Lurked on this forum a lot back when I was applying to Master's programs 2 years ago, but this is my first time posting - any advice is appreciated, just need some objective thoughts.
Completed my master's back in October. As part of my thesis, I was comparing data from two populations to generate risk differences. However since these two populations had very different age structures, part of what I was doing was age-standardizing one data set to match the age distribution of the second data set. My supervisor and I knew from the outset that figuring out how to do this in a valid, statistically rigorous way was going to be one of, if not THE major challenge of my thesis. (I know this may not sound complicated but since both data sets are weighted to be nationally representative, and thus have complex, multi-stage stratified collection methods and also have differing variance structures it was - but I digress). I did a TON of research, contacted a lot of people doing similar research, and after running into a lot of dead ends finally got in touch with some researchers who were doing something similar to what I wanted. From several email conversations with them I was able to modify an existing bootstrapping program that was available with one of the datasets to create the estimates and 95% CI's I needed.
To this day, I do not believe that my supervisor really understands what I did or why it took me so long to code which is FINE because it's my thesis, and I didn't expect her to hold my hand and do my work for me. After I defended, I agreed that I would place the modified program in our project drive in case she, or any of her future students wanted to repeat the project using future data.
Using this program I did some analysis for a lab mate of mine who was working in a related area and felt that a comparison between these two data sets would add some weight/credibility to a paper he was producing as part of his PhD. I recently found out that he published 2 papers using the analysis that I had done as a key point in both papers. Graphs I made myself are in his papers. I was not listed as an author on either paper, or informed that they were to be published, though I am acknowledged "for assistance with data analysis". Not sure how to feel about this - I did not write a substantial amount on either paper, but I did provide the pieces in the methods section about my analysis, and offered limitations on my method (also in the paper) and would have been happy to contribute more. Honestly, I am annoyed but am willing to let it go since it will stir up bad feelings with my former lab mate who is, in general, pretty nice.
This is getting long and I apologize, but the back story is important. Now, I get an email from ANOTHER PhD student in the lab asking if he could have my analysis output. Since this a totally different project then what I did (not the one I had agreed to sharing my code/analysis for) I replied that the program is located in the shared drive - it is the publicly available version with a few modifications. NOPE - then he needs MY ENTIRE code that I used for my thesis (cleaning, organizing data, etc.) since he isn't familiar with coding and the two datasets and all of their intricacies and (I quote) "This objective is my first objective and I have two more objectives; this one is the easiest one".
Further conversation with him only revealed he hasn't done the slightest bit of research into this part of his theses (didn't even know how to access the data sets). At this point I do not want to send him what I have done so that another lab student can piggyback off of my hard work.
What do I do? I'm sure he will tell my former supervisor if I don't help him and I don't want to burn any bridges.
TL;DR - feel like my work has/is being copied (plagiarized?) by another student in the lab for his PhD thesis