I once had a lab with about 20 employees and graduate students.
Some worked out, some didn’t.
I was starting to realize my first marriage was falling apart and masked that failure with other accomplishments.
But I didn’t really pay attention.
I’ve always been interested in science policy, and even started a Masters degree in philosophy of science until I realized that philosophical debates about how color is perceived and trees falling in an imaginary forest weren’t my thing.
However, I remain convinced that science advances in weird ways that we can’t always comprehend and that collaboration is a code-word for, I suck.
A new working paper by economics-types evaluates science and death.
We study the extent to which eminent scientists shape the vitality of their fields by examining entry rates into the fields of 452 academic life scientists who pass away while at the peak of their scientific abilities.
Key to our analyses is a novel way to delineate boundaries around scientific fields by appealing solely to intellectual linkages between scientists and their publications, rather than collaboration or co-citation patterns.
Consistent with previous research, the flow of articles by collaborators into affected fields decreases precipitously after the death of a star scientist (relative to control fields).
In contrast, we find that the flow of articles by non-collaborators increases by 8% on average. These additional contributions are disproportionately likely to be highly cited. They are also more likely to be authored by scientists who were not previously active in the deceased superstar’s field.
Overall, these results suggest that outsiders are reluctant to challenge leadership within a field when the star is alive and that a number of barriers may constrain entry even after she is gone. Intellectual, social, and resource barriers all impede entry, with outsiders only entering subfields that offer a less hostile landscape for the support and acceptance of “foreign” ideas.
Most scientists, according to this analysis, are, in the wise words of The Simpson’s, cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
Does science advance one funeral at a time?
dec.15
NBER Working Paper No. 21788