On a good day, a senior author will give you the clearest explanation, the perfect quote, and the richest context.
"We don't have as much time as we previously thought," said Chris Langdon, a professor at the University of Miami and a senior author of the study.
If I claim to be a senior author, I have to write it and I have to concoct what the experiment was, and defend it".
Studying the genomes of parasites allows scientists to explore new ways of developing drugs and other forms of treatment, said Matt Berriman of the Wellcome Trust, a senior author of the scientific paper.
A senior author of the study, Professor Louise Arseneault, of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's, said that society needed to stop viewing bullying as "an inevitable part of growing up".
"We know from our measurements that after a few months, the high-fructose corn syrup drinkers weighed more," said Bart Hoebel, a psychology professor and a senior author on the research.
"We, like everyone else, were very surprised because we didn't expect it to be that high," said a senior author of the study, Neil Risch, a geneticist and epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco.
He has also sent apologetic e-mail messages to colleagues over the last few weeks, acknowledging, "By virtue of being a senior author, I have lent considerable credibility to this work".
In the case of disagreement among authors, the full-text publications were reviewed by a third senior author.
(In the Hwang case, an American senior author was found not to have actively contributed to the experiments).
In an interview, the senior author, Betsy Foxman, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, offered some ideas for what could be going on.
