News Finding: "You'd expect them go the opposite direction: At first, picking important things but then there are diminishing returns in those experiments, so over time they'd shift to more risky experiments, choosing things further from each other in the network," said Evans.
Paper Finding: Despite these limitations, our model reveals patterns of discovery in biomedical chemistry and shows that more efficient discovery strategies would incorporate more "interdisciplinarity" and more risk, with the latter particularly important as a field matures.
News Context: They analyzed the relationships between medically useful molecules and found that as a field matures, scientists are more likely to study closely related molecules rather than distantly related ones. "You'd expect them go the opposite direction: At first, picking important things but then there are diminishing returns in those experiments, so over time they'd shift to more risky experiments, choosing things further from each other in the network," said Evans. But that's not what happened.
Paper Context: { Future models could introduce these layers as additional features, penalties, and rewards associated with the "game" of science. Despite these limitations, our model reveals patterns of discovery in biomedical chemistry and shows that more efficient discovery strategies would incorporate more "interdisciplinarity" and more risk, with the latter particularly important as a field matures. Adopting a more efficient approach would lead to greater risk, but our findings suggest that scientists pursue progressively less risk, focusing more and more on the immediate neighborhood of high-degree chemicals, with the slight increase in bridging links as a silver lining.