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Can I put the name of my baby as one of the co-authors of a scientific paper?

I know it sounds disturbing, but it's a way of mine to protest against co-authors that haven't made any contribution (they haven't even read it or are part of the research area) to a paper, but they are part of the research group.

What are the legal / ethic concerns?

So technically I was writing the paper with my baby in my hand and the baby was talking with me in its own language. The baby even wrote a few characters in the paper when it managed to get near the keyboard while I was holding it.

smci
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teter
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    "coauthors generally that havent given any contribution" !!! if they have not given any contribution, why are they coauthors? – d.putto Oct 29 '15 at 09:50
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    It sounds like the question is, "I am being pressured into committing an ethical breach. Rather than stand up against it, may I instead commit an additional, sillier ethical breach?" – Nate Eldredge Oct 29 '15 at 13:39
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    Do you have control over the author list or not? If you have, why don't you simply remove the ones that didn't contribute anything? Otherwise, how are you going to add your baby to the author list? – michau Oct 29 '15 at 14:10
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    Don't you know the story of Stronzo Bestiale? ;-) – Massimo Ortolano Oct 29 '15 at 14:24
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    Ranting on this site will not solve your workplace issue. Discussing it with your colleagues might help though. – Cape Code Oct 29 '15 at 14:36
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    I can't wait until the baby has to sign the copyright transfer agreement. – Fomite Oct 29 '15 at 22:44
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    How many co-authors besides you did contribute meaningfully to this paper? – Klaus Draeger Oct 31 '15 at 11:57
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    Andre Geim (Physics Nobel Prize 2010) once published a paper with his hamster H.A.M.S. ter Tisha

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/.../pii/S0921452600007535

     – Mohamed Khamis Nov 02 '15 at 11:52
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    This was linked from Nature News yesterday – David Z Nov 27 '15 at 08:53
  • I know several people who share a Martian as a co-author. I also know of more than a dozen ficticious humans (although their non-Martianship is not explicitly stated) who have been acknowledged for their contribution to various scientific papers. Neither the Martian, nor the dozen humans, nor the scientific community as a whole appear to have been harmed in any way by their inclusion. ... nor, unsurprisingly (!) do they appear to have gained any unfair advantage over other combatants in the Great 21st Century Authorship War. – CrimsonDark Feb 10 '24 at 05:48

13 Answers13

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There was a similar case in 1975, when an American mathematician and physicist, Professor Jack H. Hetherington of Michigan State University, added his cat as a co-author. Apparently, a collegaue who had reviewed his manuscript, had pointed out that he had used "we" and "us" throughout the manuscript, but this was incorrect as he was the sole author. so, instead of typing out the entire document once again (those were the days before Ctrl H), he decided to speed up the process and added the name of Chester, his pet cat as a co-author. However, to disguise the fact, he put "FDC Willard" as the name, with FD standing for "felix domesticus" and the C for "Chester." And Willard was the name of Chester's father.

However, these days, with so many regulations in place, I'm not sure if it would be ethical to include your baby's name. If however, you choose to do so, I would suggest you inform the editor and mention this in a disclaimer somewhere within the title page, so that readers are not misled about your intent.

Another well known case is the paper "In a fully H-2 incompatible chimera, T cells of donor origin can respond to minor histocompatibility antigens in association with either donor or host H-2 type." by Polly Matzinger and Galadriel Mirkwood in The Journal of Experimental Medicine, 1978.
As Ted Anton described it in his book Bold Science, "Refusing to write in the usual scientific passive voice ('steps were taken') and too insecure to write in the first person ('I took the steps'), she instead invented a coauthor": her Afghan Hound, Galadriel Mirkwood. Once discovered, papers on which she was a major author were then barred from the journal until the editor died and was replaced by another.

