

Age and Great Invention - bd
http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/jones-ben/htm/AgeAndGreatInvention.pdf

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teuobk
Direct free link to the paper from the author's site:

[http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/jones-
ben/htm/Ag...](http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/jones-
ben/htm/AgeAndGreatInvention.pdf)

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frossie
Hey thanks for the free link, I wasn't going to pay $5 to read it, but now
that I have, it would have been worth it.

It is definitely an interesting analysis and the author has taken some pains
to isolate confounding variables. The one thing I would have liked to see is
some cross-cultural data. For example his theory is that the interval
available for innovation is being reduced due to upward pressure at the low
end (people take longer to get academically qualified to start "real" work)
but no corresponding expansion of the upper end (just because people are
starting 8 years later than they used to does not mean they keep being
innovative 8 years after they used to stop). He attributes some of this to the
extended training period, which means PhDs don't really get going until 31
whereas a century ago they started research at 23.

But their is a large cultural diffence in this value right now. Back when I
was getting my academic training, the typical age of a US PhD was 30, whereas
in the UK it seemed to be 24-25 [I do not know whether this is still the
case]. So if his point is that the squeeze in "fertile years" is linked with a
social drop in scientific innovation, he should be able to show that in
countries were the academic qualifications happen faster, those countries are
more scientifically productive.

But without looking up his secondary references, I have to admit to being very
surprised at the thought that R&D is less productive now than it used to be
(per person involved, I guess). If anybody can figure out how they measure
that and in what areas of endeavour and can explain it in a few words, please
do so.

