Critique between peers plays a vital role in the production of scientific knowledge. Yet, there is limited empirical evidence on the origins of criticism, its effects on the papers and individuals involved, and its visibility within the scientific literature. Here, we address these gaps through a data-driven analysis of papers that received substantiated and explicit written criticisms. Our analysis draws on data representing over 3,000 ``critical letters'' -- papers explicitly published to critique another -- from four high profile journals, with each letter linked to its target paper. We find that the papers receiving critical letters are disproportionately among the most highly-cited in their respective journal and, to a lesser extent, among the most interdisciplinary and novel. However, despite the theoretical importance of criticism in scientific progress, we observe no evidence that receiving a critical letter affects a paper's citation trajectory or the productivity and citation impact of its authors. One explanation for the limited consequence of critical letters is that they often go unnoticed. Indeed, we find that critical letters attract only a small fraction of the citations received by their targets, even years after publication. An analysis of topical similarity between criticized papers and their citing papers indicates that critical letters are primarily cited by researchers actively engaged in a similar field of study, whereas they are overlooked by more distant communities. Although criticism is celebrated as a cornerstone to science, our findings reveal that it is concentrated on high-impact papers, has minimal measurable consequences, and suffers from limited visibility. These results raise important questions about the role and value of critique in scientific practice.

翻译：同行间的批评在科学知识生产中发挥着至关重要的作用。然而，关于批评的起源、其对相关论文及作者的影响，以及其在科学文献中的可见性，目前仍缺乏充分的实证证据。本文通过对收到实质性明确书面批评的论文进行数据驱动分析，以填补这些研究空白。我们的分析基于来自四本高影响力期刊的超过3000篇“批评信”——即明确为批评另一篇论文而发表的论文——的数据集，每封批评信均与其目标论文关联。研究发现，收到批评信的论文在其所属期刊中不成比例地集中于高被引论文，且在较小程度上也集中于最具跨学科性和新颖性的论文。然而，尽管批评在科学进步中具有重要的理论意义，我们并未观察到收到批评信会影响论文的引用轨迹或其作者的生产力与引用影响力。批评信影响有限的一个可能解释是其常被忽视。事实上，我们发现即使发表多年后，批评信获得的引用也仅占其目标论文引用量的一小部分。对受批评论文与其引用论文之间主题相似性的分析表明，批评信主要被活跃于相似研究领域的研究者引用，而更广泛的研究群体则往往忽略它们。尽管批评被推崇为科学的基石，我们的研究结果表明，批评集中于高影响力论文，其可测量的影响微乎其微，且可见性有限。这些发现对科学实践中批评的作用与价值提出了重要问题。