Authors comment on authorship commentary
DOI: 10.1063/PT.3.1659
Philip Wyatt’s commentary was an enjoyable read. The vista he describes is, unfortunately, exactly where the publish-or-perish culture has brought the physics community.
I wholeheartedly agree with Wyatt’s opinion on the authoring of papers, but I must object to one specific statement in his commentary: “When a recent PhD in a physical science said that helium formed diatomic molecules, I knew we were in trouble!”
Helium and all other rare gases indeed form diatomic molecules, albeit in excited states commonly referred to as excimers. Radiation (around 60 nm) resulting from decay of He2 to the dissociative ground state was discovered in 1930 and is referred to as the Hopfield continuum. 1 Then again, maybe the student was indeed referring to ground-state He2.
References
1. J. J. Hopfield, Astrophys. J. 72, 133 (1930). https://doi.org/10.1086/143271
More about the Authors
Willem Wieme. (willem.wieme@ugent.be) Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
