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China Overtakes the US In Scientific Research Output (theguardian.com) 127

Posted by BeauHD from the eclipsing-the-US dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: China has overtaken the US as the world leader in both scientific research output and "high impact" studies, according to a report published by Japan's science and technology ministry. The report, which was published by Japan's National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTP) on Tuesday, found that China now publishes the highest number of scientific research papers yearly, followed by the US and Germany. The figures were based on yearly averages between 2018 and 2020, and drawn from data compiled by the analytics firm Clarivate.

The Japanese NISTP report also found that Chinese research comprised 27.2% of the world's top 1% most frequently cited papers. The number of citations a research paper receives is a commonly used metric in academia. The more times a study is cited in subsequent papers by other researchers, the greater its "citation impact." The US accounted for 24.9% of the top 1% most highly cited research studies, while UK research was third at 5.5%. China published a yearly average of 407,181 scientific papers, pulling ahead of the US's 293,434 journal articles and accounting for 23.4% of the world's research output, the report found. China accounted for a high proportion of research into materials science, chemistry, engineering and mathematics, while US researchers were more prolific in research into clinical medicine, basic life sciences and physics. "China is one of the top countries in the world in terms of both the quantity and quality of scientific papers," Shinichi Kuroki of the Japan Science and Technology Agency told Nikkei Asia. "In order to become the true global leader, it will need to continue producing internationally recognized research."
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China Overtakes the US In Scientific Research Output

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  • oops (Score:3, Interesting)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Thursday August 11, 2022 @05:06PM (#62781762) Homepage Journal

    It's almost like decades of neglect have led to the fall of the greatest nation in human history.

    • Re:oops [The China in the Bull Shop?] (Score:5, Insightful)

      by shanen ( 462549 ) on Thursday August 11, 2022 @05:31PM (#62781864) Homepage Journal

      Neglect sounds benign. No, they attacked public education quite vigorously. I suppose you could all the way back to the Scopes Monkey Trial, but I think it really ramped up with Secretary of so-called Education William Bennett in the '80s. At this point the only thing keeping America in the game at all are the immigrants, but the same idiots (loving TFG) are targeting those clever brains for expulsion.

      I don't like a lot of things about the current leaders of China, though I have high regard for the culture and the people over the hundreds and thousands of years of their history. But their "balance" these days is not stupid, and I think that's the kindest adjective I can apply to the way things are going in the States these years. America "don't need no enemies with friends like" these Civil War guys... Divide and conquer from the inside.

      P.S. Last I heard, super-hypocrite Bennett was still alive and now a big supporter of TFG. But I wouldn't have noticed if he had done the honorable thing and dropped dead.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by iAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 )

        Have you visited China? I have been there in both major and smaller cities and some real dirt farm no name places.

        The depth of racism, stupidity, ignorance, selfishness and greed commonly seen there is nothing to admire. To say nothing of the current government which is its own issue.

        There are always standout individuals in a large enough crowd but in general, no, there is nothing about their culture to admire.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          If you couldn't find anything to admire, then the problem is probably yourself, and your belief that your culture is somehow inherently superior. There's plenty to be admired, and I've also been to China in both major and small cities and real dirt firm no name places. There's just as much to admire there as there is anywhere in the West as well. There's also a lot of crap as well, but that's the same in BOTH cultures, just in different ways.

          I think there's few people who would go to China and say there'

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shanen ( 462549 )

          NAK

        • Re:oops [The China in the Bull Shop?] (Score:4, Interesting)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday August 12, 2022 @03:33AM (#62782838) Homepage Journal

          I've visited China too, from the big cities to the rural areas. I found most people were basically decent and friendly. Taxi driver tried to rip us off in Shanghai, not really surprising. Other than that no issues. In the more rural places I got some stares from kids who had probably never seen a white person in the flesh before.

          Chinese culture is complex and varies - how can it not be when there are 1.4 billion of them?

    • But wait, I thought that Greeks were the greatest nation in human history...?

