U.S. Is Losing Its Dominance in Science
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| Mon, 05-03-2004 - 3:40pm |
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: May 3, 2004
he United States has started to lose its worldwide dominance in critical areas of science and innovation, according to federal and private experts who point to strong evidence like prizes awarded to Americans and the number of papers in major professional journals.
Foreign advances in basic science now often rival or even exceed America's, apparently with little public awareness of the trend or its implications for jobs, industry, national security or the vigor of the nation's intellectual and cultural life.
"The rest of the world is catching up," said John E. Jankowski, a senior analyst at the National Science Foundation, the federal agency that tracks science trends. "Science excellence is no longer the domain of just the U.S."
Even analysts worried by the trend concede that an expansion of the world's brain trust, with new approaches, could invigorate the fight against disease, develop new sources of energy and wrestle with knotty environmental problems. But profits from the breakthroughs are likely to stay overseas, and this country will face competition for things like hiring scientific talent and getting space to showcase its work in top journals.
One area of international competition involves patents. Americans still win large numbers of them, but the percentage is falling as foreigners, especially Asians, have become more active and in some fields have seized the innovation lead. The United States' share of its own industrial patents has fallen steadily over the decades and now stands at 52 percent.
A more concrete decline can be seen in published research. Physical Review, a series of top physics journals, recently tracked a reversal in which American papers, in two decades, fell from the most to a minority. Last year the total was just 29 percent, down from 61 percent in 1983.
China, said Martin Blume, the journals' editor, has surged ahead by submitting more than 1,000 papers a year. "Other scientific publishers are seeing the same kind of thing," he added.
Another downturn centers on the Nobel Prizes, an icon of scientific excellence. Traditionally, the United States, powered by heavy federal investments in basic research, the kind that pursues fundamental questions of nature, dominated the awards.
But the American share, after peaking from the 1960's through the 1990's, has fallen in the 2000's to about half, 51 percent. The rest went to Britain, Japan, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and New Zealand.
"We are in a new world, and it's increasingly going to be dominated by countries other than the United States," Denis Simon, dean of management and technology at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, recently said at a scientific meeting in Washington.
Europe and Asia are ascendant, analysts say, even if their achievements go unnoticed in the United States. In March, for example, European scientists announced that one of their planetary probes had detected methane in the atmosphere of Mars — a possible sign that alien microbes live beneath the planet's surface. The finding made headlines from Paris to Melbourne. But most Americans, bombarded with images from America's own rovers successfully exploring the red planet, missed the foreign news.
More aggressively, Europe is seeking to dominate particle physics by building the world's most powerful atom smasher, set for its debut in 2007. Its circular tunnel is 17 miles around.
Science analysts say Asia's push for excellence promises to be even more challenging.
"It's unbelievable," Diana Hicks, chairwoman of the school of public policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said of Asia's growth in science and technical innovation. "It's amazing to see these output numbers of papers and patents going up so fast."
Analysts say comparative American declines are an inevitable result of rising standards of living around the globe.
"It's all in the ebb and flow of globalization," said Jack Fritz, a senior officer at the National Academy of Engineering, an advisory body to the federal government. He called the declines "the next big thing we will have to adjust to."

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I am totally against this system. I use to wonder why we needed this defense system until I learned that Bush has activated the nuclear weapons program. Therefore, I conclude, if we intend to initiate a nuclear war, we would want to defend ourselves. Rememberance of WWI.
>"I am totally against this system."<
ITA
It's an enormous
The education system of India is completely hopeless. The creativity is completely suppressed and education is suffereing. I have studied there and I am totally disgusted with the unhealthy competetiveness. WhenI visited India, I found that most of the kids age two or more must go to school, not only that they will be subjected to test (Like be able to talk English, draw a straight line) before they get admission. Teh students study for the test and forget everything after the finals. It is just ridicuolous. Extreme pressure on parents and kids. My friend is a subs teacher in public school here and she tells me that American kids are overall very creative in their answers and thoughts where indian kids are bright but only in their ability to provide known answers as in Maths. It is too bad that public schools are getting more and more test oriented. It is really bad for the kids. I know it because I have come from such environment.
As far as I am concerned any school which deviates from traditional style such as Montessori, waldorf etc are any day better and education reform in public school should be done to incorporate such aspects from other teaching philosophies.
Just my 2 cents.
A good deal of which is accomplished at school where students are taught not to stand out from the crowd. Displays of superiority or originality are as discouraged as failure and disruptive behavior is.
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I disagree. In many countries with better math and science scores, standard class sizes are what we would consider large. However, in our system, since disruptive students are so common and how teachers and schools can deal with them is so limited now, the smaller the class size the better. Having more than one or two of that type of student in a classroom is exponentially more troublesome.
Renee
>"In many countries with better math and science scores, standard class sizes are what we would consider large. However, in our system, since disruptive students are so common and how teachers and schools can deal with them is so limited now, the smaller the class size the better. Having more than one or two of that type of student in a classroom is exponentially more troublesome."<
ITA The classes I attended were all 40+ discipline was very strict.
The difference that I see is that now the tests have consequences and rewards for the school, teachers, and students where before they did not. About a decade ago, it seemed that more and more school days were being required for testing, but that seems to have just been a transition period where students were taking tests used in the old system and the new one as well. I'd be interested to see any statistics about this if anyone has them.
Also, there is a lot of misconceptions about what exactly these tests are, in fact, testing. From what I've seen, the Texas test is similar to the ones in other states and, with the exception of the math test, which I'm not familiar with (but I'm pretty sure provides formulas), and the writing test which tests grammar and the ability to write in a cohesive, well organized, and clear manner, none of the other tests including science & history test prior knowledge. The tests are completely self-referential. The correct answers are all found or inferred from the the reading passage. In fact, students have to be taught not to use their prior knowledge to answer the questions because that leads them to a wrong answer choice deliberately included to mislead them.
The language, reading, science, & social studies tests all test the ability to read and comprehend a variety of different types of material (fiction, non-fiction, instuctions, advertisements, informative essays, warranties, signs, maps, brochures, persuasive essays, charts & graphs, personal & business letters, resumes, graphic organizers, timelines, bus & train schedules, historic documents) amd critical thinking skills such as making inferences, drawing analogies, reaching a logical conclusion, finding the main idea, excluding extraneous information, identifying fact & opinion, etc.
Renee
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