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China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

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Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#51
post #16

A better index that measures QUALITY scientific research is the Nature index. By that measure, China is #2 in the world, tho far behind the US still. https://www.natureindex.com/country-outputs/generate/All/glo...

I'm surprised at how high up Canada / Switzerland is in the rankings. Both pretty small for that much impact.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#52

> They document a rapid expansion between 2000 and 2016, as the Chinese share of global publications in physical sciences, engineering and math quadrupled. I really hate to risk being the guy who says "they will never best us," until they do, but in my field and many others Chinese papers are known to be of a lower quality standard and a lot more mill-like. This may come as a surprise to many, but the simple fact is…

The article points not just to number of publications but citations too, which hint that they aren't just paper mill papers. In my field, China is actually committing to investing in my kind of research in terms of facilities and such while the US is cutting of course.

There is certainly good research coming out of China, but there are also journals set up to primarily publish articles citing their own papers, or papers in peer journals to boost citations...

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#53

The average Chinese is just as clever, if not more clever, than the average Westerner. They'll absolutely produce good results given good funding. But the tradition of the University is not Chinese; the Areopagitica is alien to mainstream Chinese civic and intellectual values; the inviolability of the right to interrogate the universe as a free, searching, essentially individual being is not part of the mentality dri…

this is racism

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#54
post #53

The average Chinese is just as clever, if not more clever, than the average Westerner. They'll absolutely produce good results given good funding. But the tradition of the University is not Chinese; the Areopagitica is alien to mainstream Chinese civic and intellectual values; the inviolability of the right to interrogate the universe as a free, searching, essentially individual being is not part of the mentality dri…

this is racism

No. I said they're cleverer than we are, at least on average. I said the Chinese government should learn some humanity (which they obviously should -- and given the current state of the US gov't and Western politics broadly, ours should too).

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#55

> They document a rapid expansion between 2000 and 2016, as the Chinese share of global publications in physical sciences, engineering and math quadrupled. I really hate to risk being the guy who says "they will never best us," until they do, but in my field and many others Chinese papers are known to be of a lower quality standard and a lot more mill-like. This may come as a surprise to many, but the simple fact is…

The article points not just to number of publications but citations too, which hint that they aren't just paper mill papers. In my field, China is actually committing to investing in my kind of research in terms of facilities and such while the US is cutting of course.

I'm skeptical of citation rate as well, although I'm not sure I have anything better to offer in terms of metrics. Hype, after all, is related to citation rate. I think what we need is something that is more like "sustained rate" or something like that.

It's pretty clear China is progressing in the sciences substantially, so I don't want to discount that--no one should--but this progression is occurring in what I consider to be a crisis of academic integrity globally. The result is that metrics like publication rate and citation rate are much fuzzier to interpret, and something I distrust a lot because they are somewhat meaningless relative to replicability or something of that sort.

I generally feel like academics and industry at large is suffering from a kind of hype crisis or bubble. I think it's strongly related to income inequality (inflated attributed value of higher-income individuals relative to lower-income individuals) and all sorts of other societal problems at the moment. How this relates to China I'm not sure but overall it makes me skeptical of any attempt to measure or rank countries relative to one another (I'd say the same thing about the US or any other country for that matter).

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#56

The quality debate about scientific merit aside, if the U.S. wants to remain "the best", then we need to incentivize the best scientists and researchers in other countries to come here and become U.S. citizens. A lot of famous physicists, mathematicians, and logicians have done this over the past 100 years. Unfortunately, the attractiveness of becoming a U.S. citizen is waning because (1) current U.S. policies on sci…

I think it comes down to US and UK in terms of general science research. I would include Japan but language is an issue (for many). Despite what the average math and science metrics in the US imply, I actually think it’s a direct result of more practical approach to education in the US. There are unbelievable opportunities for young students who want to excel in sciences. I was around graduate level research environment since the 8th grade. And I would say it wasn’t all that unusual as long as you knew where to look. Access to science research is unparalleled in the US.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Chinese I don't get offended by this, depending on the people they he interacted with this may largely be true.

Personally the only times when I got back-stabbed at work were by Canadians, but I don't go around making conclusion about Canadian culture being backstabby. If 1 in 10 Chinese you met are manipulators, that means 9 out of 10 are NOT honest/manipulative, how can you then go conclude "in Chinese culture 'any means necessary' tactics are considered smart and fair game as long as they work."?

I move out of china for college in japan and I feel I can view things without getting too emotional. In practice when you are dealing with people from mainland they are ruthless about business and do not share/acknowledge the rules people follow in westerner and other Asian countries(most of they are not aware of it of course). We hear ton of story about Chinese company stealing IP. China have this absence of culture in the last several decades that leave its people no core moral to follow. Whenever a business leader are portrayed in mass media, it is always about how well they are dominating the market, how fast they killed the competitors. While I talk to my Chinese relatives about business, all they care is profit.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#58

The quality debate about scientific merit aside, if the U.S. wants to remain "the best", then we need to incentivize the best scientists and researchers in other countries to come here and become U.S. citizens. A lot of famous physicists, mathematicians, and logicians have done this over the past 100 years. Unfortunately, the attractiveness of becoming a U.S. citizen is waning because (1) current U.S. policies on sci…

> current U.S. policies on science are extremely unfavorable to foreign researchers To U.S. researchers also - the proposal funding rate is so low on account of the resource/PI ratio that many U.S. researchers are moving to Europe where there is greater promise of hard funding.

The USA spends more on R+D in aggregate and more as a percentage of GDP than the European Union[1]. It is not substantially easier to get a Professorship or permanent research appointment in Europe than the USA, at least generally speaking. Without data to back it up, I don't see how this comment holds up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_...

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#59
The impact of publications in technical fields is so long tailed that 1000 mediocre publications doesn't equal one single breakthrough paper (eg the AlexNet paper in deep learning). Even according to the source cited in the article (http://www.nber.org/papers/w24829) impact per paper is much lower in China.

Once China beats the US in both volume and quality, we'll know the balance of intellectual capital has really shifted.

I'm skeptical this will happen. The US has a much better culture of intellectual freedom. It's much more likely that China will surpass the US economically than intellectually. Business culture is so strong in China and probably even better than in the US already.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#60

The impact of publications in technical fields is so long tailed that 1000 mediocre publications doesn't equal one single breakthrough paper (eg the AlexNet paper in deep learning). Even according to the source cited in the article ( http://www.nber.org/papers/w24829 ) impact per paper is much lower in China. Once China beats the US in both volume and quality, we'll know the balance of intellectual capital has really…

People over-obsess about how China is beating us in science and technology, and not enough about how China is becoming so entrepreneurial while US citizens are becoming extremely risk averse.
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