Similar to a recent discussion, a paper in PLoS One has been called out by a commenter at the journal's blog who has started a heated discussion about a supposed intentionally missed citation of prior work: in other words, the authors stole the idea from the commenter. Lead author Andrew Clark makes a point of letting readers know that his group presented work well before. DrugMonkey says that this kind of thing happens all the time in science. "Scooping, unethical reviewing and under crediting the efforts of those who came in second are detrimental to individuals, which is bad. But the race to be first can encourage cheating and faking and blocking of grants in a way that is corrosive to the entire enterprise," he writes.
Indeed, competition in the halls of academia can be fierce. Jane at See Jane Compute compares two friends in opposite tenure situations, one where there is transparency and one where it's a guessing game. To her, it seems unfair and unduly stressful that a university would hide its tenure requirements (publication numbers, meeting attendance) from it applicants. What do you think?