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US Losing its Scientific Dominance
ScaredSilly writes "The New York Times is reporting that the US is losing its dominance in the sciences. They cite lowering research budgets, increased military spending and 'reverse brain-drain': fewer techies staying in the US after school. I personally think that our comparatively crappy K-12 educational system, and an increased dominance of military research over core scientific research plays a big role. (It's easy to get DARPA, DoD and DoE funding, but difficult to get NSF funding). What do you folks think?"
"Reverse Brain Drain"? No, when people you've educated tend to move away, its simply 'Brain Drain'. Canada has been suffering its effects for years to the US. It just so happens that it used to be the US was the beneficiary of brain drain in other countries. That would be the 'reverse'.
This is not a sig.
The NSF grant search website is far more primitive than Fastlane, but if you haven't used it to see who has NSF grants at your institution, it can be revealing. A good way to search is to look for "investigator contains ucla.edu" and "start date after 1-1-2002" to find people at UCLA who have recent grants, though only the PI's email addresses are listed under investigator, so that won't find grants where the UCLA person is a "co-principal investigator." But it's a good start.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
The reason? Why turn away a morons first year tution? :P
So that those of us that did our homework and are actually there to learn don't have to sit in the fucking aisles of the lecture hall!
The Canadian govt's choice to cut OAC classes (Grade 13 in High School) has had the effect of making the first few weeks of every semester a huge pain the ass, with nowhere to sit in your lectures!@
This is particularly true in Math classes.. where *everyone* shows up for the first 2 weeks thinking "this time, I'll go to all my lectures, I'll do the homework, and I'll pass!"..after 4 weeks, there's half the class left. 2 weeks before the end of the term, maybe 25% of the class still attends lectures, but usually it's more like 15%
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Being a "foreign" graduate student in computer science, I know this first hand. Two-third of the graduate students here (Michigan State University) are international. And when you consider the fact that they count us as "American" in the published papers metrics and so forth, then it looks even more bleak. Especialy since most of the Americans I know in grad school are only staying for the masters, and most of the internationals are interested in PhD and research.
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
There is a definite trend of US politics having a detrimental effect on science.
The current issue of Scientific American mentions the censorship and blatant manipulation of facts by the current administration in order to further their political goals.
We have passed a critical point in our progress as a nation. No longer is there economic incentive to build products here as we can outsource the factories and labor to other countries. Ideas follow the means of production. If there is more production in other countries, there will be higher standards of education and higher quality minds in other countries.
We must learn to accept and integrate the new standards of globalization into our society. The question of location of means-of-production should not depend on lowered cost, but rather on benefit to society.
An obvious example would be technology and China. Yes, costs are lower for Americans but the Chinese are destroying their environment. A large element of "recycled technology" recovery occurs in China and most of the toxic products in out technology are released into the local environment. Search Google sometime for the terms "technology toxic byproduct China" and you'll be amazed by the material.
Means-of-production should be located where society can locally benefit via increased employment, etc. Until nanotech duplicators are created, we'll have to live with the status quo.
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> We know Japanese work long hours. We also know they don't work nearly as hard as Americans.
Don't equate working long hours with working hard.
Having worked both in America and Europe I find the Germans work the har4est. They put an enormous amount of effort in while they are at work, but when the whistle blows they go home.
Time magazine had an article in January claiming the exact opposite situation, that US laboratories and departments were the destination for thousands of European scientists. Here are two quotes:
"Some 400,000 European science and technology graduates now live in the U.S. and thousands more leave each year. A survey released in November by the European Commission found that only 13% of European science professionals working abroad currently intend to return home."
""In soccer, if you're great, another team can buy you." Science is the same, and the big buyer is the U.S.: in 2000, the U.S. spent 287 billion [euro] on research and development, 121 billion [euro] more than the E.U."
The full article is here
A British physicist predicted it, a British-born American inventor and a German physicist each independently confirmed it, a German inventor used it for a collision detection system for ships in 1904, an Italian demonstrated a low-frequency radar system in 1922, an Englishman and a New Zealander used radar to prove the existance of the ionosphere in 1924 and scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. were the first to use radar to detect aircraft in 1930.
Not so cut and dry me thinks.
Without getting into the whole 'Canadians are / are not Americans' debate, a whole 32 foreigners helped with the NASA team that put men on the moon? Well golly, that's gotta be more than half, couldn't have taken more than 64 people total to do the entire couple of dozen space shots from Mercury I to the last Apollo mission.
I'm not sure you deserve a reply, since you didn't take the time to read the entire thread so far, but you're getting your tenses mixed up. Nobody claimed more than half of NASA were non-American born at the height of the space race. I was only giving evidence that not ALL were American. The comment about half was made with reference to the current NASA establishment, and I'm tired of doing the work for everyone else - google it yourself.
Just out of curiosity, where exactly were the Germans living when they were the best rocket scientists during the space race? Rhetorical question of course, they were in AMERICA.
So, you're saying there's just something in the water? Is there something in the air that makes them more industrious? They weren't smart until they came to the U.S.? Or is it that there's a super-abundance of resources, plus, at the time, the correct economic environment to support enough industry to support such a huge social undertaking as a space race?
I respect your optimism, but enough countries will have caught up to the U.S. economically in the next couple decades that these firmly held beliefs you have about your absolute superiority in all things is soon to be shattered. The fact that your school system keeps teaching you that you're all perfect and that you're better than everyone else, without actually comparing the U.S. to any other front-running country in any meaningful way is going to bite you in the ass. You can't win a race if you keep you eye on last place.
I've heard several Americans say, "there's nowhere else I'd rather live", but the fact is, even though that may be true, it's meaningless if you haven't actually looked at the real alternatives. When you say that, you're thinking entirely of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Mexico (parts of which are actually nicer than you think). How many Americans have been to Scandinavia, Iceland, England, Canada, or Australia? The reason Americans think that Canada is "just the U.S. and doesn't count" is because they can't fathom the idea that another sovereign nation is just as great a place to live as the U.S.. Even better in many ways. Then they say that Canada wouldn't be as great a place without the U.S. The fact is that the U.S. wouldn't be as great a place without the rest of the world, now would it? You are a trading nation, just like the rest of the nations in the world, and you would have a much lower standard of living if you did not trade.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain