July 2012 Archives


In my view, the problem is not so much with their observation (equation denser papers tend to collect fewer citations) as with their main conclusion:

"To maximize the scientific impact of their work, biologists should consider reducing the equation density in the main text of their theoretical articles."

These type of observational analyses (i.e. *not* randomised experiments) are prone to confounding factors---a problem I am keenly aware of, as it almost ruined two years of my work.

Although the authors have controlled for a few confounders (article length, journal), there could well be other important ones.

For instance, it is well known that math papers have in general much lower citation rates than biological papers. So it might well be that articles on more mathematical topics tend to get fewer citations in general---regardless of the number of equation.

Because of this, I'd caution against dropping equations in the hope of boosting one's citation count.

For what it's worth, my own anecdotal experience has been that math formulas can be appreciated if they are accompanied by intuitive explanations about their rationals. Ideally, the text should make sense to both mathphobes skipping over the equations and mathphiles skipping over prose!



Thanks to Hannes Röst for bringing this article to my attention.


Reference:

Fawcett TW, & Higginson AD (2012). Heavy use of equations impedes communication among biologists. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America PMID: 22733777

sciseekclaimtoken-4ffddb9030141

About this page

Open Reading Frame is the blog of Christophe Dessimoz, visiting scientist at EMBL-EBI.

About this Archive

This page is an archive of entries from July 2012 listed from newest to oldest.

June 2012 is the previous archive.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Pages