======= Date Modified 21 Sep 2010 22:43:06 =======
OK, first the disclaimer. I don't know anything about your area of research (proteins etc) and have no idea of the kind of situation that prevails in your lab, nor do I know how your line manager (principal investigator) is. So my opinion may well prove to be wrong after all - and let's hope it does for you.

However, I have seen a horrible example of a similar kind of situation, although slightly different from yours.

I know of a PI who made a postdoc work on a project using a technique that only this postdoc had the expertise in (within that group). Once the postdoc had mastered the procedure and produced reliable results, the PI brought another postdoc onto the project under the pretext of "speeding up" the work, even though that second postdoc was supposed to be 'officially' working on a separate project altogether. So the 1st postdoc spent quite a few weeks teaching this entire methodology to the 2nd postdoc (because the latter had no experience in it). Once the 1st postdoc had taught everything to the 2nd one, the PI fired the 1st postdoc. To save money!

The 2nd postdoc was then burdened with TWO projects to work on simultaneously, although officially he was meant to be working on only one. But in the process, the 1st postdoc was robbed of all the credit for allll the hard work he had done to develop his methodology.

So I would always be very careful in situations where another person of similar standing was doing similar sort of work as yours. It has the potential to get ugly.

Is it possible to view the Case for Support of a grant proposal that has been successful? The research councils seem to make available a brief summary of the proposal, but not the actual details.

No, I don't want to steal anyone's ideas. Lol.

Someone has won a grant recently and I suspect she may have included someone else's ideas in the proposal. So just want to find out the details. How do I get access to the full Case for Support she wrote? It's government funded (i.e. publicly funded), so surely it should be available to public for having a look?

Hi Sneaks, yes that's the thing. If someone is asked to work on, say 3 projects, when they are realistically meant to be have adequate time for only 1 project, he/she is bound to under-perform, isn't it? And then the PI can take that as an excuse to get rid of them. That's why I said it sounds dodgy.

As a matter of fact, postdocs receive fixed-terms contracts to do specific projects. So isn't it illegal to ask them to do more than that?

I know of a research group in the UK where the Principal Investigator makes his PhD students and postdocs work on far more projects than they are supposedly funded for. If they refuse to do it, he terminates their studentship/contract. Isn't that dodgy/illegal? If a postdoc position, for example, is funded to do one particular project, can the PI legally squeeze in two or more projects in that slot?