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Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time

nature.com

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Re: Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time

#11

Post by rich_sasha »

I wonder if this is to do with major vs minor breakthrough.

Take physics. As I read it, modern fundamental physics is mostly some combination of general relativity and quantum mechanics, which are both early 20th century inventions.

They weren't necessarily genius in particular in-depth analysis, rather they were genius new concepts that created a whole new blank canvas to fill in.

What did the field look like just before them? I always forget the details, but was it lord Kelvin who said, physics just needs to figure out the ultraviolet catastrophe and it's done? I wonder if it looked similarly uninnovative. The canvas they had was full, and they needed a new canvas for true innovation.

Now the thing is, I think true disruption, like GR and quantum physics, is not limited by the number of postdocs, but by truly genius insights. Einstein wasn't even working as an academic when he came up with Special Relativity. So the number of papers written isn't a proxy for pace of revolution.

Not to mention, since number of published papers has become a target, it has become useless as a measure of progress.

Re: Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time

#12

Post by ablatt89 »

I think that the expectation that "ground-breaking" discoveries in science should follow some linear or predictable timetable is not reasonable. Is the time period between "ground-breaking" discoveries supposed to be every 5 years, every 10 years?

The volume of papers has increased significantly, and publish or perish kinda stinks, but it's not just an issue of funding, but some (many?) researchers publish and exaggerate about the importance and difficulty of their research to receive an "I am smart" badge on social media. Although, despite this increase in volume of crap tier papers, the article seems to think it's not correlated:

"Declines in disruptiveness are also not attributable to changing publication, citation or authorship practices..."

Re: Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time

#13

Post by [deleted] »

asdff wrote: post #7

I blame the grant funding process. What gets published is what gets funded when written up as a grant proposal. What gets written up as a grant proposal is what is called for by grant funding agencies for their own research initiatives. If you want disruptive science, fund it then. That's all everyone wants to do in science, but the bills need to be payed somehow, so you play the game the funding agencies want you to…

[deleted]

Re: Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time

#14

Post by anonymouskimmer »

- Grant funding

- Tenure requirements

- Job duties (both requirements and limitations)

- Elimination of corporate skunk works like PARC

- Credentialism

- A "Pain point" focus would tend to be more incremental than truly disruptive

On the good side there may be some decrease of disruptive inventions and discoveries because we are also focusing on eliminating the externalities of current and previous inventions and discoveries. It's a lot easier to make wildly new things if you aren't worried about their side effects.

Re: Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time

#15

Post by ablatt89 »

rich_sasha wrote: post #11

I wonder if this is to do with major vs minor breakthrough. Take physics. As I read it, modern fundamental physics is mostly some combination of general relativity and quantum mechanics, which are both early 20th century inventions. They weren't necessarily genius in particular in-depth analysis, rather they were genius new concepts that created a whole new blank canvas to fill in. What did the field look like just b…

I agree, I think we're discounting genius insight as the primary driver of innovation and ground breaking science, and we can't expect genius insight to occur in some predictable time frame or a time frame even within a lifespan.

I think perhaps we've also partially lost the meaning of ground breaking research given the constant news articles on "ground breaking science" and the constant overinflation and exaggeration of one's papers and achievements.

Re: Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time

#17

Post by feraloink »

morphle wrote: post #5

‘Disruptive’ science has declined — and no one knows why https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04577-5

Good 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".

Re: Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time

#18

Post by feraloink »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #14

- Grant funding - Tenure requirements - Job duties (both requirements and limitations) - Elimination of corporate skunk works like PARC - Credentialism - A "Pain point" focus would tend to be more incremental than truly disruptive On the good side there may be some decrease of disruptive inventions and discoveries because we are also focusing on eliminating the externalities of current and previous inventions and dis…

>Elimination of corporate skunk works like PARC

This is a big problem. PARC, Bell Labs, IBM Research are the first that come to mind. Same is true for mostly government-funded initiatives like the one where Marc Andreessen invented Mosaic browser, that eventually became Netscape Navigator. I don't recall the project name. Do we even do that anymore?

Re: Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time

#19

Post by buran77 »

ablatt89 wrote: post #15
rich_sasha wrote: post #11

I wonder if this is to do with major vs minor breakthrough. Take physics. As I read it, modern fundamental physics is mostly some combination of general relativity and quantum mechanics, which are both early 20th century inventions. They weren't necessarily genius in particular in-depth analysis, rather they were genius new concepts that created a whole new blank canvas to fill in. What did the field look like just b…

I agree, I think we're discounting genius insight as the primary driver of innovation and ground breaking science, and we can't expect genius insight to occur in some predictable time frame or a time frame even within a lifespan. I think perhaps we've also partially lost the meaning of ground breaking research given the constant news articles on "ground breaking science" and the constant overinflation and exaggeratio…

A lot of the obvious questions on the table were answered, even without an answer we at least have the question. Today true, groundbreaking innovation needs someone to identify the new questions. It's like doing science in a bubble and you need someone to take a massive new one and merge it into our own. Right now we're not opening wide doors, but just refining and adding almost imperceptibly to an already huge bubble. We're grinding in the game because we can't find the boss on the map or can't beat it yet.

Besides the current structure of research and the known weaknesses (misaligned incentives, funding issues, etc.) science in general today ran out of low hanging fruit. The last unexplored or unanswered riddles may need prerequisites that are outside of the current boundaries so someone needs to open the door do a vast new bubble that has more relatively low hanging fruit.

Also humans probably (don't quote me on that :) ) can't come up with any new questions or answers unless they are already at the edge of that bubble. And they each see and understand a smaller patch of that surface as it expanded. Stumbling onto new thinks is exponentially harder.

This is what those revolutionary discoveries did for us in the past: Opened the door to a new world where the hard answers were suddenly a bit easier, they made sense.

Re: Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time

#20

Post by derbOac »

ablatt89 wrote: post #12

I think that the expectation that "ground-breaking" discoveries in science should follow some linear or predictable timetable is not reasonable. Is the time period between "ground-breaking" discoveries supposed to be every 5 years, every 10 years? The volume of papers has increased significantly, and publish or perish kinda stinks, but it's not just an issue of funding, but some (many?) researchers publish and exagge…

What you're pointing to is far more insidious than I think is usually recognized.

People can point to incentive structures like grants etc, and to the implications in terms of the meaning of metrics etc but the real harm is in how it shifts mental focus and attention collectively.

It's not ok to let minor things or things you think are obvious go anymore to focus on bigger picture issues, that might be "riskier" but nonobvious. The way that plays out too is incredibly dependent on your institutional social environment etc.

So much of this is difficult to easily quantify in ways that can be easily studied. I loved this paper for example, but it's easy for me to think of papers in my own field that would look "disruptive" in terms of citation networks but are really the same content. There's these weird shifts I've seen happen in reading old literature and during my career, where big shifts in who is being cited will happen for quixotic social reasons. Usually it's basically politics or ignorance of big parts of a field, who will get introduced to an idea by a particular author or group. Lots of chaotic citation patterns and feedback loops.

Add in shifts in what's motivating grant and paper topics and it really damages authentic scientific discourse. So much is driven by looking like a brilliant scientist and not by scientific progress. People aren't dumb either and they are very very good at looking like brilliant scientists.

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