Scientists who study ’Achievements’ have for years, noted that people make a mark in their job usually at a young age. The new mind is open to accommodate more and hence can devote them to work in a much better way than older people can. Moreover, they find their job to be more thrilling in the early stages, making them work more enthusiastically.
It was in 2016, that this thought was changed. Albert Laszlo Barabazi, the Robert Gray Dodge Professor of Network Science at Northeastern University said that there is not much connection between age and breakthroughs in science. According to him, productivity is what matters, and it is this that brings about great discoveries. Whether the person is 20-years old or 80- both have equal chances of achieving success. As long as they keep trying, they can always reach success, not just once, but has many times as wanted.
Barabazi, the distinguished professor of Physics at Northeastern University, says that Science has with itself, the exceptional tools that help to predict natural occurrences. Using these tools for scientific careers, the same degree of predictability is seen, the ability to quantify the evolution that scientific careers undergo. He adds that understanding the laws and rules that hold a career also enhances the output. These governing laws also give the individual the necessary resources to achieve their goals.
Sinerta, visiting research assistant professor at Northeastern and assistant professor at Central European University, along with several other researchers studied the publications of more than 10,000 scientists in seven different disciplines. The research allowed them to separate three variables that drove success- luck, productivity, and magnitude of sustainable impact. The most astonishing finding of this research was that the timing of discoveries does not matter, what matters is that the discovery happened. The biggest breakthrough may happen in the scientist’s first paper or his last one, it has no fixed pattern.
The researchers were careful at explaining their result, stressing that their research pointed out as to how they are focused on measuring success and not performance. Their research offers a mathematical parameter that shows how a scientific community gets the awareness of an individual’s output.
Teena Rose Tom