I agree. To me, it seems that the big names mostly determine the paradigm and standard practices of their field. I think where we see the “median researcher problem” is in the auxiliary skills, such as statistics in social science. The big names may have blind spots or they just might not have anything to say in these areas. The result is that median skill and ideas fill in the gap.
The big names do tend to have disproportionate weight, but they’re few in number, and when a big name promotes something the median researcher doesn’t understand everyone just kind of shrugs and ignores them. Memeticity selects who the big names are, much more so than vice-versa.
I agree. To me, it seems that the big names mostly determine the paradigm and standard practices of their field. I think where we see the “median researcher problem” is in the auxiliary skills, such as statistics in social science. The big names may have blind spots or they just might not have anything to say in these areas. The result is that median skill and ideas fill in the gap.
The big names do tend to have disproportionate weight, but they’re few in number, and when a big name promotes something the median researcher doesn’t understand everyone just kind of shrugs and ignores them. Memeticity selects who the big names are, much more so than vice-versa.