This is my considered reply to the email I received from Dr.Yong-Cheng (Shi). The two previous posts would need to be read to appreciate the background to the dispute that exists between said gentleman and myself. Suffice it to say that it's about intellectual property, namely the patent that he and his three colleagues took out on a method for making resistant starch based on work (unattributed) that I published in 1986.
Link to his patent: US patent issued July 25,2006 "Resistant Starch Prepared by isoamylase debranching of low amylase starch"
Ref. to my published work:
Berry, CS (1986) Journal of Cereal Science, 4, 301-314
"Resistant Starch: Formation and Measurement of Starch that Survives Exhaustive Digestion with Amylolytic Enzymes During the Determination of Dietary Fibre."
Abstract (key passage in italics):
Heat processed foods can contain appreciable amounts of resistant starch(RS) that have the ability to survive prolonged incubation with alpha-amylase and other amylolytic enzymes. The occurrence of RS has important implications for dietary fibre(DF) determination and, possibly, for human bowel physiology also. Studies using cereal and potato starches have identified three key factors that influence yields of RS after heat-processing, ie amylose content, processing temperature and water content. The highest yields of RS(20-34% of total dry weight) were obtained from amylomaize starches, either raw or processed, and from amylopectin starches (32-46% RS) after incubation with alpha -(1->6)de-branching enzyme (pullulanase)followed by heat-processing. In contrast, the lowest yields of RS (0.2-4.2%) were obtained from intact (ie non-debranched amylopectins), with or without heat-processing. Yields of RS from wheat starch were affected primarily by processing temperature, reaching levels of about 9% in a single cycle of autoclaving at 134°C with excess water and subsequent cooling (cf levels of less than 1% in uncooked wheat starch)and higher levels still (about 15%) after 5 repeated cycles of autoclaving and cooling. A similar increase in yields of RS was seen in dilute (1%) starch suspensions that were subjected to repeated cycles of heating to 100°C, followed by cooling and storage. The time of storage after gelatinisation was only important in these dilute systems: levels of RS in freshly-prepared concentrated starch gels(typically 57-67% H20) or in white bread did not alter significantly on storage.
Reply:
1. Relax, Dr. Yong-Cheng (Shi) et al* : I'm not going to challenge your patent, at least not now. Indeed, I hope it earns you and your sponsors lots of dollars through royalties and licences. I may then come back later and claim a share of the proceeds - on the grounds that your patent is a straight crib of what I published in the open literature, back in 1986.
2. Relax, Dr. Yong-Cheng(Shi): I'm not going to contact your new employers - Kansas State University- accusing you of plagiarism.
It would be easy for me to do so. After all, how many people move from industry - as you have recently done- straight into a high-level academic appointment on the strength of a few published papers as you have succeeded in doing?
One has to assume that it was your patents, to which you give prominence in your current resumé, that so impressed your new employers, knowing that they too are patent-hungry, in common with so many new-age US universities. I expect they also like the research funding that you brought with you from your previous employers: the National Starch and Chemical Company (well over a quarter of a million US dollars).
In short, there's nothing for which I can report you. Kansas State University knew exactly who/what they were getting when they offered you that appointment - a commercially-aware "business scientist" who has no qualms about patenting someone else's discoveries.
3. Relax, Dr.Yong-Cheng (Shi): I am not going to denounce you here for failing to acknowledge my discovery in your patent application. Florid example it may be of plagiarism, but you have made it ridiculously easy for me to show the way in which a man's work can be turned to commercial advantage without so much as an acknowledgement.
No, my real ire is directed at some others who have taken out patents on my work, who have simply paid lip service to my original (and some might say, including yourself, unexpected discovery) by merely including my name in a list of references, without saying why it's there. Another has cited the title of my paper, but omitted my name, making it impossible for patent assessors and others to locate and read my work. Now that's what I call sneaky!
4. So what's my next step? Options are limited, given that the system of granting patents and licences seems indifferent as to who did the original work (at least in the US, and possibly elsewhere). All the rewards go the individual and/or company that files the first patent application. This means that a discovery made in Europe say, supported in my case by public funds (UK Ministry of Agriculture,Fisheries and Food) can be commercially exploited in the USA, earning perhaps millions of dollars for the patent holder, while the discoverer and his research sponsors get nothing- not even an acknowledgement for venturing into print with news of the breakthrough. Yet who was it who took the flak at the Kelloggs' Symposium, and at an Edinburgh conference, and even from his own colleagues, for describing a way of making resistant starch that seemed to fly in the face of received wisdom at the time? "Don't you realize that retrogradation of starch requires long chain amylose?" they asked. "How can you possibly claim that short-chain linear alpha-glucan (debranched amylopectin) can retrograde to resistant starch?"
To which my response was effectively "Sod your theory- these are the results I obtained by putting aside all preconceptions about the nature of RS."
So my next step is to wait a week or two for a reply from Dr.Yong-Cheng and his commercial sponsors who filed a resistant starch patent based almost entirely on my technology. I want to know how they propose to recognize my input - in a tangible way.
