The Top Ten Countries in Science
| Rank | Country | Papers 1998-2008 |
| 1 | United States | 2,798,448 |
| 2 | Japan | 757,586 |
| 3 | Germany | 723,804 |
| 4 | England | 641,768 |
| 5 | France | 517,096 |
| 6 | People's Republic of China | 511,216 |
| 7 | Canada | 388,471 |
| 8 | Italy | 370,053 |
| 9 | Spain | 271,753 |
| 10 | Russia | 262,982 |
The table (link) lends some credence to Kanazawa's dictum that Asians can't do science. The population of Europe and North America combined are somewhat over one billion, with Asia at some 5.3 billion. Japan and China together produced some 1.3 million papers, while Europe and North America combined produced about 6 million papers. Papers/population for Asia: 0.00025. For Europe and North America: 0.006, or 24 times as many.
However, take a country like South Korea, which had 2.26% of the world's papers, with only 0.8% of the world's population. This would seem to be above average for the world; the U.S. by contrast has 34% of the world's papers (link) with 5% of the world's population. Must be all those Asian scientists engineers immigrating, without whom we wouldn't be competitive.
Sadly, the continents of South America and Africa are not represented on this list.
White people: we've still got what it takes.
Labels: Decline of the West, Science
posted by Dennis Mangan @ 5:00 AM
27 comments
27 Comments:
The ten year sample obscures the emergence of China as now being second placed nation:
Zhou Ping and Loet Leydesdorff, The emergence of China as a leading nation in science, Research Policy 35 (1) (2006), pp. 83–104.
This has happened by exponential growth in recent years a _doubling_ of output per year!
As a journal editor I can vouch for this - it has mostly happened since 2004.
Of course, it is only the USA which is producing a significant amount of top-notch 'revolutionary' science:
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2007/07/nflt-metric-for-revoutionary-science.html
I dont know if commenter bgc would agree with me, but seems to me that the USA has the monopoly in many new less defined fields and it is outdistancing (yes!) its competitors.
In my field there is nobody to talk to except Americans and surprisingly, Australians (CSIRO).
That is why I am so surprised by American bloggers view of their own country: a country falling apart, invaded by foreigners, natives reduced to impotence and slavery, the media teaching them to hate themselves, a multiracial army that is loosing wars all over and much other nonsense. Reality is a world dominated by America.
Chinese science is very young. Science works like a guild, with masters and trainees, and the Chinese people by their nature are able to work onoly under respected authorities. But the continuity of Chinese science was broken by Mao and currently the Chinese have no traditional leaders. It will take another generation to develope the teachers.
White people: we've still got what it takes.
In everything except the desire to continue white civilization. That's all nature cares about in the end.
A very, very naive analysis. Who are the US researchers producing those papers? Do they come from the US? What fraction of US PhDs are foreign born (e.g., from Asia)?
What do the trends over time look like? (See BGC's comment.)
That is why I am so surprised by American bloggers view of their own country: a country falling apart, invaded by foreigners, natives reduced to impotence and slavery, the media teaching them to hate themselves, a multiracial army that is loosing wars all over and much other nonsense. Reality is a world dominated by America.
There is no contradiction between a world "dominated by America" and an America falling apart and invaded by foreigners. Except to a person with a certain mindset ...
If you'd been alive in Hadrians Rome you'd have scoffed at those saying "The end is nigh". But they'd have been much more right than you, even assuming that Rome was best measured in terms of military might.
Subotai
Agree with "J" the U.S. has full-spectrum dominance and simmply pulled away from the pack after 1990.
In all the high-end social sciences I'm aware of it's about 98% US 2% UK.
China was simply not on the charts before 2000, but has definitely come online in the 2000s. THe social science output from China I've read is solid but without advances in cutting edge theory.
P.S. - I daresay the entire social sciences are a U.S./U.K. monopoly in terms of theoretical advances and cutting edge application.
The papers from other countries are mostly merely competent empirical work, specific to their region or country.
P.P.S. -
It seems WWII lobotomized continental Europe in terms of social science. Mighty Germany, Enlightenment France, Baroque Vienna, and Renaissance Italy have disappeared underneath the waves. Unbelievable. The U.S. killed Europe.
