scans of scribbled notes. Can you show an example of this being done and how it harmed that person?
If you’re so against this, have you spoken or written to anyone with the ACS about the matter? Asked them to change or enforce their rules? You should. We paying members of the ACS (as are you I assume) have a voice in things that affect us (real or not). I think we would all thank you if you did. Tell them you’ll post their reply here, it’ll make a nice post.
I think what this boils down to though is extreme paranoia and grad students thinking that their work is much more important than it really is.
Well, it’s true that a lot of grad student work may be crap, but even if it is crap, it’s four years of their life when it boils down to it. You shouldn’t take that lightly.
Personally, I consider that my work has some sort of meaning. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have gone to grad school at all. I think my project has promise to be something revolutionary (if only I was just a little harder working and a little smarter and better looking); if that was not the case I would try to work on a different project.
I don’t know about your research though. Maybe you’re not deluded as me and you know that your research doesn’t matter and it also doesn’t matter who’s name is stamped on the results as a corollary.
I’m not suggesting someone would take the photos and put them online, but they certainly are likely to email them to their lab, who could then use them as an example to someone else, who in turn could promulgate them ad nosium until someone thinks it’s a good idea and decides to put a firestorm together to get it done.
If you’re at a conference presenting your data, you have a modicum of control about what you talk about and to whom. You can, for instance, reserve tidbits of unpublished data only if asked and then speak of it in general terms or show a hidden slide. This, of course, is speaker dependent – as well as conference dependent.
There’s no reason people can’t wait for the publication to come out to have a nice copy of my NMRs. I don’t see any reason why they need to snap a photo of it months before it hits the shelves. Uncontrolled and unaccounted for results is just asking for someone to scoop you and, while in the grand scheme of things, my work may not be earth shattering, but it is, nonetheless, my work and I’ve devoted a lot of time and effort to it and would kill the motherfucker that stole it from me.
What I meant in my example is that you use the catalyst or ligand in a general sense, but not in the exact same reaction and on the exact same substrates that the presenters had up on the slide. That is much more likely to happen if you allow photos than if an abstract idea, that this catalyst and ligand set has a very low oxidation potential and can act as a radical transfer agent for example, sticks in your mind after a presentation.
Besides, the guy who took photos at my presentation had a very expensive looking silent camera and no flash. So there was no discomfort beyond a certain uneasy feeling. Whatever, this oral presentation is mostly going to be published very very soon. However, I did present an oral before where the results very preliminary and unpolished, but were exciting to people in the field. I’ll think really hard before I do that again though. Judging by the attitudes expressed here it was a pretty stupid thing to do despite the fact that it got my name out there. Maybe my paranoid boss (who claims his ideas were lifted from Gordon Conferences and ACS meetings too many times to present new stuff) was right.
I don’t have much to add to all of this, but I will add a couple of things:
There is supposed to be a certain level of collegiality to scientific conferences, where “we’re all friends here.” It’s a lie, but a noble one. If digital photography and an anything-goes atmosphere prevails, there will be less of a space for interesting unpublished data to exist.
It also appears that those who are taking pictures of posters are not even bothering to engage the speaker or (gasp!) ask their permission. Can we all agree that this is rude behavior and undesirable?
Posted this in the wrong post thread – here it is again.
Someone needs to invest in one of these “Image Fulgurator”.
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/.....-adds.html
(with video)
I tried to write my own synopsis of how it works, but the article did a better job. “The device has a slave unit on top which is triggered when it sees a flash fire. This triggers his own flash, which fires through the back of the camera, through a film slide containing his slogan and then on and out through the lens at the front. This works because a camera is pretty much a projector in reverse. And because the light-graffiti is fired at the exact same moment the unsuspecting victim takes a picture, it ends up in their photograph and paranoid mind ramblings result. Neat.”
So, someone needs to set this up at their research talk and have a big “F*** YOU!” appear everytime someone takes a picture. Nifty.
