I really enjoyed this piece and in particular the part at the end about high-status core and low-status periphery as potential sources of innovation. The experience you describe is consistent with predictions of mid-status conformity theory.
You may find this recent paper of interest (I'm one of the authors: Johnson). Based on an analysis of a large number of StackExchange users, we identified who is most likely to make knowledge contributions valued by the community. The paper is open access and available at the link noted below.
"Who Contributes Knowledge? Core-Periphery Tension in Online Innovation Communities"
Where do valuable contributions originate from in online innovation communities? Prior research provides conflicting answers. One view, consistent with a community of practice perspective, is that valued knowledge contributions are primarily provided by central participants at the core of a community. In contrast, other research—including work adopting an open innovation perspective—predicts that valuable ideas primarily emerge from peripheral participants, those at the margins of a field of knowledge who provide novel ideas and viewpoints. We integrate these contrasting perspectives by considering two distinct forms of position: social embeddedness (a core social position within the social network of participants interacting within a community) and epistemic marginality (a peripheral epistemic position based on the network of topics discussed by a community).
Analyzing contributions by 697,412 participants of 52 Stack Exchange online innovation communities, we find that both participants who are socially embedded and participants who are epistemically marginal provide knowledge contributions that are highly valued by fellow community participants. Importantly, among epistemically marginal participants, those with high social embeddedness are more likely to provide contributions valued by the community; by virtue of their epistemic marginality, these participants may offer novel ideas while by virtue of their social embeddedness they may be able to more effectively communicate their ideas to the community. Thus, the production of knowledge in an online innovation community involves a complex interaction between the novelty emanating from the epistemic periphery and the social embeddedness required to make ideas congruent with existing social and epistemic norms.
Yes, and and as a guy having 'epistemic marginality' without 'social embeddedness' I can totally sympathize. Still, I think your reputation, Zeynep, is intact.
This is interesting and we would love to talk about implementing your paper finding in our graph technology work at RightRelevance. I will reach out by email. Thanks again.
My wife is a Phd in Neuroscience and works in the health/pharmacy space. We had a very similar discussion. I had seen the charts on the efficacy of the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine and suggested: why don't we just do one dose and see what happens? (I was being more flippant and without the caveats, you rightfully put forth, but this was typical husband/wife banter). She told me I was crazy and that I should - "stay in my lane." I've got a law degree and run a small company - I have zero background in the sciences, but I read widely and am curious about just about everything. She had told me the same thing about masks in the early days of the CDC suggesting people NOT buy or wear them. I'm often struck by the fact that my wife, a brilliant woman, by any conventional standard (Ivy league education at multiple levels, prestigious post-docs/jobs) - still holds to convention or authority and assumes it is correct even when comment sense at least asks us to think otherwise. She has recently admitted that this is probably a blind spot of hers. She can't risk losing authority in the spheres where she maintains it. Since I have zero in that space, I'm much freer to think broadly and outside what the authorities are offering.
What a great post. I can't speak to status, not having any of the kind you're talking about here, but I really appreciate people like you finding other people with expertise and having difficult conversations in public. I'm not sure being too worried about how people will misuse ideas or information is getting us anywhere (obviously, there are exceptions), but I've been wishing for months that someone with expertise would start talking about the loneliness aspect of lockdowns and quarantines, for example, especially for children. I haven't brought it up myself much out of concern that it would be taken up by the hardline "cure is worse than the disease" crowd but also it seems better to be addressed by someone with a background in neuropsychology and/or child development.
I'd be curious to know if replicability issues regarding publication relate to questions of status. Someone could have landed in a place of status--a university position or a regular cable news commentator, maybe--through high-profile or significant publications, but do they suffer any loss of status if those findings are either negated or not replicable?
I'm starting to find myself bitter about the social media hoard's critiques that obfuscate meaningful questions and issues. It would be interesting to unpack and further categorize the types of pile-ons we see on social to better understand how our attention gets misdirected, somewhat like the helpful categories of misinformation we have seen emerge as it becomes more of a problem.
