cc: diybio, biocurious, tito, indiegogo (is this a violation of indiegogo terms?)
Thomas:
The reason why this is annoying to me, personally, is that you didn't seem to do your homework, nor do you exhibit much professionalism.
I can't tell how much of your video or your product is directly copied from Pearl Biotech. Is Tito Jankowski aware of this? I think they (Pearl/Tito) have done presentations at BioCurious in the past, have an almost identical product selling for half the price of your own (http://www.pearlbiotech.com/c=1) and there are at least 2 instructables out there on how to make your own transilluminator ( http://www.instructables.com/id/Pearl-Gel-Illuminator/ , http://www.instructables.com/id/UV-Transilluminator/ ). It's considered bad form to repeat the work of others and not attempt to cite that work in the scientific community, and considering the accessibility of the instructables, the fact that you were creating this amidst the same community that originated some of the prior works, this is just uncool. SELLING that for twice the price to "greater fools" willing to give you money for the work leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. Then, there's the ethical and legal question: to what extent did you begin to offer for sale something that is open-sourced by Pearl Biotech BY-NC-SA (http://www.instructables.com/static/entry/license/BY_NC_SA.html)? Did you create it from scratch, or did you license it separately from Pearl? Why would Pearl license it to you without removing the competing product from their own website?
I don't know if you are sincerely apologizing, or if you think it is a joke (the "ha ha" part). But adding haha to an apology negates it and is extremely unprofessional. Failure to plan on your part does not give you the right to copy content nor use content without permission, especially since if the people involved knew about it in advance, we would have been happy to help. It abuses our good nature.
If you didn't do your homework with regard to a transilluminator, and aren't very serious nor particularly concerned about the ethics involved, why should you be a "believable" source for a lab on a chip? You might have a really important discovery or invention that could provide a big boost not only to patients lives but also to the DIYBio community, yet obscure that by showing flagrant disregard for the methods and ethics of science in a very public medium, behavior in which you stand to profit considerably. Things don't add up.
In my opinion, which you probably don't take very seriously, you should be spending your time, money, and skills on working up a scientific paper to let others reproduce your work and help to validate it. I would be happy to back such an effort. You can turn this around with a simple mea culpa and more transparency on your intent and methods.
But this? Does not feel right. Does not smell right. IMO: violates our code of conduct. http://diybio.org/codes/, and that of indiegogo http://www.indiegogo.com/about/terms.
Everyone: how do you feel about this? Are my concerns ungrounded?
-matt
On Thursday, November 21, 2013 3:43:46 PM UTC-8, Thomas Warinner wrote:
Hey guys,Let me start off by apologizing about including you in the video. I'm so embarrassed reading this haha We thought you guys knew what we were doing that day when filming- we didn't mean to step on any toes. We had a lot of issues with the video. We had the camera for a portion of two days, with half of the footage rendered unusable. That left us with so little content that we had to use stock video! The product we have are labeled "for education use only" for legal reasons. Most biotech companies have similar disclosures on their products (ex. BioRad). The first products we released, including the blue light transilluminator, were the first I ever designed or fabricated. The reason they are priced much, in the case of the blue light, on the higher end is 1. starting up we couldn't afford bulk materials making it far more expensive and 2. sourcing materials in the US. This is something I plan to remedy when I have the funds (buying in bulk). For now, I've cut the costs as much as I can and only make a small margin of profit on that item. Lastly, we were vague on the video because 1. The content we did film that went in depth were completely out of focus and 2. We didn't think it would be very interesting to the average indiegogo user. I have talked to Raymond about doing a demo at BioCurious soon.Many apologize for the lack of production value of the video haha. I worked with the time I had and the footage that survived.Cheers,Thomas
Under Discussion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQT-oQVaahg Anyone know more about this? it's an indigogo campaign, but it seems to be a bit under the radar...http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/lab-on-a-chip-diagnostics-in-the-palm-of-your-hand
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