Supported By

this is Supported By

And some support in the form of negative effects of near analogies

Also some support from outsider innovation effects

Case for the claim

One support for this is a specific anecdote of tracing a significant discovery through a series of (near) analogies, and then asking the scientist to recall/recount the origins of that discovery: Dunbar found that [[EVD - A molecular biologist who had made a major scientific conceptual change did not recall any of the spontaneous analogies used to enact that change - @dunbarHowScientistsThink1997]]

There's also some evidence from citation level data that looks at combinations of "knowledge domains" (with journals as a proxy) and finds correlations between having atypical or highly novel combinations of knowledge domains being related to being outliers in terms of citation impact

Some complicated, qualified support also comes from studies that find contingent benefits of far analogies

There is some weak support from an early experiment from @dahlInfluenceValueAnalogical2002 that everyone cites in the creativity/engineering design literature. Two core results relating to analogical distance come from the third experiment.