Michael Park, Erin Leahey, Russell Funk

Although the number of new scientific discoveries and technological
inventions has increased dramatically over the past century, there have also
been concerns of a slowdown in the progress of science and technology. We
analyze 25 million papers and 4 million patents across 6 decades and find that
science and technology are becoming less disruptive of existing knowledge, a
pattern that holds nearly universally across fields. We link this decline in
disruptiveness to a narrowing in the utilization of existing knowledge.
Diminishing quality of published science and changes in citation practices are
unlikely to be responsible for this trend, suggesting that this pattern
represents a fundamental shift in science and technology.

Read the full article at: arxiv.org

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