There are many differences between the scholarly cultures of
the humanities and the natural sciences. One seemingly superficial but striking
difference is in the number of authors per paper. A significant number of
papers in the humanities are single-authored whereas in the natural sciences
multi-authored papers are the norm; for some articles, the author list is longer
than the article itself. For example, this paper on an
experiment performed at the CERN Large Hadron Collider sports an army 2,926
authors, enough to fill two concert halls.
In contrast to the natural sciences, publications in the humanities
are typically single-authored; examples are essays in philosophy, linguistics, and
literary criticism. Such scholarly endeavors are by nature individualistic. The
author’s style of writing and argumentation play an important role. References
to these essays are therefore often accompanied by quotes rather than by a dry summary
of findings. It is apparently not only important what
the author said but also how he or
she said it.
In the humanities, the author can be held responsible for the entire content of a paper; all remaining errors are my own is a common expression in the
acknowledgements of such scholarly contributions. In the natural sciences, complementary types
of expertise are essential to carry out a project. (I haven’t tried it yet but I’m
pretty sure you cannot single-handedly conduct an experiment in a particle
accelerator.) As a result, among the thousands of authors there probably isn't a single one who oversees the entire paper.
So what is the lay of the land in the social sciences? In
psychology—the field I am focusing on—multi-authored papers have become the
norm. Often co-authorships are student-mentor partnerships but especially with
the advent of neuroimaging techniques, the complementary-expertise model of the
natural sciences has become common.
Multi-authored papers raise all kinds of issues regarding
credit. How much credit should go to the first author relative to the other
authors and what is the status of the last author? Various journals, including Psychological Science as of this year,
are now requiring authors to specify their respective contributions. Who
designed the experiment? Who analyzed the data? Who wrote the paper? Who went
along for the ride? And so on. This is a good idea. Moreover, it is not only a
good idea for assigning credit but also for assigning responsibility.
To what extent should a co-author be held accountable for the
entirety of a scientific article? A—what I would call—shared-responsibility view holds that by signing on as co-author, a
researcher is responsible for the entire paper. The rationale for this
assumption is that if you want the credit then you should also accept the
responsibility. And if there is blame to throw around, it should fall on everyone.
If you burn your behind, you’re going to
have to sit on the blisters as the Dutch expression goes.
Another view assumes divided
responsibility. Authors are only responsible for the part that is covered
by their domain of expertise. The rationale for this view is that you cannot
hold people responsible for things they have no control over. This would seem
obvious in the physics example I just gave. Forgive my profound lack of
knowledge on the topic, but I would assume that the guy who cranks up the
particle accelerator and the guy who touches up the images in Photoshop have no
overlapping expertise, so it would seem unfair to rake the former over the
coals if the images are artistically subpar.
Which view should we adopt in psychology, shared or divided
responsibility? The case of Barbara Fredrickson, which I described in my previous
post, provides a poignant illustration of the issue. Fredrickson had
co-authored a paper with Marcial Losada in which they presented, among other
things, a mathematical model of emotional dynamics based on fluid dynamics. A recent paper
convincingly and eloquently showed this model to be a mathematical shambles.
In a response to this
critique Fredrickson radically disowned the model. She argued that the modeling
was entirely Losado’s work and that it, all things considered, was not even
relevant to the rest of the research, so that it could be safely expunged from
the record.
Many people find Fredrickson’s response inadequate (see for
example the comments on this Neuroskeptic post)
and it is easy to see why. On multiple occasions Fredrickson has embraced the
model and touted its virtues, for example in a popular book and in this talk (starting at
12:35). Her own website until very recently
displayed the butterfly image produced by the mathematical model. The image is
gone now, but at the bottom of this post is a screen shot.
By washing her hands of the model now, Fredrickson has
shifted from a shared model of credit to a divided model of responsibility. All
gain, no pain in other words.
There may not be a good solution to the problem of assigning credit and responsibility but all gain no pain doesn’t seem the right model. It might be a start to require authors to indicate not only which components of the work they want to receive credit for but also which ones they want to be held responsible for. And wouldn’t we want to have a perfect match between credit and responsibility?