Institutional environments and breakthroughs in science. Comparison of France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States

Abstract

Scientific and/or technical breakthroughs require the exploration of novel ideas and technologies. Yet, it has not been studied quantitatively how national institutional contexts either facilitate or stifle organizational support for exploration. Available qualitative evidence suggests that institutional contexts that exert weak control over universities and research organizations strengthen their capabilities to achieve scientific breakthroughs, while contexts with strong control constrain them. The paper is based on an analysis of the population of Nobel laureates in Physics, Chemistry and Physiology or Medicine. We examine to what extent existing qualitative findings for the biomedical sciences, which are partly based on Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine, can be substantiated both quantitatively and across the three Nobel Prize fields of science. We find that for most of the 20 th century and the early 21 st century, countries with weak institutional control (United Kingdom, United States) have outperformed those exerting strong control (France, Germany). These results are further corroborated when controlled by population sizes and by GDP per capita. In addition, these results hold not only for the biomedical sciences, but also for Physics and Chemistry. Furthermore, countries with weak institutional control have attracted many future Nobel laureates from countries with strong environments. In this regard, the United States appears to be a particularly attractive setting for conducting innovative research, and thus has been a magnet for young and promising scientists. However, future laureates working in institutional environments exerting weak control are not faster in accomplishing their prizewinning work compared to those laureates working in more restrictive institutional settings.

National and organizational patterns of Nobel laureate careers in physiology/medicine, physics, and chemistry

“…This result corroborates findings from Stephan and Levin (2001). At the same time, the United States has become more specialized in the later career phases (PWR, NP), indicating its growing attractiveness over the twentieth century as a work environment for future laureates (Heinze et al, 2020). These developments are especially pronounced in the medical sciences.…”

“…(1) the university where future Nobel laureates received their highest academic degree (HD), (2) the university or research organization where they performed their prize-winning research (PWR), and (3) the university or research organization where they were employed at the time of the award (NP). Our analysis covers 100 years of an existing dataset (Heinze et al, 2020;Heinze et al, 2019a, b) that includes the entire time period 1901-2020 (120 years). The primary data source was the Nobel Foundation's website (www.…”

“…More recently, analyses of the population of Nobel laureates have focused on the rise of North America as a global center of science and technology, its subsequent hegemony (Heinze et al, 2019a, b), and how national institutional contexts have shaped the capabilities of universities and research organizations to achieve scientific breakthroughs (Heinze et al, 2020). These studies found that North America, in particular the United States, replaced Germany as global scientific center by the 1920s, that its hegemony was consolidated in the 1970s, and that although its leadership has come under pressure since the 2000s, a new global powerhouse is not in sight.…”

Uncertainty and risk-taking in science: Meaning, measurement and management in peer review of research proposals

“…Flexibility can provide backup or recovery plans when problems emerge in a planned task. This is especially possible when the environmental conditions allow sufficient freedom and flexibility to the scientists (Heinze 2008;Heinze et al 2020;Hollingsworth 2004). For example, when the IceCube team found that bubble-free ice did not exist until a considerably greater depth than they had initially thought, they realized they had a problem.…”

“…Some scholars note that the rewards to undertaking risky research are only descernable with a long delay ( Wang, Veugelers, and Stephan 2017) and are modest compared to those for incremental research (Foster, Rzhetsky, and Evans 2015). Some emphasize the role played by the institutional environment (Hollingsworth 2004), suggesting that risk-taking is disfavored by systems that exert strong control on universities and research institutions (Heinze, von der Heyden, and Pithan 2020), and that the increase in competitive funding, and short-term positions reduces the ability and willingness of scientists to conduct risky research (Laudel 2017;Wang, Lee, and Walsh 2018).…”