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Did the US Take the Back Seat In Science In 2009?
tcd004 writes "In the PBS NewsHour's roundup of the biggest science news of the year, Neil DeGrasse Tyson dropped this doozie: '[Scientific leadership] drives the economic strength and security of nations. The fall is not from a cliff. More like a slow, downward slide — almost imperceptible from day to day. But as the years pass America will have descended from leaders to players to merely followers as we fade to insignificance, at best hitching a ride on the innovations of others.'"
everyone saw this coming
But in which direction?
The USA has a population of around 300,000,000, or around 5% of the world population. It should expect to be following in some areas. In the twentieth century, a combination of factors (less damage from WWII than other developed nations, higher ratio of middle class to subsistence-level citizens, greater economies of scale that most of Europe) let the USA lead in technology. Even then, a number of key developments came from outside the USA, for example the first theoretical models in computing, the first stored program computer, the most successful commercial CPU architecture and the TFT display all came from the UK, the first (and, so far, only) supersonic passenger aircraft was a joint venture between the UK and France.
With 5% of the world population, you simply can't expect to be the world leader at everything. Through most of the twentieth century, the USA operated quite a successful brain drain, skimming off a lot of the best and brightest in the rest of the world by offering them bigger salaries and, more importantly, a lot more resources to continue their work. Now it's quite difficult for someone with a PhD to get a visa to work in the USA (unless they're just transferring within the same multinational company) and the desire to work in America is significantly lowered by the insane anti-terror legislation, not to mention the crippling IP laws which make the USA a much less attractive place to do research unless you have a massive company backing you.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
For decades, many of the world's best students came to the US to get their PhDs. In many American labs you could hardly meet a native American scientist. And American science thrived, really. Maybe now it's time for the US to send their best students abroad and get valuable PhDs from countries where you can still find a taste for hard work and good science?
if it is a global world now, and in no small part due to the internet, then is is because of US
Then why are we speaking American?
Slashdot is U.S.-centric. We readily admit this, and really don't see it as a problem. Slashdot is run by Americans, after all, and the vast majority of our readership is in the U.S. We're certainly not opposed to doing more international stories, but we don't have any formal plans for making that happen. All we can really tell you is that if you're outside the U.S. and you have news, submit it, and if it looks interesting, we'll post it.
It is worth noting that there is a Japanese Slashdot run by VA Japan. While we helped them a little in their early days, they essentially run their own content without any real involvement from us... none of us can read Kanji! There are currently no plans to do other language or nation specific Slashdot sites.
You can't just have PARC and places sitting in isolation, churning out whizz bang science.
Neither can you just build a PARC, and have that attract and create industry around it.
PARC and places like that need to co-exist with a hotbed industrial base, and then you get a positive feedback loop.
If you kill local industry and manufacture, then you also kill science.
If you kill science, then you also kill local industry and manufacture.
Back in the 1960's and before every school in the UK turned out kids who could read, write, and do math.
You cannot do ANY trade without these skills, not plumbing, not carpentry, not bricklaying, not to mention the slightly higher level trades like boilermakers etc.
Sadly, we threw it all away, in our pursuit of crap courses like equine aromatherapy and womyns studies, anything, just to get more people in university, just to get more people with degrees and diplomas and certificates.
Now we have a "service" economy that relies on someone else being able to do the basic math etc.
I am an engineer ( a proper one, eg mechanical and marine) and sadly I am the demographic that went through the trade at a time when an engineer was lower in status and pay than many blue collar jobs, which meant no-one wanted to do apprenticeships, which means I am one of the last of the "old school" of engineers.
The future isn't bright.
Sci-fi series Firefly had one thing right, learn a second language, and make it Chinese.
Even if we turned around and went balls out to fix the problem, money no expense, NOW, it would take a generation, or 20 years, to fix, which is too damn slow to work.
All that is left is importing the talent.
From what I know of the USA, there is a lot of importing engineering talent going on, lots of foreign nationals, green card holders and immigrants working in tech.
A friend of mine summed it up well years ago, when he said that in 2020 the USA will be the place to go to make cheap porn and exploit people who don't have any other options.
USA, the new Romania.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
are you americans arent able to realize that internet has become a global place still to the extent that you think staggering majority of people here are americans ?
get over yourselves. you are living in a global world and its name is internet.
In this great international global place of no shift keys, do you also not recognize the authority of the direct quote? The we in question is Dr. Tyson (an American) and his fellow countrymen (also Americans).
I am not a crackpot.
I speak English here because it is an English website... douche.
US may be taking a back seat in science, but what is described in the article has nothing to do with that.
Russian space agency needs money very much like NASA. The proposal to shoot down an asteroid (which, according to recent calculations is not an imminent threat) is made primarily to raise their profile, and perhaps get some cash. It certainly helps that the cause is "you will die unless you pay". If you read the original russian announcement you'd notice that they "will need 100s of millions of dollars" and they hope US and European partners will bring some dough to the table :)
I am somewhat familiar with a state of Russian science, and while it may be that over countries are going ahead of US - Russia is not one of them. Real science in Russia is, unfortunately, taking a backseat to populist crackpottery (such as controlling the clouds or making machines that cure all diseases with "magnetism" and other such things bordering on mysticism) that is in style with the new rich, who are ready to pay for it.
BTW. Alexa claims only about 47.1% of us here at /. are from US. I'm unsure how representative Alexa is for global stats (global rankings rarely are), but the rest of the world'd be sooner underrepresented than not.
the concept of a 'nation' is seriously dated, and 99% artificial.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Nobody ever said the Internet wasn't global. When interpreting pronouns like 'we' in a quote like that posted on slashdot, context matters. The person who constructed the sentence made it very clear that the 'we' pronoun was citizens and residents of the United States. 'We' isn't always a universal that is meant to encompass everyone who reads the text. For example, the U.S. Declaration of Independence was written by the Continental Congress, to be sent both to people within the American Colonies, *AND* to foreign nations (in particular, England). The second paragraph starts "We hold these truths to be self evident. . ."
It's obvious that the writers of the Declaration of Independence weren't including all possible readers in the "We", as the King of England and his privy council, as well as the parliament of England, probably didn't hold that view at that time.
'We' is a perfectly useful pronoun, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with the way it was used in the quote posted to slashdot. If the article author hadn't made it clear from context who 'we' encompassed, then I might have agreed with your position, but I personally find your argument lacks merit.
Same reason we're using Intel's 80386 architecture, IBM's BIOS, and Arab numerals: it's a common protocol that is in use worldwide. Be thankful for that, it might not last ;-) Though, there's a reasonable chance that it will to be honest. Doesn't mean we're all American though ;-)
Who cares where the research happens, so long as it happens and happens well? Science should be without borders. Reducing it to a penis-measuring contest is hardly edifying.
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
If this is an English website, there's a lot of foul spelling - looks more like an American if you ask me!
This is blinging
American society absolutely hates smart people these days. They are called derogatory names, like "nerds", and "geeks", ridiculed and made fun of. The net result of that is in years to come only rednecks would be left in US and other countries which value smart people would have replaced US as world leaders. This is called evolution - survival of the best and the fittest.
By the way, if we have laws to prevent discrimination against races, why is there no anti-discrimination law for discrimination against intelligent people? Calling someone a "geek" and bullying him and making fun of him just because he is more intelligent than you should be against the law.
However, that law is never mentioned when American companies demand that Washington open the floodgates to foreign engineers begging to come to the USA. The CEO of, say, Intel says that the American economy will collapse unless we Americans admit foreign engineers. Professor David Patterson (of UC-Berkeley) promotes the idea that we must admit foreign engineers so that we can be #1 in all fields. (Patterson is president of ACM and has promoted the H-1B program.)
These advocates of foreign engineers are wrong.
Even more interesting is the fact that Japanese companies rarely hire foreign engineers. Technology in Japan is homegrown. Yet, the Japanese beat the Americans in several areas of high technology. Most of the patents for your LCD monitor are owned by Japanese companies.
Here is the irony. Despite a massive influx of foreign engineers, the USA is actually declining in scientific achievement according to the lead news article in this discussion. Yet, Japan, which has severe restrictions on hiring foreigners, remains a technological powerhouse. Here is the conclusion: H-1B engineers were never necessary to the American economy.
Though, there's a reasonable chance that it will to be honest. Doesn't mean we're all American though ;-)
Actually, it kinda does. The same way using those arabic numerals means we are all a little bit arab.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
http://creationmuseum.org/
...and it has not been laughed out of existence. 'Nuff said.
So what sort of music do the Chinese like these days? What's the market for cultural tourism and what does a Bed and Breakfast feed Chinese for breakfast?
Disruption is the essence of progress. Some of what was is superseded by something new. Typically the incumbent technologies and powers either fight progress tooth and nail, try to co-opt it, or try to at least manage it's pace to something they can control. When too much incumbent power is too successful at slowing progress, that progress tends to move somewhere else.
In recent years, those incumbent powers have been quite successful in the US. One can hope that that trend doesn't continue.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
People mentioned the immigration policies and other factors, but I think the #1 reason long-term pursuits like science have faded from the forefront is the shift everywhere to short term thinking.
Personally, I think we should deemphasize the amount of attention paid to the stock market, and give it back to the billionaire's club. Invest your retirement money in something safe that gives reasonable returns....ror better yet, demand that they bring pensions back (the ultimate long term planning tool.)
The US is home to huge numbers of institutes, universities, and foundations that are directly responsible for TONS of science coming out. Matter of fact, I have a subscription to Science Magazine and many of the articles are in part or wholly by the US.
We are a bit behind in stem cell research training and skills, relative to other countries, but CIRM is working to catch that up.
http://www.cirm.ca.gov/node/278
---
I think the article is a bit shallow and assumptive, and does not wholly encompass (or ignores for sake of proving a point) the massive science we are responsible for producing.
it lost all credability when they shoe horned that nugget in there. measuring something via satillite is hardly a break through.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Culture is a virus.
He made a very good point.
Tyson made a very good point. In that lecture, he talked about the Islamic Empires of the 12th and 13th centuries that were building while we were in the Christian Dark Ages. Do you know what happened? A bunch of Imams got together and basically stated that Math and Science were of the devil. After that, it was only a matter of time. The result is the Middle East we see today.
He also stated a statistic that since Bush took office in 2001, during the 8 years of Bush, the amount of "hard science" Papers in Chemistry, Biology and Physics has dropped to 1/10th what it was in the 90s.
(He had exact numbers, and I saw this last November.)
The point is, Reactionary Christianity is causing the collapse of our civilization just the same way that Reactionary Islam caused the middle east to become what it is today.
Christianity. Its the Problem.
When you have 60% of your population denying Evolution, a scientific fact, your civilization is circling the drain.
