David Tuller: Trial By Error: My Letter to LP's Study's Senior Author

My Letter to LP Study's Senior Author

I e-mailed the following letter to Professor Montgomery on Sunday evening (California time), with the subject heading “Retrospective Registration and Outcome-Swapping in Lightning Process Trial.” I cc’d Dr Nick Brown, editor-in-chief of Archives of Disease in Childhood, and Dr Fiona Godlee, editorial director of BMJ. In addition, I cc’d three members of Parliament who have expressed dismay about the poor quality of research in this field and are seeking a parliamentary debate on the issue: Carol Monaghan MP, Darren Jones MP and Nicky Morgan MP. Finally, I cc’d Adom Lowe, Sally Burch and Dr Charles Shepherd, three members of the committee that is developing the ME/CFS guidance for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

 

Thank you @dave30th for pursuing this.

Just spotted this typo:

(it's Adam)

And perhaps, given that three of the study's co-authors are still at Bristol, it might be worthwhile to forward the letter also to Prof Munafo at Bristol? see:

https://www.s4me.info/threads/bristol-new-network-prof-munafo.5802/

@Graham 's letter:
https://www.s4me.info/threads/bristol-new-network-prof-munafo.5802/page-3#post-106472

Prof Munafo's first reply:
https://www.s4me.info/threads/bristol-new-network-prof-munafo.5802/page-4#post-107448

Graham's reply:
https://www.s4me.info/threads/bristol-new-network-prof-munafo.5802/page-5#post-107586

Prof Munafo's second reply:
https://www.s4me.info/threads/bristol-new-network-prof-munafo.5802/page-6#post-107738

 

My understanding is that in the social sciences the principal author is listed first and in medicine, they're listed last, so when you get a psychological medicine paper, it's very confusing! But this paper was published in Archives of Disease in Childhood, so I'd expect the principal author to come last. But then, as you say, Crawley is the corresponding author.

 

In this particular case I do not think Montgomery can be regarded as senior author, although the name does not matter and no interpretation of it will let him off a hook of sorts.

There is no consensus about author order because academic conventions came into conflict with research assessments for promotion about twenty years ago and since then nobody has known quite what orders mean. As a result papers now indicate individual contributions in appendices.

A first author is either the p son with th big idea OR the stooge who did the spadework. Generous bosses make their stooges first authors, less generous take th slot for themselves. But for trials like this the first author is likely to be th person with the Ida to do the trial and also the one who got it done. In that situation the lat author is either a head of department given courtesy authorship, which is not so likely, or simply then l east important contributor , who goes last. So in all probability Montgom ry is just the last important author.

But he still has a particular responsibility here because he is supposed to be th person who knows about trial methodology. So sending a message to him specifically is bang on the nail.

 

Now I also had a look at the list of authors* which reminded me that Crawley is doing all this nonsense in collaboration with a seemingly very busy and well funded club called "Bristol Randomised Trials Collaboration" (BRTC), http://www.bristol.ac.uk/population-health-sciences/centres/brtc/

(ETA: This collaboration has nothing to do with the above mentioned Prof Munafo's network.)

So it might be worthwhile to distribute the letter even more generously, also among those people in charge of the BRTC, as well as of collaborating and funding institutions?

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/population-health-sciences/centres/brtc/

*https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28931531#

 

thread here:
https://www.s4me.info/threads/bristol-randomised-trials-collaboration.5731/

 

As pointed out in the thread that @Sly Saint links to in the above post, the Bristol Randomised Trials Collaberation includes Crawley's MAGENTA and FITNET-NHS trials as current examples of good research practice.

So the Bristol Collaberation has a lot of questions about Prof Crawley's previous research malpractice and whether these issues are being dealt with in relation to the current trials. However the signs are not looking promising given such as Red Whale's advertising FITNET- NHS (see https://www.s4me.info/threads/david-tuller-trial-by-error-my-letter-to-red-whale-gp-update.5457/ ) that is likely to bias potential participants even before enrolling in the trial.

[edited to correct the name of the Bristol Collaberation]

 

The on-going SMILE mess is making me want to give up hope for humanity.

Thanks to Tuller for pushing on with it - are these letters getting better? Practice makes perfect? Or maybe it's the same letter copy/pasted and my mind is just playing trick on me!

 

The bulk of the points are repeated. For the rest, I think probably my tone has become a bit softer. .

 

Maybe this differs by discipline. I consider first and senior (last) author to both be exalted positions--as least that's how it's been in my experience in US public health academia. Montgomery is the senior author by virtue of being the last one listed. Traditionally, as Jonathan suggested, this might be the head of the research group that did the study or someone else in a position of oversight, while the first author--in this case Crawley--is the main driver of the study. I don't know what specifically it means in this case. The corresponding author is usually the first author but sometimes the senior author--again, in my experience.

In any event, whether or not he is the "senior author" or just the last one listed, his prior position at Bristol and his credentials suggest that he had some responsibility for making sure this was a well-designed study--or should have, if he didn't. So writing him seemed very appropriate. In terms of sending this to Professor Crawley, I have not sent her anything since last year and will not start now. She considers e-mail from me to be a form of harassment, as I understand it, so no need to scratch that itch. I presume she will see it whether or not I sent it to her directly, or to Bristol.

 

http://www.virology.ws/2019/06/05/trial-by-error-a-second-letter-to-lp-studys-senior-author/

 

I remember the first paper I wrote as the ‘stooge’. I constructed a new experimental design to explore new aspects of some previous research carried out by my mentor. I did all the work and the thinking, wrote the paper, presented interim results to sponsors (which was one of those panelled amphitheater type affairs). I was pretty much a one man band doing a 2 year government and industry funded research project with just courtesy updates to my mentor.

When I submitted a draft to my mentor, he made one edit, which was to put his name after mine. He was very old school. His perspective was ...I secured the original funding, I started the “big idea”, I’m technically your mentor so I’ll pop my name on your follow up work. It didn’t matter that my work was a better design and furthered our knowledge more than the initial exploratory work he did. The thing that really grated though is that he made absolutely no contribution to the work I did or the paper. It was quite the hierarchy in that place.

I’m not sure there was any convention he was using other than one of collecting papers with his name on it.