Science and scientists are currently afflicted by an epidemic of mania manifested by associating the value of research with the journal where the work is published rather than the content of the work itself. The mania is causing profound distortions in the way science is done that are deleterious to the overall scientific enterprise. 

We suggest an analogy between scientists and foraging predators, which employ random Brownian movement when prey are abundant and use more complex yet still random Lévy flights when searching for sparser prey. Scientists in search of new discoveries cannot hope to investigate the full scope of nature if they must limit their searches to areas that a consensus of other scientists judges to be important.

Causes for the Persistence of Impact Factor Mania
Arturo Casadevall and Ferric C. Fang
mBio March/April 2014 
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