Are you worried about your ideas getting stolen? Idea theft is far more common than you might think.
Sujit from Pakistan submitted an article to a reputed journal and received a rejection letter. Later, he found another article published in a different reputed journal by Sujit from India, one of the reviewers of his paper. The theft was so poorly executed that even the manuscript document had a similar name. Caught red-handed, he came up with the lame excuse of mistakenly submitting the wrong document (link).
Sujit is like a petty thief who got caught in his first attempt and was soundly beaten by the crowd. But in most cases, the theft is so subtle that it becomes nearly impossible for the victim to defend their case. A friend of mine, who worked in a microbiology lab in the Netherlands, had one of his co-authored manuscripts rejected by Science, only to later see its main idea published in Nature. They did not even fight the case.
Don't assume that publishing your work protects your ideas. Almost everyone credits Einstein for the theory of relativity, even though Lorentz and Poincaré formulated key aspects of the theory before him, which is an undisputed fact. Einstein maintained that he had not read their papers, which is hard to believe given that he worked in a patent office before joining academia. Julius von Mayer nearly committed suicide and was admitted to a mental hospital because he was denied credit for his work on thermodynamics.
What can one do? I always recommend putting your manuscript on a preprint server if you want to protect your work from petty thieves. However, if the theft is subtle, especially when committed by a more famous scientist, there is little you can do. I am not saying you shouldn’t fight, but it is important to learn to make peace with yourself. Scientific discourse largely runs on trust, and there is no strong mechanism to prevent stealing of ideas.
Friday, 25 April 2025
Idea stealing is quite common
Can Brick-and-Mortar Universities Be Replaced by AI?
Why? I use the term “clubhouse effect” to explain this paradox. To understand this, let's consider why a house in Hiranandani Gardens, Powai, fetches more than a 20% premium compared to a house of similar size in a neighboring housing society. One of the main reasons is the clubhouse they provide.
People go to a clubhouse for networking. You can get a business deal in a clubhouse. An educational institution effectively works as a clubhouse. Surely, Harvard University provides a superior education compared to an average university, but that is not why Harvard charges $100,000 per year. In any case, most of its courses are freely available online.
The same goes for IITs. Most courses are freely available online. The perceived reputation and the alumni network are the real values one gets. The next question, of course, is whether building a university is the only way to bring people together. Of course not. Sanjeev Sanyal proposes building a bhajan mandali, and I agree.
Let's conduct a thought experiment. Suppose we build a bhajan mandali for 1,000 students. They are taught by AI teachers without a human teacher present. In the evening, they do bhajan together. We need to employ some humans to provide security, to provide food, and perhaps to provide spiritual guidance. They will eventually form a community and support each other.
Of course, this will not happen due to government interference.
Don't apply for jobs half-heartedly
A small piece of advice to job seekers, particularly those targeting academic jobs: Do not apply half-heartedly. Why?
Institutes typically invite external subject experts for faculty hiring. There is a good chance you will meet the same expert again if you failed to secure the earlier job, and he or she will start the next interview with a negative impression. Even if the same expert does not interview you again, there is a good chance the outcome of your earlier job interview has reached the next institution. You will need to work extra hard against the negative perception.
Of course, this should not be considered a thumb rule, as people know candidates are rejected for many reasons, including their profile not matching the job requirements. Nevertheless, it is good to try to avoid creating any negative impression.
Do not apply for a job unless you are reasonably confident of your chances. How to know? Read the job advertisement carefully. Connect with people to gather more information. Attend conferences. If possible, visit the institution to give a seminar and talk to potential colleagues, which will also help them get to know you better. You should do this anyway, as joining an academic institution is potentially a lifetime decision.
When you decide to apply for a job, give it your best.
Read the job market right
The "one job, 100 applications" stories are factually correct but quite misleading. Why? Consider a hypothetical scenario: every eligible candidate applies for every job in the market. If there are 100 jobs, each job receives 100 applications, yet every candidate is ultimately assured of a job.
Most degree holders from top institutes find jobs easily -- some immediately after receiving their degree, while others take time. Of course, real scenarios are more complicated. In some cases, the number of eligible candidates exceeds the number of jobs, forcing some to look for alternative opportunities outside their domain of expertise.
Conversely, there are cases where the number of jobs exceeds the number of eligible candidates. This is not a hypothetical scenario. Many labs in IITs are either dysfunctional or have been shut down because suitable faculty candidates cannot be found. PhD candidates often choose trendy research topics that yield easy publications rather than those that could lead to better job opportunities.
If you are planning to pursue a PhD, or any career path for that matter, make sure to check the job market. Of course, getting reliable information is not always easy. Networking definitely helps.
