For freedom / a young scientist being imprisoned for 5 years in dungeon set up by several people from MPI-polymer and ISSP in China

[ackermann]

In wissen.blog.com

 

K. Muellen (Prof of MPIP) — T. Weil (Prof of Uni-Ulm & KM’s PhD student) — U. Ziener (TW’s associate & collaborator of KL) — K. Landfester (Prof of Uni-Ulm & MPIP)

 

From G Lu

Sent: 2011-05-19 14:56

To: E. P. K

CC: Eagling

Re: Accusation on paper b816751f

 

Dear Prof. Kundig,

I acknowledge you for your kind comfort and sincere counsel on the rules in scientific activities. As I told you before, I was actually kidnapped by the institute that I am currently staying in, so it is impossible for me to carry out research under such circumstances. I had also attempted twice to publish my paper b719277k to JACS and then Chem. Commu.. However it was unfortunately rejected directly by the editors without sending to referees. And Dr. Yue Li, who is a totally stranger to me, was selected to implement the work in order to cover the facts that the ideas were from me. Nonetheless some evidences still shed light on that the ideas do not belong to the authors themselves; for example, that Y. Li left Korea in Oct. 2006 contradicts with the availability of the funds.

 

As shown in the main body of b719277k, the work on the synthesis of cation-loaded polymer nanosphere via miniemusion was actually carried out and mostly completed in spring 2005. On May 30, 2005 I showed all the results that I had got in a presentation given in our group seminar. I noticed that most audience was PhD students and postdocs from our group with Prof. Wegner at the scene. Only one young asian man seated himself at the last row was unknown. When I finished the report, he came to me and introduced that he came from another group, whose head is considered as one of the leaders in contemporary chemistry world. He requested to make a photocopy of the slide (I gave the presentation in printed slides), where the synthesis scheme was presented and I agreed him. However, I discovered a paper from that group using the same idea as mine was published at the beginning of 2006 and the authors claimed they owned the idea themselves.*

 

 

As I repeated many times, I have never shared the ideas that I conceived in the Beijing conference in 2007 inside or outside the institute of ISSP. But I found out again this group published several papers employing these ideas with the assertion that the ideas were created by the authors. An invisible connection between this group and people from ISSP can be detected as well.**

 

I retrospect the history of some parts of my work because I wish similar case would never happen on me again. I am weak and powerless as an individual, so I look forward to the understanding from conscientious people, which will bring me more hope for my life.

 

Thank you very much for your valuable time once more.

Best regards,

G Lu

 

(*)”10.1002/marc.200600027″

 

(**)http://wissen.blog.com/science-intrigue/

 

Some listeners at Wegner group seminar on May 30, 2005: Dr. R. Munoz-Espi, Dr. T. Seibel, Dr. M. Demir, Dr. I. Lieberwirth, Prof. G. Wegner, Dr. F. Laquai ……

 

From: E. P. Kundig

Sent: Friday, April 08, 2011 3:17 PM

To: G. Lu

Cc: Eagling

Subject: Re: Accusation on paper b816751f

 

Dear Dr. Lu,

 

Over the past months I have followed your e-mail exchange with Dr. Eagling regarding violations of intellectual property. Since, as you report, the adverse party continues to publish extensively I presume that they report work carried out in their own research group. You have to realize that once you discuss an idea with another person you run the risk that he/she will go and adopt it for his/her own work. It is not elegant, especially if they do not acknowledge you, but there is nothing you can do about it if you do not have taken out a patent on the invention. It happens all the time and particularly so in science. I have witnessed numerous cases where a large and well funded research group has ‘taken over’ a bright idea of someone else and, by the sheer power of their possibilities have made it their own. In other words, once you discuss an idea, you better be the first to publish results. When published or presented – in private or in public, the idea is in the open domain and it is a ‘free for all’. If you are the first to publish you can refer to this publication in subsequent papers and show that others have picked up and further developed your idea. If you have not published first, you have lost and any time devoted to claim back the idea and publications, patents, etc is time lost. It is then often better to concentrate on something new than to poison you life by trying to undo what cannot be undone. For an editor and a referee, all that can be done is to make sure that precedent publications are properly cited, that results that heve been previously published are not again published as ‘new’, and that publications are stopped when it the data are ‘copy/paste’ take-over from the competition. Other than that the check is purely on whether the results are of interest to the journal’s readers and whether the claims made are fully corroborated by the data.

 

With sympathies and best regards,

 

Prof. P. Kundig

 

 

 

[mississippichem]

Someone stole your work?

[CharonY]

Ideas are worth nothing until you manage to publish them.

[Realitycheck]

Bummers dude. Time to call the A-Team.

[Ben Banana]

What's this? China kidnapped a scientist or something? Oh lovely... I don't get it. Is this a hoax anyway?

 

Edit:

Oh wait is it North Korea then? That sounds more reasonable, actually.

