Lab work and collaborations

[yesnomaybe]

Hi all, I am a regular poster on this board but would like to keep anonymous for the purposes of this post.

<rant / details>

I recently joined a lab in my department headed by a relatively inexperienced professor. Over the summer he managed to recruit five people to work on three different projects funded by an NSF award that he had won a couple of years ago. I led one project, a team of two students led another project, and a third team led the last project. During the semester, three of the five people basically stopped contributing to the projects, with me left working on my project and one person, call him X, completing the project he started with his team-member, Y. My project turned out to produce very good results, which I have used to expand the project and produce contributions of my own; the other project turned out to be pretty disappointing and at most could be regarded as a control for my results (though pretty unnecessary, since I ran my own pilot and control experiments regardless). This means that throughout the semester, I have been working on designing experiments (4 in total), writing up experiment items (ca. 200 items per experiment, a matlab command script, instructions), proctoring (twice a week, morning to afternoon for the last two months), analyzing results and coming up with a theory to explain them. X helped me run some of the stats.

A few weeks ago the professor and I decided to submit the results of two of my projects (the NSF one, plus one of my own developments of the project) to two conferences. I did the actual abstract-writing and it was decided that X would also get authorship credit. The professor wanted to mention X's experiment results in the abstracts and he did help with stats, so I was not terribly upset. I am new to lab-work and from what I understand that's how things happen in that world, so it didn't seem out of line. But then X said that his team member, Y, should also be given authorship credit, and the professor agreed. This whole discussion happened just minutes before the submission deadline (we were working into the night on those abstracts) and though I objected, there was no time to discuss and the professor said to add him. So Y, who did not contribute anything throughout the semester, is now co-author on two of my abstracts.

To make matters worse (well, also better) - we are writing together a paper, which the professor has been invited to submit to a leading journal in our field. Specifically, the professor invited X and me to write the paper with him; and X promptly wrote an email to Y and invited him to join the writing. Again, this is last minute: the deadline is in 9 days. Again, Y did nothing during the whole semester; he doesn't understand the experiments, the results or the theory we have for explaining them. But, of course he did not decline. He showed up to our meeting where we decided who would do what. . and since he really can't do much of anything, he is "helping" X with his part; the prof and I each will do a third of the paper.

</rant>

Now, rant over. I have a few questions.

I had originally decided not to confront the professor about his choice to include Y. I do appreciate it very much that he has given me many opportunities during the semester, including funding to run my experiments, mentorship and support in designing them, and first authorship on all our work. But three weeks have gone by and I still feel taken advantage of. I have a meeting scheduled with the prof for early next week and I am wondering what you think of the situation. As I wrote, I am inexperienced in this type of work; it's a unique opportunity in my department so I can't switch labs or stop working with this prof (nor do I want to).

I understand that it's probably too late to take away credits from Y, but: should I still bring this issue up?

The thinking is that since this is a new lab, what happens now is likely to become protocol. I don't want my work to be credited to other people like this again.

Separately from this, or not: I am the only female student in the lab. I feel like the two other students, X and Y, are letting themselves take advantage of me, and I feel like I have to do three times as much work to get the same kind of acknowledgment as them. Specifically, X did stats and gets co-authorship on my paper; I did matlab coding, but in a discussion about turning X and Y's project (that used this code) into an abstract of its own (and again, pretty soon it became apparent that it's not interesting enough -- which cut the discussion short), the prof said to X "...and I don't know if yesnomaybe should be co-author on that," to which X agreed. I didn't say anything, and I'm still mad at myself because of that.

Thirdly, I feel like Y behaves strangely towards me: ignoring emails I send, making little snide remarks about me in other people's presence. I have nothing concrete to back the feeling that he is being chauvinistic, but I hate it that this person gets credit for work I did. I wonder if it's attitude towards female students, or maybe he just doesn't like me. .. should I bring this up and say I don't want to work with Y anymore, or suck it up and accept that there will always be some people that will act like jerks?

Thanks for reading this and for any comments. As you may have noticed, I am pretty upset.

I don't have experience with this type of work and unfortunately my department doesn't have any young female faculty members who I feel like I could approach for more advice. Any advice from those of you who are more familiar with situations like this will be greatly appreciated.

