Copyright
Krist VaesenPublished On
2026-02-06ISBN
Language
- English
Print Length
198 pages (xiv+184)Dimensions
Weight
Media
OCLC Number
1572693375LCCN
2025432278THEMA
- PDA
- JHB
- PDX
- QDTK
- KJMV6
- JPP
BISAC
- SCI075000
- SCI034000
- PHI004000
- BUS108000
LCC
- Q175
Keywords
- Replication crisis
- Innovation
- History, sociology and philosophy of science
- Open Science
- Scientific coordination
Neomania
How Our Obsession With Innovation is Failing Science, and How to Restore Trust
- Krist Vaesen (author)
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.
Additional Resources
Contents
Introduction
(pp. 1–8)- Krist Vaesen
Science in poly-crisis
(pp. 11–32)- Krist Vaesen
Neomania as an explanation of the poly-crisis
(pp. 33–58)- Krist Vaesen
Neomania: A short history of the obsession
(pp. 59–78)- Krist Vaesen
Open science: Necessary but not enough
(pp. 81–94)- Krist Vaesen
Coordinating our way out of the poly-crisis
(pp. 95–122)- Krist Vaesen
Towards a science organized around research programmes
(pp. 123–146)- Krist Vaesen
- Krist Vaesen
Contributors
Krist Vaesen
(author)Krist Vaesen is an Associate Professor of Philosophy of Innovation at Eindhoven University of Technology (the Netherlands) and serves as director and co‑founder of META/e—the Eindhoven Meta‑science Center. This interdisciplinary center focuses on the scientific study of science itself, with expertise in areas such as Open Science, reproducibility, team science, and the role of AI in research. 'Neomania' owes much to the many insightful conversations with members of META/e.