Science is losing its ability to disrupt

The decline in truly revolutionary research may have serious implications for humanity.

- Anjana Ahuja

There is, according to an eye-catching metric doing the rounds, a malaise at the heart of the scientific enterprise. This noble pursuit seems to be slowing down in its ability to disrupt convention.

Evidence of that deceleration, according to the metric's creators, can be spied in decreasingly novel patent applications.

Rather than minting revolutionary ways of thinking, science and technology are increasingly polishing the same conceptual pennies. If iterative research is displacing its more radical cousin, to the possible detriment of knowledge, human well-being and the economy, then science and technology may require some disruption of their own.

Dr Russell Funk, associate professor in strategic management and entrepreneurship at Minnesota University, teamed up with PhD student Michael Park and Dr Erin Leahey, a sociology professor at Arizona University, to analyse 45 million scientific papers and 3.9 million patents. They gave each paper and patent a "consolidation-disruption (CD) index" based on whether it built on previous findings or sent a field in a new direction.