Misattribution and the Matthew Effect
JAN 01, 2005
DOI: 10.1063/1.4796712
I was enjoying reading David Mermin’s May 2004 Reference Frame when I found his discussion of the Matthew effect. It is amusing that his citation of Robert Merton as the originator of this concept is itself a superb example of the Matthew effect! Many of us who took elementary organic chemistry as undergraduates knew this phenomenon under the slightly different name, “Matthew’s rule,” with the chapter and verse quoted in our textbook, copyrighted in 1944.
More about the authors
R. Stephen Berry, berry@uchicago.edu University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, US .
© 2005 American Institute of Physics
