The same day that Madge complained to the chairman, the chairman invited Prof. Bishop to his office to discuss Madge's allegations. Prof. Bishop was upset and angry.
"She didn't deserve to be a coauthor on that paper. She put in minimal time, followed a well established procedure that had been done many times before in other laboratories, and still got terrible yields. To be sure, I had told her that if her work got published, she would become a coauthor. But this is not her work. The synthesis was not original. She didn't provide any new insights. And she wasn't involved in writing the paper. What does she expect? Another thing that is totally unrelated but it really bugged me was that I found out later she was using my research account on the departmental copier to copy things for her courses."Does Dr. Bishop's response change your assessment of Madge's complaint?
What should the chairman do next?
How could this situation have been avoided?
1. Written
by H. B. White for CHEM-465, Chemistry Senior Seminar, University of Delaware,
10/7/97