Jul 4, 2025 05:53 PM
The many perils of the ‘pivot penalty’
https://undark.org/2025/07/03/opinion-pivot-penalty/
EXCERPT: Although I’ve found these interactions to be mostly humorous and inconsequential, a recent study highlights that there is a formal cost to “pivoting,” whereby a scientist moves into a research area outside of their own formal expertise.
An interdisciplinary team examined about 30 million studies and patents published between 1970 and 2020 and found that scientists who pivoted into different areas incurred a penalty, as measured against several standards, such as how often their papers are referenced in other studies. And the effect was quantitative: Across the scientific literature, papers that were further from the established area of the author (larger average pivots) had systematically lower impact.
This study also suggests that the pivot penalty is robust across career stages and subdisciplines, though it does seem to have become more pronounced in recent times — that is, we penalize the pivoters of 2020 more than we did the ones in 2010, 2000, etc. The hypothetical scenario painted by the findings is that however interesting a study might be, we don’t read it or trust it if it isn’t authored by a name that we recognize, a person who possesses a skill set that we deem appropriate.
To be fair, work done by outsiders attracts a sort of justifiable suspicion. For one, the age of misinformation has made us appropriately skeptical of those who speak with authority on matters for which they are underqualified. Relatedly, the Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias by which we tend to overestimate our competence in an area, and it has become central in today’s conversations about expertise.
The ability to distinguish real from fake is a very important part of science, so some of this pivot penalty is defensible. If a cell biologist wants to study linguistics, they must recognize that the discipline has a rich history and set of methodologies that must be understood to participate responsibly.
So at least part of the pivot penalty can be attributed to the challenge of acquiring expertise. Learning new fields to the level at which we can contribute to them meaningfully is challenging — and should be.
However, given the enormous sample of papers analyzed in the pivot penalty study, we should feel confident that it captures a real phenomenon. And if we accept that it is true, two important questions come to mind: What is specifically troublesome about the pivot penalty, and what can we do to address it? (MORE - missing details)
https://undark.org/2025/07/03/opinion-pivot-penalty/
EXCERPT: Although I’ve found these interactions to be mostly humorous and inconsequential, a recent study highlights that there is a formal cost to “pivoting,” whereby a scientist moves into a research area outside of their own formal expertise.
An interdisciplinary team examined about 30 million studies and patents published between 1970 and 2020 and found that scientists who pivoted into different areas incurred a penalty, as measured against several standards, such as how often their papers are referenced in other studies. And the effect was quantitative: Across the scientific literature, papers that were further from the established area of the author (larger average pivots) had systematically lower impact.
This study also suggests that the pivot penalty is robust across career stages and subdisciplines, though it does seem to have become more pronounced in recent times — that is, we penalize the pivoters of 2020 more than we did the ones in 2010, 2000, etc. The hypothetical scenario painted by the findings is that however interesting a study might be, we don’t read it or trust it if it isn’t authored by a name that we recognize, a person who possesses a skill set that we deem appropriate.
To be fair, work done by outsiders attracts a sort of justifiable suspicion. For one, the age of misinformation has made us appropriately skeptical of those who speak with authority on matters for which they are underqualified. Relatedly, the Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias by which we tend to overestimate our competence in an area, and it has become central in today’s conversations about expertise.
The ability to distinguish real from fake is a very important part of science, so some of this pivot penalty is defensible. If a cell biologist wants to study linguistics, they must recognize that the discipline has a rich history and set of methodologies that must be understood to participate responsibly.
So at least part of the pivot penalty can be attributed to the challenge of acquiring expertise. Learning new fields to the level at which we can contribute to them meaningfully is challenging — and should be.
However, given the enormous sample of papers analyzed in the pivot penalty study, we should feel confident that it captures a real phenomenon. And if we accept that it is true, two important questions come to mind: What is specifically troublesome about the pivot penalty, and what can we do to address it? (MORE - missing details)