      • The Greeks had the greatest culture. The Romans arguably built a better nation (and empire) than Greece.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by sfcat ( 872532 )
          Funny you should say that. The Greeks invented most of the technologies that Rome used to build their empire and ended up as their slaves. Perhaps you can argue that the Greeks had the greatest technology, but unless your idea of a good culture is self-destroying, I'm not sure I would agree that their culture was worth celebrating. Many of the culture attributes that we don't like in US culture come from Greek culture (e.g. a degree in music making one qualified as a CTO). Basically all the elitist idea

          • Western academics have been obsessing for the last thousands years over long dead Greek philosophers. And some aspects of ancient Greek culture are still seen strongly in western culture such xenia.

            It's a curious lens you see the world through, it's a bit like watching a series of movie trailers back-to-back.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      It's almost like decades of neglect have led to the fall of the greatest nation in human history.

      Does this need to be quoted against censor sock puppets with mod points?

      Anyway, I think my earlier reply was flawed. I should have noted that those immigrants are mostly smart and highly motivated and are largely a brain drain on other countries (including China) that are competing with the US. But now I also think I should have questioned the "greatest nation in human history" claim. Not like history is finished, notwithstanding that pompous immigrant's book.

  • Most CS graduate students are Chinese (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jah8303 ( 758061 ) on Thursday August 11, 2022 @05:09PM (#62781766)
    Chinese nationals comprise the majority of students in most of the graduate CS departments in the USA.

    • The problem with for profit universities is that there is more wealth in the rest of the world than in any one country. Including in shit countries like China. So they can send their kids to for profit universities who will happily charge a premium for foreign nationals if they can, and then less American (and in my country's case) less Canadian kids have spots available to them. Universities in Canada are not immune, they will charge foreign students four or five times what Canadian kids pay. And then they

  • What you get when the MBA overtakes STEM... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 11, 2022 @05:16PM (#62781802)

    Color me surprised. True R&D is not something most modern US company would want to do, because it takes away from their quarterly haul every year, and if they decided to buck the trend, the threat of shareholder lawsuits would send them back to doing as little as possible other than price hikes or forcing subscriptions.

    Chinese companies, on the other hand, tend to have government officers as part of the company structure and on corporate boards. Look how many state owned enterprises there are.

    Finally, look how much of the Chinese GDP is dedicated to finding talent.

    On the other hand, look at the US. We have politicians taking office who believe that power grids, roads, water/wastewater treatement plants are all "socialistic" entities and need to be sold off or discarded. The education system is just broken. Nothing about that.

    Blame it on philosophies that not even the dumbest farmer would follow. Anyone knows that if you don't plant seeds, water the ground, and put some time/toil into a farm, you won't get much, if anything from it. However, a lot of the politicians in Congress believe exactly that -- nothing needs to be done to help average citizen help or education, and they wonder why the US loses ground.

    It is simple. Plan for the future, or another country that does will have plans for you.

    • Re:What you get when the MBA overtakes STEM... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Shaitan ( 22585 ) on Thursday August 11, 2022 @05:26PM (#62781842)

      That and they publish so much fake research it will make your eyes bleed. I have a friend who has become something of an expert on the matter and he says the MAJORITY of Chinese biology papers he examines contain graphics which appear to be output from standard tools/instruments but have been photoshopped... often badly.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by BytePusher ( 209961 )
        It's not like Western Scientists are doing the same thing... Actually, they probably do it a lot more than you think: https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
      • I've said it before but the supposed "crisis of repeatability" is overblow. Humans are wasteful. We do a lot of pointless things. Get over it.

        But overall we're certainly seeing more tech come out of China than the US. We're falling behind, and if we're not careful they're gonna "Belt and Road" us.

        • No need to worry. Their economy is on the verge of collapse. The only question is will it continue the slow slide that's been happening the last few years or suddenly just snap and break.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Shaitan ( 22585 )

            That would be more comforting if our economy weren't also collapsing and they were converting all the US debt they hold into US real estate.

            • China has full capability to survive a recession, as does the US. For example, There are problems with people getting their bank accounts frozen [youtube.com], but that is just an administrative issue. They should have an equivalent of an FDIC to protect people from that kind of problem.

              In other words, if somehow the current recession does somehow go out of control, then it will be entirely self-inflicted through poor management.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Shaitan ( 22585 )

                Agreed but we got in the current recession by self-inflicted poor management. There are plenty of examples in history of governments that suddenly decide to solve all their ills by just doing whatever they want and printing all the money they wish with no regard for underlying economic reality. The are rather dark blots on modern world history.

