World's most creative physicist---guess who, and how they measure

[Martin]

Who do you guess? It is among those living today---Einstein and Newton don't count

There is a chance that you wont even recognize the name.

 

http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/10/8/13/1

 

It is interesting how they developed this measure of physics creativity and then used it to get a list of the top ten living physicists.

 

I probably would not have guessed who came out #1, but I knew of him and have been impressed earlier by things he has said---like in reply to the 2005 Edge question.

[Klaynos]

Surely a flaw in this method is that it doesn't take into account some fields are more active than others? Although I havn't read the paper, I'll probably read it tomorrow....

[CPL.Luke]

it also doesn't take into account that some people are more anal about citations than others.

 

and if the use of this sort of creativity index becomes widespread than it may become commonplace for physicists to stop citing their sources properly.

[J.C.MacSwell]

Top 3 are old guys. Aren't your twenties your most creative years in physics?

[Martin]

here is Numero Uno's reply to the 2005 Edge question

 

http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_10.html#andersonp

 

Please let me know if the link doesnt work for you

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yeah CPL.Luke it would be a real handicap if a guy was anal and had to put a whole lot of citations in his papers, more than he needed to corroborate his points and acknowledge debts to others.

 

but mainly what gets you points is when OTHER people cite your papers (more than you cite theirs), so for that it doesnt matter if you are anal or whatever----it is other people's valuation

================

 

MacSwell that is correct, no measure of creativity is perfect and this one to the extent that it is reasonable at all, is more of a measure of creativity over the course of time, a lifetime even. It is not an instantaneous thing. With young people it's hard to know in any case.

[abskebabs]

I'm glad Phil Aderson can see string theory for what it is. As for the opening article, if this going to now be used as a measure of creativity; couldnt it be easily exploited by ppl who increase their citations and lower their number of references arbitrarily in order to advance their careers? IMO this creativity scale should not be adopted and perhaps be just one time only.

[Martin]

... IMO this creativity scale should not be adopted and perhaps be just one time only.

 

I agree. I don't think it will be used seriously:-) . It is just a one-time curiosity, in my opinion as well.

The colleagues in some professional line will always have their own ways to decide status within their specialty

 

 

BTW glad you looked at the Edge 2005 question thing. You must have noticed that Anderson put in a plug for Francis Bacon.

Funny to think of the empirical science method being first visualized by a contemporary of Shakespeare. we owe that period, and bunch of people.

[Severian]

and if the use of this sort of creativity index becomes widespread than it may become commonplace for physicists to stop citing their sources properly.

 

Physicists have been judged on their number of citations for quite some time now, and yes it does cause physicists to stop citing their sources. Even worse is that it has become popular to self-cite a lot (ie. cite all your past paper, whether relevant or not) and to cite all your friends' papers (assuming they will return the favour). This should be caught by a referee if the paper goes to a journal, but the automatic programs count the citations in pre-journal versions on the arXiv. It has turned bibliographies into a bit of a farce.

 

There are some other interesting effects too:

 

1. Writing a wrong paper gets you a lot of credit since people will write papers saying it is wrong, giving you citations.

 

2. Writing a paper which solves a problem completely is very bad, since no more papers will be written on it, so you won't get cited much. It is much better to only half-solve a problem, milk the citations for a bit and then publish your full solution a few years later.

 

3. Subjects which have more activity (eg. string theory) get more citations.

 

There were also some anomolies in how citations were counted. There was a bit of controversy not too long ago when it was realized that some people were 'cheating'. Most papers are written using LaTeX which allows the author to comment out lines of text, so they don't show up in the final version. Someone realised that if they cite all their papers but comment it out, the automatic programs which count citations would still count the comment out ones. This led to certain individuals getting a huge number of self-citations for a while, but the problem has been fixed now.

[Skye]

Another thing is that in small areas of research you will get a group of people citing each other in their papers and then every few years writing a review paper citing all the papers they've been citing each other in. There's nothing wrong with it though, untill you put a premium on citations.

