Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time? (NBER)
In Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time? (NBER Working Paper No.21788), Pierre Azoulay, Christian Fons-Rosen, and Joshua S. Graff Zivin explore the famous quip by physicist Max Planck. They show that the premature deaths of elite scientists affect the dynamics of scientific discovery. Following such deaths, scientists who were not collaborators with the deceased stars become more visible, and they advance novel ideas through increased publications within the field of the deceased star. These "emerging stars" are often scientists who were not previously active within that field. The results suggest that outsiders to a specific scientific field are reluctant to challenge a research star who is viewed as a leader within that field.
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