

High-scoring grant applications yield more highly cited papers - Thevet
http://www.nature.com/news/high-scoring-grant-applications-yield-more-highly-cited-papers-1.17380#/b1

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Al-Khwarizmi
Did they control for the fact that low score means no (or less) funding, and
that makes it more difficult to produce results? This sounds obvious, but it's
not mentioned as a factor in the linked page...

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jessriedel
It would have been a lot more useful to also know how a percentile increase on
the review score translated into a percentile increase on the citation
distribution. We already the citations are highly skewed from a winner-take-
all dynamic, so even if you just barely increase your chance of funding the
top paper as opposed to the second-to-top paper, your expected number of
citations might jump a lot.

Of course, if you think citations are roughly proportional to scientific
value, then this doesn't matter. The absolute number of citations is the
important thing, and it really _is_ worth it to eek out a slightly higher
chance of funding the top paper. But if you believed that, you'd think from
the exponential explosion in citations that science today is vastly more
valuable than even a few years ago, and that physics hadn't stopped making
much progress back around 1970....

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acadien
Sometimes good science turns up null results or even worse, not interesting
results. These works tend to not get cited but are still important when
they're exploring new science or attempting to solve challenging problems. I
don't see what the problem is.

