[Lawtonfogle]

>In mathematics, multiple authors are always listed alphabetically by family name; ie there is no "first" or "second" author.

Is there any research showing this standard to be fair? People pay more attention to the first item of a list than to the middle ones, making me think that one's position on such a list could have a small benefit. Less important if there are overall less multiple name papers, which it seems from the rest of your comment, but still a factor as long as multiple names on a paper do happen.

[matheist]

Is there any research showing this standard to be fair?

I don't know of any.

Less important if there are overall less multiple name papers, which it seems from the rest of your comment,

Actually, I think multiple authors is far more common than single authors, though I don't know the numbers to back it up. I was responding to a very specific "what-if" scenario of bouncing ideas off someone else, and describing what would happen in that case.