Good Article. But i don't think the US has any cause for fear as long as;
1) Go back to the early policies enacted for driving Science & Technology using Public Funding specifically for Specialized Institutes and the overall Education System.
2) Pour more money into the above as much as possible so as to attract top talent into it.
3) Invite Immigration from all over the World with a clear path from Higher Education to Citizenship.
4) Continue to allow the Private Sector to do what it is already doing to great success.
And Oh; keep the petty Politics out of it. The US' advantage over China is 3 & 4.
This is a very good point. And it works across the board. The Vietnam War led to many bright and ambitious young people leaving the US. I know. Many of them were my teachers.
3 seems irrelevant with regard to China given the difference in population sizes being compensated for (yes yes China's demographics are poorly balanced I've heard it before).
I think there's merit to 4 but I'd be curious if China couldn't overcome that if it could iron out some of the academic dishonesty that occurs. And lately a lot of news has made it sound like China is making headway on that one so eventually it may come down to market incentivized research objectives versus centrally set ones.
> 3 seems irrelevant with regard to China given the difference in population sizes being compensated for
Not what i am implying. It is the differences in modes of thinking coming from different cultures that leads to breakthroughs, sustaining development and more. They play off of each other's strengths leading to something unique which is not possible in a mono-cultural country. It is hard to quantify directly but can be measured via its effects on Science/Technology/Economy etc.
The academic dishonesty is a direct result of the autocratic government. If the government wants to have research that proofs X, they will get research that proofs X. Academics know that there's no use in researching stuff that might show something that disagrees with the government, so they don't even bother.
Idk which news you read about China stamping out academic fraud, but that's basically a red herring. Xi's very public "anti-corruption" campaign has mostly targeted people from opposing factions within the CCP. They will be replaced with people that are just as corrupt, but loyal to Xi.
edit: don't forget that any news coming from China is heavily redacted by the CCP.
What does the word "politics" mean to you if it does not describe the four bullets you listed that strike me as very political, like basically the essence of what politics is? Or was this meant as satire and it just went way over my head?
Another great advantage is that autocratic governments will not allow anything to be published that wouldn't conform to the party agenda.
For example, after Xi decided to use traditional Chinese medicine as a propaganda tool, a lot of articles have been published showing the supposed effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine.
Although it makes sense for an autocratic government to use science like this, eventually it will poison the pool of 'knowledge', and all their science is basically useless.
If you look at the kind of content coming out of China especially in physics and chemistry, expecting the US to lead in science in 5 or 10 years is being overly optimistic
A few things about China science,they are getting better,and the rate they are getting better is accelerating and something that is possibly of
much greater significance is that China is implimenting new scientific knowledge into products quickly and of even greater significance
those implimentations are across the board and at scale
another thing to note is that China scales everything and impliments infrastructure accross the board,and to do this,China's engineering is
very good,bridges,roads,ports,mines,power plants,hospitals,railways,factorys,etc ,etc, etc,go up big ,fast/on time,on budget
and I think that it's by plan that the main focus
in China is still on infrastructure,ie: all the
best brains are working on infrastructure,but as that is maturing,the focus will shift towards science,and as we all know,there is a great deal
left to learn
and our infrastructure isn't that great
“If science and academia become ideological endeavours,” he says, “it’s going to be hard for them to survive.””
The irony of this closing sentence being about 5 paragraphs below a paragraph praising Harris and bashing Trump was noticed by, apparently, nobody at Nature.
To be clear, I’m not a fan of Trump and I’ve never voted for him, but surely Nature should just stay out of explicit endorsements and bashing of one or the other political side if they are at all concerned about science becoming an ‘ideological endeavour’. It’s borderline insane to me that they would engage in blatant partisanship right after extolling the value of science at least APPEARING to be politically neutral.
In fact, for scientists, whether or not to believe in global climate change is a very clear dividing line. Essentially, the existence of climate change is a scientific consensus, and denying its existence is equivalent to rejecting science...
