The Mathew Effect, and other Problems of Science

Dr Norman[1], a young scientist at the start of her academic career, writes a technical paper full of new observation and innovative ideas challenging accepted orthodoxy and submits this to a prestigious international Journal. Norman is happy to acknowledge minor, but valuable, input from her friend and colleague Dr Edwards and includes him as a co-author. Professor Yelland, the head of her department, must also be included as a co-author because it is his policy that all papers from his fiefdom carry his name. This is a very common practice, which the Professor justifies by saying that he is the Head of a Team and, by virtue of his reputation and contacts, all members of the team are beholden to him for their contracts, salaries, funding and (he likes to think), intellectual leadership [2].

But the Professor has another policy: authors of joint papers must list their names alphabetically. Were Norman’s paper to be submitted in the order of their relative contributions, as Norman, Edwards & Yelland - it would, correctly, establish Norman as the lead author. But under Yelland’s direction, she is forced to publish it as authored by Edwards, Norman and Yelland. An important distinction, as we shall see.

Why this policy? The Professor justifies it by saying:

“We’re all equal members of a democratic team – there are no prima donnas here”.

But there is an unspoken reason, one that everyone involved understands:

No one can be allowed to outshine their boss. With an alphabetically arranged author list, most will assume that my name comes last only because of the position of my name in the alphabet.

You think that’s petty? And so it is, but anyone who has worked in the dog-eat-dog world of academia will recognise that such petty, selfish stratagems are par for the course [3].

For Edwards, with the paper published, widely cited as Edwards et al. and winning prizes, there is Tenure and, on the future retirement of Yelland, appointment as the new Head of Department. To Professor Yelland’s already large bibliography is added another starred item: his reputation is boosted: fresh research grants and new acolytes  assured. Norman’s academic career languishes. Unable or unwilling to renew her contract, she resigns and seeks a position in industry where the harsh realities of commerce ensure that talent is rewarded on the basis of results, not reputation [4].

There is no wisdom in crowds

This story is a parable that illustrates many things, among them:

• turning your back on truth in favour of empathy consensus and inclusion;
• self-serving behaviour at the expense of others.
• The “publish or perish” requirement for academics if they want promotion, and..
• success itself, whether deserved or not, is self-reinforcing.

The last bulleted point is an example of the Mathew Effect [5]. The Effect is named from scripture:

“For unto everyone that hath, shall be given: and he shall have abundance. But from him that hath not, even that which he hath, shall be taken away.” St. Mathew Gospel, 25:29. (King James Bible translation).

The term Mathew Effect was coined in a 1968[6] paper in the journal Science by Robert K. Merton – a professor of sociology at Columbia University. In Merton’s abstract, the Effect is defined as:

“…a conception of ways in which certain psycho-social processes affect the allocation of resources to Scientists for their contributions – an allocation which in turn affects the flow of ideas and findings [7] through the communication networks of Science.”

But St. Mathew, and the King James translators put the idea much better.

The Mathew Effect is a cynical and bleak observation on how success can breed success: how reputation and authority can become self-sustaining: how rigid orthodoxy can exclude new ideas, potentially giving one person or small in-group at the head of every discipline an authority they may not deserve. The Mathew Effect can be seen in all fields of human endeavor but is most noticeable in the organised and structured disciplines of universities.

In retrospect, examples of the Mathew Effect in action are easy enough to find. Here are just a few from the field of science:

1. In 1543, Copernicus published his theory that the Earth and the planets circle the sun and not, as the scientific and theological paradigms of the time held, the other way round. Those who accepted and promoted Copernicus’ mathematical arguments were fiercely persecuted. In 1600, philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned alive at the stake for (among other things) his heretical Copernican beliefs. In 1632, Galileo Galilei, a proponent of the Copernican theory, was shown the torture implements of the Catholic Inquisition. As an eminent scientist his life was spared, but he was put under house arrest, and his books were banned. Science eventually moved on under the overwhelming weight of evidence for the heliocentric theory, but the Church’s ban on the works of Copernicus and Galileo remained until 1822.
2. In 1883, English polymath Francis Galton, influenced by Charles Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection, proposed selective breeding as a means of improving the human race. By “improving”, Galton of course meant creating more people like himself. White, Northern European, healthy, in control of all limbs and faculties and imbued with Victorian morality. He called his proposed new science Eugenics. Over the next 60 years in Europe and North America eugenic ideas became widely popular and a field of study for university departments and for implementation by government agencies. To their credit, the Catholic Church under Pope Pius XI (1922-1939), as well as left wing politicians, argued against the movement. But throughout the Western World, government-supported programs of coercive breeding and forced sterilisation were widely adopted, most enthusiastically by the National Socialist Government of Germany between 1933 and 1945. It took the post-war realisation of the full horrors and scale of Nazi genocidal programs, along with better scientific knowledge on how genetic inheritance actually works, to finally discredit the Eugenics movement.
3. In 1905, a 26-year-old mathematical prodigy called Albert Einstein, working as a lowly clerk (Assistant Examiner-Level III) in the Swiss Patents Office, published a paper on his Theory of Relativity. That paper, along with a follow-up paper in 1915, are now universally accepted as containing the most important and revolutionary ideas in the physical/mathematical/astronomical sciences since the 17^th century work of Isaac Newton. At that time, Einstein was not a member of any Scientific Establishment, and his paper created few waves. In 1905, the Nobel prize for Physics was awarded to Phillip Edward Anton von Lenard for his work on Cathode Rays. (You’ve heard of him, right?). In 1915, the prize was jointly awarded to the father and son team of William and Lawrence Bragg. In 1921, (after an interregnum due to the World War), Einstein got his long-deserved Nobel Prize, but that was not for his seminal work on relativity, but for other less well-known papers of his. In 1931, a number of German scientists published a book contesting Einstein’s ideas under the title (translation) “A Hundred Authors Against Einstein” [8].  But Einstein, now one of the big dogs of Physics, laconically replied [9]: “Only a hundred? If I had been wrong, one would have been enough”. If he had still been a patents clerk, this book would likely have terminated his career.
4. In the early 1980s, Barry Marshall and Robin Warren were medical researchers at the University of Western Australia. They discovered that gastric (or peptic) ulcers are caused by infection with the bacterium helicobacter pylori and not, as the medical establishment had believed for over a century, by stress, spicy food, excess stomach acid, whatever – the only treatment offered being was invasive surgery to reduce stomach acid production. In 1983, Marshall and Warren submitted their findings to the Gastroenterology Society of Australia. It was rejected by their reviewers as among the worst submissions they had received that year. The paper was subsequently published in 1984 by the Lancet (https://doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(84)91816-6 ). The publication had little initial impact because conventional medicine at the time firmly believed that bacteria could not survive in the acid environment of the stomach. Despairing of a breakthrough, in 1987 Marshall drank a culture of helicobacter pylori that he had obtained from his patients. Within a few days, he was suffering all the extremely unpleasant symptoms of an active gastric ulcer. Marshall then quickly cured himself with a course of antibiotics. This heroic experiment brought him notice and the infection theory slow acceptance. Starting in 1994, ten years after the first publication of the results of Marshall and Warren, they began to be awarded a stream of honours and prizes, culminating in the joint award of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2005.  But, for over 10 years, sufferers from gastric ulcers had been denied an available, effective, cheap and non-invasive cure for their condition [10].

As an antidote to the general cynical tone of this post, I am pleased to conclude on a more upbeat note. It is possible to argue that, when considering the inertia of scientific paradigms, things are getting better. Bruno in 1600 was burnt at the stake; Galileo in 1643 was merely shown the instruments of torture. It took 60 years for Galton’s eugenic theory to discredited. Einstein only had to wait 20 years for his for his reputation to be established. Marshall only had to wait 10.

Footnotes