I'm reading through @andrewwhite01's blog and came across this passage. Is it really true that "the pace of discovery is not declining" but that "the utility of an average discovery" is? Has anyone scraped/compared all articles in Science over the last 100+ years and attempted to benchmark their utility? Furthermore, how can one quantify "utility" in the first place? I've not heard of a compelling metric that is universal, untethered from a single scientific domain, and not based on, say, the awarding of some Prize; but I'm also relatively naive about these things. Is anyone thinking deeply about the "utility" of a discovery? If so, I'd really enjoy talking with you.