Kardashian index: a measure of discrepant social media profile for scientists

I would make a counter-case that scientists don't get much credit from the scientific community for communicating with the public, which funds their research, engages potential students, etc.

An extreme case is Issac Asimov who dropped out of the rat race of academia and writing Sci Fi with L. Ron Hubbard for a penny a word and wrote decades of monthly essays about science for the public that were a big reason why I went for a PhD. He didn't contribute hugely in terms of research or traditional teaching, but his impact was immense.

Also, Carl Sagan's involvement in Cosmos and the books he wrote overshadows a completely solid career in space and planetary science.

Odd as it may seem, I think Kim is a highly intelligent woman who could have if she had been so inclined become a solid scientist.

Crazy? Not if you think of her as using applied psychology to acquire and retain attention in a world where attention is the scarce resource. She has a finely tuned sense of how to stay in the news and fascinate the world.

That takes intelligence and social savvy. I'm sure she could have directed it to more scientific endeavors if she wanted.

The original article is old, and also a bit cringey in trying to be hip and sardonic. And obviously it's an argument and opinion not meant to be taken scientifically. No scientist would voluntarily include a K-index (ratio of citations vs. twitter followers) on their twitter profile unless they felt they deserved larger recognition.

That said, there's this growing clique of scientists on twitter and as the clique grows in spread and weight, it's becoming harder for new scientists to jump in. What used to be a safe place to air laundry and commiserate about academia is now kind of like regulated hivemind where you can only air 'certain' topics that the twitter cabal approves.

I've heard this from more and more scientists approaching social media/openness/the internet, that twitter is not as flat as it's been portrayed to be. I think this stems from the main conflict of popularity vs. legitimacy, and in science buzz it's so easy to game the system once you have the minimum amount of recognition.

All of this points to the conclusion that twitter is not a natural home for scientists, but rather scientists have adapted their behavior to twitter and shrewd ones have capitalized. Some of it's good, some of it's not good, and in that regard I agree with the author.

Here's an example of the Kardashian index applied to the specific field of marketing academics: https://analyticdashboards.wordpress.com/2015/10/08/from-kar...

Credit: Koen Pauwels

Someone should try this with Github commits/repo-stars and Twitter followers. There a good number of productive developers who don't have much of a social media following.