Citation Map Shows Top Science Cities

A typical symptom by ThunderBird89 · 2011-03-20 05:00 · Score: 4, Funny

This is a typical symptom of scientists/researchers having way too much free time on their hands. They need to find a way to spend it properly, or they will kill us all one day.

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Hyperbole: I use it liberally!

Re:A typical symptom by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-20 05:47 · Score: 1

I'm sure your God won't allow that to happen.
Re:A typical symptom by ThunderBird89 · 2011-03-20 06:42 · Score: 1

We really need a glyph to indicate humor or sarcasm, since apparently some people wouldn't know it if it hit them in the face with a sledgehammer...

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Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
Re:A typical symptom by brokeninside · 2011-03-20 07:12 · Score: 1

Yeah, if only there was punctuation symbol widely acknowledged to indicate sarcasm!
Or, failing that, perhaps even a widely used convention would be nice. Or not. ;)
Re:A typical symptom by guruevi · 2011-03-20 10:49 · Score: 1

All we need to do is educate Americans in proper English, classic reading as well as writing skills. Then they would be able to understand both humor and sarcasm. If the highlight of University courses in English is Shakespeare then we have lost.

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Re:A typical symptom by WATist · 2011-03-20 11:51 · Score: 1

Umm, I don't blame them. I've heard more outrageous things proposed or said seriously. Then I wished sledgehammers were involved.
Re:A typical symptom by severoon · 2011-03-20 13:15 · Score: 1

Did they adjust for the researcher population? Of course a big city with 100x the number of researchers will produce 100x the results...

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but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
Re:A typical symptom by arivanov · 2011-03-20 20:21 · Score: 1

I would not say so.
That is what is the key factor in determining how much funding you get. The chart gives a good initial estimate of the likelihood for a site to produce a cited paper.
One comment however - the method used is skewed slightly against Russian and Chinese. These two countries still have a significant amount of stuff published in their native language journals and those tend to get less than average citations from abroad.
It is also surprising that places crippled by war and sanctions around ex Ugoslavia still deliver top science while cough cough some of their well off neighbours do not. It also shows the _REAL_ amount of innovation going on the Indian subcontinent. Good graph for slapping anyone talking about exporting research there.

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Re:A typical symptom by polymeris · 2011-03-21 14:54 · Score: 1

Exactly. Notice how Europeans always get sarcasm? Must be their superior education system. I bet Norwegians are masters at it.

Re:Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl i 19 by WrongSizeGlass · 2011-03-20 05:00 · Score: 1

I'm just asking if he did or not. If he didn't, then why doesn't he provide us proof?

Did you happen to check the story on Scientific Papers? Perhaps you'll find your proof there?

misleading metrics by Hazel+Bergeron · 2011-03-20 05:07 · Score: 5, Interesting

"Number of links" has always struck me as an odd metric (see also PageRank). The greatest work from the PoV of scientific advancement isn't necessarily the most cited. The greatest determinant will be how fashionable a particular field is - a few leading researchers in a particular field are likely to have a huge number of cites, especially if they constitently reach the well-known publications, but it doesn't necessarily mean the field is very scientifically interesting.

Then, even if great progress has been made, you get the effect that people don't necessarily cite the seminal investigations so much as the pioneering refiners.

Another interesting effect, of course, is the difference between provenance of researcher and location of publication. The US and the UK are particularly good at draining other countries of already well-educated people, but this doesn't mean that the US or the UK have performed the academic preparation necessary to produce excellent researchers.

Re:misleading metrics by mikejuk · 2011-03-20 05:15 · Score: 1

... The US and the UK are particularly good at draining other countries of already well-educated people, but this doesn't mean that the US or the UK have performed the academic preparation necessary to produce excellent researchers.
Ah but it doesn't alter the location of the centers that are doing well. If you are interested in identifying places that are doing the best/most work then you don't caer if the people doing the work have come from somewhere else!
Re:misleading metrics by metlin · 2011-03-20 05:26 · Score: 1

The first report that you linked to is very interesting -- thank you.
It provides an overview of non-U.S. citizens who were awarded doctorates in science and engineering, but there is no comparison against U.S. citizens provided, other than this little excerpt.
From the paper:

Some academics and scientists do not view scientific migration as a problem, but as a net gain.
These proponents believe that the international flow of knowledge and personnel has enabled the
U.S. economy to remain at the cutting-edge of science and technology. A 2005 report of the
National Academies states that:

The participation of international graduate students and postdoctoral scholars is an important
part of the research enterprise of the United States. In some fields they make up more than
half the populations of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. If their presence were
substantially diminished, important research and teaching activities in academe, industry, and federal laboratories would be curtailed, particularly if universities did not give more attention to recruiting and retaining domestic students.50.
Re:misleading metrics by Hazel+Bergeron · 2011-03-20 05:34 · Score: 1

