Hossenfelder raises valid concerns about the decline of scientific progress, but her analysis overlooks several critical systemic issues that may better explain the apparent slowdown. The current academic and corporate research environment actively discourages long-term research projects, particularly those extending beyond a single researcher’s career span. This creates a fundamental misalignment between scientific advancement and the human timescales of recognition and reward. Unlike medieval monasteries, which preserved and advanced knowledge across generations with an institutional commitment transcending individual lifespans, modern research lacks structures for sustaining truly long-term scientific missions. Without such time-steady dedication to knowledge that extends beyond personal achievement, critical long-term research initiatives risk being eroded by shifting political priorities and institutional dynamics before they can reach fruition.
The problem runs deeper than visible metrics suggest. Corporate research increasingly remains hidden in proprietary vaults, creating artificial knowledge silos that fragment scientific progress. This privatization of knowledge means breakthroughs may be occurring but remain invisible to Hossenfelder’s analysis, which necessarily relies on published work. The consequences cascade through the scientific enterprise: research teams unknowingly duplicate each other’s work, while other groups struggle to verify results because critical methodological details remain locked away in corporate archives. Even within academia, knowledge suppression occurs – ironically exemplified by Hossenfelder’s own unpublished survey of physicists from twenty years ago, which apparently revealed similar dissatisfaction with research constraints yet never saw the light of day.
The publication landscape further distorts our understanding of scientific progress. Negative results, despite their scientific value, rarely find their way into journals. A particularly telling example from agricultural research illustrates this problem: a study discovered that certain commercial products actually hindered plant growth by damaging mycorrhizal networks, yet never reached publication because the corporate sponsor had contractually reserved the right to suppress unfavorable findings. Such cases aren’t isolated incidents – they represent a pattern where promising scientific careers can be derailed by a single study that challenges corporate interests. This systematic burial of contradictory findings occurs through various mechanisms: funding contracts that prevent publication of unfavorable results, corporate acquisition and shelving of threatening patents, and subtle pressures on researchers whose findings might disrupt profitable product lines. The pattern suggests that science isn’t necessarily slowing down – rather, we’re witnessing the active suppression of knowledge that threatens commercial interests, creating an invisible graveyard of research that might have redirected entire fields of study.
What Hossenfelder labels “bullshit research” requires deeper examination through the lens of what scholars call the distinction between “frontier” and “core” science. The messy, uncertain work at the frontiers – which often appears unproductive – serves two crucial functions. First, it occasionally yields revolutionary breakthroughs, as exemplified by John Nash’s game theory work, which was initially dismissed but later transformed multiple fields. More importantly, frontier research builds the foundational understanding needed to anticipate long-term consequences of scientific applications. Without this patient, systematic exploration that Hossenfelder dismisses, we risk rushing promising discoveries into application before we fully understand their implications. This rushing of science from discovery straight to market, bypassing crucial understanding, has become a dangerous pattern in modern research.
This rush to apply scientific discoveries before their implications are fully understood has created a troubling pattern in modern innovation. When research is driven primarily by the pursuit of immediate practical applications and quick returns on investment, we repeatedly see convenient solutions spawn devastating long-term consequences. Consider Styrofoam, which brilliantly solved immediate packaging and insulation needs but now persists as an environmental contaminant that will outlast our civilization, or High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), which gave food manufacturers an economical sweetener but contributed to a public health crisis affecting generations. Seriously, America is overweight and diabetic because we put a known liver toxin (HFCS) into everything we eat – every aisle of the grocery store. These aren’t mere oversights – they represent systemic failures to allow frontier research the time needed to understand complex environmental and social implications. Thus, Hossenfelder’s concern about scientific progress stalling might be better reframed: we’re not doing too much meaningless research, but rather too little of the patient, systematic investigation needed to anticipate the true costs of our innovations.
The corporate prioritization of shareholder returns over scientific understanding has spawned a bitter irony: the very success of applied science in creating convenient products has undermined public trust in science itself. Many citizens, particularly those with limited scientific education, have developed a deep mistrust of science while remaining thoroughly dependent on its fruits. They drive to anti-science rallies in vehicles engineered by physicists, coordinate their protests using smartphones that embody quantum mechanics, and post their criticisms on platforms built by computer scientists. This growing disconnect between scientific literacy and technological dependence may be the most dangerous outcome of our broken research system – we’ve created a society that consumes science’s products voraciously while rejecting its principles and warnings with equal vigor.
When science is driven primarily by corporate interests and immediate applications, we not only miss opportunities for fundamental discoveries but also fuel public skepticism about scientific expertise itself. The metrics Hossenfelder uses to measure scientific progress – publication counts, citation impacts, and economic returns – may actually be measuring research activity rather than meaningful advancement. Scientific progress is inherently nonlinear, with some ideas leading to rapid breakthroughs while others require lengthy gestation periods or face protracted resistance.
The path forward requires carefully distinguishing between truly exploratory research and what might be called “performative science” – research designed primarily to validate existing commercial interests or pad publication records. Hossenfelder’s critique of “bullshit research” is perhaps better aimed at studies deliberately designed to be underpowered, irreproducible work that exists mainly to generate publications, and corporate-funded research intended to create the appearance of scientific validation for existing products or processes. The real challenge isn’t just improving research quality – it’s rebuilding a scientific ecosystem that can distinguish between genuine inquiry and scientific theater, while fostering the patient, systematic investigation needed to understand the full implications of our innovations. This means restructuring incentives to support long-term research, ensuring negative results see publication, limiting corporate manipulation of the scientific process, and fostering better public understanding of how real science works. Most importantly, we need to recognize that what appears to be “useless” research today might contain tomorrow’s crucial insights – while being appropriately skeptical of research designed primarily to sell products or generate headlines.
