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Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

nature.com

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Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#11

Post by joe_the_user »

your-nanny wrote: post #3

People who are working out their ideas far outside the mainstream have no one to cite but them selves. Some are quacks, to be sure, but sometimes a field is just not ready for their work because the utility of the idea is not easily apparent, or because it's perceived to be too risky. A field needs a healthy mix of the the curmudgeonly stubborn thinkers going their way no matter the cost, and those making steady prog…

The need to step outside of mainstream views has been important for intellectual progress over the years, indeed. The problem we have now is we're stuck with a series of bad faith, polarizing and disingenuous views that "suck the oxygen out of" actual wide-ranging thinking - IE, climate denialists can still get a lot of money, anti-vaxers can pull in a lot of money from scams, etc.

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#12

Post by jacquesm »

pkaye wrote: post #10
guntars wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any good examples, historical or otherwise?

Possibly Barry Marshall and Robin Warren who discovered H Pylori causes peptic ulcers and subsequently won a Nobel Prize. They were ridiculed by doctors and scientists for their theory.

I can see them citing themselves once or twice but not 10's of times or more.

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#13

Post by MaxBarraclough »

melling wrote: post #6

"In 2017, a study showed that scientists in Italy began citing themselves more heavily after a controversial 2010 policy was introduced that required academics to meet productivity thresholds to be eligible for promotion" Cobra Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

I don't see that it's the Cobra effect. Did it actively make them less productive?

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#14

Post by std_throwaway »

You need a source of trust in these systems. Journals used to have that role. They had high standards that were upheld by editors selecting only worthy publications. Today it seems that many journals aren't as trustworthy as they seemed to be in the past. It's also easier to spam the journals with your publication and to bullshit your way into publication. The incentives to publish a lot are also way higher now that your grant money is highly dependent on your citation count. Journals can publish more and easier and lower the standards for submission to earn more money. The system is basically eating itself and we haven't found a cure yet.

Filtering for self-citations is useful to identify the bubbles. But it is not sufficient to determine if those bubbles only contain hot air or if these scientists are actually working on something with substance in a narrow field where few others publish.

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#15

Post by techie128 »

Not defending people who self-cite but here is an alternative explanation. There are many areas of science that have very few researchers working on the same or related problems. In addition papers tend to build on prior works of the same or related researchers. Over time we may see clusters of what look like "self-cited" papers. This is not abnormal.

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#16

Post by tomtomistaken »

melling wrote: post #6

"In 2017, a study showed that scientists in Italy began citing themselves more heavily after a controversial 2010 policy was introduced that required academics to meet productivity thresholds to be eligible for promotion" Cobra Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

More like Goodhart‘s law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#17

Post by HarryHirsch »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #13
melling wrote: post #6

"In 2017, a study showed that scientists in Italy began citing themselves more heavily after a controversial 2010 policy was introduced that required academics to meet productivity thresholds to be eligible for promotion" Cobra Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

I don't see that it's the Cobra effect. Did it actively make them less productive?

Publication standards are different between disciplines. Traditionally, a materials chemist publishes many times more papers than a structural biologist. With a metric like that, you run whole sub-disciplines out of town.

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#18

Post by duskwuff »

jacquesm wrote: post #7
your-nanny wrote: post #3

People who are working out their ideas far outside the mainstream have no one to cite but them selves. Some are quacks, to be sure, but sometimes a field is just not ready for their work because the utility of the idea is not easily apparent, or because it's perceived to be too risky. A field needs a healthy mix of the the curmudgeonly stubborn thinkers going their way no matter the cost, and those making steady prog…

Sure, but there is no 'pruning of the tree' in case a dead end is reached, so the citations stay allowing the quack to pretend they have more credibility than they do. In fact, the whole idea of these citations is to build credibility where there is none.

Right. The purpose of citation metrics is to measure the intellectual influence of a person's ideas. If an academic's works are never being cited by anyone else, the correct conclusion would be that their ideas have little influence -- regardless of how many self-citing papers they've published.

Re: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database

#20

Post by jedberg »

std_throwaway wrote: post #9
bifrost wrote: post #4

I found this situation regularly when going down the rabbithole of the anti-vaxx or anti-5g people. One "scientist" makes a highly dubious claim, thousands of nutjobs cite this one scientist, "scientist" then goes on to cite articles that cites their work. I'm basically waiting to find Alex Jones cited in a serious article at this point.

If you work in a very narrow field of science you're basically on your own and have to cite yourself because there's nobody else to cite.

In which case you have to ask yourself, are you so brilliant that you’ve found an important topic that no one has considered yet, or have all the brilliant people already figured out that topic isn’t worthy of study?

It’s the same with the startup world. If you’re the only one doing a thing, are you brilliant or foolish?

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