Something I forgot to mention: the average (intelligent) person would probably guess that Italy and Spain would be ciphers in the world of science, yet here they are at positions 8 and 9 respectively. To my mind that speaks volumes for the dominance of Europe/North America in science. Where's India, whose citizens we so badly need?
A couple of years ago I saw a comment from an Australian economist who worked in the US. He said that because he worked there his work was much cited, much engaged with, and so on. In his judgement, if he'd published the same work from an Aussie university it would have been largely overlooked. It will be interesting to see if there's a similar effect if China becomes top dog.
And another thing: a friend has adopted the rule that what's fashionable in his science is whatever is fashionable in California. It'll be interesting to see whether his rule survives the state's bankruptcy.
The abstract states: "22 main fields of science (including general social sciences)"
The United States might be overproducing papers on "racism". I doubt that is anything to be proud of. A better metric would be to focus on who receives cash prizes for scientific advances. That is, Field Medal, Nobel Prize, etc.
The United States might be overproducing papers on "racism".
It might, but if you look at the link stating that the U.S. has an overall share of 34%, you'll find a column headed "Relative impact compared to world"; in computer science it's +44; geosciences +43; physics +59, etc. Compare education and social sciences, a +9 and +18 respectively. Therefore I conclude that the American edge in science is not due to "papers on racism".
However, it would be better if the American relative impact in law, education, and social sciences were negative compared to the world. Then we'd be cooking.
dearieme: What is your friend's science? I'm guessing molecular biology. Although California doesn't do too badly in physics either, with the Lawrence Livermore lab.
The U.S. is the spiritual home of 100% of "papers on racism" and like pseudoscientific advances. There it holds absolute dominance.
But it's also 98% home (2% UK as previously mentioned) of real social science theoretical advances.
This study may simply be a reflection of the "publish or perish" mindset common in America univerities, where the definition of good science is that it leads to a paper in some peer reviewed publicaton.
This site shows patents granted per capita by country. The US does not do so well.
Subotai
[Chinese] Science works like a guild, with masters and trainees, and the Chinese people by their nature are able to work onoly under respected authorities.
Um, that's pretty much how US science works, too. Master and trainee = tenured prof plus grad student at a "respected" school.
I echo the anon who asks how many of the "US" papers were written by Asians.
Keep in mind that there is still a considerable amount of scientific potential in Central and Eastern Europe that has not fully come to the fore yet because those parts of Europe are still recovering from Communism.
As Eastern Europe's economy picks up, their scientific output will also surge.
Just based on genetics, IQ, and population size, there is no reason why Russia should not surpass Germany in scientific output, or why Poland could not match Spain or the Czech Republic could not catch up with Sweden.
I also notice Japan is only barely ahead of Germany despite Japan having a 50% larger population than Germany.
Here's a more sophisticated analysis that includes rankings by factors beside simple publication numbers. These include actual citations by other articles and H indices by country.
http://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php
There was a nice article in Nature about four years ago called "Scientific Impact of Nations" and normalized rankings for all sorts of things, like research funding levels. Switzerland came out on top.
Subotai, patent numbers aren't a very good measure of scientific strength. It's not very hard to get a patent, assuming you can afford a lawyer. Patent licensing royalties would be a much better measure, if you can find them.
Somebody working for the UK gov posted that Nature article. Take a look:
The scientific impact of nations
All of the top 19 countries in the comprehensive ranking are white. Japan is #20. (Table 2)
England? Did you mean the UK?
What percentage of those American papers were written by "old Americans"? What percentage of the authors were Asian-American or Jewish?
Reijo's got a point there. Something north of 50% (more like 95%) of the top social science papers are by Jews.
Lots of U.S. Asians writing papers, but nothing truly top tier that I've seen.
Is "social science" really science - in the sense that there are unknown natural rules that are being uncovered and described by people in this field? I'm sure there are smart people doing this work, but is it anything more than just well-packaged phenomenology?
The answer to Chris is "Yes", and it's been all figured out. And yes, the establishment is hiding it all from you to keep you a dumbed-down slave while they rule the country and maybe the world.
They don't share the good stuff any more than they share how to build the H-bomb or Coca Cola their formula. You get the fake stuff that makes you a good docile tax-slave.
I'm actually surprised that the US is No. 1, but still, I'm glad
My guess is a fair number were written by Asians. Of the Whites, Jews and Eastern European immigrants are overrepresented.
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