‘Our obsession with innovation risks undermining science’ TU/e

February 2026 TU/e door @brigitspan

“Innovation is the holy grail of science, but the drive for novelty has taken on obsessive forms.”

Engineer-philosopher Krist Vaesen wrote a book on neomania in science:

Krist Vaesen with his book Neomania. Photo: Bart van Overbeeke

Science is driven by an insatiable hunger for innovation. But this fixation on novelty does not make science stronger. It makes it more vulnerable, argues engineer-philosopher Krist Vaesen in his book Neomania: How Our Obsession With Innovation Is Failing Science, and How to Restore Trust. Vaesen does more than criticize. He also outlines how things could be done differently. The book was published in early February by a diamond open access publisher and is freely available to anyone.

It sounds paradoxical: an associate professor of Philosophy of Innovation warning about the risks of having too much innovation. “I am certainly not against innovation,” says Krist Vaesen, “but I am against the idea that something new is always better. We pay too little attention to confirmation, deepening, and repetition.”

Vaesen is the first to admit that he, too, is a neomaniac. For years, he stood at the frontline of what he calls neomania in his book: the constant search for novelty in science.

Burnout as a turning point

For two years, Vaesen was exempt from teaching to focus on securing research funding for his group, Philosophy & Ethics.

“I enjoyed it and took the department’s support as a compliment,” he says. “During that period, I was constantly generating new ideas: project proposals, fresh perspectives, new collaborations. It may look creative and productive, but it’s draining.”

In this video, Krist Vaesen talks about his burnout and what inspired his book. Click on the photo to watch the video. Photo: screenshot from the video

Constantly generating new ideas left me completely drained.

Krist Vaesen, Associate Professor in the Philosophy of Innovation

Vaesen eventually burned out. “I didn’t fully realize that this was an unhealthy way of working. Reinventing yourself now and then is fun, but if you do it all the time, you alienate from yourself.”

During his burnout, Vaesen began searching for the causes of his depression. “Suddenly, I recognized myself in the concept of innovation fatigue. And then I saw the same recognition among my colleagues. That was the turning point. I realized: this isn’t just my story. It’s something structural.”

Many small islands

The constant push for something new turned out not to be an individual problem, but a systemic one. “You get funding for projects of a few years, and then you’re expected to come up with something completely new again. That leads to fragmentation: lots of small research islands, without any coherence.”

He decided to share his findings in Neomania, a book that is both personal and analytical. It takes on fundamental questions about how science is organized and how scientists are rewarded.

From crisis to reflection

In addition to his personal crisis, the replication crisis in science was a key trigger for Neomania. That crisis erupted in 2012 in psychology and cancer research, and has since spread to virtually all disciplines, including engineering fields. Experiments in seminal studies turned out to be hard if not impossible to replicate. And such low replicability seriously undermines the credibility of science.

“Repeating research often brings little recognition, funding, or opportunity for publication. Scientists are rewarded for producing new results, not for checking existing work.”

“Since then, much has been written about what is going wrong,” Vaesen observes, “but remarkably little about how we can do things differently.”

Krist Vaesen in Atlas. Photo: Bart van Overbeeke

Open science is necessary, but it is not enough.

Krist Vaesen, Associate Professor in the Philosophy of Innovation

A stronger focus on open science is often presented as the solution to the crisis: sharing data, publishing open access, and working more transparently. “All of that is necessary,” Vaesen says. “But it is not enough. Open science enables change, but it does not automatically ensure that people actually work differently. If no one reuses that open data, we make very little progress.”

According to Vaesen, universities, funders, and journals should also reward reuse. “Give credit for replications. For building large research programs in which ideas have time to mature. Make visible who contributes what, and value that as well.”

The world of science is changing, albeit slowly. Over the past decade, he has seen real progress. “Researchers have come to see open access publishing and data sharing as self-evident. That is hopeful. Within our own university, there is also greater attention to valuing work in open science.”

Novelty as a goal in itself

In Neomania, Vaesen describes how novelty has become a goal in itself. Publication requires surprising results. Grants go to the most original idea. “We have started to confuse innovation with progress. But you don’t build robust knowledge by constantly starting over.”

