r/news • u/AudibleNod • 1d ago
Wyoming grad student accused of poisoning colleague arrested after attempting to flee to China
https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/article/wyoming-grad-student-accused-of-poisoning-colleague-arrested-after-attempting-to-flee-to-china/197
u/pponmypupu 1d ago
Wait, this is a separate case from the other poisoning case? what's with all the poisoning of colleagues?
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u/Allopurinlol 1d ago
Different case. This one’s in Wyoming
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u/KidOcelot 1d ago
Other one is in Berkeley CA, but that dude got off due to lax laws for criminals.
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u/Bluechariot 1d ago
Nope, they got off because the district attorney offered an overly generous plea deal, which contributed to her getting impeached.
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u/KidOcelot 1d ago
Criminal DA letting criminals go
…im tired boss
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u/Bluechariot 1d ago
Nobody said she was criminal.
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u/KidOcelot 1d ago
As a Bay Area resident, that specific DA has a record of letting criminals go, either on lighter charges or charges dropped.
That DA is already abedding. Might as well be criminal imo
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u/lacegem 17h ago
I was doing a little reading on her (Pamela Price) the other day. She wanted to avoid prison time for three gang members who shot a toddler. She's been accused/sued several times for anti-Asian discrimination, and the toddler was Asian while the shooters weren't...
And she still got 25% of the vote in the recent election to re-elect her. So clearly this is a positive track record for a significant number of voters in the area.
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1d ago edited 21h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/TheOutsideWindow 1d ago
Fortunately, in the eyes of U.S. law, ignorance is not a viable or valid defense.
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u/MCStarlight 1d ago
Meanwhile a guy in MD got 25 yrs in prison for putting his semen and urine all in his co-workers’ stuff at the office.
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u/AutomaticMedium8418 1d ago edited 1d ago
Culture in research labs can be very competitive sometimes, but having worked with labs (at US universities) with lots of Chinese graduate students and run by Chinese PIs, they can be especially intense in terms of workload and competition.
People of all nationalities have conflicts in labs but it seems to be Chinese graduate students who have the most cases of trying to poison their colleagues
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u/dogs_gt_cats 13h ago
Corporate R&D as well. And also, weirdly brutal towards other Chinese and Taiwanese expats.
I was doing a product build with a Taiwanese woman, and we were paired with a Chinese researcher. He treated me like gold, and treated her like absolute dogshit. I had to bring her along with me to every opportunity he offered because it wasn't fair, and he was not so happy about that.
One of the weirdest things about working in a.large multicultural corporation was learning to tiptoe around cultural and ethnic divides.
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u/munchanything 1d ago
Seems like it.
This kind of thing isn't actually new. I saw a documentary about something similar years ago. These two women had both learned under a a guy named Pai Mei, who was pretty famous in his field. There was some drama between them, and one of the ladies poisoned Pai Mei's fish soup.
Crazy thing is, the other lady was pretty violent and tried to kill the lady who poisoned the fish soup.
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u/Proxymanity 1d ago
Perhaps this is the beginning of another "viral tiktok trend"
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u/zubumafeau 1d ago
2 years probation, 1 day time served is the standard I believe.
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u/uraniumingot 1d ago
Wang failed her first attempt to defend her dissertation and became envious of her colleague’s success in discovering how to deliver RNA to human cells using bacteria.
I feel there is more to the story here. In almost all US PhD programs, you don't get to defend unless your advisor thinks you're ready to pass. The defense itself is just a formality. Someone failing their defense is almost unheard of. I've worked with people with half a brain that still managed to pass their defense. This is either a harsh/hostile advisor with a volatile narcissist, or a problematic student with serious issues.
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u/darwinooc 1d ago
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that maybe, just maybe, the person trying to poison another person and then flee the country just might be the one that has issues.
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u/donutknight 23h ago
I mean, it depends. Academia is a very competitive, high-pressure, and toxic place, and there are indeed a lot of narcissistic advisors.
I have a friend whose advisor had their 1:1 at 12:30 AM (not PM) and the daily team meeting at 9 AM, Monday to Saturday, and you have to physically stay in the lab in between.
