Nov 7, 2019 06:23 PM
(This post was last modified: Nov 8, 2019 05:06 PM by C C.)
https://undark.org/2019/11/06/top-scientists-dying/
EXCERPT: New ideas advance in science not just because they are true, but because their opponents die, physicist Max Planck wrote in 1948. . . . Older scientists aren’t notably worse at accepting revolutionary ideas compared to younger colleagues, research has found. But a paper published in August in the American Economic Review suggests there may be subtler ways in which the top dogs have a discouraging effect on new entrants.
According to the paper, which draws on decades of data on more than 12,000 elite biology researchers, when a superstar scientist dies their field sees a small burst of activity in the form of fresh publications. What’s more, the authors of the new papers, which are more likely than usual to be highly cited, are typically newcomers who have never published in this subfield before. The results imply that the deaths of important scientists may open up opportunities for fresh ideas, reaffirming Planck’s statement. But they also suggest that science is reassuringly robust; instead of fields getting into a rut, or even falling apart when a star dies, they continue to evolve.
[...] Aaron Clauset, a physicist and complexity scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder, who has studied the career trajectories of academics. “A superstar scientist doesn’t have to exert power themselves in order to be powerful,” he says. Many members of a scientific community are invested in the success of a star’s ideas, which are accepted because they’ve allowed research to advance. While the star lives, attention will be focused on them; ideas that don’t mesh with theirs are perhaps unlikely to get easy acceptance.
[...] “Scientists love to talk about science and the social processes that go along with it because we just feel very viscerally that these social processes do shape the direction and taste and texture of science,” says Clauset. The paper confirms that feeling. Still, he goes on, the fact that fields neither fall to pieces nor experience cataclysmic shifts after a star departs is, in some ways, a testament to science’s ability to evolve slowly in the right direction, with an infusion of new voices gradually changing the status quo. “In the long run,” Clauset suggests, “science figures it out.” (MORE - details)
EXCERPT: New ideas advance in science not just because they are true, but because their opponents die, physicist Max Planck wrote in 1948. . . . Older scientists aren’t notably worse at accepting revolutionary ideas compared to younger colleagues, research has found. But a paper published in August in the American Economic Review suggests there may be subtler ways in which the top dogs have a discouraging effect on new entrants.
According to the paper, which draws on decades of data on more than 12,000 elite biology researchers, when a superstar scientist dies their field sees a small burst of activity in the form of fresh publications. What’s more, the authors of the new papers, which are more likely than usual to be highly cited, are typically newcomers who have never published in this subfield before. The results imply that the deaths of important scientists may open up opportunities for fresh ideas, reaffirming Planck’s statement. But they also suggest that science is reassuringly robust; instead of fields getting into a rut, or even falling apart when a star dies, they continue to evolve.
[...] Aaron Clauset, a physicist and complexity scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder, who has studied the career trajectories of academics. “A superstar scientist doesn’t have to exert power themselves in order to be powerful,” he says. Many members of a scientific community are invested in the success of a star’s ideas, which are accepted because they’ve allowed research to advance. While the star lives, attention will be focused on them; ideas that don’t mesh with theirs are perhaps unlikely to get easy acceptance.
[...] “Scientists love to talk about science and the social processes that go along with it because we just feel very viscerally that these social processes do shape the direction and taste and texture of science,” says Clauset. The paper confirms that feeling. Still, he goes on, the fact that fields neither fall to pieces nor experience cataclysmic shifts after a star departs is, in some ways, a testament to science’s ability to evolve slowly in the right direction, with an infusion of new voices gradually changing the status quo. “In the long run,” Clauset suggests, “science figures it out.” (MORE - details)