2022年经济学人 结束科学停滞期（1）

（单词翻译）

Finance & economics

财经板块

Free exchange: In search of a bright light

自由交流：为了寻找明亮的光

Billion-dollar experiments aim to end a period of scientific stagnation¹

耗费数十亿美元做实验，以求结束科学停滞期

In 2008 Ben Jones of Northwestern University formalised a simple yet powerful observation.

2008年，西北大学的本·琼斯正式发表了一项简单而有力的观察结果。

The more knowledge humans have, the longer it takes a budding researcher to get to the frontier, and thus to push things forward.

人类拥有的知识越多，初出茅庐的研究人员就需要越长的时间才能到达知识前沿，从而推动事物向前发展。

In a paper provocatively² titled, “The burden of knowledge and the death of the Renaissance³ man”, Mr Jones argued humanity’s growing knowledge would slow scientific progress and thus economic growth.

在《知识的负担和文艺复兴人的死亡》这篇题目发人深省的论文中，琼斯辩称，随着人类拥有的知识越来越多，科学进展会放缓，经济增长也会因此减缓。

More recent research has solidified⁴ this view.

最近的研究证实了这一观点。

In 2020 economists⁵ at Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) published another provocatively titled paper, “Are ideas getting harder to find?” which concluded that in areas from crop yields to microchip density⁶, new ideas were indeed getting harder to find.

2020年，斯坦福大学和麻省理工学院(MIT)的经济学家发表了另一篇题目引人深思的论文——《创新是不是变得更难了？》。得出的结论是，从作物产量到微芯片密度等领域，创新确实变得越来越难了。

The slowdown has spurred academics and policymakers looking to bolster⁷ scientific enterprise.

这种放缓促使学者和政策制定者想方设法支持科学事业。

Many are turning to DARPA, a cold war outfit⁸ which funds high-risk “moonshot” research, for inspiration.

许多人正在向美国国防部高级研究计划局（DARPA）寻求帮助，这是一个冷战时期成立的机构，为高风险的“登月”研究提供资金。

Last year the National Institutes of Health (NIH), America’s largest science funder, launched a new arm with an annual budget of $1bn called ARPA-H.

去年，美国最大的科学资助机构美国国立卫生研究院(NIH)成立了一个新的部门，名为卫生高级研究计划署（ARPA-H），年度预算为10亿美元。

Other countries, including Britain and Germany, have set up their own versions.

英国和德国等其他国家也设立了类似部门。

In July America’s Congress authorised nearly $200bn in new scientific funding over the next decade (although it is yet to stump⁹ up the cash), in the process creating a branch of the National Science Foundation (NSF) for applied¹⁰ science and tech.

今年7月，美国国会批准了在未来十年拨款近2000亿美元来促进科学研究(尽管它尚未支付这笔资金)，并在此过程中创建美国国家科学基金会(NSF)的应用科学和技术部门。

Philanthropists are joining the action, too: their funding of basic research has nearly doubled in the past decade.

慈善家也加入了这一行动：他们对基础研究提供的资金在过去10年里几乎翻了一番。

All these efforts aim to help science get back its risk-loving mojo.

所有这些努力都旨在帮助科学在敢想敢做方面东山再起。

In a working paper published last year, Chiara Franzoni of the POLIMI Graduate School of Management and Paula Stephan of Georgia State University look at a number of measures of risk, based on analyses of text and the variability of citations¹¹.

在去年发表的一篇工作论文中，米兰理工大学管理研究生院的琪娅拉·弗兰佐尼和佐治亚州立大学的保拉·斯蒂芬基于对文本和引用的可变性的分析，研究了一些风险衡量标准。

These suggest science’s reward structure discourages academics from taking chances.

这些都表明，科学领域的报酬体系阻碍了学者冒险。

The most common way research is funded, through peer review—in which academics in similar fields score proposals—deserves some blame.

最常见的研究资助方式是通过同行评议，即由类似领域的学者为提议打分，这种方式理应受到一些指责。

In 2017, using a data set of almost 100,000 NIH grant applications, Danielle Li, then of Harvard University, found that reviewers seem to favour ideas similar to their own expertise¹².

2017年，当时在哈佛大学的丹妮尔·李使用了包含近10万份NIH拨款申请的数据集，发现评审人似乎偏爱与自己的专业知识相似的想法。

If a project must satisfy a committee, it is not surprising that unorthodox ideas struggle to make it through.

如果一个项目必须做到让委员会满意，那么非正统的想法难以通过评审也就不足为奇了。