system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is it common for someone to be published in a big research group paper and that person not be able to fully understand/describe all of the details in that paper?

There's a popular question right now about impact factor for publications, and I thought of this question because of it. I'm not up on my science, but I know a few people who are in large groups (10 or more people sometimes in a publication) and they can't even describe what all of their paper is about. There are some sections that go over their head because other members of the team performed those experiments. For example, an experimental side and a theoretical side. The experimentalist might not understand the work of the theorists. Is this common? Does this usually only occur in very large research groups, or in specific fields like Physics but not so much in Biology?
gpt
I have been told that it is customary that if you contribute SOMETHING to the publication that you get your name placed on the paper. That something can be funding, data analysis, running a sample, any number of things. One way to add emphasis on who actually did the majority of the work is to make them the first author. But in short no you don't  have to be able to fully understand/ be able to describe all of the paper to get your name on it =/