British Classification Soc post-RAE talk/discussion - 6 July (fwd)

[Stevan Harnad]

On Wed, 6 Jun 2007, Loet Leydesdorff wrote:

> I look forward to your multi-variate regression model for explaining the RAE
> rankings. 

(1) It's not explaining, it's predicting -- like weather-forecasting.

(2) It's not a model. (Multiple regression is just the bog-standard
general linear model for statistics.)

(3) The idea is first to find metrics that are closely enough correlated
with the RAE panel rankings to be confidently substituted for them.

(4) Then the idea is to make them better, more powerful, more
predictive, field by field, adjusting the regression weights on each
metric as needed.

(5) Not slavishly predictive of the RAE panel rankings any more (that
would be circular), but predictive of future research performance, other
(validated) metrics, other human rankings.

Stevan Harnad