Marginalia: Reply to Simonton and Handberg

Neither Simonton' nor Handberg2 dispute the core finding of our paper:3 each of the 98 X-ray astronomers in our sample (some innovators, others not) is 'marginal', when marginality is determined by empirical indicators used in previous studies. The hypothesis that marginality causes scientific innovation becomes trivially true, if only because the biography of any innovative scientist is almost certain to include at least one attribute that indicates marginality. We suspect that neither 'improved' operationalizations of an inherently ambiguous concept, nor statistical manipulation of an R2, will improve the prediction of those scientists most likely to contribute innovations.