publications - Can co-authors disagree in their own paper?

Co-authors are increasingly required to report their individual contributions to a research paper. But can they report their (internal) disagreement?

Co-authors may disagree on parts of a final draft. Each may have own interpretation of (parts of) the results or view of their implications.

The different views can be of course expressed in the publication without attribution, e.g.:

Our results may mean x, but they may also mean y.

But some co-authors may find others' interpretations/views controversial, or they may wish to get "exclusive" credit for their own ideas.

In such cases, is it appropriate for co-authors to explicitly attribute certain interpretations/views in a paper to their owners? Should they do that?

Co-author A thinks results mean x, whereas co-author B thinks they mean y but not x.

Answer

It is rather unusual, but it has occurred before. In the paper

Piccione, Michele, and Ariel Rubinstein. "Equilibrium in the Jungle." The Economic Journal 117.522 (2007): 883-896.

each of the authors has their own conclusions, marked "4.1. Concluding Comments by MP" and "4.2. Concluding Comments by AR." It should be noted though that the writing in economics tends to be less structured (no such thing as a "method section") and this is a somewhat unconventional paper to begin with.