A new paper runs deliciously contrary to accepted wisdom in science, which says that most scientists peak in their 20s. It is welcome news to those of us who have not yet, ahem, done our Nobel-winning work:
Great achievements in knowledge are produced by older innovators today than they were a century ago. Using data on Nobel Prize winners and great inventors, I find that the age at which noted innovations are produced has increased by approximately 6 years over the 20th Century. This trend is consistent with a shift in the life-cycle productivity of great minds. It is also consistent with an aging workforce.
There is an interesting twist though:
…the results show that individual innovators are productive over a narrowing span of their life cycle, a trend that reduces — other things equal — the aggregate output of innovators. This drop in productivity is particularly acute if innovators’ raw ability is greatest when young.
[Update] The National Bureau of Economic Research has another new paper by the same author that is arguably more important, althought its findings make for less entertaining cocktail chatter. This one looks at how knowledge accumulates as technology progresses, such that successive generations of would-be innovators have an escalating educational burden. The upshot: “…the nature of innovation is changing, with negative implications for long-run economic growth”.
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A few questions:
1. Are the curves statistically different?
2. Why were those particular years chosen?
3. Has the data been corrected for changes in expected lifespan?
Nigel — I’m tempted to say, “Go read the paper”, but the gist is that it is a credible piece of econometrics published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, not some bit of juvenilia from an MBA who spent the weekend running spreadsheet data.
Anyway, yes author Jones accounted for an aging population (it’s actually one of the interesting analytical parts of the paper), and yes the results are significant (at a 95/99% sig. level). And as for the curves themselves and the dates, they strike me as arbitrary, but it doesn’t matter. The curves are merely an attempt to show graphically what he has already shown is statistically significant: That the age of great innovation is trending upward 5 to 6 years per century.
If you still want to take the guy on, however, be my guest and contact Ben Jones at Northwestern directly. I’m sure he’d happily spar.