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Kakoli Majumder
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    If the editor didn't mind, mentioning the intent in a disclaimer would also serve as a more straightforward, and probably effective, way of protesting than being discovered later by someone else. – Orion Oct 29 '15 at 13:19
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    Can regulations alter ethics? – paul garrett Oct 29 '15 at 13:51
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    F.D.C. Willard (fl. 1975–1980) was the pen name of a Siamese cat named Chester, who internationally published under this name on low temperature physics in scientific journals, one as co-author and the other time as the sole author. – Ooker Oct 29 '15 at 14:04
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    Your first paragraph would have made a nice comment I would immediately have upvoted (although the connection to the OP's question is rather far-fetched). Your second paragraph is problematic. What will the OP's coauthors say when they read the disclaimer? This will make the OP no friends among her coauthors. And many readers will be put off, considering this a silly passive-aggressive stunt. – Stephan Kolassa Oct 29 '15 at 14:18
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    And in 1987 there was Stronzo Bestiale. – Massimo Ortolano Oct 29 '15 at 14:27
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    Also Galadriel Mirkwood. – jakebeal Oct 29 '15 at 15:15
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    @Stephan Kolassa: The OP's decision is somewhat strange, but as she has mentioned, she is aware that the proposal will sound disturbing to others. The second part of my answer is based on the assumption that the OP wants to use this form of protest being fully aware that it is, at best, a very unusual one, and is likely to elicit negative reactions. – Kakoli Majumder Oct 29 '15 at 17:07
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    @paulgarrett Of course they can. If regulations make something expected practice, breaking this practice would be an ethical violation. Example: in the academic world, a full citation is expected for everything and not providing it is considered unethical (you make it seem like you thought of it yourself); in newspapers in contrast, facts are expected to come from an external source, and not providing a full citation is not a breach of ethics. – Sanchises Oct 29 '15 at 18:00
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    @sanchises, it is not clear to me that regulations and expectations are reliably consonant, except in the most benign contexts. With or without that, it is also not clear to me that "popular" expectations dictate "ethics", unless the former is essentially the definition of the latter. Even then, upon observation, apparently full citation is not universally "expected" or given. Not that I imagine I conceived the idea that proper attribution should be given, but only have observed that surprisingly often it is not, contrary to various claims. Some non-citation is presumably due to ignorance. – paul garrett Oct 29 '15 at 18:09
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    IMO using a baby is worse than using a cat or a made up name. Sometime that baby will grow up and then you have a person who really exists falsely attributed on the paper. – Peter Green Oct 29 '15 at 19:03
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    @paulgarrett I agree with you completely. I'm just saying regulations can alter ethics, if only because not following regulations puts you at an unfair advantage, which could be considered unethical. I'm not saying regulations correspond one-to-one with ethics - I don't believe that's possible, or even desirable. – Sanchises Oct 29 '15 at 19:16
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    There was a time when a mathematician's paper wasn't expected to use plural personal pronouns regardless of the number of authors? What a shocking history lesson! – zibadawa timmy Oct 29 '15 at 19:22
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    @Peter Green, but how is that any different from as the OP said, "co-authors that haven't made any contribution"? – Octopus Oct 30 '15 at 06:10
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    @zibadawatimmy: not really. Certainly the didactic "we" exists prior to 1975. Hetherington's colleague was most likely winding him up and that is why he responded with humour. – Steve Jessop Oct 30 '15 at 10:54
  • @Octopus The baby has not given informed consent. – Simd Nov 02 '15 at 05:20
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    "with so many regulations in place, I'm not sure if it would be ethical..." You mean legal, or perhaps permitted. – Kyle Strand Nov 02 '15 at 23:04
  • @paulgarrett Actually that depends entirely on what we think "Ethics" is. If we think that ethics are human conventions of acceptable behavior, then yes, certainly regulations can change that. If we say that ethics are the logical/philosophical interpretation and application of commonly agreed on principles to human behavior, then less so, but eventually, yes. If we say that they are based on unchanging abstract principles, then only contextually. And if we think that they are absolute and/or come from a Supreme Being, then no, of course not. – RBarryYoung Nov 03 '15 at 17:56
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    @PeterGreen Because as we all know babies don't actually exist until they're grown up. Until they're grown up they are just make-believe creatures. – Pharap Nov 04 '15 at 06:07
  • "until the editor died" I don't know if he's still with us or not but Jack would have loved that story :-) – uhoh May 02 '22 at 11:57
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I disagree with most of the other answers, which are basically telling you that it's unethical and you shouldn't do it. Their reasoning is sound and conservative, but overlooks the basic idea that this is an act of protest.

