Professors have many graduate students working for them under their direction that do the grunt work. They do get “some” joint credit in publications and such but to suggest that a grad student should be credited with the discoveries he makes following the directions of a superior is just silly.
Re-read the article. Evidence was uncovered in the superior's collection that showed he hid the evidence, and the evidence was the grad student's notebooks clearly detailing that the grad student did all the discovery work long before the superior entered the picture.
“If you are not a scientist then you wouldn’t understand this, and it would seem unfair.”
I have been involved several times as an ‘underling’ in research work and have always been given shared credit for the work I did in various discoveries. I was given a free hand in the research work and though there was some direction, there were ‘discoveries’ that were clearly mine. I was always given credit. But then, I worked for honest, decent research scientists.
On one occasion, as an undergraduate student, I was given the opportunity to present a paper, for some privately funded research, as co-author, before the Iowa Academy of Science where a number of my immediate professors were in attendence.
I also was introduced to Dr Paul Dudley White and Ancel Keys as being co-collaborator in ongoing research that they were interested in.
I also had a paper published in the Journal of Bacteriology as a result of research that was ‘directed’ by a superior.
Money and ‘Nobel Prizes’ were not a factor, of course in my experiences.