
Scientists Can Publish Their Best Work at Any Age - barry-cotter
http://www.nature.com/news/scientists-can-publish-their-best-work-at-any-age-1.20926
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Xcelerate
I've always been a little bit worried about trying to get my "best work" in
life done as soon as possible. I frequently read that most people (physicists,
artists, entrepreneurs, etc.) did their greatest work when they were young,
and I had always assumed that it is because your brain loses plasticity or
something as you age. Being 26 years old, that often makes me feel like I only
have a few good years left.

This article considers a different explanation for the trend — one that I
hadn't considered. Namely, young people produce greater works because they
have more _time_ available. This study finds that the probability of producing
something "great" is evenly distributed across all works that a person ever
produces, so it seems that if you want to produce something great later in
life, then the secret is to rearrange your priorities so that you have enough
free time available to pursue whatever interests you.

That said, I will say that the Q factor makes me a little nervous — if you
have an inherently low Q value, how do you improve that? (Maybe you can't —
which would be unfortunate.)

~~~
NhanH
I have a hypothesis about how most people seemingly did their greatest work
when they were young: most of the very famous people we know of on average is
several generations before - when you think of theoretical physicists you
think of Einstein, Feynman, Higgs etc. . They started their careers a lot
earlier than us now, their institutions were less crufty, the edge of the
field, any field, is a lot closer. I'm willing to bet that on average the
current generation would do their best work later in life. It's as big as the
difference between how Baby boomers and Millennials starts their careers.

That said, experimental physicists and biologists have always done their best
works later in life (mid 40s last time I read). Elon Musk's best work should
still be ahead of him if he doesn't flop. And Jobs's best work (turning Apple
into the monster it is today) wasn't done in his youth either.

~~~
srtjstjsj
Math and theoretical physics -> best work is extremely intellectually
challenging -> done by youngsters. (Gauss is a special case)

Engineering and biology -> best work is managing a long-term research and
development program, managing large teams -> done by veterans.

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YeGoblynQueenne
>> The Q factor is obtained from a researcher’s citation record: it is
proportional to the logarithm of the number of citations that a scientist has
received over a certain time frame.

I'm not terribly convinced by this Q-value. What happens if a scientist's
field is a sub-field of a sub-field that's only of interest to very few
people? What if their field only has a couple of journals? Then they'll get a
low Q value but it won't be representative of the quality of their work.

For instance, see [1] :

 _The average biochemist ... will always score more highly than the average
mathematician, because biochemistry attracts more citations._

There's some reserach from Lise Getoor I think, that shows how scientists tend
to cluster in "cliques" [2] and that they will tend to cite each other's
works. It means you can't really draw many conclusions from even a normalised
h or Q, or whatever similar metric, except that the work is interesting to
researchers in the same field, so, er, to people who are interested in it.

________

[1] [http://www.nature.com/news/who-is-the-best-scientist-of-
them...](http://www.nature.com/news/who-is-the-best-scientist-of-them-
all-1.14108)

[2] A term from graph theory meaning a collection of nodes all connected by
edges, and not implying collusion, or a citation mill etc.

------
mandor
Original article:
[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6312/aaf5239](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6312/aaf5239)

~~~
mandor
PDF: [http://www.barabasilab.com/pubs/CCNR-
ALB_Publications/201310...](http://www.barabasilab.com/pubs/CCNR-
ALB_Publications/201310-04_Science-ScientificImpact/201310-04_Science-
ScientificImpact.pdf)

------
dorianm
Their Q value (ability) reminds me of Paul Graham's relentlessly resourceful
concept:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/relres.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/relres.html)

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pvaldes
Ehhm, Nope, they can't. Two real life examples.

"The selection process is open to candidates with a PhD who meet the following
criteria: Be in possession a PhD, awarded no later than three years"

"You can't apply if you are over 30 years old"

Enough said.

If airplane pilots where scientists, they would lose their pilot licenses
after three years, _without possibility to renew it_ of course (unless they
start again and wait for four or five years). Isn't science superfunny?

And it seems that nobody though on this.