Yes, it is unethical to add your baby as a co-author. However, you believe that you are already being forced to do an equivalent unethical action by your group. In effect, what you are doing is planting a signpost that says (without being explicit), that you are aware of the unethical actions that you are taking and protest against being forced to do so.

This is a risky stance to take, from a professional career perspective, but from a legal and ethical perspective you are doing nothing worse than you are being forced to do already. It does, however, change the situation slightly for each of them:

  • You are more likely to face consequences with the publisher, because a completely implausible author makes the unethical co-authorship more likely to be detected .
  • I think you are actually in a better position ethically, since you have declared your disapproval of the behavior that you consider unethical.

I would thus judge your proposed course of action to be an ethical act of protest of an unethical situation. It would be better to get rid of the unethical coauthors in the first place, but if you cannot do that, this is within the reasonable traditions of scientific defiance (F.D.C. Willard being another example, as are the uses of SCIgen).

You need to be aware, however, that doing this is likely to create enemies out of everyone in your research group, and may end your scientific career. That is a reason that many people would choose to not make a fuss about the unethical co-authorship and instead perpetuate the problem. Only you know how important your personal goals are, and whether this act of protest is worth the likelihood that you will make enemies and may destroy your career. From an ethical and legal standpoint, however, I think that you are fine.

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jakebeal
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    -1. "from a legal and ethical perspective you are doing nothing worse than you are being forced to do already": two wrongs don't make a right. – Stephan Kolassa Oct 29 '15 at 14:19
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    @StephanKolassa, indeed. It makes civil disobedience, in this case. Ofc, if that is advisable or fruitful, is another discussion altogether... – Fábio Dias Oct 29 '15 at 14:24
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    I like your stance supporting unconventional attitudes, but there is a fairly high profile case in which a crazy neuroscientist did this (the entire family actually; accepted paper was un-accepted). So I'd be careful at the least, if only as so doing might remind some of this case. – gnometorule Oct 29 '15 at 15:54
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    Passive-aggressive action isn't actually unaggressive and this just makes the OP look childish and unprofessional. If you can't negotiate to remove false co-authors then it is unlikely that adding a baby will go unchallenged. – JamesRyan Oct 29 '15 at 16:11
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    This "protest" is essentially an inside-joke that nobody will ever understand. Instead it gives a false impression of another co-author who's seemingly a field professional. Be a professional, and don't add your baby as a co-author. – SnakeDoc Oct 29 '15 at 16:57
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    @JamesRyan Nobody claimed it wasn't aggressive (or did they?). And as for unprofessional, I'd argue strongly that this isn't any less professional than the ethical breach the OP is apparently forced to commit anyway (if this is actually such a breach). – Konrad Rudolph Oct 29 '15 at 18:46
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    @KonradRudolph a lot of people do seem to think it isn't. Why else would you not simply express your feeling more clearly and directly and actually talk about a solution or agreement? By bringing it in a petty way you would be immediately making your position non credible. – JamesRyan Oct 29 '15 at 19:21
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    @JamesRyan Yeah, I'm not saying it's a brilliant idea but I'm assuming that OP has exhausted his possibilities of interacting with his coworkers as adults. It's career suicide either way. At least this way is funny. – Konrad Rudolph Oct 29 '15 at 19:32
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    Essentially, it seems to me that, baby or not baby, once the paper sees the light of day, all the damage to be done is done, professionally as well as interpersonally, assuming the fraudulent coauthorship ends up being detected. The protest might seem petulant, but I don't see how, from an ethical standpoint, it's "a second wrong," seeing as nobody will be wronged moreso than if if the protest didn't occur. (This would also make the original question somewhat of an XY problem.)

