Scientific Publishing Careers Appear to be Growing Shorter and Shorter

[Yazata]

While in the 1960's and early 1970's (the age that put humans on the Moon) scientists seem to have been publishing productively for 30-40 years on average, basically a whole career from graduate school to retirement.

Today they are only publishing for maybe five years until they go silent.

[Image: GJcr-qdWoAAfH_n?format=jpg&name=large]

Source: https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1800478115

correction - the authors left off a reference

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6347713/

[stryder]

While in the 1960's and early 1970's (the age that put humans on the Moon) scientists seem to have been publishing productively for 30-40 years on average, basically a whole career from graduate school to retirement.

Today they are only publishing for maybe five years until they go silent.

[Image: GJcr-qdWoAAfH_n?format=jpg&name=large]

Source: https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1800478115

correction - the authors left off a reference

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6347713/

I would say it's a wide vs tall issue.

Originally it was tall. Those trained were in some respects elites. They'd get the grants for experiments. They'd be the superstars of their area of expertise.

Nowadays science has moved wide.
There is a constant supply of new faces with fresh perspectives. When discovered (given a break) early they are going to be cheaper than someone thats been working in a field for years. So there is a higher change of getting first time grants, than extending funding for someone that's tenure increases their costs.

Further to that there is now the problem of AGI and plagurism. AGI can likely do the work, and some will plagurise. (Considering an AGI can't patent/copyright material)

[Syne]

That graph is about researchers abandoning their field, not about their status or grants. If you're tenured, you have a job whether you get grants or not, and are still perfectly able to publish... at least in the US. And the barrier to publishing has decreased over time, as the number of publishers has proliferated.

But we do have an ever increasing number of less qualified people being encouraged and funded to go to college, since the bell curve on intelligence is pretty stable over time. These people are likely less able to accomplish as much and thus easier to give up. In that respect, "wide" just means further to the left of the bell curve, which necessarily means more mediocre. And that's not even taking into account the increasing prevalence of women in college, and their documented tendency to leave their career, in academia or otherwise, once the biological clock starts ticking.