Guess what happens when you keep trying to teach controversies that do not exist, define reality as a matter of religious freedom and get "fair time" for stupidity in classrooms.
This decline has been going on much longer than any war on terror. This is a problem on a wide social level that has no single cause and no single solution. The sooner people stop using this problem to push their own political agenda the sooner we can get down to solving it.
Britain, dude, Great Britain. The american colonies didnt belong to England, England had ceased to exist as a sovereign nation in 1707. The US won it's independence from Britain.
Kind of messes up your whole argument when your core theme is incorrect. What was it you were trying to say?
I don't recall being asked if I'd like to have my science credited to the US, either upon entry into the science workforce or at the outset of each study. I resent being appropriated.
Tyson is an educator/entertainer and a scientist. None of this makes him qualified in any way to speak on the political implications of "scientific leadership", whatever that is supposed to be. Tyson should perhaps stick to the science, perhaps even doing some on the subject raised here. He might be surprised to find that scientific leadership is not what drives economic strength and security. If asked, I'm sure the economic and security leaderships would be glad to explain this fully.
From whence this wind blown rhetoric, Tyson? Scientific leadership has led nothing in this country but science itself for our entire history. And whither blowest? Is there some science pulpit coming open in the political arena? Science Czar perhaps? If so, you've got the talking pretty part down, but could use some work when it comes to realism. Willing suspension of disbelief applies to drama, not politics nor science.
To lead one must be involved. The more science is involved with politics the less it is allowed to lead itself much less any other segments of society. Scientists who attempt to lead more than science suffer from the handicap of relying on truth. Other practicing politicians do not suffer this same problem, and will eat your lunch.
For someone whose training is in an observational science, Tyson seems peculiarly unable or unwilling to observe the relationship of science to politics across history. Too close maybe? As an astronomer you should be familiar with that in order to be able to focus your instrument on a target, you need go be quite some distance away. As for me, that's where I plan to keep my science, because I've had mine looked over by the Department of Appropriation of Research for Political Agendas(DARPA) and those people piss me off and scare me.
And until the general population sees fit to show up at the lab to do their share of the work, fuck this 'we' shit. I do science for Science's sake. If there were an alternative called US Science, I'd refuse to do that sort. Luckily outside of politically motivated rhetoric there isn't.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
are you americans arent able to realize that internet has become a global place still to the extent that you think staggering majority of people here are americans ?
get over yourselves. you are living in a global world and its name is internet.
Please don't assume everyone on this site is American, it's annoying.
More seriously though, I found it surprising that slashdot is so specifically US-centric (given the FAQ mentioned below). It has always seemed like a global tech site to me, and I am not from the US either.
The USA does not, contrary to some believing it, have a monopoly on science and technology.
During the 1970's to 1990's the USA may have made some innovative computer technology and got the Apollo mission to the Moon and the Space Shuttle, but the rest of the world has caught up and in some ways passed us by.
Due to offshoring the work to foreign nations and not hiring enough scientists, engineers, and computer science US citizens in the USA, most of us had to take a job to pay the bills that does not contribute to science and technology. The jobs went to the lower bidders in India, China, Russia, etc instead. Labor goes to where labor costs are cheaper as per classic capitalism and even China has become capitalist. Minimum wage is welfare capitalism and classic capitalism does not use it. The USA has welfare capitalism which means we have welfare ie social programs backed by capitalism via insurance and that means unemployment, COBRA, medicare, disability, welfare, etc. We also force companies to get health insurance for their employees but foreign nations do not. Plus we tax corporations to pay for our welfare capitalism social programs so it also forces companies to move to foreign nations to avoid all that.
When I went to UMR I hung out with the foreign students from China and other places. They were so smart I would play pinball with them in the student lounge and they would win all of these free games because of mechanical engineering and they taught me some of the tricks of playing pinball and gave me their free games, in which I would win more free games and give them to another student. The best of the best from foreign nations come to the USA for college degrees and used to work in the USA, but now thanks to the Internet they can work in a foreign nation and turn out work for pennies on the dollar of what a US citizen wants to earn.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Nice!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Have some respect- we built it...
While out of all the countries, the US is definitely home to the most readers of this site, the majority of the readers are not US-based. Those are two different things. If you look at the stats on Alexa you can see that 47.1% of the readers are from the US, while he second place goes to India with a mere 8.8%. That still means that 52.9% of the readers live outside the US though, so the FAQ seems either false or outdated.
Come on, give it a rest! In what way did they lose credibility by making a measurement that confirmed their predictions? That seems to be the ideal way of increasing credibility.
Can you really be suprised that they would bring up climate change in a scientific review of 2009 when it is such a hotly debated topic right now?
Personally, I blame the MBA. As in the "Masters of Business Administration" degree.
The MBA programmes at all North American universities promote this short of short-term, quarter-by-quarter, stock price driven corporate culture. As the MBA increasingly became the price of entry to more lucrative salaries and promotion within an enterprise, that culture became all-pervasive, to the point where it is now the water in which the fish swim.
And along the way, the MBA-trained manager class forgot the hard-learned lessons of their founding fathers - like long-term planning, maintainence of corporate morale, and taking care of employees.
My career arc went military (I was a product of a military college) -> civvi -> military. The military is hardly a perfect institution, but one thing it really gets right is teaching leadership. Actual *leadership*, not just management.
One of the key tenets of leadership is that quality personnel who are properly motivated can overcome shortfalls in pretty much everything else. Crappy materials, shitty situation, odds stacked against you - well led troops can overcome these things and manufacture success.
And so there are a number of principles that go along with providing this kind of leadership: Lead by example. Ask your subordinates to do nothing you wouldn't do (or haven't done). Loyalty up starts with loyalty down. Respect is earned, not demanded. Always tell the truth, no matter how unpalatable it might be. If you have to correct someone (or you yourself are corrected) fix the problem and move on with no grudges. Provide subordinates with clear direction, including the mission to be accomplished and your intent, and then trust them to carry it out. Etc.
Yes, even in the military it is rare for all of these to gel in the same unit, and I can name commanders who I worked for/with who were deficient in one or more of these areas. But even the worst of them (and some could be pretty bad) were still better leaders and ultimately more effective than any MBA-trained manager I ever worked with as a civilian.
Having worked in a variety of civvie companies, ranging from small startups to major corporations (and most of my civvie experience was with US corporations) I've never seen so many people so completely oblivious to the effects of their decisions upon morale and the overall health and well being of their workforce. Decisions were routinely made with no consideration of second or third order effects. Corporate loyalty simply did not exist, with the employees in the trenches convinced (quite rightly) that management was out to screw them as hard as they could - and so it was OK then to screw the company as hard as they could.
And most frustratingly, any attempt to draw attention to problems in an attempt to get them rectified was usually perceived as an attack on the person who came up with the policy, not the policy itself. It was nearly impossible to pass ground truth up the chain because the bearer of bad news was treated as "difficult" and quite often punished or even terminated.
I wonder sometimes if the success of the "greatest generation" who fought in WW2 isn't because so many key people were exposed to military-style leadership and that sense of everybody in an enterprise pulling towards a common goal, and then that carrying on through the rest of their lives. Now, we get the short-sighted, numbers-focussed "leadership" of the MBA and the resulting destruction and misery.
I went back to the Army in large part because I couldn't take it any more. Even a bad day in the Army usually trumped a good day as a corporate wage slave.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
If this is an English website, there's a lot of foul spelling - looks more like an American if you ask me!
I always used to take the piss out of the Americans not being to speak English correctly. Then a friend of mine who was a Phd student studying the evolution of languages pointed out to me that the way Americans write and pronounce certain words is closer to original English and it is us who can no longer speak our own language the same way as we did when the American forefathers left.
I dont read
it is undeniable that internet sprung up from arpanet, however its progress has been global. if you are not aware, the entire www thing was from switzerland. which kinda basically forms the majority of interactions on the net.
Read radical news here
Massive offshoring, and importing of guest workers, has driven the salaries of many STEM workers below a living wage. US citizens are pushed aside to make room for the flood of offshore workers. Needless to say, this situation discourages Americans from pursuing a STEM career. Smart Americans are studying to go into finance, or something. If the US has not already lost it's technology edge, it soon will.
How many of their best and brightest become lawyers or investment bankers?
They are, but perhaps they wouldn't have been if there was sufficient (in quality as well as quantity) homegrown talent.
Even if you could reverse the causes mentioned above - and do it overnight - it's be a decade before the effect was felt.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
this nightmare started in 1980 with reagan and has continued ever since. Poppa Bush tried to give it more funding, but Clinton did little and W out and out destroyed it. It remains to be seen what Obama really will do, but it does not look all that good.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If only the US had launched some space observatories
If only the US had bothered to maintain some of its science assets
If only the US had conducted any exploration of our solar system
If only the US had commissioned any meaningful physics experiments
If only the US had any anthropologists discovering stuff
If only the US had any geneticists discovering stuff
If only the US had bothered to conduct any nuclear physics experiments
If only the US had any medical science to speak of
If only the US had any practicing bioengineers
If only the US had funded any studies into the harmful effects of BPA
...then maybe then SlashSnot editors would avoid indulging their myopic views of the US science.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
If you hover over the "E-Mail" button, it is a link to the same page. Seems like CNN is not above scamming the Internet for revenue by tricking people into hitting their page more often, thus generating more ad revenue. I wonder when they will have an article on how supposedly respectable sites "pirate" ad revenue by exploiting the ignorance of the typical reader who visits their site.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Had Russia been even the LEAST bit sincere about that, it would include some levels of partners, be it China, EU, or even America.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Nitpick: evolution is not a fact, it is a theory, such as gravity is a theory. (Yes, incorrectly misused by creationists as a derogatory statement).
While I think there is rampant abuse of the H1-B program I do think it is vital a U.S. dominance in all technological fields. Through-out the 30's and 40's we were not pulling just highly educated people from other countries, we were pulling in rockstars of science, people that could contribute the science we were trying to develop. Today H1-Bs are just a form of cheaper labor for companies and you don't have to be especially well qualified to land a job using an H1-B. Because of this our job pool is diluted and all the effort bringing people here yields very little.
The best and brightest minds are naturally going to be in other countries as we hold merely 5% of the population. H1-B needs to be about bringing in the best and the brightest, not about filling non-existent programmer position voids. Foreigners helped us construct the atomic bomb among many other technological leaps forward. They are necessary. The fact that Japan is so successful right now is due to us being lazy and let's face it, science was manipulated for political gains through the new millennium. When we recover our strengths you'll see us surpass Japan unless they too start bringing in foreign talent.