    Unless you're arguing that it's right and "professional" for the OP to do his best to cover up a breach of ethics.

     – millimoose Oct 29 '15 at 23:38
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    I agree with this assessment of the protest, but I expect that practically speaking, that pressure which forces the OP to include a deadweight author, will prevent the OP including the baby. I very much doubt the ethics will arise, since the paper won't be published with the baby. "Two wrongs don't make a right" is a facile objection, since this answer states "there exists a wrong which somewhat mitigates another wrong", whereas the objection states an unrelated fact, "it is not the case that a wrong can be wholly reversed by a second wrong". – Steve Jessop Oct 30 '15 at 11:01
  • @millimoose: I don't think people are arguing that it's right to cover up a breach of ethics, however they are arguing that it is right to retain the conventions that are usually good, but under the cover of which miscreants operate. It's not (strictly speaking) the fault of those who instinctively support the status quo and "no silliness", that there are some bad guys who rely on this general support for the status quo to provide the environment they operate in. They don't support the wrong-doing, they just aren't willing to tear down the walls as part of uncovering the wrong-doers. – Steve Jessop Oct 30 '15 at 11:06
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    +1 for understanding protest and not feces-slinging the most literal interpretation of "ethics" in a dictionary unlike most people on this page. –  Nov 02 '15 at 15:10
  • +1 for being objective while thinking out-of-the-box. I think you managed to put yourself in the OP's shoes and evaluate all the pro's and con's in an not-so-biased way. – mgarciaisaia Nov 02 '15 at 18:05
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No, that is not okay. I will quote Peter Jansson's answer to a question on this site, Is it common to claim co-authorship by helping writing a paper without doing any research:

The so called Vancouver protocol (developed by ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) and its definition of authorship has been mentioned in many questions of this kind here on Academia but I think they deserve being repeated. The protocol describes authorship through three components which every author must fulfil:

  1. Conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data, and
  2. Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, and
  3. Final approval of the version to be published.
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Pål GD
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    And that protocol is only used in some fields; by no means all fields. – 410 gone Oct 29 '15 at 13:42
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    Yes, @EnergyNumbers, I don't remember granting the ICMJE any authority... :) – paul garrett Oct 29 '15 at 13:52
  • @EnergyNumbers While ICMJE might not apply to all fields, I'd be surprised if you could find any statement of authorship criteria where this is passage. – Fomite Oct 30 '15 at 00:30
  • Perhaps you can expand your answer to include how "co-authors that haven't made any contribution" is okay. – Octopus Oct 30 '15 at 06:12
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    I'm listed as an author on hundreds of papers where I've failed all three criteria. Some fields are just different. – Shep Oct 30 '15 at 07:40
  • @Shep, mind if I ask what did you just do to be included as co-author, then? –  Oct 31 '15 at 10:43
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    @Octopus, Yes, again, 3: "I read the paper, I think it's OK and should be published, therefore add me as a co-author". Now I know why many supervisors are added as co-authors, without any contribution to the actual paper. –  Oct 31 '15 at 10:47
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    @Joseph, I ran some detector diagnostics about 5 years ago. Mostly it served as an exercise to familiarize myself with the experiment and our data format, so I don't think I really contributed much, definitely nothing that's still in use. Ever since then I've been on the "author list", which means my thousands of colleagues have to put me on anything they publish. The flip side is that anything I publish has to include thousands of authors.

    This is sort of an extreme case, but there are many experiments with hundreds of people on the official "author list".