Surely it is as interesting to find out what produces the excellent researchers as it is to find out what consumes them:
(i) from the PoV of improving education at home and abroad;
(ii) for countries with potential for local scientific growth to note where they are losing out and consider how to improve;
(iii) to perhaps produce a more distributed network of research centres rather than consolidating skills in a few dozen centres across the world. (Is so much centralisation necessary or even positive?)
In particular, the headline "top science city" suggests that most of the work done is locally in producing the research, when as much input may have occurred elsewhere in nurturing an excellent researcher. For example, where the US is "number one" scientifically, it is increasingly so only in being able to identify which foreigners to import. Is that healthy?
Re:misleading metrics by pongo000 · 2011-03-20 05:38 · Score: 1

The US and the UK are particularly good at draining other countries of already well-educated people, but this doesn't mean that the US or the UK have performed the academic preparation necessary to produce excellent researchers.
Cite needed.
Re:misleading metrics by Hazel+Bergeron · 2011-03-20 05:46 · Score: 1

The part before the "but" is covered above.
The part after the "but" is a statement of logic: we cannot assume that a university in country X full of good researchers implies that country X provides good preparation for research (or any sort of good education). Are you asking for evidence that the US education system is not as good as its research output would speciously suggest?
Re:misleading metrics by Mathlol1 · 2011-03-20 06:06 · Score: 1

A very good idea and I for one am curious where the smartest or most influential people in their fields originate(d) from. We will never know the origins of the smartest people. The only connection the public has to them is where they ended up and made a name for themselves. It would be pretty hard and darn hard to track that next step to this process they've mapped.
Re:misleading metrics by MtHuurne · 2011-03-20 06:12 · Score: 1

I think this is a generic problem with metrics: the things that are easy to measure do not necessarily correspond with the things you want to know. While citations have some relation to the scientific value of publications, it is not an extremely strong correlation. And since citations play a major role in performance evaluation of researchers, there is motivation to game the system.
On the other hand, you cannot directly measure some property that is not clearly defined. Is it better to measure something that is inaccurate or to not measure at all? In my opinion it is useful to measure but you should be very careful in interpreting the results. For example, if you measure the lines of code in a project, the result is useful to determine how much effort it takes to maintain the code, but as an indicator of productivity it is so flawed that it is better to ignore it.
Re:misleading metrics by cb123 · 2011-03-20 06:17 · Score: 2

If you read the paper or click on the maps you will actually see that they DO NOT CORRECT for local population density. So, the metric in question is absolute rather than "per capita" productivity. This doesn't entirely invalidate it, but it calls into question how you would verbalize or interpret the results.
I mean, if 8 of the top 10 cities for science *by any metric* are also 8 of the top 10 cities by population you have said something less interesting. These cities are already top cities for "being" at all. :-)
It would be far more interesting to normalize in a per capita sense. There are clearly some major outliers in that sense scrolling around on the map. Vancouver lept out at me, but I'm sure others could find them as well. Now, wouldn't it be nice if the fancy visualization researchers helped us along in that task? :-)
Re:misleading metrics by jonbryce · 2011-03-20 06:35 · Score: 1

If it is the place where the best people from around the world go to to work together, that is significant.
Re:misleading metrics by demonlapin · 2011-03-20 06:39 · Score: 1

I can think of no better way for a nation to acquire skills than to import people that some other country has gotten to the point of finishing undergraduate training, pouring in the high-value-added grad school, and working them to death as postdocs on the slim hope that they'll score a tenure-track faculty position.

Besides, given the dismal job prospects of most science PhDs, Americans are often making a very rational choice to stay out of those fields. If you want to work yourself to death, medical or dental school pays a lot better in the long run, and if you'd like an easier lifestyle there are plenty of jobs that will pay a resourceful college graduate $30k a year.
Re:misleading metrics by sznupi · 2011-03-20 07:19 · Score: 1

Even "per capita in a given metro area" would make TFA more revealing... :/ (that said, even a map which tracks the educational steps of "most accomplished / cited" group shouldn't be too hard; it's all basically public info)

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Re:misleading metrics by Idarubicin · 2011-03-20 08:24 · Score: 2

If you read the paper or click on the maps you will actually see that they DO NOT CORRECT for local population density. So, the metric in question is absolute rather than "per capita" productivity. This doesn't entirely invalidate it, but it calls into question how you would verbalize or interpret the results.
Local population density is pretty irrelevant here, too, unless your question is "what is the probability that I will meet the author of a journal article while walking down the street?" (To be fair, that is something one might be interested in when choosing where to live, but even in large cities there are often university enclaves near campus.) If you put a university with ten thousand students in a city of a million people, all other things being equal there's no reason why its scientific output ought to differ from a ten-thousand-student university in a 'college town' with just fifty thousand residents. The size of the circle in Los Angeles has nothing to do with the city itself, and everything to do with the output of UCLA.
More interesting would be something like number and quality of publications normalized according to the number of graduate students and postdocs (since they're the ones who are most likely doing the actual hands-on research) in the city.

