Breaking news from the state of Oklahoma:
Sook Shin stopped in a Panera for dinner. She left her computer, containing two years of grant-funded research that had painted a convincing picture of a cure for prostate cancer, in her car before going to pick up her food.
Predictably, the laptop in plain sight was stolen. Someone broke a window and made off with the computer.
And she had (drumroll.....) forgotten to back up her data.
In fact, Shin had never backed up her data. In two years of "groundbreaking" cancer research, she had kept all of her files on a single laptop. A laptop that was in no way protected, but left haphazardly in the backseat. No notebooks. No emailed inquiries. No printouts.
What do you suppose is the rest of this story? Because I think there's a lot more to this than "whoopsie! there goes that cure for cancer!!"
This is why nobody writes articles about Japanese mothers.
ReplyDeleteI bet they sell bridges as a sideline.
ReplyDeleteThere's a big piece missing from this picture.
Um. And they had no notes, and everybody in the lab used the same laptop, and they were never required to send an update on their research to the granting agency, and the store where she bought the laptop didn't keep a record of the serial number although Apple requires them to do that, and she didn't register the laptop with Apple even though that's the first thing you HAVE to do when you boot it up for the first time, so Apple would also have a copy of the serial number ...
ReplyDeleteThere is no cure for cancer on that laptop, but it's possible the granting agency wants to know what happened to the money.
And she never accessed a university network drive and wrote out anything on one of those drives? Who's kidding whom?
ReplyDeleteNews at 11!
And only offering $1000 dollars for the return of the computer, which is an Apple (so it probably cost two to three times as much). Yeah, I think they were facing an audit, myself.
ReplyDeleteSomething about the "P.S." at the bottom of the reward poster made me laugh:
ReplyDelete"PS. Thief, it is OK. Everybody makes mistake. Please return my computer safely...."
Yeah, something doesn't sit right with me either. No collaborators on a cancer project who also might have computers? Nothing stored at the lab? No conference presentations along the way that would have addressed the data? Seriously? Not so much as a few printouts?
ReplyDeleteThe PS doesn't lend any credibility either.
If she's telling the truth, she didn't find a cure for prostate cancer, because someone that fucking stupid and irresponsible is incapable of finding a cure for chapped lips (hint--it starts with "chap" and ends with "stick").
ReplyDeleteBut it doesn't matter. She's lying. Check google maps for the Panera she visited:
6800 N Western Ave
Oklahoma City, OK 73116
Take a look around. Yeah. That Panera--with all those cars in the parking lot parked close to the building, with all those big windows--looks exactly like the place where thieves would hang out in the parking lot when it's packed during dinner, waiting for some hapless woman to run in for two seconds, so they can break into her car during the dinner rush and steal her shitty old mac. The woman obviously doesn't know how thieves work. Not in the slightest.
The husband broke the window. Or she did. Before she left the house. The laptop was never in there to begin with. They've destroyed it or thrown it in a dump somewhere.
Then she called the police, filed the false report, and now she's hoping to get out of whatever mess she's gotten herself into.
She won't. They should ask to search her computers at home. They'll find all the "useful" stuff she downloaded there before she trashed the shitty mac, and none of it will be a cure for prostate cancer, or ass cancer, or head cancer, or any kind of cancer whatsoever.
Idiots.
Yeah, this seems odd.
ReplyDeleteAren't there some sort of standards in play for funded research?
It also seems inconceivable that this stuff wouldn't be on multiple machines, with primary data on a desktop. Or more likely on backed up, secure, networks / servers. And unless they're the only two people involved, there would be multiple machines.
Even so, as I tell my students, keep your shit in the trunk.
I now tell my students, on the "required texts and materials" part of my syllabus, that they're required to have, and regularly use, some sort of backup method, and that, as a result, I don't want to hear any story about lost work that involves more than a day's worth of effort (and that they really ought to back up immediately after, and probably during, any especially intense/productive work session). I use Mozy myself; it's not perfect (sometimes the automatically-scheduled backups don't occur, for whatever reason), but at least I'm limiting the amount of work I could lose to a recoverable (if still annoying/painful) amount, and, if my laptop were stolen, I'd be ordering a replacement to which to download my Mozy'd files and communicating with my insurance company, not putting up posters. I don't know much about how big grants in the sciences work, but I'd think there would be some sort of contract, and that, these days, the contract would include backup requirements. Also, since this is a medical study, I wonder whether HIPAA might come into play (not if she was just playing with cells, I suppose; I didn't read the article).
ReplyDeleteThey just want their computer back. The whole "cure for cancer" thing is pretty clever, especially prostate cancer angle, which might appeal to the (likely) male thieves. Personally, I would have gone with breast cancer. Everybody loves their mom.
ReplyDeleteMaybe not a "cure for prostate cancer, or ass cancer, or head cancer." But definitely "a cancer on the presidency" of OU. He must be embarrassed that he hired these shit-for-brains "researchers." Perfect opportunity to fire them (and send them to jail for fraud).
ReplyDeleteI'm drunk and even I can see through this horseshit.
Only complete idiots and criminals don't have the serial number for their Apple computers.
Remind me not to get cancer while these two idiots are alive and employed as researchers.
But it is Oklahoma, after all, so... Please, Jesus, help these poor lost souls! Please forgive them for being idiots. Please end their lives as quickly and painlessly as possible because they clearly have no idea how fucktarded they are.
Amen.
So we have the fakers trying to get away with inconclusive research. That's pretty plausible in my view.
ReplyDeleteOr, we have people who did some research, probably not very ground-breaking, but they are exaggerating the claims in order to get the computer back.
