Discoveries Are Getting Harder

“If you look back on history, you get the sense that scientific discoveries used to be easy. Today, it takes ever more money, more effort, and more people to find out new things.” The Boston Globe examines the scientific study of science called scientometrics and finds that the rate of discovery in a given field declines over time. “Until recently, no one actually tried to measure the increasing difficulty of discovery. It certainly seems to be getting harder, but how much harder? How fast does it change? This type of research, studying the science of science, is in fact a field of science itself, and is known as scientometrics…”