Fame: I m Skeptical. Fernanda Ferreira. Department of Psychology. University of California, Davis.

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1 Fame: I m Skeptical Fernanda Ferreira Department of Psychology University of California, Davis fferreira@ucdavis.edu February 20, 2017 Word count:

2 Abstract Fame is often deserved, emerging from a person s significant and timely contributions to science. It is also true that fame and quality clearly sometimes diverge: many people who do excellent work are barely known, and some people are famous even though their work is mediocre. Reliance on fame and name recognition when identifying psychologists as candidates for honors and awards helps to perpetuate a range of stereotypes and prevents us from broadening participation in our field, particularly from women and underrepresented groups. The pursuit of fame may also be contributing to the current crisis in psychology concerning research integrity, because it incentivizes quantity and speed in publishing. The right attitude towards fame is to use it wisely if it happens to come, but to focus our efforts on conducting excellent research and nurturing talent in others. 2

3 The Attractions of Fame I will admit to having been flattered when I was invited to participate in this discussion of fame in psychological science, because presumably that means I m at least somewhat famous. I suspect others would be similarly pleased, because most of us want to believe we have the respect of our peers, and we might even acknowledge that we wish to be admired, and to be viewed as successful and important. It s also true that a discussion about the criteria that should be considered when evaluating the accomplishments of scholars in our field is potentially useful. After all, no psychologist, and indeed, no rational person, would deny that evaluating people and the quality of their work is necessary and inevitable in any field, whether it be art, medicine, or science. We aim to admit the most promising candidates to our graduate programs, hire the best faculty, tenure only those who appear to have long, productive careers ahead of them, and reward scientists with prizes if they have contributed more than most to uncovering the nature of psychological processes (see Diener, 2016, for ways to improve selection in these and other domains of science). Fame may also be the predictable outcome of doing good work: that is, if we report findings that are timely and significant and draw the attention of other scientists, we may find that we become famous as a natural consequence of these activities. In this sense, fame is a kind of frequency effect: the more your work is cited and discussed, the greater will be your name recognition, and the more famous you will be. And all this seems fairly innocent. Reasons for Being Skeptical about Fame At the same time, we must be careful not to conflate fame, on the one hand, and scientific quality, integrity, and impact, on the other. All of us can point to colleagues or authors who have done excellent work but are barely known, or who are not famous or even acknowledged until long after their research careers have ended. We also know that some people are famous even 3

4 though their work is not particularly good. And worst of all, some scientists are well known because they have been called out for unethical practices, including data fabrication and other forms of cheating (although the term infamous is probably more fitting in these cases). We also should distinguish between two different questions we can ask about fame: One is what one must do to become famous, and the other is what leads a person to end up famous. The second question is fine: it s merely an attempt to reconstruct what led a person to attain a particular status. But the motivations behind the first question should be challenged, because the pursuit of fame for its own sake is almost never healthy or productive. Fame should not be a goal, and valuing people or ideas simply because they are famous comes is risky. Fame may serve as a heuristic for identifying ideas that may be useful or interesting, or for identifying people who are likely to do a good job at some task. But fame should also be viewed with a great deal of caution and skepticism, to avoid the temptation to assume that if someone is famous, then their work is significant. Like other forms of popularity, this kind of status may not be based on what we ought to value as clear-eyed scientists. One reason to be skeptical about fame and the metrics associated with it is discussed by Eagly and Miller (2016), who note that women in psychology are less likely than men to receive prizes and honors meant to acknowledge exceptional contributions to our discipline. This has been widely discussed in the domain of keynote speaker invitations, for example, where women are woefully underrepresented across many fields, including in psychology (see the website Congrats! You have an all-male panel : This underrepresentation happens at least in part because the names of prominent male scientists come to mind more easily or more quickly; the invitations, in turn, reinforce the fame and justify future invitations, and those enhance fame further. Such biases are also likely to harm 4

5 underrepresented groups such as people of color (Aponte-Soto, 2016). Fame, then, can be a force that perpetuates discrimination and causes us to overlook excellent people and work. Not only should we be careful not to assume that fame reflects quality, we might even put up our guards a bit. After all, our job is to challenge conventional wisdom and popular opinion, and in many ways, fame is a kind of popular opinion one that s held among people who are elite, educated, and often thoughtful, but who presumably are subject to the same biases as everyone else. What distinguishes science from many other endeavors is the training in critical thinking, which mean we should never hesitate to question the ideas of someone who is considered famous, or ideas that appear to be obviously true. All of this is not to say that we should refuse to view the work of famous people positively or refuse to give it its due, but rather that we must be extra careful to make sure we re not seduced into thinking an idea has merit simply because the person expressing it is famous. Fame confers authority, and in a free society, authority must always be legitimate and should always be viewed with skepticism. The Dangers of Fame I have been an experimental psychologist for thirty years, and I have never seen the field in such turmoil. Some of the most foundational ideas put forward by undeniably famous psychologists have not survived close empirical examination, and there is hardly a subarea that is not embroiled in debates about replication, p-hacking, and harking. Many have argued that we re in this state because science has incentivized the pursuit of success to a damaging degree. To be successful and famous, it helps to do a lot of studies, get them out quickly, and appease reviewers and editors to prevent them from blocking publication of our work. These tendencies can cause us to sacrifice care and rigor, and prevent us from communicating the truth as we genuinely see it. And not only are we in a rush, we might also end up choosing not to spend our time verifying and scrutinizing our own work because we want to protect our 5

6 reputations, mistakenly believing that it is worse to be wrong than to be scientifically thinskinned. Conclusions I will end by restating a point I made earlier, which is that fame is often deserved. Many ideas and findings in science are widely known because they re important and useful, and many psychologists are famous because they re excellent scientists, mentors, and teachers, and because they re particularly skilled at communicating their ideas. But let s treat fame as a natural by-product of how our brains work (e.g., cognitive systems that are highly sensitive to stimulus frequency, social tendencies such as the desire for dominance and status). And let s discourage our students and other people over whom we have influence from pursuing fame for its own sake. As Feist (2016) argues, we all want to leave our mark on the world, but instead of achieving that through fame, we should strive to leave our mark by working with integrity and pursuing ideas even when we think they will be unpopular or ignored. We should focus on supporting and nurturing our students and trainees rather than on promoting our own careers. This is what will move our science forward. References Aponte-Soto, L. (2016). Minorities and bias: The big picture. Science, 353(6297), Diener, E. (2016). Improving departments of psychology. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(6), Eagly, A. H., & Miller, D. I. (2016). Scientific eminence: Where are the women?. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(6),

7 Feist, G. J. (2016). Intrinsic and Extrinsic Science A Dialectic of Scientific Fame. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(6), Valian, V. (1998). Why so slow? The advancement of women. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 7