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> negative citations also count as citations. If by "negative citations" you mean works that are widely criticised, I don't see the problem. Most scientific pa
by gradstudent 7y ago
> negative citations also count as citations.
If by "negative citations" you mean works that are widely criticised, I don't see the problem. Most scientific papers cite prior works in order to point out their limitations. This is not a bad thing. We need to understand how previous attempts fell short in order to understand how and why we might want to do better in the future.
Maybe however by "negative citations" you mean citations of works that are plainly wrong. I think this occurs very infrequently, to the point where it probably isn't an issue. I certainly haven't come across works in my area which are cited for being wrong. I don't see the point of citing them either; I'd rather cite a paper that points out the problems and analyses their impact (i.e. something constructive).
- gwern 7y agoThe problem is that raw citation counts are used for promotion and hiring. And they look the same for 'did groundbreaking work' as for 'actually so flawed that everyone cites it just to make fun of it and as a cautionary lesson to everyone else to not be so incompetent'. Some authors explicitly take a mercenary attitude and don't care about sloppiness - after all, if someone criticizes them, that just means their citation count goes up...
- gradstudent 7y agoWith respect, I think you don't know what you're talking about. I've never seen cases where a researcher will cite a paper to poke fun at it. One might cite an erroneous paper in order to point out errors if one were interested in surveying the types of errors which occur in Science. However; (i) that paper is unlikely to be famous and; (ii) even then it's considered poor form to shit on your colleagues.