Training Versus Practice: Contradictions in the Ethics of

Authorship
Dawn A. Joseph, Leah M. Lozier, Karen Gale 225.19
Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience, Georgetown University,
Washington, DC

Background The Case Results

A major theme that emerged from the Carnegie Initiative on the Bob Powell, a postdoctoral fellow in biochemistry, has just
Doctorate (CID) deliberations was "fostering professionalism" in the completed a manuscript detailing the results from the first project in
25

Count: faculty responses

context of training graduate students to integrate into the broader which he had taken a leading role. The focus of his project has been to
professional community. A major challenge in this regard is the gap discern the ways in which humans metabolize sulfites, a class of
between the professional ethical standards that students learn in chemicals commonly used to preserve wines and dried fruits. Although 20

the classroom and the variety of professional practices that they will he had developed the rough outlines of the project on his own, he
confront in the "real world." owes much to individuals both inside and outside his lab. 15

Training doctoral students in scientific ethics and responsible

The assistance he received from others includes the following: 10
conduct often creates a disconnect with practices in laboratories of
1) A colleague at another university, a toxicologist specializing in food
faculty who themselves have not received this type of formal
additives, shared with Bob his previous work on the in vivo activity of e
training. In the classroom, students learn standards and policies an ua
t

st
sulfites, information that allowed Bob to choose the ideal animal model ife st ci d or er

i
og
l i a i
that guide responsible conduct in research only to find some of ild iali hn gr e n ch

ol
r S ar
for the experiment -- the Abyssinian field mouse. c
de

xic
W ec T e e
them implicitly or explicitly contradicted in research laboratories. A sp Un s

common example concerns 'honorary' or 'gift' authorship (Grieger
2005). The pressure to publish poses a great challenge for
decisions regarding the assignment of authorship (Bennett 2003).
Here we describe a mechanism to prompt students and faculty to
engage in honest discourse about best-practices their application,
with the goal of facilitating shared responsibility and understanding
between mentors and trainees.
AIMS
1) Assess faulty practices in the assignment of authorship in a variety
of different scenarios.
2) Expose faculty to the ethical guidelines/uniform requirements that
their students are learning.
3) Address the problems of reconciling ‘policy’ and ‘practice’ in
assignment of authorship.
We predicted that there would be a difference between faculty
assignment of authorship and assignment of authorship based on the
uniform requirements for manuscripts.
2) A friend of his, who happened to be a wildlife specialist, provided
Bob with much advice on rearing and maintaining a colony of
Abyssinian field mice such that he would have a stable pool of animal
subjects.
3) A highly experienced technician in the lab gave Bob advice on
modifying an assay he had been using, which finally allowed him to
measure successfully sulfite metabolites in mouse urine. This
technician also assisted in writing up the methods section of the paper.
4) The number of assays that Bob had to conduct was quite sizable
and more than he could manage on his own, given other demands of
the project. Thus, an undergraduate college student collected most
of the urine samples and conducted the assays yielding the data.
5) Finally, a senior researcher in a neighboring lab who took an
interest in Bob's career offered to review the initial drafts of Bob's
paper. By the end of the writing process, this researcher had helped
Bob outline the paper, suggested a few additional experiments that
strengthened the paper's conclusions, and made a number of editing
To
re
No authorship Authorship
Answer Excerpts:
Dr. D will give authorship to everyone. But the toxicologist is on the
borderline. If this person gave the idea for Powell's work, he should be
an author. In this case, Dr. D will ask him whether he wants authorship.
If he does want authorship, Dr. D will tell him to participate in this paper,
such as editing the paper.
Dr. G will give authorship to only the senior researcher.
And the technician is on the borderline. If the technician's advice
is critical in this paper, this technician may have an authorship.
Since the technician just gave advice, he may offer an
acknowledgment.
Conclusions
1)Faculty views on assignment of authorship often is at odds with explicit
uniform journal policies on authorship criteria.
2)Individual lab policies vary greatly, often giving authorship as a

Methods
Participants: Georgetown University biomedical graduate students
from two non-consecutive semesters of Survival Skills and Ethics for
Scientists; twenty-two Georgetown University faculty members.
3)Discuss authorship case (“B3”) in small mixed break-out groups
(students and faculty).
2) Each group reads “Uniform requirements” policy and
reevaluates their choices based on the policy.
3) Students interview different faculty members and record opinions
as to which, if any, of the individuals on the Powell case deserve
authorship.
changes in the penultimate draft that enhanced the paper's clarity
**Case B3 taken from: Teaching the Responsible Conduct of Research 
Prepared for the Association of American Medical Colleges by Stanley G.Korenman, M.D.,
Associate Dean for Ethics and Medical Scientist Training, University of California, Los
Angeles, School of Medicine and Allan C. Shipp, Senior Staff Associate, Association of
American Medical Colleges with the oversight and contribution of the AAMC Ad Hoc
Committee on Misconduct and Conflict of Interest in Research Subcommittee on Teaching
Research Ethics and Support from the NIH.
reward, honor, or gesture of appreciation.
3)Doctoral students will inevitably face a conflict between the authorship
criteria they learn in ethics courses and the actual authorship practices
they encounter in their thesis and postdoc labs.
4)The classroom exercise allowed students to confront the surprisingly
large variability in the authorship judgments of faculty and to recognize
the potential for conflict between investigators and journal guidelines,
and between different investigators.
5)By prompting students and faculty to engage in and open and honest
discourse about best-practices and how they are arrived at or applied,
we facilitate shared responsibility and understanding between mentors
and mentees, a hallmark feature of the collaborative learning processed
stressed by the CID.

Study supported by funds from the NIH T32NS041231