To assess progress in the social sciences, we should study knowledge cumulation, not disruptiveness

Park, Leahey and Funk – PLF – present a thought-provoking contribution to tracking scientific progress by studying the ‘disruptiveness’ of academic publications and patents in a large-N analysis. Their effort – published in Nature 613 (2023) – is timely because the best possible knowledge is needed to effectively address the grand challenges that societies are facing today, including Earth system changes, human well-being, and justice. Even though the authors' findings show consistency across various scientific disciplines, we argue that (1) their measure of disruptiveness lacks plausibility for the social sciences, and (2) the focus on disruptiveness largely neglects the essence of progress, which is knowledge cumulation. While PLF view knowledge cumulation as a precondition to disruption, we argue that it is knowledge cumulation, rather than disruptiveness, that should be the principal criterion for evaluating scientific progress.