
Toward a University Department of Generalists - hunglee2
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/06/toward-a-university-department-of-generalists.html
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gus_massa
The main problem is that is much easier to publish a continuation of a
previous work than a paper in a brand new area.

It´t is easier to understand in a lab. If you were using a microscope to look
cell and the new area needs a Geiger counter, you need to buy one.

In theoretical research it's more difficult to explain, but in many cases you
need to know how to use the public software and also have a lot of custom
software. So to start a new research line, you need to learn or rewrite them.

And there are also some knowledge about which areas are interesting, and which
journals are friendly.

So the Department of Generalist perhaps will get more wide and interesting
results, but in the final statistics they will have only a half (or less) of
published articles. And if you don't win a Nobel prize, when the University
needs fundraising people only car about silly metrics like total publication
ammount.

> _Weighted by quality of course._

That's the hard part.

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op03
The 'publication range' metric is a good idea. Would be interesting to see
rankings.

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bsldld
"Department of Generalists", is that another name for Liberal Arts?

