Dr. White has developed a novel approach for the analysis of genomic sequence data that is available on open source websites but is cumbersome to implement. After meeting Dr. White at a lab seminar, you mention that you plan to implement the method but you haven’t been able to hire someone with the right computational experience. After the discussion, you share your data with him and about a week later you receive a series of summary figures, as well as an interpretation of the data and some ideas about additional genes to analyze and experiments to perform. Approximately 9 months later, you receive an angry email forwarded from your lab chief where Dr. White expresses outrage that you have published a paper using not just the analytic method but also validating some of the genes that he had proposed. Dr. White expressed the opinion that based on his analysis and reporting the data back to you, as well as the fact that interpretation of the results at the level of predicting specific genes and pathways, required experience and insight and that was sufficient to have warranted co-authorship.

Questions 

1. Was Dr. White justified in being upset? Are there corrective actions that you should take? 

2. What actions could you have taken to clarify collaborative and authorship roles, and when might you have taken those steps? What were your expectations when you shared your data with him originally?

https://oir.nih.gov/sites/default/files/uploads/sourcebook/documents/ethical_conduct/case_studies-2015.pdf



Last modified: Tuesday, 12 March 2019, 2:06 PM