Yeah, that’s my sense too, as someone within low-level academia. Bibliometrics and other attempts to quantify research output have been big in the last few decades, but I think that they have made the problem worse if anything.
It’s especially messy when we consider the kind of progress and contribution that Nobel prizes can’t account for, like education and outreach. I really like how Dr Fatima explores this in her video How Science Pretends to be Meritocratic(duration: 37:04)
FaceDeer@fedia.io 9 months ago
The saying "when a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure" (Goodhart's Law) has been making the rounds online recently, this is a good example of that.
Ironically, this is a common problem faced when training AIs too.