From: godfrey@sscvx1.ssc.gov (LAURENCE GODFREY)
Subject: Re: Canadian free speech in action
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.4-b1  
Organization: Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 10:45:00 GMT


At the request of a number of readers of scb, scc and src, I have posted
below some recent correspondence which illustrates the dispute I am presently
engaged in with NRC.  I have nothing to hide.

I have, however, protected the names of those to whom I am complaining.



                     Fax: +44 71 388 4569
                   Tel: (0)71-383 3560/4560

                         17 June 1992


Dept of Industry, Science and Technology


Dear Ms. x,

	At your request I am writing to elicit a written
statement of the response you have already given me by
telephone - that the department cannot (or does not wish to)
intervene in the matter of my complaint against NRC over the
unfair exclusion of my name from OPAL scientific papers.

The following letters were written to NRC about this matter:

1. 4th Dec 1990 - from myself to H, NRC  - no response
2.18th Mar 1991 - from Elsevier to H, NRC - no response
3.26th Apr 1991 - from Elsevier to M, NRC - no response
4.5th June 1991 - from Elsevier to M, NRC - response from M
not addressing any of the issues raised but instead saying
that matter had been referred to T of NRC BUT no response from
T of NRC to date.

Please be kind enough to let me have the department's view on
this matter and if, as you have said, the department will not
get involved, a statement of the reasons why not.

Yours sincerely






Laurence Godfrey


                     Fax: +44 71 388 4569
                   Tel: (0)71-383 3560/4560

                          3 July 1992


Dept of Industry, Science and Technology


Dear Ms. S,

	Thank you for your fax of today's date.

While I accept that NRC is an arm's length organisation, I do
not accept your assertion that it would be inappropriate for
your department to intervene, as your Minister is ultimately
responsible for everything that NRC does.

Moreover, your assurance that my letter has been passed on to
Mr. T is, I assume, either cynical or disingenuous - Mr. T is
the very person who has failed to respond to every single item
of correspondence he has ever received about every aspect of
my case.  

I am sending a copy of this fax to Dr. Z.


Yours sincerely






Dr Laurence Godfrey



                     Fax: +44 71 388 4569
                   Tel: (0)71-383 3560/4560

                          3 July 1992

Dr. Z
Dept of Industry, Science and Technology


Dear Dr Z,

	I herewith enclose a copy of my reply to the letter dated
7th July 1992 from Mr. T at NRC, which I assume you have seen.

I do not believe that NRC are willing to resolve this matter,
nor do I believe, judging by Mr. T's letter, that their legal
department are competent to do so.

I see little point in continuing a dialogue with NRC until
your department become involved.  Irrespective of your
willingness to do so, you will inevitably become involved if
my dispute continues on its present course.

I look forward to hearing from you shortly,

Yours sincerely





Dr Laurence Godfrey



               Tel: 44 71 383 4560, 71 383 3560
                      Fax: 44 71 388 4569

November 22, 1992


NRC

fax: 613 952 0974

Dear Mr T:

	Thank you for your fax of 7th July, 1992.

The papers on which I was wrongfully excluded as an author
were the early OPAL papers, submitted for publication in 1989
and the beginning of 1990.  They were not published five years
after my work with NRC ended, as you have claimed.

The author lists of these early papers included the names of
others who had left the experiment long before publication. 
In fact, they included two people who worked for the
Canadians, and with me, on the same part of the detector - Dr.
McP and Dr. W.

Contrary to the statement in your letter, I have not made, nor
do I make, any claims to authorship of current OPAL papers,
except as a suggested means of partially compensating for my
wrongful exclusion on the earlier papers.

Please be good enough to address yourself to these points, and
respond without further delay.


Yours sincerely





Laurence Godfrey




                     Fax: +44 71 388 4569
                   Tel: (0)71-383 3560/4560

16th August 1992

Dr. Z
Dept of Industry, Science and Technology


Dear Dr Z,

	Immediately after my last contact with you, I received a
telefax from the lawyer at NRC asking me for a list of the
publications from which my name was omitted.  I provided this
by return telefax and have heard nothing at all for more than
one month.

