Talk:Matthew effect

Precedence

The article says "In the sociology of science the first description of the Matthew effect was given by Price in 1976." But the article also cites Robert Merton's 1968 paper "The Matthew Effect in Science", which would prove that this sentence must be wrong. Could it be that the original editor wanted to say that "The first description of 'cumulative advantage' in terms of network theory was by Price in 1976"? This would make more sense, but I am not familiar with the literature.

I can take out the precedence statements (e.g. anything using the word "first") but keep the description of Price's work, but I haven't read the paper or the literature, and I don't want to mangle it. I also think it would make sense to reorder the section so that the earlier work by Morton comes first. I'll give the original editors some time to fix this before I make any changes. ---- CharlesTGillingham (talk) 05:43, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Also: it's ironic that in an article about (among other things) the way precedence is used and abused, we have an example of someone apparently abusing precedence. ---- CharlesTGillingham (talk) 05:46, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Sam Vimes theory of socioeconomic unfairness

I suggest either adding as a link or including a small mention within the article the Terry Pratchett 'Sam Vimes theory of socioeconomic unfairness'.

It's a pop culture reference rather than from academia, but it provides in roads to theory for those who might not usually pursue them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory TomPleasant (talk) 11:02, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

I've added a link to the "See also" section. There's clearly a relevance between the two topics. If there's an explicit link between them in the sources, maybe someone can work a mention into the body text. Thanks for the suggestion, MartinPoulter (talk) 14:20, 15 December 2025 (UTC)