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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.
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.
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
And isn't that how it should be?
I grew up in Germany, I worked there, then moved to the states and now Canada.
Sure, people spend more time at work here, but the actual work that gets done is at best the same.
I think I want to go back to Europe, at least there once I am done I am done and nobody expects me to do "more".
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
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.