Quantifying the Ease of Scientific Discovery

TL;DR

This paper introduces a quantitative method to measure the decreasing ease of scientific discovery over time across disciplines, revealing an exponential decay pattern and linking it to scientific output.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach to quantify the ease of scientific discovery and demonstrates its application across multiple scientific fields.

Findings

Ease of discovery declines exponentially over time.

Scientific output and ease jointly influence discovery pace.

Method provides insights into future scientific progress.

Abstract

It has long been known that scientific output proceeds on an exponential increase, or more properly, a logistic growth curve. The interplay between effort and discovery is clear, and the nature of the functional form has been thought to be due to many changes in the scientific process over time. Here I show a quantitative method for examining the ease of scientific progress, another necessary component in understanding scientific discovery. Using examples from three different scientific disciplines - mammalian species, chemical elements, and minor planets - I find the ease of discovery to conform to an exponential decay. In addition, I show how the pace of scientific discovery can be best understood as the outcome of both scientific output and ease of discovery. A quantitative study of the ease of scientific discovery in the aggregate, such as done here, has the potential to provide a great deal of insight into both the nature of future discoveries and the technical processes behind discoveries in science.