[themartorana]

A lot of the time those same students are doing the bulk of the legwork for those findings then attributed to a professor, who is under greater pressure to advance (not confirm) science, who may or may not have even participated heavily in the grunt work of that research. The professor then punishes the work under his/her name, with no credit to the work of the students.

[privong]

> A lot of the time those same students are doing the bulk of the legwork for those findings then attributed to a professor, who is under greater pressure to advance (not confirm) science, who may or may not have even participated heavily in the grunt work of that research. The professor then punishes the work under his/her name, with no credit to the work of the students.

It's important to note that though this seems to happen in all fields, it is far less common in some. I rarely hear of such things in astronomy; it does happen, but more often I hear about faculty explicitly working to ensure they can protect projects for their students so their students can get the credit deserved for doing the project. I hear of professors appropriating student research in biology and chemistry more frequently, however.

The occurrences of professors taking and publishing student research is certainly a problem, is unethical, and should be stopped. But the way in which it is usually discussed ("in science") implies that it's a systemic issue across all science, which (from my experience) isn't true. This topic of credit and attribution for research deserves more nuanced discussion and fewer blanket statements.

Edit: Spelling, wording clarification.

[ska]

I think it does vary a lot by discipline. In my area of mathematics I don't recall ever hearing of it. For whatever it is worth I even published papers without my supervisor being on them at all, if he hadn't been involved in that work.

[otoburb]

How does attribution and second/third authorship work if you "just" bounced ideas off your supervisor or fellow students in verbal discussions? I'm trying to gauge how strict attribution rules are in what I would consider a gray area.

[matheist]

In mathematics, multiple authors are always listed alphabetically by family name; ie there is no "first" or "second" author.

In the situation you describe, the paper would probably be singly authored, and the author would write something like "Thanks to my advisor _____ and to my colleagues ____ for many helpful discussions" in an acknowledgments section.

If the contributions were more serious, then possibly the author would invite the others to co-author with him/her, and the others would then either accept (and then help write the paper) or politely decline and say "just mention me in the acknowledgments".

At least in my experience, co-authorship carries responsibilities: to help with the writing, the figures, references, dealing with editors and with submission to journals, speaking about the research at seminars/conferences, etc.

[Fede_V]

In life sciences, the last author is almost always the person whose grants paid for most of the research. Usually, they also helped supervise the research, but the grant aspect is more important.

For example: Mike Synder, a brilliant biologist, 'supervises' 36 postdocs, 13 research assistants, 11 research scientists, 9 visiting scientists, and 8 graduate students (http://snyderlab.stanford.edu/members3.html - thanks to Lior Pacter for noticing it).

In 2014, he had 42 published papers. How much scientific input do you think he had on each one?

[cli]

What are the differences between postdocs, research assistants, research scientists and visiting scientists?

[Lawtonfogle]

>In mathematics, multiple authors are always listed alphabetically by family name; ie there is no "first" or "second" author.

Is there any research showing this standard to be fair? People pay more attention to the first item of a list than to the middle ones, making me think that one's position on such a list could have a small benefit. Less important if there are overall less multiple name papers, which it seems from the rest of your comment, but still a factor as long as multiple names on a paper do happen.

[matheist]

Is there any research showing this standard to be fair?

I don't know of any.

Less important if there are overall less multiple name papers, which it seems from the rest of your comment,

Actually, I think multiple authors is far more common than single authors, though I don't know the numbers to back it up. I was responding to a very specific "what-if" scenario of bouncing ideas off someone else, and describing what would happen in that case.

[qmalzp]

I was thinking the same thing. I think math lends itself to this because the work is so esoteric that often the advisor doesn't even completely understand the work, much less can claim credit for it.

[nmrm2]

I think the size of labs is more important. Bio and Chem labs -- especially the best ones -- are often freaking huge. There's no way the PI actually has time to meaningfully contribute to every paper when they are bringing in enough money to support dozens of full-time positions.

In math, the group sizes are way smaller. A PI might only have 1 or 2 students.

[Terr_]

I wonder if it correlates to how easily new discoveries can be monetized.

Astronomy is too far to reach, mathematics is too abstract to patent, etc.

[LeifCarrotson]

Publishes. I assume that was a typo?

[eplanit]

No doubt a typo. Punishment is the consequence of not publishing. :)