Not surprised. I've just read a book about science-metric approach implemented in different countries. Sociologists have known for a hundred years that any mea

Not surprised. I've just read a book about science-metric approach implemented in different countries. Sociologists have known for a hundred years that any measure, taken as an ultimate criterium for reward, becomes manipulated. But British neo-liberal government in 1980s started using it as a measure of efficiency, out of fear that scientists live off public money and produce no meaningful output. It made a nation-wide rating of scientists (per field), made once in 10 years, giving bonuses to those making more research that is cited. Scientists now have to output an article at least every 2 years and get it published. This makes people do various tricks: having produced good research, they split the results it in 2 or 3 articles, or attract more co-authors (making extra work in exchange for extra citation points). Journals also have weights, so more prestigious ones get more proposals. More competition for being published, higher the pressure and demands. And this lead scientists to define a bulletproof narrow and precise hypothesis, and then prove or disprove it very rigorously. This essentially led to abandoning a holistic research and monographs, and to writing in "bird language", incomprehensible for outsiders. The system has been copied since by France (90-2000s) and Russia (2000-2010s).