Logical Reasoning

PT115 · S2 · Q15 More and more academic institutions

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More and more academic institutions are using citation analysis as the main technique for measuring the quality of scientific research.

Conclusion

Citation analysis works against the goal of encouraging good research.

rephrase: by doing citation analysis, you're not encouraging good research. (Maybe you're encouraging bad research!)

Evidence (since)

Citation analysis counts references to a researcher's work in journals.

Scientists trying to maximize citation counts will avoid multiyear projects in favor of short-term, faddish ones.

Evaluate

The conclusion is essentially saying that "citation analysis | leads to less-good research".

What does the evidence say about citation analysis?

It's basically saying that we scan scientific journals once a year to count the number of times that a certain researcher's work gets mentioned. Implicitly, the more times your work is being mentioned, the higher quality we think your work is.

What does the evidence say about leading to less-good research?

Nothing. What he year is that citation analysis will lead to avoiding multiyear projects and instead doing short-term projects in faddish areas.

So the author is assuming that we are getting "less-good research".

Should our common sense accept that assumption? Probably. So maybe the answer will test it, or maybe they just expect us to play along with the common sense notion that short / trendy studies are not as robust or meaningful as serious / long studies.

The author is also assuming that scientists who work on short-term fad projects will get more yearly mentions than scientists who work on long-term projects. Is that an assumption our common sense should accept?

Hmm, probably not. After all, scientific journals might have standards where they don't publish any articles about these quick / inferior / trendy studies, or there's a professional taboo against citing lower-brand science like this.

Maybe the longer projects are so good that they are cited for years and years, so even though you're busy working on your next long project, you're still being cited for your last long project that ended several years ago.

Goal

Let's look for an answer helping to convince us that we get less good research when scientists switch away from multiyear projects and into short-term faddish projects, or one that helps convince us that scientists working on short-term projects would get more yearly citations than those working on long-term projects.

15.

Which one of the following, if true, provides the strongest support for the argument?

Correct
In general scientific research is
Why this is right
Yuck. This answer is probably not going to jump out on a first pass, but we'll work our way back to it as best available. If we're debating the relevance of a new fact, it can be useful to toss around in our mind the opposite: "Does it matter if research is usually only cited once it's done vs. usually cited while it's ongoing?" Hmm! Yes that probably would affect this argument. If you just started a 3 year project, the author is thinking you won't be referenced at all this year, whereas if you just started a short term fad project, you would be referenced this year. (Or in less extreme terms, the author thinks you'll be referenced less this year if you're starting a 3 year project than a short-term fad project.) If journals are giving constant updates on important studies, as those studies are ongoing, then a scientist working on one of those studies might be referenced a bunch in scientific journals, even though the study hasn't ended. That could mean that scientists who are motivated by getting mentioned as much as possible could pursue that route by going for big/long important studies that get talked about as they go. So the opposite of this answer would weaken. Thus, ruling it out Strengthens, defender-style. If they don't mention you until the study is finished, then someone just starting a 3 year study won't be mentioned (when it comes to this study) for at least 3 years. Meanwhile, a scientist starting a short term 3-month study in some trendy area will probably get referenced in journals this year. This helps the author argue that ppl who do short studies (which is the less-good faddish science) will be referenced more than those doing long studies. Thus the practice of judging quality of work by number of yearly citations will incentivize scientists to pursue this crappier kind of short-term science.
Skill tested: Strengthen · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
67% picked this
Areas of science that are
No Impact
We wanted to be told that long-term is higher quality research and short-term faddish stuff is lower quality. This feels more like it goes in the opposite direction, making it seem like faddish stuff can be important, i.e., higher quality?
7% picked this
Research that is initially criticized
No Impact
The group of "initially criticized" research is a weird new concept. Does it map onto multiyear vs. short-term faddish? No, not really. Either type of study could be initially criticized. So this seems to provide no clear distinction between long/short term projects, and thus doesn't help us judge this argument. If anything, we'd probably assume that "faddish" projects are more often criticized, because the fact that they're trendy already makes them a target for snobby mockery. But if we thought that way, then this answer would Weaken, because it would be saying that this faddish research, though initially mocked, turned out to be really good research (which is the opposite of what the author wants to convey).
4% picked this
Scientists are sometimes hostile to
No Impact
As we discussed with (A), the author's argument would be weakened if we said that "multiyear projects get a lot of yearly references even while they're ongoing". So the fact that this says that scientists (sometimes) don't want ongoing assessments, it somewhat sounds like it's undermining the idea that journals would publish an article assessing an ongoing multiyear study. But ... 1) just because the scientist doesn't want to have an article written about them doesn't mean the journal won't write an article (the journal doesn't answer to the scientists) 2) this says sometimes, so it just means at least once. Whereas our correct answer says in general, which means "in more than half of cases".
13% picked this
Scientists often cite their colleagues’
No Impact
This category of "unfairly neglected" is a new concept. Does it map onto multiyear vs. short-term faddish? No, not really. Either type of study could be unfairly neglected, in a colleagues' eyes. So therefore it's hard to gauge what effect this would have on the number of references to multiyear vs. short-term projects.
8% picked this

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