Of course you might remember that Japan was in a similar position to the U.S. now about a decade ago. They shifted their priorities and surprise surprise, they are back to being productive members of the international community. Right now people in the U.S. take their success for granted and have forgotten that it was only achieved through lots of hard work and lots of sacrifice! My own feelings lean towards suggesting that the religious awakening since 9/11 has been the root cause due to people living in fear searching for a quick fix rather than fixing the root of the problems at hand. It's easy to say god will save us, hard to actually do it yourself and stop the international sale of arms to unstable regions and stop the acquisition of oil from countries that behave unconscionably. All solutions come with sacrifice and there would be serious humanitarian issues to deal with although I suspect China would fill any economic gaps for those countries we stopped buying from. At some point we have to accept higher gas prices as a cost of our ideals which are just and sound if only we had the balls to live up to them.
There are a number of factors as to why science is sliding, and it's not unique to the USA, most of the Western countries have this problem.
- In the UK, anyone on a science / engineering degree is sneered at; science, engineering and IT are SERIOUSLY uncool.
- In the UK, it is cool to be a moron.
- In the UK, there are no incentives for smart children to take up sciences (the government socially engineering moron population - easier to control).
- In the UK, a degree in a useless subject like English, art, politics, history, Latin, drama, can get you on the career paths which can earn LOTS of money (ie. acting, banking, politics). How many rich people do you see that are engineers? The list rapidly runs out after Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Ellison and a few others.
- Education in sciences is not that great, many lecturers prefer the textbook approach and not enough practical skills.
But that's the education side. The other problem is people in the sciences of engineering come up with a new gadget or process, but then find out that they can't proceed because part of their idea has already been patented by Mega rich corp..
Take Nobody's Word For It.
H-1B engineers are necessary to suppress wages, which is necessary to make the rich richer at the expense of everyone else. That's commonly known as "right-wing" politics, which have been practiced at least since Reagan's time, for the detriment of almost all.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Okay, we're all a little bit Intel, IBM, Arab and English. Where's the American part?
No, it is not. Look at China. They operate PURELY as a nation looking out for their own interest. Copenhagen should have told you that. Likewise, we see similar actions in South America. India worked with China, but even they point their finger at China for not working to do what most nations perceive as being in global interest. Brazil and nations like Veneuela point their finger at America and say that we did not do enough. Yet, we offered up large conncessions and said that we would go further if CHina would go with us. China refused. Problem is, that unless CHina changes course, then even if the entire west drops to ZERO OUTPUT TODAY (zero chance), China will drive the total emissions over the 2050 line by 2030.
What this shows is that we have a coming superpower that only recognizes national lines, not global.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I mean medicine. First you go to college for 4 years and then 4 years of med school. (So 8 years of making no money while racking up around 200K in debts.) Then you do residency at 40k a year for 3-10 years. (Usually working over 80hrs a week.) Then after all of that you hit the payoff, continuing to work 80+hrs a week for between 150K-400K. (Of course you can make more if you end up running the entire medical practice and have a bunch of docs working under you.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
American universities should focus on Americans first.
" The fall is not from a cliff. More like a slow, downward slide -- almost imperceptible from day to day. But as the years pass America will have descended from leaders to players to merely followers as we fade to insignificance, at best hitching a ride on the innovations of others.'""
Don't worry! I'm sure whatever administration in power at the time you obviously realize you're only players will find an excuse to bomb the living shit out of whatever country replaces you. As they pull themselves out of the mess with your "help" I'm sure your corporations will find a way to steal enough tech to catch back up.
I'm only being sarcastic here, but in the back of my mind I could see it happen.
>>They are, but perhaps they wouldn't have been if there was sufficient (in price as well as quantity) homegrown talent.
Fixed that for you. H-1B's are there to lower expected wage for engineers by increasing the pool, not to replace any shortage.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
I mean Islam last I checked has no real central authority. Actually more to the point the Islamic world isn't even one culture, let alone one country so what Tyson said is probably a gross simplification. (Admittedly I'm kind of biased against him.) Actually looking on the wiki about it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_science#Decline Makes it sound like it was more than just "Oh my god religion" doing it's thing. (Things like Mogol invasion, fights between different parts of the Islamic world, etc. Actually they point out other parts of that sphere kept doing scientific research. Of course creationist still suck.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
The U.S. has some things going for it that may tend to mitigate or completely counter this decline. For one, English is the lingua franca of the world, and the U.S. is by far the largest English-speaking economy. Its easy for non-U.S. would-be scientists to come do research at U.S. universities because they most likely already know English. China could create the best universities in the world, but they'd have a much harder time attracting international students because far fewer people learn Chinese as a second language compared to English.
You could argue for the E.U., maybe, but again there's the language issue. Even if all university classes are conducted in English (which would be unlikely), any prospective student still has to contemplate moving to a country where, outside classes, he's not going to speak the language.
I also practice Mercantilism, and believe that all advances only effect the country the advance occurs in and that there is a limit to the advances. All advances made in a country is limited to only that country, the advances never leaves and nobody but that country can benefit from the advance. Any advances caused because of previous advances will only benefit the country the advance originally came from. I also believe that once you are behind you are behind forever, how other countries were able to get ahead after being behind is a mystery.
Who is "you Americans"? You need to realize that not all of us are Americans and acting like an idiot in front of us does not also make us idiots.
...economic strength and security of nations.' , while at the same time, most published research in the US is done just because someone can get grant money for it. As somebody that has worked in research for the last 6 years, looks to me like the problem is that when the drive behind research is greed (be it wealth or ego flavor), what we get cannot be compared to what we would get if the drive was just passion for further the knowledge. I've seen that all over the place. In today's US scientific environment, you research anything you can get that comes with money attached, and not necessarily what you are better prepared to do, or like the best. Somehow take money of of the equation, do not use it as 'incentive'. Money not only does not help, but it corrupts the ideals.
And the income tax is driving the offshoring. Repeal it, run the country on a consumption tax. This will tilt the playing field back toward America, stop the offshoring, and bring prosperity back to the USA. See www.fairtax.org.
To have a good domestic workforce, you have to train good domestic engineers. It is actually that simple.
Ever seen a Japanese school from the inside? Try to discuss the idea of "no child left behind" with a person from Japan and watch closely how he tries to retain his proverbial composure. Japanese schools don't level the field, they demand.
You say that the Japanese system of a reliance on domestic engineers is good and should be applied to the US. I say, to do that you first of all have to create engineers that are on par with Japan. Then we can talk.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
H1Bs are also often the ONLY way to get a well educated workforce that doesn't expect to be paid more than they're worth, to be blunt.
I had a good look at the US education system. And, sorry to be blunt again, your schools are for the most part little more than places to put your kids so they're out of your way. The education lacks. When being able to solve easy integral equations in your head without looking up the rules constantly is seen as some sort of superhuman feat, which is basically a requirement to pass math 101 in one of our universities, you know that something is not running right.
When the standards are lowered, the output is lowered as well.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yet you're communicatying over the internet in a way created by a British man.
You mean English which did not originate in the US. Speak Indian if you want to speak your nation'`s own language.
Slashdot is outsourcing its readership! Is nothing sacred any more?
England, Great Britain, a country without dentists, whatever you want to call it... It was only you who was incapable of understanding the point.
You are lucky, Ed Gruberman. Few novices experience so much of Ti Kwan Leep so soon.
My understanding is that to receive a student Visa in the US, you have to promise NOT to attempt to get a job here after graduation. Why are we trying to send the best(?) educated people in the world to other countries to innovate? If I was president, anyone with a master or doctorate degree from an accredited US university could live and work here as long as they like with a only a background check.
We could be tops again, however that would require a lot of measures that are not favored by corporatists. They'd have to put the copyright, patent and trademark laws back the way that they used to be. Meaning that software and business practices would no longer be subject to patent protection and that copyrights would expire in at most 3 decades, better still just make it the life of the creator. Science and education in general would have to be properly funded, and we'd have to stop signing stupid free trade agreements that don't give us the teeth to bite back at nations that are cheating via currency manipulation and similar.
We're still the most productive nation on Earth, we could also be tops in many other ways, assuming of course that people were willing to acknowledge the weak spots.
Let's hope UAVs remain at a standstill in this country. We've got enough problems with Homeland Insecurity going nuts with every "boo" the so-called "terrorists" do.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
They are necessary. The fact that Japan is so successful right now is due to us being lazy and let's face it, science was manipulated for political gains through the new millennium.
As you said political and religious machinations has contributed to something of an anti-intellectual vibe. Though it should be considered that some parts of the Japanese educational system is better, at least better at allowing the "best and brightest" of their young generations to purse their chosen path regardless of what economical situation they might have been born into. That being said I know next to nothing about the American educational system, and even less about the Japanese one. But I will argue that the decline of American technological supremacy goes further back than just these last years, and deeper than just a religious resurgence( though no doubt that is part of it).
This is of course simple speculation on my part; but I tend to believe that questions (at least those related to social and economical subjects) rarely have one easy answer or cause.
The Long Now Foundation
American universities should drop their diversity requirements and educate Americans.
The problem with anecdotal evidence, is that people arguing the exact opposite point can pull out a dozen examples too. In this article John Derbyshire pulls out a dozen examples of why Obama is trying to kill science in the United States. It's not convincing to anyone who knows about National Lab Day, Educate to Innovate STEM initiative, Computer Science Week, data.gov, and the Policy Forum on Public Access to Federally Funded Research... but this is all anecdotal too, a better resource would be an overview of all the projects being funded by the stimulus package or trends in government funding of scientific research.
However, I do completely agree that Tyson is being unfair to the American government. In fact, this is the same guy who previously argued Republicans were doing a great job of funding American science. The real issue here, and the one we are dealing with most in computer science, is American Culture's antipathy and outright contempt for science and academia. Kids aren't going into Computer Science, Physics, Chemistry, etc, because they are afraid of being associated with "geeks." The kids all want to be gangsters, models, and sports stars... not realizing how unrealistic those dreams are and that only a miniscule percentage of people succeed in those arenas.
We need a culture change, we need to be proud geeks and make others envy us. It'll help us out in the long run.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
The problem of the US is, that they do not educate enough people in the sciences. One problem is, that the universities and colleges train people to fit job descriptions very well, which makes these people less flexible for future developments. Also most people only have a bachelor degree. It would be better when everyone would go for a scientific master degree. In the past the US compensated this problem by importing scientists and engineers from Europe, India, and other continents and countries. Since the US became more restrictive, these scientists stay in other countries. Also the Dollar is losing value, so it makes less sense to work abroad and bring back Dollars.
A segment of the population has always been like that. It's hard to blame them for the entire state of things.
How many Americans who won Nobel prizes were naturalized?
That is a very false conclusion.
The Japanese are a few years behind... but they are suffering the same fate as the Americans.
Young Japanese (on mass) do not find science and engineering all that interesting anymore and they aren't willing to sacrifice to just do it as a job.
