Yes, on that last paragraph! In academia, but also in business, where we get a "measurement-friendly agenda". To me it feels particularly pernicious when work and rewards are steered to things that can be most easily justified by measurement, without much work to tie those measurements to actual good outcomes.
See also Goodhart's Law, which states that "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure", or McNamara on body count. Although it's pretty common to lament that since publication count became a target it's become a poor measure, I don't know that I've seen any effective action to work around it - although I never experienced the British system that limited academics to something like reporting only your five "best" papers, regardless of how many you'd published?
Yes, on that last paragraph! In academia, but also in business, where we get a "measurement-friendly agenda". To me it feels particularly pernicious when work and rewards are steered to things that can be most easily justified by measurement, without much work to tie those measurements to actual good outcomes.
See also Goodhart's Law, which states that "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure", or McNamara on body count. Although it's pretty common to lament that since publication count became a target it's become a poor measure, I don't know that I've seen any effective action to work around it - although I never experienced the British system that limited academics to something like reporting only your five "best" papers, regardless of how many you'd published?