     – Shep Nov 01 '15 at 16:25
  • @Shep: Sorry, but this simply is unethical by all standards of good scientific practice! While the mentioned Vancouver protocol apparently only addresses medical, all major funding agencies insist on such standards irrespectively of the discipline, See, for instance, this answer for the DFG regulations. – Daniel Nov 04 '15 at 15:48
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    @Daniel, I'm not saying I like the system, but I guess you should take it up with CERN, the ATLAS Collaboration, the CMS Collaboration, Fermilab, and a half dozen smaller particle physics experiments. Clearly it's not unethical by all standards, since at least some of the thousands of authors on these experiments (I'm not necessarily including myself) believe this approach is perfectly ethical. – Shep Nov 04 '15 at 22:06
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    And @Daniel, I can assure you that we get plenty of funding from the DFG, not to mention the US DOE, the UK Science Council, the French CNRS, the German BNBF, and a dozen other funding agencies. I'm sure they are quite aware of our authorship requirements, but they clearly haven't insisted on any standards like those you mention. – Shep Nov 04 '15 at 22:22
  • @Shep: Take a second look at it, it is part of the "Bewilligungsbescheid". Whenever you accept money from DFG, you sign that you will adhere to the "DFG Proposals for Safeguarding Good Scientific Practice". It is just a tick in some box, so it may easily be overlooked. But it is definitely there... – Daniel Nov 05 '15 at 08:03
  • @Daniel, if that's true the guidelines from these funding agencies would be at odds with those from several multi-billion dollar experiments, none of which make any secret as to their policies. CDF, for example, has [officially used an author list since 1998](https://goo.gl/FsPshw for more details). So if this check box you mention exists, it's only as an example of policy being out of synch with actual practice. These agencies are knowingly funding these experiments, have been for some time, and don't have any intention of stopping any time soon. – Shep Nov 05 '15 at 09:46
  • @Shep: Well, it is an example of an "out of sync" policy that nevertheless might have legal implications for the one who signs it. Nevertheless, I wasn't aware of the fact that author lists are even an official concept in some institutions. Thanks for the book reference, I have just ordered it. – Daniel Nov 05 '15 at 10:23
  • Note that the first bullet point in the current edition of the ICMJE criteria has the first two of its three "and"s replaced with "or"s, and has "acquisition" added to the list alongside "analysis" and "interpretation". That's quite a significant change, and is probably enough to "legalize" the particle-physics author-list policies that @Shep discusses. – Daniel Hatton Dec 01 '21 at 23:00
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What would I think if I found out that someone had listed their baby as a coauthor?

  1. This author is out of touch with academic publishing practices. His/her judgment probably can't be trusted in other matters either.

  2. It could be an attempt to be funny.

  3. It could be intended as an sentimental tribute to the baby.

  4. It could be a way of thumbing one's nose at academic ethics.

I would not guess it was in any way a form of protest against the forced inclusion of other authors on the paper. A protest that does not appear to be a protest defeats the purpose of protesting. If you don't call attention to the problem and express disapproval, then you can't really consider it a protest at all.

I might not even believe it was truly intended as a protest if that was explained after the fact. Instead, I might see it as just one aspect of a larger pattern of misbehavior and lump you in with your coauthors. For comparison, if you are caught breaking windows during a riot, you can't expect leniency if you explain that your real intention was to protest against looting.

In practice, I imagine that including your baby as a coauthor would lead to a worse outcome for you and a better outcome for your unethical coauthors if there were an investigation. For the other people inappropriately listed as authors, someone would presumably vouch for them and explain why they merited authorship. The explanation might be a lie, but it's often hard to prove that someone definitely didn't deserve authorship. On the other hand, it's easy to prove that your baby didn't deserve authorship, and your coauthors would surely do everything they could to undermine your credibility. If you explained that your act was intended as protest, they might counter that in your inexperience you mistakenly thought you detected something unethical, so you got carried away and started committing unethical acts yourself in some bizarre payback fantasy (while their only sin was being overly trusting in assuming the coauthor you added must have contributed in ways they weren't aware of, because why would you have added them otherwise?). Everybody would look bad, but your transgression would be much more easily proved, and you might well end up being thrown under the bus to get the whole situation resolved. Having a scapegoat is a good way to keep the real villains safe.

