SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019
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DISCOVER 11
IN THE LATE 1940S, while a new library
was being built at the future National
University of Singapore, a young math-
ematics instructor named Derek John
de Solla Price stored the Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society of
London in his bedroom. When he placed
the archives, starting with the first volume
from 1665, into chronological stacks by
decade, he was struck by what he saw: The
height of each stack increased exponen-
tially. Presenting his findings at the 1950
International Congress of the History of
Science, Price theorized the growth was a
characteristic of science itself.
His insight was prescient, and not
only in anticipating the ever-escalating
onslaught of publications. Today, a grow-
ing number of researchers are studying the
inner workings of science, trying to make
future work more effective. “The science
of science has really exploded in the last
10 years,” says Northeastern University
physicist Albert-László Barabási, a lead-
ing expert in the field often referred to
as SciSci.
Although the discipline’s roots go back
to the middle of last century, it has only
really blossomed with modern processing
technology. Instead of physically stacking
and sorting journals, researchers can now
digitally manipulate enormous online
databases amassed by the likes of Google
and the National Institutes of Health. And
there’s a vast amount to learn.
For example, physicists were recently
surprised to discover nobody had under-
taken a basic census of physics. How many
physicists are there? How are they distrib-
uted among subfields? Which subfields
are producing the most high-impact sci-
ence? Without this knowledge, the orga-
nizational decisions that universities and
journals made were little more than guess-
work. So in 2017, the editor-in-chief of
the journal Nature Reviews Physics com-
missioned Barabási and his Northeastern
and Central European University col-
league Roberta Sinatra to map out the
field using a proprietary database called
the Web of Science.
Together with four other researchers,
they analyzed roughly 5.6 million papers
authored by 135,
physicists between 1985
and 2015. The results,
published in January,
provided the first rigorous
demographics of physics.
It also showed that one
of the subfields — inter-
disciplinary physics, an
intersection of the field’s
main branches — contrib-
utes the most impactful
research, but is under-
populated and poorly
supported. For instance,
less than 2 percent of the
32,000 physicists who
work in interdisciplin-
ary physics specialize in
it (meaning they don’t
spend a lot of time work-
ing in other subfields).
For comparison, the most popular sub-
field, condensed matter physics, boasts
over 62,000 physicists, comprising over
40 percent of all specialized physicists.
Yet it has the most high-impact, or
most highly cited, papers in relation to
its size.
“There is clear evidence of discrimina-
tion of interdisciplinary physics,” says
Sinatra, now based at the IT University of
Copenhagen. She believes these empirical
observations can serve as a call to action
for funding agencies to provide more
money, and for schools to guide more
young scientists toward interdisciplinarity
— a move that would bolster future scien-
tific discovery.
SciSci has also reexamined some old
myths that could hinder research, like
the long-standing claim that scientists
produce their most important work at the
beginning of their careers. But an analy-
sis of 514,896 papers in a diverse range
of fields shows that a researcher’s most
important work could be published at any
time — that likelihood isn’t restricted to
the early days of a scientist’s career.
Not that SciSci is faultless. In 2007,
researchers published a Science paper on
the nature of collaboration,
stating that, compared
with work by individual
researchers, teams “pro-
duce the exceptionally
high-impact research.”
The paper was used as “a
primary justification for
enlarging teams every-
where,” says James Evans, a
sociologist at the University
of Chicago. “But it was
only half the story.”
Earlier this year, Evans
published a new analysis
in Nature confirming that
large teams (which can
exceed 1,000 people) are
excellent at fleshing out
existing theories. However,
it seems they’re abysmal at
generating novel ideas that
take science in new directions. The smaller
a team is, the more adept it is at “disrup-
tive” science. Evans believes this is because
smaller groups are more flexible and less
risk-averse. He argues that funding small
teams, while riskier, is essential. Without
such groups to pioneer new directions,
large teams may be left with nothing to
develop.
Evans’ research, and that of other SciSci
experts, shows that science can discover its
own excesses and correct past errors — a
hallmark of the scientific process. Through
the science of science, science is guiding
itself. — JONATHON KEATS
A Look in the Mirror
Thanks to recent technology, science takes a hard look at itself.
D
A
V
I
D
E
B
O
N
A
Z
Z
I
BIG IDEA
SciSci has
reexamined
some old myths
that could
hinder research,
like the long-
standing claim
that scientists
produce their
most important
work at the
beginning of
their careers.