Is it ethical for an author to cite their own work with themselves as first author when they are not first author? I was reading through a journal article by an author. Let's call him Author X. The author while referring to some of his own journal articles cite them as Author X et al., even though Author X is not the first author in the cited article. Is this allowed or should it be treated as academic dishonesty?
The only reason I would use a formulation such as this is if the work being "cited" were multiple works performed by a changing group of members with a "constant" member who was probably the group leader. And, even in that case, I would use the formulation "X and coworkers," rather than "X et al.," to indicate that the it's not a "direct" citation, but a matter of convenience. The reason for this is that it's quite distracting to have to write: 


  as discussed in A et al. [cite], B et al. [cite], C et al. [cite], A et al. #2 [cite], . . .


when there's a bunch of different references that are all part of the same research effort.