5 ms·
50 authors in a paper about flipping coins?
by cabirum 3y ago
50 authors in a paper about flipping coins?
- jb1991 3y agoSounds fair to me. Better than if it was only 49, or 51.
- boomboomsubban 3y agoBlind guess, it's cheaper and easier to recruit volunteers to flip a coin 7000 times if you promise them credit on the paper.
- fbartos 3y agoYou are absolutely right :)
- blantonl 3y ago[flagged]
- shusaku 3y agoI guess that’s one way to prevent p-hacking: you can’t exclude/include someone’s flips without them getting mad!
- bunderbunder 3y agoMake me sit around flipping coins 10,000 times and recording the results, and you damn well better at least put my name on the paper.
- slingnow 3y agoThen I guess we should include every study participant as an author across all disciplines. 200 participant study in psychology? 200 authors on the paper.
- bunderbunder 3y agoNot necessarily? The difference is that the people flipping the coins are not just experimental subjects, they're actually implementing the experimental protocol. The kinds of participants you're talking about are not just left off the paper out of lack of interest. It's often the ethically preferable option. They often have a vested interest in remaining unnamed for privacy reasons, and derive no tangible benefit from being listed as authors. A big author list isn't totally unheard of. The paper where they announced the discovery of the Higgs boson had an author list that spanned 8 densely-packaged pages.
- netrus 3y agoBy flipping thousands of coins for this paper, I am sure their participation exceeds that of many 5-author-papers.