Edited December 12, 2010 by yesnomaybe

[nessa]

I'm sorry to hear you're frustrated. You need to do something about this, because it is not going to get better on its own.

How close are you to this professor? I had a similar situation (new and angered by freeloading coworkers) in a non-research job. I found the best approach was to play dumb and just ask what the normal protocol in this situation was- so for you, what are the authorship guidelines? how is that decision made? etc. Then you could also explain that you've been frustrated and you're not sure how to handle the situation. If he thinks it's not a big deal and you're overreacting, he'll tell you so, and then you'll know you'll need to address the issue without him. The trick is to keep the professor on your side- so don't attack his decision, and don't come off as whiny (even if it's well-deserved frustration and not whininess you're expressing!).

I know what you mean about being the only woman (although I'm sure other GradCafe members would disagree, and probably will)- the acceptable range of behavior (in terms of being pushy and/or lazy) is much narrower for women than for men. Don't take Y's behavior personally and don't feel you need to change anything you say or do because of him.

Good luck and I hope things start going better! It sounds like your research has the potential to be really exciting and I hope you can take full advantage of (and credit for) that.

[robot_hamster]

Was your name listed first? If it helps at all, if your work is ever cited it will be your name et al. I can understand why you are upset though, I probably would be too. I would find out exactly what the protocol is on authorship. In some labs, if several people are working on separate but related projects that are all funded through the same grant then they may end up being placed as co-authors on whatever papers are produced from the lab whether they worked directly on the project or not (because, in a way that may be very small, they contributed somehow to the work being published). Not fair, but that is sometimes how it works.

Edited December 12, 2010 by robot_hamster

[yesnomaybe]

Thank you for your replies.

The lab I am working at is pretty new. In fact, this batch of abstracts and the paper are the first things to come out of it. So, for better or worse, there is not established authorship protocol. I had made sure beforehand that I would be first author on anything that was primarily based on my work (which happily is everything that was submitted, actually) and I had agreed to the prof's suggestion that X should get credit for his contribution to the stats, but it never occurred to me to say that Y should not get credit. His name didn't come up until the very last minute, when we submitted the abstracts. We worked until the VERY LAST MINUTE and literally submitted ON the deadline. So when X said that Y should get credit, the prof had to make a fast decision and said OK. I didn't even have time to object. Right after this X sent Y an email inviting him to participate in writing the journal paper (again, without asking the prof); the meeting was the next morning and again I had no time to object. Now it may be too late to do anything, but I'm still pissed. Especially since during that meeting Y was making fun of me with regard to an aspect of how I do my work (apparently it's funny that I make detailed checklists of all my tasks).

Now, the prof is in a very delicate situation. None of the students in the lab are actually funded by the lab itself, we are funded directly by our department. That means that we don't have to work for any specific prof on any specific project we don't want to. From his perspective, he want as many people as possible to actively participate in projects, and he wants as many publications to come out of the lab as possible. I may have influenced the decision to include Y if I had time to discuss it with the prof, but who's to say that he wouldn't have made the same decision? I do know that the prof realizes that my contribution was greater than that of others, and he has been more than fair in giving me authorship credits (after all, he didn't have to invite me to write a paper with him in the first place).

I realize that approaching this will be very delicate; I worry about blaming others too much, about (justified, but still) whining about carrying a larger load than others, about Y's attitude towards me (X's also, to a lesser extent), about the way decisions are made. I get along very well with the prof and I don't want to antagonize him. I don't want to come off as threatening to leave, although if things go on like this I can't see any other solution except removing myself entirely from the situation. Ugh. Why does everything have to be so complicated?

[eklavya]

I will keep this short.

Something similar happened to me as well. One person (call him X) who pretty much did not contribute to the project was invited (by Y) to be an author in my paper which we are sending off for publication coming week. When Y proposed this to me and my prof via email, I was shocked, confused, and even angry, for X did pretty much nothing. X also did not know the premise of the project till then. Long story short, X is in the paper now, but as the least important author.

