Research in Crisis

This book explores the weak explanatory and predictive power of theories across disciplines, explains reasons for limited expertise after centuries of scientific effort, and sets forth strategies to accelerate knowledge accretion and to manage a future we can only dimly comprehend.

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This book explores the weak explanatory and predictive power of theories across disciplines, explains reasons for limited expertise after centuries of scientific effort, and sets forth strategies to accelerate knowledge and manage a future we can only dimly comprehend.

Gaps in knowledge arose because common, natural and artificial phenomena are fundamentally hard to understand, and in expertise persists because research is unproductive. This book argues that weak research comes with huge opportunity cost because it stymies optimum decision making by government, corporations and individuals. Research needs restructuring which must come from governments’ top down requirement that funding bodies foster applied research with real-world impact, and that universities influence scientific publishers to improve their publications’ integrity.

This book seeks to catalyse extinction events for theories in most disciplines, which would clear a path for solving multiple crises in research. The author cautions that this process would be disruptive, unpopular and painful.