This is amazing…
Anyways, this discussion is making me a little upset because me and some others here are worlds apart on this and I “know I’m right” (plus I had a really bad headache today that prevented me from going to the lab for a while), so if I say something stupid or insult you, it’s probably only for this thread. Sorry in advance.
At my last big ACS con (pun intended) I had an young Asian gentleman taking photos. I said nothing at the time, but I knew who’s lab he was from and so I emailed his adviser with a note mentioning said fact, so that at least now he knows that I know.
Rhenium said: “At my last big ACS con (pun intended) I had an young Asian gentleman taking photos. I said nothing at the time, but I knew who’s lab he was from and so I emailed his adviser with a note mentioning said fact, so that at least now he knows that I know.”
I’m really not trying to be rude, but what did you hope to accomplish by doing that? You are tattling on someone for not doing anything wrong. If I were his adviser, I would be upset if he *hadn’t* come back with details about what other people in the same area were doing. Aren’t you supposed to be interested in what your competitors are doing, when they freely volunteer such information? What do you do when you go to meetings? Do you specifically avoid the talks and posters most closely related to your own work in case you accidentally learn something relevant?
If your concern is that he is breaking rules by using a camera, you should take it up with the conference organizers, not the adviser. The only good reason I see for forbidding cameras is when they are being obtrusive by using flash and making noise. I don’t think they make it any easier for someone to scoop you. It’s just a faster way to take notes. If you are concerned about someone using certain data to scoop you, just don’t present that data.
zts:
“I don’t think they make it any easier for someone to scoop you. It’s just a faster way to take notes.”
Don’t you think this is underestimating things just a little bit? Large details, small details, etc. are permanently stored in a easily transferable format that coffee, ink stains, etc. cannot destroy. There’s a really, really big difference between a camera and a notebook and pen.
There’s a really, really big difference between a camera and a notebook and pen.
Not to someone who really wants to steal ideas. Cameras are a lazier method, but if you want to steal ideas, you’re gonna get them whether they ban cameras, or pencils, or memory, Eternal Sunshine-style.
I posed Kyle this hypo and I’ll pose it to all of you: let’s say you’re an American, and as an American, you only speak American. You go to a conference in Poland. The conference is in Polish, the talks are in Polish. You speak some Polish, but eeeeh, not that well. You want to get something out of sitting through all of these Polish talks. Taking notes and keeping up would be difficult. Taking a pic of the slides, well… that’d be easier… at least then you can grind through the information given at your own pace later.
If you think the above hypo is ridiculous, you probably need to go to a Polish chemistry conference. In Polish.
excimer, I don’t really understand what you’re getting at with this hypothetical — are you suggesting that international folks with cameras are compensating for lesser language skills?
that’s exactly what i’m getting at. and it’s not a point worth dismissing, either.
oh noes! my secret indentiez iz compromised
excimer, forgive me if I seemed dismissive. I was merely clarifying.
Considering I was seeing people photograph slides of protein crystal structures, I don’t think the language barrier accounts for most of the issue.
That’s exactly why I stopped attending Polish conferences.
Yes, it is underestimating things a little bit, but only a little bit, and I don’t think there is that big of a difference between a camera and a pen. If someone asks me to check out, for example, a poster about some total synthesis, because they are working on that same target and want to see what this other group is doing, it doesn’t matter whether I take a picture of the poster or take notes, I’m going to send them the same information, with as much detail as is important. They aren’t going to scrap their work and start over using your chemistry and try to beat you to it (it is very rare that the approach is at all similar), but they want to be aware of your work, maybe apply something that you learned about the molecule to their own work. They want to learn something from you. And isn’t that, theoretically, why you are doing this anyway?
Based on a very unscientific sampling of people I know, I would say that almost everyone taking pictures of posters or slides are doing it either to write a generally meaningless report for their company to justify the expense of sending them to the meeting, or because they or someone they know is doing similar work and wants to digest the information better–not to steal it, but to learn from it and apply it to their own work.
