Number crunching

Duncan at nodalpoint has suggested "A crude score for benchmarking scientists", which looks at publications in Nature, Science or PNAS. Why suggest such a conservative measure reliant upon a restricted view of publishing, when there are already metrics like the Hirsh index? You can calculate the H-index of an individual researcher from citations in Google Scholar. It's not perfect, and there are numerous corrections and alternatives to it, but let's not simplify things too much.