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"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."
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Today, most scientists go for the popular topics and whatever is on the government research plan to get funding.* Whenever the wind changes direction they change their topics because they need that funding.
*: This might seem to contradict with the statement that most scientists work on nice topics. But only on the surface. In order to get published you have to do something novel. So, you choose a popular topic and then research a rather unpopular side aspect on it like how a specific chemical behaves when applied to the popular topic. If you're successful you publish and continue. Citations come later or they don't but the next round of funding comes with publishing. After a few years without many citations you move on to the next thing.
On government plans often you need to publish and then it's done. The citations only matter long-term if at all. Most scientists don't achieve anything of greater value. They are happy if they can publish at all. If the institute has a few scientists with a high citation count it carries all the rest of them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
>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? Imagine how many inventions we would have missed if all inventors had shared your mindset.
I know some scientists that define their research direction by asking these questions first before pursuing an idea. Many great inventions like optogenetics or expansion microscopy came from this investigative strategy. It can help keep your resources and energy in check.
"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."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
>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? Imagine how many inventions we would have missed if all inventors had shared your mindset.
It’s just an important question to ask yourself.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see that it's the Cobra effect. Did it actively make them less productive?
If it means that some academics are choosing to cite their own papers rather than keeping up to date on the literature of their field, there's likely to be some potential insights missed.
"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
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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? Imagine how many inventions we would have missed if all inventors had shared your mindset.
What? These are perfectly valid questions to be asking and do not inherently stop you from researching what you're working on. I know some scientists that define their research direction by asking these questions first before pursuing an idea. Many great inventions like optogenetics or expansion microscopy came from this investigative strategy. It can help keep your resources and energy in check.
Some topics need a large investment to show anything at all.
Some topics show immediate results (good or bad).
Should we, for example, stop all activities in fusion research because so far nobody has shown that it will work and we already invested billions?
The core problem here is that universities think that citation statistics are a useful metric to evaluate the quality of the work of a scientist. There's plenty of evidence that this is not the case or that even the reverse may be the case [1], but this idea refuses to die. [1]