A Note on Authorship:
The methods used in determining authorship order vary widely throughout the research community. From our laboratory's inception, Drs. Daroff and Dell'Osso established the following transparent, merit-based rules: 1) the order of authors reflect the contributions of each to the paper; 2) a student, resident, or fellow would be listed as first author if they were actively involved in the study and produced the first draft of the paper (in these special cases, the investigator who conceived and was responsible for the study was listed as second author); 3) there would be no reserved "last listing" for the "senior" author; and 4) there would be no gratuitous authorships granted (contributors not meeting the requirements for authorship would be listed in "Grateful Acknowledgements"). All papers emanating from this lab based on the work of either Drs. Daroff or Dell'Osso have adhered to those authorship rules (see CV's of Dr. Daroff or Dr. Dell'Osso).