Jessie Kopp's response to Writing in the Sciences, chapter 3

Chapter 3

I would like to start my discussion with section 3.3 The ethics of authorship. I found this section particularily intesting. I agreed with the authors about the problem of 'author inflation' in today's research field. I have had the opportunity to work for two different labs conducting social scientific research that handle the process of authorship extremely differently. In my first experience, authorship was given only to those individuals who directly particpated in the writing of the research article or analysis of data for the article. In my second experience, it was given to the aforemention individuals plus any professor who was involved in collecting data or writing the research grant (but not any graduate or undergraduate assistant involved in data collection or grant writing). So any article coming out of this lab, on average, had 7-10 authors even though only 2-3 participated in the writing process. I feel that this is giving credit for ideas of few to many. Anyone who has worked with large data sets knows that a vast number of research questions can be generated from these studies. So, I feel that authorship/credit for these unique ideas should go to those who originated them and who took the painstaking time to develop them for publication.

The last two sections, 3.7 and 3.8, go into the ethical responsibility of the scientific community to relate their work to the general public. This is a HUGE responsibility of scientists that may not be fully met. There seems to be a line between writing as a scientist and writing as a scientific journalist. We discuss this in a previous question posed to this class. Writing as a scientist seems to include a large amount of jargon and complicated statistical analyses that are often hard for the general public to understand. Whereas, writing as a scientific journalist involves relaying the pertinent material in a more understanable way, but also jazzing up the facts to make them more newsworthy. I think it is important to bridge these two styles in order to 'further break down the barrier' between scientists and the public as the authors put it (pg. 86). We need a form of writing that reports finding in an understandable way without inflating them.

Lastly, I'd like to talk about an issue that wasn't mentioned in this chapter. In the beginning of the chapter, the authors discuss ethical concerns about scientist misrepresenting/falsifying data. This may happen because there is a great drive to publish, and the only papers that get published are ones that further current ideas/findings. Studies that fail to find a cure for whatever ailment is being studied are not published. So individuals may be inclined to 'play with numbers' (which is quite easy with some of the statisitical programs) in order to get some sort of statistically significant finding. I think if our journals also included studies that were not successful, we could cut down on this ethical problem. I also think that learning about treatments that do not work can be very beneficial. First of all, it allows others to learn about what has been tried so they do not try it again. Secondly, as with everything from life, you often learn more about something from a failure than from a success. In the realm of drug research, you may try a drug that does not cure a disease, but in the process you may learn about a characteristic of the bacterium or virus that is causing the disease. This latter information would be worth publishing.