our collaborators told us they werent going to publish their work but they have and in the same journo we were going to publish in. it's open warfare now!

That's happened to us. Can't really say any more cos of confidentiality issues, just wanted to sympathise. Some people are really hard-faced.

it's ok. it just seems that they've given us the structure for our paper, i.e. a point by point destruction of theirs! rarrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, go get 'em!

Aww, that's nothing. Someone in our group (A) gave something to someone in the next door lab (B), thinking that our boss had agreed to it. They (B) are now directly competing with us on this project (using our constructs), and are now saying they got the samples from another rival lab (c). The other lab (B)is collaborating with a new group (D), that is headed by an ex-postdoc from our lab. This ex-postdoc (D)promised to always ask us to collaborate with him first, but obviously hasn't kept that deal. Meanwhile group B says they are also colaborating with lab (E), which is an absolute top class lab. We've heared from the ex-mphil student of another lab (F), who is now doing a phd in lab E, that E is not colaborating with B.
The lab heads of lab A and B have both told their people not to talk to the other lab.

Meanwhile, lab E have discovered a new gene in a patient cell line they recieved from us, A. We (A) discovered, that this cell line has a mutation in an undiscovered gene. So, E should have offered us a joint authorship on this gene found in our cell line (as we gave them this cell line with the agreement on a joint authorship). E say that they got a second cell line from lab G, which also has a mutation in this new gene - and therefore didn't really need our cell line to discover the new gene. That's obviously bollocks- they found the gene in our cell line and then stumbled on another cell line once they new what they were looking for.

Anyone actually read that?

That was a bit of hard work to follow that.

So who's shagging B????

Stu- do you really want the full version A to G ???? With who told whom what over a beer? How my supervisor talks about unpublished data at conferences? People stealing other peoples conference posters??? No, please! I want to stay sane!

Sixkitten- one things for sure- if we shagg B we've got to make sure there's no moaning, groaning or YES!YES!YES!YEEESSS! going on, as we're technically not allowed to speak to B.

Just have a massive brawl and sort your problems out like men, and have the biggest fight your uni has ever seen. Bite their ears off, stab them with broken test glassware, throw computer monitors at each other (not flat screens, they don't weigh enough) and make petrol bombs.

I know, I come up with the best ideas, you don't need to say it

this isnt inter-lab rivalry. our collaborators are a big US biotech company :(