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Professor does not care about cheating, what should TA do?
I am a PhD student, working as a Homework marking TA in a school where cheating is extremely blatant. The university has an extremely strict policy against cheating. Hundreds of students in math courses alone are reported each year, and suspensions are given to severe/repeat offenders. I have personally reported cheating many times.
Based on this environment, most courses have shifted away from Homework grades, and more toward Quiz/Test grades.
My course is a low-bar mid-level math course, very likely to be the last math course ever taken by the students who enrolled in the course.
The marking distribution of my course is done in a way where the homework mark weight is so absurdly high that cheating on homework would almost guarantee a pass.
I had realized this at the beginning of September, and discussed with (confronted) the instructor.
The short summary of the response is that the instructor doesn't care about cheating.
The professor doesn't want to put in the effort to deal with cheaters.
The professor thinks the students cheating would not be overly unfair to other students who don't cheat.
The professor also does not want me to try to catch cheaters.
I have made clear that cheating on homework almost guarantees a pass, and he/she agrees, and is ok with this.
The homework are all questions from the textbook, and a solution manual is readily available on google.
In this week's homework, I have found more than 100 students who have copied from the solution manual, where at least 50 students copied word for word (if reported, the cheating done can be easily proved by the school.)
I suspect I only caught a portion of all cheaters, as buying solutions at this university is too blatant.
I would like to ask the community of my next steps.
If I were to report the cheating to him/her:
Would I anger the professor, since this is against his/her wishes?
Would I build a tense relationship with him following this? (There is still a whole semester ahead, and possibly years in the same university.)
What would be done in the end? What if he ignores the report, what should my next steps be?
If I were to report to the undergrad chair:
Would it be inappropriate to skip reporting to instructor first?
Would I also build a tense relationship with the instructor by this move?
I am almost positive that there would be action by the undergrad chair on the cheating behavior.
I could also report to both simultaneously.
I could also do nothing at all, in which case the cheating would without a doubt continue for the whole term, with the vast majority of students taking part.
I personally disagree with the professor, as I believe that it is unfair for the minority of students who don't cheat.
Due to the high homework marks, a mark curve is highly unlikely, so the students who don't cheat are truly getting lower marks because of the cheaters.
The instructor is in the beginning of his/her career, and not retiring. The university is in North America, very large (more than 50,000 undergrad)
Edit3:
As I continue to grade, I have found more and more cheaters, in the hundreds, approaching 50% of the class.
Thanks for all the suggestions asking me to "let it go".
After much consideration, I can not take such advice.
Thanks for all the suggestions of asking me to "not skip the chain of command".
I have since realized this may have severe consequences, and have decided against it.
I have contacted only the instructor with minimal details of the situation.
Thanks for all the support and best wishes from the community, I sincerely appreciate it.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

Since you are in charge of grading, and the professor does not care, can you just give a zero to all students who you know are copying?

Are you sure using a solution manual is actually against any rule?

If you report them, and they get officially disciplined, you might be dooming your school's football/basketball/hockey/baseball team's chances of making the playoffs, which will seriously annoy the alumni who give money to ensure a winning season.

I do not see why that is a problem. They should not have cheated.  (and I am notseeing things in black and white but if a solution is copied 100% from a manual then either kick them out of school or introduce a surprise test which counts for 90% of the point average. Might even be a simple test for those why did study).

Arguably, ignoring blatant cheating could be considered helping students cheat, which might be a violation of some universities' academic integrity policies. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if the professor has also cheated in their own research or studies.

Thanks for the interesting question - and welcome! I asked something related, about giving the responsibility to the students.https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/118106/13560 Make sure they understand that they can choose how they learn what is needed. Then cheating becomes just not learning. Invest some of time saved not grading small things in having a really good exam. You can still go back to normal if you see them crashing.

If you believe >50% of your students are blatantly cheating it's worth re-evaluating how you're establishing that... All things equal, that seems more likely to be a systemic evaluator error rather than rampant misconduct: if students are taught a specific formula for answering a question and half of them plug & chug it... it should not be that surprising their answers are similar. Hundreds of reports from 50k students is less than 1%...

@TemporalWolf Hello. Thanks for the reminder. The cheating isn't a "formula" issue, or a plug and chug issue. It's about copying word for word from the solution manual (in a proof question).

You're ascribing it as copying word for word, that isn't necessarily why it's the same. I'd just be wary of blowing the whistle only to find out from the professor "I showed them that proof last week in class..." That being said and playing devil's advocate, the professor may have a reputation which attracts cheaters and good (easy) course reviews, so ultimately it's a judgement call on your part.

"hundreds of students are reported" sounds like a pretty lax policy rather than a strict one. A lot of students think they can get away with it, so probably a lot of them are, even if they are "reported". (I'll admit I don't know what being "reported" means in this context.)

@Jasper Hello. By "reported" I mean reported to the department, and the department takes action accordingly. Indeed, a LOT of students think and do get away with cheating, and only a small portion actually get reported.

@shoover That should be the LEAST of the OP's concerns. Does the institution exist as an academic institution, or as an athletic institution?

I was a head TA for 5 years and worked with 7 professors. There needs to be a clear policy of what is and isn't cheating at the university, department and at the class level. Generally, in US, it is up to the discretion of the professor/lecturer whether to pursue cheating cases.