Or, we have a genuine person working very hard and being an absolute fracken idiot about common computer practices.
Reading this story sent my snowflake bells a-ringing.
CALLING ALL CMers: Back up your computer tonight. Use dropbox.com, burn a CD, run your backup program, copy it all onto webspace or a USB stick. There is no excuse for more than a day's work lost!!
Props to Stella for doing the extra research to see the Panera area. That's commitment. I'd hire you on a committee in a moment.
ReplyDeletejesus h! This really passes for news in Oklahoma? This is why the Chinese are laughing at us.
ReplyDeleteWhy not also claim that they found a severed thumb in their food while they were in the restaurant? Just for good measure.
"Oh, and the dog ate my wallet! Guess I can't pay for the meal. Goddamn shame, too, because I was going to cure cancer and leave a big tip for the waitress. Oh, well, too bad...."
@StellafromSparksburg
ReplyDeleteWouldn't she realize that filing a false report is a crime itself (I think it varies from state; either a felony or a misdemeanor) and that she is making it worse? Also, that isn't a two-person lab; there have to be other scientists or assistants working on the project or projects. When the authorities question them, woulden't they cave and admit that Shin and her husband Ralf Jankecht had been faking work? Or would they destroy their careers and lie for the couple? Finally, if both were committing fraud woulden't they know that the deck is heavily stacked against them and that there would be a good chance that their college, whatever government outfit(s) gave them a grant(s), and the law would hit them like a ton of bricks when the fraud was uncovered?
I don't know if these clowns are guilty or not or if it was a moment of perfect stupidity (those do happen.) I do know that people are innocent in this country before the law finds them guilty, and that the TV station hyperbolized this possible cancer cure if it did exist at all.
Rereading the article, I'm inclined to believe that the students simply told the TV crew that the labtop had some cancer research data on it. The authors of the article played that up so much that it makes the victims seem foolish. An advisor didn't make a big deal about backing up data and the students didn't take the initiative to do it themselves. That seems reasonable.
ReplyDeleteA drug addict could smash and grab and be out of there. They wouldn't think twice. The things Merely Academic notes are giant red flags. But the fact that a parking lot might have a lot of cars in it in the google maps photo doesn't impress me.
ReplyDeleteWhere I live the drug is heroin and the hot commodity to steal is metal to scrap. Next is a maternal relative's jewelry (because they are suckers and they'll go to the pawn shop and buy their stuff back instead of call the cops. Then the kids will add insult to injury by stealing and rehocking the same exact items). Third is a laptop. Down there I hear the drug is crystal-meth. But the specifics don't change the mentality. A car in that lot could be robbed.
Go to Bing maps and do the birds eye view. If you rotate it you can see that there are spots in the back where there are no windows to the restaurant.
@Strel-
ReplyDeleteDesperate people do desperate things. I had a friend once who ran over his own hand to avoid doing a final paper.
My guess is the husband's been paying her (and thus himself) with a research grant he had some control of, because he's the name (a search on him brings up his page instantaneously on google, and he's an associate prof--more searching reveals he has a "research team" and administers grant money).
The wife seems to be on the payroll, but a little fishing reveals that she is not on the "list of cancer researchers" at the OU cancer research website. She is co-listed with him as an author on several of his articles, but I can find no other sign of her anywhere.
Monkey business. All in the family. That seems far more likely than two researchers--two--not backing up vital, lifesaving data, and "forgetting" to keep a computer's serial number.
Plus, well, I watched the video of them. They're lying. She's sitting there, trying to cry, but not crying. Lip quivering, etc. But it's hard to manufacture real tears when you're lying.
Everything will get sorted out. Grant money can't just disappear into a mac void and get "stolen" at 12 noon on a Sunday from a locked car next to a bustling Panera. If the story stinks to us it stinks to a bunch of other people as well.
And I checked--it was noon, not dinner as the story and video initially seemed to indicate--at least that's what their "lost and found" poster indicated. Because all thieves break into locked cars next to a Panera on Sunday in broad daylight with a million church folk milling around.
Can you tell I'm trying to avoid answering student emails?
@StellafromSparksburg
ReplyDeleteYes, I can feel the avoidance from here....I was lazy and only going on the original story and a news website (which probably got its points from the news broadcast.) Still, some of my questions stand: why did they think they could BS their way through this? Fraud in science comes up all the time, and most if not all fraud is found out either quickly or within the lifetime of the fraudster. Why piss it all down the drain?
It will be interesting to see how this pans out.
Yeah, among other things I'd call this mystery "The Case of the Gullible Reporter." Whether Shin and Mr. Shin were lying, I don't know. But I can definitely see a reporter brightening upon thinking of a great "angle" for a story about how a cure for cancer was stolen. Maybe the reporter exaggerated for effect, or maybe she simply didn't understand that not all scientific research contains The Cure For Cancer, no matter what we tell granting committees.
ReplyDeleteI think they spent the grant money on hookers and blow, and the laptop has pictures on it.
ReplyDeleteWell, I know someone who had to type his whole dissertation a second time because the computer ate the first version. Since it wasn't based on a handwritten version, but it was doing the typing as the research went along, based on notes, it took another year to recover from the catastrophe. Now, that was 20+ years ago when back-ups were more of a pain in the ass (they weren't automatic and depending on the document might have to have been spread over several discs) and computer hiccups were more common. Nonetheless, a lot of pain could have been avoided without a whole lot of effort. The person was essentially intelligent, the catastrophe predictable, and yet it happened.
ReplyDelete