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~Idarubicin
Re:misleading metrics by cb123 · 2011-03-20 10:48 · Score: 1

I actually was thinking of "what city would I like to live in". :-) You are correct that not all "capita"s are equally relevant and probably a total of grad students plus professors is a better denominator. Less refined census data than that is easier to come by, though. I do think that bigger cities support more schools and/or bigger graduate departments, other things being equal. So, in a vague statistical correlation sense just bulk census data gets you part of the way there.
If the real question is "what university would I like to be near" then a city is also the wrong aggregation unit, so not only the normalization but also the aggregation should change. I believe per university/per student or per professor/group output is what most academics would like to know for bragging rights or even funding priority reasons, but they usually make such evaluations themselves on a per department basis.
Re:misleading metrics by mapkinase · 2011-03-20 16:56 · Score: 1

CI is a bad indicator as a quality of a particular paper or a field but it's ok when applied to the whole science (not just a field, as you are saying).
The fact that a man has BMW does not mean that he is rich, but the fact that Moscow has N BMW's and Kiev has M is a significant indicator.

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Re:Psychology? by WrongSizeGlass · 2011-03-20 05:12 · Score: 5, Funny

Since when is psychology a science?

Hmm, someone seems to have issues with psychology. Would you like to talk about it? ;-)

Northeast USA, represent! by Shihar · 2011-03-20 05:15 · Score: 1

Sorry Southern US, maybe next year.

P.S. Austin, TX isn't in the south. It is San Francisco colonizing you.

Re:Northeast USA, represent! by cobrausn · 2011-03-21 02:49 · Score: 1

Might explain why it infuriates me every time I go there. Or it could be going to the grocery store and watching hipsters buy lobster and wine with food stamps. Not sure. I've always considered Austin where people talk about accomplishing things and Houston where they actually do it. Austin is also very heavily represented in Chemistry because half the population is UT students, and UT has a lot of post-grads.

Also, nobody colonizes Texas. Nobody. Except Mexico. But aside from them, nobody.

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How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
Re:Northeast USA, represent! by slyrat · 2011-03-21 03:29 · Score: 1

Sorry Southern US, maybe next year.
P.S. Austin, TX isn't in the south. It is San Francisco colonizing you.
Hey at least Atlanta (GaTech primarily I'm guessing) is showing up well for Chemistry. Actually it would be neat to see something similar for other engineering and science fields. I'm real curious about computer science / math papers.
Re:Northeast USA, represent! by stewbacca · 2011-03-21 07:03 · Score: 1

I live in Austin. I ain't no South. The worst part about Austin, however, is it is surrounded by Texas.
Re:Northeast USA, represent! by stewbacca · 2011-03-21 07:07 · Score: 1

Funny all my friends here in Austin say Houston is a nice place to be FROM...
Lobster? Seriously? Hipsters, yes. They'll grow up some day, but for now, they are far more tolerable than the inner-city crime associated with Houston.
There 1.5 million residents in Austin and surrounding area and about 50,000 UT students, most of whom are not Chemistry students, so that assessment is not valid either.
Re:Northeast USA, represent! by cobrausn · 2011-03-21 07:17 · Score: 1

Funny all my friends here in Austin say Houston is a nice place to be FROM...
Your hipster friends? :)

Besides, that smell in Houston? That's the smell of Money.

Lobster? Seriously? Hipsters, yes. They'll grow up some day, but for now, they are far more tolerable than the inner-city crime associated with Houston.
Well, it's a good thing most of the 4.5 million people in the greater Houston area don't live in the 'crime ridden' inner-city areas. Hipsters just annoy me, they don't actually seem to hurt much except productivity. Crime, on the other hand... well, if we weren't once considered a 'sanctuary city', I doubt it would be near as bad.

There 1.5 million residents in Austin and surrounding area and about 50,000 UT students, most of whom are not Chemistry students, so that assessment is not valid either.
Half was meant in an exaggerative manner. All that was meant by that statement was that Austin has a lot of post-grads, a lot of whom do research. I happen to know one. Hence the big bubble.

