[chriskanan]

Regarding inflating the number of authors, it is especially bad in medicine, where I've observed a lot of names being added to papers for "political" reasons, despite the "author" playing no role in the paper.

Some journals now require an "Author Contributions" section to at least partially address this issue.

[kjkjadksj]

The worst part of this in the biomedical field is the conferences. Thats because sometimes you get toddlers with an advanced degree and a chair position picking the conference presenters, who will unilaterally reject or accept people on the grounds of whether they like them or see them as a competitor, even within the same department, no regards to what the poster or talk might be. At least with journals you have the editor who can sometimes mediate a hotheaded reviewer dispute in a level headed manner.