Demarcation dispute

A demarcation dispute is a dispute between (usually) two

trades unions A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ...

as to whose members should do a particular job, and is associated with multi-unionism in an enterprise, where two labour unions claim the right to represent the same class or group of workers. This is particularly important in compulsory arbitration systems of industrial relations, as in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

; where only one union may be the registered representative of a particular classification of worker. The term is also applied to disputes in assigning credit for significant discoveries in

science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence ...

, in particular the recognition of such credit by major awards such as the

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

. Notable

Nobel Prize controversies Since the first award in 1901, conferment of the Nobel Prize has occasionally engendered criticismNobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, accordi ...

, awarded to James D. Watson, Francis H. C. Crick, and

Maurice Wilkins Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins (15 December 1916 – 5 October 2004) was a New Zealand-born British biophysicist and Nobel laureate whose research spanned multiple areas of physics and biophysics, contributing to the scientific understanding ...

for their discovery of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid ( DNA). It has been argued that the award failed to give appropriate credit to

Rosalind Franklin Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July 192016 April 1958) was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, ...

for her

X-ray crystallography X-ray crystallography is the experimental science determining the atomic and molecular structure of a crystal, in which the crystalline structure causes a beam of incident X-rays to diffract into many specific directions. By measuring the angles ...

on the DNA molecule, whose evidence is acknowledged to have been critical to the discovery. It is acknowledged in this case that the Nobel Prize may not be shared among more than three persons, and is not given to deceased persons (Franklin had died in 1958). A second notable example is the 1974

Nobel Prize in Physics ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...

, awarded to

Antony Hewish Antony Hewish (11 May 1924 – 13 September 2021) was a British radio astronomer who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974 (together with fellow radio-astronomer Martin Ryle) for his role in the discovery of pulsars. He was also awarded th ...

and

Martin Ryle Sir Martin Ryle (27 September 1918 – 14 October 1984) was an English radio astronomer who developed revolutionary radio telescope systems (see e.g. aperture synthesis) and used them for accurate location and imaging of weak radio sourc ...

but not to

Jocelyn Bell Burnell Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell (; Bell; born 15 July 1943) is an astrophysicist from Northern Ireland who, as a postgraduate student, discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967. The discovery eventually earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in ...

. Bell, as a

doctoral student A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''li ...

under the direction of Hewish, made the primary observations that lead to recognition of the phenomenon of

pulsars A pulsar (from ''pulsating radio source'') is a highly magnetized rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation out of its magnetic poles. This radiation can be observed only when a beam of emission is pointing toward E ...

. Burnell herself has stated " would demean Nobel Prizes if they were awarded to research students, except in very exceptional cases ....". With respect to demarcation disputes involving Nobel Prize awards, it is notable that the importance placed by selection committees on a body of work over many years, rather than a single experiment or observation. Trade unions {{Trade-union-stub