[Ar-Curunir]

Beyond his Higgs Boson papers, the rest haven't been cited particularly much. Not indicative of a genius. Sure, no-one is calling him stupid, but there are potentially many other people who have changed the field as much, or more than him. Just because he won a Nobel Prize for one work doesn't make him immune to criticism.

[aub3bhat]

There is valid criticism, and then there's "this guy did not do anything after making a Nobel worthy discovery, should have been kicked out".

Also "haven't been cited particularly much" is utterly bullshit. Unless the goal is to optimize for mediocrity (3 papers each year with 20-50 citations each) being better than one break-through Nobel worthy work. Frankly citations are very very easy to game if you are a professor with reasonable means at a good university, and are a really really bad indicator of success.

Since he already had a very successful paper maybe he wanted to write risky papers. In any case that's not worse than other researchers who write cookie-cutter papers adding extra terms to equations that are guaranteed to be cited by the next guy adding even more terms. By finding these minor faults with a Nobel award winning researcher, you are displaying the same dysfunctional thinking that has plagued academia.

[Ar-Curunir]

I'm not sure why you have this idea that academia is resistant to paradigm shifts; they happen all the time. Any papers that are "risky" enough to start such paradigm shifts end up getting cited tons.

[aub3bhat]

Its not me but rather its you who has the wrong idea that all papers with 50 citations are good. Or rather the more citation == better research.

Frankly almost 95% of papers are crap and better off not having been written, had it not been for publish or perish culture, or "lets count papers/cites to shame a Nobel award winning researcher culture" that you espouse.

Citations are a self reinforcing metric. Once a community starts counting them, the only way to succeed is to publish more which in turns leads to higher counts.

There is nothing wrong in publishing a good thorough paper over 4 years maybe slowly updating it as a working paper as done in economics.

[Ar-Curunir]

I am not saying that all papers with citations are good; rather, that most good papers get tons of citations.

[gnipgnip]

I wish papers were "running", as in a wiki page with developments being incrementally added. It'd certainly help reduce the amount of redundant reading, and much greater coherency.