What are scientists researching about?

Plant research in space (NASA)

In previous posts I have mentioned some dangers faced by the future of science in the face of the growing obstacles suffered by basic research and the tendency of politicians to prioritize practical applications. The arguments I offered in those posts were qualitative. It is possible, however, to obtain real quantitative data, extracted from the journal Science News, which publishes a fairly complete summary of the results of research in all fields of science and technology. By analyzing 23,946 articles published during 30 years, I have obtained the following table, which shows the number of scientific news related to fourteen of the most researched topics in the fields of biology and medicine during that period of time. (More than half the research results belong to those two fields).

Subject	1985-89	1990-94	1995-99	2000-4	2005-9	2010-14
Origin of life	11	15	21	25	15	12
Extinctions	39	25	20	19	9	7
Biological struggle	26	24	20	12	7	4
Marine ecology	9	7	19	22	36	12
Embryonic development	10	21	22	12	4	4
Biotechnology/genomes	108	42	51	48	54	42
Physiology of nervous system	33	48	65	54	43	45
Contamination	158	93	118	131	91	47
Cancer	178	206	166	139	91	52
AIDS	162	99	76	48	24	20
Circulatory diseases	114	110	63	50	21	12
Drugs/alcohol/tobacco	78	93	69	38	41	36
Vaccines	44	19	28	38	27	18
Transplants	36	25	28	15	13	8

The next table shows the number of news related to fourteen of the most researched topics in the remaining fields of science and technology.

Subject	1985-89	1990-94	1995-99	2000-4	2005-9	2010-14
Greenhouse effect	22	78	57	28	50	53
Ozonosphere	50	55	19	8	3	6
Exploration of Mars	22	26	38	47	48	18
Telescopes	33	48	32	19	13	7
Extra-solar planets	7	10	38	41	52	57
Supernovae/black holes	57	50	33	40	33	21
Cosmology	32	60	56	67	41	46
Superconductivity	45	26	16	9	6	3
Atomic physics	119	87	83	65	40	59
Laser	21	25	16	16	5	5
Energy sources	80	37	33	46	50	19
Micro & nanotechnology	1	7	14	94	50	16
Computers	25	24	51	36	20	16
Polymers	14	50	15	13	13	5

Both tables summarize 6882 scientific news. Looking at them, it is obvious that, in some subjects, the number of results tends to decrease, in others (such as nanotechnology) to increase, in a few (such as biotechnology) it remains more or less constant. These differences are logical: when an important breakthrough takes place in a particular subject, the discoveries in that field initially shoot up, although sometimes there is no continuity (this happened, for instance, in the case of superconductivity). In other cases (as in marine ecology) a field where little research had been done suddenly moves to the foreground, in this case due to the increasing depletion of life in the oceans caused by over-exploitation. A specific subject may also be exhausted when, in the current state of our knowledge, most everything that could be discovered has been discovered.

The evolution of advances in medicine is surprising. The results on cancer, AIDS and circulatory diseases have been declining for years. In this case, it’s obvious that we don’t know everything that can be known about those diseases. Have society, researchers or governments lost interest in them? It would be interesting to know.

As additional information, the following table shows all the news published in Science News in 25 years, distributed by science.

Science	1985-89	1990-94	1995-99	2000-4	2005-9	2010-14
Biology	925	849	1299	1301	1128	876
Medicine	1714	1492	1424	1372	1051	590
Geology	469	438	336	226	208	174
Astronomy & cosmology	511	631	530	492	457	333
Physics	233	213	194	134	90	93
Chemistry	87	128	68	81	51	29
Mathematics	50	33	40	40	19	9
Information & Communication	163	205	208	227	135	76
Other technologies	246	250	185	182	128	81
Ethnology & sociology	44	44	45	37	26	21
History & Archaeology	92	96	85	101	92	102
Psychology & education	68	80	68	66	49	53
Other news	67	64	57	42	29	14
Total	4669	4523	4539	4301	3463	2451

The decrease in the total number of news published in the last two columns can be explained in part by the change in the format of the magazine, which went from weekly to biweekly, although the number of pages and the proportion of longer articles have increased. 
One can see a pronounced decrease in the results obtained in fields such as medicine, geology, mathematics, physics, chemistry and technologies, which is not so apparent in other fields, such as biology, history, astronomy and psychology, which remain relatively stable or even grow a little. Other fields (ethnology and sociology) exhibit just a slight decrease.

Manuel Alfonseca