There's also the salary curve. As your society gets more services and regulations, there are 'easier' ways to make money, you can be a financial person, a doctor, lawyer, public sector worker, transit worker ... Your best and brightest go into those areas.
Contrast this with say H1Bs. Now you get the best of the best from other countries where the pay/work vastly exceeds anything they could earn in other industries.
That said, the need for H1Bs is simply not that useful these days. If a company wants to make use of foreign labor, they could just setup a foreign branch :P
Which do exist at public universities and are taken seriously.
Despite a massive influx of foreign engineers, the USA is actually declining in scientific achievement according to the lead news article in this discussion. Yet, Japan, which has severe restrictions on hiring foreigners, remains a technological powerhouse. Here is the conclusion: H-1B engineers were never necessary to the American economy.
OK, posting as anonymous so we can bypass the karma whoring: correlation is not causation.
H-1B engineers would not be necessary to the American economy, IF AMERICAN SOCIETY PRODUCED ENOUGH OF ITS OWN. So, don't look at Japanese engineering success; look at American educational failure.
Nope, it's still leading in important sectors like Creationism. Although with Iran as a close second. ;)
H-1B engineers are necessary to suppress wages, which is necessary to make the rich richer at the expense of everyone else. That's commonly known as "right-wing" politics, which have been practiced at least since Reagan's time, for the detriment of almost all.
H-1B engineers (educated through socialistic education programs) also often need to emigrate from their home countries as a direct result of the economic imperialism (right-wing politics) of rich countries; they then make a lot of money and bring it home to set themselves up for the rest of their lives, thereby aiding the economies of their home countries; this could be seen as a form of socialism.
Funny how one is a direct consequence of the other, isn't it?
That means zero to me.
If it's free market you are worried about, did you notice that if you hire a foreign engineer even with just a bachelors, you just got approximately 16 years of training for absolutely free. The other country paid for the schooling, and you get the fruits.
The reason most countries have free education is that the investment into education is well worth it. Now you are saying no, when someone is giving it to you for free. The way to make sure that US engineers have jobs is to stimulate the job market, not by starving the job market of foreign talent. Investing in basic research is one way to do that, and the US has done that in the 50s and 60s, and we are still reaping the benefits. Now that huge government investment in basic research has gone the way of the dodo ... so will the jobs. Insulating ourselves and pretending nothing's wrong ain't going to work.
the concept of a 'nation' is seriously dated, and 99% artificial.
What's the great alternative that most of the world's population (barring, say, Somalia) is too stupid to think of, polar red?
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven
In other words, the more the incumbents tighten their grip on technology, the more scientists will slip through their fingers?
You mean English which did not originate in the US. Speak Indian if you want to speak your nation'`s own language.
Oh yeah? Which "Indian" would you like us to speak? Apache? Crow? Cherokee? Your point is null and void, since ENGLISH always has been the main language of this nation (i.e. - the United States).
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven
The US innovates all the time! Look at how many patents are filed! And you might say they're the only ones trying to drive innovation around the world by spreading their patents/rights protection regulations! Without that, why would anyone have any incentive to conduct scientific research?
You state we spend money "proving" global warming. Let's assume you're right - how much is that exactly?
According to the GAO, it's probably around 6 billion a year. Which is about two weeks in Iraq.
Not sure that... we are doing anything never seen in the history of this planet.
Yes, we are burning hundreds of millions of years worth of old biomass in less than 150. We're also destroying every old growth forest on the planet. I'm fairly sure these are new events. And even a closed system will have periods of self-regulation that could be very inhospitable to our way of life.
Virgin is doing more with space technology than NASA is. And making money at it.
Virgin is not making money. Virgin has not been to the moon. Virgin hasn't ever placed a satellite. Virgin has never even orbited the earth as the space shuttle has. Virgin has never docked with a space station, or built one. It's performing sub-orbital flights - whoopdedoo!
All government funded research does is take money away from people who want to spend it in some other manner and apply it towards projects that may not have any realizable benefit that's being run by people who are better at pitching funding proposals than delivering results.
If this is true, why are all technologically advanced civilizations run by a strong state government? And I guess rocket technology, information technology, satellites, and every other major advance of the 20th century funded directly by government research have netted us very little.
Here's food for thought. Polywell fusion has amazing potential as a viable energy source. Government funding consists of $500,000 from the US Navy and run by a private company. The researchers are not Government employees. With some Venture Capital they could be running this project with billions of capital investments
I thought you just said government funding was the problem? Would polywell reactors had a chance at private capital investment in the 1980s, so it could develop to the point where it may be viable? Or are you just unable to form a coherent argument if you're allowed to write more than a few sentences?
I agree that there need to be more reasonable restrictions for research and development, but that's more of a function of bad governance than private initiative. All of the programs in Australia and South Korea are sponsored by their federal governments.
We don't do commercial R&D because we can't afford it. All our money is going to Federal programs.
Commercial R&D is just like commerce itself. Incredibly short sighted and hamstrung by the requirement of quick return on investment. That's why pure R&D does not exist in the commercial realm, especially since the closure of Bell Labs. Modern corporations are so greedy, they are only allowed by their shareholders to perform product development. Anything that has a good chance of losing money - like pure research and development - is never even put on the table.
Thats not why. Whats driving offshoring is the promise of slave wages. We can not compete with slave wages and never will. We just cant. Our country has to degrade to their poverty level before our workers are competitively priced.
The problem is, in order for that to happen, our country has to be first destroyed by our own capitalistic greed.
We are doomed.
We could block importation of goods, or place extremely high taxes on them so we can lower the taxes on our citizens... (which would be a good idea) but... in the end i think we wont because we like cheap products... even if it means losing your job.
No one really cares about America, or its people. The world doesnt care, and we the American people dont even care. We exist to be exploited by those who have the money.... and they certainly dont care.
The top 1%... blah blah blah... we've heard it all before... they have a ridiculous amount of wealth... and yet we in the broke 99% have nothing. Thats not going to cahnge because no one cares.
Its that simple. WE NEED TO STOP PRETENDING THAT WE GIVE A DAMN, and just kill the country.... oh but before we do, lets bleed her dry for all the pennies she has. And that is exactly whats happening and the mentality.
The problem can be traced throughout "western" countries, it's not unique to the US: Science is no money maker (anymore).
You want money? You want easy money? Get a MBA degree! Get a good golf handicap and you're set.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Engineers have been paid badly relative to lawyers and money-movers for longer than the H1-B scheme has existed, and for much longer than the numbers have been so large. That's probably before you were born, kid.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If you want better science and technology, you need to give the scientists and engineers more incentives, respect and recognition. I don't just mean respect and recognition in their field, I mean by society at large for creating the life in which we now live. They also need incentives that are proportional to their achievement; it's an absurd state of affairs where an executive can take home millions of dollars a year while some of those who've made the technology which is the cornerstone of our society often take home a 10th of that or less. Even more absurd that for some reason we value the average plumber's time ahead of that of the average engineer or scientist.
In many ways, these are the signs of a decaying society. The people who have been the architects of the greatest progress have been disenfranchised from receiving the benefits of their labor and because of it, they'll become detached and apathetic. Who's going to take their place seeing how they're treated? What incentive is there to continue their work?
Yeah, where's the yoorpean equivalent of Tim Berners-Lee? U S A! Number one! U S A! Number one!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I left it as Indian as I'm not going to list every single one since you could, technically list hundreds if you include all the ones that existed before and after colonisation.
On the plus side, you got quite a few to choose from.
Where I work, about a third of the engineering positions are people from abroad - foreigners or (by now) immigrants, most of them from Europe and India.
A HR person told me once that the process of moving somebody to the US and all the immigration paperwork costs between $70k and $100k and that is considered a fair deal to get somebody who is good.
That was in 2000 IIRC. The people who have been moved to the US by the company are the ones who tend to stick around and survive layoffs, so the percentage of foreigners has increased since then.
I haven't seen any new foreign faces in a couple of years. It's probably no longer cost effective to hire people from abroad.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
The decline in science and technology in America is enough to scare the hell out of me. The worst of it is that we can do nothing to fix it that the public would tolerate. Requirements for success by our school children would have to be drastic. American parents are in no way willing to put their kids through the kind of hell it takes to make competitive scholars. Some nations have genius scholars simply because extraordinary accomplishments are the only hope a young person has to avoid a living hell.
A lot of people here are talking about H1bs and the cost of education and one person even said the size of our population somehow correlates to a lack of amazing scientific progress. If that's true, India and China should have warp drives already.
Let's stop with the nonsense, especially with regard to immigrant workers.
While some companies do abuse H1bs it's not the cause of the decline of US scientific leadership, not even close! Einstein, Fermi, Godel et al were all foreigners! Please take the immigration debate elsewhere!
The realize the real root of the problem: culture. We have created a culture that loves to watch celebrities and make money. We have not instilled in our students the value of science education. And this should be seen as the biggest tragedy going into the second decade of the 21st century. People lack basic scientific literacy and they seems to be ok with not understanding a great many things. Just the other day I read about a high school that wanted to cut science labs because too many white students were overachieving while the minority students were not. This should be obvious to anyone with common sense that this is absurd. Taking away resources from achieving students and directed them to non-achieving students won't help anyone. There are a lot of factors why students don't perform well in school, particularly in the math and science fields. But I think the main reason is culture. The under-achieving students haven't had it beaten into them that their education, particularly in science, is invaluable. And while these are often minority students, they are not exclusively so. My grandfather came to this country with a PhD in physics but less than $6.00 in his pocket and no family, but managed to work his way up to solidly middle class with a comfortable life and his kids are in engineering. The idea that education is paramount has been drilled into me from birth and now I'm a graduate physics student and I enjoy doing physics.
So my point is, you must hammer into the psyche of the populace that science and math are not inaccesible and can be quite enjoyable if some hard work is put into study. Not everything is about money and getting the MBA (but yes, increased funding would go a long way to help advance STEM). And even though some companies do probably abuse H1bs, it's not the reason we're lacking and neither is the size of our population (a silly idea in my humble opinion, it's obvious to see why).
So, even thought Tyson makes a weak link between the shooting of Apophis and American science, the point he raises is still a valid one and is a valid concern and requires an honest attempt at a cultural shift as I pointed just mentioned that requires us, especially scientists, to show the population that evolution is fact, the reasons for it, why it's important, and how spectacular learning about it is.
That would be the Cheetohs® and Mountain Dew®...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Even more interesting is the fact that Japanese companies rarely hire foreign engineers. Technology in Japan is homegrown. Yet, the Japanese beat the Americans in several areas of high technology. Most of the patents for your LCD monitor are owned by Japanese companies.