@Radiant Dawn As a student, I feel that I should be thanking you, for your honest and sincere action to prevent cheating in spite of professor disagreeing with you. Thanks. :)

Given that the OP consciously went in the opposite direction from the consensus advice here, it would by very interesting to get a question update on how that strategy worked out for them. (?)

I realize that the following advice may be very unsatisfying. But you may need to hear it, just to save yourself from grief. I hope it helps.
It may be that you have done all that you can do without harming your own future. You need to judge that, of course, but getting between a new professor and the administration can be uncomfortable at best and career ending at worst.
But you can, of course, vow to be a better actor than this professor when it comes your turn to be in the driver's seat.

There are a lot of possible "reasons" for the situation you are in, none of them especially valid, but still possibly determinant.
Perhaps the department doesn't care a lot about these students or this course, as it doesn't sound like they are in the major.
Perhaps the professor is so tied up in research that he just doesn't care about (or have time for) teaching. This is true, in fact, for some untenured professors.
Perhaps the professor is seen as a future superstar who is immune from all criticism.

If you weren't alone, and had other TAs with similar concerns then you would be in a better position to bring the situation to the attention of higher-ups. If you are friendly with another professor who sees the problem and also objects to it, you could work through him/her.
If your duties included more than grading, such as leading small breakout sections, you could, perhaps, work with your smaller group to get some local change. But, if it is the professor's job to teach them and he refuses to do it effectively then there isn't a lot you can do.
But as a sole TA with only grading responsibilities you don't have a lot of options that won't come back to your own disadvantage.

Certainly you can bring it to the attention of the undergrad coordinator, with evidence. Whether to do it without the knowledge of the prof or not is a (risky) judgement call. But if a solution is to be found, you probably won't be part of creating it. It would be a faculty committee that would have authority and be able to effect change. But you would likely be in the center of any controversy that was generated. As a doctoral student, it feels pretty unsafe to me.
Look to the future, and learn from the past. Do your best but don't put yourself at risk unnecessarily.

Thank you for your answer. After reading your post, I have realized there may be serious consequences if I was to report to the undergrad coordinator without the knowledge of the prof. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction.

@RadiantDawn: As I said in my answer, if the professor in question does not have direct authority over you, you can consider reporting anonymously as if you were a student. You ultimately have to choose your ethical stance. If cheating is morally unacceptable to you, you should try your best to fight it while protecting yourself sufficiently (you cannot fight cheating in the future if you are significantly harmed now). So yes be very careful, and weigh the risks against how important academic integrity is to you.

I am very saddened by this and other answers I've read today on other SE sites. They seem to imply that dishonesty is ok if telling the truth can hurt you.  If this professor doesn't care about academic dishonesty where does it stop? Are their research papers dishonest too? Are they falsifying their results? There are times when people of good conscience MUST take a stand, even if it can hurt them with one constituency of the population. Perhaps that's naive on my part but if now is not the time, when is?

@CramerTV. It gave me no joy to have to write it. But I didn't want the OP to walk into a windmill without warning.

@CramerTV: I totally agree with your comment. But, in my opinion there is a key reason for suggesting a very cautious approach such as in my answer. Consider the noble goal of fighting violent crime. You shouldn't necessarily go all out, because you cannot help anyone if you are dead. More generally, in fighting any kind of injustice, you should choose what you think is the best path that lets you bring about the most justice overall, and not simply try to maximize impact on a specific case.

@user21820, fair point.

-1 The university will have a anonymous whistle-blowing mechanism.  Using it is clearly the right thing to do here.

@UKMonkey, some do, some don't. Are you confident it would change anything? Are you also confident that confidentiality would be maintained?

"Are you confident it would change anything" no - but it doesn't stop it being the right thing to do.  "Are you also confident that confidentiality would be maintained" yes - because you don't say who you are.  If you point them towards the evidence then you've done your bit

@UKMonkey, I also consider the fact that it might be pretty easy to figure out who the whistleblower is, as the candidate pool is pretty small here. All I suggest is that you consider the possible blowback.

@UKMonkey The OP is the only one who has the evidence, so maintaining anonymity is unlikely if they report it. But it's still the right thing to do.

Problem i see in reporting it, would be that if this took the schools reputation of awesome grades in this subject to "meh".. the school wouldnt look kindly on making their rep look worse

@Ray Having evidence is not the same as knowing it's going on; and all a whistleblower needs to say is that it's going on.  The fact that in this case they can say more; and then state that TA's to this professor (I'm sure there are multiple) may have evidence ... it's then up to the investigators to ask them for it.

