Assuming the trendline cannot continue seems like the Gambler’s Fallacy. Saying we can resume the efficiency of the 1930′s research establishment seems like a kind of institution-level Fundamental Attribution Error.
I find the low-hanging-fruit explanation the most intuitive because I assume everything has a fundamental limit and gets harder as we approach that limit as a matter of natural law.
I’m tempted to go one step further and try to look at the value added by each additional discovery; I suspect economic intuitions would be helpful both in comparing like with like and with considering causal factors. I have a nagging suspicion that ‘benefit per discovery’ is largely the same concept as ‘discoveries per researcher’, but I am not able to articulate why.
Assuming the trendline cannot continue seems like the Gambler’s Fallacy. Saying we can resume the efficiency of the 1930′s research establishment seems like a kind of institution-level Fundamental Attribution Error.
I find the low-hanging-fruit explanation the most intuitive because I assume everything has a fundamental limit and gets harder as we approach that limit as a matter of natural law.
I’m tempted to go one step further and try to look at the value added by each additional discovery; I suspect economic intuitions would be helpful both in comparing like with like and with considering causal factors. I have a nagging suspicion that ‘benefit per discovery’ is largely the same concept as ‘discoveries per researcher’, but I am not able to articulate why.