Dennis,
My time is finite, and, unlike Nancy Hopkins
[the chief complainant in the MIT case] I didn't
receive a million dollar grant from the Ford Foundation
to study these matters. I'm a volunteer.
I do it for the warm appreciation I get from
colleagues. <G>
To address a main point:
When a person publishes, say, 200 papers and gets 12000
citations over 12 years, the question is, "How many people
*actually* have read the work and reacted to it." This is
and interesting question, and may indeed vary substantially
from person to person. For example, as you know, there
are some classic cases of groups of psychologists citing,
and critiquing, and signing on to group condemnations of papers
they never actually read. I don't think anyone can necessarily
answer the question in its full generality. Say, for example,
papers read by a large research group tend to get
published, and cited more. You can have "readers"
that are, of course, never reflected in citations.
I order to get published, a paper has to be submitted
and reviewed. Say there are four reviewers. Maybe all of them
read the paper. Maybe none of them do, but accept it anyway
on the basis of the author's reputation. You can, via
ISI, get lists of every paper that cited another. You could
do some name counting [complicated, trust me, by the existence
of several people with the same name]. None of this would PROVE
anything about the number of people reading and supporting
a person's work. Chances are, though, the groundswell of support
for a person's work leading to 12000 citations and 200 publications
involves many people, probably hundreds, being interested in the
work and reading it. But many of the citations are by the same
people. And, for the reasons listed above, you cannot prove
people actually read what they cite.
So your implication of hyperbole in my writing would have to
be assessed carefully on a case by case basis. You may be right.
Some people with high citation counts may not actually
have that many people carefully reading their work.
Their competitors may be reading their work very carefully,
however.
Estimating how many people read a 12000
citation author would make fun psychological research.
For all I know, it has been done, is published,
and is highly cited <G>!
All the best,
Jim Steiger
--------------------
James H. Steiger, Professor
Department of Psychology
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 1Z4
----------------------
Note: I urge all members of this list to read
the following and inform themselves carefully
of the truth about the MIT Report on the Status
of Women Faculty.
Original MIT Report on the Status of Women Faculty:
http://mindit.netmind.com/proxy/http://web.mit.edu/fnl/
Judith Kleinfeld's Article Critiquing the MIT Report:
http://www.uaf.edu/northern/mitstudy/#note9back
Patricia Hausman and James Steiger Article,
"Confession Without Guilt?" on the MIT Report:
http://www.iwf.org/news/mitfinal.pdf
On 16 Feb 2001 13:09:25 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (dennis roberts) wrote:
>
>
>obviously irving scheffe likes citation rates (or lives with them
>comfortably) ... and dennis roberts does not
>
>we can have these back and forth discussions till we are blue in the face i
>guess ... but, i seriously doubt that it will change your mind nor mine
>
>ok, so you thought my looking out the window example was way off mark ...
>fine, i will accept that
>
>BUT, i ask the following ... and i hope that you won't put this in some
>nonsensical category
>
>you stated:
>=======
>No, not at all. How could you possibly equate citation counts based
>on the way HUNDREDS of other scientists have reacted to the work of
>these individuals over TWELVE YEARS ...
>=======
>
>NOTE: CITATION IS FOR A PERSON, RIGHT? CLARIFY WHAT YOU MEAN THEN ... ??
>since we don't have group tenure or group promotion or group salary
>increments ... then we have to be talking about ONE person at a time
>
>
>how do you know that over 12 years ... and the 12000 citation rate that was
>previously mentioned ... that it involved HUNDREDS of other scientists???
>
>please relate to me and the rest of the edstat group ... how you deduce
>this .... FROM THE 12000 CITATION NUMBER ... over the 12 years?
>
>it would be helpful to show the output statistics from the citation rate
>site or sites or databases that you have access to ... that allows you to
>make this assertion
>
>and more specifically i ask:
>
>1. how many are unique and different scientists?
>2. how many of #1 did NOT appear simultaneously on the SAME papers? (note:
>it is very commonplace in science writing ... to have papers with 5 or 6 or
>7 or 8 authors ... would these count in the HUNDREDS of OTHER scientists?)
>3. how many different PAPERS/BOOKS does this represent as separated from
>the HUNDREDS of other scientists?
>4. how many of these papers ... where citations are commonly carried over
>from one paper to another ... are from the same group of researchers
>working in the same institution(s)?
>
>i know when i write papers, i quote myself ... is that not common practice?
>but, to assert that i am having impact on myself ... is rather strange ...
>so, now i have 5 papers ... where the fifth cites 3 of the others ... and
>so on and so forth ...
>
>and students who work with me ... cite those papers too ... they HAVE to!
>
>now, i want to make it abundantly clear that i am in NO way suggesting that
>the person or persons who was (were) given in evidence as havingion
>average) 12000 citations over 12 years ... has (have) not made important
>contributions to biology ... and that others do not recognize that ...
>
>but, your implication that 12000 citations over 12 years has impacted
>hundreds of scientists in important ways ... is overstated ... ALOT
>
>there just is no way to do any corroboration that will show convincingly
>... that this level of citations for THIS or any other person ... equates
>to the level of impact that you are implying
>
>the questions i have raised about citation rates in general ... and
>specifically in this case ... are fully legitimate to make about citation
>rates ... and, if you have some good data to clearly answer the questions
>posed ... i (and most others i would suspect) would be more than delighted
>to examine these data
>
>CITATION RATE STATISTICS ARE HIGHLY OVERRATED
>
>
>
>
>
>
>=================================================================
>Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about
>the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at
> http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/
>=================================================================
=================================================================
Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about
the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at
http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/
=================================================================