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How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
Re:Northeast USA, represent! by stewbacca · 2011-03-21 09:38 · Score: 1

I'm 42. We don't have hipsters at my age. We are too young for hippies and too old for hipsters.
All I could smell in Houston was smog and humidity.
You are seriously the only person on the planet advocating Houston over Austin. For one, Houston is East Texas, which is the same thing as Louisiana.
Re:Northeast USA, represent! by cobrausn · 2011-03-21 10:10 · Score: 1

You are seriously the only person on the planet advocating Houston over Austin. For one, Houston is East Texas, which is the same thing as Louisiana.
I'm not advocating anything - merely pointing out my observations from my time in Austin. I was interested in moving there once. Then I wasn't. That simple. Your attitude throughout this is underpinning why - the Austinites I met had delusions of cultural grandeur mixed with disdain for everyone else who isn't as 'weird' as you all claim to be or refused to acknowledge the inherent superiority of everything Austin. Sure, it has things that make it interesting, but nothing on the scale that seems to exist in the minds of those who live there.

And if you consider Louisianna the same thing as East Texas, and East Texas the same thing as Houston, you have probably never been to two of those three places for any period of time.

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How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?

Re:Psychology? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-20 05:16 · Score: 1

Perhaps you should make some attempt to correct your limited view of the world, apparently constructed from an arm-chair. I'll give you a bit of advice, start by reading (seek information), and stop being a believer.

Re:Psychology? by mikejuk · 2011-03-20 05:17 · Score: 1

Since when has chemistry been a science? :-)

The Maps by Big_Oh · 2011-03-20 05:17 · Score: 4, Informative

Physics: http://www.leydesdorff.net/topcity/figure1.htm Chemistry: http://www.leydesdorff.net/topcity/figure2.htm Psychology: http://www.leydesdorff.net/topcity/figure1.htm And for the record, the authors refer to these as "fields of study", not "fields of science."

Re:The Maps by Hillman · 2011-03-20 08:26 · Score: 1

If you like these maps, I did something similary with scientific collaboration. You can see it there http://olihb.com/2011/01/23/map-of-scientific-collaboration-between-researchers/
Re:The Maps by polymeris · 2011-03-21 15:00 · Score: 1

Most productive place near my town is called "Post Office" and is somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Weird.

Re:Psychology? by Nidi62 · 2011-03-20 05:18 · Score: 1

It's more of a science than Political Science

And yes, I'm a Political Science graduate student(and have also dabbled in psychology in undergrad)

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The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil

Offtopic, I know by Nidi62 · 2011-03-20 05:23 · Score: 3, Insightful

P.S. Austin, TX isn't in the south. It is San Francisco colonizing you.

Every Southerner would agree with you. In fact, most Southerns believe that Texas isn't even in the South. It's its own separate, crazy entity.

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The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil

Re:Offtopic, I know by Sponge+Bath · 2011-03-20 06:29 · Score: 1

"It's its own separate, crazy entity."
Crazy like a Fox (News commentator)!

Pay attention CERN by FlapHappy · 2011-03-20 05:23 · Score: 1

Do NOT, I repeat do NOT, outsource any of the research or implementation of the Super Large Hadron Collider to anyone living in or around Moscow.

Re:Pay attention CERN by MasterPatricko · 2011-03-21 02:46 · Score: 1

The researchers who parse the data from CERN are based all around Europe, so the papers are probably attributed to their home universities.

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Word is for office girls by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-20 05:26 · Score: 2, Interesting

In what software did they write the paper? Word 97? It is absolutly infuriating to see a scientific paper not written in TeX-based software.

Re:Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl i 19 by aBaldrich · 2011-03-20 05:28 · Score: 1

Because everybody is innocent until proven guilty

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Comment removed by account_deleted · 2011-03-20 05:29 · Score: 4, Interesting

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Renaming cities. by pspahn · 2011-03-20 05:33 · Score: 1

Is it a sign that our world is becoming too PC? Can't we still call it Fort Collins, and not just Collins? Is "Fort" too war-mongering for society today?

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Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.

Re:Renaming cities. by arb+phd+slp · 2011-03-20 06:17 · Score: 1

University Park, PA is listed as "University."
Apparently a "park" is too play-mongering for these researchers so they renamed it.
[/sarcasm] seriously now, why would you jump to the conclusion anti-war political correctness was why the name was truncated?

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Re:Renaming cities. by pspahn · 2011-03-20 06:37 · Score: 1

Because I was joking.

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Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.

Re:Psychology? by metlin · 2011-03-20 05:33 · Score: 1

Ironically, I'd say that qualitative poli sci and the philosophy of poli sci is a lot more robust than the quantitative approaches that seem to be in vogue these days.

When it comes to psychology, it is often the opposite -- but only for small, niche areas.

That said, there are seminal works in either category that are quite amazing, but those are few and far between.

No IBM? by Doc+Ruby · 2011-03-20 05:36 · Score: 1

I looked at Yorktown Heights, NY (about 50 mi north of NYC), but saw no papers indicated. Yet that's IBM's main R&D center. I suspect the data is not properly representative.

