#109: Stigler’s Law of Eponomy, Iterative Plagiarism & the Matilda Effect
3 Ideas in 2 Minutes on Scientific Discovery
I. Stigler’s Law of Eponymy
No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer.
Eponymy is the practice of naming a discovery after the person who has actually discovered it. In 1980, however, statistics professor Stephen Stigler found that this was rarely the case, which led him to come up with Stigler's Law of Eponymy.
Truth be told, Stigler was aware that he wasn’t the first person to think of this phenomenon, which is why he credited sociologist Robert K. Merton as the original discoverer.
II. Iterative Plagiarism
A similar thought has been attributed to Mark Twain:
It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing — and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite — that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.
—Mark Twain
III. Matilda Effect
The Matilda Effect refers to the undervaluing or denial of the contributions and achievements of women scientists. It’s named after writer and women’s rights activist Matilda Joslyn Gage who first pointed out the bias in the 1870s.
One often-cited example of the Matilda Effect is the case of Rosalind Franklin, whose contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA were initially overlooked. The credit was largely attributed to her male colleagues. James Watson and Francis Crick won a Nobel Prize for it. 🐘
Have a great week,
Chris
themindcollection.com