[Martin]

Another thing is that in small areas of research you will get a group of people citing each other in their papers and then every few years writing a review paper citing all the papers they've been citing each other in. There's nothing wrong with it though, untill you put a premium on citations.

 

as is well known there already is a premium on citations this being a big way they decide who to hire for tenuretrack positions

and then later one of the things that helps them decide whether to give somebody tenure

there is a whole established instituionalized thing about how many cites

 

 

But with this guy's measure of creativity, there is a slight difference. this guy in his measure does not do a raw COUNT, he does a RATIO of how many cites you get divided by how many you give

so a group scratching each other backs and trading cites would tend to CANCEL for all of them

 

also if you write a review article then it tends to cancel out because you increase the number of papers you have cited, by a lot, so even if your review paper GETS cited, it tends to balance.

[Severian]

but that is even worse, because it encourages you to self-cite only and never cite anyone else.

[Martin]

At anyrate we already knew Phil Anderson was enormously creative and influential. he has had a massive impact on all of condensed matter physics---which is fastest growing division that arxiv tracks.

 

his field has caught up and passed high energy particle physics, if you measure by the arxiv STATS

 

and he is a Nobelist, and the most prominent person in that field AFAIK

 

so even if the measure is a bad one, he comes by his "most creative living physicist" title honestly. I dont begrudge him anyway:-)

[Martin]

BTW Phil Anderson had a piece in the (London) Times Higher Education Supplement of 25 August. Have to find some quotes, so we can listen to what he has to say.

 

Here, nitin had some quotes in his blog

http://commeappeleduneant.blogspot.com/2006/09/loose-ends-and-gordian-knots-of-string.html

There is a snapshot of Anderson at the blog and plenty of quotes from his Times piece.

 

I will quote here another public statement by him---his reply to the 2005 Edge question:

===quote from Edge magazine===

PHILIP W. ANDERSON

Physicist and Nobel laureate, Princeton University

 

"Is string theory a futile exercise as physics, as I believe it to be? It is an interesting mathematical specialty and has produced and will produce mathematics useful in other contexts, but it seems no more vital as mathematics than other areas of very abstract or specialized math, and doesn't on that basis justify the incredible amount of effort expended on it.

 

My belief is based on the fact that string theory is the first science in hundreds of years to be pursued in pre-Baconian fashion, without any adequate experimental guidance. It proposes that Nature is the way we would like it to be rather than the way we see it to be; and it is improbable that Nature thinks the same way we do.

 

The sad thing is that, as several young would-be theorists have explained to me, it is so highly developed that it is a full-time job just to keep up with it. That means that other avenues are not being explored by the bright, imaginative young people, and that alternative career paths are blocked."

 

===endquote from Edge===

http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_10.html#andersonp

[Locrian]

1. Writing a wrong paper gets you a lot of credit since people will write papers saying it is wrong, giving you citations.

 

This is a great point. Also, to me it seems like this algorithm penalizes people responsible enough to cite lots of other people's ideas. But as Martin says, it is just for fun (let's hope).

 

If anyone else has any opinion about whether Anderson is actually a good choice for "most creative" I'd be interested in hearing it.

[Martin]

This is a great point. Also' date=' to me it seems like this algorithm penalizes people responsible enough to cite lots of other people's ideas. But as Martin says, it is just for fun (let's hope).

[/quote']

 

I thought it was just for fun, but then Severian made warning noises and I looked closer and I saw some danger that institutions might adopt it and start using it seriously---and that seem outright pernicious. But I cant tell how real that danger is. Don't have a clue.

 

I am biased towards a fair experienced human judge of horseflesh (or of postdocs or anything else that matters) as opposed to numerical systems.

 

If anyone else has any opinion about whether Anderson is actually a good choice for "most creative" I'd be interested in hearing it.

 

If you will accept a naive opinion, I've seen exceptionally good reports of Anderson and his whole career of basic contributions to condensed matter. I can't think of anybody I'd propose instead.