Have you ever had to work to collaborate with coworkers? If you have, then you know that solving the science is only half of the challenge. Getting the other person to do their part can sometimes be even frustrating than solving the problem itself. In college and graduate school I had to work together with many other people, and I was not surprised when I received the following question from Benchfly.com ( great site for life scientists):
Dear Dora,
My advisor assigned me and another grad student a big project. It was implied from the start that we would have equal contributions. I do all the literature reading, planning, designing, and problem solving while actually performing a larger portion of experiments. My lab partner did help me with doing experiments but nothing else. She only does what I tell her to, never takes any initiative and relies on me to solve problems. When we present our work at groups meetings, it looks like we have the same contribution while we do not. What should I do?
Sounds like a common problem, unfortunately. My reply was:
Dear Tri,
First of all, I would like to congratulate on being so dedicated to your thesis project. It sounds like your partner is not as committed as you are, and this is clearly frustrating you. There could be several reasons for this, such as having less expertise, distractions from other commitments, or personal problems. It is not up to you to change her behavior, but your advisor must be aware of the contributions that each of you make. Not only is this important from an ethical standpoint, but your advisor should know who is the expert in the literature and who generated the data. When you publish this data, the order of authors will be determined by the level of contributions everyone made.
My suggestion is to talk to your advisor about your concerns, and be sure to give the other graduate student credit for what she has done. It is up to your advisor to determine whether she is a good match for this project, and what her thesis project should be. While you might be concerned that you are “telling on her”, it will be to her benefit in the long run to be given a project where she takes more responsibility for her research.
Any similar experiences? We look forward to your comments