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make install -not war

Re:No IBM? by PolygamousRanchKid+ · 2011-03-20 06:06 · Score: 3, Insightful

IBM doesn't publish. They patent.

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Re:No IBM? by elsurexiste · 2011-03-20 07:57 · Score: 1

IBM doesn't publish. They patent.
Wrong. I work for IBM and when I publish, I put my affiliation as everyone else (IBM Arg.). But sure, I also patent.

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Re:No IBM? by T.E.D. · 2011-03-21 01:31 · Score: 1

Which do you do first?
Re:No IBM? by elsurexiste · 2011-03-21 04:24 · Score: 1

100% of the times I published first, and after that I submitted the patent. I know a lot of colleagues that do the same thing.
Sorry, no stereotypes here to bash, or insightful comments about it. You can believe them if you want to, but reality begs to differ.

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Psychology Map May Be Incorrect by schwnj · 2011-03-20 05:37 · Score: 3, Interesting

In looking at the psychology map, I am suspicious that the authors made a minor error in their data collection. The database they used (Web of Science, Science Citation Index) does contain a category for psychology; however, it lists only the 71 psychology journals that are in the physiological/cognitive subfields of psychology. The overwhelming majority of psychology journals (almost 500 of them) are not in those fields, so the search should have also included the Social Science Citation Index data (also part of the Web of Science, just involves clicking another box). I suspect the authors only used the Science (and not Social Science) database because the data displayed on the map seems to over-represent programs that are strong in physio/cognitive, and under-represents (or ignores) programs that are strong in social, developmental, and clinical psychology.

Re:Psychology Map May Be Incorrect by schwnj · 2011-03-20 06:28 · Score: 1

If that was the authors' intent, they didn't specify that in their paper. And, although there is plenty of fluff in psychology, some of the most highly cited journals in psychology are in social, developmental, and clinical. (In fact, the flagship social psych journal is the most often cited psych journal by articles appearing in "hard" science places like Science & PNAS -- there's some neat visualizations of this at eigenfactor.org.) If you look at the "top-tier" journals in each psychology subfield, you will find nothing but rigorous, experimental science.
Re:Psychology Map May Be Incorrect by stewbacca · 2011-03-21 07:56 · Score: 1

Cognitive scientist here (well, sort of...I deal in academic tests and metrics)...that's because cognition is the only important field of psychology ;-)

Re:Psychology? by 19061969 · 2011-03-20 05:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

Since it used the scientific method? Don't take my word for it - try reading some papers on working memory, psychophysics or the statistics of psychometrics to realise that psychs have to have a stronger understanding of the scientific method than most other scientists. FYI, read the real papers not the type of nonsense that comes from critical analysis.

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Re:Psychology? by ModernGeek · 2011-03-20 05:45 · Score: 1

Ever since they started taking notes.

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Politically incorrect map by shutdown+-p+now · 2011-03-20 05:47 · Score: 1, Interesting

I wonder how long before someone slaps the map authors as being racist, as it is so obviously politically incorrect, with green largely clustered in US and Europe.

big red circles by fragfoo · 2011-03-20 05:55 · Score: 2

Moscow and Kiev have big red circles on the physics maps. I wonder if it is an interesting case study to discover why. Is it a language barrier or are the publications not relevant enough. I personaly believe the issue is not the quality of the publications, russia (and former ussr) has allways produced great scientists.

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Sig? Heil

Re:big red circles by MoonBuggy · 2011-03-20 06:16 · Score: 1

It may be the signal-to-noise ratio; unless I've been very much misled (not beyond the realms of possibility, I freely admit), Russia/China/Eastern Europe do have a much greater problem with academic dishonesty than the west (and I have also heard it said that they are more accepting of 'success' by dishonesty, but I don't have remotely enough firsthand experience of their cultures to know whether I agree with that), meaning that the work of the many extremely capable scientists they do produce could well be buried among the larger quantity of junk.
Re:big red circles by ThunderBird89 · 2011-03-20 06:56 · Score: 1

The Hungarian system is fairly critical, not really accepting of dishonesty. Then again, I'm in Political Science, so I can't speak for other fields.
I do know that in the past, we used to produce many high-quality scientists, who later emigrated to the West around the start of WWII, collectively termed "Martians", but since then, the educational system has gone downhill in quality, not quality control and rigor, just the material being taught to students. Hence the small, but very green circle of Budapest in all three fields.

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Hyperbole: I use it liberally!

One of these things is not like the others. by frist · 2011-03-20 05:58 · Score: 1

Is this a SAT test question? Physics, Chemistry, and Psychology? Why not Voodoo or Phrenology?

