The Science of Science

“Are we making fewer discoveries than in the past? Can war make us cleverer? The answers lie in scientometrics, the field of research that puts scientists under the microscope.” The Independent examines the conclusions made by the science of science, one of which demonstrates that while the scale of discoveries shrinks, the costs associated with them have grown exponentially: “Newton and his peers studied springs and apples; now we need supercomputer networks to check out broadly the same things. In an objective sense, says Samuel Arbesman, a Harvard postdoctoral fellow, science is getting harder.”