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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

#131

Post by grecy »

asimjalis wrote: post #72
hannob wrote: post #21

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]

PageRank might be better way to evaluate quality. It too can be gamed. Maybe not as easily, though.

> PageRank might be better way to evaluate quality

And suddenly Google is the authoritative source on literally everything in the world. I hope you like their political views, because they would become "the one".

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

#132

Post by chiefalchemist »

For those who wonder why there are climate-change deniers who won't listen to "the science" this article is for you. The sad and honest fact is, science has become a spin-factory in a way mainstream media has.

Yes, in theory, the scientic method / process is a wonderful standard. Unfortunately, once it's exposed to egos and profits it becomes somethings else far less worth of praise and honor.

I'm not doing a take down of science, science has already done that to itself. The sooner the rest of us come to terms with that, the better.

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

#133

Post by CrazyStat »

newacctjhro wrote: post #86
gdhbcc wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not simply use replication as a measure? Have your studies been replicated? How many other studies have you replicated? Would both help solve the replication crisis, and resolve this problem. Of course then you might have 10 000 studies replicating the same easy to do study... which is why the "score" should be reduced based on how many other times that study has been replicated.

This might work for hard sciences, but not for mathematics. Or, I dunno, paleontology or sociology or other stuff.

Indeed. My research (in statistics) is primarily methodological: I invent and describe methods that might be useful, and on a good day prove some theoretical results demonstrating that they might be useful. There's nothing to replicate there.

Citations can be a useful metric here, particularly if you can identify citations of people actually using the method (as opposed to people just mentioning it in passing, or other methodological researchers comparing their own methods to it).

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

#134

Post by cassowary37 »

hannob wrote: post #21

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]

Before everyone goes bananas citing Goodhart's law: many universities and academic medical centers in the US don't care at all about impact factor - they care about grant $$, period full stop. (They appreciate the occasional high-impact paper that they can use in marketing materials, but it's really all about the $$.)

And for what it's worth, I've almost never heard impact factors discussed at NIH study sections, where investigator quality is explicitly on the agenda. Reviewers talk about relevant prior publications in the field, esp in marquee journals. [this latter feature is the reason we don't just put everything on biorxiv or equivalent and move on.]

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

#135

Post by deathanatos »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #62
kromem wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two economists are walking down the street. One sees a $20 bill and starts to bend over to pick it up. The other economist says "Don't bother - if it were really worth $20, someone else would have picked it up." There's countless numbers of scientists that made great strides working on topics others deemed rediculous. Heck, many of the Nobel prize winners were ridiculed by their colleagues as borderline wack-jobs at…

> Heck, many of the Nobel prize winners were ridiculed by their colleagues as borderline wack-jobs at the time they were working on their research. Even after winning the prize, some still were with their later work (Crick's search for consciousness comes to mind, and why it would be so worthless a search does not). Do you have any good examples of being considered wack-jobs before their winning?

Not a Nobel prize winner (somewhat shockingly, given the contribution), and he wasn't (to my understanding) so much ridiculed, but when The Great Debate occurred, which was a debate about whether or not galaxies besides our own existed,

> if Andromeda were not part of the Milky Way, then its distance must have been on the order of 108 light years—a span most contemporary astronomers would not accept.

the size and distance of these objects (galaxies) seemed far too absurdly large to one side of the debate to be accurate; it would mean the size of the universe would be absolutely enormous. Of course,

> it is now known that the Milky Way is only one of as many as an estimated 200 billion (2×1011)[1] to 2 trillion (2×1012) or more galaxies[2][3] proving Curtis the more accurate party in the debate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Debate_(astronomy) — I think it's an interesting read, and a good example of how sometimes the right answer can seem absolutely wrong.

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

#136

Post by dwd »

hannob wrote: post #21

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]

So when querying a count of citations, did anyone consider adding a GROUP BY contributors which will at least give you distinct groups of contributors (assuming they always get listed alphabetically)

Even better split it into individual contributors to give a count of researchers who have cited the paper?

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

#137

Post by ccalf »

n1231231231234 wrote: post #120
not2b wrote: post #106

Self-citation is appropriate for a new paper that builds on the results of a previous paper. But in evaluating how influential a researcher is, it makes sense to exclude self-citation, while being careful to avoid any implication that self-citation is wrong.

when self-citation is OK and when it is not OK should be part of one's academic training/phd training. PLOS gives reasonable citation guidelines, and in this context their Rule 5 is particular relevant: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/jo...

I find this approach strangely condescending. For example the author says:

> Understanding the value attributed to X, Y, and Z in that particular text requires assessment of the rhetorical strategies of the author(s).

They could've just said, if you want to know why the author thinks XYZ are important, you need to look at what they are saying about it.

I'm a hardcore postmodern leftist, but I don't see how writing in such a contorted way helps practicing scientists. In fact I would argue that this kind of listing obscures a politics of its own; it is so busy prescribing citation practices that it won't examine its own politics.

That said, it's the first time I've seen this guide so maybe I need to read up on the issues; a list of do's / don'ts isn't the best way to introduce and help people understand the issues.

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

#138

Post by toomuchequate »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #132

For those who wonder why there are climate-change deniers who won't listen to "the science" this article is for you. The sad and honest fact is, science has become a spin-factory in a way mainstream media has. Yes, in theory, the scientic method / process is a wonderful standard. Unfortunately, once it's exposed to egos and profits it becomes somethings else far less worth of praise and honor. I'm not doing a take do…

If you want to be immune, look at the data.

They can lie in experiments and stats, but that is up to you to decide.

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

#139

Post by didibus »

CrazyStat wrote: post #133
newacctjhro wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might work for hard sciences, but not for mathematics. Or, I dunno, paleontology or sociology or other stuff.

Indeed. My research (in statistics) is primarily methodological: I invent and describe methods that might be useful, and on a good day prove some theoretical results demonstrating that they might be useful. There's nothing to replicate there. Citations can be a useful metric here, particularly if you can identify citations of people actually using the method (as opposed to people just mentioning it in passing, or oth…

Wouldn't replication here just be peer reviews ?

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

#140

Post by etaioinshrdlu »

grecy wrote: post #131
asimjalis wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PageRank might be better way to evaluate quality. It too can be gamed. Maybe not as easily, though.

> PageRank might be better way to evaluate quality And suddenly Google is the authoritative source on literally everything in the world. I hope you like their political views, because they would become "the one".

Pagerank is referring to the graph algorithm known as pagerank, not anything provided specifically by Google.
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