Re:One of these things is not like the others. by schwnj · 2011-03-20 07:04 · Score: 2

If the scientific method discovered that there was actual substance to astrology, then it would be a science. (But it doesn't, so it's not.)
Re:One of these things is not like the others. by Nigel+Stepp · 2011-03-20 10:21 · Score: 1

For those reading who aren't trolls: If you happen to think this way, then your definition of psychology probably comes from elementary school, TV, or a college intro course (which too often amounts to about the same thing). There are many branches of psychology; the least scientific of which seem to be the most well known to layfolk. Although I do agree that some fMRI studies of the brain can be pretty close to phrenology.

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Re:One of these things is not like the others. by frist · 2011-03-20 13:04 · Score: 1

Here's another SAT question. Psychologists are to psychiatrists as chiropractors are to ....?
Re:One of these things is not like the others. by Nigel+Stepp · 2011-03-20 15:25 · Score: 1

Excellent, I'll risk providing nourishment for a troll just *once* more to show how this particular layfolk has illustrated my point. Psychologists are hardly at all related to psychiatrists, making that an ill-posed analogy. One branch of psychology is "clinical psychology". That branch deals with analysis and such and is what most people think of as "Psychology", and is indeed related to psychiatry. The rest of psychology, however, has nothing at all to do with that. So, the completion to the analogy may well be "lobsters".

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4096R/EF7BAFA6 79E1 DF98 D09D 898F 9A11 F6F0 DDDC 23FA EF7B AFA6
Re:One of these things is not like the others. by stewbacca · 2011-03-21 08:00 · Score: 1

No but applying the scientific method to astrology demonstrates astrology is a crock of shit.
Re:One of these things is not like the others. by stewbacca · 2011-03-21 08:02 · Score: 1

There is no answer because the SAT no longer has an analogies section. (Certified College Board SAT test proctor here!)
Re:One of these things is not like the others. by stewbacca · 2011-03-21 08:04 · Score: 1

Well stated. Psychoanalysis is about as related to cognition as motorcycles are related to water bottles.

Re:Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl i 19 by Kvasio · 2011-03-20 06:01 · Score: 1

if you repeat a BS thousand times, someone may quote you in a scientific paper, then it gets requoted and it becomes "verifable fact" for Wikipedia ... or court

Re:GTFO by shutdown+-p+now · 2011-03-20 06:09 · Score: 1

You need to calibrate your sarcasm detector.

Language? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-20 06:09 · Score: 2, Insightful

Moscow's Physics and Chemistry papers would be IN RUSSIAN. Hence they would not be as commonly cited by English authors. Hence the large red circle on Moscow. Different language != poor quality research.

Re:Language? by WindBourne · 2011-03-21 08:33 · Score: 1

And yet, the same is true of all the other nations as well. We are talking German, Hiragana, Katakana, Mandarin, Hindi, Tamil, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, etc. Now of the others have MONSTER BIG RED SPOTS. So, why do you think that you are different?

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I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2011-03-20 06:28 · Score: 1

Comment removed based on user account deletion

London girls are insecure by loufoque · 2011-03-20 06:57 · Score: 2

Is the only thing you can really conclude from the psychology map.

Re:Twin Cities by Florian+Weimer · 2011-03-20 07:14 · Score: 1

Perhaps they used the author's home address for the map location when available? The data for southern Germany seems a bit strange, too. And the interactive map is rather crappy: no legend, no proper zooming, no apparent way to access the raw data associated with the points.

No Tucson (University of Arizona)? by burningcpu · 2011-03-20 07:36 · Score: 1

The University of Arizona is the 4th top ranked University for Analytical Chemistry, and important advances in solar cell research, organic LEDs (OLEDs), and CCDs for analytical use were pioneered here. Any such plot that does not include UA is obviously flawed, especially considering that Arizona State University was listed. ASU's Chemistry program is simply not of the same caliber.

Re:Psychology? by MightyMartian · 2011-03-20 07:48 · Score: 1

Hmm, someone seems to have issues with psychology. Would you like to talk about it? ;-)

And when he's done, he'll offer you a free personality test.

--
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.

Data display completly flawed by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-20 07:50 · Score: 1

The data plotting is deeply flawed : when you go on the chemistry map (http://www.leydesdorff.net/topcity/figure2.htm) in France, the data about Nice (south East of France) displayed by hovering over the corresponding circle correspond to the town of Strasbourg (situated in the East of France, along the German border roughly at the same latitude than Paris).

And the data about Lille (north of France) corresponds to a town (Rueil Malmaison) situated in the suburbs of Paris. I found a couple other bugs of the same type.

Re:Psychology? by Kilrah_il · 2011-03-20 07:58 · Score: 1

You are right, Psychology is just applied Biology.
Biology is applied Chemistry.
Chemistry is applied Physics.

And Physics is applied Mathematics.

So, anything outside of math is just derivative work.

From XKCD, of course.

