I have one in the context of an academic lab. I was in the process of refactoring a project a coworker had left behind which was basically spaghetti code. Our l

I have one in the context of an academic lab. I was in the process of refactoring a project a coworker had left behind which was basically spaghetti code. Our lab had a collaboration with another lab, and that lab offered to extend the functionality of our code base for mutual gain. They assigned this project to a Ph.D. student who picked it up as part of their Ph.D. thesis. I hooked this researcher up on our Github and asked them to send me anything they had about their project (requirements, design, issues, desired interface blah blah) so I could understand their plan and prepare for the integration. Fast forward 6 months and I still had not received anything. They also had not committed any code to the repo I had set them up with. I contacted them and said that it would be difficult for me to insure that our programs would interface correctly if I had no idea what the interface was supposed to look like or what their program was supposed to accomplish. She said she "was working on it". After several more months of not hearing anything and being under time pressure myself, I contacted her and demanded she upload her code to Github immediately. She refused, stating that this code was her personal property and that she was concerned I would "steal her IP". I lost it and sent her an email, CCing her adviser and my adviser, informing her that all her work was the property of her employer, and that if she didn't upload it I would contact our university's legal department and inform them that she intended to steal IP that was university property. At this point her adviser called me and quietly informed me that the reason she hadn't uploaded anything was that she had nothing to upload. She had been struggling for over a year and had made 0 substantive progress on her project, lacked the programming and scientific knowledge to do what she wanted to do, and was faring very poorly as a researcher. She was subsequently rushed through their program and graduated in 3 years from a program that typically takes at least 6 years to complete. The project never got finished.