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Some PhD advisors often simply turn down being a co-author, even if they contributed some crucial help or idea. Sometimes it is modesty or generosity, sometimes a gentle way to say the work is not very good :)

More seriously, the solution is not to use content-oblivious measures (e.g. number of papers/citations) when evaluating researchers.

In many fields there is an informal distinction based on author position. The first author(s) likely did most of the work and/or wrote the paper. The last author(s), usually called senior authors, are the ones who organized, supervised, etc.

How would you formulate what the problem is and why it is time to do something about it?