In research, about 1 in 1000 trials can account for 50% of total contributions, similar to company capitalization where 1 in 1000 companies often make up 50%.
Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
The second judge would not resolve this claim; the verdict shown is the first judge's.
What would count as true or false
The claim is hedged ('can lead to'), so it asserts that such extreme concentration is plausible or observed, not universal. True if empirical studies of research output (citations, discoveries, impact) and of market capitalisation show concentration on the order of roughly 0.1% of items accounting for about half the total, within a factor of a few. Mostly true if the concentration is extreme (fat-tailed, power-law) but the share held by the top 0.1% is somewhat below or above 50%, or holds for one domain but only roughly for the other. Mixed if it holds for one of the two domains but not the other. Mostly false if the distributions are skewed but far less concentrated (e.g. the top 0.1% hold well under 20%). False if the evidence shows no such heavy concentration in either domain.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (4)
-
E1 The skewness of science in 219 sub-fields and a number of aggregates - Scientometrics Springer (Scientometrics) · 18 May 2011
“citation distributions with a 5-year citation window are highly skewed: the mean is 20 points above the median, while 9–10% of all articles in the upper tail account for about 44% of all citations.”
-
E2 Global citation inequality is on the rise PNAS (PMC) · 8 February 2021
“From 2000 to 2015, the top 1% extended its citation share from 14.7 to 19.6% in fractional counts (relative increase = 33%) and from 14.1 to 21% in full counts (relative increase = 49%).”
-
E3 How Valuable Is Patent Protection? Estimates by Technology Field Using Patent Renewal Data National Bureau of Economic Research (Working Paper 3780, Mark Schankerman) · July 1991
“The top one percent of patents accounts for about 15 percent of the total value of patent rights in pharmaceuticals and chemicals, and about 25 percent in mechanical and electronics (excluding Japan).”
-
E4 Apportioning Value In Patent Portfolio License And Sale Agreements - Licensing Executives Society International Licensing Executives Society International · 1 January 2022
“The top 10 percent of patents comprise 68.74 percent, 55.74 percent, and 47.33 percent of the total value of patents in these countries, respectively.”
Reasoning
The evidence caps the top 0.1% share of citations and patent value at no more than about 21–25% (E2, E3), but does not show it is well under 20%. None of the evidence addresses market capitalisation, which the criteria require in order to choose between mixed and mostly false.
Cite this claim
Nassim Taleb, “In research, about 1 in 1000 trials can account for 50% of total contributions, similar to company capitalization where 1 in 1000 companies often make up 50%.” (said 12 December 2012). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_c8348a11542c, method 0.1.0+28da144b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_c8348a11542c
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
More factual claims by Nassim Taleb
-
Mixed
“entities grow in a convex way, then slow as they saturate — growth may be unbounded, but remains sub-logarithmic.”
-
Mixed
“the unavoidable conclusion is that cardio problems are at least half genetic.”
-
Mixed
“scientists that come up with new ideas & frameworks are more often the experienced ones, not the young as we tend to believe.”
-
Mostly true
“And if one does not hedge the other, then being "good at”
-
Mostly true
“A sum of such bets becomes rapidly”
Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.