Question about professional development (maybe ethical behavior?)

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NeuroWise

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Currently, I am the student representative to the Clinical Psychology faculty and an interesting situation has arisen that I recently learned about. One of the graduate students, while doing an off-site practicum, conducted a small study with one of the faculty members at this external site and another graduate student that resulted in a poster. The original plan was for the poster to be submitted to a large, international conference that was coming up in several months. The student in question was second author. But, before this large conference, the first and second author decided to submit their current study findings to a small, regional conference. This student and the first author wrote up the abstract, submitted to the regional conference, and presented it. Well, it turns out the first author (who is also the corresponding author) did not notify the external practicum faculty (the senior author) that this was happening. Once this senior author learned the poster had been submitted and presented without their knowledge, they freaked out and are causing quite a lot of drama.

The second author knows that this was an error and should not have happened, and they apologized to the senior author. However, I am wondering if the "blame" (so to speak) is really with the second author given that it was the first author's responsibility to keep everyone on the same page. Should the second author be as severely punished as the first? What is the correct amount of punishment/reprimand? It seems very harsh to me to have this second author's situation discussed by the entirety of their Clinical faculty and potentially have a permanent letter in their file, which would require that they note on their APPI that an ethical violation occurred. Is it not sufficient that the second author apologize to the offended senior author and then discuss how to prevent such problems from occurring in the future with their major advisor? What are your thoughts on this weird situation?

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Although this is an ethical gray area, tbh, I don't think it's really deserving of formal "punishment." I once had someone (a senior faculty member) present a poster on which I was an author at a regional conference without notifying me (it was a project/study I had done substantial work on, so it was right to include me as an author). I found it via googling one day, went "oh, cool--glad they presented it," and added to my CV. Also, it sounds like the "current findings" of the small conference poster equal "preliminary findings," so it doesn't even seem like duplication of presentation. I'd probably just tell both students "in the future, please keep in mind that you should only submit things with all the authors' approval," and chalk it up to a learning experience.
 
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