4 ms·

Yeah but then you have different problems. Hundreds of authors on each publication. Whose contributions are real and who is just cruising?

cortesoft 7y ago
Maybe this just shows that using authorship credit as a proxy for contribution is a bad system.
knzhou 7y ago
I mean, can't you say that for any large group of people? You can't easily evaluate who's pulling the most weight at Google either. But that's not a problem, because the people at Google deciding promotions do know, and that's what matters. CERN works like that, as does experimental physics at large.
- pfortuny 7y ago
  Most positions at CERN are fixed time. Afterwards you have a problem.
  - knzhou 7y ago
    If you leave CERN to apply for a postdoc or professorship somewhere else, they ask for lots of recommendation letters. That's how they learn what you actually did.
    - glofish 7y ago
      Do you think a recommendation letter is a more objective and better evaluation of what someone actually did? That there is less embellishment, less subjectivity in it than a scientific paper that was meant to reflect on your work as a scientist. I would expect that recommendation letters heavily favor some individuals for subjective reasons.
      - knzhou 7y ago
        As does hiring when a Googler goes to some other company. Nobody is going to see their commits. They have to go on their word, their technical skills, and their references.
        glofish 7y ago
        The fact that there are other instances when people make subjective decisions is not quite relevant in this instance. We are talking about the case when authorship on a scientific publication is insufficient evidence that someone had any contribution whatsoever to the paper. So that one needs a recommendation letter, in addition to the authorsip, where the recommendation letter would presumably state, this individual did actually do some work and is not just cruising.
    - pfortuny 7y ago
      No, in Spain you do not have that choice...
dguest 7y ago
At the LHC the number is closer to 3500. I "cruise" on around a hundred papers each year: I haven't read them and in all likelihood never will. At the same time I worked really hard on one or two of them. I have tried to figure out what would be required to remove myself from 98% of the papers we publish, but it turns out to be a lot of work (essentially you have to argue with the head of the experiment, who has other things to worry about).
- dekhn 7y ago
  this would be tough for me; I will not allow my name on a paper unless I read it before publication (and had some sort of useful, direct contribution). I guess large physics collaborations are very different from small bio projects, but still, I wouldn't want my name associated with a paper that later got retracted for something I would have caught.
  - dguest 7y ago
    Well when you do your PhD in particle physics it's just sort of accepted. And I think it's tough on a lot of people: many people in the experiment feel that they should read every paper, because they feel personally accountable to it. They feel they should insist on changes because otherwise it will reflect badly on them. To me that's an enormous amount of work and gets in the way of the really interesting science. Within the field everyone knows that I'm not directly accountable for a paper just because my name is on it. Most work is done by small teams of less than 20 people (sometimes just one or two) so it would be absurd to ask me to fully understand, much less feel accountable for, 95% of what comes out. Personally I'd love an opt-out option. I don't think my colleagues should feel burdened by any weight that my name adds. Beyond that it's a convenience thing: I was updating my CV and thinking "if only there was some automated system to keep track of the papers I contributed to...". Incidentally, we have such a system, but it's only visible within the collaboration.
dwaltrip 7y ago
Determining attribution for scientific contributions is a far less severe problem than having high-quality scientific contributions in the first place.

cortesoft 7y ago

Maybe this just shows that using authorship credit as a proxy for contribution is a bad system.

knzhou 7y ago

I mean, can't you say that for any large group of people? You can't easily evaluate who's pulling the most weight at Google either. But that's not a problem, because the people at Google deciding promotions do know, and that's what matters. CERN works like that, as does experimental physics at large.

pfortuny 7y ago
Most positions at CERN are fixed time. Afterwards you have a problem.
- knzhou 7y ago
  If you leave CERN to apply for a postdoc or professorship somewhere else, they ask for lots of recommendation letters. That's how they learn what you actually did.
  - glofish 7y ago
    Do you think a recommendation letter is a more objective and better evaluation of what someone actually did? That there is less embellishment, less subjectivity in it than a scientific paper that was meant to reflect on your work as a scientist. I would expect that recommendation letters heavily favor some individuals for subjective reasons.
    - knzhou 7y ago
      As does hiring when a Googler goes to some other company. Nobody is going to see their commits. They have to go on their word, their technical skills, and their references.
      - glofish 7y ago
        The fact that there are other instances when people make subjective decisions is not quite relevant in this instance. We are talking about the case when authorship on a scientific publication is insufficient evidence that someone had any contribution whatsoever to the paper. So that one needs a recommendation letter, in addition to the authorsip, where the recommendation letter would presumably state, this individual did actually do some work and is not just cruising.
  - pfortuny 7y ago
    No, in Spain you do not have that choice...

dguest 7y ago

At the LHC the number is closer to 3500. I "cruise" on around a hundred papers each year: I haven't read them and in all likelihood never will. At the same time I worked really hard on one or two of them. I have tried to figure out what would be required to remove myself from 98% of the papers we publish, but it turns out to be a lot of work (essentially you have to argue with the head of the experiment, who has other things to worry about).

dekhn 7y ago
this would be tough for me; I will not allow my name on a paper unless I read it before publication (and had some sort of useful, direct contribution). I guess large physics collaborations are very different from small bio projects, but still, I wouldn't want my name associated with a paper that later got retracted for something I would have caught.
- dguest 7y ago
  Well when you do your PhD in particle physics it's just sort of accepted. And I think it's tough on a lot of people: many people in the experiment feel that they should read every paper, because they feel personally accountable to it. They feel they should insist on changes because otherwise it will reflect badly on them. To me that's an enormous amount of work and gets in the way of the really interesting science. Within the field everyone knows that I'm not directly accountable for a paper just because my name is on it. Most work is done by small teams of less than 20 people (sometimes just one or two) so it would be absurd to ask me to fully understand, much less feel accountable for, 95% of what comes out. Personally I'd love an opt-out option. I don't think my colleagues should feel burdened by any weight that my name adds. Beyond that it's a convenience thing: I was updating my CV and thinking "if only there was some automated system to keep track of the papers I contributed to...". Incidentally, we have such a system, but it's only visible within the collaboration.

dwaltrip 7y ago

Determining attribution for scientific contributions is a far less severe problem than having high-quality scientific contributions in the first place.