That has consequences. Replication studies are hard to publish. Generalizations and repetitions yield little status. “In other sectors, that would be unthinkable. Cars are tested hundreds of times before they are allowed on the road. In science, we often run a single experiment and then move on, because scientists are not rewarded for repeating the same experiment.”

Cars are tested hundreds of times before they are allowed on the road. In science, we often run a single experiment and move on.

Krist Vaesen, Associate Professor in the Philosophy of Innovation

According to him, the core of the problem lies in how science is organized and rewarded. “This is not about bad intentions. Everyone is trying to do the right thing within the existing incentives.”

From islands to programs

Is there a single solution? No, says Vaesen. “It is a combination of measures.” An essential element is greater coordination: fewer isolated projects and more collaborative research programs.

“To obtain robust and reliable knowledge, you need a step-by-step plan. As a research community, you should agree on who does what within that plan,” he says. “Who observes new phenomena. Who replicates. Who develops theory? And also: which measurement instruments do we use? That requires standards and coordination.”

Krist Vaessen. Photo: Bart van Overbeeke

Not everyone has to do everything; that’s inefficient.

Krist Vaesen, Associate Professor in the Philosophy of Innovation

He sees this as a form of team science. “Not everyone has to do everything; that’s inefficient. Perhaps we need to hire more researchers who excel at coordination, or at routine tasks.”

A joint proposal

An example comes from his own work. Together with colleagues Daniël Lakens and Sajedeh Rasti, as well as meta-researchers at other universities, he worked on a joint funding proposal. Instead of submitting twenty small proposals, the meta-community submitted two collaborative projects. “The preparation went surprisingly smoothly,” says Vaesen. “We had productive discussions and reached consensus quickly.”

Learning from other fields

In some disciplines, such coordination is already more common. Vaesen points to medicine, where consensus conferences are regularly organized. Researchers agree on which questions have priority and which outcome measures are essential. That helps enormously.”

Still, it remains the exception rather than the rule, especially in highly competitive fields. “It requires collaborations across universities and even internationally. Funders like NWO and scientific journals also need to step up their game. We need to think on a larger scale.”

A lack of balance

Vaesen also advocates for so-called registered reports of research programs. “If you develop a plan for a large research program, you submit it to a journal, and the journal says: if you follow this plan, we will publish it, regardless of whether the results are positive or negative. And regardless of whether it is something new or a replication.”

Against the logic of big publishers

Vaesen is critical of commercial scientific publishers. “They make enormous amounts of money, while we do the work, and they primarily reward positive and flashy results.”

That is why his own book is published through diamond open access. He didn’t pay to publish, and readers can access it for free. “That was an eye-opener for me,” he says. “So it is possible.”

He recognizes that this isn’t an easy choice for everyone. “Publishing in prestigious journals like Nature helps your career. But if you have a permanent position, you can take more risks. We need a critical mass.”

Krist Vaesen in the library at MetaForum. Photo: Bart van Overbeeke

My book is an invitation to look differently and to put innovation back in the service of what science should be.

Krist Vaesen, Associate Professor in the Philosophy of Innovation

Vaesen is already moving on to the next project. He's working on a new book, a practical guide to reading scientific news, aimed at students and the general public.

“People are disoriented. They hear that science is failing and lose trust. Science is important, but the system needs improvement. I want to contribute to that.”

From analysis to hope

What gives him hope are young researchers who want to and dare to improve science. “Their energy is incredible. They really want to make a difference. That was less self-evident in my time as a PhD candidate.”

Neomania should not be read as an indictment, Vaesen emphasizes. “It is an invitation: to look differently. To realign innovation with what science should be: a reliable way of understanding the world.”

Krist Vaesen and meta science

Krist Vaesen is an associate professor of Philosophy of Innovation at the Department of Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences. He is also one of the founders of META/e, the research center that studies the quality and reliability of science itself. META/e focuses on topics such as open science, team science, research reproducibility, and the use of AI in research.

Photo: Bart van Overbeeke

• More about the Eindhoven Meta-Science Center META/e
• Read: Neomania, How Our Obsession With Innovation is Failing Science, and How to Restore Trust
• Read the interview with Maarten Hornikx on open science