As a teenager I watched a lot of films starring Paul Newman and Steve McQueen and loved them all. As an adult I was disappointed to learn they had petty fights about whose name appeared first in the posters.
Two big egos fighting about prestige will be familiar to many in academia. Academia presents itself as an intellectual pursuit, but off-stage there are always squabbles about who deserves the biggest slice of the prestige pie.
One irritating convention is whose name goes last. In Hollywood, the director goes last in the opening credits. In academia the last author on a paper is now often “the director”. Presumably this signals the responsible genius who pulls all the strings.
I don’t know if there are film directors who do next to nothing but still get their name last, but I have seen this happen in academia. And sometimes the researchers who really did the work get relegated to the role of extras.
There was even a Hollywood convention that the head of the art department always got their name in the credits, even if they had done nothing. This makes it difficult to trace the contributions of the actual artists.
Tracing the contributions of academics via author order is laughably facile. But being comically inept is no bar to popularity in academia, and so author order squats on academic lives.
Arguments about authorship are one of the most common issues dealt with by the Australian Research Integrity Committee. Not arguments about the substance of the work, but about the prestige. For me that speaks volumes.
I’ve met many academics who are focused on making a lasting contribution, but I’ve also met many who are focused on how they will look on the posters.