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Pruning the Tree of Science
by Chet Raymo
Scientific knowledge grows organically, like a tree.
Every piece
of published research is like a new bud on a twig. The bud is connected
to every other bud on the tree. Two buds may be very close together, on
the same twig, or very far apart, so that to trace the connection one
would have to follow twigs and branches all the way back to the trunk
and out again along other branches and twigs. Ultimately, all
scientific knowledge is one. It is the connectedness of science that give us confidence in its reliability.
The
amount of research being published today is so great that no one can
claim to know the overall shape of the tree. The last time I checked,
there were upwards of 100,000 scientific journals. It is virtually
impossible for any one scientist to become familiar with more than a
single branch of the tree.
A rule of science requires that every
published paper cite all previously published work that bears upon the
same subject. The citation rule assures that new research is firmly
connected to the tree of science.
As it turns out, only about
half of published papers are cited by subsequent research. That is to
say, about half of the twigs on the tree of science are dead ends. They
could be snipped away and the tree would grow as robustly as ever. At
first glance, this might seem promising. Good horticultural practice
suggests that a tree grows best with judicious pruning. The nutrients
for growth, in the form of funding, are limited. Snip a branch here and
there, and the other branches will grow more vigorously.
The
problem is knowing which branches to prune. Who can tell which
scientific research being done today will be the start of a fruitful
new branch of the tree and which is destined to be deadwood?
Significant work may go unrecognized for years following its
publication. Without some possibly wasteful measure of support,
promising ideas may fade before they have a chance to establish
themselves in a citation index.
More worrisome, science might
become a self-perpetuating aristocracy, rather than an open
meritocracy. It may be necessary to tolerate a substantial amount of
fruitless research in order to insure that science remains open to the
gifted young, and to others working outside of elite research
establishments.
It may be that science grows best wastefully and wild, without the horticulturist's tidying hand.
This work, by Chet Raymo, is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Photo courtesy of Savannah Grandfather at Flickr.com.
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