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Title: The Third Cognitive Revolution: The consequences and possibilities for biomedical research

Abstract

The Third Cognitive Revolution has just started. It follows the ones that, first, brought us the alphabet, numbers, agriculture, and urbanization; and, second, the printing press, books, and the scientific method. The Third Cognitive Revolution (TCR) is characterized by digitalization, computers, the World Wide Web, and global research efforts. While earlier revolutions proceeded at a slow pace over centuries, the current one started only a generation ago and is changing all aspects of human society and even human biology at an unprecedented pace. This leaves little time to analyze the profound effects of these changes and to come to terms with the explosion of knowledge and opportunities that the TCR brings with it. This article explores some of the TCR's positive and some of the troublesome consequences for biomedical research and the social sciences. We focus on two problems: the risk of delaying the adoption of available knowledge and the questionable validity of much of the published literature. To address and hopefully prevent these unintended and problematic developments, we propose and discuss topics that would promote inter– and trans–disciplinary communication.

Authors:
 [1];  [2]; ORCiD logo [3];  [4]; ORCiD logo [5]
+ Show Author Affiliations
  1. College of Charleston, Charleston, SC (United States)
  2. Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados (CINVESTAV), Yucatan (Mexico)
  3. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
  4. Univ. of Strasbourg, Strasbourg (France)
  5. Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM (United States)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
Domestic Funding; USDOE
OSTI Identifier:
1511634
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-19-22171
Journal ID: ISSN 1469-221X
Grant/Contract Number:  
89233218CNA000001
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
EMBO Reports
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 20; Journal Issue: 4; Journal ID: ISSN 1469-221X
Publisher:
European Molecular Biology Organization
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES; Biological Science; Interdisciplinary biomedicine

Citation Formats

Hittner, James B., Hoogesteijn, Almira L., Fair, Jeanne Marie, van Regenmortel, Marc H. V., and Rivas, Ariel L. The Third Cognitive Revolution: The consequences and possibilities for biomedical research. United States: N. p., 2019. Web. doi:10.15252/embr.201847647.
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Hittner, James B., Hoogesteijn, Almira L., Fair, Jeanne Marie, van Regenmortel, Marc H. V., & Rivas, Ariel L. The Third Cognitive Revolution: The consequences and possibilities for biomedical research. United States. https://doi.org/10.15252/embr.201847647
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Hittner, James B., Hoogesteijn, Almira L., Fair, Jeanne Marie, van Regenmortel, Marc H. V., and Rivas, Ariel L. Fri . "The Third Cognitive Revolution: The consequences and possibilities for biomedical research". United States. https://doi.org/10.15252/embr.201847647. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1511634.
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@article{osti_1511634,
title = {The Third Cognitive Revolution: The consequences and possibilities for biomedical research},
author = {Hittner, James B. and Hoogesteijn, Almira L. and Fair, Jeanne Marie and van Regenmortel, Marc H. V. and Rivas, Ariel L.},
abstractNote = {The Third Cognitive Revolution has just started. It follows the ones that, first, brought us the alphabet, numbers, agriculture, and urbanization; and, second, the printing press, books, and the scientific method. The Third Cognitive Revolution (TCR) is characterized by digitalization, computers, the World Wide Web, and global research efforts. While earlier revolutions proceeded at a slow pace over centuries, the current one started only a generation ago and is changing all aspects of human society and even human biology at an unprecedented pace. This leaves little time to analyze the profound effects of these changes and to come to terms with the explosion of knowledge and opportunities that the TCR brings with it. This article explores some of the TCR's positive and some of the troublesome consequences for biomedical research and the social sciences. We focus on two problems: the risk of delaying the adoption of available knowledge and the questionable validity of much of the published literature. To address and hopefully prevent these unintended and problematic developments, we propose and discuss topics that would promote inter– and trans–disciplinary communication.},
doi = {10.15252/embr.201847647},
journal = {EMBO Reports},
number = 4,
volume = 20,
place = {United States},
year = {Fri Mar 29 00:00:00 EDT 2019},
month = {Fri Mar 29 00:00:00 EDT 2019}
}
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Journal Article:
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Publisher's Version of Record
https://doi.org/10.15252/embr.201847647
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Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 7 works
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Figures / Tables:

Figure 1 Figure 1: The knowledge explosion. The number of publications reported by the Web of ScienceTM under the keywords “medicine”, “engineering”, or “toxicology” is expressed as counts/year (A–C) or percentage of all publications released between 1949 and 2017 (D–F). All investigated fields exhibited an exponential growth (A–C). If, in 1950, themore » average researcher read 2 h/week to remain updated with the scientific literature, a similar researcher, in 2016, should have read 162.4 × 2 = 324.8 h/week (41,417/255) if his/her field was Medicine (A); 1,060.6 h/week (530.3 × 2) if the area of work was Engineering (B); or 168.8 h/week (84.4 × 2) if involved in Toxicology (C). Knowledge production grows so fast that, in Medicine, 38.6% of all publications generated since 1949 were produced in the last 5 years (D). A similar trend is observed in Engineering and Toxicology, where publications released in the last 5 years represented 40.2 and 29.2% of all works disseminated since 1949, respectively (E, F).« less
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    Works referencing / citing this record:

    Assessing the Dynamics and Complexity of Disease Pathogenicity Using 4-Dimensional Immunological Data
    journal, June 2019

    • Rivas, Ariel L.; Hoogesteijn, Almira L.; Antoniades, Athos
    • Frontiers in Immunology, Vol. 10
    • DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2019.01258
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