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.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

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

Archives: 1: 2 years

Text and/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 and/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.

Sociology Low‑importance

	Society portal 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

	Psychology portal 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

	Science portal 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

	Education portal 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.

Etymology section false

The etymology section suggests that the etymology is based on the synoptic gospels, when clearly it is based on the gospel of Matthew.

There is a confused conflation between allegations and analysis of the gospel texts and the effect, and the etymology.

The etymology section therefore needs rewriting. Coalsoffire (talk) 06:02, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Precedence

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]