If I hear nothing, then I shall contact the media, suggesting it's high time that certain patent applications, especially ones filed in the US, were exposed for what they are - legalized robbery.
*Full list of patent applicants:
Inventor(s)
Yong-Cheng Shi
Xiaoyuan Cui
Anne M. Birkett
Michael G. Thatcher
Update: Wed March 26th
Changing the subject, have you ever wondered about the National Debt? Has it been rising or falling under the present Government? You might be forgiven for thinking it was falling, given that "prudent" gesture of Gordon Brown's a few years back of using the proceeds of the auction of 3G licences (some £20 billion pounds as I recall) to reduce out National Debt.
For the full grisly picture of what has since happened, read the comment by Cheeky Monkey on the comments of a Telegraph thread (ostensibly about skilled immigrants). It will make your hair curl. It certainly made mine (see later comment in response to Cheeky Monkey.
Update Thursday March 27
Here's an interesting site I discovered yesterday through idle googling.
http://bastard-bloggers.blog.co.uk/2008/01/20/my_telegraph~3603550
Health warning: don't visit it if you are averse to expletives, or if you consider "My Telegraph" to be a shining and inviolate example of civilized behaviour.
See also: http://bastard-bloggers.blog.co.uk/ (home page)
BTW: this disillusioned ex-blogger/MyT escapee gets a walk-on part in the above link
Second update:Thursday
Sometimes you read something, and wonder if it could really have happened, so one reads it again, looking for extenuating circumstances, and finding few, if any, that could account for the horror of what occurred. Today was an example - the story about the young girl with a "phobia" for dentists.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/27/ndentist127.xml
She woke from a general anaesthetic to find that all - yes ALL- her milk teeth had been removed, and died some four weeks later after refusing to speak, or eat anything except watermelon. Is that surprising: she must have felt an immense sense of betrayal, of being "punished" for not being brave where dentists are concerned.
How could such grotesque medical decision-making have taken place in a NHS hospital? The parents want those concerned to be run out of the profession. Unless there are some clinical factors that we don't know about - then so do I.
From the archives (Daily Mail, almost two years ago):
It's very noble of Paul to be saying that Heather's no gold digger. But who needs to dig for the stuff, when there's a pantechnicon full of it, sitting on the drive way, with the keys in the ignition?
- Colin, Antibes
Yet another update (Thursday)
Sad to say, the standard of reporting in The Telegraph goes from bad to worse. Regarding yesterday's State visit by Nicolas Sarkozy and his chic new wife, the Telly shows a picture of Sarky next to Her Maj' at the State banquet. The caption reads: "The Queen sat beside the French Premier". Ouch, you just can't get the staff these days.
To add to the confusion, the article continues:
Seating arrangements were carefully planned, with the Duke of Edinburgh placed opposite the Queen and Mr.Sarkozy, between Miss Bruni and French justice minister Rachida Dati.
Anyone remember the time when Fleet St. employed people called "subeditors" ? Their job was to scrutinise copy, and deliver caustic stinging remarks to those guilty of sloppy journalism, replete with threats of imminent P45s. These days, it would seem, anything goes. What is especially irritating is the Telegraph's failure to provide contact details that would allow incorrigible dyed-in-the-wool nitpickers such as myself to report misreporting (if you see what I mean).
And so to bed, but not before posting the following:
Telegraph: Schools must take in badly behaved pupils
Studio schools ? Good heavens! Do you mean to say that this Government has finally woken up to its obligation to train the academically less-gifted for well-paying vocational careers, like plumbing - ones that enhance status and self-respect? Gosh, before you know what, this Government, stuck for the last 10 years at the bottom of its learning curve, might just see fit to revive those old-fashioned apprenticeships. Not before time, some might say. It's maybe just as well those industrious Poles are heading back home, if those slow-learner serial botchers, Balls and Brown, have indeed finally hit on a way of replacing their sorely needed skills.
Posted by ColinB on March 27, 2008 8:24 PM
Update Friday March 28 08:42
"Colombia seizes 60lbs of depleted uranium" is an item in today's Telegraph. It goes on to say that the uranium was intended to make a dirty (radiological) bomb as a terrorist weapon for spreading radiation. Someone's got their science wrong there, methinks. Depleted uranium is uranium metal from which the fissile U-235 isotope* has been removed (for nuclear reactors or bombs) leaving the major(99%)non-fissile isotope, U-238, which is only weakly radioactive. Indeed, it's probably a greater chemical than radiological hazard.
The major use of depleted uranium has been for making the hardened tips of armour-piercing shells, due partly to its great density.
Uranium has a density of about 19 grams per cc (cf lead of 11.35 g/cc)
Readers may recall that large amounts of depleted uranium were scattered around the Iraqi and Kuwait deserts during the first Gulf War, and were considered a prime culprit (rightly or wrongly) for causing "Gulf War syndrome".
* more correctly "nuclide".
