The paradox of our Golden Age of science: more research is being published by more scientists than ever, but the result is actually slowing progress! With too much to read & absorb, papers in more crowded fields are citing new work less, and canonizing highly-cited articles more.
Based on 90M papers: “These findings suggest troubling implications…. If too many papers are published in short order, new ideas cannot be carefully considered against old, and processes of cumulative advantage cannot work to select valuable innovations.” doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2…
See also this 👇 thread on the burden of knowledge in science.
I think this is something we have to grapple with. As someone who reads & tweets out a lot of scientific articles, I am shocked about how much good, potentially important and potentially disruptive work is basically uncited & ignored, or else never built on. But how to solve it?
And the tools we use to manage this flood introduce their own problems: This study shows how how arbitrary factors (like hyphens in a paper title) can distort the progress of science, as academic search tools had issues with hyphenated titles, dropping their visibility & cites.
The winner in this world of too many scientific articles? Writers of reviews.

This work shows the they help legitimate and consolidate fields of knowledge.... and they also steal citations from other papers. Cites to references in reviews drop, as people cite the review instead!

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More from @emollick

7 Oct
My semi-regular reminder: being good at work means being good at meetings.

We spend 15% of work in meetings and managers spend 50%. Plus, post-COVID meetings are up 14%. So, spend a few minutes reviewing this research on the science of good meetings (1/): researchgate.net/publication/32… ImageImageImage
To pull out some findings. Things to do before the meeting:
✅only meet if needed
👯‍♀️make sure to only invite people who need to be there.
🎯set clear goals & outcomes
📄have an agenda that all review in advance
⏰make it short & relevant to all invited 2/
During the meeting...
⏱arrive on time
📋follow the agenda
🙋‍♀️🙋‍♂️everyone participates
💻📱never multitask
⚔️intervene if mood turns negative
🤪humor helps performance
🙅‍♀️leave time for objections
🗳Let everyone help decision-making. If a decision is made, tell everyone 3/
Read 5 tweets
5 Oct
Conformity to wrong beliefs about norms can have big impacts. An example: 87% of Saudi men privately agreed that they supported women working, but 70% thought other men were less supportive. When the men learned the real support, 6 month employment among their wives went up 179%.
And if you want to get an incorrect sense of norms, there is no better place to come to the wrong conclusion about what most real people believe than Twitter! (Except maybe TikTok or Facebook)

Here's the paper: home.uchicago.edu/bursztyn/Mispe…
Don’t base your hot takes about shared beliefs based on Twitter 👇

There can be real impacts!
Read 4 tweets
25 Sep
A surprisingly large part of the value of Google & other search engines is just Wikipedia.

This paper shows that Wikipedia articles appear in 67%-84% of all search engine results pages & they are the source for most “knowledge boxes” or other excerpts. nickmvincent.com/static/wikiser…
Because Wikipedia is usually used as a starting point that others expand upon, I think most people don’t realize how influential it is & how much of our world is built on it. For example, it plays a surprisingly large role in guiding the direction of scientific research 👇
Real world behavior is also strongly influenced by Wikipedia articles: Adding two paragraphs of text & nice pictures to randomly selected articles about small European cities led to an over 9% increase in hotel stays; the edits are worth $190k per year! marit.hinnosaar.net/wikipediamatte…
Read 5 tweets
21 Sep
Depressingly, a debunked theory is believed by the vast majority of teachers. The belief in Learning Styles (that some people are auditory learners, visual learners, etc) is not only wrong, it can hurt. But the research shows that when teachers learn why, they change. So, a 🧵1/
First off, there is just no evidence that teaching to a student's preferred "style" leads to any better teaching outcomes. And nobody really knows what a "learning style" is, over 71 different types have been proposed, but none help. But the belief persists for a reason... 2/
Students *think* they learn more when something matches their style... even though they objectively don’t and students don't even use their preferred styles. You may wonder, "So it doesn't work, what's the harm?"

Except we know that a belief in learning styles can hurt... 3/
Read 5 tweets
18 Sep
Blending cultures is awesome. What if Star Wars & Fahrenheit 451 were classic Russian lubok wood prints (Note samovar)? Or else Ottoman miniatures (details like the scimitar lightsaber)?

But wait, there's more! All 🇷🇺 art is by Andrey Kuznetsov & 🇹🇷 art is by @_Muratpalta 1/ ImageImageImageImage
Can you guess these? Here we have the original movie as a Russian woodblock & the sequel as a Ottoman miniature. Plus two other well-known films. 2/ ImageImageImageImage
And here is Tarantino, Ottoman miniature style. 3/ ImageImageImageImage
Read 6 tweets
8 Sep
Our intuitions about creativity are very different than reality. In this survey, most people didn't know:
🧠Group brainstorming generates less ideas than individuals working alone
📦Constraints increase creativity
👩‍👦Kids are not more creative than adults sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
Here's a thread on the myths of group brainstorming, which people keep getting wrong...
And here’s an example of how constraints can boost creativity 👇
Read 4 tweets

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