Advice for authorship/mentor issue

[healthpsychftw]

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Hello, I posting to get advice on how best to navigate a challenging situation with my former boss.

- A little background: I'm a newly licensed psychologist. My research-focused post doc ended a few months ago. I was originally planning to pursue a research career in academic medicine, starting with getting a K award. However, towards the end of my postdoc, my mentor (a physician) and I began butting heads regarding the plan for my research. It became clear we were not going to be a good fit for a mentored career development award, so I ended up accepting a full time clinical position, which I am enjoying although I do miss research.

- During my postdoc I wrote several papers using secondary data from my mentor's R-funded clinical trial. Two of them are done but not yet published. We recently got a revise and resubmit for one at a relatively high impact journal. When I completed the revisions and sent it to my former boss ( she is corresponding author), she let me know that she plans to make the statistician joint first author with me). - FYI I wrote every single word of the paper.

- I'm pretty upset about this but I'm debating if I should let it go because I think she might try something similar with the other paper.

- Any advice is appreciated

 

[WisNeuro]

How do they plan on implementing a "co-first author" here?

 

[healthpsychftw]

How do they plan on implementing a "co-first author" here?

I'm still listed first with an asterisk above both of our names and a note indicating that we are co-first authors in the fine print below. That's why I'm considering letting it go because, for all practical purposes most people will assume i'm the sole first author...

 

[WisNeuro]

Yes, let it go, no one will know the difference.

 

[healthpsychftw]

Yes, let it go, no one will know the difference.

Thanks, will do. I appreciate the advice.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

Yeah, that kind of stuff is one of the many reasons I left that "rats in a bucket" culture.

 

[futureapppsy2]

Fwiw, one thing I’ve realized over time is that authorship position drama (as long as you are getting authorship appropriately) is almost never worth it, unless perhaps you are working somewhere that explicitly requires X first/last author articles.

 

[R. Matey]

Yeah, that kind of stuff is one of the many reasons I left that "rats in a bucket" culture.

Yeah, also gifting authorship is so gross.

 

[healthpsychftw]

Fwiw, one thing I’ve realized over time is that authorship position drama (as long as you are getting authorship appropriately) is almost never worth it, unless perhaps you are working somewhere that explicitly requires X first/last author articles.

Yeah, I agree this is not worth the drama. I'm hoping the other paper goes smoothly (enough) too.

Yeah, gifting authorship is so gross.

Yeah that's been the norm in this lab, but giving joint first authorship to someone that literally wrote nothing seemed like a bit much...

 

[healthpsychftw]

Yeah, that kind of stuff is one of the many reasons I left that "rats in a bucket" culture.

Yeah, honestly it's been so nice to be out of that culture. I feel valued and respected in my new position which has been so refreshing 🙂 I do think I will miss doing research so I'm interested to see if I can find a side hustle that involves research outside of academia (or at least outside of toxic R1 giant academia)...

 

[tr]

Yeah that's been the norm in this lab, but giving joint first authorship to someone that literally wrote nothing seemed like a bit much...

But the co first author here is the statistician. Is it possible that that person did all the analysis and made the tables/figures? Using already collected data? And OP did the writing? If so, that seems like an appropriate co-first-author situation, especially if the statistician is relatively junior as well.

Also agree with above posters that asterisk co-first authorship is really not a big issue, since if OP's name is listed first the paper will still be cited as healthpsychftw et al.

 

[psych.meout]

But the co first author here is the statistician. Is it possible that that person did all the analysis and made the tables/figures? Using already collected data? And OP did the writing? If so, that seems like an appropriate co-first-author situation, especially if the statistician is relatively junior as well.

Also agree with above posters that asterisk co-first authorship is really not a big issue, since if OP's name is listed first the paper will still be cited as healthpsychftw et al.

And it's not necessarily only doing the analyses and making the figures/tables. The statistician may have also been part of development of the research, including power analyses and determining sample size, providing input on what kinds of data would need to be collected in order to do the analyses requested to draw the inferences desired by OP and the other researchers, etc.

 

[R. Matey]

And it's not necessarily only doing the analyses and making the figures/tables. The statistician may have also been part of development of the research, including power analyses and determining sample size, providing input on what kinds of data would need to be collected in order to do the analyses requested to draw the inferences desired by OP and the other researchers, etc.

Or they ran one model and handed the OP the output. There are a lot of unknowns here.

ETA: N=1, but I've been a stats consultant on papers before and never had an expectation of credit beyond getting paid and a minor authorship credit. My limited read is that is fairly normal.

 

[psych.meout]

Or they ran one model and handed the OP the output. There are a lot of unknowns here.

ETA: N=1, but I've been a stats consultant on papers before and never had an expectation of credit beyond getting paid and a minor authorship credit. My limited read is that is fairly normal.

Right, it could be lots of things. We don't know because OP is being vague about what their contributions were. OP said the paper was based on their mentor's R, so there could be contributions from the statistician that OP doesn't even know about.

