Research ethical question

[skol926]

Hello all, need some help navigating an ethical situation.
Lowdown: I wrote 2 similar papers for a surgeon from my undergrad based on his idea to utilize a database to evaluate a specific finding in 2 different fields of medicine. We have been productive together and I hope to keep being productive with him and we have several projects in the works which he has handed to me.
Now I am in medical school and wanted to present my new advisor a good study idea and suggested we do the same thing I did with my undergrad PI for his field of surgery. He loved it, we wrote it, and it is very similar to the papers I wrote with my old PI using the exact same methods, even similar title, just evaluating a different field (obviously no plagiarism, just the exact same study methods). It was submitted to the biggest journal in that field and the reviewers liked it a lot, and it is now accepted with revisions. I now feel very guilty that I "stole" the idea from my old PI and he will be upset when he sees the paper in such a good journal (intersecting with his field, so he will certainly see it).
How big of a mistake did I make by not including my old PI?
I eventually want to apply to his residency program, will he hold this against me?
Is it possible to include him in the revision stage and add him as an author?

Of note, my old PI just emailed me and was wondering if I wanted to do more of these papers for other fields, so he clearly would have been interested in being involved.

Thanks for any thoughts!

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[Womb Raider]

Where’s the ethical question?

 

[skol926]

Where’s the ethical question?

Sorry, I guess I left that out! The question is how do I proceed given the circumstances?
I could try to add him as an author, but might jeopardize the acceptance.
I could do nothing and wait for him to see the published paper
I could email him and apologize

 

[Womb Raider]

Sorry, I guess I left that out! The question is how do I proceed given the circumstances?
I could try to add him as an author, but might jeopardize the acceptance.
I could do nothing and wait for him to see the published paper
I could email him and apologize

I’m way over my head here, so take what I say with a big grain of salt.

Honestly I’d be pretty scared if I were you, especially if I wanted to go into the same field as your old research partner. You screwing over an attending is a big deal. Will it get out? Depends on who he is and how he reacts, and none of us know him. If I were you, I’d explain the situation to your current PD AND the old one and see what they say / try to get the old guy on the paper too.

 

[Donald Juan]

You should go ahead and bring this up with your new PI. Without knowing the real specifics I'm not sure how novel this idea was for it to be considered plagiarism, it doesn't sound to me like it is necessarily stealing something, and if your other PI is in an entirely different field they may not care at all as they weren't going to do this project anyways. If your new PI feels it is stealing their idea, there's no reason you couldn't add the old PI on as an author after the resubmit.

 

[Goro]

You should go ahead and bring this up with your new PI. Without knowing the real specifics I'm not sure how novel this idea was for it to be considered plagiarism, it doesn't sound to me like it is necessarily stealing something, and if your other PI is in an entirely different field they may not care at all as they weren't going to do this project anyways. If your new PI feels it is stealing their idea, there's no reason you couldn't add the old PI on as an author after the resubmit.

This.

And ask the old PI about it as well.

 

[mistafab]

I’d say it depends.

Published METHODS sections of papers give lots of details on purpose. It isn’t so that scientists can say “look at what I did and now you can never do it haha lol.” The methods section helps others replicate or use that technique in different settings. If you are using the methods on a new topic, I see no ethical dilemma.

Edit: If it is a small field, i think this is more of a political dilemma than anything.

 

[ACSurgeon]

Hello all, need some help navigating an ethical situation.
Lowdown: I wrote 2 similar papers for a surgeon from my undergrad based on his idea to utilize a database to evaluate a specific finding in 2 different fields of medicine. We have been productive together and I hope to keep being productive with him and we have several projects in the works which he has handed to me.
Now I am in medical school and wanted to present my new advisor a good study idea and suggested we do the same thing I did with my undergrad PI for his field of surgery. He loved it, we wrote it, and it is very similar to the papers I wrote with my old PI using the exact same methods, even similar title, just evaluating a different field (obviously no plagiarism, just the exact same study methods). It was submitted to the biggest journal in that field and the reviewers liked it a lot, and it is now accepted with revisions. I now feel very guilty that I "stole" the idea from my old PI and he will be upset when he sees the paper in such a good journal (intersecting with his field, so he will certainly see it).
How big of a mistake did I make by not including my old PI?
I eventually want to apply to his residency program, will he hold this against me?
Is it possible to include him in the revision stage and add him as an author?

Of note, my old PI just emailed me and was wondering if I wanted to do more of these papers for other fields, so he clearly would have been interested in being involved.

Thanks for any thoughts!

It’s normal for young professionals to take previous experiences when moving into new roles. I honestly don’t see much wrong in what you described. You should not apologize and should not make this a bigger deal than it is.

You didn’t use his personal data and from what you mentioned the old PI has no authorship role.

 

[Raney Schauer]

You repurposed an old paper into boilerplate for a completely different investigation. No ethical issue.

You can even preface the methods by saying they were similar to previous efforts (Reference, et al, 2xxx). Reference the old paper to boost its stats. That's a compliment.

 

[Raney Schauer]

You should have told your new PI, "I have a project idea. It's basically what my old PI came up with only now applied to a new field."

If this wasn't part of the discussion on approach then what are people even talking about?

 

[skol926]

Thanks everyone for all the super helpful insight.
Interestingly, I actually told my new PI about this at the onset, and he said he preferred to not include my old PI as an author and reassured me it wasn't an issue, but I started to feel guilty once our paper was accepted at a great journal.
I guess I didn't commit any technical wrong here, I just found myself feeling conflicted and wanted to get some insight. I am going to email my old PI nonetheless to tell him, and also mention we of course cited our first paper given the similar use of a publicly available database. Hopefully this keeps our relationship intact and I don't have anything to worry about!

 

[Peach Newport]

Yeah... I don’t know the details, but it seems like this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do as long as you a) tell your new PI, and b) ask him about citing the previous paper.