When I was very young, the father of the neighbor's family a young academic - suddenly disappeared. The young academic was working, I was later told, on original research upon which he had pinned the hopes for his career. Nearing the completion of his work, however, a professor he had been working with published the young academic's original work under the professor's own name.
There was a complaint but the professor prevailed. This was and often still is the case in such unequal power relationships.
This young academic's one piece of career-making work stolen and not finding justice through the academic process, he ended his life. It was an extreme response, but one that illustrated the absolute seriousness of intellectual property. It also illustrated the intellectual dishonesty that pervaded academia.
Having heard past complaints by more junior researchers that senior academics regularly publish researcher's work under the academic's name, it was easy to consider this as a serious but uncommon issue. Yet the examples continued and it is now difficult to not believe that there is a continuing problem. In short, there is considerable anecdotal evidence that intellectual dishonesty remains common.
It is a bedrock academic proposition that plagiarism is not tolerated. Students are regularly failed, or worse, for plagiarising the work of others. Plagiarism scandals have also claimed the professional scalps of a small number of high profile academics, if usually informed by other agendas.
Yet the incidence of senior academics claiming the researchers' or PhD students' work as their own is, it seems, widespread.
In one recent case, a young researcher left her position when, after more than a year of writing up research, she had a senior academic give it a light edit, append his own name and publish it as his own work. This is not just lifting some material from another source and claiming at as one's own, it is effectively lifting... Read more