The Secret Life of Science

In this brilliant, original and stimulating study, the author offers an acute and wide-ranging analysis of the state of what he calls the global scientific ecosystem consisting of interactions between people, knowledge, funding and the media translating findings into the public arena. Each area is populated by different players and stakeholders, with many competitive interfaces. The book takes the form of a survey of different parts of the system and the ways in which they mesh together. He begins by redefining scientists as either simplifiers or constructors, the first seeking to understand the components of the natural scientific system, while the second use insights to synthesise new domains. He sets out to answer a number of questions from the first chapter relating to the number and types of scientists, the filtering of news from original papers, the pecking order prestige of journals and the changing nature of conferences. Along the way he discusses motivations, chains of influence, the publish or perish culture, competition for funding and the peer review system.

Baumberg includes some fascinating statistics, for instance the increase in the number of scientists from 5 million in 2002 to 8 million in 2013, with an annual growth rate of 4%; of these, 60% are in industry. He looks at changing patterns in the award of Nobel prizes and how long it takes on average between the discovery and the prize – now about 25 years. There are 25,000 journals publishing 1 million articles a year. Nature receives 10,000 submissions a year and publishes 700, 42% of which are biochemistry or molecular biology (and only 10% physics). 65% of library budgets go on journal subscriptions. The author describes the evolving ecosystem of conference attendance as well as the various ways in which science is communicated and the typical progression of academic careers. His final chapters consider the future of science and how the ecosystem might change, including rationing conference attendance, encouraging open science platforms and developing artificial intelligences to mine the web of science knowledge. The book is full of fascinating insights and analysis, making it required reading for anyone who seriously wants to understand the competitive dynamics within global science today.