                Instead of fixing and reversing the bad course they are authorizing more money than it was recently estimated it would take to solve world hunger to hiring tax gestap

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        I've a similar anecdotal reference point. I once refereed a paper on ring theory by some Chinese fellow who referenced his advisor's work. Not being an expert in ring theory and wanting to do a good job refereeing, I picked up a book on ring theory and started following his theorems proving them as I went along since he left out the majority of the proofs. Most of his theorems (I presume he was male) were not particularly deep (good thing, since I'm no expert on ring theory).

        One theorem at the beginning of

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Shaitan ( 22585 )

          What makes it worse is that because the papers are highly educated science fiction, sometimes they will have correct conclusions or approximate correct conclusions to a degree that is difficult to detect even when the paper is false. Especially by someone who is trusting the paper and using it in their own research rather than scrutinizing it as you were.

          It's one thing to make a false claim in physics where you might have a discrete consistent and repeatable value to test against experimentally and solid ma

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Didn't read the summary I see. The Japan Science and Technology Agency is a government agency, not interested in lying about Chinese research. So when one of their staff says that "China is one of the top countries in the world in terms of both the quantity and quality of scientific papers" (emphasis mine) I think that has a lot more credibility than you.

        • What if the metric for quality is as flawed and exploitable as the person you are responding to suggests? How many of those papers could be bad researchers citing bad research?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            That assumes they are good enough to fool the Japanese government agency that is tasked with evaluating and supporting Japan's scientific research. Seems unlikely. At least less likely than some Slashdot poster being right.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Shaitan ( 22585 )

              Hardly. Unless your plea to the authority of Japanese government agencies includes some sort of evidence they replicate all this research rather than merely counting citations like everyone else does as standard practice.

    • Chinese companies, on the other hand, tend to have government officers as part of the company structure and on corporate boards. Look how many state owned enterprises there are.

      Chinese State owned enterprises are the least productive and least competitive in all of the Chinese markets. They mostly survive due to preferential regulation and special treatment by State owned banks. As for those "government officers" in company structures, they are mostly there to spy and to make sure their bosses palms are well-greased.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      China also has a very good and very affordable university network that is partly government funded. Universities do a lot of basic research.

  • Unsurprising. While sure yada yada science funding, publishing fucking sucks. It's awful, it's a scam, and it does nothing for scientific knowledge or advancement. These journals are useless parasites that take your money and/or lock knowledge up behind walls while providing no real work benefit themselves, all because the "publication and citation" race is the only metric non scientists have thought of to measure scientific accomplishment, even though research like artificial MRNA was totally ignored by t

    • What the hell are you on about? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday August 11, 2022 @05:52PM (#62781946)
      Public funding is what pays for Basic Research. The kind of stuff that isn't profitable for decades, if ever. The stuff that gave us the MRNA vaccines and the Internet and rockets and pretty much every modern advance we take for granted.

      Companies used to think 10 years out. Now we can't get them to think 10 weeks out. We're running out of basic research for them to monetize but they don't care, they're switching to rent seeking for their profits. Ask yourself how many grocery stores there are in your neighborhood. Now ask yourself how many folks own those grocery stores. The stocks. Not just the parent companies... And you wonder why food prices keep going up.

      Sheesh, it's no wonder we can't compete on science if this is the level we're at.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jd ( 1658 )

        I concur. Public funding needs to be adequate for the needs of basic and blue sky research. Universities and corporations need to conduct more of the stuff. They aren't, because everything is done by quarterly profit reports. So, yes, the government can increase the pool of cash available, but there needs to also be a change of attitude throughout the system.

        Doing everything in accordance with a profit motive is proving harmful, but because that's the way the economy is set up and changing the entire socioe

  • Circle jerk of articles citing Chinese state media (Score:3, Insightful)

    by waspleg ( 316038 ) on Thursday August 11, 2022 @05:30PM (#62781858) Journal

    outlet chinadaily.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Nikkei Asia is not Chinese state media, nor based in China. It is a Japanese organization that has a reputation for accurate and factual reporting. They quote someone working for a Japanese government agency, the Japan Science and Technology Agency.

      If you were not aware, Japan is no friend of China's. The two have been at a stand-off for decades, economically and even militarily.

