Science makes great strides when stars die

The Nobel prize-winning physicist Max Planck once remarked that a brilliant new theory requires the Grim Reaper.

The sinister ally of a brilliant new theory

The Nobel prize-winning physicist Max Planck once remarked that a brilliant new theory ­requires a sinister ally: the Grim Reaper.

“A great scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its ­opponents and making them see the light,” he said, “but rather ­because its opponents eventually die.”

Now a large study of elite scientists has offered support for Planck’s notion that science progresses “one funeral at a time”.

Researchers looked at the deaths of 450 “superstar scientists” and found signs that while they were alive, they had smothered innovative thinking. Their funerals tended to be followed by a surge of influential new ideas, refreshing the fields they had once dominated.

Max Planck

“We are not arguing that stars are a net negative for scientific progress,” Pierre Azoulay of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said. “Indeed, given the outsized accomplishments of the eminent scientists in our sample, this seems unlikely. Rather, our results suggest that, once in control of the commanding heights of their fields, star scientists tend to hold on to their exalted position — and to the power that comes with it — a bit too long.”

The study tracked the careers of 13,000 elite scientists, including dozens of Nobel laureates, looking at the funding they received, the papers they published and how often they were cited. Their deaths appeared to invigorate younger rivals, who suddenly published research at an accelerated rate. The superstars, who were on average 61 when they died, tended to be replaced by scientists who had migrated from other areas of study.

“Importantly, these outsiders bring new ideas with them,” the study, published in the American Economic Review, says. “The ­papers that they publish are disproportionately likely to be ­highly cited by other scientists.”

There was also a sharp ­decrease in papers from the scientists who had collaborated with the dead stars.

Albert Einstein

Professor Azoulay believes the study is a window into the power politics that underpin scientific research. “Science, after all, is a very human enterprise,” he said. Even if established scientists do not intentionally block the work of rivals who champion alternative ideas, a tight-knit group of colleagues can wield influence over which papers are published and who receives grant money.

“If you’re successful you get to set the intellectual agenda of your field — that is part of the incentive system of science, and people do extraordinary positive things in the hope of getting to that position,” Professor Azoulay said. “It’s just that, once they get there, over time, maybe they tend to discount ‘foreign’ ideas too quickly.”

The study said that policies to curb the influence of eminent figures may be warranted, suggesting caps on funding and more emeritus positions “to induce senior scientists to wind down their laboratory activities”.

There are, of course, exceptions to any rule. Planck, one of the fathers of quantum theory, was famously open to new ideas. In 1905, aged 47 and at the top of his field, he promoted a paper that would reshape physics, written on the special theory of relativity by an obscure peer — Albert Einstein, then aged 26.

The Times