Click this link
to close this window and return to the course once you have completed the case study.

CASE STUDY: Dealing with Disappointment*

Dr. Smith was a well-known and well-respected researcher at a mid-western university. John, her graduate student, was devoted to the lab and was it's lab director. John had spent more than a year on research that Dr. Smith had expected to provide impressive results. The research simply did not pan out as they expected. Both Dr. Smith and John were extremely disappointed. Dr. Smith had depended on the results from this piece of research so that she could submit an abstract for presentation at an upcoming conference. The student had planned his thesis on the expected outcome of this research.

Dr. Smith and John were certain that their hypothesis was correct, but had not yet been able to figure out what had gone wrong with John's experiments.

Dr. Smith greeted John with a smile the next Monday. "I can't replace your thesis," the lab director said, "but I can get you a publication in an important journal." Dr. Smith handed John materials from a completed experiment that he had never before seen--the description of a protocol, notebooks of data results, and a draft of conclusions. "I've been planning to write this one up for months," the lab director explained, "because I know that it will be a good publication. But, I haven't had time. You go ahead and do it while I see if I can figure out what went wrong with this experiment or find another thesis project for you. All you have to do," said Dr. Smith, "is finish the literature review and write the manuscript from the data and conclusions that are all here." For this, Dr. Smith would give the student first authorship. "The publication will look great on your CV," Dr. Smith said.

Click on one of the following choices:

Offer Accepted.

Offer Declined.