On 24 Samh 2005, at 12:49, Marcello Pagano wrote:
I don't know about the ethics of putting your name on the
authorship list when
you don't understand what is going on in the paper, but I leave
that to others
to judge.
Any authorship guidelines which mention statistics state that one of
the authors must take responsibility for the appropriateness of the
statistical methods and the accuracy of their description. One author
must take this responsibility, but not all authors need to understand
the technicalities of the statistical method (though if they don't
understand it, it suggests that an average reader won't either).
Too often, statisticians hear the phrase 'and we must get a para from
you describing the statisical methods'. This is fine if you simply
did an analysis specified by the researcher. But if you took
important decisions about how to analyse and present the data, you
should put your name to them and accept responsibility. And, of
course, credit.
Note really Stata stuff, but Marcello has put his finger on a moot
point that I couldn't resist following up.
Ron�n Conroy
[email protected]
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