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Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

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Re: Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

#131

Post by moate »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #123
dalbasal wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Above board, perhaps. This way of researching and publish does, OTOH, mean something quite different from science of the past. This isn't applying the method more efficiently. It's applying a different method. Reading old papers, you know who they were written by. These days, authorship doesn't mean that anymore. It's more like credits in a movie than a signature on a painting.

Don't the credits on a movie imply active participation too? I'd say a closer analogy might be an attendance roll...

I feel like a supervisor who just signed off on things while not “getting his hands dirty” had as much effect on the final paper as craft services does on the final film: not 0, but not really an equal peer.

Re: Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

#132

Post by psyklic »

moate wrote: post #131
blacksmith_tb wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't the credits on a movie imply active participation too? I'd say a closer analogy might be an attendance roll...

I feel like a supervisor who just signed off on things while not “getting his hands dirty” had as much effect on the final paper as craft services does on the final film: not 0, but not really an equal peer.

The supervisor typically has a major hand in choosing a productive research direction. Asking the "right" questions often is what makes research valuable! Also, the supervisor's name is typically last on the paper, and it's clear this is their role.

Re: Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

#133

Post by screature2 »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #124
dalbasal wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Above board, perhaps. This way of researching and publish does, OTOH, mean something quite different from science of the past. This isn't applying the method more efficiently. It's applying a different method. Reading old papers, you know who they were written by. These days, authorship doesn't mean that anymore. It's more like credits in a movie than a signature on a painting.

The nice thing about credits compared to authors is that credits generally have a title/role/position associated with the name. (A grip does a very different job than a costume designer, but with a paper they're all just authors which has a different meaning than say "research director")

For scientific papers, depending on the field, order of listing actually is some indication of role. I think the convention in bio research is 1st author is the primary creator of the experiment and paper while last author is the lab PI.

Per this science.org column, that seems typical across a number of scientific disciplines. https://www.science.org/content/article/how-navigate-authors....

Re: Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

#134

Post by anonymouskimmer »

scifibestfi wrote: post #128
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the preamble of the article you linked is important for the consideration of others in opening the link: "John Ioannidis is one of the most published and influential scientists in the world, someone whose skewering of bad medical research we at SBM have frequently lauded over the years. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Since then, Prof. Ioannidis has been publishing dubious studies that minimize the dangers of…

That's a reverse dunk, given that he was proven correct.

If he had stated that SARS-CoV-2 would eventually mutate into something as serious as a cold or a flu he would have been correct. This is not what he stated.

Re: Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

#135

Post by ImaCake »

wcoenen wrote: post #61
bell-cot wrote: post #20

In Mathematics, there is Paul Erdős* - who published >1,500 papers, with 500+ co-authors, in a ~65-year professional career. Though he is recognized as being very, very unusual. And Mathematics has the huge advantage of not needing the labs, equipment, experiments, etc. that restrict pretty much any "science" to a far slower pace. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s#Erd%C5%91s_num...

Erdős was also known to habitually take stimulants like benzedrine and ritalin.

A lot of people with neurodivergent brains self medicate to function in the world we are in. It is hardly surprising a math prodigy did so.

I would imagine there are many mathematicians who take ritalin, but I don't see them mentioned as being Paul Erdos.

Re: Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

#136

Post by nextos »

derbOac wrote: post #126
version_five wrote: post #9

I did my PhD in a group with ~20 students and postdocs including many co-supervised with some other department. The prof in charge of the group had his name on > 90% of the papers we published, I believe justifiably. He would have read all of them, and written sections where appropriate, and had a hand in directing and organizing the research as well as challenging the results and strengthening the presentation of th…

I'm glad you felt comfortable with that situation, but not all are like that. Sometimes the involvement is very nominal and unnecessary and there can be unintentional side effects that aren't always obvious, in a form of "attribution manipulation." I can think of situations where a researcher is basically "joining" projects whenever possible to attach their name to it in a form of branding. When a junior person comes…

I agree with you. PIs that have their name in so many articles are actually gaming the system.

Nature and Science journals now require author contributions. Administration, fund acquisition, etc. are typically no longer valid to claim authorship. Cell is an exception and does allow this.

So in my experience they simply force other coauthors to give them credit for study design when they did none.

Re: Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

#137

Post by wrp »

culebron21 wrote: post #102

I've read a huge book [1] of a broad research on universities in different countries, and this is what the book told. Science metrics, when used to determine scientific significance by government officials, become abused. This law was articulated back in 1920s, if I remember correctly. And this is one of the cases. Science was not like this until quite recently -- citation metrics were first used in the 1980s by neol…

That book is a massive sociological study of academic Sociology. There is no detailed summary in English, but the PDF of the review is online. I just ran it through Google Translate. (https://publications.hse.ru/pubs/share/folder/0mbqwfls21/192...)

Re: Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

#138

Post by the_snooze »

screature2 wrote: post #133
NegativeLatency wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nice thing about credits compared to authors is that credits generally have a title/role/position associated with the name. (A grip does a very different job than a costume designer, but with a paper they're all just authors which has a different meaning than say "research director")

For scientific papers, depending on the field, order of listing actually is some indication of role. I think the convention in bio research is 1st author is the primary creator of the experiment and paper while last author is the lab PI. Per this science.org column, that seems typical across a number of scientific disciplines. https://www.science.org/content/article/how-navigate-authors... .

It’s the same in my field (CS: security and privacy). The most senior people tend to be in the end of the list. The first author is typically a student/postdoc who did the technical leadership on the work, and they get the benefit of getting their name out there in the shorthand citation (“AuthorName, S&P ‘23”).

Re: Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

#139

Post by trashface »

throw_pm23 wrote: post #3

As an academic (CS), I'm able to write one or two decent papers a year, in a very good year, three. Looking at colleagues who write ten a year I already get existential angst, and have to actively tell myself that life is not a competition and some things are more important. Writing fifty (while also teaching, writing grants, mentoring students, etc.) seems mind-numbing, even just in terms of the relatively routine t…

Are your colleagues just hitting the stimulants hard? Worked for Erdős I guess...

Re: Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

#140

Post by aborsy »

version_five wrote: post #9

I did my PhD in a group with ~20 students and postdocs including many co-supervised with some other department. The prof in charge of the group had his name on > 90% of the papers we published, I believe justifiably. He would have read all of them, and written sections where appropriate, and had a hand in directing and organizing the research as well as challenging the results and strengthening the presentation of th…

Reading and providing comments on a paper is secretarial work and not valuable respected scientific work. Any undergrad could do it. There are even companies in some countries that do it well.

You have to contribute substantively to the actual research.

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