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Where does scientific discovery happen, and why does it matter? A by Amitabh Chandra, the Ethel Zimmerman Wiener Professor of Public Policy, director of the Harvard Healthcare Policy Program at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government and faculty director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at ����vlog����, and Connie Xu, a Harvard PhD candidate in health policy, investigates whether individuals or institutions are bigger drivers of scientific breakthroughs. 

They find that strong scientific institutions play a significant role in output in the life sciences. “In the context of life-science discovery, the institution of a researcher has a consequential effect on their output,” the authors write.

Shaping the life sciences, few places, outsized impact

The production of fundamental knowledge in the life sciences, like the discoveries that give rise to new medicines, deeper biological understanding, and world-changing technologies, is unevenly distributed. According to the research by Chandra and Xu, 70% of global life science research output comes from just three countries: the United States, China, and the United Kingdom. Within the United States, over 15% of the world’s life sciences research is concentrated in just two regions: Greater Boston and the San Francisco Bay Area. When considering individual institutions, the numbers are even more striking. Harvard and Stanford alone account for over 8% of global output. That means these two institutions generate more fundamental knowledge in the life sciences than many entire countries.

What explains this intense clustering of scientific productivity? Chandra and Xu’s research shows that the institutional environment plays an outsized role. 

“Between 50 to 60% of a scientist’s research output is attributable to the institution where they work,” Amitabh Chandra & Connie Xu write. 

“A handful of institutions, mostly in the U.S., produce more fundamental science than the total of many countries,” the authors write. “The research environments created at these institutions not only amplify the work of individual scientists but serve as incubators for the discoveries that drive progress in medicine, technology, and our understanding of life itself.”

Several interconnected factors lead to these few top institutions dominating scientific output. Chandra and Xu contend that most of this phenomenon can be traced directly to the presence of “star” researchers at an institution. Star researchers are magnets for talent. They attract ambitious students from around the world and young scientists eager for mentorship and opportunity. This talent improves the kind of engagement that institutions can foster, and in turn the research the whole entity can produce. Top-tier universities also offer better equipment, bigger research budgets, and access to extensive networks for collaboration.

But output is not just due to material resources, Chandra and Xu explain. The presence of a vibrant scientific community where collaboration is fostered, ideas are shared, and researchers are encouraged to build on each other’s discoveries, produces an environment where innovation is more likely to occur. Chandra and Xu find that as scientists move to more productive institutions, their research output increases significantly; they argue there is strong evidence that the inverse is also true, that their production decreases when they leave these hotspots.

Strategies and tradeoffs for life-science funders

Such concentration of talent and resources raises complicated policy questions. Should governments and philanthropies double down on supporting a handful of top institutions? Or should they boost rising stars and underfunded regions?

Chandra and Xu argue that the goal of maximizing knowledge production is best achieved by supporting strong, productive institutions. Among the fifty most productive institutions, they found significant differences in research output between them, and a large part of this difference is explained by factors related to the institution itself, not just who happens to work there. That means funding bodies should pay close attention to the research environment, not just the résumé of the individual scientist. Chandra and Xu write, “if funders want to maximize the impact of their resources on the fundamental scientist discovery, institution-level resources (such as a gift that is not associated with a particular scientist) should be allocated to the most productive institutions. If funders face the choice between funding two scientists with the same output, then funding the scientist at the more productive institution will generate more research.”

The importance of powerful established research institutions does not mean there are not strong reasons for cultivating new centers of research excellence. The Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, for example, has a “per-capita productivity that is comparable to the leading U.S. institutions,” the authors write. It is not just size that matters; it is the depth of talent, resources, and culture within the institution.

There are real-life consequences to supporting life science research, not simply abstract academic ends. “Fundamental science is the cornerstone of long-term medical innovation,” the authors write, “and our study highlights that where science is done significantly influences how much and how impactful research is produced.” Chandra and Xu found that the research emerging from high-productivity institutions is not only cited more often by other scientists, a measure of academic impact, but also more frequently referenced in patents. This “paper-to-patent” correlation, which the authors state may be greater than previously thought, shows how dependent life sciences industries are on rigorous academic research and the institutions that disproportionately produce it.

To consider the impact they want to make, funders such as governmental bodies and private philanthropists/philanthropies must navigate tradeoffs. “Treating all institutions as equal recipients would be inefficient if the goal is to maximize knowledge production,” Chandra and Xu argue. However, funders should also consider how to cultivate more institutions with the kind of academic cultures that can drive transformative innovation. Investment, the authors argue, is key, not just in people, but in the places where science is most likely to change the world.

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Portrait courtesy of Martha Steward. Image composite courtesy of Adobe Stock.