Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time.

Theories of scientific and technological change view discovery and invention as endogenous processes, wherein previous accumulated knowledge enables future progress by allowing researchers to, in Newton's words, 'stand on the shoulders of giants'. Recent decades have witnessed exponential growth in the volume of new scientific and technological knowledge, thereby creating conditions that should be ripe for major advances. Yet contrary to this view, studies suggest that progress is slowing in several major fields.

Do synthesis centers synthesize? A semantic analysis of topical diversity in research.

Synthesis centers are a form of scientific organization that catalyzes and supports research that integrates diverse theories, methods and data across spatial or temporal scales to increase the generality, parsimony, applicability, or empirical soundness of scientific explanations. Synthesis working groups are a distinctive form of scientific collaboration that produce consequential, high-impact publications. But no one has asked if synthesis working groups synthesize: are their publications substantially more diverse than others, and if so, in what ways and with what effect? We investigate these questions by using Latent Dirichlet Analysis to compare the topical diversity of papers published by synthesis center collaborations with that of papers in a reference corpus.