IR/PS and MIT Sloan professors find deaths of superstar scientists lead to productivity loss among collaborators
Professor Joshua Graff Zivin of IR/PS participates in the intriguing research topic of an "invisible college"
12/18/2008
Barry Jagoda,
ucsdnews.ucsd.edu
When “superstar” academic scientists die, their collaborators experience a significant and permanent decline in productivity, according to a recent paper coauthored by MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Pierre Azoulay and UC San Diego School of International Relations and Pacific Studies Professor Joshua Graff Zivin. Studying the role of collaboration in spurring the creation of new scientific knowledge, they found that the more the collaborators’ areas of study overlapped with the superstar, the sharper the decline in output.
The study was conducted with a panel of 8,220 scientists who had coauthored papers with a superstar scientist who subsequently died prematurely. The authors measured how collaborators’ scientific output -- determined by publications, citations, and National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants -- changed after the "extinction" of the star. Superstardom was assessed on the basis of several criteria, including funding, citations, and membership in the National Academy of Science.
This finding supports the concept of the “invisible college,” said Graff Zivin. “Our interpretation is that superstars infuse their scientific field with fresh ideas. They replenish it periodically and when they die, the entire field contracts so it’s really about their ideas and the effects of losing them are fairly broad and diffused.”
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