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

[Arnie Pye]

Title : ‘Disruptive’ science has declined — and no one knows why
Subtitle : The proportion of publications that send a field in a new direction has plummeted over the past half-century.
Link : https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04577-5
Posted : 4th January 2023

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 literature1.

Data from millions of manuscripts show that, compared with mid-twentieth-century research, that done in the 2000s was much more likely to push science forward incrementally 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.”

1) My assumption would be that Eminence Based Medicine creates a dam preventing anything disruptive from getting any exposure.

2) The pharma companies don't want anything to come along that might cure people.

3) Then of course, there is the "problem", related to 2 above, that Goldman Sachs highlighted :

Article Title : “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” Goldman Sachs analysts ask
Link : https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...le-business-model-goldman-sachs-analysts-say/

 

[boolybooly]

Fulfilment of publication quotas with papers stuffed with inconsequential observations also owes much to the commercialisation of science. This would naturally change the ratio of breakthrough papers and create a climate of careerist conformism in academia, suppressing disruptive discoveries.

Unfortunately if one examines the historical causes, it becomes a story of simple megalomanic instinct justified by economic idealism, yet we are required not to discuss politics or religion here...

If one confines the discussion to the resulting dynamic, academia is more cultish than ever and I would call this a new dark age.

If one looks at the controversies in cosmology for example, its quite obvious we dont understand gravity and (lack of evidence indicates) dark matter is a kludge. Yet dark matter is promoted in the media like a new flavour of sugary drink. Its proponents seek to dominate the discussion to gain funding and those who seek employment with them must believe or fail to remain employed, academia has become like a cult of commercialism driven by media propaganda and funding mechanics.

If I look at ME research I find conformism to the fuzzy criteria of CFS remains intact for similar reasons. Researchers cant get funds unless they adopt the cognitive paradigm of the funders, who have to play to the crowd. IMHO its a problem.

 

[CRG]

I think this mostly a perspective of history problem - if we take 1975 as the cut off point and our point perspective is 2023 then 1975 is 30% of the way back to publication of 'On the Origin of Species' - that is 70% of the available time to criticise, examine or falsify Darwin's work to date, had happened by 1975. Likewise 59% of the time between publication of 'Special Relativity' and now had elapsed by 1975, and we can see similar elapses of time with almost all the foundational publications of modern science - they have been in the public domain for at least as long again, many twice as long as the end of the putative golden age of disruptive studies.

Once the foundational principles have been repeatedly tested it's not surprising that they become generally agreed upon because all lines of conceivable critique or falsification have been explored - and if the foundational principles are put to work in science, technology, engineering and medicine in everyday life, they are in effect consistently tested, and the basis for any disruptive analysis becomes ever more remote.

An additional factor is that science has simply got better at what it does, in practice it has become more democratic, less egalitarian and methodologically more sound. Of course there are areas which are problematic - the intersection of 'hard' science with the humanities is problematic as are those intersections of technology and of medicine with science but those problems aren't obviously solvable by more 'disruptive science' when the accepted scientific fundamentals are demonstrably more secure than at any time previously.

 

[rvallee]

I didn't bookmark it but an author of the study clarified that the way it's being interpreted in the media is not at all what they meant.

What they looked at is one thing only: how many new papers get massive citations. What they mean by disruptive is basically research that upends an entire field of study so much that most new papers published will cite this new paper, rather than old ones that used to be cited.

One example of that would be a paper showing the pathophysiology of ME, completely overturning what papers would commonly get cited, away from the BPS crap, and mostly clustered around this new defining paper. It's research that defines a turning point, where some areas have mostly covered the basics and only have obscure and very specific problems left to work with.

They found that the absolute # of those hasn't changed much, usually where science pushes the cutting edge. It's just in relative % that it's slowing down, in part because there are few unbeaten paths left, but also because the # of BS academic papers keeps growing. If you'd removed all of the junk research that clearly serves no purpose, it's mostly consistent with the pace of progress. If you add a lot more hay to the stack, you get less relative needle in the haystack, but the # of needles hasn't changed.

So the real issue is the sheer mass of BS research that has no chance of being useful with either the publish-or-perish model, or entire paradigms built around BS repetition. The EBM paradigm centered around the BPS ideology is a great example of an entire field of study producing absolutely nothing viable. Even if the pace of scientific breakthroughs remains consistent, having built an entire paradigm out of maximum quantity with zero quality pushes the % of significant papers down because the denominator keeps growing while the numerator is mostly stable.

 

[Kitty]

The EBM paradigm centered around the BPS ideology is a great example of an entire field of study producing absolutely nothing viable.

Aah, but they still get paid, and that's what matters!

Perverse incentives need to be removed, and funders ought to get a lot sharper—if people in receipt of arts grants produced effluent comparable to the output of BPS researchers, they'd never get any more money.

But the edifice has been built up for decades on sturdy foundations, and sapping it would be hard. It might take something like a concerted effort by pissed-off researchers to subvert the system of publishing in academic journals to start a bit of a landslide, and who knows—it's possible that might happen.

 

[boolybooly]

I dont think it is an artifact of perspective.

Scientific fraud has increased dramatically in recent times.

SCIENTIFIC FRAUD Part II: From Past to Present, Facts and Analyses.
Cambridge University Press: 09 March 2022
Ernesto Carafoli, Enrico Bucci.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...and-analyses/020CDC482D1E66C15F27C6BA70B06E14

Levels of misconduct appear to be higher than in the past.

