I Just Want to Scream

I found out today that my latest "brilliant" masters thesis idea has been specifically pointed out as an interesting and important area for future research in a February 2009 journal article by a certain professor at a certain top 10 marketing department. In the discussion, he even mentions the exact same other line of research that had me thinking of this particular idea as a likely improvement on current methods. (I am not willing to be specific because I still hold this glowing, fragile idea protectively against my chest.)

Maybe I should be happy, since this publication sort of validates that it was a good idea. But you know, I already knew it was a good idea. Apparently, it was too good for me to get first crack at it. Not that I know that he is already working on this follow-up project that is almost exactly like the thesis I had in mind, but I feel totally scooped nevertheless. (I mean, god, I was talking to Robert about an affiliated idea to this one just this past Saturday!) I guess I needed to get off my duff a couple of years ago to get to this idea first. Of course, within minutes of reading this introductory paper I had thought of various ways to follow this up and some potentially interesting offshoots, but ... it doesn't feel like my idea anymore. I hope that this feeling of disappointment (bordering at moments on rage) passes soon.

You know how I sometimes like to say that there is nothing wrong with being a researcher who doesn't do ground-breaking work but rather contributes to the science by testing, refining, defining boundary conditions of, etc., other people's big theories? That this is valuable and satisfying work that I would be happy spending my life doing because I just love doing research? Well, that is still my official position, but the punch-in-the-gut feeling I had seeing my idea in print provides evidence that I really do want to do innovative work and have ideas nobody else has thought of yet. And while this idea was never going to cause a paradigm shift a la Martin Seligman, it was something different from what other people are doing in the general field. And yeah, maybe it's somewhat silly to think that one's masters thesis is going to be very competent, let alone inventive, but I still hope that it is both.

Well, my undergraduate psychology advisor assured me that eventually I would have many more ideas than I could ever follow up on myself. So I am going to keep adding to my list of research ideas. Maybe when it's thesis time, one of them will not have been looked at by someone else yet.