From: watanabe@milton.cs.uiuc.edu (Larry Watanabe)
Subject: Re: Dr. Fabrikant and honesty in science
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1992 04:11:41 GMT


In article <1992Aug27.132822.4428@bb1t.monsanto.com>, tjfeue@bb1t.monsanto.com writes...
> 
>He was ranting like a lunatic.  Much of what he said may have been 
>the exaggerations of a paranoid.  Consider his argument that some people
>had been co-authors on his papers and didn't even know what the paper
>was about.  *I* have been co-author of a few papers that *I* didn't even
>know about.  I was asked for help in a problem and contributed (presumably
>to the author) enough to be included as an "et al".  If you found some of
>those papers and asked me about them, I'd probably give you serously
>blank looks.  Maybe he did the same thing and then in his paranoia

The Committee on the Conduct of Science, National Academy of Sciences,
has a publication "On Being a Scientist" (National Academy Press,
Washington, D.C., 1989). It is worthwhile reading, and discusses
a great many issues in detail related to ethical conduct - methodology,
self-deception, priority of discovery, allocation of credit, etc.

The publication has this to say about allocation of credit:


   "One potential problem area in collaborative research involves the
   listing of a paper's authors. In many fields the earlier a name
   appears in the list of authors the greater the implied contribution,
   but conventions differ greatly among disciplines and among research
   groups. Sometimes the scientist with the greatest name recognition
   is listed first, whereas in other fields the research leader's name
   is always last. In some disciplines, supervisors's names
   rarely appear on papers, while in others the professor's name
   appears on almost every paper that comes out of the lab. ...
   
   .. Collaborators must also have a thorough understanding of the
   conventions in a particular field to know if they are being treated
   unfairly ...
   
   Occassionally a name is included in a list of authors even though
   that person had little or nothing to do with the genesis or 
   completion of the paper. Such "honorary authors dilute the credit 
   due the people who actually did the work and make the proper 
   attribution of credit more dificult. Some scientific journals now
   state that a person should be listed as the author of a paper only
   if that person made a direct and substantial contribution to the
   paper. Of course, such terms as "direct" and "substantial are 
   themselves open to interpretation. But such statements of principle
   help change customary practices, which is the only lasting way to
   discourage the practice of honorary authorships."


By these standards, it seems difficult to determine whether the
practices at Concordia were really unethical unless one is a
researcher in Fabrikant's area and knows the standard practice
of that field. Honorary authorship is a practice that
the National Academy of Sciences feels should be discouraged,
but it does not seem to be clearly unethical.

-Larry Watanabe watanabe@cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: sci.research,sci.research.careers