But I also want to point out that Nature has different political views from scientists: they want more research funding, which makes sense for a publisher that profits from government research funding worldwide.
What is there to believe in observable reality ? The debate is over, whats left is storms and refugees and idiots who believe that a messagebringing shaman in a lab coat has the power to revert bad news or other idiots that belief that propagating a fast &repent cult will undo the bad news. Meanwhile the news is just bad wether we refuse delivery or won't .
I disagree 100% in this specific case. The Republican Party is choosing to deny climate change, to root out the EPA, to get rid of the NOAA, of all things. This is a cult whose brains have been seized, like in mad cow disease. It must be rooted out.
EVERY science publication should come out and do an explicit disendorsement of Trump and the entire party, even if they don't endorse KH.
Everything you said could be true, but it does no good for Nature or any other ostensibly neutral and apolitical scientific organisations to make express political endorsements. Scientists and others who regularly read Nature don't need Nature to tell them who to vote for, nor is Nature going to change their view one way or the other; and by the same token, the very people Nature might like to imagine it could persuade to vote for Harris are the very last people who would ever read a Nature feature article about Federal science funding.
But those people - the ones who would never read this kind of article voluntarily and for information's sake - will absolutely latch onto the fact that Nature is making an explicit Harris endorsement and bashing Trump, and this will be irrefutable evidence that science, scientists, and the scientific gatekeepers are all beholden to 'the Left'. Thus, Trump voters will not unreasonably see any and all scientific conclusions as government-sponsored lies and all scientific outputs as somewhere along the spectrum of mind control nanobot devices.
In short there is absolutely no reason for Nature to be expressly partisan, and every reason for it NOT to be. It's bad enough that a sizable portion of the American public think 5G is reading their minds and that the US government is somehow orchestrating hurricanes - giving them actual fact evidence that the industry is biased against them just ensures they'll never listen to anything that industry says (Exhibit A: Vaccines).
this is the classic disempowering rhetoric that you should not talk about politics and religion - the two biggest forces in society that will screw your life and that of your children the most if you let them.
What’s disempowering is sending a family member a link to a study demonstrating that COVID vaccines reduce one’s risk of long COVID or dementia, and having that family member say ‘Oh this is Nature, they hate Trump and I’m not interested in reading something from this.’
And for what? So a bunch of PhDs can virtue signal to one another that they’re all voting for the same candidate?
If your family member is a die-hard Trump supporter, they're not going to care about what any science publication says. They're already a lost cause. We're talking about people who think taking horse dewormer or injecting themselves with bleach is going to cure their COVID.
When one "side" is explicitly making itself the enemy of actual scientists, when exactly is it OK to call a spade a spade, in your book?
maybe that's natural selection in action? if they love trump more than their health, I'm happy for their sacrifice if it gives future generations a chance.
So people shouldn't write what they care about, just so they don't offend uneducated rednecks who might stumble on an article that's not meant for them anyway?
If you have a family member who distrust msm and 'the globalists' then you're not going to convince them with a nature article anyway.
You have to understand that these maga-cultists don't use logic. Just like religion their beliefs are based on faith. Faith is exactly believing something despite facts and arguments. Someone who has drank the kool-aid and has progressed to the level of; "they said something bad about X, so they must be on the other side and I shouldn't trust anything they say", cannot be brought back with scientific proofs and logical arguments.
If you want your trump-family to stop taking bleach you cannot just argument against bleach. You have to repair their trust in science, education, the government, etc.
Not talking politics, but just sending snarky links to science they don't understand anyway is not doing your family a service.
This is not my experience. I've convinced two family members to get vaccinated on the basis of very strong evidence for protection against long COVID. Not all the 'uneducated rednecks' are as intransigent as you or the others in this thread apparently think they are.
But you do say this:
"If you want your trump-family to stop taking bleach you cannot just argument against bleach. You have to repair their trust in science, education, the government, etc."
