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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

#121

Post by DoctorOetker »

mjfl wrote: post #32
oh-kumudo wrote: post #4

Good, competition and more spending is always welcome.

It would really suck to have the global language of science change to Chinese though. And Beijing strikes me as the sort of place to suddenly require all their scientists to publish in Chinese one day, once they felt they had sufficient leverage.

Back when I was studying physics, in the university library of the exact science campus I found a couple of shelves full of identical thick volumes in the physics section. Curious what they were I took one out and I forgot the exact name but I think it was Chinese Physics B / Acta Physica Sinica (overseas edition), which is basically the english translation of a selection of the local Acta Physica Sinica. Browsing the articles and actually reading the ones that seemed interesting, I can confirm these were of high quality. Apparently they cover all branches of physics, including fundamental particles but notably excluding nuclear physics. Before that moment I had a very Western-centric view of exact sciences, but quickly realized that this is merely an illusion: whenever we search and find articles we search in our own language, and since then I have encountered countless references of theorems and discoveries and observations which were also discovered abroad, but due to different communication language the concepts have typically different scientist/mathematician names attached to them. What you describe is partially true but partially it was always the case or at least for quite a long time now. Not just science in chinese, but also of course in russian, probably the dominant language in india too etc...

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

#122

Post by bushin »

jmmcd wrote: post #108
dnautics wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i mean that's true across the board. A large portion of bad startups are just meaningless cargo culting, etc.

Not really. There are other journals that I do read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

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

#123

Post by DoctorOetker »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #121
mjfl wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would really suck to have the global language of science change to Chinese though. And Beijing strikes me as the sort of place to suddenly require all their scientists to publish in Chinese one day, once they felt they had sufficient leverage.

Back when I was studying physics, in the university library of the exact science campus I found a couple of shelves full of identical thick volumes in the physics section. Curious what they were I took one out and I forgot the exact name but I think it was Chinese Physics B / Acta Physica Sinica (overseas edition), which is basically the english translation of a selection of the local Acta Physica Sinica. Browsing th…

I forgot to mention this also has a strong parallel with a different phenomenon in within society: a lot of the people who think education is useless, even though they actually use many of the skills, think so because it is easy to pretend one learnt something on their own (which is kind of true) once others (teachers, authors of books etc.) have invested the time and effort to explain the subject. It's easy to pretend or believe you have no one to thank for such a simple thing as being able to read and write!

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

#124

Post by badminton1 »

goblekitepe wrote: post #103
xvilka wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then everyone will just learn Chinese，like everyone learnt English before.

The process of English becoming the global language has taken over 150 years. Massive cultural and economic forces have been at play to make English global. It's not a simple thing, and what will likely happen is language balkanization for a significant period of time before any seismic shift from English to Chinese which is unlikely to happen for a number of reasons regardless.

Before World War II, French was more popular than English.

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

#125

Post by bsder »

throwaway713 wrote: post #36

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…

> So in effect, the grad students would get advanced degrees in the hard sciences and take that knowledge back home with them, whereas the U.S. students would get a B.S. in literature, advertising, or business (generalizing of course).

One could argue that the US students are simply more rational actors and perceive the fact that a PhD has no economic value.

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

#126

Post by linkregister »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #118
a-dub wrote: post #115

One brilliant way to stimulate and support cutting edge research in the United States would be to impose tariffs on high end equipment and research supplies that are made elsewhere in the world. By making it comparatively more expensive to buy equipment and supplies than other places in the world, the world's top research talent will be clawing at the door (assuming they can get visas) to take up residence in our uni…

Can you explain that process in more detail please?

The OP was being sarcastic.

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

#127

Post by rdtsc »

throwaway713 wrote: post #36

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…

> (this is a net win for humanity though)

Yeah. Maybe we want to take a more global approach and cheer when other countries are doing well and are attracting scientists?

There was an article a while back how a Chinese professor or maybe recent grad, couldn't find a position in US and the Chinese government made them a generous offer, an apartment, a guaranteed research fund, etc. Everyone was bashing and shaming US but it seemed kind of nice that China is able to do those things.

> So in effect, the grad students would get advanced degrees in the hard sciences and take that knowledge back home with

I remember that too, but that's kind of the goal of the F-1 / J-1 educational visas. None of them are designed for permanent residency or imply a path towards citizenship. The idea is that these students will get a graduate education then return home and and apply that knowledge in various countries around the world.

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

#128

Post by houshuang »

mc32 wrote: post #95
Eridrus wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point that most grad programs don't have US students is revealing - for those who have alternative entry into the US economy, most people decide that a PhD program is a poor choice. Most of the things people work on in their PhD programs are very niche, and most do not work in academia or on the same thing after they finish their PhD. And most people never really make a noticeable contribution to science…

>if Chinese folks start publishing in Mandarin They may, and then it will be like during the cold war where Soviets published in Russian and we'd be lucky if someone translated that into English. If it were to happen today, someone would make a business out of translating the publications --maybe even crowdsource the translations.

If they start publishing in Chinese? The commercial CNKI database indexes 10,406 Chinese language academic journals, and 63 million articles. Arguably, much of it is of low quality (although there are plenty of Western journals of questionable quality as well), but that's a different discussion. If you rephrased the question as "When the leading Chinese scholar chooses to publish in the most prestigious Chinese journal, rather than Nature or Science" - would be a more interesting question.

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

#129

Post by vixen99 »

a-dub wrote: post #115

One brilliant way to stimulate and support cutting edge research in the United States would be to impose tariffs on high end equipment and research supplies that are made elsewhere in the world. By making it comparatively more expensive to buy equipment and supplies than other places in the world, the world's top research talent will be clawing at the door (assuming they can get visas) to take up residence in our uni…

At least make the irony logical!
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