R0058/2026-04-03/C001/SRC01/E02¶
Top 1% of authors by degree control 58.0% of cross-disciplinary paths — the actual "1%" finding
URL: https://arxiv.org/html/2512.10058
Extract¶
The paper reports:
- Top 1% of authors by degree control 58.0% of cross-disciplinary paths
- Top 5% of authors control 88.1% of bridging connections
- Removing just 100 high-degree authors eliminates cross-community connectivity
This is a finding about concentration of bridging influence — a small number of highly connected authors serve as structural bridges between the safety and ethics communities. It is NOT a finding about what percentage of authors "bridge the divide" in the sense of publishing in both fields.
Relevance to Hypotheses¶
| Hypothesis | Relationship | Strength |
|---|---|---|
| H1 | Contradicts | The claim states "only 1% of authors bridging the divide," but the paper says the top 1% of authors by degree control 58% of cross-disciplinary paths. These are materially different assertions. The paper's "1%" refers to network centrality rank, not to the total percentage of bridging authors. |
| H2 | Supports | Confirms that the "1%" figure exists in the paper but has been mischaracterized in the claim, supporting partial correctness |
| H3 | N/A | This evidence is about the specific wording of the claim versus the source, not about whether the underlying phenomenon is real |
Context¶
The distinction is critical: saying "1% of authors bridge the divide" implies that 99% of authors have zero cross-field connections. The paper's actual finding is that a small elite dominates the cross-field connections that do exist — but does not claim that only 1% have any cross-field activity at all. The paper separately reports that mixed papers represent 9.5% of the corpus, suggesting cross-field work is more common than "1%" implies.
Notes¶
This is the most diagnostic evidence for discriminating between H1 and H2. The claim's "1% bridging" is a paraphrase that materially changes the meaning of the source finding.