Fundamental Dynamics, Predictability, and Uncertainty of Scientific Discovery and Advance
Abstract
Modern scientific research has grown exponentially. Today, tens of millions of grant proposals, preprints, white papers, research articles, and patents are produced each year. The growing scale and complexity of science and technology have created unprecedented opportunities and challenges for understanding and managing the research and development (RandD) enterprise of the 21st Century. On one hand, scholarly big data offers insight to scientific production and reward at novel scales and finer resolution than previously possible. This explosion of data has the potential to benefit scientists and decision makers who seek to identify the most promising ideas, individuals, and teams early in the scientific process. On the other hand, science and technology constitute a fundamentally complex system: inherently complicated, involving convoluted interactions between components, and predisposed to emergent and unexpected collective outcomes that thwart simplistic approaches to anticipate, model, and predict the future. These analytical challenges are compounded in today’s increasingly complex environment of research interdisciplinarity and fiscal scarcity.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jan 14, 2022
- Source ID
- FA95501910354
Entities
People
- Dashun Wang
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Northwestern University
- United States Air Force