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

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 'neomania', the valorization of the new for its own sake, has reshaped the scientific enterprise, privileging novelty over reliability and fragmentation over coordination.

Drawing on meta-science and the philosophy of science, Krist Vaesen 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.

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.

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.