Posted on 07/24/2014 5:54:27 AM PDT by CharlesOConnell
Using only six fish and six tanks, a 6th-grade science fair entrant was able to demonstrate last year what is being hailed as a remarkable discovery: Lionfish, an invasive species found up and down the Florida coast, can also survive in nearly fresh water.
There's just one catch: That student may have stolen her idea from a former graduate student her scientist father may have once worked with, reports UPI.
Zack Jud, a marine biologist who published very similar results in 2011, says the recent news surprised him because his years of work leading to similar findings are being ignored.
He calls now-13-year-old Lauren Arrington the daughter of his "former supervisor's best friend." Arrington's dad, Albrey Arrington, has a PhD in fish ecology and is reportedly listed on Jud's 2011 research paper as a contributing author.
"At this stage in my career, this type of national exposure would be invaluable," Jud writes on Facebook. "I feel like my hands are tied. Anything I say will come off as an attempt to steal a little girl's thunder, but it's unethical for her and her father to continue to claim the discovery of lionfish in estuaries as her own." Whatever the elder Arrington's involvement on that paper, the Central Florida Aquarium Society notes that his author listing on Jud's paper shows that "he was clearly aware that lionfish were found in low salinity parts of the estuary years before the science fair project was carried out," though he reportedly didn't have anything to do with Jud's actual research.
In a later comment on Facebook, Jud says, "Now there's a petition on the web demanding that the young lady be added as an author on my most recent scientific publication," where, he says, he did name her in the acknowledgements section, "because apparently I stole her idea." (Before this revelation, Lauren's work had blown away other scientists.)
Western society has given itself the organization best suited to its purposes based, I would say, one the letter of the law. The limits of human rights and righteousness are determined by a system of laws; such limits are very broad. People in the West have acquired considerable skill in interpreting and manipulating law. Any conflict is solved according to the letter of the law and this is considered to be the supreme solution. If one is right from a legal point of view, nothing more is required. Nobody will mention that one could still not be entirely right, and urge self-restraint, a willingness to renounce such legal rights, sacrifice and selfless risk. It would sound simply absurd. One almost never sees voluntary self-restraint. Everybody operates at the extreme limit of those legal frames.
I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale than the legal one is not quite worthy of man either. A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high level of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relations, there is an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man's noblest impulses. And it will be simply impossible to stand through the trials of this threatening century with only the support of a legalistic structure.
— Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 8 June 1978, Harvard University
This Zack Jud guy seems to be upset that some 12 year old girl stole his thunder. I read the poorly written article (they don’t seem to require writing skills to be a writer these days) and it appears that what this girl did was to do an experiment to test the theory that Lion Fish could migrate into freshwater estuaries. Jud didn’t test his own hypothesis or his own research.
The girl did and he’s upset because she didn’t credit him.
Now everyone is trying to accuse her of plagerism.
Her laboratory tests were completely independent of his own field research.
More like 6th grader’s father “stole his idea.”
When our child did her science projects many years ago, it was easy to tell which ones had parental help and which didn’t. I have a hard time believing that this young lady was not helped by her father, especially if he was friends with the former supervisor of the marine biologist who was working on the same thing a few years before.
But so what?
“Now everyone is trying to accuse her of plagerism.”
How is this plagiarism? We all get ideas from thousands of sources every day. That’s why we have Books and the likes...
Plagiarism is the “wrongful appropriation” and “stealing and publication” of another author’s “language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions” and the representation of them as one’s own original work. Which, BTW, I didn’t just make up...
All scientific work has it’s root in the work of others.
The good news is that lion fish are yummy.
Not only good eating, but I am wondering how they spread, since they are territorial and tend to stick around one particular place. In some areas, sports divers leave a floating marker so the spearfishers can come back and spear them.
Have also read that, in some places,the predators, like groupers, have learned to eat them despite the spines.
It is a 6th grade science fair, this Marine Biologist PUBLISHED his findings in 2011, thus he should get credit for the discovery. However; who expects 6th graders to come up with new and ground breaking discoveries? Generally they will try to duplicate other peoples experiments. So why is this guy so upset? His discoveries are not allowed to be tested by others? Has he ever heard of peer review? What are they teaching scientists these days?
Oh, silly me, they are teaching them how to beg for grant money.
Interesting to know. I like the idea of groupers eating them. My son does quite a bit of spearfishing I will ask him if he has seen any markers around here.
I think he is more upset by the girl’s father sharing the research they did together with his daughter for her project.
Whatever happened to the Science Fair rule of “Do your own work”?
He "discovered" that lion fish have the ability to live in relatively fresh water environments. The 6th grader did an experiment to determine how fresh the water could be and still not kill the fish. Frankly I'm not so sure that Jud even discovered anything that commercial fisherman didn't already know. He just documented his findings in a journal. She, OTOH, performed independent experiments to determine the exact environments in which it is possible for Lion fish to exist. I think his "discovery" was more or less irrelevant to her experiments. There was no need to give him any attribution. He's just jealous that she got all the publicity.
He’s just jealous that she got all the publicity.
I have to agree with you. The 6th grader actually seems more mature.
My information is from friends who went diving in Bonaire.
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