We’ve talked about personal branding before. Leave it to physicists to quantify fame.
Fame in science is different to fame in other areas of life according to physicists at Clarkson University in the US. Daniel ben-Avraham and colleagues have shown that the fame of a scientist – as measured by the number of hits on Google – is directly proportional to their merit as measured by the number of research papers they have published. Such a relationship is not found for other groups such as sportsmen or actors (J P Bagrow et al. 2004 arXiv/cond-mat/0404515). The Clarkson team says that the research could shed new light on the science of networks and help researchers working in social sciences and psychology.
So, what if you’re a scientist and you haven’t been able to get any papers published? You should become the A-list blogger in your field. Give it a try! You’ll be famous.
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