“The most famous psychologists today will be forgotten in less than a century”, says this study: “Varieties of Fame in Psychology,” Henry L. Roediger III, Perspectives on Psychological Science, vol. 11, no. 6, November 2016, pp. 882-887. The author, at Washington University, St. Louis, explains: “Fame in psychology, as in all arenas, is a local […]
Tag: fame
Who Is the Most Famous Person in the World, Statistically?
Fame has been newly measured by Eric Schulman, continuing the series of studies he began in 1999. We are famously proud to publish the new paper here, as famously as we were to publish the earlier papers. Read the paper here, below, and if you like, also download it in PDF form: MEASURING FAME-part2-2016-09. *** MEASURING […]
“The Osler Industry: Insightful History or Insipid Hagiography?”
Osler, Osler, Osler. What about Osler, all these years after he departed the scene? “The Osler Industry: Insightful History or Insipid Hagiography?” C.S. Bryan and R.L. Golden, Journal of Medical Biography, 2007;15 Suppl 1:2-5. The authors explain: “The life and legacy of Sir William Osler (1849-1919) have been celebrated by nearly 1900 articles, 10 special […]
Should this essay about fame become famous?
A person could go insane trying to calculate the effects of telling other people about this essay: “Homo Narrativus and the Trouble with Fame“. Written by Peter Sheridan Dodds [pictured here], the essay sums itself up in the phrase “We think that fame is deserved. We are wrong.” (Thanks to Uta Frith, who as it happens […]
Very Famous People Are Famous for More than 15 Minutes
Four famous sociologists conclude that very famous people are famous for more than fifteen minutes, and that people who are less-than-very famous tend to be famous for only a short time. They published this study: “Only 15 Minutes? The Social Stratification of Fame in Printed Media,” Arnout van de Rijt [pictured here], Eran Shor, Charles […]
Famous, Fast Approach to Death: Obits in NYT
Some people achieve fame, then live so long that the fame fades and their eventual death goes largely unremarked upon. Those people are not the subjects of this new study: “Death in The New York Times: the price of fame is a faster flame,” C.R. Epstein and R.J. Epstein, QJM, epub 2013. (Thanks to kiltish […]
Becoming famous: A watch-it-happen experiment
How can a person become famous? A man named Aeron Haworth appears to be conducting a personal experiment to answer that simple question. Mr. Haworth’s job title is media officer for the University of Manchester’s Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences, so presumably (and by his account, emphatically) he knows what he is doing. A […]
A high school student’s medical prominence
Behold the power of a bacterium and a high school kid and some yarn. Gavi Levy Haskell’s knitted bacterium (mentioned here yesterday, and a few days before that) today is featured on the home page of BMJ, one of the world’s great medical journals.
Reflections from Darwin’s beard
Ed Theriot, co-author of the classic article “The Taxonomy of Barney“, writes after seeing a web site about Darwin’s beard: Musing on stuff that is not necessarily clearly connected to anything else: My dad and I were duck hunting one morning in South Louisiana. A cold front had just passed. The sun was not yet […]
Measurement: Who’s the Most Famous of Them All?
Eric Schulman, famed author of The History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less (which appeared in the January/February 1997 issue of AIR), has produced another in his continuing statistical analyses of fame (which is related, in a fashion, to celebrity). Click here to see Schulman’s new study in its entirety. Here is a […]