In 2020, I published on my first blog the results of a significant study featured in Nature Communications, which revealed that collaborating with a renowned scientist offers a crucial advantage that can extend throughout the careers of young researchers. https://pacheco-torgal.blogspot.com/2020/09/junior-researchers-who-coauthor-work.html
Now, in 2024, I feel compelled to revisit this issue in light of a recently published article in the prestigious journal Nature. This article presents a study that analyzed 245,500 mentor-mentee pairs worldwide, who collectively published nearly 10 million papers across 22 academic disciplines. The findings demonstrate that having a well-cited mentor significantly boosts a junior researcher’s chances of success, while lacking such mentorship can result in a career spent on the margins of the academic community.https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsif.2024.0173
The article goes on to suggest that future researchers must be warned about the risks of accepting mentorship from those with limited academic impact. This raises a crucial question: if a future researcher is not adequately informed of this risk, could they legally hold those responsible for this harmful omission accountable, especially if it results in irreversible damage to their career?
P.S. In this context, it’s worth revisiting the post where the ethics of those who attained full professorship without merit were called into question. https://19-pacheco-torgal-19.blogspot.com/2024/07/how-scientific-community-can-identify.html
