In 2007, Science reported on an earlier NSF finding that the absolute number of academic papers published by U.S. authors had plateaued—but its article missed at least one key detail. According to the NSF, the number of published papers leveled off as spending grew, an important (as far as taxpayers are concerned) observation omitted by Science. Moreover, Science did not cover the more recent NSF paper. A spokesperson for AAAS, which publishes the journal, declined comment for Scientific American, saying “it appeared to be a remix of a prior report…” The spokesperson “checked with multiple people and nobody had any other reaction or knew what to make of the findings…”
Those who believe science is advancing fastest may be least likely to recognize or acknowledge disconfirming evidence. The Singularity Hub is a blog and news network covering science and technology developments it expects to lead to the “singularity,” a moment, following exponential advances, “when we will transcend current intellectual and biological limitations and initiate an intelligence and information explosion beyond imagining.” I asked the Hub’s editor, Keith Kleiner, if there was a way to square the NSF study’s findings with exponential advance. Kleiner declined to comment.
A more widely read web publication, Xconomy, also posits a form of exponential progress, and did not cover the NSF study. Few people do their jobs better than the site’s national biotechnology editor, Luke Timmerman (recently named one of FierceBiotech’s top five writers, along with journalists from Forbes and The New York Times), and even he was not initially aware of the study. After reviewing it, however, his comments echoed those of AAAS president Alice Huang.
“I think it’s possible this could be an important and worrisome trend, but I’m not sure tallying the number of published articles is the best way to look at the question of research productivity,” he said.
Xconomy targets a readership of entrepreneurs, business and technology executives, venture capitalists, and university researchers and officials. So long as deals are happening, there seems to be little impetus to audit the value of basic research. When I asked Timmerman if faith in the exponential economy might create a coverage blind spot, he didn’t reply.
Xconomy, in addition to earning revenue from traditional online advertising, also derives income from an underwriting program which allows companies and other institutions to be listed as partners on the Xconomy site and receive other benefits such as participating in networking events. Thus Xconomy not only reports on science, technology, and industry, but facilitates interactions between them.
Similar dynamics obtain at The Economist which, with its events and intelligence arms, represents a kind of scaled-up, global version of Xconomy.
The Economist is one of the few publications that have lately explored scientific publication trends. In an article about international trends described in a recent UNESCO report, the magazine explained the age-old scientific dominance of North America, Europe, and Japan:
They spent the most, published the most and patented the most. And what they produced fed back into their industrial, military and medical complexes to push forward innovation, productivity, power, health and prosperity.
This basic model still works, the article implied, even if “the old scientific powers are starting to lose their grip.” When The Economist’s article went to press, however, the NSF study hadn’t been published. Subsequently, I asked the magazine’s health correspondent, Vijay Vaitheeswaran, about the productivity decline in the life sciences described by the NSF. He declined to comment.
The Economist’s coverage of biomedical research has been resolutely upbeat and undaunted. A dozen years ago, in a survey of the pharmaceutical industry entitled “Horn of Plenty,” it pronounced that “New genetic knowledge means more, and more effective, drugs.” However, by the end of 2000, the magazine no longer considered the genome as the holy grail of medicine, transferring its hopes to the proteome: “Know it and you will be a long way towards knowing how bodies really work.”
This editorial did not generate the traction it should have:
[Science 10 September 2010: Editorial Overbuilding Research Capacity
Bruce Alberts Bruce Alberts is Editor-in-Chief of Science.
Policies that offer incentives for individuals and institutions can
unintentionally induce harmful behaviors. One such perverse incentive
encourages U.S. universities, medical centers, and other research
institutions to expand their research capacities indefinitely through
funds derived from National Institutes of Health (NIH) research
grants.]
The science policy implications of "101 Theory Drive" have been underanalyzed. If science were on the treadmill, churning obsolete practices, it would not be possible for government and universities to examine the pathology. Obama is caught in a warp so that he is unable to recognize that intractable issues in biomedical research will not always yield to money. Instead, the churning takes on a hypnotic force so that self-analysis becomes impossible.
Scholars in the humanities and social sciences struggle to reflect on the meaning of their practices. However, for outright solipsism, there is nothing like a scientist. We could take the Bruce Alberts editorial and the thoughtful comments in "101 Theory Drive" as being urgently in need of deep analysis. In government, they just give it all a wave. At Science itself, if you comment on the churning, the magazine is likely to post and delete your comment.
Obama has to take personal responsibility for this eccentric state of the union. He has a duty to read the Alberts editorial and "101 Theory Drive" and comment on them. He cannot rely on his science policy experts. They are just helpless.
