Some useful links:
“The number of science and technology research papers published has skyrocketed over the past few decades — but the ‘disruptiveness’ of those papers has dropped, according to an analysis of how radically papers depart from the previous literature”
The Nature paper on ‘disruption in science’.
“Grants, for example, often err on the side of safe bets, resulting in published research that only marginally advances existing knowledge.”
STAT News article by Juergen Eckhardt of Leaps by Bayer and George Church at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.