I agree 100%, and the starting point for repairing that trust involves ostensibly apolitical scientific institutions like Nature refraining from directly and expressly engaging in partisan politics. It would be one thing if Nature promulgated a particular policy about, say, salt marsh restoration or carbon sequestration; it is something else entirely for Nature to praise Harris and bash Trump, something that prima facie has literally nothing to do with science and serves only to undercut Nature's notional objectivity with the wider public.
It is not about an upside to Nature. By banding together with the leading science publications, it is an upside to society. They don't have to endorse, but they must always call out politicians/policies that will set back science or scientific temper back a few decades. This is not about someone like Deepak Chopra with some quaint view of "quantum"; this is about the most powerful political force that institutionalizes bad faith arguments against science and scientific institutions.
Let me give you another example. The Modi govt. in India is right wing Hindu, and keep touting Ancient Hindu science. They rammed through a track by that name at the prestigious (well, until then) 102nd assembly of the Indian Science Congress. Read the following account of one of the papers submitted and weep.
Now, if it was one crank submission, one can laugh it off. But now there are "cow science" institutes all over India, I kid you not, with prominent politicians claiming that cows are immune to radiation etc. These are official government backed places.
I would very much like the scientific establishment and their mouth pieces (Nature, SciAm, etc) to openly disendorse the govt, and to mock the science roundly. I am tired of equal sized megaphones for illiterate people.
This is a well-informed article, with some very compelling graphics. I don't care a whit what is said about politics or policy, because I doubt that many Nature readers will need help in making decisions about such things.
For me, the key is the data. I've never seen so much information, presented so clearly. The trends are quite clear. As someone who works in research, none of what I saw was actually surprising, but the article is a very helpful integrative resource.
32 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 83.0 ms ] thread1) Go back to the early policies enacted for driving Science & Technology using Public Funding specifically for Specialized Institutes and the overall Education System.
2) Pour more money into the above as much as possible so as to attract top talent into it.
3) Invite Immigration from all over the World with a clear path from Higher Education to Citizenship.
4) Continue to allow the Private Sector to do what it is already doing to great success.
And Oh; keep the petty Politics out of it. The US' advantage over China is 3 & 4.
I think there's merit to 4 but I'd be curious if China couldn't overcome that if it could iron out some of the academic dishonesty that occurs. And lately a lot of news has made it sound like China is making headway on that one so eventually it may come down to market incentivized research objectives versus centrally set ones.
Not what i am implying. It is the differences in modes of thinking coming from different cultures that leads to breakthroughs, sustaining development and more. They play off of each other's strengths leading to something unique which is not possible in a mono-cultural country. It is hard to quantify directly but can be measured via its effects on Science/Technology/Economy etc.
See the psychologist Richard Nisbett's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_E._Nisbett) works; The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geography_of_Thought) and Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_and_How_to_Get_It) for some insights.
Idk which news you read about China stamping out academic fraud, but that's basically a red herring. Xi's very public "anti-corruption" campaign has mostly targeted people from opposing factions within the CCP. They will be replaced with people that are just as corrupt, but loyal to Xi.
edit: don't forget that any news coming from China is heavily redacted by the CCP.
For example, after Xi decided to use traditional Chinese medicine as a propaganda tool, a lot of articles have been published showing the supposed effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine.
Although it makes sense for an autocratic government to use science like this, eventually it will poison the pool of 'knowledge', and all their science is basically useless.
Any publication of work done in China is suspect unless it came from the labs of a very short list of PIs.
It has gotten better over the last couple decades, but of the massive volume, I’d argue maybe 10% is at the level of the West.
The irony of this closing sentence being about 5 paragraphs below a paragraph praising Harris and bashing Trump was noticed by, apparently, nobody at Nature.
To be clear, I’m not a fan of Trump and I’ve never voted for him, but surely Nature should just stay out of explicit endorsements and bashing of one or the other political side if they are at all concerned about science becoming an ‘ideological endeavour’. It’s borderline insane to me that they would engage in blatant partisanship right after extolling the value of science at least APPEARING to be politically neutral.
