[GSlob]

Well, "appeal to the authority" is not a fallacy there - while "man on the street" [or his market preferences] could be a gage of popularity of the day, Murray made a conscious and perfectly reasonable decision that only the professionals are in any position to offer learned and informed judgment on the relative standing of truly prominent contributors in their disciplines. To order the importance of scientists in biology by the means of statistical polling, for example, the only valid "voters" ought to be biology PhDs, or still better, tenured biology professors. All others need not bother. To filter off fads, he limited his statistical work to those who were born before 1910 [and thus had reached the "acme of 40" by 1950.]

[Dark Knight]

But appeal to authority is the problem. Meta studies are particularly prone to them. While the scientific standard of a good study might be 95% confidence (1 in 20 may be completely rigorous but absolutely wrong), a meta study has no "real" standards.

He eliminated fads...why? He cut his info off at 1950...why?

I would say that as a matter of convenience, he cut off all the hard science biologists that came into being after DNA and genetics became important and biology evolved into hard science.


DK