December 07, 2008

Fairy Tales...

During my studies for my M. Sc., there were rumours about my supervisor having published data obtained by one of his Ph. D. students without that student's knowledge or permission, let alone giving him credit.

During my thesis research, I read some papers written by that supervisor. He could have produced one excellent publication with the data he had but, instead, half of it went into one paper, half into another, and half the data from each of these papers went into a third. Amazing: three papers for the price of one!

The supervisor died a few years ago. His obituary described him in glowing terms, emphasizing his generosity and the sacrifices he made for his students. When I was his student, he was nothing of the sort. I knew him as a work-shy incompetent who freely exploited others to maintain his reputation. Either he underwent a miraculous transformation or somebody wrote fairy tales about him.

El Cid

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