The importance of the irrelevant

Which group do you fall in, under Smith’s Law?

Our astronomer’s contribution to social science he calls Smith’s Law.  In the best astronomical tradition it is named after someone who did not originate it and may never have heard of it, and its main application is to an area distant from the science itself.

One of our astronomer’s supervisors, by the name of Smith, one day was talking about his experiences on the telescope time-assignment committee.  These are the people who decide, sorting among all the observing proposals for a given telescope, who will actually get to use it.  Dr. Smith opined that between 5 and 15% of the proposals were outstanding and would certainly get time and produce good science.  About the same proportion were so poorly thought out that they should never get any time.  The remainder, some 60-90%, were all scientifically well-motivated and would probably give useful results.  As far as the Advancement of Astronomy was concerned, there was nothing really to differentiate them.  But there were so many that only about a third could actually be accommodated.  So the actual choice turned on features that really had no bearing on the effectiveness or scientific importance of the proposed observing run.

Our astronomer took this out of context and applied it to his job search in academia.  Some 10% or so of new PhDs are so obviously brilliant and promising that they can write their own ticket.  Maybe as many really shouldn’t have chosen the field in the first place.  Of the rest, only a third will find long-term or permanent employment.  But the choice will not turn on who is the better scientist or teacher, because the differences (at least at this level) are slight; it will be made on the basis of features which are really irrelevant.

We are inclined to think that Smith’s Law applies even more strongly to the non-academic job market.  Among the cacophony of advice we received during our job-hunting days, we recall a great deal about one’s resumé.  The format was vitally important, though no two sources were quite agreed about what it should be.  And whether one used a serif or sans-serif font was presented as a make-or-break decision.  Now, apart from possibly a handful of jobs in the typography field, you have to agree that a serif is utterly irrelevant to how any candidate would actually perform.  And yet this piece of drivel was presented with a straight face.

Well, you could say that job-hunting-advice people are motivated to find things they can present as secrets to success, whether they actually are or not.  Or you could dismiss all our talk about Smith’s Law as sour grapes from those who never managed to climb very high on the corporate ladder.

But we remain convinced of the importance of the utterly irrelevant in too many decisions.