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Search committees scooping applicants’ ideas?

In our September “how can we help you?” thread, a reader asks:

Is there a risk that people on search committees might take applicants’ “next project” ideas, run with them, and try to scoop the topic? I’m curious how specific or general you should be when describing your future research agenda in job applications (research statement), especially in highly competitive, “trendy” fields like the philosophy/ethics of AI.

Especially if you’re not a grad student but someone in a TT position trying to make a lateral move? I mention this because if you have a grad advisor and faculty and other people who know your current work, they might be able to vouch for you in case someone does try to scoop you, but as a faculty member in not well-known departments and you yourself aren’t well known, it seems like it’ll be nearly impossible to argue. And given the state of our discipline, more senior or mid-career but well-known people seem to get the benefit of the doubt more often than others.

I would certainly hope this doesn’t happen. Is this a real risk? If so, what’s the best way to manage it? (Please note: the Cocoon is not a place to make/air accusations–comments to any such effect will not be approved).

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8 responses to “Search committees scooping applicants’ ideas?”

  1. Anonymous

    I don’t know if this would happen. It seems to me very unlikely. But I don’t know. However, just like with the possibility peers stealing your ideas, my advice is just live your life, discuss your work freely, and be merry. The costs of being guarded and suspicious steal so much joy and opportunity as well, that you should just consider it an occupational hazard.

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  2. Anonymous

    God if this were a thing we should just burn the profession to the ground and be done with it. Fortunately, I have never heard of this being a thing.

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  3. Anonymous

    two reasons to think it isn’t a very big risk:

    1) many departments are looking to hire someone to fill a research gap, meaning they are less likely to be able/want to successfully scoop a candidate’s idea

    2) in large departments where 1 does not apply, often the search committees are quite large and several people read files, disincentivizing someone from stealing an idea that was read by several people to belong to someone else

    of course, it could happen that a search committee member, in the preliminary stages of reviewing applicants, is the only person to see a research statement, and decides to steal an idea. but in my experience of having to review 50+ applications very quickly, typically I am not reading research statements closely at this stage. When I am, I am FAR more interested in reading about what they have *already* published (to see if they have a solid record of publication)

    so all in all, i would say the risk is very low

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  4. Anonymous

    I am always quite surprised seeing this kind of concerns, though this is nothing personal against OP. People typically have way too many projects to work on rather than too few. I routinely decline collaborations (that come with free ideas). Also, it is rare that other people’s projects exactly interest you. Even if something strikes me as super interesting, I would be too lazy to steal *their* ideas, which requires publishing earlier (?), rather than building on their ideas. And of course, there is the ethical sense that I am not a thief. So this kind of questions just sound odd to my ear. But again, maybe it’s just me. I don’t even lock of my bike in public.

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  5. Anonymous

    While it is not quite the same thing, there have been comments on previous posts from people on job committees saying that they take pedagogical ideas from the things that job applicants write in their teaching philosophy, etc. I’m not saying that such a thing should never happen (generally I think that the more sharing about teaching methods the better), but as someone who has been on the market for the last several years, it doesn’t feel great to hear people on job committees openly admitting to poaching teaching ideas from applicants they decide not to hire.

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    1. Anonymous

      I guess I don’t see “taking pedagogical ideas from the things people write in their teaching philosophy” as ANYTHING like “stealing their research project.” Maybe I don’t know what kind of insanely specific thing you write in your teaching philosophy but:

      a) I think most people describe pretty generic things (break students up into small groups, have them collaborate on classroom norms, or even “flip the classroom” or “have students design a video” or something like that) that couldn’t really be “stolen” because they just clearly aren’t really special to that person.

      b) insofar as someone had a totally novel idea (I dunno- have students design their own video game using theory x or something? I think Jason Brennan had some kind of specialized business ethics teaching ideas he was giving people? ) i suspect people use the idea they were inspired by in a teaching statement much more generically like “that made me realize I could have my students do art projects or design a boardgame or something.” That’s much closer to research than anything like concerning plagiarism (it’s like hearing someone say “I am making x claim about promising” and you thinking “oohhhh promising sounds like a cool area” and then reading up on it and developing their own view.

      c) teaching just seems like a more collaborative thing. Its something we are doing as a service to students, the world etc, its not proprietary. And its not about individual attribution really. It would be fine if we all did the same thing if it turned out to be what works best. Whereas research is clearly attributive and includes a long history of citing people. (I don’t cite the first class I was ever in that broke up into small groups when I do that for my students and I don’t take myself to be wronging whatever professor taught that class. I don’t really know what it would mean to cite a teaching idea.)

      d) I would be surprised if this happened much though I’ll take your word for it that people have said they did it. In my experience, a very large number of people will admit to never reading teaching statements (even if they care about teaching! What people say about teaching is questionable evidence for how excellent they are at teaching.)

      e) I am sure that would feel terrible. But for what its worth (and I’m an n of 1, I know) I’ve never heard of someone being hired or not hired based on a teaching statement (like I said, I’ve heard a lot of people say they don’t read teaching statements and an equal number of people say they barely skim them or read them at best for the absolute finalist and even then only to look for red flags.)

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  6. Michel

    I’ll just echo people above: (1) your research interests are probably not reflected in the search committee or hiring department in the first place, (2) there are lots of eyes on the file, (3) very, very few people would be so-inclined in the first place, and (4) your work is already at an advanced stage; it would take a while to put together a new paper that wasn’t just obviously plagiarized

    And yeah, I think the more normal situation is to have more ideas than we can write up, rather than a dearth of them.

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  7. Anonymous

    I agree with the general sentiment – I’ve not heard of this happening. But: to follow up on Michel’s point (4) – keep in mind that a good “next project” idea is generally one that is already worked out. That is, ideally, you already have a draft of something for your “next project(s).” If you don’t, it can be hard to describe a “next project” in any reasonable amount of detail that makes it sound plausible, significant, and interesting.

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