But I also want to point out that Nature has different political views from scientists: they want more research funding, which makes sense for a publisher that profits from government research funding worldwide.
EVERY science publication should come out and do an explicit disendorsement of Trump and the entire party, even if they don't endorse KH.
Everything you said could be true, but it does no good for Nature or any other ostensibly neutral and apolitical scientific organisations to make express political endorsements. Scientists and others who regularly read Nature don't need Nature to tell them who to vote for, nor is Nature going to change their view one way or the other; and by the same token, the very people Nature might like to imagine it could persuade to vote for Harris are the very last people who would ever read a Nature feature article about Federal science funding.
But those people - the ones who would never read this kind of article voluntarily and for information's sake - will absolutely latch onto the fact that Nature is making an explicit Harris endorsement and bashing Trump, and this will be irrefutable evidence that science, scientists, and the scientific gatekeepers are all beholden to 'the Left'. Thus, Trump voters will not unreasonably see any and all scientific conclusions as government-sponsored lies and all scientific outputs as somewhere along the spectrum of mind control nanobot devices.
In short there is absolutely no reason for Nature to be expressly partisan, and every reason for it NOT to be. It's bad enough that a sizable portion of the American public think 5G is reading their minds and that the US government is somehow orchestrating hurricanes - giving them actual fact evidence that the industry is biased against them just ensures they'll never listen to anything that industry says (Exhibit A: Vaccines).
There's just no upside to Nature doing this.
And for what? So a bunch of PhDs can virtue signal to one another that they’re all voting for the same candidate?
When one "side" is explicitly making itself the enemy of actual scientists, when exactly is it OK to call a spade a spade, in your book?
If you have a family member who distrust msm and 'the globalists' then you're not going to convince them with a nature article anyway.
You have to understand that these maga-cultists don't use logic. Just like religion their beliefs are based on faith. Faith is exactly believing something despite facts and arguments. Someone who has drank the kool-aid and has progressed to the level of; "they said something bad about X, so they must be on the other side and I shouldn't trust anything they say", cannot be brought back with scientific proofs and logical arguments.
If you want your trump-family to stop taking bleach you cannot just argument against bleach. You have to repair their trust in science, education, the government, etc.
Not talking politics, but just sending snarky links to science they don't understand anyway is not doing your family a service.
But you do say this:
"If you want your trump-family to stop taking bleach you cannot just argument against bleach. You have to repair their trust in science, education, the government, etc."
I agree 100%, and the starting point for repairing that trust involves ostensibly apolitical scientific institutions like Nature refraining from directly and expressly engaging in partisan politics. It would be one thing if Nature promulgated a particular policy about, say, salt marsh restoration or carbon sequestration; it is something else entirely for Nature to praise Harris and bash Trump, something that prima facie has literally nothing to do with science and serves only to undercut Nature's notional objectivity with the wider public.
Surely that isn't controversial.
yes it is, because the candidates aren't equally supportive/dismissive of science, one side is absolutely against.
This isn't "actual fact evidence" though. The industry bias you perceive is towards the truth, not a particular side.
Let me give you another example. The Modi govt. in India is right wing Hindu, and keep touting Ancient Hindu science. They rammed through a track by that name at the prestigious (well, until then) 102nd assembly of the Indian Science Congress. Read the following account of one of the papers submitted and weep.
https://scroll.in/article/698616/pilots-in-magic-suits-could...
Now, if it was one crank submission, one can laugh it off. But now there are "cow science" institutes all over India, I kid you not, with prominent politicians claiming that cows are immune to radiation etc. These are official government backed places.
I would very much like the scientific establishment and their mouth pieces (Nature, SciAm, etc) to openly disendorse the govt, and to mock the science roundly. I am tired of equal sized megaphones for illiterate people.
For me, the key is the data. I've never seen so much information, presented so clearly. The trends are quite clear. As someone who works in research, none of what I saw was actually surprising, but the article is a very helpful integrative resource.