Homo Citansand Carbon Allotropes: For an Ethics of Citation
Cite we must, cite we do. We cite because we are links in a chain, using properties and methods validated by others. We also cite to negotiate the anxiety of influence. And to be fair. After outlining the reasons for citation, we use two case studies of citation amnesia in the field of hypothetical carbon allotropes to present a computer-age search tool (SACADA) in that subsubfield. Finally, we advise on good search practice, including what to do if you miss a citation. In a classic of scholarship, “On the Shoulders of Giants,”1 Robert K. Merton, a great sociologist of science, traces the involuted history of a remark by Isaac Newton, “If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants.” Merton's book is also a humanist romp, a deliciously humorous dissection of scholarly pretensions, including his own. Merton follows The Aphorism, as he labels this apposite expression, back to Bernard of Chartres. And he documents its passage through a menagerie of more or less illustrious Gallic, Jewish, and Anglo-Saxon writers, to Newton, and past him to Claude Bernard, Bukharin, and Freud. Each should have cited the source of that seductive simile. Some did, some made up imaginary sources. Still others just tried to pass the expression off as their own creation, deigning citation unimportant. Meanwhile, The Aphorism kept its hold. Because it packages in a physical metaphor a truth: Even when we imagine (and want others to acknowledge) that our piece of hard-won knowledge is novel, better, or deeper than that which came before, we know that in fact it depends on what others have done previously. The novelist's citations are hidden, for PhD students to disinter. The scientist (male and female) is perforce and explicitly homo citans et citatus. This essay will first take a look at the reasons why appropriate citation is essential to the well-being of our profession. It will then pass from ideals to two case studies of failures in citation in one subfield of chemistry and physics, that of hypothetical carbon allotropes.2, 3 One of these cases has managed in three decades to accumulate an intricacy that took eight centuries for The Aphorism. Fault finding is easy; we will try to move beyond it in two ways. First, by giving down-to-earth suggestions for more-effective literature searching, and even advice on what to do if, God forbid, you should be guilty of omitting a crucial citation. And second, by introducing, at least in the specific subfield we discuss, a computer-age tool for avoiding making a fool of yourself. The reasons are numerous; here is a selection. 1. The tradition of scholarship. To mix similes, if not dwarves on the shoulders of giants, we are links in a chain. Citation is natural, as old as the laziness that is most often behind the failure to give credit where credit is due. European, African, and Asian scholarly cultures have left us with a tradition. This is worth upholding, and not just in Anatevka. Take a look the citation-studded orthography of a page of the Talmud (redacted 600 CE),4 or Confucius (551–479 BC), which cites the older texts of the Shangshu (Shu-ching, Book of Documents),5 and you will see the scholarly chain displayed. Anthony Grafton, in his delicious book, “The Footnote: A Curious History,” traces the evolution of referencing in European historical scholarship from the Renaissance onwards.6 2. History. Yes, there are new things in this world—a gram of buckminsterfullerene, special relativity. But everything, absolutely everything, even the molecule and theory named, has antecedents. Reserving ethical considerations for a separate category, we are unabashedly and persistently curious the new came is and we In our we use by others. 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