The Genius Index: One Scientist's Crusade to Rewrite Reputation Rules

Guy Gugliotta:

Jorge Hirsch had been getting screwed. For years. At a scientific conference in 1989, he presented a paper arguing that the generally accepted theory of low-temperature superconductors--the BCS theory--was wrong. Most researchers at the time held that under certain low-temperature conditions, vibrations in a metal's crystal lattice can allow electrons to become attracted to one another, which drops electrical resistance to zero--a superconducting state. Hirsch said this "electron-phonon interaction" in fact had nothing to do with superconductivity. He was a youngish up-and-comer then, but physics rarely forgives apostasy. After his fateful presentation, similar conferences stopped inviting him to speak. Colleagues no longer sought him out for collaboration. Grants dried up. High-visibility journals shunned his papers.

It's not that Hirsch wasn't getting his work published. He was. And other physicists were still citing his research, implying some acceptance of his views. Hirsch just wasn't able to get his papers into the really high-visibility journals--places like Science, Nature, and, for a solid-state physicist, Physical Review Letters. There's a clear pecking order, established and reinforced by several independent rating systems. Chief among them: the Journal Impact Factor.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at June 13, 2009 1:33 AM
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