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CORRESPONDENCE On the Expropriation of Discoveries In Joseph Bunnett’s recent editorial (September issue) entitled “On the Defense of Hypotheses”, he raises the issue of a scientist putting forth a principle that explains a number of observations of general interest. The scientist then leaves that area of research for awhile only to discover, years later perhaps, that the principle has been usurped by others, in a variety of ways, thus obscuring the historical record of who can claim rightful credit for the introduction of the original principle. As part of this editorial Bunnett then proceeds to raise the example of what many ”senior scientists”do when faced with this situation and from there he offers some suggests to rectify the problem. Another example of this type of dilemma is when a scientist from one of the less-endowed institutions explores an area of interest for a number of years, makes a substantial discovery, and proceeds to develop a hypothesis that explains the discovery as well as a variety of disparate observations in the literature. Lacking resources, the researcher publishes the result in preliminary form and continues to work laboriously through the verification of the new hypothesis only to discover that a well-endowed “senior scientist” has expropriated the principle and put
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a number of working colleagues hot on the trail of verification. This senior scientist publishes a plethora of results that substantiate the principle but reference to the original author of the original principle is given only once. Subsequently the “senior scientist” becomes known for the work and the principle, mainly because of the number of papers published, and the origination of the principle is lost in the historical shuffle, not for a lack of creativity but for a lack of resources to compete. What can be done about this situation? Little in today’s climate of “publish or perish”, although Bunnett’s solutions might rectify this problem somewhat. Until we begin to recognize that the quantity of publications is not as important as their quality, these situations will continue to arise. How much better science would be if we could work in an atmosphere where quality of creative result was rewarded and not automatically equated to the quantity of one’s disseminated results. William Rosen
Department of Chemistry University of Rhode Island Kingston, Rhode Island 02881
0 1983 American Chemical Society
