Certain Academics Prefer to Ignore Traders

I have for a long time observed how over sensitive many (but luckily not all) academics are to others citing or not citing their work (in the light they prefer). Academic is mainly about getting published in the right journals and get cited by other academics. This is important to become a professor and to get grants and be looked upon as prestigious in the academic world. That others cite your published work naturally make sense, it is irritating when others re-publish your ideas without citing you.

Recently Myron Scholes attacked Nassim Taleb for not citing academics

” Scholes said academics do not take Taleb seriously because he does not cite previous academic literature in his theories, relegating him to a man who "popularizes ideas and is making money selling books."

Full story here: Scholes attack on Taleb

So Taleb is not taken seriously by academics (according to Scholes) because he cites plenty of academics, but not every academic Scholes would prefer in the light Scholes would prefer? The Black Swan has 1350 citations to loads of academics and non-academics. I am sure Nassim always could cite more, we all could. However I find it surprising that Scholes are throwing this stone when he is sitting in a glass house. What about all the academics not citing traders that had published great ideas (that actually was used in practice) long before the academics?

For example Professor Stoll published on the put-call parity in Journal of Finance in 1969 without citing several traders that had published the put-cal parity in greater detail than him long before him. Most academics still citing Stoll as the one that came up with the put call parity. What about Myron Scholes himself, why did he not cite for example Filer (1959), Reinach, (1961), Thorp (1969), Bernhard, (1970), Nelson (1904)..... and a whole series of papers that had been looking at discrete market neutral delta hedging as well as the put-cal parity long before their paper in 1973. There is a whole series of academics that did not cite traders (as well as academics) that published ideas or part of their ideas long before them. Traders normally not care if academic cite them or not, they do not bother to scream about it like some academics do, traders have their income from trading and not from academic jobs where it is publish or perish.

There could of course be many reasons academics do not cite traders, they simply did not know about the sources. Still part of an academic job should be at least to do a good attempt to dig out literature that published central ideas before them, even if this means traveling around visiting a few libraries and dig out some books and papers. My point is not that academics did not cite every trader or ancient academics that came up with central ideas long before them. As researchers dig into the literature it will over time be clear who came up with different ideas first, until time again forget/diffuse the originators of an idea.

My point is simply that academics should be careful throwing stones at traders (that often also are academics) for not citing every possible academics they prefer in the light they prefer, at least not before they start to cite properly themselves, in particular when it comes to great ideas like the put-call parity that was invented long before their time.

Many academics (not all) have a tendency to only look into their own defined prestigious journals for who is who, and for who published what and when, they are not looking for the truth (or if their theories has any link to what actually can be done in the markets), but to publish or perish.