It's all about interpretation and perspective of one. This blog discusses my interpretation of this scenario. Back then, I was a little new to research collaborations and did not really know how funding and overall collaborations worked.
The scenario starts off like this, I happen to send one of my research softwares description (ReviewAid) to a research group on WhatsApp, and a surgeon from the group DMs me privately first, acknowledging my software and praising me heavily for it. It genuinely made me happy that a surgeon found my tool helpful for his research work.
Then, he asks me about my thoughts on risk of bias software concerning evidence synthesis. Coincidentally, I already had plans concerning the revival of RobotReviewer, which I had thought about around 6 months before this. So, I tell him my thoughts, my perspective about it and how I would make it if I were to make one from scratch, taking into account RobotReviewer's accuracy.
I also tell him about my thoughts on accuracy of modern day LLMs over ML for risk of bias assessment and my plans of testing RoB assessments using Hugging Face models specially fine-tuned for biomedical NLP. He was impressed and wanted to know, if I could make a software for him and his research organization he was associated with, which would be able to assess risk of bias of studies in their research work. I told him that I would be happy to do so, but would need some funding for it. He then tells me that he can provide me with funding for it and we can discuss the details further.
Fast forward, we did multiple zoom meetings to discuss the details of the software and the funding. He claimed to be a part of a medschool's research committee (the UK medschool ranked within 500 overall in the world). He tells me, he wanted me to make the software for his research organization and that it would be their primary tool for risk of bias assessment. Then when I actually ask for the funds, he tells me to make a demo which he would present to his research committee head and ask for their approval and take the funds from them.
But then again, I was under the impression that I would now be provided with funds. I wanted to pin-point LLMs accuracy for RoB and compare it with the ML models trained for RobotReviewer. He then kept delaying it and ultimately, told me to make the software putting my own money for its initial run. So, I ask him to provide me a fund of 100$ personally since I was the one doing everything, like making, writing the code, and even running trials to know its accuracy. I told him that this $100 would be his commitment, since according to him, he wouldn't have to do any of the actual work apart from providing the funds. He kept delaying and then in one of the zoom meetings, he says he simply did'nt have the money.
He would also have these Zoom meetings where he would tell me things like how he had a surgeon colleague who flexed working for NASA which he disliked, and wanted to flex something of his and that was the reason he wanted to "work" with me. He would also tell me things like how I was lucky to have been able to work with him since he could also have hired 2 cs freelancers to make the software instead of me. Overall, he kept delaying it further and eventually, there was no news from him. I set off in my own work and furthermore, cut contact with him.
So, my interpretation of this was that his plan might have been to make me create the software using my own funds, which he would then present to his committee using his own name, without involving me in the funding discussion, and potentially secure the funding himself. I started thinking about different possibilities. Say, if the project was discussed as requiring $2,000, would he potentially ask his committee for $5,000 and keep the rest for himself? I obviously have no way of knowing whether he would have actually done this, but this was genuinely one of the thoughts that crossed my mind at the time. Another possibility I started thinking about was that, since I didn't even belong to the country he worked in, he could have simply cut me off after getting the funding and kept the money himself, perhaps making some excuse that the software was unsuccessful, or even claiming that he had lent me the money and I was the one who shoo'd off with it. Again, I have absolutely no way of knowing whether any of this would have happened. These were simply the scenarios I started imagining based on how the collaboration had been progressing. Things I found out about him, such as his plans to leave the exact research committee and hospital he worked for after a year and his history of moving between countries, were also some of the factors that increased my suspicions. I had started wondering what would happen to the project, and to my involvement in it, if he left the institution anyway.
The things he did, some of those seemed very unprofessional like not committing to the funding, lack of communication just because I was much younger than him, him even vaping in one of the Zoom calls, telling me how he needed funds to cover his PhD, planning to name the software after his and my own real name, or him telling me to MAYBE make a private version using the funds and charge researchers to use the software if its accuracy was much better than RobotReviewer.
I haven't mentioned a lot of information, such as what kind of surgeon he was, the country he was based in, the medical school's name, and other specific details that contributed to my interpretation of what might have happened next. I did not want to reveal and I definitely do not want him to read this. Any research senior who follows ideals similar to his is probably better off not wasting their time, or mine, on a collaboration.
Looking back, I feel like I probably overthought about it, but I feel much better for not collaborating with him. Who knows? Maybe this is how some actual research collaborations work?
