In the five years following publication, approximately 12 per cent of medical research papers and around 30 per cent of natural-and social-science papers had zero citations.

From Science Fictions by Stuart Ritchie.  Page 186.   

A somewhat depressing fact about scientific papers might be an unlikely saviour here, helping to reduce some of the damage done by such shady publication practices. It’s this: huge numbers of these papers receive barely any attention from other scientists. One analysis showed that in the five years following publication, approximately 12 per cent of medical research papers and around 30 per cent of natural-and social-science papers had zero citations.  It’s possible that these lonesome papers will get cited eventually, or that maybe the analysis missed some citations.  But whereas it’s probably a good thing that these low-quality products of the quantity-maximising system don’t have much influence, it should be a signal that something is amiss. Is our time, and our research money, being well spent on these studies that are making so little contribution to the literature? A low citation count doesn’t necessarily say anything about the quality of a paper, of course. It could, for example, be an underappreciated work. However, if scientists are publishing useless papers just to secure jobs or grants rather than advance science, it’s no wonder that so many are of no interest to their peers.

Harrison Bergeron as a leading indicator

The short story of Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. always bubbles back up whenever the populace sense the return of socialist authoritarians.  Whenever equality of outcomes supersedes equality of opportunity and whenever due process gives way to social justice/mob justice.  

Apparently, the bat signal has gone out.  I haven't seen references to the Bergeron story for 3-4 years.  In the past week, I have seen three allusions to it.  I don't know that it is any sort of leading indicator but it sorts of feels like one.  

History

A beautifully decorated yew bucket with bronze fittings from a 9th-century #Viking ship burial of two women, at Oseberg Norway. A human figure sits in lotus position, decorated with red & yellow enamel. The bucket is thought to be Irish in origin, acquired by raids or trade. pic.twitter.com/6tD6JvCuem

— Alison Fisk (@AlisonFisk) December 20, 2020

 

An Insight

The great tragedy of recent years is that freedom of speech, patriotism and the rule of law have become partisan issues instead of universal values.

— Konstantin Kisin (@KonstantinKisin) January 18, 2021

 

An Insight

Suppose COVID transmitted through laptops instead of air. You could install cumbersome, performance-reducing software to limit your risk of getting sick—but only by staying offline could you eliminate it.

How would we, the laptop class, have reacted?https://t.co/KOXKHm86CA

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) December 17, 2020

 

I see wonderful things

They had a painting made of their dog that recently died..

This is his brothers first reaction.. 😭

🎥 TT: amyrowlands7 pic.twitter.com/D9fEGcE4O6

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden_) December 23, 2020

 

Offbeat Humor

Woke Einstein. pic.twitter.com/Y6ulbALsMH

— James Lindsay, New Year, New Me (@ConceptualJames) December 29, 2020

 

Data Talks

Wow. Makes you wonder just how America got through those years. pic.twitter.com/xsmWdSkmgE

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) December 21, 2020

 

Winter Quiet, 1980 by Eyvind Earle

Winter Quiet, 1980 by Eyvind Earle

Click to enlarge.

They were good questions then and they remain good ones today.

From The rediscovery of character: private virtue and public policy by James Q. Wilson in the Fall of 1985.

The view that crime has social and cultural as well as economic causes is scarcely new. Hardly any lay person, and only a few scholars, would deny that family and neighborhood affect individual differences in criminality. But what of it? How, as I asked in 1974, might a government remake bad families into good ones, especially if it must be done on a large scale? How might the government of a free society reshape the core values of its people and still leave them free? 

 
They were good questions then and they remain good ones today. In 1974 there was virtually no reliable evidence that any program seeking to prevent crime by changing attitudes and values had succeeded for any large number of persons. In 1974 I could only urge policymakers to postpone the effort to eliminate the root causes of crime in favor of using those available policy instruments--target hardening, job training, police deployment, court sentences--that might have a marginal effect at a reasonable cost on the commission of crime. Given what we knew then and know now, acting as if crime is the result of individuals freely choosing among competing alternatives may be the best we can do.
 
In retrospect, nothing I have written about crime so dismayed some criminologists as this preference for doing what is possible rather than attempting what one wishes were possible. My purpose was to substitute the experimental method for personal ideology; this effort has led some people to suspect I was really trying to substitute my ideology for theirs. Though we all have beliefs that color our views, I would hope that everybody would try to keep that coloration under control by constant reference to the test of practical effect. What works?