Development in Science is on The Decadence and We Are Unsure Why

Increased knowledge but reduced innovation in science

According to an analysis published Wednesday of countless analysis papers and patents, the rate of ground-breaking scientific findings and technological innovation is reducing despite an ever-growing quantity of knowledge.

While the past study has revealed downturns in particular disciplines, the study is the primary that “emphatically, convincingly documents this decrease of disruptiveness across all important areas of science and technology,” lead author Michael Park informed AFP.

Park, a doctoral student at the College of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, named disruptive discoveries those that “break up from existing concepts” and “pressure the whole scientific area into novel territory.”

The researchers provided a “disruptiveness score” to 45 million scientific documents dating from 1945 to 2010 and 3.9 million US-based patents from 1976 to 2010.

From the beginning of those time ranges, research documents and patents have been progressively likely to settle or build on former information, according to outcomes posted in the journal Nature.

What was the ranking based on?

The ranking was based on how the papers were mentioned in others researches five years later publication, presuming that the more disruptive the study was, the less its precursors would be mentioned.

The most significant decline in the disruptive study came in physical sciences like chemistry and physics.

“The essence of research is changing” as incremental innovations become more common, senior research author Russell Funk said.

Burden of knowledge in science

One theory for the decrease is that all the “easier fruit” of science has already been gathered.

If that were the situation, disruptiveness in various scientific fields would have fallen at different velocities, Park mentioned.

However, instead “the decreases are very consistent in their speeds and timing across all important fields,” Park stated, showing that the easier fruit theory is not likely to be the root cause.

Instead, the scientists pointed to what has been dubbed “the burden of study,” which suggests there is currently so much that researchers have to learn to dominate a particular area that they have little time left to surpass boundaries.

This triggers scientists and inventors to “focus on a narrow piece of the existing information, guiding them just to generate something more consolidating rather than disruptive,” Park said.

Academic evaluation method

One more reason could be that “there is boosting tension in the academic community to publish, publish, publish because that is the manner that academics are assessed on,” he added.

The scientists called on universities and funding firms to focus more on quality than amount and consider complete subsidies for year-long sabbaticals to permit academics to read and think more deeply.

“We are not becoming any less ingenious as a species,” Park highlighted, pointing to current innovations such as the usage of mRNA technology in COVID-19 vaccines or the measurement of gravitational waves in 2015.

Jerome Lamy, a historian and specialist in the sociology of science at France’s CNRS research firm, who was not engaged in the study, claimed it showed that “ultra-specialization” and the tension to publish had increased throughout the years.

He criticized a global trend of academics being “forced to slice up their papers” to enhance their number of publications, stating it had resulted in “a dulling of study.”

Read the original article on Science Alert.

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