What I really don’t understand about this whole thread is the perception that there are all these people hiding out there just waiting to steal your ideas. If people are really that desperate to get your data, they will probably show up at the talk, or send someone to cover it. Most people have their own work to do, and it is very rare that people are doing the exact same thing. Sure, it does happen sometimes. If you have a real fear of that, I think the only way to prevent it is to not present it at the meeting.
So if the student suddenly produces a new crop of complexes, the supervisor will know where they come from.
As you say, “Nobody has done anything wrong” yet, but if you don’t think it happens then you are being naive.
I’m sure it does happen, but rarely. In my own experience, most of the people I know who take pictures of slides/posters do so either to write a report (generally a very dull one that nobody will actually read) for their company to justify the expense of sending them to the meeting, or because they or people they know are working on a similar program and would like to know what other groups are doing – not to steal their results, but to learn from them, just like anyone else who wants to be familiar with all the literature about their work. I haven’t known anyone who was doing the exact same work as someone else, to the point that they could steal their ideas and apply to their own research, even if they were of the moral character that would do so (and most people aren’t).
It sounds like, in your case, you know that this student is involved in the exact same project, to the point where he can go home and reproduce all of your results and beat you to the publication. If you knew, going into it, that he and other people were so close to your research, and the data in your presentation was so important and sensitive that knowledge of it makes it trivial to scoop you, then why did you present it?
Suppose the same student didn’t have a camera, but was furiously scribbling down all the details? What would you do? The technology does not seem to be the problem in this case.
Suppose he was giving a talk, and his results suddenly shed light on your problems? What would you do? I bet you would take just as many notes, by whatever means.
Rhenium said: “As you say, “Nobody has done anything wrong” yet, but if you don’t think it happens then you are being naive.”
I’m sure it does happen, but rarely. In my own experience, most of the people I know who take pictures of slides/posters do so either to write a report (generally a very dull one that nobody will actually read) for their company to justify the expense of sending them to the meeting, or because they or people they know are working on a similar program and would like to know what other groups are doing – not to steal their results, but to learn from them, just like anyone else who wants to be familiar with all the literature about their work. I haven’t known anyone who was doing the exact same work as someone else, to the point that they could steal their ideas and apply to their own research, even if they were of the moral character that would do so (and most people aren’t).
It sounds like, in your case, you know that this student is involved in the exact same project, to the point where he can go home and reproduce all of your results and beat you to the publication. If you knew, going into it, that he and other people were so close to your research, and the data in your presentation was so important and sensitive that knowledge of it makes it trivial to scoop you, then why did you present it?
Suppose the same student didn’t have a camera, but was furiously scribbling down all the details? What would you do? The technology does not seem to be the problem in this case.
Suppose he was giving a talk, and his results suddenly shed light on your problems? What would you do? I bet you would take just as many notes, by whatever means.
Rhenium said: “As you say, “Nobody has done anything wrong” yet, but if you don’t think it happens then you are being naive.”
I’m sure it does happen, but rarely. In my own experience, most of the people I know who take pictures of slides/posters do so either to write a report (generally a very dull one that nobody will actually read) for their company to justify the expense of sending them to the meeting, or because they or people they know are working on a similar program and would like to know what other groups are doing – not to steal their results, but to learn from them, just like anyone else who wants to be familiar with all the literature about their work. I haven’t known anyone who was doing the exact same work as someone else, to the point that they could steal their ideas and apply to their own research, even if they were of the moral character that would do so (and most people aren’t).
It sounds like, in your case, you know that this student is involved in the exact same project, to the point where he can go home and reproduce all of your results and beat you to the publication. If you knew, going into it, that he and other people were so close to your research, and the data in your presentation was so important and sensitive that knowledge of it makes it trivial to scoop you, then why did you present it?
Suppose the same student didn’t have a camera, but was furiously scribbling down all the details? What would you do? The technology does not seem to be the problem in this case.
