I want to thank everyone who responded to me on and off-list. Based on some of your responses, it does seem like some undergraduates get enough training (and supervision) to be capable of carrying out and understanding some of those advanced statistical techniques. Nevertheless, I have a strong suspicion that an increasing number of students are given unmerited authorship of journal articles and, especially, of conference papers and I believe that this is a growing problem.
Responsible authorship is an issue of concern within the area of research integrity and inappropriate and questionable practices include ghost authorship, gift authorship, misappropriation of text and ideas, etc. In the biomedical world and, increasingly, in the social sciences, the guidelines proposed by the Committee On Publication Ethics (COPE, http://www.publicationethics.org.uk/guidelines) are being universally adopted by science journals and professional associations. One of the relevant guidelines states: The award of authorship should balance intellectual contributions to the conception, design, analysis and writing of the study against the collection of data and other routine work. If there is no task that can reasonably be attributed to a particular individual, then that individual should not be credited with authorship. Another guideline states: All authors must take public responsibility for the content of their paper. The multidisciplinary nature of much research can make this difficult, but this can be resolved by the disclosure of individual contributions. In fact, the APA has similar guidelines in its ethics code. For example: 8.12b, Publication Credit : Principal authorship and other publication credits accurately reflect the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their relative status . Minor contributions to the research or to the writing for publications are acknowledged appropriately, such as in footnotes or in an introductory statement. Mike, who teaches at a highly competitive institution, points out that it is rare for an undergraduate to have both, the skill and the depth of conceptual understanding to carry out some of these sophisticated statistical analyses. I would guess the likelihood of having such a student is even lower at the less competitive colleges and universities. Yet, at most institutions these days there is a strong expectation to involve undergraduates in professional research and I think this push has resulted in too many instances of unmerited authorship being awarded to students. What I am trying to determine is exactly how extensive and serious is this breach in academic AND professional integrity? Ill leave you with a quote from Fine and Kurdek (1993), a must-read article for those of us who involve students in our research: First, a publication on ones record that is not legitimately earned may falsely represent the individuals scholarly expertise. Second, if because he or she is now a published author, the student is perceived as being more skilled than a peer who is not published, the student is given an unfair advantage professionally. Finally, if the student is perceived to have a level of competence that he or she does not actually have, he or she will be expected to accomplish tasks that may be outside the students range of expertise (p. 1143). Reference Fine, M. A. and Kurdek, L. A. (1993). Reflections on determining authorship credit and authorship order on faculty-student collaborations. American Psychologist, 48, 1141-1147. --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