Edited December 16, 2011 by Ben Bowen

[michel123456]

What's this? China kidnapped a scientist or something? Oh lovely... I don't get it. Is this a hoax anyway?

 

Edit:

Oh wait is it North Korea then? That sounds more reasonable, actually.

I saw nothing about North Korea.

Mr G. Lu on his own allegation writes:

Yes, this is Lu, a former PhD student of Prof. Wegner. I am currently working in the Institute of Solid State, Chinese Academy of Sciences as an associate researcher.

I found such an institute at Heifei, People's Republic of China.

Prof. E.P. Kundig is in Geneva.

 

The paper (the source of the debate)

 

Yang, S., Feng, X., Zhi, L., Cao, Q., Maier, J. and Müllen, K. (2010), Nanographene-Constructed Hollow Carbon Spheres and Their Favorable Electroactivity with Respect to Lithium Storage. Advanced Materials, 22: 838–842. doi: 10.1002/adma.200902795

 

Author Information

1Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research Ackermannweg 10, D-55128 Mainz (Germany)

2National Center for Nanoscience and Technology of China Beiyitiao 11, 100190 Beijing (China)

3Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research Heisenbergstr. 1, 70569 Stuttgart (Germany)

[CharonY]

Huh? Where does imprisonment come in?

[michel123456]

Huh? Where does imprisonment come in?

I suppose it is a bad interpretation (or exaggeration) of this sentence

As I told you before, I was actually kidnapped by the institute that I am currently staying in, so it is impossible for me to carry out research under such circumstances.

[Appolinaria]

Of course people are going to steal your ideas if you don't patent them, or whatever. It's like leaving cash out... people are going to steal it. It kinda sucks, but it's reality.

[Arete]

You let a stranger photocopy slides of unpublished ideas/data from your presentation?!?!

 

However it was unfortunately rejected directly by the editors without sending to referees.

 

If the English in the email is representative of the paper - this is a given. It will pay dividends to get an native English speaker to go over your work before submission to smooth out the grammar and spelling. I've had to review very poorly written manuscripts before and it's sometimes impossible to understand what was done and therefore critically evaluate the work, so it has to be rejected regardless of how good/bad the science actually is.

Edited December 16, 2011 by Arete

[CharonY]

I suppose it is a bad interpretation (or exaggeration) of this sentence

 

 

Hah, not that unusual, tbh.

[DrRocket]

Someone stole your work?

 

Hard to believe that anyone in China might not have high regard for intellectual property rights isn't it ?

[CharonY]

Well, it is academia, isn't it? I do not really think that nationality plays a role here. Usually such cases are handled by an ombudsman. But especially when different groups are involved, the first one to publish has won. And it is a rare thing even within a given institute that a junior scientist will have any claim to property. Ideas generated belong to the institute and the PI (in that order).

[DrRocket]

Well, it is academia, isn't it? I do not really think that nationality plays a role here. Usually such cases are handled by an ombudsman. But especially when different groups are involved, the first one to publish has won. And it is a rare thing even within a given institute that a junior scientist will have any claim to property. Ideas generated belong to the institute and the PI (in that order).

 

That rather depends on the idea, the discipline and the institution. When I was in academia, even as a graduate student in mathematics, my ideas were mine and published in my name alone.

 

I do have engineering publications that were done in collaboration with others, but for projects in which I participated credit went to all participants. In that case there was actually a publication in which my appeared that I was not aware of until a third party called my attention to it (It turned out that I had done simulations that were of value in the paper and the group doing the writing was temporarily at another school).

Edited December 23, 2011 by DrRocket

[CharonY]

Let me guess... mathematics (they and sometimes theoretical physicists play by slightly different rules)?

However, all institutes require that intellectual property is signed to the employer (i.e. uni institute etc.). Many have the right to prevent you to publish if they wanted to (though almost never enforced).

It is most obvious when e.g. patents are issued. The institute holds the right, but may extend it to the PI (and other people involved). In almost group based papers credit goes to the corresponding author (everything else is a spill-over by association). And again, publish or perish is the game for most of us...

Edited December 23, 2011 by CharonY

[DrRocket]

Let me guess... mathematics?

 

Primarily. And you don't have to guess.

 

And it is a rare thing even within a given institute that a junior scientist will have any claim to property. Ideas generated belong to the institute and the PI (in that order).

 

If you are speaking of patent rights or commercial rights of some kind, as opposed to credit for invention, then that is a different matter entirely.

 

Generally any employer, including an academic institution, requires employees, as a condition of employment, to agree that any patent or commercial rights associated with an invention will be assigned to the employer. Nevertheless, a patent must, by law, be granted only to the actual inventor. The inventor then can, and with a typical employer/employee relationship, must, assign the patent rights to the employer. If the names on the patent application are not, in fact, those of actual inventors then the patent can be invalidated (I have seen this happen with big money involved).

 

I don't know about PIs. I have never worked for another PI.

Edited December 23, 2011 by DrRocket