In 1991, the American astronomer and superstar science popularizer Carl Sagan was nominated for membership in the National Academy of Sciences. Despite the efforts of some strong backers—including the Nobel laureate Stanley Miller, who advocated passionately for Sagan’s admission to the Academy—the nomination did not succeed. Sagan was blackballed in the first round of voting, which led to a full debate and vote by the Academy members. He then secured <50% of “yes” votes in the final round, far from the two-thirds required for admission to the Academy. Sagan's biographers have argued that the Academy's rejection of Sagan, and Harvard's prior denial of his tenure, were the direct consequence of the phenomenon that has become known as the “Sagan Effect”: the perception that popular, visible scientists are worse academics than those scientists who do not engage in public discourse. Yet, later analyses of Sagan's output have indicated that his academic contributions compared favorably to those of other Academy members (Davidson, 1999; Poundstone and Chyba, 1999; Shermer, 1999; Morrison, 2006; Jensen et al., 2008). Fast forward to 2011. Sean Carroll, a nontenure track research professor at Caltech—and science writer—wrote a widely read blog post, facetiously entitled “How To Get Tenure at a Major Research University,” drawing partially from his own previous failed tenure attempt at the University of Chicago (Carroll, 2011). He offered 13 pieces of advice, approximately half of which are straightforward, even self-evident: “Do good research; Make an impact in the field; Bring in grant money.” Others are, to a large degree, counterintuitive: “Don't be too well known outside the field; Don't write a book; Choose your hobbies wisely.” Carroll argued that academics look askance at colleagues that have too high of a public profile. Not out of envy—but because they worry that public scientists care more about their media presence than about discovery. Likewise, authors of popular science books face concerns that they have wasted time that should have been dedicated to doing research. Carroll's most radical warning is that extracurricular pastimes should have zero resemblance to academic work. It's OK to fly planes, play the cello, run ultramarathons, and cook gourmet dishes. It's not OK to start a business or to do nonacademic writing (fiction or nonfiction). Again, the main concern being that any significant time dedicated to such activities might have been better spent on conducting research—even though hobbies that are related or unrelated to science both take the same amount of time away from the lab. there are certain researchers are “renowned for being renowned,” rather than “because of their contributions to the published literature.” those who with more social media followers “may have built their public profile on shaky foundations.” — source pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov | Susana Martinez-Conde | 2016 Feb 17