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Does ranking performance lead to meritocracy? In my latest @arxiv preprint I show that the more you pay attention to a ranking, the less it reflects the actual skills of those being ranked arxiv.org/abs/1907.08053 
This happens because rankings naturally encourage to imitate top performers, which, however, is a self-defeating strategy that consolidates the advantage of those already at the top. Serendipity (luck) is a much better strategy to achieve success.
Take-home message in the context of academia: following some academic hotshot's research agenda instead of coming up with your own will only make *them* more successful
