Is Academia More Like Sports or Hollywood?
Academia is a star system, but what kind of star system is it?
Academic science is partly a star-system. Some people are famous, they get invited to fly all around the world (or Zoom all around the world, in these covid-times), they decline employment offers left-and-right, and get paid thousands to just show up to something, they are stars; others toil away, in respectable semi-obscurity, where a long-term contract (tenure!) is a major goal. Like with all star systems, there are many more pretenders than those that get to sit on the throne, while the benefits disproportionately go to the top.1
But is it a star system like Hollywood or a star system like sports?
What do I mean? A sports star (like Ronaldo, pictured above) is just obviously better than even most of the average professional players. As Alvaro de Menard recently wrote “Some hierarchies are undeniably legitimate. Chess, for example: […] There is simply no way Magnus Carlsen is secretly bad at chess.”
When it comes to Hollywood, though, the hierarchy is not so obvious. I mean, every single professional actor is incredibly talented (top 0.1% of talent) and/or worked hard; most of them are incredibly attractive too. But, there are 1,000s of other individuals in the same category and it’s not obvious that the ones that become stars really are that much better. Every year, the top theatre schools around the world churn out 1,000s of graduates who have dreams of becoming movie stars. They are all talented, some very talented, many worked hard, many are incredibly attractive.
Yes, as must be, only a few will become stars and it is not obvious to me that this is because they are that much better than their fellow graduates, like Ronaldo is better at soccer or Carlsen is better at chess. Every casting choice is a multi-dimensional choice where most professional actors would do a pretty good job, but some would be funnier, or better-looking, or sassier, or project more gravitas, or…2 Still, movie stars exist. I think that, at some point, they are stars because they are stars. Their fame is based on having been in big movies, parts which they got because they were in big movies.
So, is science like sports where the star scientists really are better in a fundamental sense or like Hollywood where everyone is really good compared to the general population, but Matthew Effects dominate and small early advantages eventually accumulate into stardom?
Given how often star scientists come out with a paper that says roughly the same thing as another paper, but theirs is the one that ends up getting cited 100x more; how often scooping and simultaneous publication happens, how important getting into a handful of journals is, how pedigree breeds pedigree3, given all of this, I think that we’re Hollywood. We’re pretty much all above average in scientific talent, we all work hard, but who becomes a star is due to a lot of randomness, networking, and the compound interest of (scientific) fame.
Best links of the week
https://jameshfisher.com/2017/11/08/i-hate-telephones/: “Months ago, I was ill. I needed to arrange an appointment with my GP. Apparently, you can do this online, but you need a User ID. Alternatively, you can call them, in which case you just need your name. But the idea of calling them made me feel more ill than I already was. I didn’t call. I waited it out, and eventually got better.” The authentication stuff is spot on and completely bonkers.
An excellent post on UX and the legal system: Citi cannot have it’s $900 million back by the always excellent Matt Levine
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This is perhaps the true mark of a star system and which is why, while I am sure that there are people who are famous in the world of accounting, I would not call accounting a “star system.” There aren’t 100s of young graduates every year trying to break into accounting, to have the majority of them “have to settle” for alt-accounting careers years later, while a handful reap enormous benefits.
The same can be true of sports. Take chess: it is possible that a player would exist who could always beat Carlsen [world #1] as they’d be immune to Carlsen’s generally superior gamesmanship (remember when he pushed one of the world’s top players into making a beginner’s blunder) and positional understanding; while somehow falling victim to Fabiano’s [world #2] ruthless prowess at calculation. Still, it is hard to imagine that such a Carlsen-beating player would not be in the world’s top 5 as well. There is no imaginable world in which a player cannot make it into the top 100 and still regularly beat Carlsen.
A 67 year old full Professor might be getting an award, but they will still be introduced by who their PhD advisor was 40 years earlier, and in which prestigious university this took place. The name dropping, oh, the name dropping….