The second last sentence is "This result makes it clear that academic impact — as quantified by citations — is to some extent inherited." Two things come to mi

The second last sentence is "This result makes it clear that academic impact — as quantified by citations — is to some extent inherited." Two things come to mind. 1. Figure 2, which supports the conclusion, does not seem all that "clear" to me. The r (0.61) is pretty low, and the rightmost point might be leveraging the fit. 2. Why would it be a surprise that citation impact is inherited? Research groups with high citation rates tend to draw attention from ambitious students who hope to learn how to do highly citable research. Not that any of this matters all that much in the end, since citations can (and are) "gamed" by many people. Plus, citation rates very a lot between disciplines, and disciplines within disciplines. But bean counters like to count beans, and citations are easy beans to count.