Others have given good answers here.  A further possibility is to talk to a more senior colleague who seems sensible, and ask them why is this OK?
Their answer might be ‘what?! this is not OK!’, at which point it becomes their problem; or it might be ‘ah, sit down, Padawan,...' and you are initiated into some academic practicalities (you may or may not be asked to roll up one trouser-leg first).  In either case, though, you have raised the issue as an earnest seeker after knowledge, rather than as a complainant.  The worst you can be accused of, after that, is naivety.
The answer from @Buffy included a couple of possibilities, of which ‘the department...doesn't care about this course’ sounds most plausible to me.  For example a good fraction of ‘statistics for biologists and psychologists’ courses are terrible, and are hated by those studying them, by those teaching them, and by the departments who are strong-armed into providing them – they only exist so that a professional validation exercise can attest that (say) the psychologists in question have seen the word ‘ANOVA’ at least once in their education.  I'm not saying this is good (in fact it's Bad), but this explains why a department might not want to invest significant academic, social or moral resources in a course which they already believe is academically meagre, and a battle over which they have possibly already lost.  That is, the department is prepared to grit its teeth and try to smile sweetly, and might implicitly expect that you do so too (as a colleague in the same hole).  This is the sort of course that one can imagine being dumped (improperly and unfairly) on a junior academic at the beginning of their career, and which they look keenly towards passing on to the next departmental hire – pass the parcel!
...or something like that.  This is the sort of broad shape of advice that I'd give to a junior colleague at a different institution (in the UK, to the extent that matters; and at a different institution so it's not my problem either – pass the parcel!), with the proviso that they should follow their nose, and their good sense, in what they do in fact.
If the above analysis matches your situation, then I suggest (with some diffidence) that the most professional thing you can do is to quietly identify the students who actually want to learn something, rather than merely get a pass, and support them in their learning as much as possible – you'd be helping those students beyond the triviality of grading, and be servicing your vocation.
(I should mention that in my department, in my university, we happen not to have any of this type of course; which is good; other departments may not have been so nimble-footed as we have clearly been)

I think in the US it's more common to say "pass the buck" albeit "pass the parcel" should be easily understood.

Hello. Thanks for your answer. My department cares very much about this course, and even more so when it comes to cheating. This is the reason why if I report to the undergrad chair, I'm almost positive there will be serious consequences for the cheaters, including course fail/suspension. Please give more insight if possible. Thank you.

@RadiantDawn Fair enough, but if you were to follow this up with the instructor or the undergrad chair, my own instinct would still be to take the tack of ‘this seems weird, why is this sane?’, in case there are subtleties or practical trade-offs you're not currently aware of. (I agree that it does sound weird, but what do I know?)

@Mari-LouA "Pass the parcel" is a children's party game in which a gift is wrapped in multiple layers of paper and passed from child to child. When the music stops, the child holding the parcel unwraps one layer. The child who unwraps the last layer wins the present. So "pass the parcel" has rather different connotations to "pass the buck".

It's sad that statistics-for-people-who-absolutely-100%-need-to-know-statistics courses are bad and hated.

@DavidRicherby I agree that 'pass the parcel' and 'pass the buck' have different meanings. But 'pass the buck', or alternatively 'get rid of the hot potato' makes far more sense in the context.

I was thinking of the game, but I confess in a slightly facetious sense, in which the gift in the parcel is ticking. Sorry about any confusion; but I think it does mean that we can subsequently assert that everybody has got a correct sense of what I was intending.

YOU ARE THE RED PEN OF DEATH, TA. USE YOUR POWERS.

Summary: While a student's solution may be correct, it doesn't necessarily warrant full credit. Give students the benefit of the doubt when you can, but use your judgment when doling out points: If the solution bears too close a resemblance to a known published solution, then do not give full credit. Perhaps give zero credit.

The idea is to train your students into turning in quality work and also to uphold a fair grading distribution. Essentially, tackle the problem internally without raising the issue to administration. You'll abide by the professor's rules, be fair to students, and push back against cheaters. Your grading will send the signal that a) they're caught and b) you expect better. You have a lot of power here.

Be consistent in your penalties and apply them on a per problem basis. Be severe for flagrant offenses such as direct copying, as opposed to cheaters who have studied the solution and recast it in their own words. Again, give students the benefit of the doubt.
When you do penalize, leave a short note. For example, write "correct but full credit for original work only" or "answer must be in own words". Also consider phrases like "first offense documented; next time zero credit." And, of course, follow up with a zero for repeat offenders who have been warned. The point of a note is not only a signal to the student but to leave an indelible mark on the graded work for anyone else who surveys it.
Take a photo of the offending works. Make notes on your grading spreadsheet, too, since after you pass back the work, there is no record left in your hands beside the grade. Keep statistics of the number of direct copies, suspected cheaters, and authentic assignments. Supply the statistics to the professor.
Remind the class about your grading policy and about your record taking. Be friendly but firm. Don't threaten; inform.
Post the solution from the solution manual after grading. By revealing your hand, you declare your expectations.

This is an excellent answer!

Two concerns: (1) You are effectively giving partial/no credit to students with correct answers because you suspect misconduct. This seems unfair; students should be convicted of misconduct before being punished. (2) The professor has already told you not to catch cheaters; you are either disobeying the professor or hoping he won't notice, neither of which is likely to end well.

@cag51 The question talks about tens of students handing in answers that are word-for-word identical to the model answers. The chances of a student using those exact forms of words coincidentally is zero.

@cag51 Oh, I agree! The grader needs to be prudent to minimize false-positives, and so ought to encourage students 100% to argue for credit. And yes, hiding this grading strategy is a bad idea: I'd inform the professor about the grading rubric (often left up to TA's to create).
From context, it seems that the professor primarily wants to avoid escalating claims of cheating, as it'd be a bureaucratic nightmare. As TA grader, the job is to grade student's work. And if they don't work, there's no reason to give high marks.

