Sir

Friedrich Katscher is correct in stating that science has a long history of abuse of authorship for honour and glory1.

Insulin, for instance, was discovered by Frederick Banting and Charles Best. Yet the Nobel prize for physiology or medicine was awarded in 1923 to Banting and John J. R. Macleod. Macleod was merely the head of the physiology laboratory in Ontario where the research was done. Not only did he take no active part in the research, he was on vacation when the crucial experiments were done. Banting, in protest, shared his half of the prize money with Best; Macleod did the same with J. B. Collip, who had assisted with the purification and standardization of insulin2.

It must be admitted, though, that there are gentlemen scientists, too. Klinefelter states that the syndrome named after him was the result of an unselfish action on the part of Dr Fuller Albright, who after they jointly described the syndrome, allowed Klinefelter to put his name first on the list of authors3.

I am collecting material on such eponymous misnomers in biomedical research, as well as examples of serendipitous discoveries in the field. I would welcome assistance from fellow scientists.