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Late Bloomers

TED Radio Hour

00:00

Science Is Like a Lottery

The chances of me publishing a paper whose impact would overcome my earlier papers is less than 1%. This sounds grim, but Laszlo looked at the data and realized he was missing a control. After lots of statistical tests, there's only one explanation for that. Most scientists buy most of their lottery tickets in the first 10, 15 years of their career. And after that, their productivity decreases.

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