But Japan also suffers for it. If it let more foreigners in, perhaps Japan would do better in, say, software development. Perhaps it would do better with other devices if it let a few foreigners show them something about interface design? It's this insularity that appears to be holding back their otherwise excellent products in many ways. not that they aren't successful, but they could be even better.
... and then they built the supercollider.
In a good year there are jobs for half of the newly minted Ph.D.s. We have a massive and growing glut of people trained in the sciences. I'm one of them; Ph.D. in biochemistry and about to be unemployed for the second time in five years. Last time it was for eight months. With the economy having cratered I wonder how long it will be this time.
> They do what they can do well, we do what we can do well.
And what exactly is it that we can do well these days? Science and technology? Nope. Industrial production? Nope. Software development? Nope. Agriculture? Oh, yeah, we can still do that.
It's funny, if your comment had any merit of truth to it, the free market would adjust itself, and the highly skilled workforce would MOVE to another country where they can work for more. Are you suggesting that these people brought in on a visa would be paid more in their home country? Somehow, I think they're getting a better deal moving to the US, which means that the US is paying these people more than other countries (or other countries have laws in place preventing them from working there). Either way, what you are advocating in preventing these visas is " to make the rich richer at the expense of everyone else". By this I mean that people in the USA are richer than the vast majority of people in the world. You only want to pay people who grew up rich lots of money to work here, thus keeping the wealth isolated to our country. The intelligent and skilled workers of other countries can stay where they are getting paid LESS money (otherwise why would they want to move here), and thus ensure that the rich keep getting richer.
Your logic on this matter is DEEPLY flawed. Only through a free market on labor can everyone get paid what they deserve.
Phil
Get an MBA. Half the work, twice the standard of living. If you're smart, do a salary survey and really look at the work conditions of the various career paths. I didn't.
Engineers, and many scientists from what I see, work long hours, get very little respect/recognition, and make a decent salary. Don't expect a door or window to your "office", and expect to be jealous of Dilbert (I'm no kidding).
With an MBA you get lots of recognition (i.e. take credit for what your engineers do), get little blame (i.e. blame all your engineers), and get ~50% more salary despite the omnipresent line of drool on the left side of your mouth. No one bats an eye when you leave for a 3:30 PM tee time either. Best of all your skills are "universal", no need to understand microwave design now that you manage it, you worked for a disk drive manufacturer. Same thing, right?
Seriously, the incentives are pretty fouled up at the moment, and you will kick yourself later if you get into engineering or science for anything but the cerebral self rewards your are occasionally allowed to enjoy (in between schedule related beatings from your MBA wielding overlord).
Actually, this notion is only partially true. Many of them were educated elsewhere, but in many of the poorer countries universal education isn't free. Mostly it's the richer people who can afford to go, even if schooling itself is free. But even then, many of the ones that eventually immigrate to the US go here for graduate school. While many get their undergraduate degrees in their native country, a number of them travel here for one as well. The one who travel here for an undergraduate education often pay a large sum of money to do it, and are obviously from relatively wealthy families. However, with graduate schools, things are different. In engineering graduate schools, it's common for well over 50% of doctoral students to be foreigners. It's also extremely common for the vast majority of these students to be funded as either TAs, RAs, PAs etc. This funding (particularly RAs and PAs) tends to come from the federal government via NSF grants. For a 5 year PhD (which is really fast), that's about $500k of taxpayer money that has gone into educating these people (Assuming a single RA costs a professor ~$50k/year, and half their grant money is turned over to the university to pay for overhead expenses). To turn around and say that they can't work in the US is ridiculous. We will pay huge sums of money to educate someone, but then say that you can't work here.
Phil
Hell, we're riding in the short bus now!
If he really said what you claim about spelling, then he is entirely wrong. Spellings in English were not standardised until well after the two dialects split. Noah Webster is responsible for a lot of US spellings. The English spellings were adopted at around the same time, but following different rules. In English, the spellings are close to the words in the languages from which English stole the words, in American English Webster made them approximately phonetic (although failed quite considerably due to a lack of consistent phonetic rules, resulting in US spellings being differently confusing, rather than less confusing). Some rules, like the -ize ending, come from a decision in US English to adopt the latin or transliterated greek spelling, while the British spelling follows the French.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Japan can produce homegrown technology because their education system produces enough homegrown students who are actually competent at science and mathematics.
Does that make you feel better?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2Al5BnGC5c
It's only one small example of the US tech businesses allowing the lead to slip through their fingers, but it's pretty representative of the malaise.
Up until the last few years, American manufacturers of telescope mounts for amateur astronomers were acknowledged as the leaders in the field, with products from companies such as Astro-Physics and Software Bisque being touted as the last word in astro-mount tech, and highly sought-after.
The trouble is those companies, and most American amateur astronomers with them, are still saying that, even though it hasn't been true for some time.
Astrosystemes (Austria), Astelco (Germany?), and other European manufacturers have forged ahead with innovative and advanced technology, while Americans sit around congratulating themselves about being Number One, while relying on outdated last-century designs.
The US eerily resembles the UK in this regard: the Brits have a reputation for occasionally developing some at-the-time advanced technology ahead of everybody else, then sitting back and congratulating themselves for the next 50 years, while the world races by and leaves them behind.
It's almost as if China owns us, economically, and Europe owns us, technologically. What do we have left?
You should read about logical fallacies in wikipedia. What you have just implied is "Americans are dumber than Japanese" and nothing else. Your statements don't prove in any way that "H-1B engineers were never necessary to the American economy."
You mention WW2, but the US got MOST of its technology FROM its allies and the axis powers. Radar, computers, the jet engine, the list goes on and on.
And I think this is significant, for a long time the US has been "cheating", a lot of the tech they developed wasn't developed by them at all, or at best in cooperation with others. And the US has become less good at working together and the rest of the world has less reasons to work together.
The americans got a lousy reputation, I am sure most here are aware that being america's allie is a good way to get yourself attacked by them. Vietnam promised independence, then had millions killed by the US, Iraq was an ally, so was the Taliban. Even western allies are not safe with the US having an attack plan ready for The Netherlands if any of its citizens would come up for war crimes. America would rather invade a friendly nation then have one of its citizens face justice for war crimes.
Internally, the US ain't doing much better. "United" states? Don't make me laugh.
But the US doesn't have to worry to much, as bad as it is doing, the rest of the world ain't doing much better. And you never know what the next big thing will be and who will invent it and who gets to benefit from it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
> While some companies do abuse H1bs it's not the cause of the decline of US scientific leadership, not even close! Einstein, Fermi, Godel et al were all foreigners! Please take the immigration debate elsewhere!
*ANY* stable human organization sorted by authority or skill or pay is going to resemble a pyramid. And you don't get to the top of the pyramid without starting at the bottom and working your way up to the extent of your full potential. Our immigrant geniuses were supported by vast numbers of local geniuses, local competents, and local grunt force.
When we threw away our local base of the pyramid, we started eroding our local center of the pyramid, because it no longer had a source. We're now in horrible danger of losing the top of our pyramid, because there's no base to feed the center to feed the top. At which point we won't be able to import anyone directly to the top anymore either.
We are basically importing far more workers than we have work for, and this is why people are observing the wage depression effect (and resulting new student discouragement effect, and existing workers leaving their fields). That's pretty basic supply and demand economics. If you have a huge spike in demand, importing to meet some of the missing difference in supply can only help you. But if you have a dip in demand or spike in supply, it is insanity to keep importing more supply. It is exactly the same pattern we correctly followed in the US's old expansionist and industrialization period - huge numbers of workers migrated in, and it was greatly to our benefit to encourage this, because we were aggressively building up infrastructure and pushing the population westward; but as we got things built, there was less need for that huge influx of workers, and immigration numbers (relative to total population) tapered off.
What riots of the '70's are you talking about? Do you mean the '60's? In the 1970's, there weren't many riots in the USA. There were a few motivated by the Viet Nam war (not hedonism); Kent State was the big one. I see a race riot on that list, a couple of prison riots, and looting in the wake of a blackout. None of those are hedonism-motivated.
I'm not trying to be antagonistic to your point, but I do care about historical accuracy, and the Long Hot Summer was in the 1960's. Is that what you are referring to?
$META_SIG_JOKE
for what it's worth, CS research (specifically, in systems) is still crap outside the US (try reviewing papers from asia and europe and you'll get the picture). and it's not just the language barrier; these papers suck in motivation and methodology as well as presentation. barring 2-3 centers in europe (epfl, eth, cambridge, msr-cambridge) and asia (msr-asia), which produce good work and are taken seriously, everyone else is just producing garbage. systems research in CS is still extremely US-centric (restricted to the top 10-20 schools and the top 4-5 industrial labs).
So you are saying we should make it worse?
Table-ized A.I.
As much as the claim "a bunch of Imams got together and basically stated that Math and Science were of the devil" plays into contemporary stereotypes, it is a very superficial and incomplete assessment.
What happened was a period of scientific breakthroughs and constant progress in conjunction with the expanding empires of Islam from Andalusian Spain, to Kashgar in Western China.
Then, several events started the slow but steady decline. The first was the Mongol invasion from the east, which destroyed Baghdad as a seat of science (and government) for the Muslim east. Great libraries were lost in the event. The Silk Road trade was eliminated, and with it all the hinterland that produced luminaries such as Al-Farabi, Al-Biruni and many more for many centuries.
The second was the Reconquista in Spain which took several centuries. Again, untold amounts of books were burned or lost.
Then following the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks, 1492 saw two events: the final fall of Muslim Spain, and Columbus' discovery of America. With the wealth of the Americas, Europe now had access to new trade and riches, and developed many technologies for sailing, trade, military, ...etc. No longer were they constrained by the Muslim Orient being a barrier between them and trade limited to India and China.
Then came the rejection of modern technology: the most stark example is the printing press. While Europe started the Renaissance, and printed books started an intellectual revolution, the printing press was rejected in Muslim lands. I am not sure why, but perhaps the Ottoman authorities feared it as a means of insubordination. Regardless, the end result was 3 centuries of relying on manuscripts only, causing poor dissemination of knowledge.
You can see the effect even in religious disciplines, for example, jurisprudence: the later commentators were just compilers/editors/summarizers of earlier texts. Even they declared that the "door to ijtihad has been closed", and all that has been said has been said, nothing new was to come about. This decline happened under late Mameluke and Ottoman rule.
This was soon followed by the colonialism period from Mughal India (1700s by the British East India Company), North Africa (France 1830s), Egypt (Britian 1882), Palestinian mandate, and the rest of it.
Following World War II, military dictators came to power (Nasser, Sukarno, Assad, Saddam, Qaddafi, ...etc.)
At least the Arab countries have not yet recovered from those last 2 stages.
For more on Science under Islam, watch this awesome BBC documentary: Science and Islam - Episode 1.