I've tried grading like this, and it's hell.  Too much guess work.  Cheating is most easily controlled on the front-end.  Randomized seating assignments during tests work best.  Now, if I were in the shoes of the TA, and the professor made no efforts to control it initially, I'd follow suit and ignore it all.

I think this would violate many US academic honesty policies, which involve tracking if penalized -i.e., violstions happened, and are tracked, or no violation happened, and no penalty incurred.

In my experience as a TA, people who cheated and then received zero almost never have the gall to complain about it.  And if they come in and complain, you just ask them to explain their answer.

Be very careful with this.  By automatically assigning a grade based on anything other than the actual assignment, you're acting as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner.  In many places, students have a right to due process, and a hearing may be required before such a grade may be given.  Make sure you know your institution's policies on this.

@Xcali Their answers are copied verbatim from a solution manual.  Let the cheaters demand due process. Encourage them to demand due process. It will bring the cheating to the attention of those who (hopefully) care more than the professor does.

In light of the professor being against your reporting this matter: You could try reporting the matter to the undergraduate chair using a proxy or anonymously. You are justified in reporting to the undergraduate chair because the professor seems too reluctant on the issue to help you.
I'd advise you to seek alternatives; maybe move to another course or institution but you cure no illness by dying but by treating it. It is best you find a permanent solution without going to such extremes.
All the best.

I am okay with the first part of the answer (though it's unclear how anonymous this would really be), but the last suggestion (maybe move to another institution) sounds a bit extreme for issues with a single TA assignment.

Thanks for your answer. Based on this approach, would I give graded homework as evidence to the undergraduate chair? If I do, I would be immediately giving myself away, as there are very few TAs. How would this approach play out if the instructor got wind of my "anonymous" report?

After reporting to the undergrad, the evidence will absolutely point back to you. Most practical outcomes are, you may either end up having a tense relationship with the professor and getting rid of cheating or having a normal relationship with the professor and not getting rid of cheating. At the end of the day integrity matters if it is what you wish to stand for but if you chose otherwise you will be supporting a shattered system.

You can always reach out to the undergrad chair from, say, an anonymous email address, be vague enough that you aren't identifying yourself, but specific enough that they know you are a real TA, possibly even link to this post. You don't need to present any evidence, at least not initially, and see what sort of advice they give you. From there you may have a better idea of what to do next.

@Kai Thank you so much. That actually seems like a great idea. I should take some time and think about that.

@RadiantDawn: I still think what I said in my answer is better. Since you said you can find the solution online, you can simply pretend to be a student and tell the undergraduate chair that you feel it is very unfair that other students can just copy it and boost their grades significantly because the homework has a high weightage. If asked for any personal details you should insist on remaining anonymous because you do not wish to get into any trouble for no fault of your own. Please don't follow Kai's suggestion because linking to this post is a serious mistake and will blow your anonymity!!

Linking to the post may not be a good idea, since you have already given personal details about your department and which course, but I still think that it could be worthwhile to anonymously attempt to gain direction. Essentially coming forward as an anonymous whistleblower. Specifically indicate you wish to remain anonymous or that you are concerned about blowback.

Check your university policy. When I worked as a TA, the requirement was:

As a front-line observer, any teaching assistant who has reason to believe that an academic offence has been committed must report it to both the course instructor and the appropriate associate dean.

I am a strong believer in such policies, as simultaneous reporting to two authorities (one of whom, the associate dean, has dealing with academic offences as a substantial part of their job) helps guarantee that the report will be properly followed up. Indeed, reporting to only an instructor is sometimes met with indifference. Most instructors are sensible enough to follow the written policy of their employer when the associate dean (or department chair, etc.) is now effectively looking over their shoulder.
I also learned to avoid bringing up specific cases with the instructor, at all, until after making a report. This way if there's backlash (which I have encountered on occasion), I could fall back on applying policy as written to justify my actions, and appeal to the associate dean in case of real trouble. (This does become more delicate if the instructor is also the thesis advisor of the TA, or in some other position of authority beyond the course instructor-TA relationship.)
Unfortunately it seems like TAs are often overlooked in this sort of policy. If a similar instruction does not appear in your University policy, consider asking whether something could be added (I suggest asking those who handle making the policy directly). Explain why you think it's important and you may find that they're more than happy to discuss it and potentially make prompt changes.

I agree with Kyle.  Your instructor's opinion doesn't matter as this policy is surely set by the university.  Find out what the university policy is and do whatever that is.

You state that the uni "has an extremely strict policy". So there is someone and some official way to enforce it. (Probably the Undergraduate Chair, but I am not familiar with your system, and you do not state this explicitly)
Now:
Can't you write a report on the matter that the professor just passes on to the one(s) in charge? I guess he just refuses to waste his time on the issue, rather than not caring.
This way you stick to the official channels.
If he decides to throw it in the trash... well, so be it.
In no variant would I override the chain of command, (as/if) it exists.

Yes, I like this answer. Make it easy for the professor but also  give them the responsibility.