Retractions in the scientific literature: is the incidence of research fraud increasing?
BMJ Journal of Medical Ethics 17 Mar 2011
R Grant Steen
https://jme.bmj.com/content/37/4/249

I could create a long list of quotes here, all you really need to do is google "scientific fraud increasing" and you will find many more. I think standards are falling and levels of insincere publications are rising as everyone and their dog are using fake science to blag their agenda, whether careerist self promotion or marketing, by underhand means like the oft mentioned predatory journals. Consequently the ratio of pearls to swine really is dropping. Its the scientific equivalent of fake news.

 

[Creekside]

Another factor: easy global communication means that everyone has access to the latest papers. Science is about asking questions, and if you do a quick internet search, you can probably find an answer, and lose the incentive to find the true answer your own way. Sadly, the easily-found answer may be wrong, but it's got citations and word-of-mouth support, so no one bothers to check whether it's right. Those amazing disruptive answers are buried under an ever-deepening pile of trash (wrong answers).

 

[CRG]

I dont think it is an artifact of perspective.


SCIENTIFIC FRAUD Part II: From Past to Present, Facts and Analyses.
Cambridge University Press: 09 March 2022
Ernesto Carafoli, Enrico Bucci.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...and-analyses/020CDC482D1E66C15F27C6BA70B06E14


Retractions in the scientific literature: is the incidence of research fraud increasing?
BMJ Journal of Medical Ethics 17 Mar 2011
R Grant Steen
https://jme.bmj.com/content/37/4/249

I could create a long list of quotes here, all you really need to do is google "scientific fraud increasing" and you will find many more. I think standards are falling and levels of insincere publications are rising as everyone and their dog are using fake science to blag their agenda, whether careerist self promotion or marketing, by underhand means like the oft mentioned predatory journals. Consequently the ratio of pearls to swine really is dropping. Its the scientific equivalent of fake news.

Fraud isn't central to the idea of disruptive science as presented in the study. An example of disruptive science most familiar to PwME is Warren and Marshall's work on Helicobacter pylori and H.pylori's role in gastritis and stomach ulcers, which challenged the prevailing authority of eminence that said stomach acid was effectively sterile.

Disruptive science is about challenging the assumed 'knowns' by taking a different approach, unfortunately it is easily romanticised into the "lone researcher against the world" while the reality is simply someone just following up a slightly different angle on an established position and coming to different answer. Much disruptive science is serendipitous, for example Penzias and Wilson's finding of the cosmic microwave background.

It might be true to say that scientific fraud is increasing but that is an historical perspective; it says there is more 'now' and there was less in the 'past'. To understand what increasing means we have to examine the history and understand how that is perceived. The paper on disruptive science compares mid 20thC to post 1975, if we take 1950 to 2023 and compare the occurrences of scientific fraud then we have to take account of the net amount of 'science' and how it was constrained at each point. The amount of spending on science and technology by Governments and business has grown considerably year on year, at least matching global GDP growth, the number of people employed as 'researchers' has increased inline with that spending.

In 1950, most research was constrained by the institutionalism of Cold War militarism and civil Nuclear programmes, later accompanied by an East West space race, these were contexts in which fraud if found was unlikely to be revealed. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall global science has seen unprecedented openness.

Scientific fraud may be increasing, but the questions of whether there is more relative to the increased volume of investment, or whether modern systems are better at revealing fraud have not been addressed. It becomes a matter of perspective - for pessimists it's all going to hell in a hand basket, for optimists there's more net fraud but that's just a function of adding $trillions to investment and millions to the numbers employed in research, plus much better systems to expose bad practice.

 

[Shadrach Loom]

In 1950, most research was constrained by the institutionalism of Cold War militarism and civil Nuclear programmes, later accompanied by an East West space race, these were contexts in which fraud if found was unlikely to be revealed. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall global science has seen unprecedented openness.

I suspect that this pendulum is swinging back, at least on science topics with the potential to be exploited for significant geopolitical advantage. We’re pretty much back in cold war mode now.

 

[Hutan]

Those amazing disruptive answers are buried under an ever-deepening pile of trash (wrong answers).

I think part of the story is probably that there is the expectation that a much bigger percentage of the population will go to university, and go on to do some sort of research, or even get a PhD. That's a good thing as a more diverse group of people get to contribute to moving knowledge forward. But it also means that a bigger percentage of people who aren't very good at research and/or don't really care about what they are doing go through the motions to get the qualification.

I mean, in my parent's day in my country, most people left school at 15 and got on with working, and most women gave up work when they got married and concentrated on their family. In my day, an undergrad degree was a big deal and more than enough to qualify you to do most things. In my children's day, a Masters is often the minimum requirement for an entry-level job, and, if not, often a post-grad qualification is needed to advance. That obviously doesn't apply to everything, but the expectation of a post-grad degree is much more common.

I think there's also an increase in universities selling their degrees for a lot but using cheap staff to deliver content and be supervisors. I know of universities that market themselves to overseas students, many of whom struggle with English, while using poorly paid staff with knowledge only tangentially related to courses to drag these students through to graduation. The students pay a lot to be there and they and their families will not be happy if they don't get the qualification they have paid for. Universities need happy customers to help bring in more fee-paying students, so staff are given the message very clearly that most students need to pass.