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Scientific and technological progress has historically been very beneficial to humanity but this does not always need to be true. Going forward, science may enable bad actors to cause genetically engineered pandemics that are more frequent…
Over the last decade proposal success rates in the fundamental sciences have dropped significantly. Astronomy and related fields funded by NASA and NSF are no exception. Data across agencies show that this is not principally the result of a…
Theories of scientific and technological change view discovery and invention as endogenous processes, wherein prior accumulated knowledge enables future progress by allowing researchers to, in Newton's words, "stand on the shoulders of…
In a commentary published in mid-2024 (to which the present work is a direct response), a number of scientists argue that U.S. funding agencies have "politicized" the process by which grants are awarded, in service of diversifying the…
Space Science enjoys broad public support in the US. People say they follow developments with interest, and that the programs are worth their cost. This attitude seems to arise in part because of the intrinsic accessibility and appeal of…
Scientific research funding is allocated largely through a system of soliciting and ranking competitive grant proposals. In these competitions, the proposals themselves are not the deliverables that the funder seeks, but instead are used by…
Setbacks are an integral part of a scientific career, yet little is known about whether an early-career setback may augment or hamper an individual's future career impact. Here we examine junior scientists applying for U.S. National…
US funding agencies alone distribute a yearly total of roughly $65B dollars largely through the process of proposal peer review: scientists compete for project funding by submitting grant proposals which are evaluated by selected panels of…
The world is changing fast, and so is the space sector. Planning for large scientific experiments two decades ahead may no longer be the most sensible approach. I develop the argument that large science experiments are becoming comparable…
Over the last few decades, the nature of scientific research has changed in response to external influences. Firstly, powerful networked computers have become a standard tool. Secondly, society presses ever harder for research to deliver…
At what level should government or companies support research? This complex multi-faceted question encompasses such qualitative bonus as satisfying natural human curiosity, the quest for knowledge and the impact on education and culture,…
We discuss, at the macro-level of nations, the contribution of research funding and rate of international collaboration to research performance, with important implications for the science of science policy. In particular, we…
Science of science (SciSci) is an emerging discipline wherein science is used to study the structure and evolution of science itself using large data sets. The increasing availability of digital data on scholarly outcomes offers…
Social epistemologists have argued that high risk, high reward science has an important role to play in scientific communities. Recently, though, it has also been argued that various scientific fields seem to be trending towards…
The analysis of the demographic transition of the past century and a half, using both empirical data and mathematical models, has rendered a wealth of well-established facts, including the dramatic increases in life expectancy. Despite…
Understanding how institutional changes within academia may affect the overall potential of science requires a better quantitative representation of how careers evolve over time. Since knowledge spillovers, cumulative advantage,…
The quest for historically impactful science and technology provides invaluable insight into the innovation dynamics of human society, yet many studies are limited to qualitative and small-scale approaches. Here, we investigate scientific…
It is a matter of debate whether a shrinking proportion of scholarly literature is getting most of the references over time. It is also less well understood how a narrowing literature usage would affect the circulation of ideas in the…
It appears paradoxical that science is producing outstanding new results and theories at a rapid rate at the same time that researchers are identifying serious problems in the practice of science that cause many reports to be irreproducible…
Fast growing scientific topics have famously been key harbingers of the new frontiers of science, yet, large-scale analyses of their genesis and impact are rare. We investigate one possible factor connected with a topic's extraordinary…