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u/incidencematrix 1d ago
Failures are not common, but they happen. I have been on two committees where the student did not pass (though in both cases they did revise and make it through later), and several for which significant revisions were needed. No one wants that outcome, and yes, the advisor will usually try to delay if the student is not ready. But sometimes there are overlooked (or concealed) problems that only crop up under cross-examination by the committee. You also get cases where someone who is not quite ready is pushing/being pushed by needing to take a job, funds/visa expiring, etc. They may convince everyone that things are going to come together by the defense....and usually, they do. However, miscalculations can happen. So yes, the defense is a formality when everything is in order. But it is also an inspection, and the wheels will come right off that wagon if it turns out that something is very wrong. Those kinds of interventions are not fun, but they are part of the job.
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u/bilyl 1d ago
It’s not officially a “formality” and the people in this thread are being ridiculous. Your committee and advisor would never let you defend unless you were ready. It looks bad on EVERYONE if someone fails.
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u/Gain-Western 1d ago
We had to take a US government civics test as part of requirements to pass high school in my state.
It is a formality if you have been paying any attention in school. I could have taken it in my sleep since I had taken AP Government.
People are making a mole out of a molehill because someone used “formality”.
They need to go touch grass outside.
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u/polaris2acrux 1d ago
I don't know the policy of this department or university but it could be that the student was forced into defending because of timeline rules. That would be out of the advisor's hands, although it shouldn't even get to that point in terms of years of lack of progress. I have known of instances, not at my institution, in which students have not listened to their advisor and pushed for defending before they are ready or didn't follow any advice they received, or didn't make the necessary corrections in time and failed. It is rare though.
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u/obeytheturtles 19h ago
Hostile advisor, or just indifferent. If your primary advisor goes on sabbatical or something, a lot of times you just end up treading water if you aren't proactive about it. My first three years of grad school, I had my first advisor change schools (but stay on my committee), the second advisor retire and then die, and the third advisor just kind of assumed I knew what I was doing because my work was funded. It probably did set me back two full years, and I would not have finished without a lot of help from the world's best post-doc
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u/AtomicBlastCandy 1d ago
I showed your comment to my partner who has a PhD and she died laughing at your thought that the defense is “just a formality”
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u/Boring_and_sons 1d ago
It's "just a formality" only in the sense that by the time you're ready to defend, almost no one is in a position to fail. But the defense itself is not "just a formality" in the sense that you actually have to defend your thesis against a group of experts in your field who won't just let you pass for funsies. They take this seriously, as they should.
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u/deputybadass 1d ago
Just here as another Ph.D in the sciences saying, yeah, if you fail your dissertation something is horrifyingly wrong.
If you’re outside academia hearing “it’s just a formality” may come off blasé, but it really is. By the time you’ve made it there, you should have a few papers that you’ve written yourself, dozens of hour long seminars and conference presentations, and the actual blood, sweat, and tears of ripping through the literature and failed experiments to claw your way to any real results. Yes, your committee will grill you, but you should be able to casually put them in their place by then.
This doesn’t mean it’s a “diploma mill” as the other person said. It means that most PhD programs will have booted you far sooner if your weren’t going to make it through. It’s hard work, and the defense is more a celebration than a trial at that point.
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u/didsomebodysaymyname 1d ago
I don't know a lot about this, but if it's true almost no one fails their defense, then it is itself a formality, the real test was getting permission to defend.
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u/Haunting_Cap_8312 1d ago
It isn't 'just a formality' in the sense that it's easy. But no advisor worth a damn is going to let you try unless they are 99% sure you are gonna pass. Because you've done the work, not because the work was easy. Which is why very very few students fail in the actual defense. The ones who would have failed just don't do it.
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u/VortexMagus 1d ago
The fail rate is between 1-3% every year. That suggests that he is right that it is indeed a formality, in the sense that almost nobody fails.
I'm sure most all the students in the program take it seriously and put in a lot of work to make sure they don't fail, certainly, but I think if the professors in question really wanted you to fail the chances would be a lot higher.
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u/arand0md00d 1d ago
There is nothing new to the thesis committee at that point. They know what data you have and how you present it. There is even a pre defense meeting where they explicitly tell you these things. They will advise against defending if they will fail you.
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u/donutknight 1d ago edited 1d ago
It is. When I defended mine, my committee had already read my something-a-hundred-page thesis a couple of months earlier because no one can or wants to go through that stuff in depth in a 2-hour defense. They'll raise any hard questions before the defense so they don't waste anyone's time and make sure you are absolutely ready. And by the time of the defense, it is indeed just a formality.
