ArticlePloS one2013
Bibliometric Evidence for a Hierarchy of the Sciences.
Article in PloS one, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Meta-assessment of bias in science.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Pooled it
- Scientists Admitting to Plagiarism: A Meta-analysis of Surveys.Science and engineering ethics · 2015Pooled it
- Barriers to and facilitators of interventions to counter publication bias: thematic analysis of scholarly articles and stakeholder interviews.BMC health services research · 2014Pooled it
- The illusion of progress: why most introgressions from wild Triticeae fail to improve wheat agronomically.Frontiers in plant science · 2026Review
- A data-driven comparative analysis on citation intents across scientific disciplines.PloS one · 2026Article
- A metric of knowledge as information compression reflects reproducibility predictions for biomedical experiments.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Socio-environmental modeling shows physics-like confidence with water modeling surpassing it in numerical claims.iScience · 2025Article
- Distinct domains: a call for nuance in the categorization and evaluation of "Arts and Humanities" disciplines.Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2025Article
- Issues in Grounded Cognition and How to Solve Them - the Minimalist Account.Journal of cognition · 2025Article
- Enhancing disciplinary diversity and inclusion in conservation science and practice based on a case study of the Society for Conservation Biology.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2024Article
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- The Colombian scientific elite-Science mapping and a comparison with Nobel Prize laureates using a composite citation indicator.PloS one · 2022Article
- Unveiling the knowledge domain and emerging trends of olfactory dysfunction with depression or anxiety: A bibliometrics study.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Article
- The Rhythms of Scholarly Publication: Suggestions to Enhance Bibliometric Comparisons Across Disciplines.Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2022Article
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- Toward a Cultural Evolutionary Psychology: Why the Evolutionary Approach does not Imply Reductionism or Determinism.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2021Article
- Neural embeddings of scholarly periodicals reveal complex disciplinary organizations.Science advances · 2021Article
- Psychology's Status as a Science: Peculiarities and Intrinsic Challenges. Moving Beyond its Current Deadlock Towards Conceptual Integration.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The hypothesis of a Hierarchy of the Sciences, first formulated in the 19(th) century, predicts that, moving from simple and general phenomena (e.g. particle dynamics) to complex and particular (e.g. human behaviour), researchers lose ability to reach theoretical and methodological consensus. This hypothesis places each field of research along a continuum of complexity and "softness", with profound implications for our understanding of scientific knowledge. Today, however, the idea is still unproven and philosophically overlooked, too often confused with simplistic dichotomies that contrast natural and social sciences, or science and the humanities. Empirical tests of the hypothesis have usually compared few fields and this, combined with other limitations, makes their results contradictory and inconclusive. We verified whether discipline characteristics reflect a hierarchy, a dichotomy or neither, by sampling nearly 29,000 papers published contemporaneously in 12 disciplines and measuring a set of parameters hypothesised to reflect theoretical and methodological consensus. The biological sciences had in most cases intermediate values between the physical and the social, with bio-molecular disciplines appearing harder than zoology, botany or ecology. In multivariable analyses, most of these parameters were independent predictors of the hierarchy, even when mathematics and the humanities were included. These results support a "gradualist" view of scientific knowledge, suggesting that the Hierarchy of the Sciences provides the best rational framework to understand disciplines' diversity. A deeper grasp of the relationship between subject matter's complexity and consensus could have profound implications for how we interpret, publish, popularize and administer scientific research.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.