Suppose he was giving a talk, and his results suddenly shed light on your problems? What would you do? I bet you would take just as many notes.
zts
Yes it was unpublished research that has now been submitted for publication, however I never expected anyone would sit right up the front and take photos! He easily could have defused the situation by just saying hello after.
If he gave a talk and this shed light on my research I’d probably go and talk with him after the lecture, but that’s just my approach.
I was probably naive to present unpublished results and so it probably won’t happen again.
I always thought that one of the major intentions of conferences like the ACS meeting is to facilitate the sharing of scientific data. C&EN publishes the titles ahead of time precisely so that someone who is interested in a particular talk or poster can either arrange to go himself or make sure someone covers it for him. It is quite naive to assume that people who are working in the same area as you are not going to attend your talk or poster.
By disclosing things at a meeting you are making those details available to anyone who might be interested in them. Often, such parties won’t be there, but I think you always have to operate under the assumption that they will be, and that they will going to go back to the lab with any relevant details and discuss them in detail, whether they took pictures or not. I knew folks who would come back from talks without any notes and be able to talk about entire total syntheses, and remember the important details (I wish my memory were that good, but I take notes). If our group was working on the same synthesis, we certainly talked about it, and we were right to do so. If I saw the a specific catalyst/ligand combination that would suddenly solve all my problems, of course I would write it down the conditions and try to use it myself. That’s why you presented it, right? If you aren’t OK with that, then you shouldn’t be presenting those details. I’m not trying to scoop you–how often is someone doing *exactly* the same thing? (I guess it does happen, and if you are that paranoid you shouldn’t be presenting until you are ready to publish).
See my and Klug’s points earlier. I believe I address your point vis a vis ligand/catalyst combo. There is always a compromise at things like that. People steal others’ research here, but others are much more generous and give you a year. Some choose to present really novel stuff and some don’t with that knowledge in mind. Taking photos muddies the delicate balance and it destroys the meeting for many. Why do you think this thing is so highly frowned upon at a Gordon Conference? Do you really want the ACS meeting to become a venue where nothing truly novel is shared anymore?
You know what else is gay and incredibly fucking annoying? Calling things gay.
you’re gay
On the one hand the Chinese are not Americans so why in God’s name should you think they subscribe to a similar system of laws? Duhhh…only the biggest swinging dick with the most muscle makes it in Asia.
On the other hand, why not just hand out a pdf of your lecture since you are obviously making it public.
You can’t have it both ways. Keep it secret or blast it through a megaphone. DONT EVER BELIEVE OTHER COUNTRIES THINK THE SAME WAY WE DO. ONLY IBM AND THE ACS WANT YOU TO BELIEVE THAT. THEY SAY THAT YOUR JOB CAN BE OUTSOURCED. BECAUSE HEY IT”S ALL GOOD, IT’S ALL JUST ONE BIG MARKET.
KILL THE ACS! THEY HATE AMERCIANS!
I talked about my view in my post:
http://network.nature.com/blog.....e-audience
Andrew: In your post you mentioned legality, so here goes.
ACS and other meetings are private affairs, hence the exorbitant “admission fee”. As such, it is their place and their rules. If they say “no photos” they are within their rights to have you escorted off the premises. Conversely, if you gave a talk, freely, outside in a public park, anyone is legally able to click away. It is called “expectation of privacy”. This is how the paparazzi exist.
We won’t be able to settle the “is it right?” question, but the fact is the ACS says “No photos” and they should mean it and enforce it. Taking photos of talks is boorish behavior, in my opinion, and is just as disruptive as cell phones. Turn the flash off – the flash power of the little digicam will illuminate maybe 10-20 feet anyways, and you’re taking a picture of a white, illuminated screen. It’s like taking a picture of a light bulb with the flash on.
And why do you think that is the rule? It’s because most people except for your strange world view representatives, agree that it is ‘wrong’ ‘wrong’ ‘wrong’. That means the question is more or less settled outside of this blog.
