The PDF of the paper gives a bit of a clue as to what’s going one. The author list is more modest on the title page, which lists the authors as, “Wilson Leung and Participating Students and Faculty of the Genomics Education Partnership.” So a lot of these authors are students who took a class, and probably completed part of the analysis as a course assignment.

When does authorship stop meaning anything useful?

In his blog post, Faulkes suggests a new rule: “If the number of authors on your paper can be measured in ‘kiloauthors’, having your name on the paper will not count for tenure and promotion purposes.”

Zen Faulkes, an invertebrate neuroethologist at the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, questions on his blog whether every person made enough of a contribution to be credited as an author.