Thank you for your post. You seem to be very strong on the point of not overriding the chain of command. I am very interested in hearing more details if possible. After reading your post and many others, I am now very reluctant in overriding the chain of command.

My suggestion is to report this as an anonymous student to the undergraduate chair, as if you were taking that class and found out about a whole bunch of people in the class cheating. Provide as much evidence as you can find that could plausibly be found out by a student of that class. Keep reporting it until something gets done. Make sure this is done through email, and CC it to at least one other relevant party in the department. This sets up a black and white paper trail and some pressure of accountability. Do not approach the professor anymore, and pretend that you know nothing about this reporting. Sometimes, you need to protect yourself, because there are far more wolves than sheep who are willing to stand up for you. (You may even have to consider doing nothing if this professor is your direct supervisor.)
Another approach is to be extremely strict in your grading. Then if any cheaters complain, they would have to either go to the professor, whence you hope that he will get annoyed by the cheating compounded by grade-grubbing, or they would have to come to you, in which case you say that you have reviewed but found nothing wrong with your grading, forcing them to go to the professor.
The above approaches are based on your confidence that the undergraduate chair will take proper action against cheating. If the undergraduate chair is lackadaisical about curbing cheating, then there is a much lower likelihood of a good outcome.

The problem with the "strict grading" idea is that (assuming the solution manual answer is correct, and at the appropriate level of detail for a student to have produced on his/her own) you can't give it less than full marks except by explicitly accusing the student of cheating. If the prof simply changes your mark to 100%, either because there is no evidence of cheating right in front of his eyes when he sees the student's complaint, or (worse) because he chooses to ignore that evidence anyway, all you have done is to give yourself a reputation as a poor grader.

@alephzero: You are of course right if the solution manual answer is 100% perfect. But I have very often seen a so-called solution manual that is either wrong or flawed or ambiguous or whatever, and if so you can use that as a reason if asked why you did not give full credit.

Note that I simply said to be extremely strict. You should not be assuming that it implies taking away marks.

The masterclass variant: Only assign homework questions where you know the solution manual is incorrect. And then grade strictly.

@JeffE: Hahaha! Interesting one. There are for instance some simply wrong solutions to mathematics problems on Yahoo Answers, and one could give that same problem with the exact same wording so that cheaters would find that thread and give that wrong answer. I probably should add that I'm not being serious about that; I just don't think any homework should be given significant grade weightage, because there is no way to prevent cheating. I think homework students submit should be given full feedback, but not contribute much to grades. Proctored exams are still the best way to ensure fairness.

Hello. Thanks for your answer. It would be difficult to provide evidence (if any at all) if I was to pretend to be a student of the course. And If I was to provide the Homework of the cheaters as proof, I would be giving myself away (I think...), as only the grading TA has access to those (and there is very few TAs)

@RadiantDawn: Don't provide any evidence that only you have access to. That is of course probably unwise in your situation. Just provide the online solution manual and say that all your classmates are copying it, and how unfair it is that they are allowed to cheat and the instructor put such a high weightage on the homework that their cheating will have significant effect on their grades. Doing this also leaves you with all the other options available, whereas most other proposed courses of action will be either unethical or force you to reveal your hand.

I can't possibly imagine how you can have all the evidence of cheating beyond reasonable doubt, without requesting additional information from students, who are not under any obligation to provide any additional information.
The fact that the homework is identical to an answer that can be easily found online is not enough evidence to prove misconduct. Extensively and intensively studying online resources in order to complete homework is part of the normal and acceptable academic conduct. To show misconduct you should prove that the student did not study the resource but copied it without reading it even once. Also, you'd have to prove this without expecting any additional information from the student, as the burden of proof is on you, not on the student.
Perhaps in your opinion, someone who just reads some online resource once and follows the provided online instructions too closely, in order to complete the homework, is cheating. But studying online resources, even superficially, IS NOT CHEATING, unless if, perhaps, there is a very clear rule at class level that the homework must be completed without studying any online resource. I would personally find such a rule to be silly, since generally speaking I would encourage studying of any kind of resources. Based on the information you provided, it is clear that the professor did not set such a rule, but quite the opposite, he is encouraging students to use any materials available to complete their homework.
Even though what the students are doing is not cheating, perhaps you feel that the homework can be completed successfully both by studying thoroughly or superficially, while the grading does not reflect these levels of effort nor the different levels of understanding among students. If so, you are very likely correct in this assessment. Still, it is the professor's job and prerogative, and not yours, to assess what level of understanding is required for a 100% grade. He is setting up a bar to pass his class, so he is doing his job. You just happen to consider that this bar is set too low, which is your problem, that you can fix for yourself, in your class, when you will be a professor.
Still, I can understand the frustration of having different views on academic matters, like the level of understanding required for this class. Again, this is your problem, which you might want to discuss with the professor, with the hope that he will give you some insights about his method which will put your mind at ease. If this discussion does not end satisfactory for you, you should quit and find another position with another professor who aligns better with your views.
I am not a professor, but if I would be in your professor's position and you would report unfounded cheating accusations about my students, even if you would honestly believe they are cheating, while also accusing me of academic misconduct, I would not continue to work with you. Whether this would mean you getting fired or reassigned, it is a matter that the university needs to figure out.
To conclude, first of all, there is no academic misconduct to report, based on what you presented in the question. Secondly, you should try to understand, with an open mind, where the professor is coming from, and you might be pleasantly surprised. If you feel you made enough effort and you do understand where the professor is coming from, but you still disagree with his methods, you should quit.