To summarize: don't do this. It's inappropriate in itself, it's not an effective form of protest, and it might help deflect attention away from your coauthors in an investigation.

Anonymous Mathematician
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    "I would not guess it was in any way a form of protest against the forced inclusion of other authors." I would, straight away, especially after this thread has been brought into being. It would also immediately spring to my mind that, if this were one of the principal intentions, it was rather good, precisely because of its oblique and uncertain character. Clearly the fact of not being able to state openly what the problem is is, precisely, the nub of the matter. The effect on the OP's career is a separate question and one which s(he) obviously needs to think about quite hard. – mike rodent Oct 30 '15 at 09:49
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    @mikerodent: so the OP is put in a position where, having gone through with this act, you will consider it a protest and AnonymousMathematician will consider it looting. So it's certainly a precarious position for OP to enter, knowing that a goodly proportion of people will disbelieve the stated motives for doing it even having read this question. – Steve Jessop Oct 30 '15 at 11:11
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Don't. Just don't.

I get the frustration with including authors that didn't contribute much. I've actually lost a publication due to exactly this kind of thing. But listing a baby as a co-author? It just doubles down on the absurdity, further muddies the concept of authorship, and is essentially indefensible by any authorship criteria you could come up with.

Be the change you want to see. If you want to make a principled stand against adding courtesy authors, make a principled stand. Don't stick an infants name on a paper.

Fomite
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So, you're saying that your chosen way of protesting against a practice you disagree with is to do the exact same thing but on an even worse scale? How does that make any sense? If you object to co-authors who haven't made a significant contribution being listed, you already know the ethical concerns involved. How can doing it yourself be a reasonable way of protesting? That's akin to honking your horn to protest against people who honk their horns.

More importantly, your problem seems to be with the people involved in your project. Why are you now wishing to make the problem affect the general community? If you have issues with the way authorship is assigned in your research group, take it up with your PI or your collaborators. Your paper will be read by people in different institutes and countries. They won't give a hoot about your personal issues with your co-authors and they shouldn't be dragged into a private dispute. There is a very real problem in certain academic fields with authors being listed despite their lack of contribution. Your suggested "protest" will only add to this and make the problem worse.

In addition, your "protest" will be completely pointless since i) nobody will know why you've included your baby's name and ii) nobody will know your baby isn't a bona fide co-author, so what's the point? You will just be adding to the problem, cluttering up the authors' list with yet another name that doesn't deserve to be there, and all to make a pretty pointless statement.

If you want to protest, do so, please! I'm all for it. But chose a way that might actually produce some beneficial results and which doesn't constitute precisely the type of offense you are trying to protest against.

If you are truly so offended by this, as you have every right to be, and talking to your PI or collaborators doesn't help, then don't publish the paper. Either block it completely or walk away and don't put your name to it. What you certainly cannot do is both accept the non-contributing authors and add an extra non-contributing author as a form of protest. In other words, either have the courage of your conviction and stage a real protest or do nothing. This sort of half measure might make you feel better but I can't imagine how it will have any sort of beneficial effect in the long term, and it will definitely have an immediate detrimental effect since you will be including yet another extra author who has no right to be there.

