The history of science
shows that the greatest
advances were made
by brilliant individuals,
or small teams,
who opposed the
"consensus" views.
Many thinkers argue
we are experiencing
technological
stagnation.
They point out
the slow labor
productivity growth,
in spite of recent
information
-technology
innovations.
Robert Gordon, of
Northwestern University,
a productivity expert,
claims researchers
have picked all
of the technological
“low-hanging fruit,”
such as our
indoor plumbing,
automobiles,
air travel, etc.
According
to this theory,
once you discover
electricity and
automobiles, all the
future innovations
will pale in comparison.
Economists
Jay Bhattacharya
and Mikko Packalen
claim “New ideas no longer
fuel economic growth
the way they once did,”
One possible cause:
Academic papers
are evaluated by
how many citations
they receive.
Citation analysis of
scientific research,
was introduced
in the 1950s,
and did not
become common
until the 1970s.
Eugene Garfield
developed
the idea of using
citation quantity
to evaluate
the impact of
scientific journals,
but later regretted
its use as a
performance
indicator
for individual
researchers.
As a result,
scientists choose
low-risk projects,
that are certain
to get attention,
rather than novel
experiments,
that may fail.
Academics
also prefer the
crowded scientific
fields, because their
papers in such fields
are guaranteed
to be read by
more researchers.
Novel ideas
are unlikely
to score well
on measures of
scientific impact,
because they
develop slowly:
EXAMPLE:
CRISPR gene editing,
ws one of few recent
breakthroughs
in biotechnology,
developed by
scientists over
a 20-year period.
It took 25 years
of tinkering,
with very few
tangible results,
before scientists
discovered
the use of
CRISPR DNA
segments for
genome editing.
That was a long wait !
Scientists exploring
new ideas will often fail
to produce meaningful
results at all.
That's why
the vast majority
of researchers today
aim for incremental
advances.
A paper in the American
Sociological Review
concludes:
“An innovative publication
is more likely to achieve
high impact than
a conservative one,
but the additional reward
does not compensate
for the risk of
failing to publish.”
When researchers
avoid new ideas,
innovation
is reduced.