Academia as a d-index measuring contest

author here -- the follow-up post explains the point...it's an existence proof, that a metric exists which ranks me first....which doesn't mean that we have to care about that metric, but it does mean that we shouldn't be taking any metrics for granted as "real"

• Donald E. Knuth, the most eminent computer scientist alive, ranked 92nd (!) in computer science - seems off by about two orders of magnitde.

• Noam A. Chomsky, of whom some say he is the most-cited scholar alive (on the level of Aristotle), ranked seventh in the US. He gave theoretical computer science the Chomsky hierarchy and the Chomsky Normal Form, he has been called the "father of modern linguistics" (Hewbrew morphology, generative grammars, competence-performance distinction, Universal grammar, government & binding theory, the review of Skinner's book that single-handedly destroyed behaviorism, the 'minimalist' program, ...), in politology he is a long-standing and perhaps the most ardent and vocal critic of US foreign policy, supporter of Palestine (being a Jew himself), and in communications and media studies his book (with Herman) "manufactoring Consent" is a field-defining classic. - https://research.com/u/noam-chomsky

• regarding school rankings, in Germany, KIT (Karlsruhe Inst. of Technology) seems missing entirely, a top place in CS research.

I didn't know Kevin Munger. You could definitely seen regarding his field and publications why he would weight 25% of the score to the methodology citations though. Which is partly why his index is very flawed, seeing how qualitative endeavors would be squashed (Qualitative methodologies being very dependant on context). Maybe it does bridge a gap between disciplines that are quantitatively oriented ; STEM and social sciences. The humanities would be nowhere though.

It does beg the question of rankings to begin with ... A dean should know better than to statsmaxx (note the irony).