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China To Overtake US In Science In Two Years
An anonymous reader writes "China is set to overtake America in scientific output as soon as 2013 — far earlier than expected. Chinese research spending has grown by 20% per year since 1999, now reaching over $100bn, and as many as 1.5 million science and engineering students graduated from Chinese universities in 2006. 'I think this is positive, of great benefit, though some might see it as a threat and it does serve as a wake-up call for us not to become complacent,' said Professor Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith. However, the report points out that a growing volume of research publications does not necessarily mean an increase in quality."
China may do a lot of research, but it does not seem to do a lot of good research. If you've been to China, it is understandable why: There is very much a mentality of "Whatever you want to do is ok, so long as it gets you ahead." Lying, cheating, all perfectly ok. Well maybe you can argue this works in normal life and business (though some serious downsides can be pointed out) it doesn't work in science.
Feynman put it really well (he was talking about the Challenger disaster): "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
Well China's culture doesn't magically stop when you start talking universities and labs. The faking of results goes along strong, because it helps you get ahead. Publish more papers, be more prominent and all that. Works for the individual researcher, I suppose, but that means overall the research is useless. I can write as many papers as I like, fake as many results as I like, that claim that X causes Y. However if X does indeed not cause Y it doesn't do any good, I can't change reality.
Before China can become truly top at science, as in producing the most useful actual output, they'll have to have a cultural change, at least in the scientific community and probably the larger culture.
However I also fail to see why this is a big deal. I wouldn't consider myself all that worldly, but I've traveled to a fair number of countries not the US. All of them are by definition #2 or lower in science output, as well as many other things the US is #1 at. Guess what? that doesn't matter. They are nice places to live, with happy productive people, stable governments, and so on (I don't tend to visit countries that don't meet those requirements). I could move to Canada or the UK or Norway and be quite happy there. They may not be #1 in anything, I don't know, but it doesn't matter. You don't have to be the best at everything, I think maybe Americans need to learn that.
There is a lot of anecdotal evidence of cheating.
And it's also helped by the fact that in China researchers are judged by number of papers they put out - so there is a very strong incentive for copying work from others and add maybe a bit of your own just to push out yet another paper. It's normal for a PhD at a Chinese university to have a dozen or two papers on his name when graduating; against just a few for PhDs at European or American universities.
Cheating is considered a large problem within universities in China - not only universities but also other parts of the whole education system. I've read about doctors working in hospitals with bought certificates. Recently it was pilots flying commercial Chinese airliners without having actually passed the exams. It's a real problem - and arguably part of the problem is the lack of checks and balances. These pilot licenses should have been verified with the school that purportedly issued them, for example, yet airliners were too busy expanding that they didn't do this. I wouldn't be surprised if more bribes were involved in not having those licenses checked.
Quality of Chinese research in general is still low. They will surely pick up to the game sooner or later, and there are definitely very good Chinese researchers around. Just have a look at the top universities in the US: many of their top researchers nowadays are Chinese nationals. Oh and that they are working in the US and not in their home country is not just because.
China also is notorious for science fraud. From my observation, which can be summed up as a 'scientist browsing and delving into various pubs regularly', when there's fraud, it's usually in China.