As a scientist, are you always focused on improving your metrics by such means as getting papers into prestigious journals? Do your funders and institutions add to that pressure to get ahead? If so, you may be at risk of a new psychiatric condition known as “Publiphilia Impactfactorius” — or, simply, PI, described in a PeerJ preprint. We talked to first author Joeri Tijdink at VU Medical Center (VUmc) in Amsterdam about this tongue-in-cheek take-down of the scientific condition, and whether there is any cure for the affliction.
Mental illness is no laughing matter but we loved the name of this condition so decided to include this Retraction Watch item in the Resource Library.
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Joeri Tijdink: We have studied personality traits (narcissism, psychopathy, self-esteem, Machiavellianism) in 535 biomedical scientists and associated these traits with research misbehaviors. These results are published in a serious publication here.
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From a psychiatric perspective (I am a psychiatrist), I felt that from my observations of the research culture there are several personality subtypes of scientists that may show (pseudo)psychiatric symptoms and traits. However, I was unable to classify these individuals in a formal psychiatric classification. Therefore, we have conducted a cluster analysis and found 3 different personality clusters with specific features. We named them after their personality profile and features; the sneaky grandiose, the perfectionists and the ideal sons-in-law.
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