The durability of scientific reputation

Abstract

James McKeen Cattell used peer rankings in identifying the order of merit of American psychologists in 1903. The measures of scientific standing reported by Cattell are contrasted in the present paper first with ratings that nine judges made of some of the same psychologists in 1967 (Annin, Boring, & Watson, 1968; see Note 17); and second, with the number of citations that each of the psychologists in Cattell's sample attracted in the literature covered by Social Sciences Citation Index in 1966–1970. Cattell's order of merit correlated only +0.40 with the ratings obtained by Annin et al., possibly because some of the psychologists in the sample had made their most important contributions after 1903. There was a correlation of +0.72 between Cattell's rankings and the number of citations the psychologists gained in 1966-1970 for material that they had published before 1903. The durability of scientific reputation as identified through the latter comparison suggests that citation counts can be used to identify the relative scientific standing of individuals for whom contemporary evaluations are not available.

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