The Ortega hypothesis holds that average or mediocre

scientists A scientist is a person who researches to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosophical study of nature ...

contribute substantially to the advancement of

science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

. According to this hypothesis, scientific progress occurs mainly by the accumulation of a mass of modest, narrowly specialized intellectual contributions. On this view, major breakthroughs draw heavily upon a large body of minor and little-known work, without which the major advances could not happen.

Citation research

The Ortega hypothesis is widely held, but a number of systematic studies of scientific

citations A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose o ...

have favored the opposing "Newton hypothesis", which says that scientific progress is mostly the work of a relatively small number of great scientists (after

Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton () was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment that followed ...

's statement that he "stood on the shoulders of giants"). The most important papers mostly cite other important papers by a small number of outstanding scientists, suggesting that the breakthroughs do not actually draw heavily on a large body of minor work. Rather, the pattern of citations suggests that most minor work draws heavily on a small number of outstanding papers and outstanding scientists. Even minor papers by the most eminent scientists are cited much more than papers by relatively unknown scientists; and these elite scientists are clustered mostly in a small group of elite departments and universities. The same pattern of disproportionate citation of a small number of scholars appears in fields as diverse as physics and

criminology Criminology (from Latin , 'accusation', and Ancient Greek , ''-logia'', from λόγος ''logos'', 'word, reason') is the interdisciplinary study of crime and deviant behaviour. Criminology is a multidisciplinary field in both the behaviou ...

. The matter is not settled. No research has established that citation counts reflect the real influence or worth of scientific work. So, the apparent disproof of the Ortega hypothesis may be an artifact of inappropriately chosen data. Stratification within the social networks of scientists may skew the citation statistics. Many authors cite research papers without actually reading them or being influenced by them. Experimental results in physics make heavy use of techniques and devices that have been honed by many previous inventors and researchers, but these are seldom cited in reports on those results. Theoretical papers have the broadest relevance to future research, while reports of experimental results have a narrower relevance but form the basis of the theories. This suggests that citation counts merely favor theoretical results.

The name

The name of the hypothesis refers to

José Ortega y Gasset José Ortega y Gasset (; ; 9 May 1883 – 18 October 1955) was a Spanish philosopher and essayist. He worked during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism and dictatorship. His philosoph ...

, who wrote in ''

The Revolt of the Masses ''The Revolt of the Masses'' (, ) is a book by José Ortega y Gasset. It was first published as a series of articles in the newspaper '' El Sol'' in 1929, and as a book in 1930; the English translation, first published two years later, was auth ...

'' that "astoundingly mediocre" men of narrow specialties do most of the work of experimental science. Ortega most likely would have disagreed with the hypothesis that has been named after him, as he held not that scientific progress is driven mainly by the accumulation of small works by mediocrities, but that scientific geniuses create a framework within which intellectually commonplace people can work successfully. For example, Ortega thought that

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein (14 March 187918 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence f ...

drew upon the ideas of

Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works ...

and

Ernst Mach Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach ( ; ; 18 February 1838 – 19 February 1916) was an Austrian physicist and philosopher, who contributed to the understanding of the physics of shock waves. The ratio of the speed of a flow or object to that of ...

to form his own synthesis, and that Einstein did not draw upon masses of tiny results produced systematically by mediocrities. According to Ortega, science is mostly the work of geniuses, and geniuses mostly build on each other's work, but in some fields there is a real need for systematic laboratory work that could be done by almost anyone. The "Ortega hypothesis" derives only from this last element of Ortega's theory, not the main thrust of it. Ortega characterized this type of research as "mechanical work of the mind" that does not require special talent or even much understanding of the results, performed by people who specialize in one narrow corner of one science and hold no curiosity beyond it.

References

{{reflist, refs= David J. Hess. ''Science Studies: An Advanced Introduction,'
p. 71
NYU Press, 1997.

. ''

,'' pp. 110-111. Norton, 1932. Jonathan R. Cole and Cole, Stephen
"The Ortega hypothesis."
''Science,'' New Series, Vol. 178, No. 4059 (Oct. 27, 1972), pp. 368-375. M.H. MacRoberts and Barbara R. MacRoberts. "Testing the Ortega Hypothesis: Facts and Artifacts." ''Scientometrics,'' Vol. 12, Nos. 5–6 (1987) pp. 293–295. M. Oromaner
"The Ortega hypothesis and influential articles in American sociology."
''Scientometrics,'' Vol. 7, No. 1 (Jan. 26, 1985), pp. 3–10. {{doi, 10.1007/BF02020136 Hildrun Kretschmer. "Measurement of social stratification. A contribution to the dispute on the ORTEGA hypothesis." ''Scientometrics,'' Vol. 26 No. 1 (1993), pp. 97–113. {{doi, 10.1007/BF02016795 Heidi Lee Hoerman and Nowicke, Carole Elizabeth
"Secondary and Tertiary Citing: A Study of Referencing Behavior in the Literature of Citation Analysis Deriving from the Ortega Hypothesis of Cole and Cole."
''The Library Quarterly,'' Vol. 65, No. 4 (Oct., 1995), pp. 415-434. S. A. Goudsmit, John D. McGervey, Robert J. Yaes, Jonathan R. Cole and Stephen Col
"Citation Analysis."
''Science,'' New Series, Vol. 183, No. 4120 (Jan. 11, 1974), pp. 28+30-33. Endre Száva-Kováts
"Non-indexed eponymal citedness (NIEC): first fact-finding examination of a phenomenon of scientific literature."
''Journal of Information Science,'' 1994 20:55 {{doi, 10.1177/016555159402000107 Endre Száva-Kováts
"The false 'Ortega Hypothesis': a literature science case study."
''Journal of Information Science'' 2004 30: 496. {{doi, 10.1177/0165551504047823 Sociology of scientific knowledge Science studies José Ortega y Gasset

Citation research

The name

See also

References