Double edged sword of discovery

In My Humble Opinion
1

When it comes to my hobbies sometimes I feel like a fat greedy pig! I have this compulsion to. I have this compulsion to test every theory to a knats ass. This means I step on toes a lot. Most of the toes I am stepping on are people I like and admire but when I see something wrong I just can’t seem to let it go. In a couple of cases it has been work that individuals had poured decades into, they were highly resentful.

 The stepping on toes part bugs me some but the part that bugs me even more is that I am robbing someone else of the joy and fun of discovery that I had. Once you add something in the mix it never comes out. 

 On the plus side I will often see individuals take my theories and refine and improve on them, this gives me great joy. Often to the point where I limit the amount of information I put out knowing that certain individuals will jump on it and run. I like to think it saves me time. I might identify something and work out a method for testing, start a discussion on it and then let others refine it down. 

 Now what the thread is really about, are there any kind of ethics involved in research that take into consideration the dynamics of the passion that drives the research to begin with? Or is it simply a race to see who gets their first.
2

I’m not completely sure on what you mean here…concrete examples might help…

My view is that, at the very, very beginning, mentoring and teaching (regarding a hobby) are good things. Have a guide who eases you into things. This spares the neophyte from making the crassest possible “newbie” blunders. Without a mentor, a lot of time gets lost that way.

Later, when the hobbyist starts to know what he’s doing, then, yeah, let him go off in his own directions. Let him make a more sophisticated level of error. Even then, you can give advice, so long as he’s willing to hear it.

(“Ah, no, son, you can’t put plastic model kits together with school glue…”)

3

I think I know what you mean. A friend of mine had an old WWII Jeep - a Willy. He was restoring in the parking lot behind work. The boss didn’t mind, since it was behind the office. Anyway, he was working on it, and I was helping out one Saturday. He got stuck on some part and decided he needed a tool. I could clearly see that he did not need the tool. He just needed to turn the one piece just - so. He wouldn’t listen. At the time, I didn’t know if it was because I was female, but I decided that was the reason.

He left to get the tool. I decided to surprise him by fixing it for him while he was gone. All done and reassembled by the time he got back. He was not excited and happy, as I expected. He was bummed. It turned out it wasn’t really something we were doing together. It was his Willy snerk, and I ruined it for him by being better at it. I took it back apart and I didn’t help again.

4

Within my research group, I didn’t work on someone else’s problem without making sure this is okay.

The “group” can be quite extended. Not just the people at my own school, but those I’ve been talking, at a fairly deep level, with from anywhere.

If instead they are just people I don’t know or know a little then all bets are off. If I see the solution first, I’m writing it up.

It can get kind of tricky at times. Once, during a taxi ride, one of my PhD students told me about some preliminary stuff he was thinking about. By the time it was over, I knew what all the main chapters, theorems, etc. of his thesis would be and how they would look. (And that turned out to be mainly true with only a few small “gotchas”.)

But, I only steered him here and there till the thesis was finished. If I had just wrote it all up on my own, he would have had to start over on a new thesis topic.

But if this was a peer, I’d would approach them from the point of view of doing a joint thing. Sure, almost all the contents would be mine and my name might appear 2nd (or later) alphabetically*, but 2nd authors can be quite helpful so I consider it a win.

  • Which happened a lot.
5

I don’t know if this is relevant to your question, but my brother had a habit of taking a contrary view on some question, listen to my counter-arguments and then use them in arguing with others. My brother and I were very close and arguing was one of the attractants.

6

I can provide an example from a hobbyist view point, but nothing to do with research.

I have been a collector of various things most of my life. My high point was in the 1990s when I collected Watt pottery. In the beginning there was almost nothing known of the company, what it made, how many of each were made, how valuable were the various pieces, etc.

I spend a couple of years researching it and became the main expert on the topic, writing a very comprehensive book on the subject in 1994. It was my publishers’ top selling book. I founded the Watt Pottery Collectors USA and ran it for almost 10 years. And I spoke at many conventions, for my organization, the other national Watt club and local collectors groups. One of the things I touched on was that your significant other can never buy you a piece for your collection.

First of all, it is probably going to be a wrong piece, one you are not interested in, a duplicate, or in a condition you don’t want.

If it is a good piece, then the collector wonders, “How did she ever find that? This state is my territory and I know every piece that comes up for sale!”

Then, as you hold the coveted piece in your hands, that you somehow overlooked and she found it, the dreaded thought creeps in… how much did she pay for it?

If she overpaid, geez, I never overpay! If she got a bargain, then the fact that she found and bought it instead of you is doubly disturbing.

And finally, you are robbed of the satisfaction every collector gets from telling how you stalked through the flea market and spotted it under the corner of a tablecloth and the guy selling it had no idea of what it was.

You might as well give the damn thing away.

Dennis

Gratuitous plug. It is still selling after 22 years: https://www.amazon.com/Watt-Pottery-Collectors-Reference-Price/dp/0764318535