NY Times Science Gets Creative - Not Unlike Some Scientists

The addition of authors and the authors' rank in a scientific research paper's list of authors have as much to do with money and politics as they do about who did the work. Senior researchers and professors may be given honorary authorship because they helped to spark an idea that led to the results or because the honorary author has such clout that simply having their name on the paper can grease the review path to a top journal. As the journal Science manages fallout from the Hwang Woo Suk scandal, the NY Times reports that Science is considering "new requirements that authors 'detail their specific contributions to the research submitted,' and sign statements that they agree with the conclusions of their article." According to the NY Times, a statement of authors' contributions is already required by The Journal of the American Medical Association and by other medical journals. This requirement may be a challenge to implement for a multidisciplinary journal like Science, since it will require a significant change in proceedures for scientific fields otherwise untouched by the Hwang scandal. Nevertheless, we particularly liked the NY Times' sample page from the Journal of Imaginary Genomics, which humorously illustrates what future issues of Science might look like if the editors implement these new requirements.