The Internet Classics Archive | The Republic by Plato
The Republic by Plato, part of the Internet Classics Archive
classics.mit.edu
Here is a coherent, concise post on Scientometrics. I have somewhat over forty hours experience here. My original post was too sprawling and
incoherent to be useful for most people; however, it was a good starting point for this post.
Scientometrics - Wikipedia
What does it look like to use these systems? A lot like using a potency system in pharmacology. So much so that first one ought be familiar
with how potency systems work; ergo, the following aside.
Pharmacology Aside
Potency (pharmacology) - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Erowid -- a professional folk community -- maintains one potency system as a set of intensity to dose-range charts for various pharmacological substances. This
can be seen as a professional folk system: Useful for a rule of thumb; on the threshold of scientific; prone to breaking down into fuzz -- particularly "around
the edges." (Another example of a similar sort of thing is the Body Mass Index, or BMI.) Consider the following examples.
The effect (intensity) and corresponding dose (range) for two smoked tryptamines. It is clear that 5-MeO-DMT is more potent than DMT: threshold effects start
at 1 mg, half the 2 mg dose needed for DMT. One could therefore say that 5-MeO-DMT is twice as potent as DMT; however, this is regarding threshold effect only.
There is much nuance. For example, 40 mg of DMT can produce strong effects, but only 10 mg of 5-MeO-DMT is required; ergo, 5-MeO-DMT has four times the potency
of DMT in the context of reaching the stronger intensities. Oftentimes, a linear dose-response curve is assumed; however, this is not actually a safe assumption
to make.
Dose–response relationship - Wikipedia
Professional folk systems like this are extremely useful; however, they have many caveats that must be kept in mind. This can be very important -- especially
in edge cases. This was illustrated by the previous example of two drugs with incongruent dose-response curves. Knowing that half as much 5-MeO-DMT -- 1 mg --
is needed to produce a threshold effect -- versus DMT's 2 mg -- would seemingly imply that one ought to take 20 mg of 5-MeO-DMT to reach the threshold of strong
effects. However, 20 mg of 5-MeO-DMT is the strongest suggested dose, and when discussing strong intensity effects, 5-MeO-DMT is actually four times as potent,
instead of simply twice as potent.
It conveys that one needs 50 times less fentanyl than heroin, and 100 times less than morphine, for comparable effect. But this can only really be considered a
rule of thumb -- unless we know their dose-response curves have equivalent slopes, for otherwise they haven't a fixed potency difference between them; rather,
only for a given intensity of effect. Much as 5-MeO-DMT can be seen as either twice as potent or four times as potent as DMT. Things are fuzzy in the world of
professional folk systems; therefore, they are typically not used in the most rigorous scientific contexts, even as they oftentimes are in more pragmatic and
applied areas, and unambiguously are of high value.
Potency - Wikipedia
EC50 - Wikipedia
The primary improvement of this is replacing more subjective things like "threshold," "light," "common," and "strong" with an objective measure: EC50, which is
the concentration of a drug that attains 50% of its maximum efficacy, or ability to produce effect.
Efficacy vs. Potency - Pharmacology - Medbullets Step 1
step1.medbullets.com
In specific, make use of JCR Impact Factors, SJR Indicators, and Google Scholar H-indices. Also, the other metrics provided by
https://scimagojr.com are valuable in the assessment of academic journals. Google Scholar H-indices are also computed on individual researchers
and give you some insight into their status in their fields. One exception is mathematics related papers, which can be ranked by these systems as
well; however, the Erdős numbers of the authors is a better indicator for mathematics papers -- especially papers regarding discrete mathematics,
graph theory, number theory, mathematical analysis, approximation theory, set theory, and probability theory.
JCR Impact Factors (R): https://clarivate.com/webofsciencegroup/solutions/journal-citation-reports/
SJR Indicators: https://www.scimagojr.com
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com
Things are more complex than this, but recursion from this basis will allow for building a more powerful system. To address apparent dichotomies in the
scientific literature, we take a sufficient sample of the literature and weight it in accordance with these scientometric systems. The position having the
most scientometric support for it is essentially the scientifically supported position; however, there are oftentimes competing positions in science, and we
should realize that what is the most supported today may not be tomorrow. However, as the disparity between the dichotomous positions and their academic
merit as derived by this system increases, the one having the most merit currently in support of it is increasingly likely to be not only the scientifically
considered as correct position, but the position that is reflective of the truth of actual reality.
