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2015 ; 112
(47
): 14569-74
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Choosing experiments to accelerate collective discovery
#MMPMID26554009
Rzhetsky A
; Foster JG
; Foster IT
; Evans JA
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
2015[Nov]; 112
(47
): 14569-74
PMID26554009
show ga
A scientist's choice of research problem affects his or her personal career
trajectory. Scientists' combined choices affect the direction and efficiency of
scientific discovery as a whole. In this paper, we infer preferences that shape
problem selection from patterns of published findings and then quantify their
efficiency. We represent research problems as links between scientific entities
in a knowledge network. We then build a generative model of discovery informed by
qualitative research on scientific problem selection. We map salient features
from this literature to key network properties: an entity's importance
corresponds to its degree centrality, and a problem's difficulty corresponds to
the network distance it spans. Drawing on millions of papers and patents
published over 30 years, we use this model to infer the typical research strategy
used to explore chemical relationships in biomedicine. This strategy generates
conservative research choices focused on building up knowledge around important
molecules. These choices become more conservative over time. The observed
strategy is efficient for initial exploration of the network and supports
scientific careers that require steady output, but is inefficient for science as
a whole. Through supercomputer experiments on a sample of the network, we study
thousands of alternatives and identify strategies much more efficient at
exploring mature knowledge networks. We find that increased risk-taking and the
publication of experimental failures would substantially improve the speed of
discovery. We consider institutional shifts in grant making, evaluation, and
publication that would help realize these efficiencies.