On Mon, 27 Oct 2008 06:42:52 -0700, Jim Clark wrote: >My brother-in-law is a well-respected orthopedic surgeon. He >once commented that his name ends up on publications of research >largely (entirely?) conducted and written up by fellows who worked >in his clinic at the time. So his contribution is largely indirect, but >that is sufficient in some fields to merit your name on a publication.
Over the course of my career I have worked in both psychology departments and academic psychiatry departments in medical schools. Most of my "psychology" publications have less than four authors while most of my "psychiatric" publications have more than five authors (with a few exceptions). Early in my career when I would get a draft of a psychiatric research report and I would see the list of authors, there were people whose contribution I knew about but there were others that I was at a loss to explain. One time I asked the senior author/principal investigator/big name researcher how the hell did so-and-so get a co-authorship since he hadn't contributed anything to the paper, not even reading and commenting on it. I was told this was a "courtesy authorship" in recognition of previous support and contributions. This was a couple of decades ago but it is my understanding that such "courtesy authorships" are now considered unethical at least within psychology. I now avoid accepting authorship on papers where either my contribution or a co-author's is either minimal or nonexistent. >We also need to appreciate that in many sciences, papers are often >of modest length and involve single studies (and much higher acceptance >rates). Psychology has evolved (unfortunately I think) a tradition of >lengthy, >multi-study papers. Those of us old enough will remember the contrast >between the old J of Experimental Psychology or J of Verbal Learning >Behavior (now J of Memory and Language) and current papers (longer, >more extensive intros and discussions, replications, ...). Perhaps psychology >is thereby putting undesirable barriers and delays between findings and >publication. Having been a co-author on papers in JEP:General and JML and in psychiatric journals I believe that the difference is more likely to be due to differences in the fundamental approach to the conduct of research. In psychology, individual researchers usually are operating with a very small group of people, ranging from just themselves to working with students (undergrad and grad), perhaps a post doc, and other colleagues. If a psychology researcher has grant money, especially large grants that are renewed, he/she can create what a colleague once referred to as a "research empire" which are heirarchially structured with research assistants at the bottom and the senior researcher/PI at top. But even in this situation the number of authors will not be too large. Without grant money, a psychology researcher is likely to produce publications with only one author or include the names of students/colleagues who provided some form of assistance. In psychiatric research, at least in the contexts I've been in, a team approach is more commonly used which, I think, mirrors the structure of medical/hospital operations. Someone is in charge (the PI) and delegates to others key responsibilities (e.g., Project Directors) who then delegate responsibilities to others (e.g., data analysts, biochemists, nurses, etc.), who then delegate jobs to others (i.e., research assistants, interviewers, lab assistants, etc.). So, just like a physician isn't expected to monitor a patient 24/7, rather just to come in and check on what is going, make sure everything is on track, and make sure that everyone else is doing his/her job. This, I believe, helps to explain why there may be 12 or more authors on a paper (especially in psychiatry) but, using contemporary standards, some of these may be questionable. Especially in situations where the department head/chief requires a co-authorship on papers based on research conducted in his/her department and he/she may only read the paper. Such practices might explain how things like the Columbia "Prayer" study got published in the "Journal of Reproductive Medicine". See: http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-09/miracle-study.html -Mike Palij New York University [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
