Does Human Knowledge Double Every 5 Years?

Real World Consequences of These Issues

Let's try to look at real world effects of this dangerous illusion we are discovering.

The illusion is that a rapid growth in human knowledge (doubling every five years) is happening all around us, naturally and painlessly. As we hope to have shown on this weblog, human knowledge about a particular subject can increase that fast or faster, but it is always as a result of putting money, institutional resources, interested and bright people to do the research, together. It doesn't hurt to have an urgent public need (HIV) or potential private gain (nanotechnology) as a carrot.

But where these inputs are not provided, human knowledge about a subject grows at a much slower pace. Let me explain what I mean.

Click below for more...

Alzheimers and Human Knowledge

Alzheimer's disease destroys human knowledge, but perhaps more importantly, it decoheres the personality that organises this knowledge. It is only human knowledge that can defeat this destroyer of human knowledge. It has been described,  treated (unsuccessfully) and researched for a century.

Let's see what Scirus tells us about the growth of human knowledge (and the commitment of research resources) on this. (BTW, I recently had another look at the sources Scirus uses, and it includes PubMed, so I won't be replicating this search there.) (And I got a quick scare by starting with the search term 'Alzheimers,' which only returned 1,428 results--if you're fact-checking me, and I hope to God someone is, use 'alzheimer.')

A search for Alzheimer on Scirus returns 1,274,572 results on Scirus, of which 112,401 are journal publications containing the term in the title, abstract or text. The search also returned 67,900 patents.

In the extended post, I will give the results by year and by five-year period. That's a Sunday morning for you--hot coffee and a database to search.

Okay--we'll assign 1920 as the base year for journals and infer 4 journal articles published that year, giving us a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 9.65%. This would indicate that human knowledge regarding Alzheimer's Disease doubles every 7.52 years.

However, the first patent was filed in 1976, which gives us a CAGR of 11.26%. This would double every 6.5 years. So, although work proceeds at a good rate and human knowledge is increasing, there is nothing like the growth rate seen in areas such as nanotechnology or global warming.

Again, we see that patent growth, starting at a later date, grows much more quickly than academic publishing. I am personally mystified as to why research into prions has grown twice as quickly as research into Alzheimers. Many more people suffer from Alzheimers than CJD, and the potential for both alleviating human suffering and reaping large rewards are much greater. The overall totals for Alzheimers research are greater than prions, don't get me wrong--but why is the growth trend favoring prions?

Prions

It's back to Scirus to see trends in publications and patents regarding prions.

Prions are infectious agents composed only of proteins, and are implicated in BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, AKA mad cow disease) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) which as far as I can tell is more or less a human equivalent.

Prions were hypothesized in the 60s and actually found in the 80s, winning a Nobel prize for the disoverer, Stanley Prusiner.

The human disease is quite rare. Mad cow disease is not. Both are fatal. There is a public good to be pursued in preventing CJD and private profit in preventing mad cow disease. The two together should stimulate research. With a short timeline to look at, it will be interesting to see if human knowledge doubles every five years.

Scirus returns 13,518 journal publications with 'prion' in the title, abstract or text, and 8,781 patents. Because there is a bird called the fairy prion (Pachyptila turtur), I will actually have to look at the results... darn.

We hereby proclaim a base year of 1981, when 5 journal articles and no patents were published. That gives us a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 25.57% and we have another winner! Human knowledge has doubled every 5 years regarding prions! And patents have grown even more rapidly, at 33.76%--huzzah!

However, as we have seen elsewhere, a note of caution--while patent growth has consistently exhibited hypergrowth characteristics, journal publications have leveled off, with the period 2002-2006 growing 'only' 66% over the preceding five-year period.

Click below to see the results.

Outcomes

Advances in human knowledge should make life better. That's hard to measure. However, we can measure if human life gets longer (it does), healthier, richer (if not more rewarding), etc.

The rest of this post is philosophizing--feel free to skip. And in a previous post, I talk about the Outcomes Fallacy. But if you want thinking on the issue of human knowledge and outcomes, click to read more.

Sobering News

The post below from yesterday, which details the stately, rather than exponential, increase in granted patents in the U.S., has really got me thinking, and I think we'd better report on the state of play here.

Let's detail those areas where we have seen adequate growth to double human knowledge every 5 years:

Update: We have since found other areas where the CAGR is sufficient to double human knowledge every five years:

Update 2: A modest review revealed errors in my calculations regarding oncology. Its position has changed (and not for the better).

