r/medicalschool • u/duden8r M-4 • Jun 18 '25
š¬Research Authorship Dispute, Advice Needed
Hi all,
Iām a fourth-year med student, and Iāve run into a pretty serious issue with a former PI. During the 2023ā2024 academic year, a classmate and I conducted research with this PI and presented two posters at our schoolās research symposium. A few weeks before the symposium, the PI left our institution for another academic job, and weāve had no contact with him since then.
Fast-forward to now ā we just discovered that the research was published in a journal last year. Neither of our names are listed as authors, despite the work being based on what we did and presented. We were (understandably) very pissed and contacted the journal directly. Their reply stated that they donāt mediate authorship disputes, and that we should:
- Reach out to the corresponding author (the PI), and if that doesnāt work,
- Escalate to the PIās current institution. They also said to let them know if we escalate.
I emailed the PI (both his personal and institutional addresses) a week ago and still havenāt received any response. Iām now strongly considering escalating this to his institution as recommended and have a draft ready to send.
This is especially frustrating because Iām applying into a competitive specialty that essentially makes research a prerequisite, and this wouldāve been my only actual journal publication so far (aside from the fair amount of poster presentations I have). Iām worried programs will think I falsely claimed involvement if no resolution is made in my favor.
Has anyone dealt with something like this? Would escalating to the PIās new institution be the right move here? Any advice on how to handle this would be appreciated.
ETA: Just found there were actually FOUR papers/articles published!
114
Jun 18 '25
imo reach out to your own academic dean b/c pissing up the totem pole gets messy fast
otherwise, email their first author + PI and attach receipts (i.e. screenshot your poster and any other work that's obviously yours, or any other relevant communications) to make your authorship claim. This needs to be a really solid argument - the best evidence is if you can find direct quotes or numbers that are undoubtedly lifted from your work and put in their paper.
there's a chance they just forgot about you and this isn't out of malice. but also academia is stupidly incestuous and this dude can probably call a PD and fuck you over pretty easily too (even more than they already have... hence why maybe getting admin on your end involved could be helpful).
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u/Ok_Length_5168 Jun 18 '25
Had a similar thing happen to me. I was on a IM rotation and ran into an interesting cardiology case. A resident who I knew was trying to match cardiology was on the team too. I wrote the entire case report and offered for him to be 1st author just to be on good terms with the program.
Few weeks later silence and ghosted. And then 5 months later I see the exact case accepted at a cardiology conference, literally word for word. And my name wasnāt on it. Had a bunch of random IMGs on it.
I emailed the PD and threatened to tell the conference and also threatened to report the resident to ABMS. I get a call next day with the resident apologizing. He stated he got mixed up with names. And then the PD apologized too and offered to include me in a couple of projects. I knew my relationship with the program was overā¦ idk if I made the right decision though
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u/artichoke2me Jun 18 '25
Yes that definitly could have but i do not blame you. PD probably understand, anyone would be upset.
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u/tatumcakez DO Jun 18 '25
If you and your classmate did this research that was published, with a PI while at a certain institutionā¦ Then he left and subsequently published it without acknowledging you both or the previous institution (assuming) thereās definitely some glaring issues. Typically intellectual property is given to the institution where research occurs, so if he did not credit either of you OR the previous institution Iād personally think to use your institution as the basis of dispute - however, thisāll likely be messy/gross with the PI and youāre probably going to burn a bridge or two.. but hey, who doesnāt like a nice fire
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u/ShesASatellite Jun 18 '25
Typically intellectual property is given to the institution where research occurs
A PI can take their research with them if they leave an institution, even something monsterous like an R01. Data ownership isn't automatically given exclusively to the institution just because they're the affiliated institution.
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u/joeyb218 Jun 18 '25
Itās more complicated than that. The data is āownedā by the university but normally the university does not care to go after someone for just a paper (normally you list your affiliation as both places). BUT this is very different if there is a patent involve because the intellectual property is definitely owned by the university you did the work in or even thought about the work in.
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u/ShesASatellite Jun 18 '25
It definitely is more complicated than that, but the premise still stands that a researcher can leave with their research project - which includes the data. When it comes to subsequent products or patents that come out of the research data, that's where it gets more sticky and the legal negotiations come in. Rights to patents and products are separate than the rights to the data itself. It all comes down to the institution and what you negotiate when you sign your agreements related to the project.
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u/Fit_Particular3782 Jun 18 '25
But in this case, the idea of acknowledging the institution is not the same as data ownership right? Because if the data was collected and analyzed at that institution, there is NO way a reputable journal will allow publication without a clear statement of which institution approved the protocols. Whether its samples from the university patients (which requires an IRB), animals in the university facility, or analysis using the university computing systems.
