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."

Comments

Well yes

[keesh]

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.

Re:Well yes

[Rei]

I disagree. Modern technological innovations are more and more dependant on having a large scientific knowledge base, which takes time to acquire. This, to me, seems the main reason for the increase - not some shift from a "golden age" in education. I would only expect this number to increase in the future.

Re:Well yes

[alienfluid]

Why is this a "waste"? Do you expect to do groundbreaking physics research without knowing and understanding the fundamental laws or even basic calculus? There is no point in re-inventing the wheel and so some time spent in reading literature is time well spent.

Re:Well yes

[keesh]

There is a big difference between understanding and memorising.

Re:Well yes

[Rei]

Um, no. For example, lets say that you want to come up with an innovation relating to modelling of airflow turbulence. Go ahead and try and do that without first learning the Navier-Stokes equations and familiarizing yourself with at least some of the dozen or so turbulence models. Of course, try learning the navier stokes equations and turbulence models without a solid physics background as well. Try to get that physics background without a calculus and algebra background, and try to get that without a basic mathematics background.

It's not about "memorization" - it's about learning, and there's an awful lot to learn to be prepared to work in a modern scientific field.

Re:Well yes

[the eric conspiracy]

By taking the time to learn and memorize these modern 'innovations' aren't they grounding their thoughts into the same kind of mentality they are trying to break free of in the first place?

The problem is that you are equating the idea of hidebound mentality with the tools necessary to do basic scientific work. If you have good teachers you can obtain the latter without getting caught up in the former. If not, well, you are probably likely to get the former without the latter.

Re:Well yes

[NoseBag]

Exactly. As is stated in other posts, rote memorization is not "learning". To be able to quickly and automatically integrate new phenomena and data with already-understood principles requires that the "old" info be known forwards and backwards.

Hell, to even IDENTIFY new phenomena required a thorough understanding of past work. Even more importantly, to spot contradictions in past work requires deep understanding of said past efforts.

There really is no shortcut. And since there is more past effort to learn, the longer (perhaps) it takes to reach ones peak.

Re:Well yes

[Inspector Lopez]

There is no point in re-inventing the wheel

Often heard, but not true. In fact, wheel re-invention is extremely useful.

• "pretty good" programming languages were available decades ago, but people keep inventing new ones, and some of the new ones are pretty great.
  
• Mathematicians and physicists frequently reinvent things, because better tools become available. example: proofs of Stokes' Theorem and Gauss's Law require a bit of effort in classical calculus, but both become special cases of a much more general theorem when you have the tools of differential forms available.
  
• GNU/linux is pretty clearly the result of wheel reinvention. some of us think this has been a pretty useful activity.
  
• wheel reinvention is obviously useful as a pedagogical tool. How many million times have students laid out some elementary circuit in VLSI, say, an eight bit adder? Would you hire someone to design a chip who had read all the literature, even memorized it, but had never actually laid out a single chip?
  
• wheel reinvention is a critical (and underused) feature of modern science. In principle, peer-review is a kind of wheel reinvention, however it is usually in the form of checking the math, if you will (that's not even always possible http://www.google.com/search?q=four+color+theorem) . The best kind of peer review is duplication: can somebody else duplicate the experment? It is a real tragedy in modern Science that whoever was First gets all the credit, when the person who was Second should earn our deep gratitude for independently checking the result.
  

Wheel reinvention provides a critical opportunity for the advance of science and technology, by creating an opportunity to find a better way, and to detect previously undiscovered vulnerabilities.

Re:Well yes

[mindaktiviti]

Getting all of that background should be done by the time you're 17-19, not 25-30. Kids should be able to finish high school calculus in grade 8, not grade 12. We need to expect more from them, otherwise they will do the bare minimum. The public school system moves at the pace of the lowest common denominator. ...Well, no that's not right, but they definitely move on the lower end of the spectrum. Also, in elementary/high school you are generally rewarded for memorization as opposed to expressing a higher form of understanding. That doesn't happen until sometime late in university. In some instances I believe that school can inhibit your inventiveness, because it certainly doesn't push you to learn on your own. You just have to do your homework so you can study for those exams, which will get you into university/college. It's all about marks marks marks.

Re:Well yes

[tmortn]

Yes but do you really think that for a student that finds intrest in these things it takes 18 some odd years of formal education to learn them ?

Current mass education systems are far more successfull at turning out mindless sheep that simply accept what they are told than fundamentally grounded eggheads that push the edges of our knowledge. Basic math, calc and physics do not take years upon years. For someone that is motivated and interested, they can be picked up in days, weeks at the most.

To me the modern classroom is like the equivalent of those A++ certification classes. They cost alot, teach you nothing and give you a stamp of approval that only means a damn thing to HR weenies.

The average age of ground breaking work is going up not because it takes that long to grasp the fundamentals. But because we have a system in place that blocks most from having any reasonable chance to learn, or more importanly apply, those fundamentals before going through a monolitic education process unable to adapt to the needs of the gifted student.

Re:Well yes

[cyclop]

Does a programmer really have to know what is the function of mitochondria?

Yes. And vice versa. My interest in programming greatly helped me working in biotechnology, for example.

People should of course specialize, but specialization doesn't mean ignoring the whole world around you. This is a disaster for society already (here in Italy we have to vote for a referendum on stem cell research next week: you can imagine how much even learned people misunderstand the problem) Kids can and should simply learn much more at school than today. Stupidity is incurable, but ignorance not.

Moreover, most interesting things in science today happen at the interfaces between knowledge fields. The world of science would be much poorer in a world like the one you seem to want.

Maleable

[Boronx]

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.

Re:Maleable

[quandrum]

Perhaps I'm being cynical here, but it seems our education system is designed primarily to teach the bulk of the population for a life of boring repetition. In the bulk of jobs today, creativity and critical thinking aren't considered an asset. However, the ability to do the same thing for 8 hours is.

The product of a century of achievement?

[ettlz]

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.

Building on previous work

[alienfluid]

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.

farhanahmed.net

The prerequisites are so much higher than before

[hung_himself]

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...

The way in which academia

[BlightThePower]

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.

You're missing the point, dude

[melted]

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.

Speaking as an inventor

[DanielMarkham]

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.

Great- a $5 article!

[kevcol]

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.