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Scientists making a difference, editors not so much: Robert J. Sternberg,

Susan T. Fiske, Donald J. Foss (eds): Scientists making a difference: one
hundred eminent behavioral and b...

Article  in  Metascience · May 2018

DOI: 10.1007/s11016-018-0316-0

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https://doi.org/10.1007/s11016-018-0316-0

BOOK REVIEW

Scientists making a difference, editors not so much

Robert J. Sternberg, Susan T. Fiske, Donald J. Foss (eds): Sci-
entists making a difference: one hundred eminent behavioral and
brain scientists talk about their most important contributions,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016, 536 pages, £19.99/
$28.00PB

Saray Ayala-López1

 Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2018

This book consists of a collection of personal narratives by a selected sample of

scientists. The authors reflect on their research, reveal how they got interested in a
particular topic, and, as instructed by the editors, describe their most important
scientific contributions. Several stories talk about the motivations that led each
scientist to inquire into a specific topic, providing great material for anyone
interested in how science and values interact, shedding light on how values, more or
less explicit, guide the selection of questions a scientist decides to pursue.
The book also raises some questions. In fact, the first question is raised by its
very subtitle, i.e., ‘‘One hundred eminent behavioral and brain scientists talk about
their most important contributions.’’ Right after reading it, one might wonder:
‘‘What is eminence?’’ One of the editors, Sternberg, satisfies this curiosity in the
preface, clarifying that the selection of researchers is based on a ranking made in
2014 by Ed Diener et al. (2014). That ranking contained 200 researchers and was
based on three criteria: total number of citations, pages in textbooks devoted to the
scholar’s work, and number of major awards received. One concern is that a ranking
based on those three criteria carries on known biases affecting citations, textbook
appearance, and in recognition. One cannot help but wonder whether these biases
could have contributed, for example, to the underrepresentation of women scientists
in the book? Or are there other reasons why out of 100 featured scientists only 22
are women?
Let us take a closer look at each of the ranking criteria.
Number of citations: In her article ‘‘The Matilda effect in science’’ (1993),
Margaret W. Rossier describes how the contributions of women scientists are often
ignored. Several studies arrive at a similar conclusion in different fields, for
example, Sociology (Davenport and Snyder 1995), Astronomy (Caplar et al. 2017),

& Saray Ayala-López

ayala@csus.edu
1
California State University Sacramento, Sacramento, CA, USA

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and Communication Science (Knobloch-Westerwick and Glynn 2013). It is

reasonable to think that in behavioral and brain sciences (BBS), something similar
might be happening. One might wonder if the citation gap might be the result of
fewer women in the discipline. While this could be a relevant factor in some fields,
it cannot be so for BBS. The number of women in this field is not small. Data from
2011 show that women earned 49.4% of Ph.D.s in Neuroscience in the USA and
72.1 in Psychology [see National Science Foundation (NSF) 2011, at: http://www.
nsf.gov/statistics/srvydoctorates/].
Appearance in textbooks: It is not uncommon for textbooks, especially at the
introductory level, to lack diversity. Every discipline has its canon, and it is usually
a very exclusive one. If we measure the quality of a scholar’s work by how many
pages they have in introductory textbooks, all women and nonwhite, non-Western
scholars would be ranked as producing work of poor quality. And this is not a
conclusion we want to rush to, and not the impression we should wish to perpetuate
in any field, knowingly or unknowingly.
Recognition: Recognition measured by awards is another candidate for bias.
Let us take the Nobel Prizes as an illustrative example: Out of 881 individuals
who have won Nobel Prizes between 1901 and 2016, only 48 are women (https://
news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/10/nobel-prize-winners-laureates-charts-graphics-
science/).
The above considerations focused on women, but similar points can be made
about nonwhite researchers, researchers working in non-Anglophone countries, and
those in less recognized institutions. Diener et al.’s original ranking of eminent
scientists looked at the institutions from where their top-ranked scientists came
from, and found that a few institutions were overrepresented (e.g., Yale, Harvard,
Stanford). Out of the 285 doctoral programs in the USA, ‘‘the top 10 doctoral
programs … accounted for 55% of the entire list’’ (Diener et al. 2014, 27). Without
questioning the quality of the programs, one may wonder whether the gap reflects
the true size of the discrepancy in the quality of education.
One of the scientists in the book, David E. Meyer, notes that ‘‘Diener et al.’s
operational definition of ‘eminent’ emphasized fame far more than respect.
Especially dubious in this imbalanced regard was their heavy (33%) weighting of
page counts from introductory psychology texts in the composite ‘eminence’
scores’’ (92). He warns that this sort of ranking encourages what is already a trend in
the field, and that is ‘‘research aimed at achieving rapid fame rather than rigorous,
long-lasting, fundamental scientific findings’’ (93–94).
Given the above comments, we might wonder whether the editors of this
anthology considered the adequacy of relying on Diener et al.’s ranking. And they
did.
One of the editors, Sternberg, in his introduction to the book acknowledges the
possibility that the specific measures of ‘‘eminence’’ used in Diener et al.’s ranking
might not be fair. He writes: ‘‘Scientists have had lesser citation rates at various
times in history (perhaps including the present) because of their gender, religion,
race, nationality, or ethnicity, or because they were at less widely recognized
institutions’’ (7). In the preface, however, he writes that the used measures are ‘‘as
good a basis for recognition as any we could find’’ (xxv). I see the editors’ reasoning