You can see in Fig 4. (it is for vaccine BNT162b2) that for those below 55 years old, it is probably a more effective vaccine and with less side effects. But because in the > 55 yrs old age group, the 30 μg was much better, they opted for 30 μg.
Using 20 μg to vaccinate people in the group < 55 years old could mean vaccinating 30% more people…
"David Salisbury was director of immunization at the [U.K] Department of Health until the end of 2013. He was responsible for the national immunization programme and led the introduction of many new vaccines."
Lord Salisbury told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday:
“We have done something like this before when we had a finite amount of flu vaccine for children and it was clear if we gave children one dose we could actually protect twice as many.
"And the numbers are really straight forward here again.
“If you look at the New England Journal of Medicine paper about the Pfizer vaccine..you give one dose and you get 91 per cent protection, you give two doses and you get 95 per cent.
"So you are only gaining four per cent for giving the second dose.
“With the current circumstances, I would strongly urge that you should use as many first doses as you possible can for risk groups and only after you have done all of that come back with second doses.”
...
"I would use my Pfizer vaccine much more aggressively so that I vaccinated as many people as I could with one dose as fast as I had supplies of that.
“The reality is that the vaccine that gives 91 per cent efficacy after the first dose is a phenomenally good vaccine and I would be telling people we are going to be saving more lives..and if you have to go down that route the cost is miniscule compared with the cost of holding doses for second time round.”
Nice Janice Joplin reference, much appreciated!
Academic hires and Bobby McGee
My friends all have tenure-track jobs, I must make amends...
I really enjoyed this piece and in particular the part at the end about high-status core and low-status periphery as potential sources of innovation. The experience you describe is consistent with predictions of mid-status conformity theory.
You may find this recent paper of interest (I'm one of the authors: Johnson). Based on an analysis of a large number of StackExchange users, we identified who is most likely to make knowledge contributions valued by the community. The paper is open access and available at the link noted below.
"Who Contributes Knowledge? Core-Periphery Tension in Online Innovation Communities"
by Hani Safadi , Steven L. Johnson , Samer Faraj
https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2020.1364
Abstract
Where do valuable contributions originate from in online innovation communities? Prior research provides conflicting answers. One view, consistent with a community of practice perspective, is that valued knowledge contributions are primarily provided by central participants at the core of a community. In contrast, other research—including work adopting an open innovation perspective—predicts that valuable ideas primarily emerge from peripheral participants, those at the margins of a field of knowledge who provide novel ideas and viewpoints. We integrate these contrasting perspectives by considering two distinct forms of position: social embeddedness (a core social position within the social network of participants interacting within a community) and epistemic marginality (a peripheral epistemic position based on the network of topics discussed by a community).
Analyzing contributions by 697,412 participants of 52 Stack Exchange online innovation communities, we find that both participants who are socially embedded and participants who are epistemically marginal provide knowledge contributions that are highly valued by fellow community participants. Importantly, among epistemically marginal participants, those with high social embeddedness are more likely to provide contributions valued by the community; by virtue of their epistemic marginality, these participants may offer novel ideas while by virtue of their social embeddedness they may be able to more effectively communicate their ideas to the community. Thus, the production of knowledge in an online innovation community involves a complex interaction between the novelty emanating from the epistemic periphery and the social embeddedness required to make ideas congruent with existing social and epistemic norms.
This is fascinating, thank you!
Yes, and and as a guy having 'epistemic marginality' without 'social embeddedness' I can totally sympathize. Still, I think your reputation, Zeynep, is intact.
This is interesting and we would love to talk about implementing your paper finding in our graph technology work at RightRelevance. I will reach out by email. Thanks again.
