5 ms·
This is a great study and gives insights in to what's wrong with research today. As the study has uncovered the causes: - mentorship of very many young researc
by tinkerteller 8y ago
This is a great study and gives insights in to what's wrong with research today. As the study has uncovered the causes:
- mentorship of very many young researchers
- leadership of a research team
- becoming full professors, department chairs
- leadership roles in large centres
As the paper states: at the peak of their productivity, some cardiologists publish 10 to 80 times more papers in one year compared with their average annual productivity when they were 35–42 years old. There was also often a sharp decrease after passing the chair to a successor.
In other words, people with checkbooks gets their names engraved on work that is being done by others. Their author metrics like h-index and citation counts would shoot up and the get credit for scholarly publications even if they have played little or no part.
This is extremely sad. These people in leadership roles should be avoiding taking credit to scholarly work that is not theirs.
As the article says, requirements for authorship are the "Vancouver criteria" established in 1988. These specify that authors must do all of four things to qualify: play a part in designing or conducting experiments or processing results; help to write or revise the manuscript; approve the published version; and take responsibility for the article’s contents.
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors does not count supervision, mentoring or obtaining funding as sufficient for authorship. However as credit hungry folks becomes leaders they circumvent all and every ethical line to get their names on everybody else's work whoes paychecks and careers depend on their whims.
- rscho 8y agoMDs are NOT scientists by any criteria you could reasonably formulate. The actual and unique use of research for 99.99% of MDs is academic advancement, which in the medical field also goes with lots of money (patents, scientific board membership, etc.). Hence the rise of "piggyback research", i.e. putting your name everywhere you possibly can or if you really want to put some effort in it, doing meta analyses on topics you don't know anything of in practice. Medical "research" is a shame to our society.
- angry_octet 8y agoThe only information your post conveys is that you know nothing about medical research, but you have strongly held conspiracy views about it.
- rscho 8y agoAnd you are being very much presumptuous. Clearly, you also have very partial views on the topic.
- watwut 8y agoIt is more complicated then that with mentors and leaders. When I was writing article, I did the problem solving and writing. Then the professor went through it multiple times and we rewrote a lot of it. Initial push - the choice of problem and choice of articles to read so that I learn enough to even start were also instrumental to my research. It would not be possible without it. I don't think it is entirely unfair for professor to get credit for that. Knowing what to do, which problem has reasonable potential and is open, knowing what is potentially related and knowing what to read matter a lot. As in, it is be easy and possible to replace student and harder to replace professor in the whole thing.
- yodsanklai 8y agoTotally agree. However, in many instances, some people listed as authors didn't contribute in any way to the article. They may have attended a meeting at some point, or there may be a local culture where you have to include your PhD advisor no matter what. On the other hand, there are researchers who wouldn't put their name on an article unless they contributed significantly.
- distant_hat 8y agoI had an advisor who wanted his own name and 2 of his students names on a paper where his only contribution was giving some reagent.
- phkahler 8y agoA mentor deserves to be credited but that does not have to mean listing them as an author.
- doombolt 8y ago> These people in leadership roles should be avoiding taking credit to scholarly work that is not theirs. That's also one of plot devices behind "Space Apprentice" by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.
- bayonetz 8y agoIt's the academic analog to Hollywood's "executive producer" credit. At least they typically only take the last author slot on the paper's author list. That's how it is in computer science research.
- fhood 8y agoSame in oceanography. People also are frequently attached to papers/proposals for name recognition to increase chances of funding. I don't really see an issue with it at all. everyone knows that it is the first and second authors that are important.
- acct1771 8y agoAs long as the "ghost writers" are actually involved in at minimum reviewing the research.
- chengiz 8y agoFirstly, two of the Vancouver criteria are silly. The third doesnt make sense. Most gradute students in my experience do not have the authority to approve the published version. Does this mean grad students cant be paper authors? They're the ones doing most of the work. The fourth criterion is meaningless. Your name is on there that means you take responsibility. In any case if you're a reputed professor no one is questioning the paper. Secondly, the four criteria are easy to meet for professors who shouldnt be authors. They "guide" the student which can be construed as playing a part in design, look over the manuscript, approve it, and take responsibility. But their contribution was probably of the order of a few percent of the total effort. If you have enough researchers under you, it's not super hard to meet those and be a hyperprolific publisher.
- azhenley 8y agoI thought approving a paper just meant saying "Yes, I approve." Why do you think students can't do that? I send the final paper draft to all my co-authors before submitting to get their approval.
- Gatsky 8y agoI see what you are saying, but at the same time I think it is an inescapable fact that the only ‘essential’ authors on a paper ie the authors without which the work wouldn’t have been done at all, are the senior authors. To suggest that they shouldn’t receive credit for that seems very unfair.