The Ortega hypothesis holds that average or mediocre scientists contribute substantially to the advancement of science.
[1] According to this hypothesis, scientific progress occurs mainly by the accumulation of a mass of modest, narrowly specialized intellectual contributions.
[2] The Ortega hypothesis is widely held,[2] but a number of systematic studies of scientific citations have favored the opposing "Newton hypothesis", which says that scientific progress is mostly the work of a relatively small number of great scientists (after Isaac Newton's statement that he "stood on the shoulders of giants").
[2] The same pattern of disproportionate citation of a small number of scholars appears in fields as diverse as physics and criminology.
[7] The name of the hypothesis refers to José Ortega y Gasset, who wrote in The Revolt of the Masses that "astoundingly mediocre" men of narrow specialties do most of the work of experimental science.