tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8446351548038522890.post6235217911459073456..comments2024-03-08T13:21:43.158-05:00Comments on Saideman's Semi-Spew: Co-authoring and Mentoring: Trust or What?Steve Saidemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09881915512311951902noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8446351548038522890.post-44114369883490840462015-05-21T12:13:05.869-04:002015-05-21T12:13:05.869-04:00Notice that my original post did raise issues abou...Notice that my original post did raise issues about the money. I don't know how research accounting works at UCLA. I didn't know when I wrote this post how much "money" was at stake. In the places I have worked, when my students got money and did the REB/IRB/whatever paperwork, I signed off on the initial proposal and the renewals. But the money never went through me--I did not see each bill or receipt. Nor did I think to ask for them. The university, of course, processed such stuff so that if there were no receipts that would be a problem. Ghost receipts? That has happened--where scientists at my last job hired ghost RAs to turn grant money into income... <br /><br />I do think that we can ask questions about Vavreck and Green on this. I am just not going to assume that they did something tremendously wrong (unless the money went directly through them or UCLA has different procedures than McG and CU). <br /><br />I don't really know what Green said before. He may be covering, he may be angry at being betrayed. No doubt that both V and G will get a reputational hit because of this. Will that matter in the long run? Probably not that much, I guess. <br /><br />My post here was mostly to present the basic reality and think a bit about oversight and how much can/should mentors/co-authors do. <br /><br />And get feedback from folks about what they think advisers and co-authors should do. Steve Saidemanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09881915512311951902noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8446351548038522890.post-50250483282294643282015-05-21T09:34:11.472-04:002015-05-21T09:34:11.472-04:001. Combining the money and advising questions, UC...1. Combining the money and advising questions, UCLA policy, as at most universities, requires that a grad student's advisor, not the grad student, serve as PI for the purposes of receiving grants or getting IRB approval. Given how public the student was about his grant-landing success, where was Lynn Vavreck, his advisor? Or the UCLA dept chair? Certainly the univ would be expected to collect its standard overhead on the grants.<br /><br />Are you saying, Steve, that an advisor can't be expected to notice that their student is claiming to be receiving $800,000 in grant money and is apparently doing so in gross violation of university rules and general common sense? <br /><br />2. Agreed that you probably can't expect Green to have caught the fraud, but you can expect some consistency from him in describing his role. Green's story months ago in media interviews was that this was fully a joint deal and even that he 'recruited' LaCour. Now, Green's version is basically that LaCour appeard out of nowhere and begged Green to sign on to a nearly-finished project just to get the moosehead attached. <br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8446351548038522890.post-10212528080119926052015-05-21T09:12:13.926-04:002015-05-21T09:12:13.926-04:00Yeah Steve, but there were red flags that an advis...Yeah Steve, but there were red flags that an advisor should catch. Be honest with me: if a grad student of yours claimed to bring in <i>eight hundred thousand</i> dollars worth of grant money, you wouldn't be looking closely at what they were doing?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8446351548038522890.post-70015627891356397902015-05-20T17:53:13.449-04:002015-05-20T17:53:13.449-04:00It seems LaCour never accepted the grant money, wh...It seems LaCour never accepted the grant money, which makes sense because the granting agency would have demanded an account for how the money was spent and since no work was actually done this would have been impossible.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17710828593897811848noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8446351548038522890.post-89917155783594795612015-05-20T17:46:19.572-04:002015-05-20T17:46:19.572-04:00What kind of due diligence co-authors should do to...What kind of due diligence co-authors should do to satisfy themselves about the validity of the research is an important question, but let's be sure to consider also the relationships inherent in co-authorship. The senior author is lending his or her name and reputation to the research. In doing so, he or she is, or certain should be, representing to the profession and the public that the research is what it purports to be. Senior researchers shouldn't get off the hook entirely by saying they trusted others; they do have some obligation to know whether there's salad oil in the silos.Robhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11386165669907559416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8446351548038522890.post-51807049675244955942015-05-20T16:39:54.217-04:002015-05-20T16:39:54.217-04:00I don't know about how things work around the ...I don't know about how things work around the world/country, but this kind of already does tend to happen. That is, in places I am familiar with, it is more about the question (is it interesting, is it important) and the research design (is it well designed, is it clever?) than the results.<br /><br />Of course, the first cut is often about publications and there is a publication bias towards significant results and that is a problem.Steve Saidemanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09881915512311951902noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8446351548038522890.post-9095816297479016932015-05-20T16:34:29.275-04:002015-05-20T16:34:29.275-04:00One suggestion: If you're on a hiring committe...One suggestion: If you're on a hiring committee, look for applicants with really nicely designed studies with inconclusive findings. Hire that person. Decrease the inequality of payoffs between significant and insignificant results.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com