Credit and Time Pressure
Author(s):
Stephen Senturia and Caroline Whitbeck
Photograph by Lee Jennings
Sen is a graduate student who has been working for Professor Bing, building an apparatus to make a particular photo-excited probe measurement on semiconductor devices. Sen and Bing have submitted a preliminary paper on the method to the Conference on Semiconductor Device Characterization.
Another student, Jag, tries the probe on his device, and, with Sen's help, gets some spectacular
results. Jag's supervisor, Professor Deadline, is very excited about the results and immediately suggests submitting a paper to the Device Research Conference, which has a submission deadline in a few days. Jag quickly prepares the text of a draft abstract and gives it to Deadline for editing. Deadline makes final changes in the abstract and prepares to ship it by overnight express to the conference referees. Deadline shows it to Jag while they wait for the express service pick-up. Jag sees that only the two of them are listed as authors, and feels uneasy.
What do Sen and Bing deserve, and why? Would it make a difference if Sen and Bing had already
published a journal paper on the subject?
What can and should Jag and Deadline do?
Cite this page:
Stephen Senturia and Caroline Whitbeck
"Credit and Time Pressure"
Online Ethics Center for Engineering
8/28/2006 10:47:01 AM
National Academy of Engineering
Accessed: Thursday, November 20, 2008
<www.onlineethics.org/CMS/research/modindex/resethpages/modcredit.aspx>