Beer and Scientific Success
The New York Times is reporting today
“Ever since there have been scientists, there have been those who are wildly successful, publishing one well-received paper after another, and those who are not. And since nearly the same time, there have been scholars arguing over what makes the difference.
What is it that turns one scientist into more of a Darwin and another into more of a dud?
After years of argument over the roles of factors like genius, sex and dumb luck, a new study shows that something entirely unexpected and considerably sudsier may be at play in determining the success or failure of scientists — beer.
According to the study, published in February in Oikos, a highly respected scientific journal, the more beer a scientist drinks, the less likely the scientist is to publish a paper or to have a paper cited by another researcher, a measure of a paper’s quality and importance.”
Reading further in the news article you find out that the report is based on a survey of ornithologists – aka bird watchers. Ok, now I understand the reported results. A bunch of bird watchers sit around in the middle of some field drinking beer getting plastered and then wonder why their “scientific” paper isn’t accepted! Maybe it was the reported flying pig sightings!
An Update
It seems this news report triggered other readers of the NYT to question the conclusions. Fortunately, others did not immediately leap to my conclusion of the foolishness of the report but rather subjected the original report to careful scrutiny. In his Lithoguru blog, Chris Mack takes a serious look at the report. I am happy to report to you that his more indepth review and my jumped-to conclusion pretty much coincide. His conclusion – “Thus, the entire study came down to only one conclusion: the five worst ornithologists in the Czech Republic drank a lot of beer.”
Posted: March 19th, 2008 under General.
Tags: beer, new york times, nyt, report, science