Transcript Surviving in academia without selling one’s soul A panel discussion moderated by K.

Surviving in academia
without selling one’s soul
A panel discussion moderated by
K. Nandakumar
Univ. of Alberta
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Sources of pressure
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University “Top Notch” gets a new president,
who wants to move it higher by one notch!
He advocates a tougher tenure system. Only
one in three will get tenure!
Is the tenure system imposing enormous
pressure on young, new faculty to publish?
Is it an unfair practice? Is it unethical?
Does it have any positive features?
Should U of A (Chem Eng) follow it?
Transmitting the pressure
Prof. Hot Shot (a new faculty member on
tenure track stream) gets 3 grad students
and lots of ($250,000) startup money!
Prof. Shot has a great idea that might lead
to fame & glory and tenure!
Prof. Shot puts all his 3 students on the
same project and tells them the one to
finish first will get the PhD, Others will have
to start over!
Is it ethical? What should the students do?
Joint Authorship Of Paper
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Engineer A and Engineer B are faculty
members at a major university. As part
of the requirement for obtaining tenure
at the university, both Engineer A and
Engineer B are required to author
articles for publication in scholarly and
technical journals.
Joint Authorship Of Paper
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During Engineer A's years as a graduate
student he had developed a paper which
was never published and which forms
the basis of what he thinks would be an
excellent article for publication in a
journal. Engineer A discusses his idea
with Engineer B and they agree to
collaborate in developing the article.
Joint Authorship Of Paper
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Engineer A, the principal author, rewrites
the article, bringing it up to date.
Engineer B's contributions are minimal.
Engineer A agrees to include Engineer
B's name as coauthor of the article as a
favor in order to enhance Engineer B's
chances of obtaining tenure. The article
is ultimately accepted and published in a
refereed journal.
Joint Authorship Of Paper
Was it ethical for Engineer A to use a
paper he developed at an earlier time as
the basis for an updated article?
 Was it ethical for Engineer B to accept
credit for development of the article?
 Was it ethical for Engineer A to include
Engineer B as coauthor of the article?
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Credit for discovery of pulsars?
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A much-discussed example of the difficulties
associated with allocating credit between junior
and senior researchers was the 1967 discovery
by Jocelyn Bell, then a 24-year-old graduate
student, of pulsars.
Over the previous two years, Bell and several
other students, under the supervision of Bell's
thesis advisor, Anthony Hewish, had built a 4.5acre radiotelescope to investigate scintillating
radio sources in the sky.
Credit for discovery of pulsars?
After the telescope began functioning, Bell was
in charge of operating it and analyzing its data
under Hewish's direction. One day Bell noticed
"a bit of scruff" on the data chart. She
remembered seeing the same signal earlier and,
by measuring the period of its recurrence,
determined that it had to be coming from an
extraterrestrial source.
Credit for discovery of pulsars?
Together Bell and Hewish analyzed the
signal and found several similar examples
elsewhere in the sky. After discarding the
idea that the signals were coming from an
extraterrestrial intelligence, Hewish, Bell,
and three other people involved in the
project published a paper announcing the
discovery, which was given the name
"pulsar" by a British science reporter.
Credit for discovery of pulsars?
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Many argued that Bell should have shared the
Nobel Prize awarded to Hewish for the discovery,
saying that her recognition of the signal was the
crucial act of discovery.
What do you think?
Surprise Authorship, Credit and
Responsibility
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In your first year as a graduate student, you
worked in a research team with two more
advanced students and the supervising
professor. Two years later, after the other
students have graduated, you look through the
proceedings of an important research
symposium in your area and are surprised to
come upon a paper coauthored by all four
members of your former group, including
yourself. One of the advanced students is
listed as the first and corresponding author.
Surprise Authorship, Credit and
Responsibility
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The paper is in two parts. The first part
represents some of your group work. The
second part concerns a loosely related point of
theory. There is no issue of fraud or
incompetence:
the
presentation
and
conclusions in both parts of the paper appear
respectable, though you are not familiar enough
with the theoretical background of the second
part to be confident about vouching for it.
