It might seem obvious that we want bold new ideas in science. But in fact, really novel work poses a tradeoff. While novel ideas might sometimes be much better than the status quo, they might usually be much worse. Moreover, it is hard to assess the quality of novel ideas because they’re so, well, novel. Existing knowledge is not as applicable to sizing them up. For those reasons, it might be better to actually discourage novel ideas, and to instead encourage slow and incremental expansion of the knowledge frontier. Or maybe not.
For better or worse, the scientific community has settled on a set of norms that appear to encourage safe and creeping science, rather than risky and leaping science.
This podcast is an audio read through of the (initial version of the) article Conservatism in Science, published on New Things Under the Sun.
Articles mentioned:
Azoulay, Pierre, Christian Fons-Rosen, and Joshua S. Graff Zivin. 2019. Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time? American Economic Review 109(8): 2889-2920. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20161574
Wang, Jian, Reinhilde Veugelers, and Paula Stephan. 2017. Bias against novelty in science: A cautionary tale for users of bibliometric indicators. Research Policy 46(8): 1416-1436. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2017.06.006
Li, Danielle. 2017. Expertise versus bias in evaluation: evidence from the NIH. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 9(2): 60-92. https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20150421
Ayoubi, Charles, Michele Pezzoni, and Fabiana Visentin. 2021. Does i pay to do novel science? The selectivity patterns in science funding. Science and Public Policy 48(5): 635-648. https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scab031
Boudreau, Kevin J., Eva C. Guinan, Karim R. Lakhani, Christoph Riedl. 2016. Looking across and looking beyond the knowledge frontier: intellectual distance, novelty, and resource allocation in science. Management Science 62(10): 2765-2783. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2015.2285