I got around the situation by calming myself down. I thought 'hey, no matter who is in the paper, and how many, as long as I am the lead author and KNOW that I did most of the work, I can take pride on my work, and the paper'. So.. you see, it's all about the state of your mind. I agree, X and Y in your case deserve less credit.. hell, Y deserves no credit. But calm down. Let it be. You know the work is yours, and you can/will be able to take pride on it any time.... but NOT X and Y.

Edited December 12, 2010 by bhikhaari

[anthropologygeek]

I don't mean to scare people. When adding names to your paper you are saying you worked with them and trust them. Let's say 10 years from now they are caught fudging data. You are now looked down upon due to this association.

[eklavya]

I don't mean to scare people. When adding names to your paper you are saying you worked with them and trust them. Let's say 10 years from now they are caught fudging data. You are now looked down upon due to this association.

True. And may I add that this has a high chance of happening if the person added is an immature + total idiot. In my case, the X was/is pretty renowned guy in my field, but still he didn't contribute to the work. The person who proposed that X should be added to the paper is the type of person who tries to be on the good side of people by providing them favors, which in my case, happened to be a bullshit authorship for X. Oh, the world and its colorfulness!

[yesnomaybe]

I don't mean to scare people. When adding names to your paper you are saying you worked with them and trust them. Let's say 10 years from now they are caught fudging data. You are now looked down upon due to this association.

Sheesh. That never even occurred to me. Fortunately I think these guys won't do anything like that.

They're just taking advantage of the situation that has been handed to them.

I know what you mean about being the only woman (although I'm sure other GradCafe members would disagree, and probably will)- the acceptable range of behavior (in terms of being pushy and/or lazy) is much narrower for women than for men. Don't take Y's behavior personally and don't feel you need to change anything you say or do because of him.

Good luck and I hope things start going better! It sounds like your research has the potential to be really exciting and I hope you can take full advantage of (and credit for) that.

Thanks, I think your way of characterizing the difference between what is deemed acceptable behavior for men vs. women is spot on.

I think I'll try and concentrate on the good things that are going on in my research and not dwell on others enjoying the results as well. Can't say I'm happy about it, but I've accepted that I'll always have to work harder than the men around me for the same rewards and so I guess this is just an instantiation of that.

Edited December 13, 2010 by yesnomaybe

[timuralp]

This is also field dependent, but a couple of things:

1. Only the first author counts for anything, but publication count, which brings me to

2. Once you have 3 or so first author, top-notch papers, people look at the total publication count. It is impossible to have a somewhat high publication count without collaborating frequently with others.

In your case, it may be that the person did not do any actual experimental work. However, one thing that commonly happens is authorship for the help with the actual writing, such as related work sections, editing, framing the paper, etc. Some small help with experiments can also lead to the same.

Finally, I would talk with your advisor about what the lab authorship guidelines are and how you're expected to collaborate.

[Eigen]

I'll add that it's also fairly common to place people as 3rd or 4th authors for similar work that didn't work or was unable to be published. Especially in a young group.

If the PI gave several projects, and a few were complete duds but the people worked hard on them, it's not unusual for them to be given low-level authorship on a remaining project when it goes to publication, assuming they help out some with the writing, etc.

If it was going to push you out of the first author position, or if it was going to be one of the asterisked "these authors contributed equally" things, then I'd think there was a problem.... Otherwise, no one really looks at anything other than the first and last authors (the person who did the work, and the boss, most of the time). Intermediate positions are for those that contributed in some sense, including collaborators, etc.

[fuzzylogician]

Wow, I never knew credits were so complicated in "lab fields."

I guess the first thing to try and do is concentrate on the positive things that are happening for you - first authorship and recognition of your work.

Second, if credit/authorship procedures are not set in your lab yet, you should bring the issue up, if only for future projects. Address not only the question of what kind of work merits authorship credit but also something more along the lines of how much work needs to be put in the be considered enough. It's not an exact science but the case you describe sounds extreme so it's a good place to start drawing boundaries.

Third, in your place I would probably not accuse anyone of being chauvinistic or treating you badly if there is no evidence of that; can you find ways to distance yourself from this person? From what you say, you don't have to agree to be in projects with him. My strategy would be actions, not words. Just remove yourself from situations where he is around, but don't address his presence in words.

Good luck, at the end of the day it sounds like you have a good thing going!