What, if anything can or should you do?
What about my contribution?
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For the first year of your graduate studies you
worked with Professor Smart on the Hot
Research project. By the end of the first year
you made a small but notable refinement to the
approach to the segment assigned to you. At
the end of the first year Professor Smart went
on leave for a semester and you started working
on a different project with another supervisor in
the same lab.
What about my contribution?
In the term following Prof. Smart 's
return from sabbatical, you are told by
another student still working on Hot
Research that he and Prof. Smart are
coauthoring a paper that incorporates
your refinement.
 What, if anything, can and should you
do?
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The Endless Dissertation
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You have been pursuing doctoral studies
in Engineering at X U for six years. You
chose to do a thesis with Professor Z,
despite having heard Z characterized as
``a slave-driver.''
The Endless Dissertation
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You completed course work eighteen months
ago and since then have worked solely on the
thesis. During this period, you have submitted
each chapter of the thesis to Professor Z; Z
suggested incremental revisions in both
methods and write-up which you have carried
out. You now believe the original goals that
the two of you agreed upon have been
completed and you submit the final draft to Z.
The Endless Dissertation
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Professor Z responds that it is wholly
unsatisfactory and asserts that you must not
only revise the thesis document, but do
additional work on the experimental
apparatus and collect substantially more
data. You feel that the additions that
Professor Z has demanded go unreasonably
beyond the original scope of the project and
will require another eighteen months to
complete.
Advisor/Advisee:
Pressure From Consulting
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Student A has been a graduate student at
MIT for three years, but has made little
progress on a dissertation because of the
heavy demands of being a Teaching
Assistant. For the last year, A has had a
Research Assistant position in Professor B's
group. During this time A has settled on a
thesis topic and started building a simulator
to use for the thesis research.
Advisor/Advisee:
Pressure From Consulting
One day Professor B tells student A to stop
work on the simulator and write some code
that he needs for a consulting project. Student
A doesn't need the money and would rather
work on his/her thesis, but is afraid that
refusing might jeopardize his/her RA position.
A confides this concern to C, another more
senior student of Professor B.
 What do you think of Prof. B?
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Falsifying data
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Engineer A is performing graduate research
at a major university. During the course of
research Engineer A compiles a vast amount
of data. The vast majority of the data strongly
supports Engineer A's conclusion as well as
prior conclusions developed by others.
However, a few aspects of the data are at
variance and not fully consistent with the
conclusions contained in Engineer A's report.
Falsifying data
Convinced of the soundness of his report
and concerned that inclusion of the
ambiguous data will detract from and distort
the essential thrust of the report, Engineer A
decides to omit references to the ambiguous
data in the report.
 Was it unethical for Engineer A to fail to
include reference to the unsubstantiative
data in his report?
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Fair Credit and Time Pressure
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Graduate student S has been working
for Professor B building an apparatus for
performing a particular photo-excited
probe measurement on semiconductor
devices. A preliminary paper on the
method has been submitted by S & B to
the Conference on Semiconductor
Device Characterization.
Fair Credit and Time Pressure
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Another student, J, a friend of S, tries the
probe on his device, and, with S's help,
gets some terrific results. J's supervisor,
Professor D is very excited about the
results
and
immediately
suggests
submitting a paper to the Device Research
Conference, which has a submission
deadline in a few days.
Fair Credit and Time Pressure
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J quickly prepares the text of a draft abstract,
and gives it to D for editing. D edits the abstract
into final form and prepares to ship it by DHL to
the conference referees. D shows it to J while
they are waiting for DHL to pick it up.
J sees that the only listed authors are himself
and D, and feels uneasy.
What do S & B deserve, and why? What
can/should D do?
Is my soul intact?
Most importantly, learn to listen to your gut
feelings.
 The
head
can
rationalize
anything,
particularly after the fact. Be bold and
acknowledge errors of judgement.
 Explore the web for more case studies.
 Discuss such issues with friends, colleagues.
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Happy soul searching