US Losing its Scientific Dominance

ScaredSilly writes "The New York Times is reporting that the US is losing its dominance in the sciences. They cite lowering research budgets, increased military spending and 'reverse brain-drain': fewer techies staying in the US after school. I personally think that our comparatively crappy K-12 educational system, and an increased dominance of military research over core scientific research plays a big role. (It's easy to get DARPA, DoD and DoE funding, but difficult to get NSF funding). What do you folks think?"

Great news (for New Zealand)

[thing2b]

"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."

Great news :)
I love New Zealand

MOD PARENT UP!

[hot_Karls_bad_cavern]

..and please for the love of fuck, VOTE in November people!!!!

BREAKING NEWS... This Just In

[Anonymous Coward]

Dominance Down!

Dumbinance Up!

* Film at 11 *

Math?

[duffbeer703]

Why would students take math?

Math causes more problems in public schools than it is worth. Students who do not grasp the concepts have their self esteem suffer and don't feel very good.

Personally, I believe that math and science courses should be reduced in schools. We could teach more tolerance classes and fire science teachers to buy laptops for kids.

Laptops can do the math that students can't. Anything that the laptop cannot do can be outsourced to India.

It's inevitable

[Anonymous Coward]

All empires, eventually, must fall. Deal with it.

Re:Argh...

[Coffeesloth]

The decline in the education system over the years certainly has a tremendous impact in this area but I feel it also has a lot to do with the trend to ship the jobs overseas. It started with manual labor jobs and has slowly worked it's way to the tech jobs.

I'm not against sending the jobs overseas even though it's probably going to impact me personally very soon (I'm a software tester) but with that happening there's little incentive to learn the tech jobs and with the current trend of patent and sue why try to innovate?
Pretty soon someone is going to patent life and charge us all a fee to continue living.

(sarcasm implied)

Re:US politics

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I wonder if Alan Alda will let this stand.

Flame bait article.

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

I am American and was born here my whole life. education is perfect in this grate country and I am so proud of it. You Yuropeans are always snooty and jealous becuase we are so strong and smart and our army is strong two. i could wrap java code around your head because I am so smart. Amerika is great and we are the best at science becuase we are number won.

Re:Oppression...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Er...Russia has been freer than the US for a long time. It's currently one of the best places in the world to have a criminal organization.

Re:Great news (for New Zealand)

[Excen]

They mentioned New Zealand just because of the server farm they have was used to create the CGI shots in the Lord of the Rings trilogy

and no, I didn't RTFA, why do you ask?

The USA Will ALWAYS be Dominant!

[serutan]

Our copyright and patent enforcement laws are YEARS ahead of the rest of the world!

Re:Argh...

[Begossi]

I call bullshit on the whole US education issue. The NASA engineers that put a man on the moon were not a random cross section of the general US populace. The engineers at PARC were not a gaggle of people picked randomly from the general US population. The scientists that developed the LASER, RADAR, every lab coat wearing nerd at JPL and The AeroSpace Corporation in El Segundo CA (the guys that actually did the work for Mercury and Gemini and GPS) - NONE of those guys were or are representative of the 'average' American High School student.

Hey congrats, you just made a point that the US education system of the 1930's rocks.

Re:Having recently been in school...

[coaxial]

All too often brilliant kids "slip through the cracks" because the classes are only taught to tailor to a single style of learning. For athletic students, it's not uncommon that their "coach" talks to the teacher and lest them slip by classes... creating one click, then you have the kids who are bored with the material (not fast enough) another click (note these kids often do bad because they simply dont bother) then you have the "go with the flow" kids who do everything their told and are disliked by the other groups because they're selling their souls to satan...err the school board.

[...]

I could go on for hours listing problems with todays school system

I just wish the school system would teach the difference between "click" the sound effect, and "clique" the small group.

(I"m sorry, but it was just so damn easy.)

Damn!

[Anonymous Coward]

the oldest is coding Python and starting Java to prep her for coding in C, and the youngest taught **HERSELF** HTML, Photoshop, and a bunch of other graphics applications. . .

*sound of jaw hitting floor*

Sir, may I take your daughters to the prom? Both of them?

Re:Argh...

[EugeneK]

"Rarely is the question asked, 'Is our children learning?'" [google.com]

-George W. Bush

Re:NSF funds only universities

[cavebear42]

Not true. As an individual, I receive at least 2 NSF notices per week from my bank. But you guys are talking like they give you money, mine cost me $22 each.

Just like Sid Meier's Civilization

[darkCanuck]

... if you start building tanks and ICBMs in every city, switch to Fascism, add more tax collectors and start invading other countries, the science suffers.