“Beginner’s Luck” in Science?
Nature’s coverage of a preprint about “rookie researchers” is itself a rookie move
Nature News sure likes clickbait headlines, and their latest one — “Want to do disruptive science? Include more rookie researchers” — is certainly eye-catching. It even includes a subhead that makes it clear the finding is rock solid:
Papers from research teams with a substantial number of beginners are highly disruptive and innovative, study shows
Unfortunately, the paper driving the coverage is a lot less definitive than these headlines would suggest, comes up short in a lot of ways, and doesn’t really make the case because it makes a lot of superficial assumptions and fails to test for some obvious confounders while missing some real opportunities.
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