Abstract
Opportunities in science largely affect the accumulation of scientific knowledge and, therefore, technological change. However, there is little evidence of how much of people’s talent is actually wasted. Here we focus on scientists with the highest performance, the recipients of the Nobel Prize and Fields Medal. We found that the average age of scientists at the time of the breakthrough was higher for researchers from less developed countries. Moreover, individual opportunities in the world were extremely unequal by country of birth, gender significantly conditioned any participation in research, and the probability of becoming a top researcher more than doubled for individuals with parents belonging to the most favoured occupational categories. Thus, inequality of opportunity in science at the highest level was higher than in sports excellence (Olympic medals) and educational attainment. These findings would not be so negative if opportunities in science at the highest level had increased over time. Contrary to the expectations, our results show that opportunities in science, in contrast with humanities, have stagnated.
Highlights
The basic idea behind the scientific method is the belief in contestability and the commitment to open science
Technological change is the main source of sustained economic growth and, despite that technology increased without any significant development in science until the first Industrial Revolution, science has been the dominant driving force ever since (Mokyr, 2017)
Because we are interested in science ( n = 624), we focus on the Nobel Prize winners in physics ( n = 216), chemistry ( n = 186) and medicine ( n = 222)
Summary
The basic idea behind the scientific method is the belief in contestability and the commitment to open science. A significant increase in the number of recipients of the Nobel Prize and Fields Medal could suggest that new ideas involve more people because they are more complex, and the required techniques are more sophisticated To verify this assumption, we calculate the number of award recipients per year in science (normalised by the number of fields, 3), humanities (normalised by 2), mathematics and economics (Fig. 9 in Appendix 1). It seems that top-class scientists from the wealthiest class take longer to develop their research careers, possibly because their financial needs are lower This result implies that improving research opportunities for those individuals with bad parental background may reduce the waste of talent and the period of time that a breakthrough takes on average.
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