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‘Disruptive’ science has declined — and no one knows why

#1
C C Offline
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04577-5

EXCERPT: The number of science and technology research papers published has skyrocketed over the past few decades — but the ‘disruptiveness’ of those papers has dropped, according to an analysis of how radically papers depart from the previous literature.

Data from millions of manuscripts show that, compared with the mid-twentieth century, research done in the 2000s was much more likely to incrementally push science forward than to veer off in a new direction and render previous work obsolete. Analysis of patents from 1976 to 2010 showed the same trend.

“The data suggest something is changing,” says Russell Funk, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and a co-author of the analysis, which was published on 4 January in Nature. “You don’t have quite the same intensity of breakthrough discoveries you once had.”

The authors reasoned that if a study was highly disruptive, subsequent research would be less likely to cite the study’s references, and instead cite the study itself.

[...] The authors also analysed the most common verbs used in manuscripts and found that whereas research in the 1950s was more likely to use words evoking creation or discovery such as ‘produce’ or ‘determine’, that done in the 2010s was more likely to refer to incremental progress, using terms such as ‘improve’ or ‘enhance’.

[...] Other research has suggested that scientific innovation has slowed in recent decades, too ... But this study offers a “new start to a data-driven way to investigate how science changes”, he adds.

Disruptiveness is not inherently good, and incremental science is not necessarily bad, says Wang. ... The ideal is a healthy mix of incremental and disruptive research, says John Walsh...

[...] The trend might stem in part from changes in the scientific enterprise. For example, there are now many more researchers than in the 1940s, which has created a more competitive environment and raised the stakes to publish research and seek patents. That, in turn, has changed the incentives for how researchers go about their work...

[...] Finding an explanation for the decline won’t be easy, Walsh says... (MORE - missing details)
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#2
Kornee Offline
Apart from what should be the obvious woolly issue of what exactly DEFINES 'groundbreaking', there is only so much left to discover that could reasonably qualify for that title.
As one physics buff iirc put it many years ago 'you can only invent quantum mechanics/physics once'. After that, it inevitably becomes a process of further refinement.
Arguably, post discovery of DNA, there is still 'groundbreaking' mileage left in the biological sciences, owing to the enormous inherent complexity and sophistication there.
AI research is another beast that may have continued room for genuine paradigm shifts.
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