Reply to Comment on ‘Are physicists afraid of mathematics?’

Abstract

Based on citation data of biologists and physicists, we reiterate that trends in statistical indicators are not reliable to unambiguously blame mathematics for the existence or lack of paper citations. We further clarify that, contrary to claims in the Comment (Higginson and Fawcett 2016 New J. Phys. http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/18/11/118003 18 http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/18/11/118003 ), a clear statistical correlation between the number of equations and the citation success is not possible because the data is too noisy and not reliable for identifying trends unambiguously. Concerning their conclusions, we stress the well-know fact in statistics that even if correlation could be found, it by no means implies causality. Accordingly, to discuss ways of increasing citation rates by suppressing or hiding equations in appendices cannot be justified with statistics, even less so when based on small sets of very noisy data.