U.S. Losing Scientific Edge
Another disturbing sign of the times....the U.S. is losing its scientic edge.
The 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.
What does it mean?
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.
"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.
Maybe if we weren't spending billions of dollars on an unnecessary war being fought for no good reason we'd have more money to fund scientific research and our scientists. The Democrats think so and are attacking Bush on the subject:
Mr. Daschle accused the Bush administration of weakening the nation's science base by failing to provide enough money for cutting-edge research....
Bush's science advisor, John H. Marburger III, responds:
"The sky is not falling on science," Dr. Marburger said. "Maybe there are some clouds — no, things that need attention." Any problems, he added, are within the power of the United States to deal with in a way that maintains the vitality of the research enterprise.
So why aren't we doing that? And who's taking our place? Europeans and Asians. Particularly with respect to patents. Singapore has made a lot of headway. China will be the next wave:
Dr. Simon of Rensselaer said that about 400 foreign companies had recently set up research centers in China, with General Electric, for instance, doing important work there on medical scanners, which means fewer skilled jobs in America. Ross Armbrecht, president of the Industrial Research Institute, a nonprofit group in Washington that represents large American companies, said businesses were going to China not just because of low costs but to take advantage of China's growing scientific excellence.
"It's frightening," Dr. Armbrecht said. "But you've got to go where the horses are." An eventual danger, he added, is the slow loss of intellectual property as local professionals start their own businesses with what they have learned from American companies.
We chalk this up as another failure of the Bush Administration. Boot Bush. Give to Kerry today.
The Washington Post reports that small donors add up to a powerful political force.
| < Iraqi Prisoner Details American Abuse | Human Rights Groups Call for Investigation into Iraqi Prisoner Abuse > |