      It is highly unlikely that they would decide to lie about China's capabilities. Aside from anything else there is nothing in it fo

    • You can't blame "education" when the "Right" refuses to tax the wealthy to pay for education and the "Left" is so horribly afriad that someone somewhere might be offended at anything they're afraid to use real words and teach real facts.. ie: women="birthing people", homeless="unhoused", etc. The pathetic state of Education is a symptom.

  • Chinese scientists are as good as anyone, but (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Thursday August 11, 2022 @05:48PM (#62781928)
    Everyone should look up the terms “citation circles” and “citation cartels”.

    Raw citation count used to be a good measure of impact, but people have figured out how to game that system.

    I’m not suggesting that all chinese scientists are doing this. The best chinese scientists are winning nobel prizes and you can’t fake that. Their top tier of scientists are truly world class. But the idea that China publishes nearly a third of the worlds high impact research? No. Nope. No way that passes the sniff test.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tizan ( 925212 )

      Sorry the quality of work in Astronomy out of South Africa or Australia is better than China by an order of magnitude.
      So i don't know what metric they are using...i agree US fraction of important discoveries is going down but that may be a good thing to have centres of excellence in Europe, south Africa, India, China and Australia.

  • per capita?
    • per-capita, the US obviously blows them out of the water. But a per-capita assessment is only useful if you're trying to measure dick length between countries.
      From a world perspective, assessing the value of the scientific output of a particular country, only the total matters. The per-capita is meaningless.

      This is newsworthy, because it means the US has lost its position as the world science superpower.
      It's a lot like GDP. Per-capita, the US and China aren't even comparable.
      But it's a almost certain t
      • It is really the only fair assessment of competitive things between countries of different populations.
        For example, how does Canada rank in academic output, or Portugal?

        Or for global warming responsibility, for example, everyone is bitching at China these days... but US per person emissions is about twice that of China, and in terms of cumulative emissions per person alive at the time (cumulative emissions matter to the problem more than per year emissions) US is #3 in the world whereas China is not in the

        • Or for global warming responsibility, for example, everyone is bitching at China these days... but US per person emissions is about twice that of China, and in terms of cumulative emissions per person alive at the time (cumulative emissions matter to the problem more than per year emissions) US is #3 in the world whereas China is not in the top 20.

          Oh, I agree entirely that per capita makes sense for emissions.
          It's not reasonable to take 18% of the world population and complain that they're using a lot of energy, when we're comparatively use double+ what they are per person.

          However, for things like scientific output, or gross domestic product, geopolitics come into play, and China as a unified polity, their total is more important.
          We can say, "But our scientific output per capita is better!", but ultimately that doesn't make a damn difference if a

  • we've been trumped (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sdinfoserv ( 1793266 ) on Thursday August 11, 2022 @06:05PM (#62781990)
    You can’t stay #1 in scientific research output when culturally you’ve devolved to tribalism, superstition, and anti-intellectual. The GOP rejects climate change, embraces the prosperity gospel, preaches authoritarianism, revels in xenophobia while off handedly rejecting verifiable facts. Scientists are personally attacked if they don’t regurgitate political dogma. Universities have become little more than fund raising corporations afraid to ruffle the feather of the donor class. As I have said before (on this very site), Carl Sagan was a profit: “I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
    The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
    Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

    • You canâ(TM)t stay #1 in scientific research output when culturally youâ(TM)ve devolved to tribalism, superstition, and anti-intellectual.

      China is only two of those things, but I still doubt the validity of this report given that they are also known to be the primary source of completely bogus papers.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jd ( 1658 )

        The US also produces a hell of a lot of bogus papers.

        Perhaps one discussion Slashdot should revisit is on the identification and elimination of bogus papers - both those that have been published (so that we garbage collect our existing pool of knowledge) and papers that are being submitted. If a better process could be found for reviewing papers, all it would take is to convince one or two of the major journal publishing houses to agree to try the idea out.

        • The US also produces a hell of a lot of bogus papers.

          Everyone does, but China is provably the largest source of them, and has the highest ratio of obvious bullshit to actual studies.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jd ( 1658 )

            The seriousness of that would depend on whether you're talking absolute numbers or a percentage of output, and the percentage of the bogus papers that (a) aren't picked up as bogus by anyone, and (b) are high impact.

