Diminishing marginal returns for the average stock of education is what we’re seeing. In large part, this is because the proportion of what Val calls normal research has grown as a share of the total pool of research conducted. IOW, a lot of tinkering, without much genuine discovery.
I’d argue our problem is also partly cultural. The pursuit of PhDs strongly favours risk aversion in research mandates (i.e. chasing grant money for topics known by government funders.) If the vast majority of our researchers expect cushy lifestyles on the other side of their PhD or postdoctoral work, and universities are bowing to political pressure to pump out imminently marketable research, then the shortening of the pure research cycle is also core to the problem. Real, revolutionary work requires an open mandate to chase down lots of tangents. Sadly, the academic model rarely supports that degree of exploration.
Prospect theory says we’re cognitively biased against accurate measurements of extremely improbable, strong upside events. Yup.
