Clippy comments on Follow-up on ESP study: "We don't publish replications" - Less Wrong

71 Post author: CarlShulman 12 July 2011 08:48PM

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Comment author: JoshuaZ 12 July 2011 12:25:40AM *  7 points [-]

A paper without any citations is generally considered such a bad source that it's only one step up from wikipedia. You can cite it, if you must, but you better not base your research on it.

If this were true how would anyone ever get the first citation?

(Incidentally in my own field, there are a lot of papers that don't get cited. It isn't because the papers are wrong (although some very small fraction of them have that problem) but that they just aren't interesting. But math is very different from most other fields.)

Comment author: Clippy 12 July 2011 06:50:20PM *  5 points [-]

If this were true how would anyone ever get the first citation?

Because the policy wasn't applied until after a cutoff date, so the recursion bottoms out at an author from before the cutoff. Obviously. Edit: Non-obviously. Edit2: HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO END THIS COMMENT FOR YOU MEATBAGS NOT TO VOTE ME DOWN???

Comment author: orthonormal 13 July 2011 04:57:28AM 7 points [-]

Edit2: HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO END THIS COMMENT FOR YOU MEATBAGS NOT TO VOTE ME DOWN???

I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that's not it.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 12 July 2011 09:41:04PM 0 points [-]

I think your comment is getting voted down because it doesn't actually answer the issue in question. It does allow there to be a set of citable papers, but it doesn't deal with the actual question which is how any given paper would ever get its first citation.

Comment author: Clippy 12 July 2011 10:00:02PM *  2 points [-]

Yes, it does, because paper B, from after the cutoff, cites a cite-less paper A, from before the cutoff. Then a paper C can cite B (or A), as B cites a previous paper, and A is from a time for which the standard today is not applied. (Perhaps I wasn't clear that the cutoff also applies to citable papers -- papers from before the cutoff don't themselves need citations in them to be citable.)

Edit: Also, papers from before the cutoff cited other prior papers.

Comment author: Benquo 14 July 2011 02:39:56AM 1 point [-]

It's not citing but being cited, I think. So if A and B are both before the cutoff, and A cites B, then C from after the cutoff can cite B (but not necessarily A).

Comment author: beoShaffer 12 July 2011 09:39:25PM 0 points [-]

Personally I thought it was a good comment even before the edit.

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