stigler’s law of eponymy (12. 894)

Via Kottke, we are introduced to the above occurrence, recursive like instances pleonasmy, which proposed by statistics professor Stephen Stigler in 1980, attributes his own discovery to an idea formulated by sociologist Robert Merton, whom also popularised such notions as unintended consequences, reference groups, role models and self-fulfilling prophecies, and holds that no scientific discovery is named after its original pioneer, citing Hubble’s Law of universal expansion derived by Georges Lemaître among others and that credit is an object lesson in plagiarism and immodesty. Fully aware of his legacy, Merton’s own version was a variation on his so called Matthew Effect of cumulative advantage from the gospel summarised in the adage “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”—specifically referring to women’s sidelining in the academia and the arts, like the Matilda effect or the Bechdel test who repeatedly attributed the idea to her friend Liz Wallace but to no avail.