You keep ignoring my point that if you take notes, then I may think that it is alright and I’m showing unpublished results and you may use the ideas and apply them to your own research. If you are a fast note taker or a rote memorizer, I’ll be safe in my illusion that you can’t possibly copy all the little details on my slides but will come away with the main talking points. Even if you are planning to copy this work, I think that you are an alright kind of person and will give me six months to a year (which is the unwritten rule) according to the unpublished fairness code.
If you take photos, then I am likely to think that you are going to pore over the presentation in detail and copy the whole thing. Then, since you have a lab full of twenty minions as opposed to just me working on this project, you will tell two to three of your minions to work on it with much haste so that our articles can come out at roughly the same time and maybe they’ll find something that I missed along the way. I don’t have any power over someone with more resources than me who is more famous and well known. I want them to use my ideas, but I don’t want them to fuck me over. In this case, even if you don’t steal a project but take photos, I think that you are a cheat and untrustworthy and if you know about unpublished fairness codes, then you are likely to spit on them.
The Russian dude who took photos of my talk was probably a reporter of some sort, and not based in the US, so I wasn’t too upset. But if someone from, let’s say, Tobin Marks’ group did it, I’d be pissed as hell. And I just know that the more cameras there are, the more ‘ideas’ big group people are going to get about their use.
Wow.
I really don’t see how the logic of what he’s saying doesn’t make sense. If for no other reason than it makes people feel very uncomfortable because they don’t trust the motives of people that take pictures, then that seems like enough reason to prohibit the behavior.
I, for one, don’t trust people that need an exact replication of my slides and poster. There’s no need for that and it’s disconcerting to know that they have an actual copy of my presentation on their hard drive.
The “Wow” factor comes from the fact that he was not so concerned with the “Russian dude” who may or may not have been a reporter, and somehow felt the need to photograph Uncle Sam’s precious data (KGB is written all over this), but he was unconcerned with the guy three rows back scribbling notes from Tobin Marks’ group, who right now is plotting to scoop this young lad with an army of minions. Not even Hollywood can write something this good.
Scribbling notes. Crappy jpeg. You presented the data. It’s out in the public. If someone e-mailed you saying they heard your talk and requested a copy of your presentation would you say no? Why? You ALREADY presented each piece of data on the slides. They’ve ALREADY seen it. What do you tell them, “Sorry, no can do, you had your chance to scribble notes and blew it, piss off!” You should be flattered that someone found your work interesting.
Maybe that person is me, who is interested in your work and might like to interview you for a job. Face it, when you do interview, your resume, CV, research summary, and YES, copies of your talk will float around to EVERY chemist in the company. And like most grad students and post-docs I’ve interviewed, much of the data is unpublished because they want to showcase their most recent work (which is usually the most interesting). And if you need to be worried about someone stealing your work, I’d be afraid of the Pharma folks, not some third year grad student.
What it comes down to is “if you don’t want someone to know, don’t tell them.” Make a note to yourself to think about this again in, say, 10 years from now.
By the way – Does Itaru Hamachi like it that you’ve taken one of his figures and doctored it with foul language? You got permission from the ACS right? No? Hmmm, this doesn’t fall under the category of fair use now does it? Oh well, I’m sure the ACS doesn’t mind.
Actually, it does constitute fair use and I’ve been in contact with publishers including the ACS for the last two years and there’s nothing wrong with it.
More to the point, I wouldn’t send my presentations to anyone who asked for it. I don’t know many people that would, either.
Listen. Why you feel the need to defend your silly point by deflecting with accusations that I’m “pirating” other’s work strikes me as those “last throws” of an argument. As such, I don’t feel obligated to save your keyboard gnashings from my spam filters any longer.
Huh? What the hell does the KGB have to do with all this among other things? For your information, KGB is the secret service of the Soviet Union and FSB is the secret service of Russia. You are allowed to use this bit of wisdom in the future as I generously lift my copyright of this knowledge.
