Talk:Matthew effect

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Matthew effect article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the subject of the article.

Add new text under old text. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Start a new topic Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed Article policies Neutral point of view No original research Verifiability

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1Auto-archiving period: 2 years

Text or other creative content from Matthew effect (sociology) was copied or moved into Matthew effect (education) with this edit. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

Text or other creative content from Matthew effect (education) was copied or moved into Matthew effect (sociology) with this edit. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Sociology Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Sociology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of sociology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SociologyWikipedia:WikiProject SociologyTemplate:WikiProject Sociologysociology Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. History of Science Low‑importance This article is part of the History of Science WikiProject, an attempt to improve and organize the history of science content on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. You can also help with the History of Science Collaboration of the Month.History of ScienceWikipedia:WikiProject History of ScienceTemplate:WikiProject History of Sciencehistory of science Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Psychology Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Psychology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Psychology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PsychologyWikipedia:WikiProject PsychologyTemplate:WikiProject Psychologypsychology Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Science Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Science, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Science on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ScienceWikipedia:WikiProject ScienceTemplate:WikiProject Sciencescience Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Education Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Education, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of education and education-related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EducationWikipedia:WikiProject EducationTemplate:WikiProject Educationeducation Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

The article says "In the sociology of science the first description of the Matthew effect was given by Price in 1976." But the article also cites Robert Merton's 1968 paper "The Matthew Effect in Science", which would prove that this sentence must be wrong. Could it be that the original editor wanted to say that "The first description of 'cumulative advantage' in terms of network theory was by Price in 1976"? This would make more sense, but I am not familiar with the literature.

I can take out the precedence statements (e.g. anything using the word "first") but keep the description of Price's work, but I haven't read the paper or the literature, and I don't want to mangle it. I also think it would make sense to reorder the section so that the earlier work by Morton comes first. I'll give the original editors some time to fix this before I make any changes. ---- CharlesTGillingham (talk) 05:43, 13 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Also: it's ironic that in an article about (among other things) the way precedence is used and abused, we have an example of someone apparently abusing precedence. ---- CharlesTGillingham (talk) 05:46, 13 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

I suggest either adding as a link or including a small mention within the article the Terry Pratchett 'Sam Vimes theory of socioeconomic unfairness'.

It's a pop culture reference rather than from academia, but it provides in roads to theory for those who might not usually pursue them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory TomPleasant (talk) 11:02, 15 December 2025 (UTC)Reply

I've added a link to the "See also" section. There's clearly a relevance between the two topics. If there's an explicit link between them in the sources, maybe someone can work a mention into the body text. Thanks for the suggestion, MartinPoulter (talk) 14:20, 15 December 2025 (UTC)Reply