I think I've been used and I'm very upset.

[Gladiolus23]

During my junior year, I worked on a research project for which I performed most of the data analysis for a researcher at a prominent hospital over several months. I also presented at a national conference and received a pretty strong letter from the physician I worked with. In the letter, he said that I was the main reason behind the project's success and confirmed that I did most of the data analysis etc. I worked pretty hard to collect his data, while taking 20+ credit hours.

After the national conference, I went back to school for the spring term and contacted him again in the summer to re-start volunteering. I didn't hear from him at all last year, so I stopped bothering him. I recently realized that he published the paper with almost 20 authors listed…and my name is not on there.

I didn't even KNOW they were working on the paper and submitted it for publication. Now, it's published without my name. I feel angry and used. I did so much of the data collection! Why would they just ignore me afterwards? The paper has 3 other undergrad names on it, but not mine. Is there anything I can do at this point? Should I confront the PI?

I was going to use his LOR and write about this experience in my application. Now, I'm not sure if my work even holds weight! An adcom will go search up the paper and see my name missing and think I falsified it all.

Please help. I'm hating the research world already.

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[NotASerialKiller]

You have a conference presentation and apparently a glowing letter, why do you feel that you're owed more?

Also this doesn't really matter because there's nothing you can do about it now, but what do you mean by data analysis? If it was running tests and collecting data (grunt work) there's no reason you should have expected an authorship out of it. If it was true analysis (running stats, examining the data, determining how it should be interpreted) then yeah there might have been potential for authorship, but for whatever reason your PI didn't feel that your work warranted it. There is no research court you can take him to, sorry. There's no reason you can't still use that letter.

edit: Keep in mind that for publication they also may have re-analyzed the data, or gone in a different direction etc. so that your work was important for the presentation, but wasn't used in the end for that publication.

 

[mimelim]

Data collection is not a reason for authorship.
"Performing data analysis" is not a reason for authorship.
If you designed the experiment or you developed the methods of analysis, that is a reason for authorship. If YOU interpreted the data, that is one thing. If you simply ran the plan that others designed, hard to argue for authorship.


Now, I would typically still put someone on my papers if they had contributed, even if I was walking them through most of it, but that certainly is not the standard everywhere. You certainly can use the LOR and write about the experience. You can politely e-mail the PI about it, but realize that if you weren't included on the author list, you aren't going to be added post-fact and you will potentially burn bridges. In general, it is better to simply move on.

 

[JustAPhD]

You have a conference presentation and apparently a glowing letter, why do you feel that you're owed more?

Also this doesn't really matter because there's nothing you can do about it now, but what do you mean by data analysis? If it was running tests and collecting data (grunt work) there's no reason you should have expected an authorship out of it. If it was true analysis (running stats, examining the data, determining how it should be interpreted) then yeah there might have been potential for authorship, but for whatever reason your PI didn't feel that your work warranted it. There is no research court you can take him to, sorry. There's no reason you can't still use that letter.

edit: Keep in mind that for publication they also may have re-analyzed the data, or gone in a different direction etc. so that your work was important for the presentation, but wasn't used in the end for that publication.

Agreed. This seems like a lack of communication, which is perhaps both of your faults. You gained a very strong LoR and a national conference presentation. Do not burn this bridge. Not having a publication does not in any sense discredit the LoR or the work you did.

An adcom will go search up the paper and see my name missing and think I falsified it all.

No they wont.

 

[FindingNismo]

I'm sorry! Research is a tough business. I know how personal it feels when you're the one collecting the data, but you've got to remember that it's just one small part of a research study. I don't think you should confront the PI, as it can do much more harm than good for a budding scientist like yourself.

But you should definitely still talk about the experience. You still did the work, and it sounds like you learned quite a bit. You don't need a publication to prove that you got something out of the experience. I'm not on any AdComs, but just thinking about the logistics of it, most schools are getting thousands of applications, there's zero chance they have the time to examine publications of letter writers at any stage of the process.

 

[piii]

The problem is not that you didn't receive authorship when you deserved it, it's that you don't understand what actually deserves authorship. You didn't do any experimental research. You crunched numbers. Stop being entitled and get over it.

 

[ChrisMack390]

The fact the you presented this at a conference and got a nice letter out of it are more than enough for you to get "credit" for this in terms of med school applications.

 

[KShah1]

During my junior year, I worked on a research project for which I performed most of the data analysis for a researcher at a prominent hospital over several months. I also presented at a national conference and received a pretty strong letter from the physician I worked with. In the letter, he said that I was the main reason behind the project's success and confirmed that I did most of the data analysis etc. I worked pretty hard to collect his data, while taking 20+ credit hours.

After the national conference, I went back to school for the spring term and contacted him again in the summer to re-start volunteering. I didn't hear from him at all last year, so I stopped bothering him. I recently realized that he published the paper with almost 20 authors listed…and my name is not on there.

I didn't even KNOW they were working on the paper and submitted it for publication. Now, it's published without my name. I feel angry and used. I did so much of the data collection! Why would they just ignore me afterwards? The paper has 3 other undergrad names on it, but not mine. Is there anything I can do at this point? Should I confront the PI?

I was going to use his LOR and write about this experience in my application. Now, I'm not sure if my work even holds weight! An adcom will go search up the paper and see my name missing and think I falsified it all.

Please help. I'm hating the research world already.

The entitlement is quite strong, yet between Spring and Summer, you weren't even involved. Shouldn't you be more worried about scribing for the podiatrist?

 

[ditritium monoxide]

Hah. All I needed to see was the title to know that this was research related. Sucks if the undergrads on the paper didn't actually make an intellectual contribution greater than the data you got (which is probably the case).

 

[vellez]

There is not some conspiracy against you by your PI. I guess your work wasn't really what you thought it was. You still have a LOR and really good ECs from this experience. I had zero pubs, 3 research experiences, and I still got into many school. You don't need pubs, unless you wanna do an MD/PhD, and even then, being 1 of 25 wouldn't help you at all.

 

[DokterMom]

You know what you did -- we don't. So I have no way of knowing whether or not your contributions merited being named as an author. What I do know is that you were not named and no one is going to retroactively change that no matter what you do. Which means there's no point in upsetting people who are currently strong references by accusing them rightfully, which is guilt-inducing, or wrongfully, which would create offense -- so either way you lose.

There's also a possibility that the value of your contributions was minimized because you are young, an undergrad, and (I'm guessing) female, which studies have shown to happen. Again - nothing you can do to change it now. But you can make sure that for the future, you learn to 'toot your own horn' as the phrase suggests -- that you highlight the value of your contributions, negotiate up-front whether your work is likely to merit co-authorship, and that you keep in touch with PIs so you can stay at least peripherally involved until submission for publication so you aren't overlooked due to 'out of sight - out of mind' issues.

For now, what you have is a learning experience. Frame it positively, change what you can, and move forward --

 

[aldol16]

Even in the good ol' boy, Ivy tower culture of academia, it's odd for a PI to allow a student to present data the student has generated at a national conference in the form of a poster and then use that data in a subsequent paper without putting that student's name on the author list. I suspect there's something more we don't know here.