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‘Disruptive’ science has declined — and no one knows why https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04577-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04577-5
by morphle 4y ago
‘Disruptive’ science has declined — and no one knows why
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04577-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04577-5
- feraloink 4y agoGood article. Interesting finding at the very end: >Although the proportion of disruptive research dropped significantly between 1945 and 2010, the number of highly disruptive studies has remained about the same. So... maybe this is because having more people doing scientific research doesn't yield more breakthroughs. More people doing scientific research DOES yield more incremental achievements, as the study found, i.e. word frequency analysis showing more occurrences of "improve", "expand", "extend".
- snordgren 4y agoThe number of highly disruptive studies remaining the same seems impressive enough to me. I expect diminishing returns to be the long-term norm in science. The low hanging fruit get picked first, and every breakthrough means one more concept that the next generation of researchers have to learn and incorporate into their work.