I assume that your department condone the NRC's continuing
evasiveness over this matter.

I look forward to hearing from you shortly,

Yours sincerely





Dr Laurence Godfrey








Article published in New Scientist on July 11th, 1992 -
references to Canada edited out, text otherwise intact

by Laurence Godfrey

Not so very long ago, in the halcyon days before the advent of
gigantic international scientific collaborations, high energy
physics was just like any other field of academic endeavour. 
When the results of an experiment were reported in a journal,
each of the small number of authors could truthfully claim to
have participated in the acquisition and analysis of the data,
and in the writing of the paper itself.  Great store was set
by the number of a physicist's publications.  An individual's
list was used as a measure of his or her scientific worth, and
was one of the most important considerations in selecting
candidates for academic jobs.

As time passed high energy experiments got bigger and bigger,
and now the larger ones consist of many hundreds of
collaborators.  Obviously only a few physicists can contribute
to each paper, but for some years it has been common practice
for everyone working on an experiment to be named on all the
papers published.  As a result, the vast majority of authors
on a given paper do not write a single word of it, make no
direct contribution to the published results and most likely
do not even read it until after submission.  Nowadays, the
length of a high energy experimentalist's publication list is
partly a matter of luck, and partly a measure of an
individual's foresight in choosing a productive experiment.

So much is well-known and accepted in the high energy
community, though not exactly advertised.  Unfortunately old
habits die hard, and the practice of judging physicists by the
length of their publication lists has not lost currency.  One
reason for this is that while everyone involved in the
selection of job applicants knows what publication lists
really mean, there is no other method available for at least
giving the appearance of objectivity.  Furthermore, because it
is now assumed that most of the papers are not really the work
of most of the authors, a high energy physicist's list is
expected to be very long indeed, and a short list strongly
suggests that something must have gone seriously wrong.

In a perfect world all of this would be fine, and high energy
physics would still be just like any other field, except
everyone would have more papers.  One way in which the real
world is not perfect, however, is that as the size of
apparatus grows and the costs escalate, some experiments have
started to use the number of authors to determine each
collaborating institution's financial contribution, others to
decide the number of hours an institution must spend on
manning the apparatus.  So now there is a premium on
authorship and it costs big money, research group leaders have
to be more choosy about whose names go on the papers.

With the abandonment of the usual criteria for authorship, and
given the importance of publications, it might be supposed
that high energy physics has evolved strict new rules for
deciding on authors.  However, another way in which this
universe deviates from perfection is that the rules in use are
arbitrary and vague - if they are defined at all - and they
differ considerably between collaborations and institutions.

For example, should someone who quit after working for years
on the preparation of an experiment be included when the
results are eventually published?  And on how many of the
papers?  For how long?  Should someone who fortuitously joined
an experiment that took many years to prepare, just before an
avalanche of papers appeared, get their name on all of them? 
Should a physicist who disagrees with his or her boss be
excluded on the whim of the superior?  Should someone who has
left the field altogether be included on future papers?

What of those whose names are left off?  In the days when each
author's contribution could easily be evaluated, someone who
had been unfairly excluded could get things put right.  But
the laws of copyright were not written to cater for the new
high energy type of authorship.  Can someone claim a right to
be on a paper that he or she did not actually write?  Is
accepted practice a reasonable ground for demanding inclusion,
or having made an indirect contribution to the paper, or
building the equipment that enabled the results to be
obtained, or the fact that others were listed as authors in
parallel circumstances?

Finally I come to a specific case, which is a sad and
cautionary tale for other high energy physicists.  Having
worked full-time for two and half years on the preparation of
the OPAL experiment at CERN - a huge international
collaboration - I quit a couple of years before data-taking,
after an argument with my Canadian employers.  When the
multitude of papers of results started to appear in Physics
Letters, the names of others who had left the experiment were
included - even those of two people who worked for the
Canadians, and with me, on the same part of the detector. 
Three physicists, two ex-Canadian employees and myself, were
conspicuously absent.

