| First of all, I believe the stagnation today in scientific discoveries is resulted from the lack of big grand visions of a future that can draw inspirations. Over the years, society has shifted into favoring financial languages and metrics in most of today communications instead of telling stories that are often associated with lifetime generational experiences. Most things are calculated based on precise risks and probabilities so naturally we would opt for the least risky path. As a result, the system has evolved into favoring incremental improvements rather than explorations of uncharted territories that are much more riskier. In scientific publishing, this metric is represented by an over-emphasize in citations which has become the main criteria those publications are now being evaluated based on. Novelty or a desire for new experience that can generate large and meaningful impact, or even simply playful experimental ideas are no longer valued as much. Citations quantity has become the main currency in scientific publishing, and understandably has also led the community to prioritize incremental improvements. In the paper, it mentioned that many seemingly irrelevant or uninteresting new scientific discoveries initially took a long time for the community to understand its potential, but those very same discoveries would later lead to much bigger and more meaningful inventions, such as the gene-editing tool CRISPR we have today. It took 20 years for this to happen counting from the initial discovery, so this is where the disconnection occurred. In that sense, there is a great need to help propagating those initial discoveries both in its magnitudes and speeds so that it can receive more attentions from other scientists and community. The novelty should once again be the main focus to drive motivations and inspirations. Scientific publications shouldn't just prioritize on hard cold metrics like citations, but instead attaching more metaphors and new visions of future possibilities that can excite and propel both science community and public interests. More than ever, people today are craving for that common naivety which used to connect everyone together into believing making the impossible possible. That's precisely what has made Elon Musk and his companies so successful. |