The three episodes are described here:
Also articles, books and talks by Dr. George Saliba (Columbia University) are highly recommended in this regard. He is interviewed in the above documentary.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
H1B visa quotas are a peripheral issue with respect to the decline in US leadership in science and technology. Although it is a visible issue among /.r's, many of whom are out of work programmers, few, if any, H1B visa holders have contributed breakthrough scientific discoveries that herald scientific leadership. Rather, H1B Visa holders are largely hired as technologists and not leading edge scientists. Needless to say, developing technology is not the same as doing science that creates the basis for new technology and new fields of human endeavor, although there is a good deal of overlap for obvious economic reasons. This confusion is apparent in the remarkably scientific illiterate coverage of "science" stories by the media, who routinely conflate the two in their "Science and Technology" "columns" on most "news" web-sites, where most of the science stories are actually just advertisements for various new brands of technology being touted by advertisers, presented without a clue as to the scientific underpinnings of the technology.
Rather, the decline in US scientific leadership can be attributed to the product to two factors 1) the relative decline in funding for science and 2) the decline in the perception of science as a career choice that makes both economic and social sense among a population that is becoming increasingly relatively scientific illiterate. Education funding for science has declined because this money is now needed to pay for the numerous mistakes made by several generations of politicians, that has resulted in 1) inappropriate investment in technologies or ideas that don't work or are ineffective, 2) misdirecting funds to useless endeavors, such as starting wars that don't need to be fought, 3) degregulating and destablizing economic markets that reduce overall return on investments, including those that fund science, 4) creating environmental problems, faster than science can address and find solutions, thereby lowering the carrying-capacity of our nation to support science, and 5) increasing debt payments that create an interest rate penalty imposed by the usual political ploy of delaying rather than solving problems (eg. the recent Copenhagen summit), 6) appealing and appeasing the those who seek "moral" as opposed to logic-based solutions to problems, and 7) a host of other factors.
This effect is magnified as the proportion of the electorate becomes increasingly scientifically illiterate and the clamor to keep up with science done elsewhere grows diluted and instead many call now on politicians to openly attack science, such as is occurring in the "debates" over climate-warming, evolution by means of natural selection, continuing efforts to underfund the public education system and attacks upon teachers that form the foundation of America's science education effort, and the implementation of science-based management of social policy (ie. usefulness of x-rays in detecting breast cancers, effectiveness of abstinence-only based sex education methods, "ethical" restrictions on stem-cell research, effects of rising atmospheric CO2 on economic policy, etc).
Japan and European countries are pulling ahead in many areas, primarily because they continue to improve their educational systems that foster a larger role and appreciation for science in the social fabric of their nations as a whole. One need only to examine standard Junior High School mathematics texts in Japan and compare them with those used in the US (when math texts are even available), to observe the presence of numerous concepts of elementary calculus, which are absent in American texts and not introduced until the last year of High School, if they are presented at all. Many other countries such as China and India are finally beginning to implement a similar emphasis and given they have much larger populations, the expression of exceptional talent is becoming more apparent as part of their overall efforts. Unlike in America, in none of these countries is it politically fashionable to advocate open
Because a belief in God can be used to explain anything and everything, therefore it explains nothing at all.
Investment theory models treat corporations as if they were mathematical or perhaps physical entities - a mechanism, if you will.
That is not the case.
A corporation is a SOCIAL entity, because most of the moving parts are PEOPLE.
That means that there are second and third and umpty-ordinal effects of the model-driven first order effects because the model cannot predict how the employees will feel and react to decisions made in the company.
Any military commander will tell you that the most precious attribute of a unit is *morale*. You can give a man the best weapons, the best equipment, outnumber the enemy by a significant margin - but if the troops won't fight, you're going to lose.
Morale is built from human relationships and human contact. It is constructed from trust and experience. It is a very touchy-feely, nebulous concept that does not model well. It can be simulated, somewhat, and many wargames attempt to build in some approximation of it because it is so important. Do your investment models take it into account?
I have been in companies with both low and high morale. The difference is night and day. And a company with low morale is both a horrid place to work and and underperformer.
Leadership, not management, build winners.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Actually, we CAN compete with slave wages. The price of a good or service is the sum of its costs. If they attack with slave wages, we counter with zero taxes on manufacturing.
We CAN win this, but we absolutely, positively must get rid of the income taxes.
TA, RA and PA positions are NOT education - it's employment. I work as an RA, and believe me it's not taxpayer money going into educating me. It's money paying me to do my damned job and perform the research that my adviser tells me to. A single RA costs closer to 30k/year, but don't think that the NSF etc are paying for our education - they're paying for our work and results.
TAs, well, you've got to be kidding me. A foreign TA (and I've been one of those too) is basically a way of paying someone with a master's degree a bit more than minimum wage to do the work of teaching undergraduate students. Again, that's NOT taxpayer money going to educate me. That's taxpayer money going to pay someone $10 per hour to teach university level physics courses.
Take a look at your department finances sometime - it's an eye-opener. The net effect of foreign grad students is to make up 20-25% of the INCOME of a department. In my department we teach the classes that have 1000 students in them. We get paid roughly 6k/semester for this, though once you add in tuition, healthcare etc it comes closer to 18k. So the department pays about 18k/semester to get its big classes taught, and for that 1000 students receives around 100k. Even when you take out classroom expenses etc etc, we're a huge net earner
Why are you generalising H1-B's? I can just as well say American native engineers are not loyal to any companies, too opinionated and only dream of making a quick six figure sum by going IPOs. May be that is why management wants to replace American workers with cheaper and loyal H1-B's. But If I said that it would be wrong. As a veteran (+15 years) in this industry I have seen all kinds of people everywhere. I have seen and still see H1-B's commanding six figures or more right here in Silicon Valley and working successfully across all kinds of companies. There is another aspect of the H1-B debate that you guys need to understand and I would try to write it below.
Would you rather have H1B immigrants looking to settle down in USA or have those jobs offshored to India and China. Believe me when I say that in spite of the constant protests and all over the last few years, the pace of offshore outsourcing has only gained more momentum over the last few years. The quality of delivery from offshore is also continuously improving with people in offshore becoming more experienced and skilled in their trade.At this point of time allmost all big companies have shops set up in different cities in India and whenever there is a new project that comes - management first thinks of getting it done from offshore. Only if it is absolutely not possible to offshorize it , it looks for getting it done locally. In fact so much so that companies really now a days don't apply for H1-B unless they absolutely have to. There is a fixed limit to how many H1-B's can be allocated and for the last 2 years those quotas were not fulfilled. Even if I agree to your argument (though what I have seen does not agree with it) that H1-B depresses wages, the fact is that H1-B payrolls are just like anybody else in this country so H1-B beneficiaries pays taxes just like any one else, they can change jobs by finding a new H1B sponsor (i.e jump ship for higher wages) and walk on the path ot become permanent resident and eventually American citizens and try to settle down here by buying properties etc. In essence they work for the American Dream. So H1-B may not be perfect but it is the best that we can have. Would you rather have those H1-B jobs offshorized or billion dollar companies using L1 and other restrictive visas bring their people in (which btw is allready happening in a BIG BIG way)? In the long term I believe that USA has to carry on with a balanced policy of allowing foreign immigrants (the educated or hard working kinds and not the gang members kind).
For folks who get a kick out of bashing the H1B policy pls go to http://www.guestworkerfraud.com/ . Here is my 2 cents; America was built by immigrants, so it is useless to complain about new immigrants. With the current legal immigration process, the only way for anyone to get citizenship, is either family based or employment based. Employment based means getting through the process of H1 or L1. I do understand most of the ./'s are in the IT field, where H1B has been abused the most. But most people I know are not in IT, they are Engineers or Doctors.
Being involved in the hiring process, I can confidently say that no one was willing to come to WNY. The company I worked, had the jobs open for as long as 8 months. Finally deciding to tap the immigrant pool from top US colleges.
Sorry, I am too drunk to comprehend all your post. All I can say is that she passed.
I dont read
Sort of hard to imagine careers in finance will be stable in the US in the future. Whatever finances we have these days seem to be based on inflows of foreign funds. Too many careers in "finance", will only mean a decrease in the rate of return on investment on borrowed funds.
Why are you generalising H1-B's? I cam just as well say American native engineers are not loyal to any companies, too opinionated and only dream of making a quick six figure sum by going IPOs. May be that is why management wants to replace American workers with cheaper and loyal H1-B's. But If I said that it would be wrong. As a veteran (+15 years) in this industry I have seen all kinds of people everywhere. I have seen and still see H1-B's commanding six figures or more right here in Silicon Valley and working successfully across all kinds of companies. There is another aspect of the H1-B debate that you guys need to understand and I would try to write it below.
Would you rather have H1B immigrants looking to settle down in USA or have those jobs offshored to India and China. Believe me when I say that in spite of the constant protests and all over the last few years, the pace of offshore outsourcing has only gained more momentum over the last few years. The quality of delivery from offshore is also continuously improving with people in offshore becoming more experienced and skilled in their trade.At this point of time allmost all big companies have shops set up in different cities in India and whenever there is a new project that comes - management first thinks of getting it done from offshore. Only if it is absolutely not possible to offshorize it , it looks for getting it done locally. In fact so much so that companies really now a days don't apply for H1-B unless they absolutely have to. There is a fixed limit to how many H1-B's can be allocated and for the last 2 years those quotas were not fulfilled. Even if I agree to your argument (though what I have seen does not agree with it) that H1-B depresses wages, the fact is that H1-B payrolls are just like anybody else in this country so H1-B beneficiaries pays taxes just like any one else, they can change jobs by finding a new H1B sponsor (i.e jump ship for higher wages) and walk on the path ot become permanent resident and eventually American citizens and try to settle down here by buying properties etc. In essence they work for the American Dream. So H1-B may not be perfect but it is the best that we can have. Would you rather have those H1-B jobs offshorized or billion dollar companies using L1 and other restrictive visas bring their people in? In the long term I believe that USA has to carry on with a balanced policy of allowing foreign immigrants (the educated or hard working kinds and not the gang members kind). USA has got lots and lots of land and the public at large has to learn to start sharing it with "folks" of the other kinds.
H1-B is NOT immigration, it's indentured servitude... It's share-cropping in the high-tech world. It pushes down wages dramatically, and what happens when you undermine the profit motive of an field? People stop aspiring to it as a career.
I'd be fine with opening the borders. I'm NOT at all happy with the H1-B program.
Are you suggesting there weren't celebrities until the past couple decades, nor greedy people?
And if so, why is it that watching celebrities makes people want to go into every field, other than scientific, because we certainly don't have a lack of lawyers or MBAs...
No, actually it isn't.
His concerns are the same baseless nonsense we've been seeing for decades.
