Entrez is the integrated, text-based search and retrieval system used at NCBI for the major databases, including PubMed, Nucleotide and Protein Sequences, Protein Structures, Complete Genomes, Taxonomy, and others. It is a service of the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. However, it is included within Scirus, so the results will be taken from Scirus.
Searching with the term 'oncology' returns 148,053 results. 57,936 were published between 2002 and 2006 (inclusive). That's only 39% of the total, so it doesn't look like human knowledge of cancer has doubled in the past five years on that basis. In the preceding five years (1997-2001), only 38,153 results were published. That means that the most recent five year period did not even double the preceding five year period.
The CAGR for academic publications for oncology is 9.23% (since 1920), which would double every 7.85 years. Patent growth since the first filing in 1973 is 28.62%, which would double every 2.75 years. Using the same base date of 1920 would yield a CAGR of 10.02%, doubling every 7.26 years. I don't know which date distorts the picture less.
And the fact is, we don't know how many times we will have to double our knowledge of cancer before we will be able to make a big difference in the lives of those who have it. I have to say, I think I'd rather see the growth rate we note in nanotechnology here--and yes, I think I am saying I would make the trade off. I'm not advocating central planning of scientific research--I'm just wondering if research incentives are correctly allocated.
Now champions of nanotechnology wll say that nanotechnology in general has many direct applications to medicine in general, and further that some nanotechnology research is specifically concerned with oncology. And it's true. My reservation comes from my suspicion (for which I have zero evidence) that this is engineering led (hey--come here and see what my new toy can do!) rather than medicine-led (can you build something that will do x, y, and z in the following sequence and make sure it does not do a, b or c?) If my suspicion is correct, this wil prolong the search for solutions rather than shorten it.
Is there a truce in the war on cancer? Best put out that cigarette. Because we see that, although oncology did see a doubling of knowledge every five years up to 1991, that hyper-growth tailed off afterwards. Note that hypergrowth started before Nixon's war on cancer. Note that growth since hypergrowth stopped has been perfectly respectable--14,000 papers published in 2006 (more in 2006 than in the entire decade of the 80's), and 4,000 patents filed. And note especially that growth in patents has continued to double every five years. Make of it what you will.
The figures are below. Click to see the numbers.
I'm going to do the year by year list below with PubMed and also using Scirus. As PubMed is held up as sort of a gold standard for databases by a journal of people who do what I am doing here, more formally called Cybermetrics--the International Journal of Scientometrics, Informetrics and Bibliometrics, it will be useful for me to look at Scirus and PubMed side by side. Scirus is very easy to use (and shows patent information right beside journal information), so I'm hoping it holds up. Both are collections of information from different sources and there is quite likely some duplication, so don't go adding the two together to get a total (I'll actually check and publish that information in a later post).
Here are the five year totals for each:
PubMed Scirus
Journals Journals Patents
Total 148,053 377,239 27,718
2002-2006 57,936 142,769 18,034
1997-2001 38,153 97,574 6,973
1992-1996 25,466 64,680 1,765
1987-1991 16,224 40,597 753
1982-1986 2,565 20,545 154
1977-1981 1,614 9,263 35
1972-1976 812 3,206 4
1967-1971 338 733 0
1962-1966 243 339 0
And here are the annual totals:
PubMed Scirus
Journals Journals Patents
Total: 148,053 385,742 28,464
2007 5,589 8,188 746
2006 14,013 32,523 4,051
2005 12,765 31,738 3,659
2004 11,753 27,635 3,645
2003 10,865 27,015 3,903
2002 9,878 23,858 2,776
2001 9,246 23,806 2,193
2000 8,554 20,804 1,560
1999 7,551 18,146 1,249
1998 6,613 17,330 1,201
1997 6,222 17,488 770
1996 5,909 16,250 586
1995 5,325 14,295 376
1994 5,017 11,890 312
1993 4,717 10,146 269
1992 4,498 9,280 222
1991 4,232 9,348 222
1990 3,999 8,503 167
1989 3,525 8,853 152
1988 2,987 7,472 112
1987 1,481 6,421 100
1986 612 5,002 62
1985 544 4,690 29
1984 515 4,190 32
1983 487 3,652 20
1982 407 3,011 11
1981 389 2,248 10
1980 397 2,128 11
1979 360 1,975 8
1978 248 1,450 3
1977 220 1,262 3
1976 208 1,065 2
1975 179 759 1
1974 176 630 0
1973 145 445 1
1972 104 307 0
1971 104 268 0
1970 69 171 0
1969 61 137 0
1968 46 75 0
1967 58 82 0
1966 57 76 0
1965 42 62 0
1964 75 91 0
1963 42 71 0
1962 27 39 0
1961 19 104 0
1950-1960 95 216 0
1940-1950 3 26 0
1930-1940 0 9 0
1920-1930 0 15 0
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