Neomania: How Our Obsession With Innovation is Failing Science, and How to Restore Trust

Abstract

Contemporary science faces a profound poly-crisis: replication failures, weak theories, poor generalizability, and declining public trust. Neomania contends that these symptoms stem not merely from flawed practices or institutional pressures, but from a deeper cultural pathology—our collective obsession with innovation. This valorization of the new for its own sake has reshaped the scientific enterprise, privileging novelty over reliability and fragmentation over coordination. Drawing on metascience as well as the philosophy and sociology of science, Neomania offers a critical analysis of how this ethos has permeated the norms and institutions of modern science. The book traces its historical emergence, diagnoses its systemic consequences, and articulates a reform agenda centered on coordination, shared research programs, and epistemic integrity—an agenda that goes well beyond the principles of Open Science. Neomania advances a constructive vision for rebuilding science as a coherent and truth-oriented system. Combining philosophical depth with institutional analysis, it addresses students, scholars, policymakers, and practitioners concerned with the organization of knowledge production in an era of epistemic crisis. It is both a critique of contemporary scientific culture and a normative proposal for its renewal.