Greg Garcia Case supplemental information.
As mentioned in the Carmen Choi case supplement, officially, a grant proposal
submitted for consideration by a funding agency is viewed as confidential information.
Not only does this mean that the researchers asked to review the proposal are
not supposed to share it with anyone else, but they are also usually instructed
to destroy all paper and electronic copies of the proposal when they are done
writing their review of it for the funding agency.
Many grant proposals now include a statement from the person submitting the
proposal attesting to the fact that they themselves have written the proposal,
come up with the ideas driving the proposed research, and affirm that the information
presented in the proposal is, to the best of their knowledge, accurate. Federal
funding agencies regard it as a serious matter if someone claims the work in
a grant proposal is original and accurate when it is not.
Greg Garcia Case frequently asked questions
Carmen Choi says that Hal Edmund's synthetic pathway is identical to hers but
doesn't actually work. Can Greg Garcia know that that's true?
SInce Greg Garcia has been working with Carmen Choi as she revises her grant
proposal, he has probably seen enough to know that Hal Edmund's synthetic pathway
matches Carmen's. However, unless he's done the experiments himself (which he
hasn't), he wouldn't be able to tell that the magnesium-intermediate doesn't
work.
How important is it for Greg Garcia to cultivate personal relationships in his
professional community?
While personal relationships are not something you're explicitly scored on (like
publications or grant money) in your tenure evaluation, they can make a real
difference. Relationships with colleagues in his department matter because these
colleagues will be the ones evaluating Greg Garcia to decide whether he should
get tenure or not. Relationships with other members of the professional community
of biochemists matter too, not only because they may provide collaboration opportunities
or invitations for Greg to present his work elsewhere, but also because Greg's
tenure evaluation may includes letters from scientists at other institutions
evaluating Greg's research and impact on the field of biochemistry.
If Hal Edmund was a reviewer on Carmen Choi's grant proposal and stole her idea,
would he get in trouble?
If the granting agency found out about it, yes. However, it might be very hard
to prove such theft, especially since peer reviewers are often working in the
same scientific area -- and on some of the same hot problems -- as the people
submitting the grant proposals. It might be possible for the reviewer to say
they had already worked out the same experimental method themselves. In this
case, it might come down to demonstrating through actual experiments that Hal
Edmund's synthetic pathway doesn't work.
Could exposing Hal Edmund as a thief get Carmen Choi into trouble?
Maybe. Carmen did put an intentional mistake into a grant proposal, which amounts
to lying to the granting agency and the peer reviewers. As it happens, that
intentional mistake seems to have caught a peer reviewer breaking the rules
by stealing an idea from a proposal under review, but that doesn't mean Carmen
didn't also break the rules.