Science Is Getting Less Bang for Its Buck

This is the natural consequence of publish or perish culture. We’ve optimized for the wrong variable.

More papers published doesn’t mean more science. It just means more people incentivized to publish “science”. Most published papers don’t matter. They may not be read at all or applied in any way. They are mostly about individuals making progress, like towards a degree or the next funding grant or next title. A small percentage of science is actually moving things truly forward. It also makes sense that after all the progress so far, further research will be increasingly expensive and time consuming and unlikely to make a finding.

Even in capitalism, the RoR - Return on Research - is something like 10-15% of what it was a century prior. That is, if $1 in 1924 R&R spending got $1 of new products or advancements, $1 of 2024 R&R spending now gets only 10-15¢ of the same.

And then people think we are going to be able to innovate out of extinction-level events that are barrelling down the pipe at us, such as climate change. I would laugh maniacally at that idea, were it not so naïvely pathetic.