Beware the undiscovered genius

At Cornell University, a tenured professor once lodged a formal complaint saying that he had been denied a pay rise for five years. He had not published for a decade, choosing instead to translate and interpret a single stanza of classical literature. He declared himself an undiscovered genius whose magnum opus would be ready for publication and evaluation at the end of his career.

True, brilliant works take time. But can a department function like this? Should it reward everyone, assuming that those who do not have finished products are ‘still at it’ and deserve as much status and compensation as the continually productive?

Performance evaluation is a central issue in academia, and is the crux of hiring, tenure, promotion and pay decisions. If it is done badly, the best people flee — under-compensated and promoted late — while people with less ability soak up resources.

How evaluations are done varies widely. Some administrators stress publishing in certain peer-reviewed journals or books; others emphasize large grants; some reward teaching large courses with high ratings; others seek national service, awards and fellowship status in prestigious professional organizations. Too much depends on a haphazard, unreliable and inadequately monitored system, particularly for evaluating scholarship.

Empirical research suggests two guiding principles: the best predictor of future performance is past performance; and high impact is associated with high productivity. For the high-productivity researcher, each publication is cited more, as is the person's work as a whole; the individual receives more career awards; the published work is better recognized with awards — all indicators of peer recognition. Not all prolific work is good work, but the relationship between productivity and quality exists across most fields of scholarship.

In practical terms, a historically unproductive professor given extra departmental resources usually remains unproductive. Conversely, a formerly productive professor suffering a setback will again be productive. Bad hiring decisions cannot be made good by dumping more resources on under-performing scientists to galvanize their productivity. Administrators must not be seduced by claims of undiscovered genius or of insufficient time and resources. The message from empirical research is clear: beware the undiscovered genius.