It's definitely not mod related but I'm unsure if it's a bug either.
I lean towards no.
I played the whole career now and it didn't bother me. Most of the time, I didn't do it but for some items, I was glad to make two, either to give them to other Sims in my family or to have one in the home lot and one in the work lot.
You can also sell them for good money.
This happened before, but since the last patch it has gotten worse. My Sim has been asked for 4 days to re-invent the momentum conservator. He was never asked to invent the simray though he had all necessary ingredients.
Did you build more than one ?
I want to add my "me too" here by saying that I'm now level 7 in science and I've been asked to build the momentum conservator six times and the simray 8 times. I've repeatedly built and rebuilt all of these hoping that it would actually ask me to build the more advanced things. Of course, I *can* build the more advanced things but I'd rather the career ask for it to fill up my daily progress bar.
Besides, if you have already invented something, it shouldn't ask you to invent it again. How do you invent the same thing more than once? O_o At any rate, it's annoying and like the OP said, it's much worse than before.
I built the cloning machine without being asked and the game hasn't once asked me to clone something. However, it's constantly asking me to use the simray on everyone all the time at the same time as asking me to re-invent it.