No, I’m unconcerned with a Marks student scribbling away furiously because I trust they are not like that and that they are genuinely interested in the topic. If I seem them taking pictures, then my trust will be shaken; it might be just a psychological thing, but that is what will happen. Like they said in “The Big Lebowski”, ‘it’s a line in the sand beyond which you do not cross’ dude.
Yeah, that was what I was trying to say, but it came out a lot longer.
If you want a copy of my talk, you should email me and meet me after the talk and if I like you, you get a copy. No taking pictures.
My tuppence ha’penny, old bean.
Yes it’s boorish and impolite to take photos in a lecture, particularly if it requires bobbing up all the time like a demented meerkat, in the same way it’s poor form to leg it out of the auditorium halfway through,and it should be enforced by the organisers.
My feeling is, if you’re presenting then the expectation is that the work is of interest to the audience and that, god forbid, they might just try and use the technology for some of their own work. Otherwise, what are you presenting for, to show where the grant money went? Ok, if someone starts passing off the work as their own, or doesn’t attribute that exotic catalyst/ligand combination for the exact same step, nail them.
Industry has that 18month – 2 year lag for patent purposes built in, what is the equivalent in academia? Talk about all the stuff you got to work in the first year in your final year?
I think people are conflating two very different although vaguely related activities. Stealing someone’s work to pass off as your own and taking pictures of a public presentation are not the same thing. Yes, people can steal your work from pictures of slides, but they can also steal your work from notes, from their own memory, from discussion and email with their colleagues, etc. It is wrong to steal someone’s work, no matter where you got it. But the vast majority of people have no intention of stealing your work. Yes, it does happen, and it is wrong, but it happened before people started taking cameras to meetings, and it will happen again whether they are allowed cameras or not. It may be fair to say that photos make it easier for the wrong person to see your work, but technology is changing the way the world works, whether we like it or not. There is no longer an expectation of privacy at fairly high impact public events. Can people blog about conferences? I think you have to think of a talk or poster as a kind of publication, since you are publicly disclosing your data, and you should have the expectation that if people want to see the details, they will. The only way to prevent that is to not present.
I have seen people take incredibly detailed notes of talks (and some people have incredibly detailed memories)–if you think that nobody is going to be able to take all the relevant details off your slides unless they take pictures, you are probably cramming way too much onto your slides and going through them too quickly (which, unfortunately, happens quite often). If you are putting information on a slide that you expect nobody to be able to absorb, why is it there in the first place?
And yes, the ACS and any other meeting has the right to make whatever rules they want, and people should abide by them. In my opinion, they *should* allow photography, at least during poster sessions. During talks, I would be inclined to allow it provided there are no flashes or noises or other annoyances. You might be able to argue against photographing talks that it would make it easier to misrepresent your work by leaving out certain slides. None of these argument would apply against posters though. In terms of copyright, I don’t know exactly how the law works, but I imagine that the ACS would be able to stipulate something to the effect of you can’t present unless you give up certain rights and let people make copies for personal use, or something like that. I know these aren’t how the rules are now, but I think this would be the most effective tack. Rather than try to go back in time, we should embrace whatever good is provided by new technology. It would be prudent to ask for permission before photographing something, and, if you are working on a similar area, to chat with the presenter, as Rhenium wishes his photographer did. But if someone is intent on stealing your work, does it make it any better if he acts nice first?
But really, I think this is all getting blown out of proportion. Most people are not out to steal from you. Most people, even if they are working in the same area, have their own work to do, and it is very rare that it is *exactly* the same as yours, to the point where they could steal it. Most people are honest and would not throw away their own research and start from scratch to reproduce yours. Maybe I’m being too kind to human nature, but this doesn’t seem like it is really worth getting all bent out of shape over. If you are really concerned about someone taking your research, starting a program based on it, and beating you to the punch, then act like a pharmaceutical company and don’t present it until you are finished and ready to submit the manuscript for publication.