"Oh no! Country X [Japan/China/Russian] is going to take over the world economically!"
"Oh no! Country X did Y in space before us."
"Oh no! Country X has a larger Z [Jet/Atom smasher/Computer/Robot] than we do!"
It's motivated by two completely different groups. One is the creeping anti-Americanism as much from our allies as our enemies, which Obama talked about early in his term, and we see here on /. on a regular basis. The other is simply easily-scared Americans, who don't have any perspective, and all they know about the world is an arbitrary fact here and there...
I learned, early on, that History is the purveyor of context and understanding our modern world, not Science. If you want some perspective, ask a historian, not a scientist, especially a poor one with a good PR man like Tyson.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I have been working on doing a machine tool project with an Italian engineer for that last year. One thing I noticed is that there are good sized tariffs on machine tools imported from Europe into the U.S. while there are no such tariffs against machine tools imported from China.
I spent some time at the David Sarnoff Museum in Princeton, NJ and it should be noted in the context of your argument that much of the early research on liquid crystals was in fact done at the David Sarnoff Laboratory of the RCA corporation (now Sarnoff Corporation) in the U.S. circa 1962-1964.
I do agree with you conclusion despite the above arguments: I too think we can do fine without the H1-B visa folks.
I think people justify the argument for H1-B's by saying that there are a lot of code monkeys required to write the endless GUI software needed for public consumption. With all of the countries in the world, it is easy to get someone who was trained to a moderately high standard for the same cost as a local entry level coder. It doesn't take more than a few calls however from the last local hires back to friends still in college explaining that H1-B's have all the entry level jobs in order to decimate the number of CS grads produced in the U.S. In the short term, the company gets more work done. In the long term, I suspect bored H1B's with masters degrees will be sitting in all the entry level slots which might have produced future CEO's and engineering directors if the people were thought of as plants to be nurtured rather than resources to be exploited. In short, maintaining an organization is about the process and I think H1-B's destroy the process that made the great American engineering organizations by allowing companies to exploit workers in the short term without the need to grow them for the long term.
While I agree with your assessment that US schools and society should foster interest and acceptance of more hard science and engineering, and seek to reduce the attractiveness of careers like being the next basketball or hip hop star, using the Japanese method of schooling does have its own set of drawbacks.
http://www.japantoday.com/category/kuchikomi/view/childrens-depression-and-suicide-a-worsening-problem
I think something in the middle between the US methods and the Japanese methods of childhood education might hit the sweet spot a little better.
If that means some short attention span theater stockholder doesn't make enough this quarter..who cares...
I think it is far more important, for the longer range view of humanity in general, that the emphasis is more placed on just being happy and having enough, rather than the great race to see who can accumulate the most electronic digits in some server some place, to be at the top of an unhappy and dysfunctional dystopian society, by being the most strict and ruthless and to use your word, "demanding".
I, for one, to follow the meme and to use an example that everyone here would understand, have absolutely no desire to be part of a society of either extreme (which unfortunately both extremes exist today and ARE being pushed heavily towards); either some zombied/brainwashed out Borg "you as an individual have no worth, and must conform and do exactly as you are programmed to do for the collective" type society, nor a "profits above everything else" type individual greed is king no rules and get out of the way or you are dead Ferengi type society.
Got no use for either, but sadly, those are roughly the two main political tracks on the planet now. Kinda sucks.
First off I am a frequent lurker of the Polywell community and if you are being intellectually
honest you know darn well that the potential device has only a slim chance of being
better than ITER. The lack of funds is one thing true, the other is the performance of science
(in this case fusion) without a proper amount of community (yes boring democratic government)
peer review so that in 30 years on the most basic assumptions have yet to be verified.
Secondly were "climate change" false or a scam there would be zero reason to develop Polywell
since this country has ample coal reserves -- enough to last 100's of years.
Thirdly I have been long been an academic researcher, now am in industry and I will tell you
that nothing innovative in science comes except from government funding. The halcyon
days of Bell Labs funding astronomy are long gone. There is a difference between science
and technology.
Capitalism, as practiced worldwide has advantages in terms of efficiency, but few in terms of
"the vision thing".
Many, many people get MBA degrees--many more than get engineering degrees. Some of these MBA holders make a lot of money in business management--more than most engineers. But most people with MBAs do not make a lot of money. And, many managers who find business success hold technical degrees. Business management darling Jack Welch, for instance, held a BS, MS, and PhD in chemical engineering.
The best path to getting rich in the U.S. is to manage a successful business--yours or someone else's. This is a path that is just as open to engineers as anyone else, MBA or not. Plenty of engineers rise into management.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Somehow, I think they're getting a better deal moving to the US, which means that the US is paying these people more than other countries (or other countries have laws in place preventing them from working there).
It's not so much that the salaries in the US are higher (compared to other Western countries at least), it's that the cost of living is so low (outside of a handful of places like Manhattan).
I took about a 15% pay cut when my company transferred me to one of our US offices. However, my costs for rent and food have more than halved, and consumer goods in general (furniture, clothes, electronics, etc) cost anything from 20% - 80% less, so in real terms I'm ahead.
I'm just hoping I can get a good chunk of change saved up and sent home to pay off my mortgage before the US Dollar tanks.
I work as a foreign engineer in Japan, and have worked as a foreign engineer in the USA, and I have to say that the parent article is massively misinformed.
Japan welcomes foreign knowledge and innovators, and this policy has contributed to their economic growth since the late 1800s. The US used to be this way too, but over the last 20-30 years it appears that public policy has shifted remarkably.
A three year Japanese work visa as a qualified engineer took me a couple of weeks to organize. My similar visa for the US some years ago took over six months. Apparently now they can take *years*. Guess which country gets my tax dollars? And those tax dollars are totally derived from export earnings so my adopted homeland receives an obvious net benefit.
The parent article is emblematic of the core problem in the US. You have become isolationist and paranoid. You scapegoat and exclude migrants, who in practice would bring a net benefit to your economy and nation. Your whole country and way of life was built on the back of migration. Is it any wonder that your economy is failing now that you have locked the best and the brightest out?
Like most religiously fundamentalist nations, your science and technology is sliding backwards. Your greatest strength was your open and secular society and yet you now pass ever more draconian laws and regulations to try and arrest the downward trend.
I have great admiration for the US, what it has been and what it could be. But right now, you are destroying yourselves, and it is a damn shame to watch.
Those 'easier' jobs are all in support-type jobs, supporting people who actually make and/or create things, one group has fewer services without the other, the other group has no job without the other... A society _needs_ people who make and create things.
I was mostly referring to people from less industrialized countries such as china, india, pakistan etc. In those countries the cost of living is often even cheaper, but the pay they get in the US is much greater. I also don't think people from first world countries like the UK, Germany, France, Spain, etc have as hard of a problem getting visas.
Phil
I agree completely, I didn't mean to say that Japan was innovating only because we weren't really competing, they have created a culture that appreciates innovation and encourages intelligence.
I definitely wouldn't say there is only a single cause, it would indeed take many to get us where we are. I do think that the anti-intellectualism is a fairly recent phenomena though. During my schooling through the 80's and 90's people weren't made fun of for being smart or geeky although admittedly that was probably not representative of the population at large as it was a small town in rural Vermont.
A large number of changes would need to occur and I see no sign that they will happen anytime soon. America is slumbering, it will take much more pain before we as a population wake the hell up.
It is very frustrating seeing science deliberating misinterpreted to support political agendas. We are definitely capable of competing properly though. There is just no will to do what is necessary at the moment for the vast majority of Americans.
I suppose it's less true with TAs, but with RAs, the government is paying for both the results and the education. I'm also an RA, and know what it's like. It's a lot of work, the pay isn't very great, but it's still not cheap. And the cost of an RA is NOWHERE near $30k/year, at least not here. Salary alone is 18k, tuition costs are another $24k or so, health insurance etc are probably at least $5k-$6k, and then you factor in the fact that at most universities half of all grant money goes straight to the department/college/university costs. That works out to about $100k of grant money to pay for one year of school. While you're getting paid almost nothing of that, that is what the costs involved are. As far as the NSF etc paying for results or for education, it's a bit of both. Sure, they want the results, but PhD students aren't really the cheapest way to get results. It's not until the last two or three years of a PhD where most people start getting useful results, and making progress. So that's at least 2 or 3 years of paying them when little is getting "done". By the time most RAs are producing good results, they're graduating and getting out of there. The real truth of the matter is much of the work done at universities is spent training future scientists. Some will go to national labs, some into industry, others will stay in academia, etc. The benefit of most PhD's thesis does not work out to the price tag that is often associated with it. However, the training of these people to go on to do greater things throughout their careers is.
Phil
Hiring outside help just because it is cheaper is not what the H1B program was built for. If there is an actual shortage of domestic workers performing regular tasks, such as programming then I don't see a need to bring in other people as the going wage is set by the local population, not the world population. This is why it is so badly abused.
If you're doing cutting edge research and someone across the pond has potential to contribute then by all means, bring him or her onboard. That is why the program was created.
Beyond that I'm unsure of where you mean the education lacks. If you're talking about primary schooling, grades 1 - 12 then I agree with you. If you're talking about universities which you specifically mention then I think you are hard pressed to state how any standards have been lowered in the science fields.
The reason why people would see solving integrals as hard is simply because the vast majority of Americans, or Europeans, or Asians, or anyone for that matter would not encounter integrals in their life. If they are pursuing a math degree in the U.S. then this would not be a superhuman feat. My math major friend from high school days went on to CMU and none of his skills seem superhuman to even me although he is quite talented.
With that said, I think there is a growing divide in the U.S. between the educated masses and the increasingly alienated uneducated masses. Most of my family falls into the uneducated group and I don't see that changing despite my family seeing first hand how much more successful those of us that are educated have become. Maybe in another generation their priorities will change. If experience is any lesson I have little hope as we try to support our family, give them jobs when they are in need at great personal and economic sacrifices but still nothing changes as education is not valued and to be blunt, inaccessible to them while they were growing up when it would be the most useful. Rural schools are in seriously rough shape with poorly qualified teachers. A lot of that has to do with massively increasing populations of school age children forcing rapid growth without associated funding increases. Eventually this funding will even out and I think the problem will ease back a bit. The is particularly a problem in the Las Vegas and Phoenix areas.
What's this? America has been slipping in science & engineering for the last 10 years?
Well, duh....It's been a little more than 10 years -- we've all been reading slashdot for that amount of time! all this time when we should have been doing our work....
I also don't think people from first world countries like the UK, Germany, France, Spain, etc have as hard of a problem getting visas.
Not really. It's damn near impossible to get a US visa that allows you to work without an employer to sponsor you - which tends to be difficult since most of the time it costs them thousands, of not tens of thousdands, of dollars in application fees and attourney's fees.
