Occasional Musings

Disruptive science in decline

An interesting article and study about decline in disruptive science in most research fields.

Few excerpts from the article:

“Disruptiveness is not inherently good, and incremental science is not necessarily bad, says Wang.”

“Finding an explanation for the decline won’t be easy, Walsh says. Although the proportion of disruptive research dropped significantly between 1945 and 2010, the number of highly disruptive studies has remained about the same. The rate of decline is also puzzling: CD indices fell steeply from 1945 to 1970, then more gradually from the late 1990s to 2010. “Whatever explanation you have for disruptiveness dropping off, you need to also make sense of it levelling off” in the 2000s, he says.“

More of this here @nature: [The link]