The Snaked Idea
I guess this happens to anyone in research, but it happened to me today…
The build-up: You’ve been reading the literature, you’ve come up with nick-names for the relevant authors in the field, you feel ‘with it’ enough to make snap judgments about the papers that are clearly no good. Then the proverbial light bulb blinks on! “What a good idea I’ve just had,” you think. You even go so far as to tell your friends to demonstrate how clever you are!
The discovery: Now that you’re on to something hot, you start reading even more literature to get help with the techniques and see what kinds of results you have to beat to really wow the community. Suddenly… low and behold… damnit! Someone has already had, implemented, and published your idea! Alas… at least the idea worked, right? Now I just get to implement it, but no publishing allowed… oh well.
didn’t this just happen a few months ago in piled higher and deeper?