terdon
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    How is this worse than the other ethical breach? – Konrad Rudolph Oct 29 '15 at 18:49
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    @KonradRudolph: for one, as Peter Green points out, this is taking advantage of a baby that cannot consent or not to being used in this way. Suppose that baby starts an academic career, and in 20 years all publication lists are auto-generated? Does that researcher really need a publication that was just his/her mom making a statement? – Stephan Kolassa Oct 29 '15 at 19:55
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    @KonradRudolph for another, I expect the undeserving authors will have a better understanding of the subject matter than a baby. I'm not saying they deserved to be authors, but they probably have at least a passing familiarity with the work. The OP hasn't explicitly said otherwise, so, presumably, the extra authors have done something at least tangentially related to the paper. The baby had nothing to do with whatsoever, making its inclusion even worse . – terdon Oct 30 '15 at 11:39
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    @terdon I somewhat agree with the first point. But I don’t think I can agree with the second point: the whole point is to put the baby on the manuscript facetiously. No actual claim to authorship is made. And although this will probably be misunderstood by many people (which itself, yes, is problematic), I fail to see how that’s ethically worse than to actually claim authorship for something that you’re plain not an author for. One’s a protest, the other is an actual, dishonest claim. To maintain that protest is worse than dishonesty is putting ethics on its head. – Konrad Rudolph Oct 30 '15 at 11:44
  • @KonradRudolph that's just it. Including a name in the list of authors is an explicit claim of authorship. They are both dishonest claims and the baby has even less of a chance to have had anything to do with the paper. All this will do is add yet another needless name to a paper and perpetuate the whole idiocy we find ourselves in with co-authorship. If you want to do something like this, do it at a conference where you can explain what you're doing. Otherwise, all I'll see is yet another name on the manuscript that has no right to be there. – terdon Oct 30 '15 at 11:49
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    @terdon I was careful when I used “actual” rather than “explicit” in my comment above. I agree that an explicit claim to authorship was made. But, for what it’s worth, no actual claim was made: As in, the authorship claim is undeniably not serious. And I agree with all the practical implications you’ve listed. The only thing I disagree about is that this is somehow ethically worse. – Konrad Rudolph Oct 30 '15 at 11:54
  • @KonradRudolph well, that is a very small part of my answer, but yes, I do feel it's worse. Whether a claim is "actual" is a philosophical concern since it is impossible to distinguish this non-serious claim to authorship from the others. And that's precisely my point. All names in the list of authors are claiming authorship, by definition. The baby included. There is no indication that this is somehow a protest, it's just one more author except that this author has even less of a claim to authorship than the others. – terdon Oct 30 '15 at 12:16
  • @terdon At least one other answer has stressed the importance of clarifying that the author is a baby with the editors. That said, I don’t want to drag this discussion on since, as you’ve said, it’s a small part of your answer and I generally agree with what you’re saying. – Konrad Rudolph Oct 30 '15 at 14:23
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    "How can doing it yourself be a reasonable way of protesting?" IMHO it is a well known way of protest that even has a name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire – cbeleites unhappy with SX Nov 04 '15 at 18:54
  • @cbeleites Satire is doing on stage (or the written page or whatever your medium is) what is done in the real world. Here, the OP is not satirizing anything since this is, presumably, a serious publication. All the OP is suggesting is increasing the number of authors who don't deserve to be listed by one. If you want to satirize something, you could publish it in AIR. – terdon Nov 04 '15 at 18:59
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    @terdon: maybe my English vocabulary is off, but: "Satire is a genre of literature, [...] in which [...] abuses [...] are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals [...] or society itself, into improvement. [...] its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society." (shortened due to char limit) - seems to me very close to what this is about. And while we may argue whether "genre in literature" fits with the paper authorship, Wiki goes on "found in many artistic forms of expression". – cbeleites unhappy with SX Nov 04 '15 at 19:08
  • @cbeleites indeed, but all of them share the common characteristic that they are works of fiction whose aim is to satirize society. This is a work of non-fiction whose only satirical aspect is the inclusion of an extra author. That does not qualify as satire. That's why I linked to AIR, a satirical publication. What the OP is suggesting is simply to add one more undeserving name to the list of names, I don't see how that becomes satire. – terdon Nov 04 '15 at 23:32
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    @terdon The WHOLE work is not a piece of satire. But the author's list is, because that list of author is an actual work of fiction (IOW, do not reflect the real authorship). – Fabricio Araujo Feb 17 '16 at 19:18
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The most important ethical concern has not yet been discussed at all:

On the long term, what is the impact for your child?

It might be funny to have your little one as a co-author. However, the little one will grow up, while the "funny" co-authorship will stay forever – internet databases do not forget.

So what happens if your little one is going to follow you in your footsteps, aiming at an academic career in the same discipline? Could it happen that your child one day find itself in awkward situations having to explain where this thirty year old paper comes from?

