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Persuasion
Do Scientific Fields Differ in Their Influence?
Why academic silo effects and field influence differences have consequences
Posted April 22, 2016
This article is co-authored with Matthew C. Makel, a Gifted Education Research Specialist at the Duke University Talent Identification Program. His research focuses on research methods and academic talent development.
Angus Deaton won the 2015 Nobel Memorial Prize in economic sciences. Thousands of media articles have now been written about him and his work. This is notable because there is arguably no other prize with equivalent influence in the social sciences.
This illustrates the clear hierarchy of influence among academic disciplines. Even a Chronicle Review article on the influential Washington Post political science blog The Monkey Cage had this quote from economist Tyler Cowen, author of perhaps the even more influential blog Marginal Revolution, which was prime inspiration for The Monkey Cage:
“the Post’s imprimatur has "lent it establishment status, legitimacy," which has been a big plus. But over all, "political science still lags far behind economics" and has "fewer stars, less unified method," and is "less closely connected to business and money." All of that is "hard to overcome."
Cowen appears to be arguing that political science still lags far behind economics in terms of legitimacy and influence because of fewer star scientists, less unified method, and less connection to business and money.
Psychology likely has even fewer stars, even less unified method and is largely not connected to business. Of course, there are many psychologists who are stars, with prominent examples perhaps being Steven Pinker or Daniel Kahneman (who actually won the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics). But overall an indicator that psychology likely lags well behind political science is that it has no blogs even as influential as The Monkey Cage or Marginal Revolution. (Note we are not saying that simply adding more blogs will solve the problem, but that greater public engagement as a field would help.)
This matters because whether we psychologists and education researchers like it or not, there are differences in field influence, and those differences impact how influential our own research is, and even whether established knowledge in our own discipline is cited or considered in another discipline.
As an example, in one of our own fields of research, gifted education—which is likely far less influential than psychology—a recent special issue highlights the incredible power of economists. This issue, convened in the Journal of Advanced Academics, was in response to just five papers published in economic journals on gifted education, but that received enormous media coverage, likely due to the influence of the economists who wrote the papers.
We recently wrote one of the commentaries, titled “Does Economic Research In Education Work? For Which Studies?” One of the key points we tried to make was simply for the economists entering the field of gifted education to fully account for the decades of research already conducted in the gifted field, education generally, psychology, and other social science disciplines. A good summary of the special issue by Scott Peters and Michael Matthews is titled “Gifted Education Research from the Economists’ Perspective: What have we Learned?”
On the one hand, having influential economists enter the field of gifted education was great because it meant gifted education research and gifted kids might get more attention among academics and the public. On the other hand, it brought to the fore the issue of field influence, both in an academic and public sense. Other education researchers, such as Robert Slavin, have also discussed the influence of economists in education more broadly.
Whether we like it or not, there is definitely a hierarchy of influence among the social sciences in terms of public influence (apart from the hierarchy of hard vs. soft sciences), and this has important consequences not only for interdisciplinary work and communication within and across academic disciplines but also in influencing the media, public policy, and the general public. Perhaps psychologists and other social scientists can learn from political science and economics what we can do to become more influential. And at the very least a better understanding of how field influence differences impact the way science is conducted within and across disciplines is worth considering.
Based on Cowen’s thoughts, there are probably issues of general interest that will be difficult for a field like psychology, education, and especially gifted education to overcome, but perhaps a more unified method and increasing the number of academic stars in these fields would help. Maybe just as economists and political scientists have increasingly embraced public engagement, we could do more to encourage this in the service of our own discipline, for example, officially rewarding public engagement in the academic incentive structure and supporting those who are trying to engage to make a difference for their fields.
© 2016 by Jonathan Wai and Matthew C. Makel
