Fuckin assholes stole my idea and had it patented 30 years before I was born!
"What do you mean a double gyroscopic core self-rectifying monorail was built in 1962?! Thats impossible..."
What's worse is when you have an idea, don't have any idea how to pursue it because you're not a professional [career] and don't have experience making whatever it is; and then you see a successful paper or product months or years later about that exact same idea, made by someone who actually knows what they're doing.
It's frustrating yet validating. Frustrating because, "that could have been me", validating because "I thought of the idea before it'd been developed too! I'm so smart."
I should start keeping a list of times when that happens. If I had a nickel for every time it happened, I'd have 2~3 nickels; which isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened two or three times now.
Studies generally take time, so if it were months later they likely had it before you. The years later is a maybe, but also possible because it takes time to get grants to do studies as well. Exceptions tend to be more urgent stuff like the pandemic, but even then we had SARS outbreaks decades ago and they've been studying it for a while, even if it wasn't specific SARS-COV-2.
I don't want to take away from your joy and validation. You sound like a generally curious person who is frequently churning out ideas.
But that's not how ideas (for doing experiments/doing research) work. Especially not in a scientific context. You have to have intimate knowledge of any matter to sift through a huge amount of various ideas and pluck out the ones that are feasible, that make sense and that are promising. That takes time and effort. Curiosity is obviously key, but actually pursuing any idea means a lot of work. It's much more frustrating than one might think, especially because it usually doesn't work the way you initially imagine it will. And most of these ideas need many years, or even decades to develop and study.
Yes, I'm very aware of everything you just said. Doesn't mean it isn't frustrating to find out that an idea you had was a good idea, but you couldn't study it because you don't know enough about the subject. I love science and engineering, but I didn't find that out until after I graduated and I don't have the money to "respec".
Sometimes I wish just being an "idea-person" would be a paid job.
Context for us uneducated?
I don't think any context is needed, it's just about when you have an idea that you think is great and novel but it turns out it has already been done 30 years prior.
Appreciate it. Thought it was a specific reference and i don't know who the person in the shot is
you have a genius giga brain blast moment, you feel like the most intelligent person on the world, and you immediately google it.
Only to find that it's been a thing for the last 50 years and nobody seems to care about it...
Okay thanks, thought i missed something that was being referenced
yeah no you're not missing out on anything except despair lol
Oh no. No no no. That ive got in spades. Feel free to steal as much of it as you want from me, it won't be missed if you do
fair enough, i've got plenty myself though, maybe you can sell it someone else.
I guess you could just take the shotgun approach and come up with so many completely crazy hypotheses that one of them is bound to be correct eventually.
This comes at the risk of being REALLY disappointed... ๐
I think p-hacking was invented sometime around the 90s as well, congratulations you matched the meme!
โI know that, that doesn't matter, I know you Mr. Rainey, that's what matters. You stole my story.โ
Do a confirmation study?
Actually no.
Realistically, I was never going to capitalize on the idea anyway. but on top of that if someone else has already had the idea and it's at least mildly successful then boom: automatic validation that it was a good idea.
I call it, "Billy and the Cloneasaurus."
Nits didn't steal your idea, he took inspiration!
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