Surgery research is becoming less disruptive

Over five decades, surgery went from the most disruptive research field to the only one where papers, on average, reinforce existing ideas rather than redirect the field.

• The disruption score fell from +0.0049 in the 1970s to -0.0017 in the 2010s.
• The analysis covered 2.4 million surgery papers from 1970 to 2020, compared with four other fields.

Surgical papers now combine ideas more creatively, yet fewer open new paths. This is a count of citation patterns, not a measure of patient outcomes, and it does not explain the cause.

• The authors suggest surgery’s research structure may drive the shift, but did not test it.