While reading this slightly-too-snarky question, I was reminded of a slightly more serious question I’ve wondered about from time to time: how does being one of the 1000+ authors on a paper like the LIGO discovery or one of the CERN collaborations influence your career? I’m used being in a field (mathematics) where most papers have between one and three authors (I’ve written with three separate four-person teams, and people have often considered this a bit exotic), so when reading a CV, one can reasonably ascribe most of the “credit” for a paper to any of the authors.
If you’re in a situation where you have to judge the research output of a scientist (like a hiring or tenure committee), how does seeing a paper from an enormous collaboration change your thinking? What do you if you have make a decision between candidates whose publication lists are identical (due them being in the same collaboration)?
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