[_ Old Earth _] U.S. is way behind in science.

[Dave...]

I was listening to the radio today and it was claimed that a recent study said that 90% of all the top scientists of the immediate future will come from Asia. It also stated that because the US is so far behind that they will only produce 10% of the top scientists of the future. If this is accurate, this is amazing, don't you think? Have been dumbed down by false science?

If anyone has access to an article, help me out and post it.

 

[cubedbee]

I'm not so sure I buy what your radio show said. This is the only recent study I know of regarding nationalities of scientists. It doesn't talk about "top scientists" but about the total number of scientific papers published. And it doesn't say that 90% of papers in the near future will come from Asia. Instead it says that the percentage from Asia will pass the percentage from America---they currently stand at 25% and 33% respectively. It sounds to me like your radio show is simply misquoting and/or misrepresenting this study.

Even if the Asians start publishing more papers than Americans, I'm not very concerned. America has 300 million people, China and the other Asian countries named have 1,400 million people. That means you would expect China to produce 4.5 times as many papers as the US if our scientific levels were the same. Since they actually only produce 0.75, it's clear that they are far far behind the US.

The number of scientific papers published by researchers in the Asia-Pacific region could exceed the number from the United States within six or seven years, says a US report published in the July/August issue of ScienceWatch.

Asia-Pacific nations, led by China, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, produced 25 per cent of the world's scientific papers in 2004, just below the United States with 33 per cent. European researchers produced 38 per cent of the papers.

In contrast, Asia was responsible for just 16 per cent of global scientific output in 1990. A US National Science Foundation analysis in 2004 found that the rapid growth of scientific output in Asia-Pacific nations is in stark contrast to slow growth in Europe and stagnation in the United States.

One reason for Asia's increase in scientific output is its strong economic growth, which has resulted in more funds for research. Scientists are also increasingly being evaluated in terms of the papers they publish in indexed journals.

Some research institutes have even adopted a policy of paying researchers for publishing in recognised journals.

http://www.scidev.net/gateways/index.cf ... language=1

 

[Dave...]

That could be some of it. It doesn't sound like what I had listened to. I do specifically remember the 90% from Asia. Who knows. I'll try to find a source and see if I can find more details.

Dave

 

[Quath]

A co-worker of mine went to a conference on xray lasers in China. He said they have a lot bigger budget and more people working on it than in the US. Unless the US recommits itself to scientific achievement, a lot of good science will start coming out of Asia and we will have to buy it from them.

Quath