Bill and Sara meet in an introductory graduate course and over the span of the upcoming academic year, fall in love and get married. At the beginning of the second year, they select different mentors in the same department and begin their dissertation research. The mentors and their groups frequently collaborate and co-author publications. They both work extremely hard but frequently has Bill help her in the lab. On weekends they are commonly seen working together doing experiments which are exclusively part of Sara's research project. Over the course of the next three years, Sara prepares 6 senior authored manuscripts and all are published in peer-reviewed journals. Bill is not included as an author on any of the papers, but he is acknowledged in 5 of them. In her last year in the program, Sara wins the prestigious graduate student honour day award and is also selected by the departmental faculty to receive the outstanding graduate student annual award. Recently, Sara has been offered a permanent position in a biotechnology company. Bill is not likely to be finished with his dissertation research anytime soon and has no publications or even abstracts to his name. A small group of graduate students meet with you, the departmental chair, and bitterly complain that Sara has had an unfair advantage during her graduate research career. They claim her publication record is deceptive as it fails to account for all the "extra collaborative help" she received from her spouse. They claim both she and her mentor are party to inappropriate practices. They want you to intervene in some way.


Questions:

  • Do you agree that Sara and her mentor have involved in inappropriate practices?
  • Do you think you, as a departmental chair, should intervene in some way?
  • Or should some else?
  • What do you think would the appropriate way to proceed?


http://research-ethics.org/topics/collaboration/#discussion


Last modified: Tuesday, 12 March 2019, 2:03 PM