From: wskelly@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au (William Skelly)
Subject: Re: Dr. Fabrikant and honesty in science
Organization: Macquarie University, Australia.
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 01:28:40 GMT

In article <5339@dove.nist.gov> gilligan@bldrdoc.gov (Jonathan M. Gilligan) writes:
In reply to one of my postings on authorship and academic "dishonesty".
I have really hacked this my appologies to Jon, but these are getting
too long even without the three-four levels of contributors...
[highly edited...]
>, it would
>be intellectual fraud _not_ to include in the ``author list'' everyone
>who made significant contributions to the work. Thus, despite the fact
>that only a couple of people put the words on the page, the only
>reasonable way to give credit to everyone who made important
>contributions to the experiment is to list them all as ``authors.''

I content that only the authors (ideas included) are the signigicant
contributors - and only the authors - not the fund raiser, the programmer
the hardware people (unless thats what the research paper focusses on),
the typesetting people or the graphics/cartography people.  Do we 
disagree?  My "beef", as it were, is not with multiple authored papers,
it is with the practice of "honourary authorship."  I disagree that
the only "reasonable way to give credit to everyone" is to list them
as authors. "Who made important contributions" -- this is the key then
isn't it?  I have stated in previous posts what I thought important
contributions to be, I think that I was fairly clear.  

More importantly, and perhaps the most significant, contributions are
those from posters who contributed to the discussion by sending in
exerpts from various professional societies as to their feelings on
"authorship" -- I am somewhat pleased that all of them reassure me
that I am not the only one concerned about the problem of "honourary"
authorship.  Thanks to all for those postings.
 
>
>Another system might work, but we'd have to change the way everyone
>does things _and_ the way everyone interprets author lists. Moreover,

As far as I can gather from the discussion so far...(a biased 
interpretation to be sure)...is that most people do think that
"honourary authorship" as has been discussed is wrong if not outright
dishonest.  While it takes place in every field, it seems to me
that the only areas of science in which it is not viewed as wrong
is in High Energy Physics and (perhaps) some areas of Biomedical
research.  These and perhaps other areas have deemed this to be
appropriate, o.k. I won't loose any sleep over it, thats just the
way things are.  I (and many others) don't feel that this is a
good or productive practice, but hey!, we all have enough to 
worry about in our own fields, we can agree to disagree.  Let me
reiterate that these "authorship" arranagements are _not_ the
norm throughout scientific writing, but are generally accepted in
only a few areas.  The people in these areas apparently know the
rules and since nobody within the HEP has said they had a problem
with current practice (in fact several have defended it), who are
we say....:-)


> [stuff deleted..l.] Since there's a consensus today on 
>what constitutes authorship of a scientific paper, do we really need..   
>to worry about changing it just to bring it closer to the meaning of
>authorship in other fields? Should we lobby for changing the names of
>quark properties because it's dishonest to talk about the color and
>flavor of things we can't see or taste?
>
>---Jon

To answer your first question:  You really have to answer this question
as I believe my area _earth sciences_ is pretty much in line with
the vast majority of scientific discplines in this regard.  I am
comfortable with my disciplines _official view_, its the unofficial
but increasingly accepted goings on that bother me.

As to your second question:  Sorry but you have lost me here.
(don't worry it happens to me all the time... :-)

Chris