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To make breakthroughs that shatter the scientific status quo, researchers may be better off working in small teams, a paper in Nature today (February 13) concludes. The report, which examines the citations of tens of millions of research papers and patents, indicates that big teams tend to work on existing theories rather than instigating new ones.
“The core finding that smaller scientific teams tend to produce more disruptive scientific findings is really interesting in the context of the secular trend toward bigger and bigger teams,” says sociologist Jason Owen-Smith of the University of Michigan who was not involved in the project. The work suggests “we need to think about supporting . . . diversity of the research enterprise.”
Erin Leahey, a sociologist at the University of Arizona who also did not participate in the research, agrees. The results “temper some of the enthusiasm for large ...
