Science is getting less bang for its buck

By Patrick Collison and Michael Nielsen in The Atlantic:

…we ran a survey asking scientists to compare Nobel prizewinning discoveries in their fields. We then used those rankings to determine how scientists think the quality of Nobel prizewinning discoveries has changed over the decades…

Our graph stops at the end of the 1980s. The reason is that, in recent years, the Nobel Committee has preferred to award prizes for work done in the 1980s and 1970s. In fact, just three discoveries made since 1990 have yet been awarded Nobel Prizes. This is too few to get a good quality estimate for the 1990s, and so we didn’t survey those prizes.

However, the paucity of prizes since 1990 is itself suggestive. The 1990s and 2000s have the dubious distinction of being the decades over which the Nobel Committee has most strongly preferred to skip back and award prizes for earlier work. Given that the 1980s and 1970s themselves don’t look so good, that’s bad news for physics…

Why has science gotten so much more expensive, without producing commensurate gains in our understanding?

There is much more evidence and argument at the linkThis appendix provides more detail on their empirical work.  Self-recommending, if there ever was such a thing.

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