How a Few Star Scientists Develop Many of Tomorrow’s Cures

Funding and partnering with a small group of star scientists and institutions—those behind the most groundbreaking discoveries—can significantly accelerate life-saving medical breakthroughs, research shows.

A relatively small number of universities and hospitals, primarily in the United States, conduct a disproportionate share of consequential life science research, a study by Harvard Business School Professor Amitabh Chandra finds. The highly productive scientists who work at these institutions tend to elevate those around them, boosting the output of their colleagues.

Chandra believes the findings show that if public and private funders want the biggest scientific bang for their buck, they should favor the institutions and scientists delivering the most potentially life-changing research. But with federal research funding to universities being reduced, the amount of important research produced in the US will likely decline, especially if star scientists leave for institutions in other countries, he says.

“The paper has lessons for policymakers about where they should place their funding,” Chandra says. “If the goal is to advance the most science and the best science, the way to do that is to fund researchers at the high-output institutions. And if I were a venture capitalist or company, I’d want to be close to one of these discovery factories.”

Chandra, the Henry and Allison McCance Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, cowrote the working paper “Where Discovery Happens: Research Institutions and Fundamental Knowledge in the Life-Sciences” with Connie Xu, a doctoral candidate in health policy at Harvard University. The paper was released in July.

Who’s producing the most research?

The US dominates in producing life science research, generating more than half of the world’s output—and more than five times its closest competitor, China. Within the US, Boston and the Bay Area stand out, generating more than 15% of the world’s research. Global research is concentrated at a handful of institutions, mostly in the US, with Harvard and Stanford University accounting for more than 8% of the world’s output.

To tease out the impact of institutions on scientific discovery, Chandra and Xu examined research papers published in top life science journals between 1945 and 2023 to identify the scientists and institutions that produced the most papers and had the most citations in subsequent papers.

The researchers focused on papers generated by lab-based research and early-stage testing in humans to look at “the science that facilitates the great drugs, the great discoveries—fundamental science,” Chandra says. Such research is also unlikely to be industry-funded, since commercial applications may be years or even decades away—and because many discoveries represent biological phenomena that cannot be patented.

“We often talk about the medicine, but we forget the long arc of scientific study that led to that medicine,” Chandra says. “For instance, the recently approved transformation therapy for sickle-cell can trace its scientific origins back to knowledge that was discovered before World War II when we learned that adults with sickle-cell did not have the disease when they were born.”

The impact of star scientists and institutions

Studying nearly 80 years’ worth of published papers and citations in journals like Nature, Science, and Cell, Chandra and Xu identified 25,845 scientists who moved from one institution to another, then observed the output of both the scientists and the institutions. By comparing scientists’ output before and after a move, Chandra and Xu found:

• Some institutions produce significantly more research than others, impacting the research output of the scientists who work there.

• Between 50% to 60% of a scientist’s research can be attributed to the institution they work for.

• More productive institutions increase the output of their scientists. In other words, these organizations are not simply hiring more productive researchers.

• About two-thirds of the effect of an institution on a scientist’s research output is driven by the presence of star scientists, which can include their mentorship, research labs, and students.

“Money matters, size matters, but neither one of those factors makes an enormous difference here,” Chandra says. “There seems to be some spillover from the star scientist to everybody else. Maybe the secret is that star scientists attract the really good students and mentor better, and the good students and mentorship enable everybody to do more.”

When top producers left institutions, their former colleagues’ output dropped, while the output of colleagues at the new institutions rose. While hiring and retaining top talent can be costly, Chandra believes institutions should recognize the multiplier effect they have.

“It’s tempting for a lot of universities to say star scientists are really expensive, and while that may be true, a simple accounting might miss the impact of a star scientist on everybody else,” he says.

Being on the inside matters

Interestingly, Chandra and Xu found no spillover effects from powerhouse institutions on neighboring institutions and researchers. And the research indicates that a scientist’s output is not meaningfully larger as a result of being in a city that produces a lot of research.

Smaller institutions in smaller cities are therefore not at a disadvantage in influencing the research of their scientists. Chandra notes that many smaller institutions have highly productive scientists, and if the policy goal is to spread research funding, sending money to these institutions would be worthwhile.

What happens if funding disappears

Chandra notes that he and Xu began their research in 2022, long before research universities faced funding cuts. But the findings underscore that public policy decisions about funding for the highest-output institutions have outsized implications for the science and businesses that ultimately build commercial applications from their research.

A few institutions generate significantly more scientific discoveries than entire Western nations, Chandra points out. For example, Stanford University generates more knowledge than Canada and France combined. In the long run, fewer scientific discoveries released by these institutions could mean fewer business opportunities.

“If you look at any one of [the leading American institutions], they’re more important to this enterprise than massive countries are,” he says. “Today’s science is tomorrow’s medicine, so if we enact a public policy that disrupts science in the leading five universities and hospitals in America, that is going to have consequential effects on medicines for all of us.”

Image by Ariana Cohen-Halberstam with asset from AdobeStock.