In science, older researchers typically have the greatest influence and access to the most resources. But are they really the ones driving progress the most? A study has now come to the conclusion that people bring in different types of creativity and innovation at the beginning and later in their scientific careers. While older people are good at reconnecting existing knowledge, it is the younger people who create disruptive innovations and new, groundbreaking ideas. To ensure a productive relationship between experience and disruption, it could therefore make sense to promote young talent more strongly.
At the beginning of a scientific career there are often insecure employment relationships with fixed-term contracts and few resources for one’s own research. On the other hand, those who have made the step to a professorship can not only rely on a secure job, but also receive more influence, leadership responsibility and financial support – and often remain active in science well past retirement age. “Extended training periods, the abolition of mandatory retirement, and support systems that reward experience have led to a concentration of resources on older scientists,” writes a team led by Haochuan Cui from the University of Pittsburgh. “As science becomes increasingly dependent on its aging core, a key question arises: How does academic age influence creativity?”
Reconnection and disruption
To answer this question, Cui and his colleagues evaluated the publications of more than 12.5 million researchers who published between 1960 and 2020. They recorded the “academic age” of the researchers, i.e. the time since their first publication, and related this to the citation patterns of their work. “In our analysis, we found that the connection of previously unconnected ideas increases with increasing academic age, while disruption, i.e. the replacement of established ideas with new ones, decreases,” the team reports.
The particular strength of younger people in science is their ability to question established ideas and replace them with completely new concepts. On the other hand, those who have been working in their field for a long time are more closely tied to existing knowledge, but can create novel, creative connections between established paradigms based on a broad wealth of experience. “Both types of creativity – reconnection and disruption – drive scientific progress,” explain Cui and his colleagues.
Experience and nostalgia
The different approaches depending on age are also reflected in the works cited: At the beginning of their careers, young researchers often build on the most current publications and cite many studies in their publications that are only a few years old. The longer your academic career lasts, the older the cited references become. According to Cui and his colleagues, this may be due to a “nostalgia effect”: older researchers prefer to rely on well-known studies. Secondly, they may have less time to keep up to date on the research front due to increasing managerial, administrative and reviewing tasks. Since scientific working groups are usually led by older people, their penchant for older citations affects the entire team. Research groups with younger leaders, on the other hand, cite more recent work more often.
There are also differences in international comparison: “Countries with younger scientific staff such as China and India produce a larger proportion of disruptive work, while countries with older workforces such as the USA have lower disruption rates,” report Cui and his team. From their perspective, the results also have policy implications: “Because scientific progress depends on both continuity and renewal, funding and promotion systems should encourage diverse pathways that enable both, especially given the aging global research community,” they write.
Source: Haochuan Cui (University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA) et al., Science, doi: 10.1126/science.ady8732