Why do people on academia.SE often suggest courses of action that are very different from what most people would do in real life?

Question

When browsing this site, I see a lot of questions like

Should I let a senior student/professor/etc be a coauthor on my paper when he didn't do any work/made only negative contributions to the project?

Or

What should I do if someone asks me to write my letter of reference myself?

The answers usually encourage the OP to be ethical, and say stuff like

You shouldn't write your own letter because that would be academic fraud

or

You shouldn't let your colleague be a coauthor because coauthorships are supposed to reflect the contribution you made to the project

Now I think if I asked these questions to academics in real life, their answers would be something along the lines of "of course you should let him coauthor your paper/write your letter of reference yourself, because doing otherwise would be career suicide, and you are in no position to take the moral high ground here." Why is the prevailing opinion on academia.SE so different (and is this a problem)?

Answer 1

Many of the questions that we get on Academia related to ethics necessarily involve "grey" areas, since what is the most ethical choice, as you suggest, may not be the most practical choice.

However, I believe we would be remiss if we, as a board, did not encourage best practices—what we believe should be done in a given situation. Of course, people reading the answers need to weigh the advice given against their own personal situations. There may be circumstances in which following the advice given may be detrimental. It is better, though, if the reader knows what is appropriate, so that they can try to avoid having to do something less ethical in the future.

Answer 2

The following is a good paraphrase of a conversation I had with a junior colleague yesterday:

I: I just wanted to say that I would have discussed the issue of coauthorship of this paper with you if I thought there was any chance that you would consider it.

She: I didn't contribute any of the results of the paper.

I: Yes, but I've seen cases where people get added as coauthors with less involvement than you've had, in some cases just by being in the room when the work was done.

She: [reddening] There is no way that I would agree to that!

I: I know. So I didn't ask.

Or, from the other side, here is the last paragraph of a recently accepted paper by Jacob Hicks (my PhD student) and Dr. Kate Thompson (a 2014 PhD from my department):

All of the computer implementations and almost all of the mathematics was done by the named authors. P.L. Clark’s mathematical contributions were (only) the statement and proof of Theorem 4 and the proof of Corollary 1. The statement of Corollary 1 is due to the named authors and was (earlier) proven by them via a different and more computational method making use of quaternions. Clark also contributed to the writing of the paper, working off of an early draft of the named authors.

I had been invited by the named authors to be a coauthor, but I declined.

Or let's switch it around again: twice in recent memory I wrote papers that benefited substantially from conversations I had with more senior academics (one of whom is many years older; the other is not that much older but many times more famous and eminent); in the latter case there was no way I could have written the paper without the ideas this guy gave me. It happened that the ideas were difficult for me to implement, required some variations, and I finished the paper years after I had the conversation, but I have no reason to believe that he could not have carried through what he proposed to me. I offered coauthorship to both of these people and got turned down both times. And, to come full circle, in the former case I did coauthor the paper with a (different) student in my department. I wrote the whole paper and contributed the majority of the results: still, what he contributed was the best part, and his name comes before mine (alphabetically!).

I could go on, but you get the point: when it comes to issues of coauthorship, in every coauthorship situation I have been directly involved with, all parties involved have taken what the OP calls "the moral high ground". I don't really like that term because it makes the practice sound different from the norm. Speaking for myself, i would rather say that I have always acted according to the ethical standards that I was taught and that are followed by the majority of my colleagues the vast majority of the time. My career is alive and reasonably well. In fact I would like to think that I have a reputation for acting honorably and that reputation helps my career.

So my recommendations that other academics uphold professional ethics no matter which way the power flows are not only unhypocritical but sincere: I really do think that following these recommendations are in junior academics' best interests.

I have never directly witnessed a refusal to compromise on these kinds of professional ethics end anyone's academic career. Perhaps I've been very lucky, been in the best places, surrounded by unusually great people. Perhaps mathematicians are more samurai-like in their codes of honor than other academics. Perhaps. But overall my reaction to such questions on this site tends to be the diametrically opposite one: I find it shocking that so many young people are being placed in situations where they feel like they have to choose between their professional integrity and their career. When no one around you is behaving well, it seems hopeless to take an ethical stand even when it actually isn't. So having people on this site firmly steer questioners in the direction of "best practices" seems very, very important.

Answer 3

I think some reasons may be

1. People on academia.SE don't truly care about anonymous Internet posters in the same way they care for their family and friends. They would rather uphold ethics than side with a random person, but in real life they would side with their friends rather than upholding ethics.
2. Many people on academia.SE post under their real name, and they wouldn't want to endorse unethical behavior where people could see it. On the other hand, never endorsing unethical behavior may be one of the things that make them comfortable posting under their real name in the first place.
3. As others have said, people who stay in academia have generally been screwed over less than people who don't, and have good relations with their colleagues and supervisors. They can afford to disapprove of writing letters of recommendation themselves, because they've probably never been in a position where they had to write one.

Is this a problem? Personally, I think it is okay as long as questioners are aware of this community bias.

Answer 4

I like a lot an answer by Suresh to Are we presenting an idealised view of academia?, i.e. that we should make a split:

• what we would all like to happen
• what typically happens
• what should NOT happen under any circumstances (even if it's sadly not rare)
• what is completely abnormal.

I understand that [survival bias, etc] many profs here may never had to write a recommendation for themselves or were never in situation where presence and positions of authors reflected other factors than thier contribution.

(And I am sure that they would not set their advisees in these conditions.)

Yet, to answer: Why do people on academia.SE often suggest courses of action that are very different from what most people would do in real life?, I think that:

• some people didn't met these problems in person,
• idealizing academia, advisor-advisee relations, etc (survival bias + wishful thinking),
• it may be dangerous to put under one's name an advice for a breach of ethics,
• "lesser evil" doesn't sound well plus may be an excuse for others as a normal, acceptable behaviour.

Answer 5

Apart from the other good arguments, I think that we should answer “what should I do?” questions from the point of view of ethics and academic standards, because that’s the only point of view from which we can give a useful answer to most of these questions.

Let’s take this question for an example:

Should I let my supervisor be a coauthor on my paper when he didn't contribute anything to the project?

The decision that the asker eventually has to make strongly depends on the following questions:

• How high is the risk that not making the supervisor a coauthor has negative repercussions of what kind?
• How high does the asker value the damage done by these repercussions?
• How high does the asker value the ethics involved?

The first question obviously strongly depends on the supervisor and can only be answered by somebody knowing this person; the other two questions can only be answered by the asker.

We cannot make the decision for askers of such questions; we cannot even give direct advice for such situations; we can only help them to make an informed decision. To this end, the main thing we can do is to inform askers about ethics and academic standards. We can and should also inform them about possible repercussions originating from them being expected to breach ethics – but in most such questions that I am aware of, the askers are already aware of possible repercussions.