michael_nielsen

Of course, others have argued for similar conclusions before. But the argument has usually been made anecdotally. We bring a new type of evidence to the discussion.

The trouble with anecdotal argument about the question "What’s the rate of progress in science" is that it's too big and vague a question, and answers are easily swayed by feeling. That makes it easy to dismiss answers that you don't like.

To avoid this problem, we surveyed scientists at leading institutions, asking them to do pairwise comparisons ranking Nobel prizewinning discoveries in their disciplines. Eg: discovery of neutron vs cosmic background radiation? Etc.

We gathered 4,483 such comparisons. From this portfolio of questions we can back out progress in science (according to this metric) over the decades.

What's being plotted: the probability a discovery made in that decade is ranked above discoveries made in other decades.