The combination of originality, ambition, and lack of scruple can take you far in social science.

I happened to come across the above line in this post from a few years ago, about the scholar and Ted talk performer who made the ridiculously innumerate claim that “It’s possible to put actual monetary value on each citation a paper receives. We can, in other words calculate exactly how much a single citation is worth. . . . in the United States each citation is worth a whopping $100,000.”

Being an idiot is part of this guy’s success–but only part of it. The nation’s universities are full of intellectually limited tenured professors, and they don’t all get Ted talks. As I put it earlier, I attribute this guy’s success his ability to come up with big ideas, along with his willingness to act as if his claims were supported by evidence, when they’re not. The big ideas are important–without them, he’s just one more schlub with a Ph.D. and a Rolodex.