How it was being second.

Morris (1987) is a short editorial, not an experiment.

The author looks back on Charlie Ferster’s rule: writers, not editors, must own every mistake in their paper.

He tells the story of being "second"—the editor who caught errors the author should have fixed first.

The paper finds that blame for sloppy data or weak logic belongs to the author alone.

Editors can guide, but the final meaning, numbers, and ethics sit on the writer’s desk.

Milton (2014) and Veneziano et al. (2023) extend the same idea to autism work. They say autistic people must be co-authors of the knowledge that is about them.

Anonymous (2024) goes further with interviews: families want community co-ownership, not just author proof-reading.

Hobson (1984) is an earlier voice from the same decade. It urges us to treat individual quirks as real data, not noise—mirroring Ferster’s call to treat each manuscript as the author’s personal product.

Before you submit your next single-case report, double every graph, stat, and word. Then ask: did the participants get to check how they are described? Ferster’s 1987 rule still saves reputations; the newer papers add that stakeholder co-authorship saves trust. Own your data, share the pen, and you protect both science and the people behind the numbers.