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We estimate the magnitude of spillovers generated by 161 academic "superstars" onto their collaborators' research output. These life scientists died while still being actively engaged in science, thus providing an exogenous source of variation in the structure of their collaborators' coauthorship networks. Following the death of a superstar, we find that collaborators experience, on average, a lasting 5 to 10% decline in their quality-adjusted publication rates. By exploring interactions of the treatment effect with a wide range of star, coauthor and star/coauthor dyad characteristics, we seek to adjudicate between plausible mechanisms that might explain this finding. Taken together, our results suggest that spillovers are circumscribed in ideas space, but not in physical or social space. Superstar extinction reveals the boundaries of the scientific field to which the star contributes -- the "invisible college."

An essay is presented on the challenges and areas for reform in the peer review program and process of the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH)'s extramural grant program. It explores the aging of the scientist population being supported by the agency and the innovativeness of the research under the institutes and the grant system and scientific risk taking of scientists.