Responding to devious demands for co-authorship: A rejoinder to Bülow and Helgesson’s ‘dirty hands’ justification

Abstract

Bülow and Helgesson discussed the practice of gift/honorary authorships and expounded on a most devious form of these, termed ‘hostage authorship’. The authors drew a parallel of such situations in research and publishing with the problem of ‘dirty hands’. In this case, acceding, albeit with regrets, may well be ‘… what we ought to do, even if it requires us to do something that is intrinsically bad’, especially if ‘this is both practically necessary and proportionate to the end’. Here, I caution against this being a morally cogent, normative course of action. Tangible benefits from research not yet performed or published could not be predicted with any certainty, and as such could not be deemed sufficiently important to override moral constraints of justice and fairness. The utilitarian argument for any measure of beneficence with ‘dirty hands’ could therefore be nothing more than a self-serving act, or a self-exonerating form of moral disengagement. Such actions could have lasting ill effects on junior researchers and perpetuate a dark research culture, which will ultimately undermine the research enterprise and the pursuit of knowledge. One could further argue that what ‘ought to be’ done when coerced or held hostage in an authorship context is to break the cycle by reporting on the perpetrators, and ultimately for the community to devise consensus measures that could deter such predatory free riders.