Student feedback on teaching does not serve any real purpose
What is the value of student evaluations of teaching?
I have always felt that student feedback for my courses did not correlate with the effort I put in. In fact, whenever I put extra effort into improving my teaching, my course feedback has dropped.
I used to dismiss this as cognitive bias until I came across the “Rate My Professors” website, where students evaluate professors in US universities. I was astonished to find that a few professors, whose research articles and lecture notes have significantly influenced my thinking, were rated very poorly. It is not just about research. One particular professor, whose lecture notes I used as a model for my own, has also received mostly negative feedback. (For clarification, I never studied in the US)
There are countless research papers on the value of student feedback, and most scholars agree it is a debatable subject. While student feedback on certain aspects of teaching can be useful, its overall usefulness beyond a certain point is highly questionable. As Johnson (2000) argues, student feedback has less to do with education and more with bureaucracy.
In my understanding, there are two primary aspects of teaching that matter to students: providing learning opportunities and making students comfortable. Students generally give more emphasize to the latter. Even if a course offers great learning opportunities, the students are likely to rate it poorly if they have not felt comfortable.
The assumption that students attend a course “to learn” is not always valid. Most students in core branches (Civil, Mechanical, etc.) in Indian technological institutions opt for non-core jobs after graduation. Their lack of motivation to learn core subjects should not come as a surprise. How this affects student evaluations of core courses needs serious examination. In fact, I could not find a single research article on this subject matter.
I am in no way advocating for doing away with student evaluations. However, it is essential to evaluate their scope for improving the effectiveness of teaching. In my assessment, student feedback serves the purpose of a scarecrow -- it lacks life but creates an illusion of it -- making teachers more likely to take teaching seriously.
Power is an illusion
The other day a friend of mine asked me about a particular minister. Surprised by my lack of interest in the conversation, he tried to tell me why I should know the minister.
“If he makes one phone call, you and I will lose our jobs,” he explained.
“Well, if he has a track record of firing people for not knowing him, I must know him. But if he had such a track record, I would have already known him.”
Why do people fear someone with power? Fear is a natural survival instinct. We avoid unnecessary confrontations and walk away when the incentives to stand our ground are low or nonexistent. This may sometimes embolden people with power.
A more interesting question, however, is why a minister with the power to fire people does not exercise it regularly. Is he not competent enough? No. Most competent people know power is like “share capital,” given to someone. Investors lend power to someone expecting returns. If the investors lose trust and decide to pull out, the power will vanish into thin air. That is how governments fall.
People often exhibit irrational fear of power because they do not understand how it actually works. It is a misconception that we adopted democracy to get power into our hands. Power was never in the hands of kings, nor does democracy give back power to people.
The real sources of power are ideas. That is why even kings in old times feared rishis. It is again a misconception that rishis had some magical power to curse people. No. They had ideas powerful enough to bring down kings. That is exactly what Chanakya did to the arrogant emperor of Magadha.
When a leader is elected to a position of power, it simply means people have invested in his or her ideas. Nothing more. One does not even need to hold a position to exercise power. Soros and Musk hold power to change governments because of their ideas. No, it is not because of their money (ideas generate money anyway).
If you ask me to name 10 most powerful people of India post 1990, I would include P. Sainath without hesitation. His ideas on farmer suicides served as the foundation for many farmer-centric political movements. Even the mighty BJP with an absolute majority in the parliament surrendered to farmer groups.
The Waqf bill became a law a few days back. The lion’s share of credit should be given to Anand Ranganathan for writing a book and incessantly highlighting the issue of misutilization power given to the Waqf board in TV debates.
Pursue knowledge. Power without knowledge is a mirage. You think you have it, but actually you don't.
Piyush Goyal’s frustration on deep-tech is misplaced
The reply by Vijay Vithal to Piyush Goyal’s comment on the lack of interest in deep-tech startups is worth reading: https://www.reddit.com/r/StartUpIndia/comments/1js2y1s/piyush_goel_i_am_a_semiconductor_startup_founder/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button&rdt=44524
The government should act as a facilitator of innovation rather than an obstructor before claiming the moral high ground. Over-bureaucratization is the main reason why we do not have a strong deep-tech ecosystem. It is not that we lack brilliant people in the government.
Speaking of water resources management in India. During the British period, engineers not only built great dams and irrigation canals but also made significant theoretical contributions. Ernest Lacey held a low-ranked engineering position in the Indian Irrigation Service in the Punjab region when he published his regime theory for designing irrigation canals. Most engineers now spend all their time and energy dealing with the bureaucracy. I once met an enthusiastic engineer who, after a long conversation, told me that the system rewards those who are good at paperwork, not actual work.
