The Myth of Academic Excellence and Scientific Curiosity

Walter F. Wreszinski
2012 Brazilian journal of physics  
We try to substantiate, using physics as an example, the following statement: the quality of scientific production cannot be measured by any numbers or indices whatsoever. In an important book [1], Mathias Binswanger alerts to the danger of staging "artificial competitions" in fields of human activity where, technically speaking, no market exists. Examples are science and education, because of the impossibility of classifying the participants on the basis of quantitatively measurable
more » ... In science, the one presently used is "the number of publications in certain journals." In Binswanger's opinion, "such competitions lead the participants to the useless production of 'measurable' achievements and products which results, in the long term, in waste of time and reserves. The victim lying along the path is the intrinsic motivation and, with it, the pleasure of working, both essential to the real scientific performance, which does not lend itself to exact measurements." On the basis of criteria such as the one mentioned above, a well-accepted concept of "elite" and "excellence" was formed, which provides orientation to universities and research foundations in the whole world for the distribution of funds. The journals which we will call top A, of high "impact factor" (a rather controversial number analyzed in detail in [1]), boast high rejection indices, which reach 95 %, encouraging referees to recommend refusal in the almost totality of cases in order to justify this so important "measure of quality."
doi:10.1007/s13538-012-0110-1 fatcat:yk4t27lxwva6zofmsyhroxmzym