I was fortunate - as an Australian citizen I qualify for an E-3 Visa, so the cost to my employer (for the Visa at least) was practically zero, thus meaning I was transferred rather than replaced. Only a few thousand immigrants per year fit into this category, however.
And yet, H1-B increases supply for engineers while increasing demand for lawyers. Funny, that.
(Really, I'm just jousting ... I'm all for getting brilliant engineers over here to compete with me; makes competing much easier for me on a personal level than moving the entire operation to India and have me compete remotely with $100/day workers.)
While I think there is rampant abuse of the H1-B program I do think it is vital a U.S. dominance in all technological fields. Through-out the 30's and 40's we were not pulling just highly educated people from other countries, we were pulling in rockstars of science, people that could contribute the science we were trying to develop.
... which was fairly easy given that the German and Italian governments were practically tossing their rockstars out (with small exceptions given to those whose theories consistently conformed to the state Master Race theories and politics).
Seems like what we really need to return to our state of brilliance is for some major international superpower to decide that it no longer cares about science or technology except insofar as the science's theories support or can be twisted to support the state-sanctioned superstitions.
Oh yeah. That was us last decade. Oops.
Sounds like you have it quite different than we do - for those first 2-3 years whilst you're learning, you're a TA. No questions, no exceptions. That way you're a net income earner for the department - you're paid out of the department education budget, which comes from students taking the classes that you teach. Once you START producing results you get moved up to an RA, or a half TA, half RA job. Tuition costs for an RA at our place (after comprehensive examination, and you're a TA before that) 5k per semester, which the associated professor pays to his own group! Salary here is about 13k per year (TA) or 14k (RA). Note that you have to use the actual tuition paid, not the 'equivalent value' - which is what the department would nominally charge someone outside to be told to run the experiment and look it up in a book/paper when you don't get something.
Our department also has a strong history of spinning off research projects in condensed matter/materials science into profit making companies, working on the IP, mostly developed by the RAs (and to a large degree postdocs, poor sods) working here. We get a regular little paycheck, but the professor in charge of the group gets a huge bonus and the department massive amounts of money when this happens. Perhaps the thesis itself isn't so useful, but I've seen 4 of my colleagues' research projects bring in well over a million each, and that's just in initial funds from investors - if things pan out for a couple of them, they'll be bringing in ten times that much each year.
Sorry, but primary schools set the entry level for universities. Some time ago our sub-university schools struck higher math off their plan because "nobody but students would need it". Result? Students had to get additional training because they didn't even know how to start with integrals, how to do trignometry or how to find a mathematic proof. When your elementary education lacks, the gap to higher education opens up, and soon reaches a point where you cannot even start studying "seriously" because you lack the basic skills. And then there are three possible scenarios. First, universities lower their standards as well to match the lower entry standard. This deteriorates education as a whole. Second, you need prep courses to get to par. Then I question the sense behind basic education. And finally, you have schools that keep the higher standards and schools where you only learn what you need for a "normal", non-university job. Then you get a two class society where everyone who can somehow justify (or afford) it tries to cram their kids into the "better" schools, no matter whether they have the brain power to compete, because you "need" to go there if you want to have a chance in life.
Pick your poison. All these are doomed to fail in some way.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Underground research and military applications
Public perception and reality are very different. People see a few "celebrities" in each profession and think they are the norm. A few footballers earn millions; most earn less than their contemporaries who became plumbers or carpenters. A few lawyers earn millions (Jonathan Sumption to be exact), most do not. A few actors earn millions; most are lucky to earn minimum wage. A few engineers and scientists earn millions but few people hear of them; most of them earn quite reasonable salaries. The most famous former pupil of the school just down the road is a multi-millionaire F1 driver, but it is hardly a common job; many other kids who were at that school have good jobs in technical industries, engineering, science, teaching and banking. As do mine...the only people who assign low social status to scientists, engineers and mathematicians are the underclass and the people with arts degrees who don't earn as much as they think they should.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
they tend to accept sweatshop conditions when they're grad students though.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
well I like the attitude but event with right one you may fall too - there is this thing about the size of China and the authoritarian regimes being more efficient in achieving their (admittedly often badly placed) goals - US may fall (behind) for other reasons too but sheer size of an adversary may already be a problem. The perception of US as oppressor rather than savior does not help either. 'funny' thing though is that all these spitting at US (on occasion being in that camp myself) may find themselves missing US Gendarme especially looking at the mess the new big boy is going to make of things. This all said even if current road is of one way kind it may end going upwards too. Only future can tell what happens. Each nation and state make mistakes and lives trough difficult times, the authoritarian regimes tend to make mistakes however that are difficult to fix because nobody dares call them mistakes - there is a strength in structures that rely on general population if only to chose mistake makers.
First, the idea that the US has only been ahead generally in the post-war 20th century is part myth. The US has always been rich. Even In the 1800s the per capita income was higher then the other hemisphere. Once ahead, you should stay ahead, fair or not, unless you are doing something wrong. And we are certainly doing things wrong.
I wasn't suggesting that the way it is currently isn't flooded with problems but I think you see my point since I specifically mentioned a growing divide between the educated and the uneducated. This needs to be addressed but as I said, there is no will to address it properly.
That said, if a child wants to learn and parents have maintained an active role in their child's education then most public schools are quite capable of offering Algebra to a 5th grader. Personally, I took Algebra in 8th grade I wanna say 15 years ago. Now it's not uncommon for 6th graders to be taking it. My mother taught 8th grade math for almost 20 years, recently she moved to 5th grade where it got easier but now she's back to 7th grade and they are tough!
The administration of most public schools has been far too neutered to be effective largely due to frivolous lawsuits. The litigious nature of many has caused a great deal of problems across all facets of our economy.
There are many great teachers out there that even spend their own money to help enrich the lives of their students. My mother does this regularly and she is far from alone. The education is accessible to practically anybody, there is just no cultural value for education right now. This will change when our quality of life reflects the change in competition globally.
That '<insert your favorite country here> is falling behind in math/science!' is blared by those looking for more simoleons for education, but what the heck does that really mean?
Any science worth a damn is published in acedemic journals that can be purchased by anyone anywhere in any country. If a country is 'ahead' it loses it's 'lead' the minute someone in another country reads about it.
I have trouble imagining how not having enough <insert favorite technical profession here> within your borders could limit you. Technical folk aren't needed en masse. They are needed here and there, sprinkled about in vital areas. Hence they are easily imported from whereever they happen to be by paying them a little extra. It's cheap enough to do, since they aren't needed en masse.
There is no need to worry that <insert foreign discovery here> might not be available in your country. You can always buy it, or if it makes the most economic sense for it to be manufactured in your country then it will be manufactured there. Where the discovery is made makes no difference at all.
The only exception to this is military technology. That technology will be developed and used where the government funds a sufficiently large military industrial complex. It's about the money, not about who has the most scientists. A few scientists go a LONG way.
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Nobody 'deserves' to be paid anything. They get what they CAN get for what they can do. The ability to earn money due to the power inherent in one's situation. Money is the power to consume. Consumption is the destruction of resources therefore is abhorrent to an efficient economy. Thus, an efficient economy produces the most *stuff* by paying the fewest people the least.
One might take what one *can* get paid as a definition of what is the deserved wage. A free society and indeed economic efficiency itself demand that fat cats enjoying an overly cozy situation can be ursurped by those below, however one's own human dignity demands that one preserve the power inherent in one's own situation. This power to earn, and also to consume is abused by us all so as to support our metabolism with food and also to supply our other needs and desires.
It is injust when those with the least power inherent in their situations are prevented from ursurping the power of those fat cats enjoying a more adventageous situation. Indeed, it is economically inefficient. A free society demands that laws facilitate such ursurpation.
Since the very wealthy do not tend to consume as much as invest is most efficient to have a few very wealthy controlling the bulk of wealth with some less wealthy folk controlling a lesser share, down in layers to subsistence level and below ( these redundancies are of course soon eliminated )
I envision an eventual steady state of a triangular society where excess progeny of the very wealthy class fill the wealthy class. Excess progeny of the wealthy class fill the middle class, excess progeny of the middle class fill the lower class, and excess progeny of the lower class fill the graves.
Wealth will tend to concentrate and it won't be possible to maintain both your families class and number at the same time. Increases in economic efficiency that do not increase productivity will move standards of living down generally so that those at subsistence level are moved below that level. Increases in productivity have generally arisen because it has become possible to apply additional resources. As resources become scarce this will no longer be possible.
Where political power is spread among the populace via a democratic voting mechanism, there will inevitably arise a tension between redistribution of wealth and the fact that it is economically inefficient to do this. Attempts to prevent the globalization will backfire. However the end result is equalization and so when wages are equalized, local production will make the most sense in the long run except for goods where real comparative advantage exists.
As growth via the application of additional resources becomes harder due to their scarcity, increases in efficiency will drive increases in profitability. Bureaucracies will find themselves redundant, replaced by lean computer algorithms.
As standards of living are reduced due to increased efficiency without increased productivity, demand for luxuries will necessarily decrease. There will always be a demand for the finer things in life by the very wealthy, but few in number, total demand will decrease. Every increase in efficiency will result in more people being made redundant forced down the class ladder into oblivion.
Of course much of this oblivion may be due to people never having been concieved. It need not be mortality due to starvation etc.
I don't forsee vacancies being filled from lower classes much. The excess progeny from the upper classes will have been invested in by parents of means and will be better equipped to fill vacancies below them than the children of lower class parents in general.
Will people find niches as cogs in the societal machine, or will automation eventually replace everyone? Maybe even someday it could replace the very wealthy in their role as 'interested party' to investments. Maybe this machine would be alive after a fashion and find humans completely redundant, or maybe it would still find them useful as cogs in it's inner workings in a kind of symbiosis.
You could take away all of the taxes, and labor costs per hour are still going to be too high to compete with China's .50 cents an hour.
I dont know where you live, but i doubt you can afford to live on anything even close to that.
because a lot of the worlds population is outside the US the only way it can retain any advantage is in retaining them. Right now, a postdoc gets 55K per YEAR. And after 2-3 years, they are compelled to leave the country. contrast this to a country like Australia where a postdoc is paid 85K at the start. Why would anyone work on research in the US when its easier to get a coding job paying 85+ (atleast)?!.
And then you have the NSF funding which people change their research areas for. No wonder there is no fundamental progress in research. Why would there be when even grants are short term and driven by the need to produce "cool" results attractive to Joe the common man on the street? Which idiot would expect to be able to understand what takes a phd graduate 3 years to come up with in 5minutes of pop-science snippets?
Low pay, the tie-up of directing science by doling out cash, and people who think science should be understood by lay people are the root causes behind why fundamental research is suffering.