--
Whenever in an argument, remember this.

Horrible accuracy by LurkerXXX · 2011-03-20 08:35 · Score: 1

One of the red hotspots is.... "St. Petersburg, Ohio".

If you zoom in, you will find out that's a road/cemetery by that name. Nothing else is there.

Re:Horrible accuracy by ehowe · 2011-03-21 00:52 · Score: 1

Apparently Tbilisi, Georgia, is now in the middle of the woods in the southeastern United States on the physics map.

The city of Argonne? by Walter+White · 2011-03-20 08:37 · Score: 1

I see lots of chemistry is done in Argonne Illinois. That's funny since Argonne is a lab, not a city. (Argonne National Laboratory.) Probably in Westmont. At least they got Batavia right (FNAL.)

Get over it by Sycraft-fu · 2011-03-20 08:51 · Score: 2, Informative

Word is now extremely standard in academics, including engineering and science disciplines. The reason is that what the researchers are interested in is actually getting their ideas out to the world, not proving they are toughguys by using TeX. What you use to create doesn't matter all that much since journals are very much saying "Give us a PDF," they don't really care how it was created. So you just choose what is easiest for you to do your paper in that looks good and can export to PDF. Word plus Mathtype can do a nice, easy, job of formatting equations visually, and gets you all the spell checking and other functions of Word.

I work for an engineering department at a research university (doing computer support) and we see more Word usage than anything else. Some researchers still like TeX, but they are in the minority these days.

If you want to be a tough guy (hiding behind an AC post) about only TeX based papers being "real" scientific papers go ahead, however realize the world has moved on and left you behind.

Re:Get over it by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-20 09:39 · Score: 1

Word is now extremely standard in academics, including engineering and science disciplines.
It is common. It is not standard. It varies from discipline to discipline, and journal to journal.
not proving they are toughguys by using TeX.
You're biased. It is hardly being a "toughguy" to use TEX. Sounds like a marketing lowlife talking, trying to manipulate with emotion rather than argument.
however realize the world has moved on and left you behind.
It is not "moving on" to use a proprietary product in science, it is moving backwards.
I am not the PP AC.

Re:Psychology? by geckipede · 2011-03-20 09:07 · Score: 2

Without physics, mathematics is only a game of picking some axioms to see what they do, or worse, just a language.

wow, the trifecta of bad science by t2t10 · 2011-03-20 09:50 · Score: 1

Misuse of statistical significance testing, false identification of measurements with high level concepts ("highly cited" = "high quality"), and the ecological fallacy, all rolled into one paper! That's quite an achievement!

Re:wow, the trifecta of bad science by kubernet3s · 2011-03-21 02:25 · Score: 1

High citation levels have been used as a shorthand for scientific quality forever, and people do acknowledge that it's a dubious metric, but of course the only *metric* there is. And how do you figure the ecological fallacy? I'd say that even if a city contains only a single individual publishing high numbers of top-cited papers, that city could be safely categorized as an important scientific center. Unless you mean with respect to departments, in which case the same conditon holds (MIT's weak sociology program can, I think, be forgiven, for example.). Unless you mean with respect to cities (i.e., making assumptions about cities based on university activity) in which case I would ask you where exactly scientific activity is supposed to take place, if not in a university or a laboratory. Finally, if you mean with respect to individual scientists, I believe the article makes no such claims about the scientific work of a particular researcher, only about the city itself. And abuse of statistical significance testing? Is their threshold too high or too low? That seems debatable. At best, you could call this a bad science semifecta, if that.
Re:wow, the trifecta of bad science by t2t10 · 2011-03-24 10:51 · Score: 1

No, raw citation rates are worthless as a measure of quality. Furthermore, putting citation rates in relation to publication rates like this is also bogus.
As for the ecological fallacy, well, yes: a few highly cited individuals do not make an "important scientific center".
As for the abuse of statistical significance testing, you cannot use statistical significance to rank anything; it is mathematically wrong.

Re:Rochester, NY by Ogive17 · 2011-03-20 10:01 · Score: 1

I wasn't aware there was a St. Petersberg so close to my house in Ohio.... but it shows up on 2 of the maps.

--
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."

Re:Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl i 19 by Attila+Dimedici · 2011-03-20 10:56 · Score: 1

You know you can stop now. Everybody knows that you did it.

--
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison

I'm not at all biased by Sycraft-fu · 2011-03-20 11:01 · Score: 3, Insightful

I don't give a shit. My job isn't selling software, it isn't publishing papers, it isn't writing papers. It is supporting computers of people who write papers. A side effect of this job is that I get to see what software they need. Our top requested apps (to the point they are part of the standard install)? Word and Matlab. TeX is not on that list. That isn't to say it is gone, just that it is in minority use. The people who need it request it special (usually MikTeX and Winedt).

