Hacker News Reader

Comment by gervase | Hacker News Reader

I've worked in a similar system to what you described, with the top-most PI contributing essentially zero to publications directly. However, their fundraising efforts were singlehandedly paying the stipends/salary of 40+ researchers under them. I felt like it was totally fair to include them in the authors list, given that the research wouldn't have been possible without their efforts.

I doubt the parent academic had O(1000) first author publications, nor is that mentioned in the article.

View on HN

No it isn't! That's like including your mom in an author's list because without her raising you, you wouldn't be a researcher.

If your mom is directly raising funds to support 40 paid position she should be included.

In the acknowledgements, not as an author. Especially not as primary author.

The grant application usually already laid out the research plan, hypothesis, state of the art etc. Even if there are massive changes later on, the person who wrote the grant application often provided enough scientific input to merit a co-authorship.

This is a totally fair point. There is a contribution from leadership.

But to track back to what was getting me bothered, it's the implication when Professor X is discussed or introduced somewhere that they personally thought up and wrote O(1000) publications.

I know good PIs guide the research activities of their groups as well rather than just creaming off publications.

But while I understand where you're coming from, stepping back and thinking about it 'authorship as a reward for leadership' could be a sign of unhealthiness in academia. Why can't authorship mean authorship and leadership be recognised separately? 'Professor X runs a highly successful lab of N researchers, who produced M papers last year, and manages a budget of Z dollars.'

There are people who behave this way. They offer valuable insight and advice, as well as money, and in return get thanked in the paper, and their grant numbers printed there. But not authorship, if they didn't write the paper. If you look up "author" in the dictionary it's pretty clear.

I actually wonder if journals should start offering a second list of names on the first page, or even three to allow both group-leader and technical-work credit. Has this ever been tried?

This seems to be a general trend in film as well. Look at a recent movie credits (accountants, administrative assistants, lawyers and the like) versus the very short list of people who actually contributed to a film on an old film. Everyone likes to see their name in lights.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com