In a
previous post I mentioned that many published scientific news are not
really new discoveries, but future forecasts. In a later post
I made a more complete study by analyzing 56 journals of six different years
and verifying that the number of scientific news that can be called futuristic
seems to be growing over time, having passed, in little more than 20 years,
from one out of three, to one out of two, approximately.
This gave me the idea
that it would be interesting to know what had happened to these futuristic news
after some time. For each specific news, three things may have happened:
1. The forecast of a
possible discovery has been confirmed.
2. It has not been
confirmed, but a new field of research has been opened, and the news in
question continues to be investigated as possible future science.
3. Or it has not been
confirmed, and the news in question has fallen into oblivion.
Estimating that an
interval of 12 years is a sufficient time to carry out this review, I selected
25 futurological news published in the journal Science News between January and
April 2006, in 11 issues of the journal. When they were published, all those
news were futuristic, for they only posed possibilities, using terms like can, could, may, might, suggest, and the like. These 25 news items belong to the
following fields:- 9 on medicine, including issues such
as transplants, design of vaccines and medicines, and the study of the
causes of diseases.
- 7 on biology and paleontology, about
questions such as the genetic origin of staple plants, the structure of
the nervous system, the biological function of prions, the construction of
biological membranes, and the origin of life.
- 4 on technology, such as the
development of energy sources, materials, optical instruments and
nanotechnology.
- 2 on astronomy: the possible
discovery of a new class of stars, and the prediction of solar storms.
- 2 on physics and chemistry:
superconductivity and mixture purification.
- 1 on psychology, about how we learn.
What has happened with
those news after 12 years? This is what I have tried to discover, by means of Google
searches on the corresponding topics:
- Five
of the news (20%) disappeared completely. They have not
been heard again (or at least I have not been able to find them). Among
these news: a possible advance in superconductivity, one in learning, one
that refers to the structure of the nervous system, another that has to do
with cancer, and the one related to the origin of life.
- Six
other news items (24%) have been confirmed. For instance, a
vaccine against H5N1 flu, and the use of a drug have been approved. Also the
relationship between the appetite hormone and memory; the role of prions
in the development of stem cells; and the existence of a new type of
neutron stars (pulsars) have been confirmed. Finally, we have learned to
build a new type of ceramic material by studying the mother of pearl.
- The
other 14 news items (56%) continue as an open field of research, i.e. they are still
futuristic. In some of these cases (at least two) I have
not been able to find in modern publications (a few of which are dated in
2018) the references that aroused my interest in the subject, which were
published in 2006.
The same post in Spanish
Thematic Thread on Popularization of Science: Previous Next
Thematic Thread on Futurology: Previous Next
Manuel Alfonseca
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