Publications part 2: It's not easy...being mean

“Do you have some time?”

I glanced up at a female faculty member – recently tenured, she was the darling of the department. Smart, well-liked, well-funded. I smiled and answered that of course I had some free time. I had wanted to work with her – understanding the importance of networking even within the department.

I was ready to tackle the research world that first summer. I had been admitted to the top school on my list, and allowed to do research with the group that most strongly appealed to me. Life was good.

Then classes started, and killed my spirit. I had no time to do research, and all the work I had put into selecting a group felt useless. I had this dream of how graduate school would be and this was not it. So when someone I liked and respected offered an opportunity during the winter of my first year, I decided to let classes slide a bit to have a chance to work with her.

There was a man who worked in our group. Not one of the usual suspects – faculty, student or post-doc – but someone less predictable in his motives and goals. He has a voice like Kermit the frog. The voice, his lack of higher education and qualifications, and his overall demeanor made me scoff at the idea that he was dangerous to my career.

She asked if I would assist Kermit with a minor project. Though disappointed I wouldn’t work directly with her, I was basically familiar with how this research should be done, and she thought that picking up a few additional skills would give me a good start at collaborations. Kermit had started with the work, she explained, then was sidetracked with clinical duties. So this would be an excellent opportunity for me to contribute to the overall research group.

So I did it – analyzed the data, made some figures, moved the results around so they were available. Then I asked the professor what to do, and she in turn went to Kermit, who happened to be her husband. That’s right – Kermit was married to the darling, and while it turned my stomach a little bit – the blatant nepotism of allowing someone ill-equipped to do a job that should have gone to a student or faculty member, there was little recourse.

Since I didn’t see a way out of the project at this point, I ran many more analyses at Kermit’s request. Over and over – changing small parameters and having him view results to “see what looked good.” In the hands of a scientist, there would have been a plan – some reasonable course of action that would or would not lead to publishable material. But in the hands of a husband, it was a fishing expedition – a grueling task of guess and check that eventually resulted in enough data for a low impact factor publication.

I had been warned, gently and with humor, from the more senior students that Kermit would take first authorship. Any sort of contribution on his part resulted in excessive credit for fear of offending his wife. So the days of having ownership of a project and a subsequent career boost were over, but I was fine with that. Continually having things handed to you fosters weak character, right? A second author paper from my first year of graduate work was a lovely prospect for me.

But Kermit wasn’t smart enough to write the paper. He asked me for help, but I was in the middle of exams and not exactly familiar with how you put these things together. The experiment design was his, and I had written the methods and results. In terms of discussion, well, it wasn’t my idea to do the study. Normally, when you design something, you have some sort of reason for it. But apparently in the mind of Kermit, you just start something, have your wife find someone to finish it, then and only then wonder why you ever did it in the first place.

So he asked a friend to give him some advice on the paper, and was aided in literature searches and the formation of some reasonable discussion. I viewed the draft, made some vital corrections on the methods. I also corrected the spelling of my name, placed rightfully second since I had done a vast majority of the work. But the idea and experiment design were his, and he had the first author position with my blessing.

Many months later, he asked me to make some revisions that had been requested. I began studying gender effects and found some papers that described a reasonable method of answering some reviewer questions. Pleased that I had redeemed myself after my initial lack of input on the discussion section, I handed text and tables over to Kermit. He dismissed me with a quick thank you.

I complained to the senior member of the group – a man whose talent was equaled only by his humor. I remember him smiling at me, and putting his arm around my shoulders.

“I’d ask to see the revised paper in total.” He said, not unkindly. “You’re not where you thought you were in author order.”

I assured him that he was incorrect, but later sat at my computer, looking at the title page of the revised manuscript. It had taken me 3 emails and a personal visit to receive it, and I now understood why. His friend, a well-established faculty member, was now the second author. So I was bumped to the third author position, and not until I saw the reviewed manuscript was I even aware of it.

The lesson here is that just as there are great people – those who are established and eager to help further the careers of others – there are slimy, insecure frogs who will take credit for your work, present it at meetings and publish it, continuing to move you further down on the list of authors without your consent or knowledge.

Being third author is fantastic, and I’m proud of my other contribution at that level. I also appreciate that collaborations are naturally tricky. That’s why it’s best to be clear on what the responsibilities are, who has ownership of the work, and the expectations of the contributors. Perhaps I let Kermit down by being less the helpful with writing certain sections of the initial draft. Or maybe when you’re in a position where you’re not qualified to do your job, let alone gain promotions, you feel the need to assert some dominance over students. I continue to believe that I got screwed on this paper – when you look at workload and critical facets of the project, I did the most work. If we were clear on how the author order would play out, I would have politely extricated myself from the project much earlier. At the very least, I was owed an explanation of why the authorship had changed.

But when there are political lines that won’t be crossed, everyone gets screwed. Kermit was ridiculed, and I joined in wholeheartedly after this fiasco. If he was smart enough to be able to find his car in the parking lot after work, he knew that students and faculty alike thought very little of him. And his wife knew he was sullying her reputation as well. But students got picked off, one by one, starting far before I joined the group and continuing on to the present, to provide the skill and time to complete work, which was then taken back and published by Kermit.

I wanted to do something about it – file complaints, have meetings, make the professor aware of the crap she had created. But I was warned multiple times to leave it alone – that I wouldn’t be asked to work with him again, and retribution was predicted if I tried to mess with a system that had created Kermit’s career, built off of naïve students’ work.

So I didn’t. This is the first time I’ve mentioned it to anyone outside my family. My parents felt that I should do something or tell someone so another student wouldn’t be disillusioned. I was scared – still am, or I wouldn’t have hesitated to publish this story last night – that my career might be harmed if I tried to fix what I see as a bad situation. But I saw, courtesy of ScienceWoman, this advice to graduate students. Among the first things is to assume that nobody cares about you and to expect the worst. This taught me both things - sometimes people will screw you over with your long-term best interests in mind, and sometimes out of insecurity. Whatever his reasons, “mean” is the kindest adjective I can come up with for Kermit. And looking at my second publication, my first from my graduate career, I see bad decisions. Some belonged to the faculty member, Kermit was responsible for others, and some were mine.

I someday hope to be successful, and will therefore be responsible for younger colleagues. In furthering my career, I hope I never make someone feel abused in their contributions. So maybe that’s the lesson I needed to learn. Or maybe Kermit finds it pretty darn easy to be mean after all.