Whether to be a coauthor or not
by mitch on Jan 14 2008 (2731 Views)I received the following by email, and was granted permission to share it. Identifying information has been removed.
Mitch,
I'm in a difficult situation and not quite sure how to handle it. Several months ago, I approached a friend of mine from graduate school to work on a collaboration together. I am an experimentalist while he is a theory guy. His recent work is always top notch, and really is the best there is in the field, his calculations always come within hundredths of an eV to experimental results. This is exactly what I needed in order to set to rest one of the lingering controversies within my small field.The gist of the situation is that the work my PhD advisor and I have published contradicts an others in the field. This has led to rather acrimonious comments on both sides and even several published letters in journals criticizing each others work. Unfortunately, my theory friend has come up with an answer that agrees near exactly what my competitors reported. He has already started writing the paper and needs me to write several experimentalish paragraphs for the paper.
The problem is I didn't approach my old PI about this collaboration and I will be effectively putting my name with our competitors when this gets published. This would also render a significant portion of my PhD thesis meaningless, although I've already graduated and have my doctorate. I am still planning to collaborate with my old PI but I don't know how eager she will be when this paper comes out. I could ask to take my name off the author list, but since I was the one who approached my friend this seems dubious, plus if his calculations had agreed with my experiment I wouldn't be thinking of taking my name off.
I'm not sure what to do.
~confused postdoc in America
My own advice would be to take your name off the author list. It sounds like your friend will likely submit the paper regardless of whether your name is on it or not as it addresses a significant controversy. I doubt you know all the ins and outs of the theory he is using to write the paper, and that in and of itself should prelude you from being on the author list.
Since you would of placed your name on the paper if it had agreed with your results, I don't know...
If anyone in the audience can offer advice, I'm sure it would be appreciated.
Mitch
How about asking the previous PI what she thinks. Maybe she won't be thrilled about having her previous student's name on a contrary result. But if Confused is confident about the theory results, there's no reason to take his/her name off the paper.
In fact, leave you name on the paper, and add paragraphs that point out the flaws in the calculation (if any) that might lead to the contrary result.
My question is, why didn't people go to a theorist earlier? Kudos to "Confused" for actually thinking of doing it
That's not an opinion, but I really don't know what you should do. lol.
Is there any reason why competitors and co-authors couldn't have a get-together to discuss the various issues over a couple of beers?
db
Talk to your old PI. Explain that there may well be an explaination to the whole problem, and this theoretical result may well shed some light on the subject. Ask her what she thinks.
Seriously, TALKING about things often helps. Heck, it may even help the paper... if she can poke a hole in it before it's published.