I wish I could remember where I read this (or even in what academic field). But some academic once wrote that his most acclaimed, most cited papers were always the ones he thought of as mere summaries of existing knowledge. This made a strong impression on me. In most cases when dealing with high-level ideas, very good restatements of previous research are not only valuable, but likely to make those ideas click for some non-trivial number of readers. A few other thoughts:
This seems strongly related to the notion of inferential distance—we tend to underestimate it.
If people are disinclined to say the obvious, I wonder how many conversations on difficult topics consist mostly of talking past one another. Perhaps more than we’d otherwise think.
A few years ago, an eminent scientist once told me how he’d written an explanation of his field aimed at a much lower technical level than usual. He had thought it would be useful to academics outside the field, or even reporters. This ended up being one of his most popular papers within his field, cited more often than anything else he’d written.
Addendum: With his gracious permission: The eminent scientist was Ralph Merkle.
Mathematician Gian-Carlo Rota also made a similar comment in his 10 Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught, giving some examples of mathematicians better known for their expository work.
I can completely believe that these papers were successful (as measured by citations for example), but that does not necessarily mean they were the most useful papers or that people got the most out of them.
In a typical paper, somewhere in the introduction it will be necessary to say some basic “establishing the field” statements. Academics want to support these statements with references. A reference that says some basic thing, in plain words with very little technical hedging, is much easier to find and cite than a series of more targeted and precise points that add up to the same thing. At least in my field the papers that get the most citations are exactly these introduction citation ones.
A good example of an arguably “obvious” result making big waves is DiVincenzo’s criteria. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DiVincenzo%27s_criteria. I don’t think that many people really would have questioned that a “useful quantum computer” needed to be able to [I have changed the order of the 5 criteria] (2) write data, (4) do logic gates. (5) read data. While also being (1) big enough to be useful and (3) quantum. Its not a million miles from a tautology, with (1) and (3) translating to “useful” and “quantum” and (2,4,5) being pre-requisites for a thing to be called a computer. But, if I am writing a paper introduction saying “X satisfies the Divincenzo criteria [1]” sounds so much cooler and more considered than “X is a possibly a good platform for quantum computing”.
[I am sure that spelling out the criteria was useful. But suspect that the level of attention, as measured by citation, is probably outsized relative to the usefulness.]
I wish I could remember where I read this (or even in what academic field). But some academic once wrote that his most acclaimed, most cited papers were always the ones he thought of as mere summaries of existing knowledge. This made a strong impression on me. In most cases when dealing with high-level ideas, very good restatements of previous research are not only valuable, but likely to make those ideas click for some non-trivial number of readers. A few other thoughts:
This seems strongly related to the notion of inferential distance—we tend to underestimate it.
This is a good way to sum up the Lukeprog era of Less Wrong: There is plenty of low-hanging fruit in merely doing your research and saying the obvious.
If people are disinclined to say the obvious, I wonder how many conversations on difficult topics consist mostly of talking past one another. Perhaps more than we’d otherwise think.
Perhaps you read it here: Explainers Shoot High. Aim Low!:
That’s it, thanks. I should have known it was on Less Wrong!
Mathematician Gian-Carlo Rota also made a similar comment in his 10 Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught, giving some examples of mathematicians better known for their expository work.
I can completely believe that these papers were successful (as measured by citations for example), but that does not necessarily mean they were the most useful papers or that people got the most out of them.
In a typical paper, somewhere in the introduction it will be necessary to say some basic “establishing the field” statements. Academics want to support these statements with references. A reference that says some basic thing, in plain words with very little technical hedging, is much easier to find and cite than a series of more targeted and precise points that add up to the same thing. At least in my field the papers that get the most citations are exactly these introduction citation ones.
A good example of an arguably “obvious” result making big waves is DiVincenzo’s criteria. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DiVincenzo%27s_criteria. I don’t think that many people really would have questioned that a “useful quantum computer” needed to be able to [I have changed the order of the 5 criteria] (2) write data, (4) do logic gates. (5) read data. While also being (1) big enough to be useful and (3) quantum. Its not a million miles from a tautology, with (1) and (3) translating to “useful” and “quantum” and (2,4,5) being pre-requisites for a thing to be called a computer. But, if I am writing a paper introduction saying “X satisfies the Divincenzo criteria [1]” sounds so much cooler and more considered than “X is a possibly a good platform for quantum computing”.
[I am sure that spelling out the criteria was useful. But suspect that the level of attention, as measured by citation, is probably outsized relative to the usefulness.]
Darn, I wish I’d come up with that line myself!
:)
The lukeprog era of Less Wrong: “It’s amazing what you can learn when you look shit up!”