The 'I Didn't See Your Citation' Excuse

Janet Stemwedel discusses the ongoing objections surrounding a Cell paper from last June by Jeffrey Axelrod's group that reported on a transmembrane protein that plays a large role as a signaling molecule in planar cell polarity in Drosophila. The objection is that another group, led by Peter Lawrence, had already done that work. In her post, Stemwedel focuses on citations, saying that building on the ideas and work of others is good when credit is properly given. "Should one do the research, publish the findings, and only after the fact discover that other scientists had been there first (and published about it), the sensible thing to do is to acknowledge those others late rather than not at all," she advises.