Belief and doubt

On the grapevine

An inventor who doubts his own metric, and a journalist who ponders Covid-19 denial. We offer snapshots of what’s happening in global science policy.

Judith Hochstrasser, 04/06/2020

“I understand how the sorcerer’s apprentice must have felt”.

The Argentinian physicist and inventor of the h-index, Jorge Hirsch, recently spoke about the unintended negative consequences of his metric, which he proposed for scientific achievement back in 2005. For one thing, “it is too sensitised to what is currently in fashion in science”. His metric takes into account the number of publications by a researcher, along with the number of times their works are cited. Today, the h-index is one of the world’s most important means of proving academic achievement.

“Decades of climate-change denial seem to have paved the way for denial of COVID-19 too”.

Neela Banerjee, a reporter in Washington for Inside Climate News, quotes experts in the climate sciences and explains how people tick in right-wing politics in the USA.

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