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Jimbo101

(776 posts) Sat Jun 17, 2017, 03:35 PM Jun 2017

U.S. dominance in the Scientific world is slowly shrinking, but China is moving up quickly,....

LiveScience

The United States still leads the world in scientific research, at least in publishing the most biomedical studies in top-tier journals and spending the most money on research and development (R&D).

But that might not be the case for long, a group of scientists claimed in an opinion piece published today (June 15) in the journal JCI Insight.

America's dominance in the scientific world is slowly shrinking, the researchers found, largely because China has invested vast amounts of money in science over the past two decades. In 2015, China's biomedical research teams ranked No. 4 on the top 10 list for the total number of new discoveries published in six top-tier journals, the researchers said. In 2000, China didn't even make the top 10 on this list (coming in at 14), the researchers reported.

What's more, China spent 75 percent of what the U.S. spent on total R&D in 2015, the researchers said. In 2000, China spent a mere 12 percent of what the U.S. spent, they found.

- click link for the rest of the article at Live Science

Pictured at the podium is current Chair Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) along with four other members of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

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U.S. dominance in the Scientific world is slowly shrinking, but China is moving up quickly,.... (Original Post) Jimbo101 Jun 2017 OP

Here are a couple of sleepers, Wellstone ruled Jun 2017 #1

Of course. Igel Jun 2017 #2

Wellstone ruled

(34,661 posts)

1. Here are a couple of sleepers,

Reply to Jimbo101 (Original post)

Sat Jun 17, 2017, 05:30 PM

Jun 2017

France and Canada.

Igel

(35,309 posts)

2. Of course.

Reply to Jimbo101 (Original post)

Sat Jun 17, 2017, 08:32 PM

Jun 2017

Why shouldn't it?

Look, they have 3x, almost 4x the population of the US. Their population is a bit older, overall, but let's stick with 3x.

All things being equal, they should produce 3x the amount of research, patents, papers. There's no reason to think Chinese are inferior to Americans; in fact, many PRC people I've met tend to think Chinese are superior to Americans.

The US punches above its level because we developed faster, sooner, so we got the physical and social infrastructure in place for lots of research. As a result, there's a kind of aura around US universities that attracts good minds. And because we're still better off than most places on Earth, there's a brain drain that leads talented people from those countries to come here to study and then stay.

A lot of that is just the natural outplay of what was true 50 or 20 years ago. Today's built on the remains of yesterday, and it's really hard to do anything else. It's a lot of "institutional racism," and that's really hard to fight because, again, yesterday leaves effects on today, and today is used to build tomorrow.

Expect China, for good or for bad, to continue to narrow the gap in some fields and pull ahead in many.

"China spent 75 percent of what the US spent", though, is always a misleading kind of statement. Take Russia: The military spent not so much, but when it bought something it went in and picked out the best of production. If it needed to, it tweaked the specs to produce higher quality and paid the standard price for the re-engineered item. In more than a few cases, the researchers and production facilities were GULags, where the staff were essentially slave labor held under duress.

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