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as follows: There are good reasons to think this is not a fair ranking, but there are
even better reasons to use this ranking as it is. This makes me think of an all-White
male syllabus or textbook with a note that says: ‘‘there are good reasons to think this
is not a good representation of the authors and works on the topic, but we are going
to keep it as it is.’’ It seems the editors decided that the status quo, which in this case
consists of biased academic practices that exclude many scholars, is worth
maintaining. That is, in stark contrast to the groundbreaking, difference-making
work of the scientists featured in this book, they decided not to make a difference.
Science often challenges the status quo (although too often science is used to
maintain it at all costs). Thanks to many scientific discoveries, widely accepted
institutional practices, for example, like doctors not disinfecting their hands, have
been changed for good (although it is true that in spite of scientific evidence, other
practices are still maintained). In the spirit of the work of those scientists, the editors
could have made a difference by making this collection more diverse, which would
have resulted in both a better representation of the field and a better educational tool
for aspiring scientists. A more diverse collection would not have meant lowering the
standards of eminence. Rather, it would have involved redefining eminence in a way
that does not feed off the biased practices that pervade academia.
To end on a positive note, there is a great lesson scattered among several
chapters of this book, one that especially philosophers should take note of. And that
is that research is a collaborative enterprise. In contrast to the culture of individual
achievement dominating philosophy, several of the scientists write their chap-
ters using the pronoun ‘‘we’’ and talk about their collaborators and co-brainstormers,
and some authors explicitly state that their work is, as it cannot be otherwise, the
result of a collaborative effort. Imagine an edited collection of ‘‘eminent
philosophers’’ relating their most important contributions. My guess is that we
would find no ‘‘we’’ in their stories, and many tokens of ‘‘according to my view…’’.
Carol Dweck reminds us that ‘‘we are not lone scientists toiling in isolation’’ (293).
Elizabeth Spelke articulates this further: ‘‘Although this book focuses on specific
people, discoveries always depend on legions of people with different ideas,
working in different disciplines, living in far-flung places, and united by their
unstoppable curiosity’’ (231). This emphasis on collaborative work is a much
needed lesson for philosophers, especially apprentices who are still learning the
norms of philosophy and who could still be saved.

References

Caplar, N., S. Tacchella, and S. Birrer. 2017. Quantitative evaluation of gender bias in astronomical
publications from citation counts. Nature Astronomy 1: 0141. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-017-
0141.
Davenport, E., and H. Snyder. 1995. Who cites women? whom do women cite?: An exploration of gender
and scholarly citation in sociology. Journal of Documentation 51 (4): 404–410.
Diener, E., S. Oishi, and J. Park. 2014. An incomplete list of eminent psychologists of the modern era.
Archives of Scientific Psychology 2 (1): 20–31.

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Knobloch-Westerwick, S., and C.J. Glynn. 2013. The Matilda effect–role congruity effects on scholarly
communication. Communication Research 40: 3–26.
National Science Foundation (NSF). 2011. Survey of earned doctorates. http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/
srvydoctorates/. Accessed 20 March 2018.
Rossiter, M.W. 1993. The Matilda effect in science. Social Studies of Science 23: 325–341.

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