Now there are many cases of physicists who have been listed as
authors on CERN experiments long after they have left.  In
contrast, there are OPAL collaborators who joined just as
data-taking began, and almost immediately got their names on
tens of papers.  The reason given for excluding the three of
us after so much work on preparing the experiment, is that our
inclusion would have required the Canadians to provide
correspondingly more manpower for running the apparatus.  Two
of us had left the field altogether, and so they were expected
not to notice or to care much.  I was working on another
experiment, but the fact that my employer and I parted as
enemies seemed somehow to justify my exclusion.

Surely these things can be put right.  Scientists are, as
every non-scientist knows, reasonable, objective people, and
they do have their reputations to consider.  Physics Letters,
a highly respectable journal, thought so to.  They wrote to
the Canadians about my case, but got no reply.  They wrote
again to the Canadians, and got no reply.  They wrote a third
time, and were told that their letter had been passed to a
lawyer for reply.  They got no reply.  But all collaborations
have a spokesman - always a physicist of international
standing and unquestionable integrity - surely it is that
person's job to sort out this kind of problem.  OPAL has one,
but he simply passed the buck back to the Canadians.

You cannot sue an experiment - although it might be fun to try
- copyright has not been breached, damages are difficult to
prove, and there is little that can be done in the face of
manifest obduracy and evasiveness.

What can other high energy physicists do to avoid
career-wrecking difficulties of this sort?   The best
solution, of course, is to find a reasonable and fair-minded
employer.  Failing that, a lawyer's solution would be that all
those working on large and potentially productive
collaborations could try to get written agreements from their
employers at the outset, stating exactly the terms on which
authorship will be given, on what papers, for how long, and
under exactly what circumstances.  I wish them luck.




                       146 Walker House
                         Phoenix Road
                        London NW1 1ER
                            England

               Tel: 44 71 383 4560, 71 383 3560
                      Fax: 44 71 388 4569

16 November 1992


National Research Council of Canada
Montreal Road

fax: 613 952 0974

Dear Mr T:

	Thank you for your letter of 8th September, 1992, which
was mailed to an incorrect address.

The list I sent you is a complete list of the early physics
papers.  I claim that my name should have been included on
several of them, not all of them.

Perhaps you are not aware that when scientists refer to
authors of scientific papers, they mean those persons whose
names are included on the list at the head of the paper.  Thus
all 280 individuals that you counted under the heading of
"OPAL collaboration" would be referred to as "authors" in
common scientific parlance, despite the fact that the vast
majority of the named persons did not actually compose the
work.  However, while I regard your letter as rather
disingenuous, I will go along with your definition of an
author for the purposes of this correspondence.

I therefore now ask you to explain why my name was wrongfully
excluded from the lists of individuals that appeared under the
heading of OPAL Collaboration on the front of the early OPAL
papers submitted for publication in 1989 and the beginning of
1990.

Please explain why the lists of names at the front of these
early papers, under the heading of OPAL Collaboration, include
the names of others who had left the experiment long before
publication, but do not include my name.  Please explain why
the lists contain the names of two people who worked for the
Canadians, and with me on the same part of the detector, and
who left before the start of the experiment, but do not
include mine.

I do not claim an entitlement to be included in the lists of
names at the head of current OPAL papers, except as a means of
partially compensating for my wrongful exclusion on the
earlier papers.

Would you now be so good as to address yourself to these
points without further attempts at evasion, and respond to
this letter without delay.




Yours sincerely





Laurence Godfrey





                     Fax: +44 71 388 4569
                   Tel: (0)71-383 3560/4560

16 November 1992

Dr. Z
Dept of Industry, Science and Technology


Dear Dr Z,

	I enclose a copy of my letter to Mr T, in response to his
letter of 8th September, 1992.

Can the Canadian Department of Justice come up with nothing
better than the asinine defence of Mr T to my manifestly
rightful claim to authorship?  This rather silly pedanticism
over the meaning of authorship from a senior Counsel does
little to enhance the credibility of the Canadian government.


Yours sincerely





Dr Laurence Godfrey

Xref: sparky soc.culture.british:15955 soc.culture.celtic:7352