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u/uraniumingot 1d ago
As bad as it sounds, it is. You're at the point where you know the stuff, your advisor knows you know the stuff, your committee had AI summarize/skimmed the stuff, and you just need to go through an intense grilling of multiple hours to get your degree.
The questions asked will be rough, but they are deliberately structured that you either have an answer or know you have no answer. The questions are also intentionally steered that way by your advisor. You passed quals, advanced to candidacy, and it's just the last thing to do. If there are any structural issues with you getting that degree, you won't have been allowed to defend in the first place.
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u/irwinlegends 1d ago
I think your experience may have been different than others, mate
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u/Itsamesolairo 13h ago
Same in most of the world.
Failing your defense reflects extremely poorly on your supervisors. It should never happen unless you defend against their recommendation.
The lone exceptions are places like the UK where failing the viva is a thing… and it still makes your supervisors look like idiots.
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/Gain-Western 1d ago
Diploma mills don’t do STEM Phd programs.
It is also a reputation issue. What do you think the advisor’s peers would think if they have been sending candidates that fail in front of the committee?
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u/Wiseduck5 18h ago
Your partner is dead wrong.
In my entire career I have seen one student fail their defense. Which caused a very awkward canceling of the party everyone plans for afterward because it is basically a foregone conclusion.
Your “real” defense is the last committee meeting and the actual defense is a show for the family.
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u/jxj24 1d ago
A defense is a rigorous examination of the candidate, their background, their project, and their vision of the future of their research. If you don't measure up, you don't pass.
So it is absolutely not a formality. And, yes, your advisor should not let you defend until they are sure you are ready. (Or simply want to get rid of you...)
I have been in academic research for over 20 years, and while I only knew one person whose defense failed (mostly over a large list of fixable items), this is certainly not unheard of.
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u/uraniumingot 1d ago
A defense is a rigorous examination of the candidate, their background, their project, and their vision of the future of their research. If you don't measure up, you don't pass.
Unless something catastrophic happened in the last few years that caused a lack of progress, if someone doesn't measure up, they wouldn't have advanced to candidacy in the first place.
And, yes, your advisor should not let you defend until they are sure you are ready. (Or simply want to get rid of you...)
Hence anything that would've come up would have been addressed in the months leading up to it. The defense itself is not the time to address new issues. The actual defense is a formality, the process of getting there is not.
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u/DGrey10 1d ago
Absolutely correct. Also, it is a committee not just the advisor. If the committee doesn't think you are ready....well you don't pass.
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u/Haunting_Cap_8312 1d ago
> If the committee doesn't think you are ready....well you don't pass.
Which almost never happens.
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u/TimothyMimeslayer 19h ago
The only person i my defense who hadnt been to every one of my talks about my research from thr previous three years was the electrical engineer, the electrical engineer i had help from to model some stuff. They all knew what i was doing and why long before the dissertation
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u/jewllybeenz 9h ago
Unless you have a bad advisor, they literally will not let you defend unless they’re nearly certain you’ll pass
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u/booleandilemma 1d ago
So do I need to be concerned my coworker is trying poison me now or...?
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u/AdCreepy5165 1d ago
Is your co-worker a Chinese national, and do you have pending patents? Time to hide all your napkins with the solution to perpetual motion!
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u/cupittycakes 1d ago
I mean, probably. Time to never leave your drinks or food accessible to anyone but you. Ummm... Maybe be extra cautious if they are of a particular nationality...?
Of course homegrown Americans poison too.
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u/theDinoSour 13h ago
Damn, what is with the poisoning stories?
Just yesterday, it was some dude in BC that had been poisoning a coworker with cadmium for yrs before they figured it out.
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u/TurboLicious1855 11h ago
I was just coming to ask the same darn question! Are these grad student programs THIS competitive? Wow.
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u/berlenba 21h ago
State sponsored intellectual theft is my more insidious guess. Perhaps was a spy. Maybe even a long term plant? Chinese asset isn’t too far fetched
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u/Pterocacti 16h ago
why would a chinese spy have a public feud with a person they were meant to steal from and kill, that doesn't make any sense
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u/Self-Comprehensive 1d ago
Wait there's another Chinese poisoner?