Prions, where academic journal publications have increased at a CAGR of 25.57%, and patents have increased by 33.76%

Software, where academic journal publications have increased at a CAGR of 22.83% and patents have increased by 33.53%

Post-graduate enrollment in China, which has increased at a CAGR of 22.38% (although see below for more discouraging information about the growth of tertiary education worldwide)

(All percentages are CAGR (compound annual growth rate.)

1. Nanotechnology, with a blistering growth in publications of 97.16% per year. Patents, 76.15%.

2. Global Warming publications, with a of 16.85%

3. Total Chinese patent applications, at 25% per annum

4. Chinese computing patents, 58.29%

5. Chinese telecommunications patents, 30.26%

(was oncology)

7. Epidemiology patents, 22.76%

So far, that's it.

Now let's look at where we did not find anything like doubling every five years (remembering that we need a CAGR of 14.87% to double in five years time):

Update: We have now found other areas where human knowledge does not appear to be growing at a rate that will double in five years time:

Worldwide university enrollment, which has a CAGR of 4.85%

Alzheimer's disease, where academic publications have a CAGR of 9.65% and patents a CAGR of 11.26%

Programming, where academic publications have a CAGR of 12.55% and patents a CAGR of 12.83%

Chinese university enrollment, with a CAGR of 9.76%

1. U.S. patents granted, 5.21%

2. Epidemiology publications, 8.85%

3. Shale oil extraction, publications 5.59%, patents, 2.61%

4. Publications on Mars, 5.78% (see also here and here)

5. U.S. Book publishing, 5.14%

6. Indian university enrolment since 1947, 5.51%

7. Climate Models, 12.66% (Very close to 5-year doubling rate of 14.87%)

8. Improvements in Climate Models, 13.76% (Also very close)

9. Growth in publication of scientific and technical papers, 1995-1999

             OECD 0.1%

             U.S., -1.8%

             Canada, -2.2%

             UK, -0.1%

             Netherlands, -0.5%

10. Publications in astrophysics, 4% (since 1970)

11. Growth in percentage of cancer patients surviving 5 years after diagnosis, 0.7% (1960-2005)

12. Drop in percentage of soldiers dying from wounds received in battle, 1.54% (1941-2006)

13. Projected growth in number of scientists (U.S.), next ten years, 7.18%

14. Patent filings in India, last five years, 8.45%

15. Increase in patent filings, World International Patent Office, 1 year, 6.4%

6. Oncology pubications, 9.23% (revised)

Considering I cherry picked areas that I thought would be most likely to show robust growth, this is scary.

          

Oncology

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.

non-Conclusions on Medical Knowledge

After writing the previous three posts, I have some thoughts about human knowledge and medicine. I reserve the right to change my mind on any of this:

• Human knowledge about matters medical has increased dramatically, but does not double every 5 years
• Medical outcomes have increased human health and longevity, but these outcomes do not 'follow the money,' nor the research
• Managing newly acquired medical knowledge is now the key issue impeding further progress

The second hypothesis I am testing is whether or not the increasing availability of knowledge to a wider population can satisfy the criteria of doubling human knowledge. I believe that medicine may offer strong evidence for this.

The invention of the polio vaccine did not eradicate polio. It was the diffusion of the knowledge about the potential of the vaccine, first to doctors, then to mothers, that made the difference. Nobody has found much of a cure for lung cancer, but in areas where public policy has pushed awareness of the link between smoking and cancer (and social activism has become more militant), smaller percentages of the population continue to smoke, and this has had a beneficial effect.

The same is roughly true regarding the benefits of mammography, checking of the colon and prostate and pap smears. It is pushing the knowledge to the people that has made all the difference. Human life expectancy has risen in the developed countries to between 75 and 84 years of age. One hundred years ago, it was between 42 and 48. Almost all of the difference seems to me to be due to increases in human knowledge, but completely conditional on this knowledge being published and affecting the behaviour of the general public.

The War on Cancer

There are many who say that we are losing the war on cancer. This article (it is from Fortune, reproduced in PDF format on the Aperio blog), offers depressing information. It says (in part)

• The age-adjusted percentage of Americans dying from cancer is the same now as it was in the 1970's... and the 1950's
• That 33 years ago, half of all cancer patients survived 5 years or more following diagnosis. That figure has climbed, but to only 63%
• Most of the progress that has been made has been due to early identification of the disease
• American spending (all public and identifiable private sources) on cancer research amounts to $200 billion since 1971
• The cancer research community has published 1.56 million papers just on signaling pathways and its related genes

And yet... for all the article's accounts of false starts, corporate greed and bureaucratic fumbling, a great body of knowledge has been accumulated. A lot of wrong paths have been followed--but if they are identified and no more time and effort is wasted on them, it means something. Those with many years of experience in the field are starting to talk about drug cocktail approaches that target both the tumor and the environment it lives in. This is after watching AIDS treatment make spectacular rapid progress while cancer treatment seemed stalled. There is talk about imitating strategies that were successful in the rapid reduction of heart attacks and strokes, as well. And again, a lot of basic research has been done.

