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Academic superstars: competent or lucky?

Published version
Peer-reviewed

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Abstract

I show that the social stratification of academic science can arise as a result of academics’ preference for reading work of high epistemic value. This is consistent with a view on which academic superstars are highly competent academics, but also with a view on which superstars arise primarily due to luck. I argue that stratification is beneficial if most superstars are competent, but not if most superstars are lucky. I also argue that it is impossible to tell whether most superstars are in fact competent or lucky, or which group a given superstar belongs to, and hence whether stratification is overall beneficial.

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Keywords

Philosophy of science, Social structure of science, Formal epistemology, Social epistemology, Network formation

Journal Title

Synthese

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0039-7857
1573-0964

Volume Title

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Sponsorship
This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation under grant SES 1254291.