This summarizes my initial thoughts. Oftentimes homework assignments are not treated and graded as stringently as exams. Perhaps the homework assignments as regarded as "practice problems," and the professor might be thinking, "Students will get out of it what they put into it." Therefore, copying from a solution manual is regarded more as "cheating yourself" than cheating the system. This could easily explain the professor's apparent apathy toward the so-called cheating crisis.

This is an issue that the professor can't be bothered with: either retirement is soon or they know they are "safe" for another reason.
You could try raising the issue hypothetically with the department head and see how that goes... If they are "best buddies" then BE CAREFUL...
If you can't change this then move on : focus on other courses and ask not to be on this course next time round.
A more challenging course of action is to move to another institution, but that has its own issues...

Hello. Thanks for your reply. Sorry, I should be more clear. The instructor is in the beginning of his/her career, and not retiring.

In Short...
It comes down to whether you should do what your instructor tells you to do, disobey the instructor and "catch" the cheaters anyway, and/or get the department/institution involved. You probably want to get somebody else involved, but there are a few things to note....
In the meantime....
Inform cheaters that they've been caught, but don't tell them what you'll do about it. You can still give them a perfect score (due to your instructor's command) but still point out that what they're doing is not helpful to themselves or anyone else. You could even type up a brief paragraph linking them to your institution's policy on cheating and staple it to their paper.
Keep track of which students are cheating. If it's feasible, make photocopies (or take pictures with your camera?) of their work and keep them for later. Later, if the instructor changes their mind, you'll have a record of who was cheating and can change their grades. If the department wants to know how rampant the cheating was or is, you'll be able to provide them with data.
Department/Institution's Stance on Cheating
Does your department or institution have a policy about cheating or academic integrity? If so, how does it apply to your situation? You're usually bound to this over your instructor.
If the instructor appears to be violating policy, you should present the instructor with the policy and clearly say that they're violating it, and ask if they still don't want you to catch the cheaters. If your instructor is willfully violating this, then they aren't doing their job! In that case, you should definitely talk to a  trusted grad rep, faculty member, or even the department head about this. (See "Protect Yourself", below.)
I find it difficult to imagine that the department would be okay with the new faculty member being too lazy to deal with cheaters. Even if they were, it's equally difficult to imagine your institution being okay with this, as it directly undermines their reputation.
Your Role
It may help to determine what your role as TA is. Are you supposed to merely be an assistant to the professor? If so, then you pretty much have to do what they say -- all the blame is on them, not you. In many institutions, however, the TAs are answerable to the Department -- not the instructor. In that case, you can talk to your supervisor (usually a faculty member in charge of TAs or the department head) about the instructor's questionable practices.
Protect Yourself
If you do discuss your instructor with other grads, faculty members, or the department head, you may you might want to ask for anonymity to protect you from repercussions if the instructor got upset. Because your instructor is new, they may be trying to get tenure, and are being watched by the department. If you were responsible for getting them in trouble, it could have big consequences for them, and they might be upset at you. Realize that they would have very little retaliatory power over you, however, unless they were your advisor.
If all else fails, check whether your institution has something like an ombuds program. You might consider contacting them as soon as possible.

Universities tend to have a chain of command and systems in place to handle these kind of things. As a PhD student and/or TA you are the very bottom of this chain. You have, as you should, reported the issue to somebody higher up than you - in this case your professor - who in turn should have handled the situation very differently than he/she did. Cheating at university is of course not acceptable.
What I would do is contact the Director of studies at your department, and ask what the formal procedures are for handling cheaters. State that you have reasons to believe that cheating has occured and ask what to do. That way you have reported the issue to somebody further up in the organisation. Then you have done your duty and the ball is no longer in your court. That's at least how these kind of issues would have been handled at my former department.
This could lead to the professor in question and you not getting along as well, but at the end of the day it's about the integrity of your department, your subject and your university. So I would bring the cheating to the attention of the Director of studies.

It seems as if the professor is not as concerned with this type of cheating as you are. Perhaps he is lazy. Perhaps he thinks that the homework grade is really a “give me” grade and wants most students to pass the class. You are probably not going to be able to change his mind on this. However, you could suggest a couple of things to make things a bit more fair/make students a bit less likely to cheat:
1) You as grader make an announcement in class stating that you have observed this behavior and it is not acceptable.
2) Perhaps you could also convince the instructor that those answers should be given 0s if you see them again after this announcement.
3) You could offer to create/assign one or two non-book problems each homework and weight those more heavily.
4) Ask to grade the homework on effort rather than/in addition to correctness and give less effort points to copied answers.
Whatever you do, I would try to solve this with the professor rather than going over his head. I would also lean toward solutions that are easy for the professor. Good luck!

I would not do (1) unless I had an advance enforcement mechanism in place (such as (2)). Empty threats are incredibly corrosive to one's authority.