 

[R. Matey]

Right, it could be lots of things. We don't know because OP is being vague about what their contributions were. OP said the paper was based on their mentor's R, so there could be contributions from the statistician that OP doesn't even know about.

I don't think they're being vague. They said they wrote every word of it (which would be hard to do if you didn't have knowledge of the work). In my exp, the theoretical heavy lifting is rewarded more setting up and running a model. But I ultimately agree that it doesn't really matter in the end since few will know or care anyways.

 

[psych.meout]

I don't think they're being vague. They said they wrote every word of it (which would be hard to do if you didn't have knowledge of the work). In my exp, the theoretical heavy lifting is rewarded more setting up and running a model. But I ultimately agree that it doesn't really matter in the end since few will know or care anyways.

I didn't say that they didn't have knowledge of the study and I'm not saying they're being vague about whether they wrote this specific paper or not. I'm talking about the planning and work that went into the R. The statistician could have been collaborating on that, selecting what analyses would be done, what data would need to be collected to run those analyses, etc. I.e., I'm saying they're being vague about what this statistician's specific role was throughout the entirety of the R, not simply who wrote this one paper.

I'm not saying OP isn't wrong to object to or resent this authorship designation or that the statistician necessarily did more than running a model and providing results or even that they deserve any authorship. I'm saying that there's wide variability in what a statistician's role could be and we don't have enough info about what this specific statistician did and what authorship (if any) was deserved.

 

[R. Matey]

I didn't say that they didn't have knowledge of the study and I'm not saying they're being vague about whether they wrote this specific paper or not. I'm talking about the planning and work that went into the R. The statistician could have been collaborating on that, selecting what analyses would be done, what data would need to be collected to run those analyses, etc. I.e., I'm saying they're being vague about what this statistician's specific role was throughout the entirety of the R, not simply who wrote this one paper.

I'm not saying OP isn't wrong to object to or resent this authorship designation or that the statistician necessarily did more than running a model and providing results or even that they deserve any authorship. I'm saying that there's wide variability in what a statistician's role could be and we don't have enough info about what this specific statistician did and what authorship (if any) was deserved.

I took your comment to be referring to the paper given the overall context of the thread, but largely agree that the role of the statistician is unknown. It would be pretty weird for a senior person (i.e., someone involved in grant planning would be typically be more senior) to desire co-first authorship, but academia is a weird place!

 

[healthpsychftw]

To clarify, there was another, senior statistician who was more involved in the planning of the trial (senior statistician was included as a middle author on this paper). I'm not certain if co-lead author statistician assisted the senior statistician in earlier phases of this trial, but if they did, their contributions were not acknowledged in the primary outcome paper. Not sure if this affects anyone's thoughts on the matter....

 

[healthpsychftw]

Co-lead author statistician performed all analyses and made 2 of 3 figures (a 3rd statistician [middle author] made a figure as well). I made all of the Table shells and populated them once the analyses were complete.

 

[Spydra]

- A little background: I'm a newly licensed psychologist. My research-focused post doc ended a few months ago. I was originally planning to pursue a research career in academic medicine, starting with getting a K award. However, towards the end of my postdoc, my mentor (a physician) and I began butting heads regarding the plan for my research. It became clear we were not going to be a good fit for a mentored career development award, so I ended up accepting a full time clinical position, which I am enjoying although I do miss research.

I think others gave you excellent advice regarding the authorship issue, but I am curious about your future research plans if you're inclined to share. I get the choice you made to walk away from that mentor, but you must have laid a hefty foundation to have been able to consider applying for a K award. Will you be able to do any research in your clinical role? Or do you have other plans to engage in research?

 

[Ollie123]

Will be tough to give advice beyond what was already said without you having to disclose more details about the analysis than you likely want to share on an anonymous forum. I agree with the above this doesn't have any sort of negative impact on you so really doesn't seem worth fighting over.

I will say that this certainly doesn't sound categorically inappropriate to me, albeit better discussed in advance. I think a lot depends on nuance. If this person ran 3 t-tests probably not. If these were insanely complex models that wouldn't converge with oodles of MNAR data that have to be accounted for with complex procedures after going through endless iterations of data cleaning hell of high-intensity sampled data (e.g., EMA, physio variables) then it is perfectly appropriate. I'm guessing reality is somewhere between the two extremes but without reading the entire paper and knowing exactly what was done I don't feel well positioned to gauge fairness.

I will say psychologists (and even moreso psychology trainees) are often weirdly focused on "writing" as the definitive performance of the science. Obviously it all depends on the context, but oftentimes the writing is the easiest part of the research compared to getting the grant, running the study and conducting the analysis. Its not unheard of to have technical "ghost writers" who draft the entire manuscript and aren't even on the author list at all because just writing up a simple study when everything is handed to you isn't considered an intellectual contribution. I'm not (by any means) endorsing that practice and would never consider it in my lab, but it does provide perspective on the range of norms....