Maybe it still makes a good story then. Maybe not. We just don't know.

So while I do sympathize with your intentions, do not forget about the personal rights of your own kid.

Daniel
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I broadly agree with jakebeal, except for this point. While it is against the rules of the journal, but it is not unethical given what you aim to do. It's not all that different from deliberately submitting an article with false content to prove a point like Alan Sokal did. Of course, knowingly submitting a nonsensical article is against the rules. While in general it would be unethical, but not if you do this to prove a valid point. Another example is the way James Randi went about to prove that the parapsychology field was severely corrupted by bad research practices. He let two of his apprentices pretend to be psychics who were able to fool the researches of their alleged psychic powers.

The fact that people are actually more or less free to take such actions makes science more reliable. E.g. in discussions with climate skeptics, I often make the point of why they don't submit an article to a journal if they think they know better than most scientists in the field. They then usually respond by claiming that the field has been so corrupted that any nonsensical article would be accepted, provided it is promoting what they call is the "left wing socialist climate alarmist agenda". I'll then counter by asking that if this is true then why not submit a hoax article to prove your point. And then we come to the point of why such hoax articles don't already exist given that there are so many vocal skeptics around.

keshlam
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Count Iblis
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It is quite well-known in at least combinatorics, that the author Shalosh. B. Ekhad is none other than Doron Zeilberger's computer...

Pete L. Clark
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Per Alexandersson
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B. Draco, L. Sadun and D. Van Wieren, Growth Rates in the Quaquaversal Tiling, Discrete Comput. Geom. 23 (2000), 419-435.

B. Draco is a stuffed toy dragon.

Felipe Voloch
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I am very skeptical about the chosen action.

If OP does not have control over who they list as Coauthor, having gone down that road and fought that battle, why would they get away with adding their baby as well? Wouldn't whoever is actually "in control" not allow this?

Let's say the case is that the OP has already agreed and signed to list the group as coauthors in order to use equipment or learn (turned out to be unrelevant) information from them. Meaning the OP is somehow already stuck in a situation where they must list this group - but technically they could add anybody else they wanted.

So then the OP is protesting what, exactly? Being careful who you choose to work with and reading the fine print?

On top of all that, the inclusion of the child's name as Co-Author isn't even going to accomplish whatever point that is trying to be made. If I learned a co-author was the writer's child, I would think it was for sentimental reason, or that the child provided a brief moment of inspiration leading to a big solution (which is still a "sentimental reason") - and an inappropriate use of co-authorship. I would not think, "these other authors must all be fake too"...

To make it clear enough what is being protested - it has to be highlighted. Meaning they will receive resistance from the same source resisting being removed from the paper, or, risk the paper just not getting published.

I'll state it again. I am very skeptical about the chosen action. I don't think it could possibly turn out well for the OP. I believe there is probably a better way to "protest". But it's impossible to know for certain, because we actually don't have any background about what, exactly, is being protested.

DoubleDouble
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I do support you to do something to protest, but it is unfair to use your baby as the tool.

You are forcing your kid to perform an unethical action as his guardian. I personally won't do it. The fact the someone else has done something unethical is not the reason for me to do something more unethical.

To protest, I will do something (possibly) equally unethical yet still rationalizable, for example let an undergrad research assistant do slightly more jobs and include his or her name in the paper. If others ask why the undergrad is in the paper, I will implicitly tell them that that student did more than you guys.

Or, alternatively, you could add your cat or dog, because this practice happened before, was tolerated, and no one accused the author for being unethical.

High GPA
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You risk the ire of your co-authors, which may not be worth it, especially if you are already unwilling to confront your co-authors about their lack of co-authoring. But if you do, following the answer by @Kakoli Majumder, you can add the disclaimer in the Acknowledgements (I lack sufficient points to add a comment to that question). Or you can simply add a sarcastic reference in the acknowledgements to having written it by yourself. But again, you risk ire.

Rudi
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