Query: Would it make sense if more articles/books in social sciences & humanities had such multiple authors listed, or is the habit in the sciences screwed up?
Carrol
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There's an order to it that goes something like this. The first name, the last name, the second and third names, and then by contribution, if there are a lot of names. If there are only say three or four then the first two, then the last then the middle. The first name is usually the principle investigator whether they did anything or not---top dog. Unless he or she is feeling generous and gives the position to their best assistant or the real work was actually done by them, and not the principle investigator. Since there are so many highly technical specialties that are necessarily performed at each stage of a molecular paper, the people in charge of those get listed. Promising post-docs and grad students get listed since much of the tedious stuff gets pushed their way. Sometimes two labs pull together to get a result and they share the credits.
Chuck Grimes