Paradox of the story is that the people who do all this get responsible jobs easily in academia or industry just because they have such a high profile publications to their credit. I do not think there is really any system exists that punishes them on their unethical behaviour (when it becomes obvious, as in this case) as opposed to the situation when they are rewarded for their so called "achievements". The take home message is that the members of selection committees for tenure track researcher positions should expand their criteria to be able to give a chance to someone who is a genuine researcher rather than just confining to someone who has published a paper in some top tier journal. Also, in this case the courage of the senior author is praiseworthy as it is pretty understandable for a senior author not to really know the darker side of a shining story going on in the lab but what about those who took the credit as co-first authors at the time of manuscript submission but now getting away by making the excuse that they were only involved with providing the reagents and experiments planning. It raises another question: should such person really have shared the first authorship of the paper? Mahendra Kumar Singh (mahendra.singh@fccc.edu)

• 06 Mar, 2008
• Posted by: Mahendra Singh

A news wothy reading!