Humans in Science

I got onto the Internet this evening after a day of entertaining 8-year-olds in honor of my daughter’s birthday. This may be why I have a short fuse (although it all went fine – but my husband was taking his seat at the World Cup rugby final while I was raking up confetti from the backyard).

I discover in my inbox a message from Science magazine. I almost tagged it as junk before I recognized the authors:

Manuscript Title:”DYSRUPTION OF … blah blah blah.”
First Author: S…
Corresponding Author: S…
Manuscript Number: seven digits

Dear Dr. …

You are listed as a coauthor on the above manuscript, which has recently been submitted to Science. According to Science policy, all authors must have seen and approved the submission of their manuscript. If you have seen the manuscript and approved its submission, no action is necessary.

If you have not read this paper and do not approve its submission to Science, please let us know as soon as possible. Please refer to the manuscript number listed above in any correspondence (you can just reply to this message).

Your manuscript is now undergoing an initial screening to determine whether it will be sent for in-depth review. We will notify the corresponding author of our decision as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

[the] Editorial Coordinator

WTF?! This is an article for which my last correspondence with the first author, a grad student, was on Wednesday. In that message, she asked me to change the capital ABC’s of the panels in a supplementary figure I had made to abc’s instead. She also asked me to switch around the legend to the article figure myself after my pointing out that when she rearranges the panels, she needs to rearrange the legend also. She had attached what I considered to be a fairly unfinished draft. I worked on “my” legend, I adjusted the figure as requested and I noticed a huge number of grammatical errors around the associated text that are easily fixed but take time. I started correcting them but have other things going on, too, so I sent a message Friday saying, I’m on it.

Next thing I get is this surprise.

Lest you think I am being harsh or touchy, in the student’s Wednesday message, she quoted my previous e-mail from five days earlier. I had written that there were many corrections to be made to the text and asked who was going to undertake them, and I also asked in the last sentence to be kept abreast of further developments. There were no responses, but being quoted demonstrates that she could have read those sentences.

Naturally, I wrote to Science :

I have indeed not read this version of the paper and do not approve of its submission to Science in its current state. I have made the first and corresponding authors aware of my objections.

Thank you for making me aware of the submission.

I also wrote a scathing letter to the first author and copied to the last, the corresponding author. I won’t cite it, because it is in French. No, not that sort of French. Among other things, I politely pointed out that there was a gaping hole in her education if she was unaware of the responsibilities that go hand-in-hand with authorship of a scientific paper. And that other people would know how to fill it in.

Unfortunately, that senior corresponding author is one of my two bosses.

Therefore, I’ve just given up a middle spot on a pretty interesting paper that will get published somewhere fine anyhow [sotto voce: although with a typo in the first word of the title it looks bad for Science]. I’ve probably pissed off established senior scientists who had been good to me. Damn it. I took care to say that if my own student DQ and postdoc S still feel comfortable with remaining associated with the article, they may take my photos and Photoshop elements and work with them. So, I’ve only shot myself in the foot.

What else are principles for?

Posted on Saturday, October 20th, 2007 at 4:19 pm Categorized as:General

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