Universities have an anonymous whistle-blowing mechanism for exactly this reason.  For example
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/administration-and-support-services/hr/public/procedures/raising-concerns/raisingconcerns.pdf
This will allow you to report what you know, and if nothing else, it's likely the professor will be informed that an investigation will be started.  The professor might have a change of attitude just from the investigation; even if they don't find anything.

@BenCrowell or, if you read the link, you'll note that you're wrong - as this is a matter that will affect the College, they have a strong desire to not have this hidden internally.

Here's an answer that will add slightly more work for you but will make it very easy to fail cheaters. Ask the professor if you can modify the numbers in the HW assignment very slightly. This way people who copy the homework word for word from the manual will get the problems wrong and you can give them a zero for that problem.

This is a non-starter in the implied context where the assignment is just referencing book problems (as opposed to duplicating them in a new document). This wouldn't be slightly more work, it would be an entirely different assignment process.

Just let it go.  If the professor doesn't care, neither should you.  Trying to control the situation will be a nightmare for you.

Someone has to care. If the professor doesn't, and nobody else knows about the problem, then it's up to the OP to at the very least inform someone else.

First:  Make sure it is clearly established there really is cheating taking place.  Perhaps there was an honest mistake.  If there is really cheating, inform the professor that the cheating was verified and happened.  Then, if no action is taken, consult your organization's manual or code-of-conduct, and do what it says.  Try not to go beyond what the situation calls for however.

A fish rots from the head down. Once upon a time your professor was exactly like you. But the professor's boss gets judged by their own boss based on attaining certain statistics, and these have to be met by hook or by crook. Thus a nastiness of proportions you may not yet quite fathom trickles down from high above. Really. Finally, your professor was bullied enough to say "Oh FFS I will just give them what they want."

I would report it to the professor. It is not clear to me what exactly was said in the conversation you two had on the topic of cheating, but I suspect that you might have misunderstood something there. In particular, I presume that what the professor meant was that they do not care enough to make great efforts / invest a lot of time to prevent people from cheating. It might still bother them that lots of students could pass their course by buying a book and copying parts of it verbatim.
Keep in mind that it is the professor's responsibility to teach and test the students taking his class in a proper way. If you go behind the professor's back and hand in a report to another member of the faculty that shows that they have failed to do that, the professor might resent you for it. I believe it's important to realize that the professor might feel that the report makes them look bad, so showing it to someone else without showing them first might anger them.
I suggest you show your report to the professor, openly telling them that you believe these students cheated and that you find that troubling, and ask them what to do about it. If they tell you to forward it to the undergraduate chair, fine. If they tell you to let it go, let it go. You have done your part of the job, and the responsibility lies with the professor.
If you do not like their decision, you'll just have to deal with that. It's not worth jeopardizing your future at the department and your relationship with the professor.

Seems like OP has already done this and been told to let it go in no uncertain terms.

@cag51 That's not how I read the question. OP asks if he should report the cheating to the professor or go straight to the undergraduate chair with it, or do both simultaneously. The conversation they had before was originally on the weight of the homework grade and the hypothetical possibility of cheating on it, now that there is concrete evidence of cheating the professor should be informed imho.

Late, but my comment was based on this line: "The professor also does not want me to try to catch cheaters." That said, re-raising the issue with this new information is a fine first step, I just don't image the conversation will go much differently the second time around.

This answer does not guarantee a solution to the problem of cheating or help bad students to learn what they are doing, but it will allow for a situation where: dishonest students don't gain an unfair advantage; honest students lose nothing; and you are not exposed to any risk of upsetting the professor; and increase the chances that the honest students will complain on their own accord.
Fight fire with fire
When I was a TA I had access to all the students email addresses.  So pretend to be a fellow student and proceed to BLIND-carbon-copy ALL the students ALL the correct answers regardless of if they want it or not.  The honest students will not lose out because of their honesty.  Perhaps a student will complain and solve the problem for you simply because you are being so blatant.
Note there is the risk that your actions could be discovered if only you had access to the emails of other students.  So make it sound like your not emailing all the students, but that you "happend" to know the email address from a "friend" and wanted to include her in the cheating ring for the sake of fairness and ask her to forward the emails of any other students she is aware of, just to throw off any investigator (since you OBVIOUSLY couldn't be the one doing it since you already have ALL the email addresses >:) ).
You don't want ALL the students talking to each other and realizing that they were all already on the email list... so only email three of the students who got wrong answers and then only use the emails they inform you of.  for each assignment add one student who got wrong answers to the email list, that way people who are socially isolated won't be left out and it will seem like the email list is growing "organically".
Also be certain to email the professor that you don't think it is fair so the professor can't latter place the blame on "your corrupt and fraudulent behavior".  Email it from your own personal email account such as gmail so that in the event that you take it to court you can subpoena your email provider to provide evidence that you protested such a policy.  DO NOT use your university email as depending on the level of corruption they could simply delete the email and claim you never sent such an email.  However, DO use your professors university email as that way the university can quickly verify that the professor did receive a complaint from you.

and also start by additionally sending emails to three of the cheating students, since the honest students might not be willing to engage in social networking for the purpose of cheating.

I think this is terrible advice. You do not want to help the students cheat. Apart from being morally repugnant, it could also endanger your career.

