A famous quote, often attributed to Henry Kissinger, says that the tussles in academia are especially vicious because the stakes are so low. My interpretation of the expression is that by the stakes being low it is meant that not much money is involved. What are the fights about, then?
One of the things that they are often about is intellectual credit, which has the broader implication of community - and sometimes public - recognition. I have had many colleagues from industry who have told me repeatedly that ideas by themselves do not count for much in their line of work. What people are really interested in - and often fight patent wars over - is finished working products.
In academia, it seems to be almost exactly the opposite. The person with the earliest traceable connection to an idea often claims to be its original progenitor. On the biggest stages this often makes Nobel (and other) prizes controversial, especially when some people are left out of the honor roll.
On smaller stages, you can receive complaints from other researchers about citations in your publications (one way to deal with these is to post the paper on the arxiv and wait for feedback before submitting to a journal). Sometimes referees will insist that you cite their work (this can get out of hand, with the recommendations going up to 5-10 of their papers, which would reflect a clear bias towards them in the citation list) or they will not accept your paper. On the other hand, reviews will often claim the work you have submitted 'has already been done' (I am dealing with one right now), based on some proximity to earlier literature.
Where the rubber meets the road, i.e. in a functioning scientific research group, claims about credit priority often arise among students, postdocs and other faculty. Students who have worked together on a project often disagree about who should be first author (in my field the first author gets most of the credit; the last author is assigned the intellectual ownership). I have even seen cases where the student thinks the advisor should not be on the paper because 'they were not in the room' when the crucial advance was made (no thought is given to how the student happened to be in the room - because the advisor wrote (IP!) the grant (money!) that hired them.).
The disagreements get more acrimonious when postdocs are involved, since first author publications (especially when they end up in high impact factor journals) are crucial to subsequent postdoctoral and faculty job applications. Outright disagreements are often preceded by periods of intense jockeying in the author queue. Some postdocs will even refuse to participate in projects where their (perceived) position in the author queue is not 'worth their time'.
While students and postdoc disagreements can be adjudicated 'in-house', so to speak, priority disputes with colleagues and external collaborators may be outside of a professor's control. Sometimes they can lead to irreparable professional breaches and termination of collaborations.
It is remarkable, on the whole, how high the paranoia can reach - I have seen entire papers, complete with author list, abstract, body, conclusion and references, put together by people who wanted to be first authors; remarkably, these papers described experiments which were yet to be done - blanks and placeholders were left for the data, yet to be taken! Perhaps unsurprisingly, the experiments were never done.
My own approach to academic credit is to foster an atmosphere of generosity and appropriateness in my group and its dealings: meaning for the participants in any project not to get bent out of shape about it as long as the right people are getting the right recognition.
I always confirm with all authors before submitting (most journals now ensure this is done formally). I also try to pre-empt the paranoia by trying to make people understand that if everyone tries their best and does their job, there is more than 'enough of the pie' for everyone to go around.
I try to distribute projects so that each person gets to be first author on some papers, second on others, etc., etc. I also convey the message that dispute resolution by me should be a last option - it is part of the professional training of group members that they should learn how to get along with each other and stay personable and productive even when there are disagreements.
Overall, the desire for credit and recognition is a very human and very powerful motivator for performance. If used appropriately, it can have very beneficial effects - as long as ego is sublimated to work.
Comments