Knowledge has been created. Outcomes have not matched this creation. Politics and corporate policy have interfered. But it looks... possible... that when the politics and corporate policy are finally removed, that progress can jump and outcomes catch up. One hopes.

Cancer Survival Rates

Again, a doubling of human knowledge should result in different outcomes in areas where that knowledge is applied. A lot of money is spent in improving our knowledge of certain cancers. If we double our knowledge, treatment of cancer should have a beneficial effect--improved survival rates being one effect we can measure.

A Google news search on cancer survival rates shows evidence of this. From Canada, the National Post reports that "the death rate for breast cancer for Canadian women has fallen 25% since 1986, when organized breast screening programs began being rolled out across the country." Apparently, this reduction is down to human knowledge from the early 1980's (beneficial effects of mammography) being dispersed through the wider population. Again, to me this counts. This is good news, great news. But again, if we keep a 5-year clock ticking, this news will disappoint, as it shows nothing remotely indicating a doubling of human knowledge within that timeframe.

Similarly, MedicineNet says, "Statistics (released in 1997) show that cancer patients are living longer and even "beating" the disease. Information released at an AMA sponsored conference for science writers, showed that the death rate from the dreaded disease has decreased by 3 percent in the last few years. In the  1940's only one patient in four survived on the average. By the 1960's, that figure was up to one in three, and now has reached 50% survival." So we see a doubling of the beneficial effect, but over 60 years, not five.

More encouragingly, St. Jude's Research Hospital shows 5-year survival rates for some cancers since 1962, and some of them might just qualify as 10-year doubling (pause to experiment on how to present this information... Okay, got it--click on the image to enlarge to readable size).

Again, a miracle, but it doesn't fit a 5-year window--it's 10 years for the best performing cancers.

Improvements in Medical Knowledge

One of the problems in doing a weblog such as this, based on desktop research that is basically powered by Google and supplemented by Wikipedia, is that one can only work on work that has already been done.

If I want to tell you about the doubling of human knowledge in medicine, I have to look at something that has been measured, and measured over time, as well. This essentially means that much of the subject matter has already been chosen for me.

My desire would be to measure the doubling of human knowledge by noting beneficial effects of new knowledge. If human knowledge in oncology has doubled in 5 years, the clearest proof for me would be the doubling of survival rates for cancer in the same period (although there would obviously be a time lag involved). That's for my next post.

But casualties to U.S. troops on the battlefield are measured, and historical information allows comparison. And, there is evidence of dramatic improvements in survival rates for casualties due to improvements in care. Note that not all improvements are due to specifically medical knowledge. Improvements in logistics (getting a wounded soldier to care, getting the right treatment to the soldier on the battlefield, improvements in body armor) contribute heavily to this improvement. However, this is all improved knowledge being applied to the medical treatment of injured soldiers. To me, this counts.

Here is the lead paragraph from the first result of a search on Google News for 'battlefield survival rates.' It comes from Heraldnet in an article titled "Trauma Care Boosts Battlefield Survival Rate."

"The survival rate for U.S. service members wounded in Iraq has reached 90 percent - higher than in any previous war and 10 points higher than in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

The major reason, says the general in charge of Army medical training, is improved trauma care being delivered moments after injury by medics and a growing number of soldiers trained as combat lifesavers."

The U.S. Army Public Affairs site has an article about the improved survival rates as well, noting that "of the 1,077 soldiers injured in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, only 18 have died of their wounds, a rate of only 1.6 percent. This is less than half the 3.68 death rate for wounded soldiers in Vietnam."

I would rather have this type of information about cancer survival rates. I don't think that battlefield survival rates necessarily should have a one-to-one correspondence with improvements in knowledge, training and logistics. But this is what is being written about. What it does show is that knowledge has improved dramatically--but it has improved incrementally and linearly, not geometrically, and the period is perhaps over a decade and not five years.

The final word shows more historical comparison, coming from Wounds1.com. "During World War II, approximately 30% (almost one-third) of soldiers wounded in combat died from their wounds. In the Korean War, the number dropped to about 24%, and held steady at that rate through the Vietnam and Persian Gulf Wars. In the current action in Iraq, the number has dropped dramatically to just under 14%, or one in seven." A 50% drop in death, but over a 60-year timespan. Truly great and wonderful news, unless you are assuming it will occur twice a decade.