Physiognomy

• Some go even as far as comparing the current research system with Lysenkoism, a flawed approach to plant genetics promoted by Soviet and Chinese authorities.
• Such as the case with an April 27 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, “The ‘hurtful’ idea of scientific merit”, by scientists Jerry Coyne and Anna Krylov.
• If true, this is terrible news, since in USSR the ideological supremacy of Lysenkoism led to many executions and exiles.

The tricky concept of scientific merit

• Their claim is supposed to hold for academia in general, and “scientific merit” is here synonymous with “academic merit”.
• Worse, the way merit itself is used by institutions and policies proves ultimately much more deleterious to science than any radicalized “social-justice warrior ideology”, if this phrase is even meaningful.
• Thus, social conventions have been invented to overcome this almost metaphysical underdetermination of the “author” (and hence her or his merit).
• Another conventional tool is the citation – the more one is cited, the higher their merit.

Where science loses out in the idea of merit

• Yet measuring scientific merit in this way damages the quality of science for three reasons that have been analysed by scientists themselves.
• Second, this measure of merit induces less exploratory science, since being exploratory takes time and risks finding nothing so that your competitors will reap all the rewards.
• Therein, what constitutes a “major contribution” to science could take several forms, depending on where one stands in this landscape.

Rethinking scientific progress

• When a field is mature, it is easy to produce many papers.
• But this ill-defined and ill-measured merit, as the basis of any assessment of scientists and therefore allocation of resources (positions, grants, etc.
• ), will be instrumental in shaping the physiognomy of academia and thereby corrupt science in a firmer way than any ideology.