I just read a paper that has me brooding, once again, over science’s limits. In “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?” four economists claim that “a wide range of evidence from various industries, products, and firms show[s] that research effort is rising substantially while research productivity is declining sharply.”
As a counter-intuitive example, the economists cite Moore’s Law, noting that the “number of researchers required today to achieve the famous doubling every two years of the density of computer chips is more than 18 times larger than the number required in the early 1970s.” The economists found similar downward trends in research related to agriculture and medicine.
These economists are concerned primarily with what I would call applied science, advances in medicine, transportation, agriculture, communication, manufacturing, and so on. But their findings resonate with my claim in The End of Science that “pure” science—the effort simply to understand rather than manipulate nature—is bumping into limits. Here are my reactions to the paper:
*What’s the Big Bang worth? In a couple of respects, I find the economists’ evaluations of scientific progress too stingy. First, they grant surprisingly little value to recent advances in digital technologies. I began my career 35 years ago writing on these contraptions called “typewriters” and doing research in places called “libraries.” I’m still blown away by my ability to access virtually infinite knowledge instantaneously from my laptop. Yeah, fake news, spam, cyber-war, but still.
Second, the economists give insufficient weight to what I consider science’s most valuable achievements, its insights into reality. The Big Bang theory and Out-of-Africa hypothesis don’t boost gross national product, but they deepen our understanding of the world and of ourselves. Isn’t that, ultimately, what science is about?
*When science regresses. In other respects, the economists’ evaluations of scientific progress are too generous. Certain fields are arguably not just slowing down but regressing. Psychiatrists have harmed many patients by over-prescribing medications. The cancer industry, similarly, is overdiagnosing and overtreating Americans. In the realm of pure science, many physicists remain stubbornly committed to strings and multiverses, things too small and large ever to be observed.
*Too much innovation veneration! Our culture’s growing obsession with “innovation” could be contributing to science’s problems. My former Stevens colleagues Lee Vinsel and Andrew Russell, who are technology historians, have pointed out that “innovation-speak worships at the altar of change, but it rarely asks who benefits, to what end?”
Good question. Innovation veneration, Vinsel and Russell point out, has widened the gap between haves and have-nots and led to neglect of the maintenance needed to keep things running smoothly. It has driven up the costs of American medicine without appreciably improving our health. Researchers’ desperation to publish novel results also surely contributes to the replication crisis, the finding by statistician John Ioannidis and others that many peer-reviewed claims cannot be replicated.
*Are some fruit too high to reach? Some pundits explain the slowdown of science with the “low-hanging fruit” metaphor. Scientists have solved relatively easy problems and moved on to harder ones, like the mind-body problem and unification of physics. Here’s a tough question: At what point, if ever, do we decide that some fruit are unreachable? Or, as an economist might put it: How much are we willing to spend on problems that have proven intractable so far? When, if ever, should we cut our losses and quit?
It depends on the problem, of course. We won’t stop investing in research on schizophrenia or cancer until they are eradicated, which might not happen for a long time, if ever. But what about pure-science investigations? To put it more bluntly: How much are “pure” discoveries like the Big Bang or Out-of-Africa hypothesis worth? I’d like to say they are priceless, but that answer won’t suffice when we’re talking about government funding. Should we spend billions on science with no practical benefits when millions of people lack decent health care, housing, and education?
Some science enthusiasts shun discussion of these issues, and I understand why. Such discussions could embolden anti-science forces, and speculation that some problems are too hard to solve might become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But we must face science’s problems and potential limits. To ignore them is unscientific.
John Horgan directs the Center for Science Writings, which is part of the College of Arts & Letters. This column is adapted from one originally published on his Scientific American blog, “Cross-check.”
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