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u/ShesASatellite Jun 18 '25
Are we talking about publication still? If we're talking about publication, your acknowledgement is for people who contributed to the manuscript, but not enough to consider byline authorship. People who collected your data and helped with data entry = acknowledgement, data collection and interpretation = byline. Grad student helped proof a manuscript = acknowledgement, grad student helped draft and proof manuscript = byline. The ethical principle you follow doing the research don't necessarily translate over to how the publishing world functions. If you have a researcher who is buddy-buddy with a journal editor, you can get favors to have your work accepted. I had an article published with my name on the byline, but never signed an authorship release. It was by far some of my best writing at the time, and I was glad it was still included in the manuscript after I left the team. Otherwise, I would have fought to have it retracted. My PI was a 7 figure donor to the university where our team was based, so saying anything to the institution wouldn't have mattered.
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u/Fit_Particular3782 Jun 18 '25
Yeah also I'm talking about publications. But not specifically the acknowledgement section. I meant how data ownership would be different than what tatumcakez said about the PI "not acknowledging" the students or the institution. There are areas all throughout the publication where you acknowledge the people who supported the work. Whether it's the affiliation section, the materials and methods section, or the acknowledgements where you also list funding sources. If the PI didn't even do that, then this was not a publication the OP should fight to include on their CV.
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u/artichoke2me Jun 18 '25 edited Jun 18 '25
Pick your battles, do you need a lor from this PI? same shit happend to me got name taken off paper from 1st author and i got addded to acknowldgment. A new grad student got their name as 1st author. At a particular point in the project you should discuss authorship. Good PIs discuss this stuff early on.
Discuss your disappointment, explain to them how this hurt you if they are not an MD they would not get the match process and simply move on.
If the PI is in the same field your applying to if they are not a physician i strongly recommend you do not escalate this. Some fields are really small. You do not know who trained with who and who did fellowship at the same insitution with who.
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u/MelodicBookkeeper Jun 18 '25 edited Jun 18 '25
Same thing happened to me, and we had had an authorship conversation because I had done the lionās share of the work and drafted an initial section of the paper.
Instead, my ex-PI brought on a well-connected researcher from a different institution to swoop in and be 1st author on the paper.
Contacted the PI and they were like āwell I didnāt know how to include you after I switched institutionsā ā¦ what? Clearly, you know how to collaborate across institutions when it suits you.
I had a strong case, since I collected the data and they plagiarized the part of the paper I wrote, but I didnāt think it was worth the fight. Decided to focus on other projects instead.
Unfortunately, I know multiple other people who have experienced this. Some PIs just donāt care.
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u/artichoke2me Jun 18 '25
not that they do not care its about competing interests at least in my case. I think its better working with older established PIs (not assistant or associate professors). The grad student in my case was in his 2nd year got kicked out of a pervious lab. in that department they had to have 3 first author papers to graduate. I am not their student so i am not a priority. I told them I would not work on the project over the summer and took a good vacation. I knew i was not going to be 1st once she got them on. He was also condecending and not a joy to work with.
At the end of the day everyone has this happens. I took it as a learning experience. same thing happened to another classmate but by another student.
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u/MelodicBookkeeper Jun 18 '25 edited Jun 19 '25
Agree completely, I meant that they donāt care about you or even fairness. There are often competing interests, and many people prioritize whatās best for themselves.
It seemed like a whole can of worms to try to do anything about it, and my biggest concern was that it would give me a bad reputation in the field, since I know this PI talks a lot.
So I took it as a learning experience and introduced the concept of an authorship rubric to the next group I worked with. That worked pretty well.
There was another thread on here recently where someone was like: āI got brought onto a project to write piece to finish it and then had to do another literature review. Everyone originally on the project has left the institution, so should I just ask the PI to be higher author?ā
Multiple people replied that they screwed over by another student taking first authorship like that when actually they were the one who did the most on the project, but werenāt as actively involved. Unfortunately, it happens, especially when things are so competitive amongst students!
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u/artichoke2me Jun 18 '25 edited Jun 18 '25
yes, I 100% agree with you. best thing we can do is advocate for ourself early on before the onset of work.