Anyway, that’s my 2 cents (or maybe 3 or 4). Since I’m basically just repeating myself, I will probably stop responding to this discussion.
You have a valid point. Most people are not out to steal from you and probably even all the people you run into at a national meeting are not out to steal from you.
I just remembered another reason to share unpublished data. A year ago I started some stuff as a side project and found some interesting results where my stuff worked a lot poorly than established methods in the field, but it was a novel approach. So one reason to share those results is to ask people who are established in that field if you are on the right track, whether you’re doing the right thing, and how interesting my results would be to various journals. The leader in this sub-field came to my poster and chatted with me about it for a while. This has given me much needed information about all that I couldn’t get otherwise really. Not as a lowly grad student anyways. Now if that person came by my poster, didn’t say anything, but took a photo of it and then walked away, wouldn’t you agree that I would be right to get an uneasy feeling from that?
“Gee Mr. Carreira (hypothetical big name person that invokes familiarity), you want to chat about my poster?”
“No peon, I would get very little intellectual satisfaction from you. I have little time an must move on to other posters so that I can think up of projects for my gigantic group with lots of sweet Swiss funding.”
Well, if that happened, then I would take your advice and would stop presenting new stuff at meetings ever again.
According to the article “Scientists find more oil fissures in Lake Baikal’s bedrock”
…several Russian scientists going back as far as Dmitry Mendeleyev have suggested an ‘abiogenic hypothesis,’ according to which petroleum was formed from carbon deposits originating deep in the Earth’s mantle…
Scientists find more oil fissures in Lake Baikal’s bedrock
Lake Baikal: 6.3 magnitude earthquake
Note: If that is the case, then it would mean that life could have originated from hydrocarbons, something that seems very likely to me!
After reviewing the matter with the assistance of the abiotic folks over at Oil_is_Mastery (Anaconda and Oil_Is_Mastery), I’ve concluded that oil on Earth is actually abiotic in origin, just as it is on other moons around our solar system, meaning that sedimentary rock is not an essential part of the process. See the following two articles for a thermodynamic analysis showing that the Earth’s upper mantle contains just the right conditions for producing abiotic oil:
The Constraints and the Laws of Thermodynamics upon the Evolution of Hydrocarbons: The Prohibition of Hydrocarbon Genesis at Low Pressures
The Evolution of Multicomponent Systems at High Pressures
One thing that I’d like to suggest is that life can arise from hydrocarbons, Stanley Miller experiment aside. Biological molecules (especially fatty acids) often do strikingly resemble hydrocarbons, so much so that perhaps life arose in the tar pits instead of the other way around? The existance of the first RNA and the arisal of life have been a major mystery for scientists. I know it’s just mere speculation on my part at this point, but abiotic oil may be the starting point for life to occur.
Anyhow, if there is such an origin of life arising from abiotic tar pits, like I suspect, then this should be huge news.
re: presenting unpublished data, isn’t it an ACS policy that you should not present published data, unless it was just a communication?
I practically got into a fight with my postdoc advisor, who did not want me to present at ACS because he was so paranoid that someone would scoop us. When I brought up the ACS guideline, he said he got around it by doing “the n+1 experiment!”. Right.
I agree with the above comments that you should expect a collegial respect for the priority any unpublished results. It only takes ONE person to scoop/steal your stuff, though. That paranoia has a very real and scary basis. Anyone who is asking VERY detailed questions about nitty-gritty, scribbling madly on a notebook at a poster for 5 minutes, or snapping pictures deserves all suspicion they receive and, as a professional, they should be cognizant of how their behavior will be viewed.
As for specific conferences, there is no defense for ignoring guidelines about photography should they exist.
In case you guys missed it:
Physicists aflutter about data photographed at conference
http://www.nature.com/news/200.....5007a.html
The author of that article contacted me for an interview. I sort of wondered wtf was up with it.
Did you give an interview?
No. I don’t like phone interviews. I honestly hate telephones.