The number of technological and scientific discoveries has decreased over the decades

The number of technological and scientific discoveries has decreased over the decades, according to a report published in the journal nature. According to the study, patents and documents are less likely to take the body of human knowledge in new directions than they were decades ago.

According to the analysis of 45 million articles and 3.9 million patents spread over 6 decades, there was a decline between 1945 and 2010 that ranged from 91.9% to 100% for scientific articles. For patents, the decline between 1980 and 2010 ranged from 78.7% to 91.5%.

“We’ve found that papers and patents are less likely to break with the past in ways that push science and technology in new directions. This pattern is universal across fields and robust across many different scales based on citations and text,” notes the study.

However, the researchers say the declines are unlikely to be caused by changes in the quality of published science. The theory is that the slowdown may “reflect a fundamental change in the nature of science and technology”.

With this, the researchers call on policymakers to reimagine how science is conducted and implement funding changes to better support the long-term careers of academics. Furthermore, the authors reflect that a lot of innovation comes from trying new things or taking ideas from different fields and seeing what happens, but if there’s a concern about publishing article after article as quickly as possible, that leaves a lot less time for an in-depth read.

According to the authors themselves, fully understanding the decline of disruptive science and technology allows us to rethink the strategies needed to organize science and technology production in the future.

Source: nature via log

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