Experienced scientists produce more persistently disruptive research, finds study
A new report challenges the idea that scientists become less innovative as they age The post Experienced scientists produce more persistently disruptive research, finds study appeared first on Physics World .
Experienced researchers generate less frequent yet long-lasting disruptive research, according to a study analyzing the publication records of over 200,000 scientists. The research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that experience enhances the persistence of disruptive work, which can overturn existing knowledge and spur new lines of inquiry.
Typically, scientific advancements accumulate on top of prior research, but disruptive research can disrupt existing knowledge and pave the way for new directions. One method to determine if a scientific paper is disruptive is if other papers cite it without referencing the original study, indicating that it has replaced rather than built upon previous work.
While previous studies have found that the propensity for producing disruptive research declines throughout a scientist's career, the current analysis argues that existing measures of disruption do not account for how effective disruption is in the long run. To address this, researchers developed a "persistent disruption index," which evaluates whether a disruptive paper is later either consolidated or displaced by the work that cites it.
By comparing the disruption caused by a paper to the disruption it experiences from citing papers, the index identifies papers that are both highly disruptive and enduring. The study examined bibliographic data from SciSciNet on 206,130 scientists with careers spanning over 40 years, revealing that while the likelihood of producing a disruptive paper decreases with career progression, the probability of publishing a persistent disruption paper increases.
This indicates that while experienced scientists disrupt less often, their disruptive research is more likely to withstand the test of time and become the foundation for future research. Additionally, the work of experienced scientists garners more attention from the media and peers, potentially contributing to the longevity of their disruptive findings.
The researchers argue that evaluation and funding systems that prioritize immediate signs of disruption may overlook the lasting impact of disruptive ideas and the role that experience plays in generating such work.
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