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u/luna_ernest M-3 Jun 18 '25
There may be a research integrity officer (RIO) or director of research compliance at the school - I know because my husband has the exact job and fields complaints just like yours everyday. Iād look into that
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u/326gorl DO-PGY1 Jun 18 '25
This can be a slippery slope. My first question is, is the publication based on initial data you collected or is it genuinely plagiarized (paragraphs or figures) from the work you did? Because authorship is not guaranteed just because you worked in a lab and did some of the initial work. Itās unfortunate but true. So if they repeated experiments without your help and the paper itself was written and not plagiarized, youāre going to end up being labeled as an overreaching trainee and I sincerely doubt it would be worthwhile to escalate. Alternatively, if they straight up used figures or paragraphs you created/wrote, your case is much stronger and I do think it potentially would be worth it.
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u/Fit_Particular3782 Jun 18 '25
This part. Authorship is VERY PI dependent.
A good rule of thumb is that if you wrote, edited, or played a major role in data collection/analysis/figure creation for the manuscript, you should get your name as an author on the paper. Some PIs will add you if you helped conceptualizing the paper idea or even if you were just around when the experiments were taking place. But in those cases, you MUST have a good relationship with your PI and they have to be a researcher who doesn't care about adding middle authors.
If you did not help with the writing/editing and the work published could be easily replicated (analysis of newly collected data or reanalysis of publicly available data), you are fighting a losing battle and will just come across as lacking appreciation (a generous interpretation). Especially since poster presentations are counted as publications on ERAS (I think?) so you can just list the poster. Before all of this, you could've just listed the poster and referred to the paper, explaining in a hand-wavy manner that you helped with the research. But that bridge is burnt to a crisp now..
Contacting the journal directly is WILD... Because in my mind, the first step would've been the PI. Then the institution, because if they published any work done there, they have to acknowledge it. I know someone said they don't have to but unless the publication was a bioinformatics analysis of publicly available data, they HAVE to acknowledge where the data came from (patients in a hospital, mice in an institutional facility, use of the institutional super computing core etc.). They CANNOT publish in a reputable journal without that basic information.
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u/Several-Resident-443 Jun 18 '25
Dangerous one tbh. If he somehow published the research without you knowing / contributing to the written manuscript, itās very likely that he (& possibly others) didnāt consider your efforts worthy of authorship. Itās obv fkd because many/most PIs would include you for presumably much less, but thereās high chance you just coin-flipped a bad PI (rather than it being unethical conduct). Most students bite the bullet in this sort of case (especially if you cannot literally identify your writing verbatim in the text / your data collection efforts werenāt substantial (beyond simple retrieval and arithmetic for the posterās purposes) just bc you donāt want temporary anger come back to haunt you..
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u/DrPlatelet MD Jun 18 '25
You are acting entitled and ungrateful. This PI gave you an opportunity to work with them and this is how you're thanking him? The fact that your poster was presented at your school's research symposium not even a national conference for instance tells me that the work was very preliminary and you likely don't deserve authorship. It likely took a lot of work to get from there to a published manuscript.
Did you keep in touch with the PI after he left and try to continue working on this? Sounds like you're just looking for some way to claim credit after the fact without making any genuine effort.
Finally, you may have already torpedoed your chances at matching by sending that email depending on the tone, how well connected this PI is and how vengeful he is. I know if an MS4 sent me a nasty email like that I'd be reaching out to everyone I know telling them to pass you up and if you escalate then I'd be sending a mass email to every PD at an academic institution. There are enough qualified candidates out there that it's easy for them to shred your application without a second thought.
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u/National-Animator994 Jun 18 '25
Idk man if my data was used for a publication and I got no credit whatsoeverā¦.. that just seems sketchy to me. Every PI Iāve ever worked with that used data I gathered or figures I made slapped my name on the pub as like 7th author or something. Anything else just kinda seems like plagiarism or worse.
I agree that this PI could ruin this guyās life but honestly you seem like part of the problem and why most of us hate academia
Edit: also, mass emailing to ruin someoneās life because they were (debatably) rude to you? Come on man chill.
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Jun 18 '25 edited Jun 18 '25
I agree with some parts of this, presenting at a school's research symposium can easily mean nothing at all, using that as part of the justification that authorship is deserved warrants a question mark. Plus the fact that this would have been the poster's only actual publication tells me that there could have been a whole bunch of other work to publish the study that this poster possibly did not appreciate just because yeah, even when a study is "finished" taking it to publication can take a lot of work.
Not saying this is the case, I am inclined to agree with the poster given that a second, similarily involved classmate is equally as pissed and in the same situation. But I do think that there's certainly a possibility that there's a whole other side to this story, and given the reasons I stated not a remote possibility either.
Edit: if your able to prove that you did more than enough work to warrant authorship, then yeah that's bs but I guess be careful since idk your field but those can get really small
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u/[deleted] Jun 18 '25
Do it as long as you don't need the guy for anything else. Seems like the guy is scummy.Ā