Occam's razor explains Matthew effect

Sociologists of science noticed that the results of many collaborative projects and discoveries are often attributed only to their most famous collaborators, even when the contributions of these famous collaborators were minimal. This phenomenon is known as the Matthew effect, after a famous citation from the Gospel of Matthew. In this article, we show that Occam’s razor provides a possible explanation for the Matthew effect. 1 Matthew Effect: A Brief Description In the 1960s, Robert K. Merton, a sociologist of science, observed that there is a tendency to remember only the most famous contributors to a collaborative project, even when the contribution of these famous contributors was minimal. As a result, the famous researchers become even more famous, while others are largely forgotten [3]. He called this phenomenon Matthew effect, after a citation from the Gospel of Matthew 25:29: “For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.” This phenomenon has been observed in many areas of science. For example, it has recently been emphasized in an article about the contribution of female scientists to computing which was published in Communications of the ACM, the main Computer Science magazine [1]. 2 How Can We Explain the Matthew Effect? Our knowledge decays with time. In the beginning, we may be well aware of the contributions of different scientists to a project. However, as time goes by, we tend to forget the details – and this explains why with time, our perception of contributions of different scientists changes. To understand why these changes follow the Matthew-effect pattern, let us describe the knowledge decay in precise terms.