21 - Theft

Summary

In 1970, as a woman and an assistant professor at a little-known Catholic university, I encountered many dilemmas imposed on me from higher up in the academic hierarchy, even involving behavior toward me that violated professional ethics. One particular incident stands out in my mind. Here, in brief outline, is what happened.

I submitted a paper to a fairly young but already prestigious journal. The paper reported a dramatically novel phenomenon in the relatively new field of cognitive vision. It showed that there was a visual response in a blank area of a visual image, corresponding to whether or not that area appeared to be in back or in front of a striped grating. In other words, the visual system was computing relative depth in a blank area when there was no actual physical stimulus in that area; hence, it was responding to something in the mind.

In response to my submission, the editors asked me if I would mind them running the experiment I had described in the paper. They had “superior equipment,” they said, and could do it better.

What did they mean? This could have been a legitimate request had they meant that they wanted me to add some conditions. Then why didn’t they just ask me to add some conditions, or at least collaborate with them on such conditions? No. In fact, what they had said was, quite simply, that they wanted to steal my work and publish it as theirs, not mine.