@Phil I came up with this answer to ELIMINATE issues of immorality.  To create a situation in which good people are punished and bad people are rewarded is what I would call "morally repugnant", at least in this situation. Additionally this answer presents the least amount of risk to OPs career... why do you bring it up? I was in the same situation in college but my job involved tutoring the students on their homework and the professor told me that all that matters is that they understand the material; none of the students called me immoral for offering my assistance, why do you???

I agree that the situation that the OP wrote about is not good at all. But what I mainly object to in your proposed solution is that by "pretend to be a fellow student and proceed to BLIND-carbon-copy ALL the students ALL the correct answers regardless of if they want it or not." this would be helping the students cheat. This would just worsen, not lessen, the problem in the long run. Unless I am misunderstanding what it is that you are suggesting?

"You were concerned that students were cheating, so you took it upon yourself to assume a false identity and help your students cheat why exactly?" seems like a good candidate for "question you're likely to be asked immediately before being asked to leave and never come back."

@Phil read the OP's question solution manual is readily available on google.  If the students are already cheating then how am I "helping them cheat"?

@Phil This would just worsen, not lessen, the problem in the long run.  yet the result of my answer is to increase the chances that the honest students will complain on their own accord, this seems like somewhat of a contradiction.   In addition, how are my actions causing the honest students to become cheaters?  You imply that my emails have the power to convert honest people into unrepentant evil doers, all with the UNHOLY POWER of my emails!!!  FEAR FOR YOUR SOUL! For I have already communicated with you! lol really...

@ZachLipton question you're likely to be asked immediately before being asked to leave and never come back.  How many more paragraphs do I have to add to my answer before it becomes obvious that my answer is only recommended on the basis that getting caught is next to impossible.  If you ignore almost all of my answer then yes getting caught sharing answers without a teachers approval would be the absolute stupidest thing you could ever do.  HOWEVER, this is NOT what my answer is recommending...

Sorry for being, perhaps, to defensive.  I would edit it to tone it down if I could.

I take it back, I am not sorry for my tone. For believing that it is wrong to take action to help presumably good students who actually want to learn from being penalized with lower grades than dumb shits who do not want to learn, you all deserve the worst (can not be overstated without [self-censorship of atrocities (from your perspective)]).


text:
Can I add a baby as a co-author of a scientific paper, to protest against co-authors who haven't made any contribution?
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.

"coauthors generally that havent given any contribution" !!! if they have not given any contribution, why are they coauthors?

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?"

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?

Don't you know the story of Stronzo Bestiale? ;-)

Ranting on this site will not solve your workplace issue. Discussing it with your colleagues might help though.

I can't wait until the baby has to sign the copyright transfer agreement.

How many co-authors besides you did contribute meaningfully to this paper?

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

This was linked from Nature News yesterday

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.

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.

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.

Can regulations alter ethics?

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.

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.

And in 1987 there was Stronzo Bestiale.

Also Galadriel Mirkwood.

@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.

@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, 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.

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.

@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.

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!

@Peter Green, but how is that any different from as the OP said, "co-authors that haven't made any contribution"?

@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.

@Octopus The baby has not given informed consent.

"with so many regulations in place, I'm not sure if it would be ethical..." You mean legal, or perhaps permitted.

@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.

@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.

"until the editor died" I don't know if he's still with us or not but Jack would have loved that story :-)

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.

-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.

@StephanKolassa, indeed. It makes civil disobedience, in this case. Ofc, if that is advisable or fruitful, is another discussion altogether...

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.

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.

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.

@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).

@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 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.

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.

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".

@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.

+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.

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:

Conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of data, and
Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, and
Final approval of the version to be published.

And that protocol is only used in some fields; by no means all fields.

Yes, @EnergyNumbers, I don't remember granting the ICMJE any authority... :)

@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.

Perhaps you can expand your answer to include how "co-authors that haven't made any contribution" is okay.

I'm listed as an author on hundreds of papers where I've failed all three criteria. Some fields are just different.

@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: 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, 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.

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: 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, 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: 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.

What would I think if I found out that someone had listed their baby as a coauthor?

This author is out of touch with academic publishing practices.  His/her judgment probably can't be trusted in other matters either.
It could be an attempt to be funny.
It could be intended as an sentimental tribute to the baby.
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.

"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.

@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.

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.

This. And keep your kid out of your petty office disputes.

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.

How is this worse than the other ethical breach?

@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?

@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 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.

@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 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.

@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 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.

"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 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: 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 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 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).

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.

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.

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

The rationalization here is that Zeilberger's computer played a critical role in many of his papers by automatically generating identities used in proofs (contributions that might merit authorship if done by a human), which is a very different situation.

Another rationalization is that Doron Zeilberger is a very famous mathematician who can therefore get away with things most of us couldn't get away with doing. That would also apply to the OP if he were equally famous, but it seems safe to assume he/she isn't.

@DanRomik Zeilberger did not get away with anything here

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.

While this might be interesting, it does not address the question.

@JessicaB It doesn't address all of the question but it does show that you can add anything as a coauthor. That was the question in the title.

@FelipeVoloch Is there some concise source that explains this situation?

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.

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.

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.

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