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A comment on Team uses copper to image Alzheimer's aggregates in the brain.

Re:Team uses copper to image Alzheimer's aggregates in the b... by 29athrowaway on Sunday December 13, 2020 @02:17AM (#25404918)
The picture of the main author should appear first, his picture should be larger, and this should read "Research scientist Hong-Jun Cho and his colleages". Same as the paper.
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Re:Team uses copper to image Alzheimer's aggregates in the b... by vikramkr on Sunday December 13, 2020 @10:34AM (#25407214)
If he's the first author, he's probably not the lab PI, and the PI usually gets the public credit, not the first author. Lab politics. Thats a complication with the research system as a whole, not with this particular news piece
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Re:Team uses copper to image Alzheimer's aggregates in the b... by pmoriarty on Sunday December 13, 2020 @02:30AM (#25404963)
"The way this is reported truly sucks. The picture of the main author should appear first, in my opinion. And this should read "Research scientist Hong-Jun Cho and his colleages""

Except in science the last author of the paper is the most significant one. So the way this article is written is just right.

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Re:Team uses copper to image Alzheimer's aggregates in the b... by zhdc1 on Sunday December 13, 2020 @03:15AM (#25405102)
It depends on the field (and journal, author preferences, and a bunch of other things...), but the main author is generally the person who did the bulk of the research and the last author is the usually the principle investigator, group lead, or gatekeeper (i.e., the person who frames the paper for a particular journal(s) to maximize publication success).

As far as how all of this played out in this case, who knows, but I don't see anything particularly wrong with having either the first author or group lead as the main focus of the article, as long as both of them (and the other contributors) are openly acknowledged, which appears to have happened.

If it matters, the group's Twitter account is worth a read https://twitter.com/miricagroup.

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Re:Team uses copper to image Alzheimer's aggregates in the b... by theresistor on Sunday December 13, 2020 @03:09AM (#25405080)
Depends entirely on the field. Different fields have different conventions.
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Re:Team uses copper to image Alzheimer's aggregates in the b... by ekianjo on Sunday December 13, 2020 @04:55AM (#25405450)
> Except in science the last author of the paper is the most significant one.

In medicine usually. Not all disciplines follow this order.

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Re:Team uses copper to image Alzheimer's aggregates in the b... by anoffvu on Sunday December 13, 2020 @02:36AM (#25404977)
Actually, the opposite is true
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Re:Team uses copper to image Alzheimer's aggregates in the b... by esyir on Sunday December 13, 2020 @03:16AM (#25405107)
This one is interesting, cause it really depends who you mean by "significant" The first author is generally the primary researcher. The last author is generally the PI of the entire lab, and the person of highest status in the lab.
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Re:Team uses copper to image Alzheimer's aggregates in the b... by ta988 on Sunday December 13, 2020 @11:48AM (#25407851)
And in some cases the last author doesn't even read or understand what is in the paper... (Seen that first hand)
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Re:Team uses copper to image Alzheimer's aggregates in the b... by j7ake on Sunday December 13, 2020 @05:11AM (#25405512)
At a minimum they should have all authors in the paper in one picture together.
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Re:Team uses copper to image Alzheimer's aggregates in the b... by ta988 on Sunday December 13, 2020 @11:46AM (#25407832)
How do you do that in the case where your paper is the result of a collaboration across the world?
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Re:Team uses copper to image Alzheimer's aggregates in the b... by therealx on Sunday December 13, 2020 @12:37PM (#25408310)
Use $15 worth of hireable Photoshop to create a decent looking image with all of them? Even just squares of profile photos put together, but I almost guarantee a better job could be easily done.
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Re:Team uses copper to image Alzheimer's aggregates in the b... by j7ake on Monday December 14, 2020 @11:59AM (#25419838)
There are four authors in that paper. Just because there are papers that contain 100s of authors should not influence this specific case of a four author paper.
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