It is completey legit in FAA land. When flying under the hood (or foggles) with a safety pilot, both can indeed log PIC. Of course, both pilots have to be legal to act as PIC in the first place. I did quite a few hours like that and probably saved north of a $1000 when building airplane hours for my ATP.
As for this "only fooling yourself" idea, I flew many IFP trips with a young PPL as my safety pilot the runup to her IR course. Had she been flying solo it would have been 40 hours of easy x-country VFR trips for her. Instead she got abundant practice in IFR nav as a non handling pilot, as well as time on the dials herself.
Last edited by oggers; 10th Aug 2016 at 17:48.