We examine whether and when star scientist collaborations produce indirect peer effects. We theorize that a star’s social status causes a collaboration to act as a prism;
it reduces quality uncertainty, leading to increased recognition of coauthors’ ideas. We
identify two moderators of prisms, other scientists’ quality uncertainty and awareness
of the collaboration, and link prisms to “sleeping beauties”, articles that are initially
overlooked and then rediscovered later. Empirically, we examine the effect on citations
of collaborating with a star who either won, or – serving as the control group – who
was nominated for but did not win, the Nobel Prize in Physics. We find that articles
by the winners’ coauthors (and which were published prior to the focal coauthor’s first
collaboration with the winner) receive a citation boost after the Nobel Prize is awarded,
relative to articles by the coauthors of nominees, and that awareness and quality uncertainty moderate this effect. We further find that this difference in citations causes
sleeping beauties written by the coauthors of Nobel Prize winners to be rediscovered
faster. Our results clarify how star scientists’ indirect peer effects impact their coauthors and, through sleeping beauties, how prisms matter for science more broadly.