Sylvie Noël submits to us the following fallacy—which appears in the editorial of a peer-reviewed journal. The editor-in-chief makes the following observation:

(…) only a small fraction of the top 100 papers ranked by the number of citations (17 of 100) were published by single authors.

From this, he makes the following conclusion:

(…) a published paper resulting from collaborative work has a higher chance of attracting more citations.

I leave it as an exercise to figure out why the logic is wrong.

But the implication is that solo authors are less interesting. Instead, I believe that solo authors probably work on different problems. (Hint: This could be the subject of a study of its own!)

Why?

Because of something I call problem inertia. For collaboration to occur, several people must come together and agree to a joint project. Sometimes money is required to pay the assistants or the students. All of these factor means that small problems or risky problems will be ignored in favor of safe bets. To put it bluntly, Microsoft will not sell PHP plugins! Hence, statistically, teams must be deliberate and careful. Also, fewer problems can be visited: even if the selected problem is a bad one, changing the topic in mid-course might be too expensive.

An autonomous author can afford to take more risks. Even more so if he has a permanent position. This may explain why Peter Turney seems to believe that researchers lack ambition. They may simply be rational: if it takes you three weeks to even get started on a project, you cannot afford many false starts!

Consider Seth Roberts‘ self-experimentation strategy and Roberts’ take regarding funding:

One reason my self-experimentation was effective was it didn’t depend on grants. No matter what I found, no matter how strange or upsetting or impossible or weird the results might be, I could publish them and continue to investigate them.

This view supports my theory that solo authors will work on different problems.

Disclaimers: I do hold a couple of research grants currently. I write almost all my research papers with others.

According to a recent study, students do better if they skip class and listen to the podcasts. The article has been discussed in the New Scientist and the New York Times, but here is a direct quote:

Results indicated that students in the podcast condition who took notes while listening to the podcast scored significantly higher than the lecture condition.

The article is not hard science. It is a single set of experiments. What I like though, is the observation made by the New Scientist that podcast lectures are good for lecturers too. On this subject, see my post Be a good teacher where I point out that the focus on delivering the content is wrong.

Reference: Dani McKinney, Jennifer L. Dycka and Elise S. Luber, iTunes University and the classroom: Can podcasts replace Professors?, Computers & Education, Volume 52, Issue 3, April 2009, Pages 617-623.

Source: iterating toward openness

Research is an industry. Unlike other industries, it is often almost entirely bound to government funding. Because research takes a long time to bear fruit, people (not equipment) should be the primary concern of decision makers. Specifically, the government is responsible for keeping the research job market healthy, so that talented and productive researchers can remain gainfully employed for many years. Because research is such an artificial industry, it should be possible to predict the evolution of the job market with some accuracy.

Recently, the Canadian government reallocated research funding. In particular, it cut funding to its research arm, the National Research Council. Top-notch researchers are losing their permanent positions and entering an already crowded job market. To compensate, the government will  allocate more scholarships to business graduate students.

I think that the government is misguided:

• In most fields, too many successful graduate students fall out of the system after graduation. We have to create more research jobs. Reliance on slave labour (such as students) may suit the tenured professors on the short term, but it hurts us all on the long term by making the job market unbalanced. Also, unlike professors, government researchers do not train new Ph.D. students. Hence, government research jobs are essential in keeping the job market healthy on the long run. We should massively invest in government research laboratories!
• Grant money should not be locked down for equipment when salaries are needed. Currently, some Canadian professors can afford to buy 200 desktops, but pay only for 10 researchers. By preventing professors from converting grants to salaries, it makes the job market worse! Often, we need more post-doctoral fellowships, not more desktops! The government should encourage professors to create more post-doctoral positions.
• Schools are already rejecting MBA students for lack of space. Diverting science funding to offer MBA students scholarships is almost certainly wasteful. 

This article summarizes the results of the current funding cuts in research. It almost feels like Bush moved up North. Dozens of millions are being cut. My previous employer, the National Research Council—Canada’s largest research organization—was cut as well. 

Fortunately, our wise government saw fit to compensate with more business degrees:

 $17.5 million over three years to (…) to fund an additional 400 master’s and 100 doctoral scholarships “focused on business-related degrees.” 

Summary: less funding for degrees in science, more funding for degrees in business.

Many years ago, I read the following piece of wisdom:

• If you had only one year left to live, what would you do differently?
• What are you waiting for to make these changes, now?

Let me propose a variant for researchers:

• If you could only write one more research paper, what would you write?
• Why aren’t you writing it?