My wife is a Phd in Neuroscience and works in the health/pharmacy space. We had a very similar discussion. I had seen the charts on the efficacy of the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine and suggested: why don't we just do one dose and see what happens? (I was being more flippant and without the caveats, you rightfully put forth, but this was typical husband/wife banter). She told me I was crazy and that I should - "stay in my lane." I've got a law degree and run a small company - I have zero background in the sciences, but I read widely and am curious about just about everything. She had told me the same thing about masks in the early days of the CDC suggesting people NOT buy or wear them. I'm often struck by the fact that my wife, a brilliant woman, by any conventional standard (Ivy league education at multiple levels, prestigious post-docs/jobs) - still holds to convention or authority and assumes it is correct even when comment sense at least asks us to think otherwise. She has recently admitted that this is probably a blind spot of hers. She can't risk losing authority in the spheres where she maintains it. Since I have zero in that space, I'm much freer to think broadly and outside what the authorities are offering.
What a great post. I can't speak to status, not having any of the kind you're talking about here, but I really appreciate people like you finding other people with expertise and having difficult conversations in public. I'm not sure being too worried about how people will misuse ideas or information is getting us anywhere (obviously, there are exceptions), but I've been wishing for months that someone with expertise would start talking about the loneliness aspect of lockdowns and quarantines, for example, especially for children. I haven't brought it up myself much out of concern that it would be taken up by the hardline "cure is worse than the disease" crowd but also it seems better to be addressed by someone with a background in neuropsychology and/or child development.
I'd be curious to know if replicability issues regarding publication relate to questions of status. Someone could have landed in a place of status--a university position or a regular cable news commentator, maybe--through high-profile or significant publications, but do they suffer any loss of status if those findings are either negated or not replicable?
I'm starting to find myself bitter about the social media hoard's critiques that obfuscate meaningful questions and issues. It would be interesting to unpack and further categorize the types of pile-ons we see on social to better understand how our attention gets misdirected, somewhat like the helpful categories of misinformation we have seen emerge as it becomes more of a problem.
Hi Zeynep, the world is full of stories of outsiders who have made important medical observations and were ignored because they were not part of the established "expertise" in the area. Here's the story of one who went on to win the Nobel prize.https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-doctor-who-drank-infectious-broth-gave-himself-an-ulcer-and-solved-a-medical-mystery
Have you also noticed the potential benefit of reducing the dose of each vaccine shot from 30 μg to 20 μg in people below 55 years old?
Here is the New England Journal of Medicine paper on safety and immunogenicity that made Pfizer go for the 30 ug instead of 20 μg:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2027906
You can see in Fig 4. (it is for vaccine BNT162b2) that for those below 55 years old, it is probably a more effective vaccine and with less side effects. But because in the > 55 yrs old age group, the 30 μg was much better, they opted for 30 μg.
Using 20 μg to vaccinate people in the group < 55 years old could mean vaccinating 30% more people…
"David Salisbury was director of immunization at the [U.K] Department of Health until the end of 2013. He was responsible for the national immunization programme and led the introduction of many new vaccines."
Lord Salisbury told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday:
“We have done something like this before when we had a finite amount of flu vaccine for children and it was clear if we gave children one dose we could actually protect twice as many.
"And the numbers are really straight forward here again.
“If you look at the New England Journal of Medicine paper about the Pfizer vaccine..you give one dose and you get 91 per cent protection, you give two doses and you get 95 per cent.
"So you are only gaining four per cent for giving the second dose.
“With the current circumstances, I would strongly urge that you should use as many first doses as you possible can for risk groups and only after you have done all of that come back with second doses.”
...
"I would use my Pfizer vaccine much more aggressively so that I vaccinated as many people as I could with one dose as fast as I had supplies of that.
“The reality is that the vaccine that gives 91 per cent efficacy after the first dose is a phenomenally good vaccine and I would be telling people we are going to be saving more lives..and if you have to go down that route the cost is miniscule compared with the cost of holding doses for second time round.”