The New Algorithm in HR
October 2, 2012
When looking for new scientists, university search committees can now avoid the trouble of putting candidates through their paces and, instead, let an algorithm decide. ScienceDaily announces, “Predicting if Scientists Will Be Stars: New Formula Reveals if Young Scientists Will Have Brilliant Future.” Why rely on human judgment when there is software to make hiring decisions for you?
The magic formula, purported to predict a scientist’s success a decade into the future, comes from a new Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine study recently published in Nature journal. Schools have been basing their decisions on a mix of instinct and a prospects “h index“, a measure of the quality and quantity of papers they have published. Journalist Marla Paul writes:
“The new formula is more than twice as accurate as the h index for predicting future success for researchers in the life sciences. It considers other important factors that contribute to a scientist’s trajectory including the number of articles written, the current h index, the years since publishing the first article, the number of distinct journals one has published in and the number of articles in high impact journals.”
Developed in the lab of Feinberg associate professor Konrad Kording, with additional funding from the National Science Foundation, the algorithm could also be applied to tenure and funding decisions. The article notes that the formula will not totally replace the peer evaluation process, but could be a “complementary tool.” It seems to me that users will have to be diligent to make sure the complementary does not become the primary. That, though, may be something we must all guard against as technology continues to gain on human reasoning.
Cynthia Murrell, October 02, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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