[yabadabadoes]

Yes, but I actually think primary authors in title actually being grant proposal writers and middle managers is far more destructive to academia itself.

I think it is the norm that a lot of people get primary credit on papers for doing what managers in every field do every day, and academia is busy obscuring their own processes as a result.

[topspin]

> Yes, but

One fraud doesn't justify the other.

[yabadabadoes]

I'm not really looking to justify it. I think fish rots from the head and it's time to either buckle down to real rules for credit or stop doing multi-author papers in this fashion.

Hollywood has a credit format.. programmers have a change by change attribution system.

A serious limit to academic reform is that an institution that fixes its own rules will have trouble competing for people in many positions by having to be completely honest about the roles.

[topspin]

IOW, if they fail to tolerate fraud they'll have a smaller pool of candidates because unethical people won't be interested.

This is the sort of thing that's only a problem when your own prerogatives are misguided. Must academe be merely another institution that must pursue growth at all costs? If so then is the pedestal it presumes to occupy legitimate?

[yabadabadoes]

I think they have very few candidates because of the ethical issues, for example nearly no one in the US wants to complete an upper degree because they don't want to be exploited.

To put it differently, poor ethics is possibly a necessity to outcompete other institutions in what should be a net zero game. Instead the game is negative, we view academia overall as worse than n years ago because of the progressively lower ethics, higher administration costs and staff to compete for the same grants, etc.