Left in the Dark
Dr. Conway is a tenured associate professor of biochemistry at a
large research institution. His research group consists primarily
of graduate students. Since Conway likes to see work in progress,
he requires all of his students to participate in individual
meetings as well as group meetings with him every week. He insists
on seeing each piece of data and working through the projects with
his students.
Elizabeth is a second year graduate student in the biochemistry
department, and Conway is her thesis research adviser. Elizabeth
has recently completed the majority of the coursework that is
required by her program and is becoming more involved in her thesis
project. Her research focuses on purifying a novel protein complex
from mammalian cells and testing its effect on the regulation of a
specific cell cycle gene. Although she has completed only a few
experiments, some of her initial data look promising.
Conway has not published a manuscript in more than a year.
Sensing that many of his peers are making progress in areas related
to his own, he is feeling pressure to extend his publication
record, in order to remain competitive in their field of research.
In order to remedy his current situation, he decides to begin
writing a manuscript that includes some of Elizabeth's data. He is
aware that many of the experiments have not yet been reproduced or
are still in the process of being repeated. He meets frequently
with Elizabeth about her progress, and they go over all of her data
regularly. Based on this involvement, there is little chance that
he could have been misled about the preliminary status of the
work.
On a recent occasion, he asked Elizabeth if he could look
through her notebook, because he would like to evaluate and think
about her data. Elizabeth willingly gave him her notebook. Conway
finished writing and putting together the figures, and he submitted
a manuscript for publication without telling Elizabeth. Conway
listed Elizabeth as first author on the paper and himself as the
second and final author. He submitted to the journal Molecular and
Cellular Biology and recommended an editor who has been a personal
and professional friend of his for many years.
When Elizabeth realizes that her adviser has submitted a paper
with her name on it without her consent, she is very upset with
him. If any of the data turn out to be erroneous, her scientific
career could be damaged. She has just begun her involvement in a
research environment, and she is unsure about how to react or if
she should do anything at all. She tries to convince herself that
maybe this is the way things are done. She has been working in
Conway's lab for only a short time, and she is not very comfortable
with him yet. She wonders if she should talk with some of the other
graduate students about what has happened, hoping that they can
help her deal with the situation.
Discussion Questions:
- Who, if anyone, should Elizabeth talk with about the possible
publication of very preliminary experiments? Fellow students? The
department head?
- Should she talk with Conway first to ask about his authorship
policies?
- Should she just forget about the manuscript submission for now
and work on trying to reproduce the experiments that were
included?
- Is it justifiable for professors to recommend a friend to edit
or peer review their manuscripts?
- Is it ethical for a researcher to submit a manuscript without
the consent of all authors?
- At this stage in her graduate career, what complications might
Elizabeth face if she changed research advisers?
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Participant's Commentary: Left in the Dark
Participant's commentary on four major ethical issues: data fraud, authorship, the mentor-student relationship, and journal editors' responsibility.
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Commentary: Left in the Dark
Commentary on four major ethical issues: data fraud, authorship, the mentor-student relationship, and journal editors' responsibility.