A much-discussed example of the difficulties associated with allocating credit between junior and senior researchers was the 1967 discovery by Jocelyn Bell, then a 24-year-old graduate student, of pulsars. Over the previous two years, Bell and several other students, under the supervision of Bell’s thesis advisor, Anthony Hewish, had built a 4.5-acre radiotelescope to investigate
Many scientists get involved in the field primarily out of a genuine intellectual curiosity that needs to be sated. Often times we are working with limited budgets, possibly utilizing grants or other public/private means in order to further our understanding of a particular subject. With many of these pursuits the financial rewards might not be great, and possibly also due to a historical precedent this is very pronounced in the scientific community, being awarded credit and being provided with recognition for one’s findings is a very big deal. Frankly it is a big deal in every profession so here is a little life lesson we can all learn from.
Don is a first-year graduate student applying to the National Science Foundation for a predoctoral fellowship. His work in a lab where he did a rotation project was later carried …
Paula, a young assistant professor, and two graduate students have been working on a series of related experiments for the past several years. During that time, the experiments have been …
May is a second-year graduate student preparing the written portion of her qualifying exam. She incorporates whole sentences and paragraphs verbatim from several published papers. She does not use quotation …
Francine was just months away from finishing her Ph.D. dissertation when she realized that something was seriously amiss with the work of a fellow graduate student, Sylvia. Francine was convinced …
Ed, a fourth-year graduate student, was still several months away from finishing an ongoing research project when a new postdoc arrived from a laboratory doing similar work. After the two …
Sandra was excited about being accepted as a graduate student in the laboratory of Dr. Frederick, a leading scholar in the field, and she embarked on her assigned research project …
The case of polywater demonstrates how the desire to believe in a new phenomenon can sometimes overpower the demand for solid, well-controlled evidence. In 1966 the Soviet scientist Boris Valdimirovich …
Doctors treating HIV/AIDS patients as well as scientists studying the virus are hopeful that an AIDS-free generation is on the horizon after a new case study was presented at the …
