alt Hacker News> Graduate students, and even post-doctoral researchers, are not the ones cited for breakthroughs from a laboratory.
What you are saying is not true- it is academic misconduct, with formal consequences, to not credit the person that did the work. Typically the grad student or postdoc that actually did the work is the first author listed on a publication, and the PI that advised and obtained funding is the last author. They both get credit for their respective roles in a very tangible way that is usually the deciding factor in career progression. They also personally both get listed on, and obtain a percentage of profits from any patents resulting from the work.
Moreover, no, researchers at a private for profit company like Google are not “academics.” They don’t need to follow strict institutional rules about fairly crediting people for their work, and they don’t need to bring in their own funding in the form of grants. An industry researcher only gets credit if their employer wishes them to, an academic is entitled to get credit for their work through formal rules.
Perhaps we're misunderstanding each other:
> What you are saying is not true- it is academic misconduct, with formal consequences, to not credit the person that did the work.
This is true in the sense of purported plagiarism, but not in the sense of citing who is 'responsible for the idea'. Review articles will often cite a senior article when describing work performed over time, even if the primary authors have changed.
> Typically the grad student or postdoc that actually did the work is the first author listed on a publication, and the PI that advised and obtained funding is the last author.
This convention varies by field and is not universal. It is isn't even constant in all fields of biology
> They also personally both get listed on, and obtain a percentage of profits from any patents resulting from the work.
This depends strongly on where the work is done (even the department within a university)
> no, researchers at a private for profit company like Google are not “academics.” They don’t need to follow strict institutional rules about fairly crediting people for their work, and they don’t need to bring in their own funding in the form of grants. An industry researcher only gets credit if their employer wishes them to, an academic is entitled to get credit for their work through formal rules.
The assertion about no academics in companies is not true at all—being an academic has little to do with where money comes from (if this were true, there were no academics at all in the 1700s, an obviously false statement).
Bell Labs, Google, MS and others have formal research institutes within their organizations. I agree that each has conventions around recognition, just like in other areas of research.