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Innovators Are Older Than Ever
GrokSoup writes "A new study shows that great achievements in science are produced by older innovators today than they were a century ago. Using data on Nobel Prize winners and great inventors, the author shows that the age at which noted innovations are produced has increased by approximately 6 years over the 20th Century. This runs contrary to accepted wisdom in science, which says that most scientists peak in their 20s. It is also welcome news to those of us who have not yet, ahem, done our Nobel-winning work."
Because these days, everyone is expected to waste three or four years memorising things that can easily be looked up, rather than actually learning anything useful or cutting edge in a degree.
If we had any brains in our heads, we'd be exposing 8-12 year olds to ground breaking work, when their brains are still maleable.
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I hardly think this is surprising, given the sheer volume of knowledge and understanding a researcher must absorb to make any advancement at the cutting edge of science today. It really does take around half a life-time's worth of study.
I think the reason for this is that any new invention/discovery now takes years of reading and understanding the basic work that has already been done. Scientists in the past did not have so much background literature/work that they had to comprehend as the scientists today have to. This is of course not saying that their discoveries were rudimentary or inconsequential, but just that they did not have to spend so much time understading already done work.
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These people grew up in an era devoid of video games, tv, government-mandated mass advertising / marketing, and centralized media.
Back when people actually read books.. and evolution wasn't such a bad word.
I'd say the easiest explanation is that as the existing fields of research get deeper and deeper, it simply takes longer to get to the cutting edge. During the renaissance, someone like Leonardo could be on the cutting edge of dozens of fields, whereas today, in a field like mathematics or physics, the sheer amount of back-reading you have to do will take you well into your twenties. An interesting question is whether human potential for discovery is ultimately going to be limited by our lifespan or the fact that we 'peak' during our twenties.
Not surprising at all. The number of scientists is so much larger than before and the literature is so expansive that nearly all obvious things are or have been tried by somebody at sometime. Typically, it takes many years of trial and error (mostly error) before a young turk realizes this and starts to be able to narrow down the approaches that might actually work.
Perhaps even more important, is the amount of technology that is required before cutting-edge research can be done. With the possible exception of algorithm research (even then clusters help), this technology is not available to the general public. The young scientist will only have access to this technology in his/her "training" phase (which in biology is usually most of the 20's) while under the supervision of a more established scientist (who would get most of the credit should a breakthrough occur...). Even after starting up a new lab - it takes a few years to get everything in place and funding set up before you can try out those new ideas etc...
works now favours older more senior staff so its hardly surprising if they then scoop the plaudits. Funding is increasingly "targeted" making younger researchers fight against stacked odds. Of course when we are talking of public money its hard to argue against the position that money should go to long proven performers. Add to this that academic promotion is largely a matter of dead-mans shoes for anyone who isn't a genuine genius (ie. for people who are merely extremely good at what they do) and there is an aging workforce then I think that could quite easily add up to an average shift of six years. In short I can't access the full text but I think this is a result of policy more than anything else. There are a lot of big ideas floating about but having the means to make them stick is another matter.
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Think of all you learn as of power tools. Sure you can go to Home Depot and buy a bunch of tools. Will this make you a good carpenter? No. You don't know how to use the tools and how to produce stuff people may find useful.
Same with science. In order to do research you have to know your tools. Math, physics, chemistry, etc. Four years is not enough to give you these things even on the most basic level. I've spent 6 years getting my M.Sc. degree (not in the US) and I wish I could go back and spend a couple of years more, knowing what I will need in the field.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) I now have a family to feed and a mortgage to pay off, so going back to school is not an option financially.
If you're a student right now, absorb the knowledge as efficiently as you can. Go really deep into subjects, understand them on the most fundamental level. Know how to use your tools. You sure won't be able to recall the most intricate details of what you're studying right now three years down the road, but you'll at least know where to look.
who just celebrated his 40th birthday, I for one welcome our new geriatric intellectual overlords.
Seriously -- doesn't this make sense? 100 years ago you went around and dug in some rocks and junk piles and you were discovering stuff. Put a magnifying glass on a drop of pond water and it's a whole new world. Nowadays the _baseline_ for inventions has grown much more than before.
For instance, my invention deals with measuring how well intellectual processes are being performed at an organization. To get to where I'm at, you have to first invent IP, then process control, then computer technology, etc -- and for me to come up with it I had to understand enough of that previous work to mutate it into something useful for people.
What concerns me is that with more and more specialization, there seems to be a dearth of "cross pollenization" among sciences. Sure, there are specific programs, but it's almost impossible to find people with a truly broad and moderately deep general knowledge of sciences. My opinion only -- we've got a lot of brillant people but lack enough people who think outside the box and put the pieces together.
Gee this is a wonderful submission. People are supposed to discuss the topic an abstract with about 10 sentences, unless you want to buy it for $5.
Can't the guy do a little more research to post some other like articles that we don't have to pay for?
Well, I guess no one RTFAs anyway so maybe this isn't any different.
There was an interesting article on this topic on Slate (http://www.slate.com/id/2082960) two years ago. The article points out that the stereotype of the mathematician as a youthful prodigy is no longer the rule but the exception. It includes an interesting quote by mathemtician Henri Poincaré: "[L]ogic and intuition have each their necessary role. Each is indispensable." By logic, I'm guessing he means a more deliberate method of arriving at an answer, something that does require those years of learning and research, while intuition refers to that singular moment of clarity, the very thing that might've struck a twenty-year old mathematician a hundred years ago. So what's changed? Like Poincaré says, both are indispensable. You can stay in school for twenty-years, memorizing every theorem, every proof, every fundamentals of mathematics to heart, but if you don't have the capacity for intuition, you are never going to come upon something new. Likewise, even if the potential for greatness is in you, you won't be able to achieve it without first laying out your foundations. And that's all there is to it. There's simply more to learn, and without that learning, you'll never have a chance to exercise your intuition.
The other main reason is these days science requires big resources to test an idea or investigate a concept. For example 1984 Physics Nobel prize was given to Carlo Rubbia and Simon Van der Meer for "their decisive contributions to the large project, which led to the discovery of the field particles W and Z, communicators of weak interaction". Carlo Rubia was not the actual discoverer but he was the project leader and it was his idea (Simon Van der Meer was the project leader in the accelerator side) and he was the one who puffed and puffed until everything got build. You have to be pretty senior and with credentials to go around puffing and getting people to take you notice.
If you take another example.. the invention of the transisor by John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain, scientists at the Bell Telephone Laboratories. Other scientists in the early 1900s had seen the effect but they had not suceeded in reproducing the effect. It took a company with great resources for them to have everything necessary to make it work. I think the purity of Germanium being one. Again to have such a previldge position at a young age is pretty rare.
Even Isaac Newton.. he was young when he came up with the tools he required for creating the models.. but it took him a good deal of 20years after that for everything to actually fall in place and for Principia to be written. If you read James Gleick's biography you can see his confusion and the mighty struggle he has. Apart from trying to understand the physics behind it he has to develop a method of investigation which today we take for granted. Slowly, as he is being pushed by his critics, he irons out the wrinkles in the work.
Cheers, A.