This week’s assignment is to read the article provided and answer two of the questions at the end of the article. The first question is:

  1. What are the authorship issues in this case?

Dr. Donald Green and Michael LaCour failed to follow the ethical standards outlined for authors of scientific material. LaCour established and reported his data results based on another’s study format, which violates copywrite regulation / law and he also gave false information about the funding for the study, the sponsorship, and participants. He also falsified his data, which fails to follow scientific data protocol. If the results are not what one expects, then the experimental results get reported and most often there will be discussion statements identifying the inconsistent data and proposals towards the “why” are given, which may be influences or factors affecting the outcomes of the experiments. Importantly, the data does not get “modified”, fabricated, or omitted without acknowledgement. Many undergraduate science students are instructed to maintain a laboratory notebook with their original data and if there is a dispute towards the validity of the scientific data, then the notebook will be consulted / referred to. Dr. Green would have been aware of all this even if LaCour “did not know any better”. The issue about what Dr. Green should have been monitoring is in the next question.

  1. What are some of the mentoring issues raised by this case?

As the advisor / mentor, Dr. Green should have been more involved in LaCour’s research by being aware of the experimental set-up, the data collected, and eliminating any questionable information. If Dr. Green had followed protocol (established for authors of pending scientific publications), then Green would have noticed the discrepancies concerning the study sponsors, funding, participant information. Green would have also been able to determine the information present in LaCour’s report lacked validity. He should have been able to detect the plagiarism, missing / altered data, and the fabricated references (concerning funding, school affiliation and sponsorship). Ideas towards protocol (involving scientific publications) can be seen in the links below:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3889085/

http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2001/03/ethics-authorship-policies-authorship-articles-submitted-scientific-journals