Again using the replication crisis as an example, you may have noticed the very wide (like, 1 sd or more) average IQ gap between students in most fields which turned out to have terrible replication rates and most fields which turned out to have fine replication rates.
This is rather weak evidence for your claim (“memeticity in a scientific field is mostly determined, not by the most competent researchers in the field, but instead by roughly-median researchers”), unless you additionally posit another mechanism like “fields with terrible replication rates have a higher standard deviation than fields without them” (why?).
unless you additionally posit an additional mechanism like fields with terrible replication rates have a higher standard deviation than fields without them
If the means/medians are higher, the tails are also higher as well (usually).
Norm(μ=115, σ=15) distribution will have a much lower proportion of data points above 150 than Norm(μ=130, σ=15). Same argument for other realistic distributions. So if all I know about fields A and B is that B has a much lower mean than A, by default I’d also assume B has a much lower 99th percentile than A, and much lower percentage of people above some “genius” cutoff.
Oh I see, you mean that the observation is weak evidence for the median model relative to a model in which the most competent researchers mostly determine memeticity, because higher median usually means higher tails. I think you’re right, good catch.
This is rather weak evidence for your claim (“memeticity in a scientific field is mostly determined, not by the most competent researchers in the field, but instead by roughly-median researchers”), unless you additionally posit another mechanism like “fields with terrible replication rates have a higher standard deviation than fields without them” (why?).
Why would that be relevant?
If the means/medians are higher, the tails are also higher as well (usually).
Norm(μ=115, σ=15) distribution will have a much lower proportion of data points above 150 than Norm(μ=130, σ=15). Same argument for other realistic distributions. So if all I know about fields A and B is that B has a much lower mean than A, by default I’d also assume B has a much lower 99th percentile than A, and much lower percentage of people above some “genius” cutoff.
Oh I see, you mean that the observation is weak evidence for the median model relative to a model in which the most competent researchers mostly determine memeticity, because higher median usually means higher tails. I think you’re right, good catch.