Let me clarify what constitutes authorship on a scientific article.

It does not necessarily mean that a person wrote one of the paragraphs. In 
fact, in the future we may have artificial intelligence to thank for writing 
much of the routine text in our articles and technical manuals.

It DOES mean that an author is a person that is responsible for one or more of 
the following:

Coming up with the original idea (i.e., the hypothesis) for the experiment
Collecting data
Analyzing data
Presenting data (in graphical, written or other forms such as videos, etc.)
Supervising the people that collect, analyze and present the data
Drawing important conclusions from the data and testing new hypotheses that 
result from this all-important step
Writing the text of the final document

You want and NEED all of these people to be listed as authors—as they are the 
ones that are legitimately responsible for the final published work. If there 
are any questions about what is presented in the work, everyone knows who is 
responsible.

We call this transparency, which unfortunately is lacking in other important 
human endeavors.

Diana

**************************************************
Diana R. Tomchick
Professor
Departments of Biophysics and Biochemistry
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
5323 Harry Hines Blvd.
Rm. ND10.214A
Dallas, TX 75390-8816
diana.tomch...@utsouthwestern.edu
(214) 645-6383 (phone)
(214) 645-6353 (fax)

> On Aug 31, 2016, at 11:59 AM, Cavers Texas <texascavers@texascavers.com> 
> wrote:
>
> Wow! Fourteen alleged authors for an article with eight paragraphs. How many 
> of those people do you think were really authors, i.e., writers? How many of 
> them were just bottle washers? -- Mixon
> ----------------------------------------
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