#1 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Mon 31 Jan 2011 at 02:17 PM
Regarding the portion about John Horgan and his book, "The End of Science," as a witness to those events in question, let me clarify what happened at Scientific American. None of the editors thought that his book was "bad for business." That concern came from the ad sales staff, which was worried that media planners would not understand the general premise of the book and would choose not to place their clients' ads with the magazine. (The purported thinking went something like this: "Well, if science is ending, why should we bother advertising with you?")
Although absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, as far as I am aware, Horgan's book did not lead to any missed ad sales.
Philip Yam
Managing Editor, Online
Scientific American
#2 Posted by Philip Yam, CJR on Tue 1 Feb 2011 at 05:56 PM
My former and current colleague Phil Yam is absolutely right. It was not my editors at Scientific who thought my 1996 book The End of Science was "bad for business" but executives responsible for sales, who are no longer at the magazine.
#3 Posted by John Horgan, CJR on Tue 1 Feb 2011 at 06:29 PM
As a research scientist for longer than I care to remember, I have seen changes to the way science is managed that deeply concern me. First, post docs are now treated like commodities that can be replaced as soon as their skills become no longer relevant to the chosen research direction. And research directions change more and more quickly as managers chase ever-shrinking government funding tied to political fashions. This means the depth of knowledge required to tackle the big problems is actually decreasing in the scientific community through a lack of continuity. The result is a desperate short-termism that works against real progress. How can the boundaries of human knowledge be extended when those charged with its advancement spend most of their time writing funding proposals, just to survive another year? The only alternative is for scientists to take funding from companies, who want to own the resulting intellectual property and therefore discourage publication (after all, secrecy is far cheaper than patenting costs).
#4 Posted by N.Clark, CJR on Wed 2 Feb 2011 at 04:17 PM
Thanks to Robert Fortner for an excellent article, and to Philip Yam and John Horgan for their comments. What Fortner is onto is a cognitive limitation of humanity: we do not have a Chomskyan Remote Cohesion Analytical Device as part of our intellectual makeup. Perhaps someday you will be able to buy one at WalMart, but for the time being we need better analysis. For example:
[PRESS RELEASE FROM NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP 31 January 2011:
King Saud University (KSU) and Macmillan Publishers have signed a five year Memorandum of Understanding to enhance the university’s scientific communication and profile. Macmillan Publishers provide KSU with a wide range of services, including workshops on writing and publishing research papers in international journals, and manuscript editing services.]
This would be an interesting subject for CJR, perhaps for an embedded writer. One issue that needs to be faced in science is the opportunity cost of churning obsolete systems. In English teaching and testing, the costs should be obvious. The industry is huge. (I have asked The Economist to have its intelligence unit examine how large the fake English business--TOEFL, IELTS, for example--is, but even though parasite revenues are probably bigger than WalMart's every year, this is not something that the magazine would be able to grasp.)
In science, the issues are not quite as crude, but still intractable. (The best book to base an examination of the crudest aspects on is "The Art of Being a Parasite"). An indicator is the extreme weakness of Scientific American Mind. I am reading a lot of texts such as Mark H. Ashcraft's "Cognition," Baddeley's 2009 "Memory," Noah Lemos's "An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge," and course books in semantics and philosophy of language.
Philosophy, Linguistics, and Psychology are a failed cluster. By adding Literature, Harvard and UPenn could produce honors programs that would result in students with far better reading skills, but the universities just can't do it. They can't grasp how to unite fundamentals. For example, at the SFU bookstore today, I found "The Academic Writer's Handbook" by Leonard J. Rosen as the Psychology department's concession to the English language. Apparently, the COBUILD English Grammar has escaped notice.
In Physics, I discovered "Scientists Must Speak" as the English language presentation standard. Now, it is clear that in science at SFU there is a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of language. The opportunity costs should be patent.
We might ensure that high school students have mastered a good text on Cognition, and two good books on Memory (Baddeley and Schwartz). The last thing we would want to do is have students take AP Psychology. General introductory texts to Psychology are usually an embarrassment.
The author of "101 Theory Drive," McDermott, would make a good editor of Scientific American Mind, which should be a monthly high-quality magazine in which philosophy, psychology, and linguistics would be focused and advanced. Literature would be able to make a significant contribution. The lack of originality of that magazine is the ultimate tipoff. Human beings would rather not think too much about what they are doing. Mind is just a metaphor.
#5 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Wed 2 Feb 2011 at 05:02 PM
looking at just the number of articles published has nothing to do with their quality or the advancement of knowledge. It's a very crude and in my opinion useless measure. I have to wonder what your agenda is here.
#6 Posted by Andy, CJR on Tue 8 Feb 2011 at 09:28 PM