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"The attention a scientist’s work gains from the public now plays into its perceived value. Scientists list media exposure counts on résumés, and many PhD these
by Fomite 4y ago
"The attention a scientist’s work gains from the public now plays into its perceived value. Scientists list media exposure counts on résumés, and many PhD theses now include the number of times a candidate’s work has appeared in the popular science press. Science has succumbed to the attention economy."
Sitting on a tenure and promotion committee at an R1 university, this type of stuff is just as likely to torpedo you as it is to boost you.
- abrax3141 4y agoI agree. I’ve almost never seen this, and I read a lot of scientific vitae. (The one time I did see it it was because a major documentary by a major scientific org had been made from the results.) I think they mostly made this observation up. (There’s no citation.) Calls the whole thing into question, which sounded pretty simplistic to begin with.
- Fomite 4y agoThere are only two places I call it out in my CV: 1) A pandemic-related paper, where press coverage was a big deal, because it was meant to influence policy decisions on a very short time frame. 2) One paper where we are in the 99th percentile for media and social media mentions for a very good journal, and we call that out specifically. But as a general rule? You're far more likely to trigger "Is that what you're spending your time on?" and "No serious about scholarship" than you are to find someone impressed with your altmetric score. Indeed, I'm worried about several of my colleagues who are learning hard in that direction (being the Social Media Editor of a journal, etc.)
- seydor 4y agoThe question is when? Surely , with passage of time, it s more likely scams will be revealed. But if the professor has already retired, the damage and lost effort is irreversible.