01 Feb Disruptive science is leaping forward, not limping along

By Juergen Eckhardt and George Church, STAT

A recent study and accompanying news story in the preeminent journal Nature provocatively concludes that disruptive innovation in science has dramatically and mysteriously declined 90% since 1945.

The study has prompted a wave of news coverage and tweets decrying the apparent languishing of modern science. We feel that the authors make interesting observations on publishing trends, but their conclusions seem to be quite disconnected from the valuable and transformative innovations that benefit humanity.

The authors reached their troubling conclusion via an enhanced form of citation analysis that tracks the extent to which previous studies are mentioned in new papers. The method is intended to separate truly novel ideas from incremental advances. Scrutinizing nearly 50 million papers and patents from 1945 through 2010, the authors report a trend away from what they consider real breakthroughs in favor of more routine progress.

If this assessment is fair, it should worry scientists and non-scientists alike. Scientific innovation is, after all, the critical engine that makes it possible to tackle the tremendous challenges humans must overcome to survive, such as pandemics, global food insecurity, and climate change. If innovation is steadily declining, it would be cause for serious global concern. Read more …