nods This is the exact same situation as entrepreneurs and their fear of others "stealing their ideas." For years and years people would hoard their ideas, ask

nods This is the exact same situation as entrepreneurs and their fear of others "stealing their ideas." For years and years people would hoard their ideas, ask people to sign NDAs and generally be paranoid dicks about their work. But in reality ideas almost never get stolen! They arise independently, sure, and on a long enough time line good ideas will be acted on, but in the near-term this is almost never the case. The situation for scientists is exactly the same. On a timeline of writing papers (3 years from original research, say 5 papers). No one is going to steal your data and get it published first! It could happen, and so people are afraid. But it won't because your data is hard to interpret, and people are lazy and they people have their own data anyway. There needs to be pressure from a lot of different places to get the point across, but the reality is that sharing is ultimately a great resource for everyone but in the near term not a threat to your ability to publish!