{"id":3385,"date":"2012-11-28T05:04:17","date_gmt":"2012-11-28T04:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/?p=3385"},"modified":"2012-11-28T05:04:17","modified_gmt":"2012-11-28T04:04:17","slug":"paper-positive-results-increase-down-the-hierarchy-of-the-sciences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/2012\/11\/paper-positive-results-increase-down-the-hierarchy-of-the-sciences\/","title":{"rendered":"Paper: \u201cPositive\u201d Results Increase Down the Hierarchy of the Sciences"},"content":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.plosone.org\/article\/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0010068<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The hypothesised Hierarchy of the Sciences (henceforth HoS) is<\/span><\/p>\n

reflected inmany social and organizational features of academic life.<\/span><\/p>\n

When 222 scholars rated their perception of similarity between<\/span><\/p>\n

academic disciplines, results showed a clustering along three main<\/span><\/p>\n

dimensions: a \u2018\u2018hard\/soft\u2019\u2019 dimension, which roughly corresponded<\/span><\/p>\n

to the HoS; a \u2018\u2018pure\/applied\u2019\u2019 dimension, which reflected the<\/span><\/p>\n

orientation of the discipline towards practical application; and a<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018\u2018life\/non-life\u2019\u2019 dimension [13]. These dimensions have been vali-<\/span><\/p>\n

dated by many subsequent studies, which compared disciplines by<\/span><\/p>\n

parameters including: average publication rate of scholars, level of<\/span><\/p>\n

social connectedness, level of job satisfaction, professional commit-<\/span><\/p>\n

ment, approaches to learning, goals of academic departments,<\/span><\/p>\n

professional duties of department heads, financial reward structures<\/span><\/p>\n

of academic departments, and even response rates to survey<\/span><\/p>\n

questionnaires [14,15,16,17].<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

refs are:<\/p>\n

13. Biglan A (1973) Characteristics of subject matter in different academic areas.<\/p>\n

Journal of Applied Psychology 57: 195\u2013203.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

14. Smart JC, Elton CF (1982) Validation of the Biglan model. Research in Higher<\/p>\n

Education 17: 213\u2013229.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

15. Malaney GD (1986) Differentiation in graduate-education. Research in Higher<\/p>\n

Education 25: 82\u201396.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

16. Stoecker JL (1993) The Biglan classification revisited. Research in Higher<\/p>\n

Education 34: 451\u2013464.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

17. Laird TFN, Shoup R, Kuh GD, Schwarz MJ (2008) The effects of discipline on<\/p>\n

deep approaches to student learning and college outcomes. Research in Higher<\/p>\n

Education 49: 469\u2013494.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Numerous studies have taken a direct approach, and have<\/span><\/p>\n

attempted to compare the hardness of two or more disciplines,<\/span><\/p>\n

usually psychology or sociology against one or more of the natural<\/span><\/p>\n

sciences. These studies used a variety of proxy measures including:<\/span><\/p>\n

ratio of theories to laws in introductory textbooks, number of<\/span><\/p>\n

colleagues acknowledged in papers, publication cost of interrupt-<\/span><\/p>\n

ing academic career for one year, proportion of under 35 s who<\/span><\/p>\n

received above-average citations, concentration of citations in the<\/span><\/p>\n

literature, rate of pauses in lectures given to undergraduates,<\/span><\/p>\n

immediacy of citations, anticipation of one\u2019s work by colleagues,<\/span><\/p>\n

average age when receiving the Nobel prize, fraction of journals\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

space occupied by graphs (called Fractional Graph Area, or FGA),<\/span><\/p>\n

and others [17,18]. According to a recent review, some of these<\/span><\/p>\n

measures are correlated to one-another and to the HoS [2]. One<\/span><\/p>\n

parameter, FGA, even appears to capture the relative hardness of<\/span><\/p>\n

sub-disciplines: in psychology, FGA is higher in journals rated as<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018\u2018harder\u2019\u2019 by psychologists, and also in journals specialised in<\/span><\/p>\n

animal behaviour rather than human behaviour [19,20,21].<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

refs are:<\/p>\n

19. Best LA, Smith LD, Stubbs DA (2001) Graph use in psychology and other<\/p>\n

sciences. Behavioural Processes 54: 155\u2013165.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

20. Kubina RM, Kostewicz DE, Datchuk SM (2008) An initial survey of fractional<\/p>\n

graph and table area in behavioral journals. Behavior Analyst 31: 61\u201366.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

21. Smith LD, Best LA, Stubbs DA, Johnston J, Archibald AB (2000) Scientific<\/p>\n

graphs and the hierarchy of the sciences: A Latourian survey of inscription<\/p>\n

practices. Social Studies of Science 30: 73\u201394.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

a very interesting metascience paper! refs are also interesting<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.plosone.org\/article\/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0010068     The hypothesised Hierarchy of the Sciences (henceforth HoS) is reflected inmany social and organizational features of academic life. When 222 scholars rated their perception of similarity between academic disciplines, results showed a clustering along three main dimensions: a \u2018\u2018hard\/soft\u2019\u2019 dimension, which roughly corresponded to the HoS; a \u2018\u2018pure\/applied\u2019\u2019 dimension, which reflected the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2049,1653,1673],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-metascience","category-psychology","category-science-philosophy","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3385"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3386,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3385\/revisions\/3386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}