The other software highly requested, though less now, is Acrobat, the full thing, to turn documents in to PDFs to go to the journals. These days the Word users tend to just use the included MS plugin, though some still like the full Acrobat. All the TeX types use Acrobat because it makes conversion real easy (you just print to the distiller and it makes a PDF of it). For the few grad students that use TeX it is usually CutePDF since that's free and generally does fine with PDF generation.

The reason for my "tough guy" remark is his attitude that it is "infuriating" to see something written in anything but TeX. This has the attitude of "I spent all this time learning it, everyone else should have to to! You aren't a REAL man unless you do!" The content should matter, not the tool, to someone who actually cares about what is being said and isn't being silly about it.

Times change. Deal with it. If you don't like Word because it is proprietary (by the way if you think that is the only proprietary thing used in research you are in for a nasty, nasty, surprise) then maybe you need to work on an open tool that is just as easy to use. The researchers aren't interested in OSS zealot arguments, they are interested in getting their shit done and for many of them Word is easier. If there were a free tool that was as good, perhaps they'd be interested in that. Never met the researcher that didn't want to save a dollar whenever they can.

Don't just bitch though because you spent time learning TeX and are mad that others don't have to.

Re:I'm not at all biased by koxkoxkox · 2011-03-20 14:59 · Score: 2

It is infuriating because of the difference in output quality, not because Word is proprietary or whatever other reason. Can you guess how the first poster was able to know the article was typeset using Word ? The paragraphs of text are not justified, the 'fi' ligature are not made, formulas are awful, the link for figure 1 is separated from the picture by a page break, etc.
Actually, it is not actually Word's fault here, it is just a very badly typeset paper and one can do much better with Word.
I also didn't understand your remark about TeX types using Acrobat and CutePDF. You do know that TeX will already output a PDF without conversion step necessary, right ? Why would they want to generate a PDF ?
Re:I'm not at all biased by WrongMonkey · 2011-03-20 15:48 · Score: 4, Insightful

Maybe you've never gotten request for TeX because it's free. I'm an academic (post-doc) and I use tech every day, but I've never ask computer support people for it.
Re:I'm not at all biased by stewbacca · 2011-03-21 07:51 · Score: 1

Not a scientist here, but are scientific papers actually expected to be justified? The APA (psychology) requires left alignment with NO justification, for readability.
Re:I'm not at all biased by Sycraft-fu · 2011-03-21 12:10 · Score: 1

Well most of the systems in the department, we manage, meaning that nobody but us has admin access. As such we know everything that gets installed on it. Also, because our boss is a really good guy and has done a good job creating a helpful environment, people tend to ask us for just about everything since it is easier for them. When you get a new computer just give IT a list and all your shit is there.
I've got a pretty good idea of the software usage in the department. Like I said, TeX is there. There are two professors that really like it and make all the grad students use it, and a smattering of other professors and grads that use it, but it is by far dominated by Word and Mathtype.

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2011-03-20 12:38 · Score: 1

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Psychology? by buchner.johannes · 2011-03-20 12:56 · Score: 1

Math is a structuring science, of a-priori knowledge. Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Psychology are a-posteriori (needing observations/verification with the real world), and each have a different focus.

--
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.

Re:Psychology? by metlin · 2011-03-20 17:28 · Score: 1

Yes, and language can be beautiful. To channel Hardy, mathematics is about ideas, and ways to represent ideas, which can be beautiful in and of itself. That it has any applications at all is quite incidental, and sometimes rather unfortunate. It takes away from the beauty of math (and I say this as someone who enjoys pure math as a hobby, with zero publications to my name in the subject -- doodling with ideas in the margins during meetings is a wonderful past time).

Is psychology a real science? by doperative · 2011-03-20 22:34 · Score: 1

Going on the map there are more nutjobs per-square-mile in the advanced west than the rest of the planet. link

Re:Psychology? by bondsbw · 2011-03-21 01:15 · Score: 1

So sorting my email (which requires math for comparisons) is a game of picking axioms or a language?

--
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.

So... by kubernet3s · 2011-03-21 01:19 · Score: 1

Do all the papers measured by this study get a cite? I say yes.

Re:Psychology? by toQDuj · 2011-03-21 01:42 · Score: 1

I certainly have enjoyed the psychometrics toolbox for Matlab as it contains useful drivers for some of Measurement Computing's DAQ interfaces under Mac OS X.
http://psychtoolbox.org/wikka.php?wakka=HomePage

--
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.

Need this for programmers... by LordStormes · 2011-03-21 02:55 · Score: 1

Would make it easier to job hunt!

Re:Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl i 19 by rwa2 · 2011-03-21 04:45 · Score: 1

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/glenn-beck-rape-murder-hoax

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