Falsifying Attribution for a Bad Pun

George Gamow

In 1948, physicist and cosmologist George Gamow was helping a PhD student, Ralph Alpher, with his dissertation. 

The paper looked at how the various elements that are present naturally and concluded that they had to have developed in the early universe through the successive capture of neutrons.

However, before publishing the paper in the April 1949 journal Physical Review, Gamow decided to add the name of his friend and fellow physicist Hans Bethe. This made the authorship of the paper read “Alpher, Bethe, Gamow”, a play on the Greek letters alpha, beta and gamma

Alpher, for his part, was dismayed by the inclusion. Bethe was already a well-known physicist, and he was worried that his inclusion could overshadow the work he put into the paper.

Bethe, on the other hand, did not object and even offered to consult and provide input on the paper to earn his inclusion. However, that did not happen and, instead, only provided input and discussion after the fact.

However, according to at least one source, that attitude began to change as issues with the theory in the paper began to come to light. Though the paper, at this point known as the “alphabetical article”, was sound for the time, issues with the theory came to light.

The biggest was that there are no stable elements with an atomic mass of five or eight, meaning that atoms couldn’t grow beyond Helium with neutron capture alone. This is commonly likened to trying to climb a staircase with two massive steps missing.

It’s because of this that Bethe considered changing his name to Zacharias.

However, Bethe never took that step and went on to become one of the best-known physicists of his time, even winning the Nobel Prize in 1967

As for Alpher and Gamow, they would have significant careers but never receive the full credit that they deserved for their contributions. 

For example, in 1965 two scientists, Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson, discovered the Cosmic Background Radiation, a discovery they would win the Nobel Prize for in 1978. 

However, both Alpher and Gamow put significant work in both proving its theoretical existence and estimating the temperature of it, something they receive little credit for.

The story, like the paper itself, is largely a footnote in the history of physics. It was a wrong turn in the understanding of the universe, even if the theory fit the information available at the time. 

That said, it’s still a stark reminder of the complexities that come with authorship in research, and that is an issue that is still very much alive today. 

Authorship issues in Research

Gamow is far from the first or the last researcher to unethically alter the authorship of a paper, though he may be the first and last to do it for a joke.

Authorship is research is something that is both taken very seriously, but is also very fuzzy. Determining who has earned an authorship credit on a paper can be difficult and, because of the importance of publishing papers, there’s a great deal of pressure to include as many names as possible. 

A 2013 survey by iThenticate found that Misleading Attribution to be one of the most serious plagiarism and attribution problems in research, just behind verbatim plagiarism and complete plagiarism. 

However, that’s not what happened here. Gamow included Bethe for a joke and, while it can be argued that Bethe’s inclusion may have elevated the paper or that the joke got it more attention, Bethe was already well known and neither asked for nor needed the authorship.

What is interesting about this case is that nearly everything was well known at the time, and Gamow never faced any repercussions that I can find. However, this is likely the case precisely because it was well known and that the intent wasn’t to fudge authorship, but to make a joke.

And, to that end, the paper has remained well-known and not just for its (ill-fated) contributions, but for this very story. Though the theory the paper presented has long since been discarded, this story lives on.

Bottom Line

In the end, this story is much like the paper it involves, a footnote in the careers of three important physicists. All three of these individuals contributed more important things to their field, even if this may be one of the things that they are most remembered for.

Still, it’s an interesting tale because authorship is such a series issue in research, and it is very frequently a source of ethical issues in research. Adding and/or removing authors inappropriately from a paper can and does result in retractions and other disciplinary action.

This is something that even those outside academia understand, especially since the topic was even the plot of an episode of Young Sheldon

Here, it appears to be more of a lighthearted tale and, though Alpher was understandably upset, he continued to work with Gamow after this incident. Though Alpher and Gamow were overshadowed through much of their career, it’s difficult to say that this contributed to it in any way.

As such, no real harm was done as the truth both was and is widely known. But, that being said, I wouldn’t recommend trying this again in the 2020s. 

I doubt this joke would be nearly as funny the second time…

Photo Credits

George Gamow Photo: Creator Unknown. via University of Colorado Boulder
Ralph Adler Photo: Credit: Alpher Papers., CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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