Scientists, like criminals,
peak at 30
Study hints that men strive to
win women and then sit back.
10 July 2003
HELEN R. PILCHER
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| Lab life: more complex than publication lists suggest. |
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Male scientists are like
criminals, a new study concludes1.
Their productivity peaks at 30
and then goes rapidly downhill.
Psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa
of the London School of
Economics and Political Science
examined the lives of 280
eminent scientists, including
Pierre Curie and Albert
Einstein. He found that 65% had
published their best paper by
the age of 35. What's more,
unmarried scientists peaked
later in life than those who had
tied the knot. Crime, similarly,
is a bachelor's game.
Picking locks and publishing
papers are ways of catching the
female eye, argues Kanazawa. As
men find partners, get married
and have children, he suggests,
they no longer need to compete
with each other. Indeed,
testosterone levels, thought to
boost action and conflict, fall
after a man becomes a father.
"I'm hoping that I'm an
exception to my theory - I wrote
this paper before I got married
and I'm now 40 years old," quips
Kanazawa. His study did not
cover female scientists.
The idea that fighting for
grants and lab space is simply a
modern version of flinging
spears to attract the opposite
sex is the latest in a long line
of controversial theories about
the evolution of creativity.
Several psychologists have
argued, for example, that
competition for mates drives the
production of great literature
and music.
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I don't believe the pattern is inevitable
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John Maynard Smith
University of Sussex
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With encroaching maturity,
the urge to show off may wane,
agrees evolutionary psychologist
Robin Dunbar of the University
of Liverpool, UK. "As you settle
into your bath chair, you may be
less inclined to go out and do
this kind of stuff," he says.
But the reality of lab life
today is more complex than
publication lists suggest. As
scientists get older, they spend
more time leading research
facilities, writing grants and
supervising students. So
personal productivity may make
way for collaborative endeavour.
"I don't believe the pattern
is inevitable," says married
octogenarian evolutionary
theorist John Maynard Smith of
the University of Sussex, UK.
"My productivity went up after
30." Maynard Smith, who
published his most influential
work at 50, teaches and writes
books to this day. |
