I am attending my first conference this week, and yesterday I attended a poster session and stopped by one that belonged to a lab manager of a lab quite similar to mine. I am also a lab manager, and was pretty excited to meet someone that's more of a "colleague" to me, since most attendees are professors/postdocs/PhD students and I was quite overwhelmed. Due to the nervousness/excitement I got swept away and I talked a bit about an idea I'm currently working on/am hoping to pursue (I didn't delve in TOO deep but I did mention the current question/a bit of the paradigm). I'm now super paranoid about the possibility of it being taken despite the fact that the girl was very friendly (I know this does not matter that much though). I realize that what I did was not the smartest (it was very stupid actually), and I definitely won't be repeating the same mistake again. How should I go about "protecting" my idea, now that I let it out in the open? How wary should I be? I know that this situation might not end up being the biggest deal, but I'd also like to know the prevalence of "idea stealing" for future reference/caution.
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1Similar questions have been asked often. The answers: Ideas are a dime a dozen. Preliminary work is best protected by publishing early. Primacy is best established by talking about your ideas often and publicly, leaving a record. See e.g. https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28398/can-one-publish-ideas-well-before-one-has-evidence-proving-the-ideas-work/ and https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/97349/can-a-phd-supervisor-take-unpublished-ideas-from-a-students-dissertation/ and https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8278/worry-about-stealing-of-research-ideas & many more – henning Jul 01 '21 at 14:49
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@henning yes it does, thank you!! – rei Jul 01 '21 at 15:35
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To supplement the excellent answer and the comment, I would like to add a quote from Howard Aiken: “Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.” – Kiro Jul 03 '21 at 10:38
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Probably you should spend your efforts worrying about other things. Likely, if you have spent time and effort on an idea you are well ahead of anyone who would want to "steal" it. There is some of what you fear that goes on, but ideas can't be "owned". They are free for anyone to develop. And in a "hot" area you can be assured that many of your ideas are shared by others, some of whom are closer to resolution than you are.
Spend you effort on developing the ideas and getting the papers written.
An exactly opposite view, of course, is that talking about your ideas can build a web of collaboration that is both good for its members and also advances scientific knowledge.
Don't waste your mental effort on paranoia. It isn't productive.
Buffy
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