On and on

One last quick note about what's been going on with Maastricht and Dr. Moens, and only because this is so outrageously wrong that I was seriously considering filing a libel suit:

Apparently, when Dr. Moens discussed the article in question with people (I have no way of telling who she's discussed this with), she would send the draft of the review before I'd started, and present that as "proof" of my non-contribution, rather than sending them the draft that I had left behind. You, astute reader, probably realize the audacity and sheer--well, "idiocy" comes to mind, but "logical inconsistency" is more in line with the break in terms of sussing out who contributed what. To whit:  how could I have worked on it if I hadn't started at the lab yet?

In other words, she's chosen to flat-out lie about what I've contributed to the article to at least two people that I'm aware of, and probably more.  And the co-authors of the paper wonder why I won't "be reasonable" and settle for fourth author.  I am, I think, quite reasonable--tit for tat, that kind of thing.  Screwing me over first by leaving my name off of the review, and then trying to screw me over by offering me an authorship which may as well suggest that I didn't actually write any of it, and then screwing me over yet again by lying to people to convince them that I didn't do shit on this review, doesn't exactly leave me inclined to see things from her point of view.  I dunno, being bitchy about this seems like the only "reasonable" response one could have.

I wasn't planning on writing more about this--like I said, happier things exist to blog about--but if there's one thing worse than being plagarized, it's being lied about. And this is apparently what she's been doing the whole time (I emphasize "apparently" because I can only glean her activities from the emails she's sent out regarding the matter).  You can have many opinions about me--I'm a terrible blogger, and this is too public a forum to discuss sensitive issues like this--but you can only skew the facts so far.   And one fact that cannot be skewed is:  she copied my draft, and published it without my name on it as an author.

I've dropped the idea of the libel suit--I doubt it'd get very far, and lawyers are expensive and there's not really much to show for it in the end.  And the ethics committee is probably debating this (or reading this) right now.  Still, though, it does put a dent in one's faith:  that science is objective, thoughtful, and fair.