            However, let's provisionally accept that China is the worst offender. We can't simply not accept research from China, they have the world's largest radio telescope, their work on fusion is being thoroughly vetted, and their work on transplant surgery has considerable importance where it is being

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )

      I think you meant prophet, rather than profit.

      I largely concur, but there's more. Basic education is underfunded, universities are increasingly for-profit, and there's really no incentive these days to get into pure research.

      • Underfunded or mismanaged? We spend a lot on education, more than nations with better educational outcomes.
    • How are you defining "authoritarianism"? How do you attribute it to a party whose ideology revolves around minimizing the scope of government authority? What is your opinion then of the ideology that seeks to increase it?
      • Sure, the GOP claims they want less government - only when it suits them. They want more police, which is local government, taxpayer funded, pension benefitted (aka: a socialist organization) , more customs agents (federal law enforcement) Then as soon as Trump is served with a search warrant for potential crimes, it "cut federal law enforcement".
        Don't forget DeSantes suspending an ELECTED States attorney, for not enforcing abortion laws while not allowing enforcement of firearm laws.
        The GOP supports p
      • To more directly answer your question: Authoritarianism doesn’t mean less Government, it means less freedom. For example, It’s perfectly fine in the authoritarian mind to abolish the department of education, the EPA, the Department of Energy, while increasing surveillance, building more prisons, hiring more law enforcement officers, and adding more “moral” crimes to federal laws.

  • FAKE NEWS!!! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    China Overtakes the US In Scientific Research Output

    This is fake news. God would never let that happen.

    • Perhaps he did let it happen. Maybe he's trying to send a message since all the tornadoes and hurricanes just aren't doing the trick...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      yes, i did.

      oh, and please stop derailing this hilarious thread ... the anguish and the denial has to keep overflowing!

  • Would you rather drink from a pipe that trickles pure, clean water, or a giant pipe that gushes water from a storm sewer?

    Chinese research should be really questioned before drinking it. They've been known for some really big turds. (especially regarding "chinese medicine" and human genetics.)

    • And that goes for every country. It's like a race to be the most published and to be the most cited, the result is paper after paper citing each other in the race to be published - being correct or accurate doesn't matter anymore.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jd ( 1658 )

        Agreed, and TBH I'd argue that this is what needs to be targeted. You can't fix the volume until you've fixed the SNR.

        I'd like to see more discussions on how papers can be better reviewed prior to publication, but that's really only half the story. Lazy thinking doesn't just magically appear, there's a problem of lazy thinking throughout education and that also needs to be fixed.

        I'd contend that fixing publication will improve the SNR somewhat, at least long enough for people with better education to get th

  • Those of us who remember the Sokol Affair, in either of its attempts, may remember how very easy it was to defraud many peer reviewed journals with utterly nonsensical papers.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    The demonstrably poor editing and exceptionally low threshold for publication of many "human studies" fields were demonstrated, which should and did all into question the validity of those fields.

  • Doesn't really interest me.

  • Every try to replicate one of those papers? Most are full of bullshit especially in AI papers.

    Citation circles are a real thing. Don't be fooled. China is corrupt from XI to the street cleaner. Academia has not escaped.

  • Is "Research" what they call stealing IP these days?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )

      Everyone steals IP. Every country is guilty of it in the here and now, and every successful country was built from it in the past. There are no exceptions to this.

  • Chinese institutions are well known for valuing quantity over quality. Just because you have 20 mediocre paper's citing other mediocre research, doesn't make it valuable.

  • Sometimes sheer numbers don't mean much.

  • And the Soviet Union.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LazLong ( 757 ) on Thursday August 11, 2022 @10:05PM (#62782470)

    During the Cold War the Soviet Union produced the largest number of academic papers and journals. I recall as a child this being touted as a metric showing the US was done for, and the Soviets had surpassed us entirely. It turned out to be a bunch of bluster and crap. Hopefully it'll turn out the same for this.

    I think an open and competitive society will out compete a command-controlled, censored, draconian autocracy.

    • I suspect open, competitive societies are less common than you think.

    • Haha. Unfortunately, the fear was correct. An awful lot of today's AI rests on statistical work done by Soviets and Russians. For example, look up Kolmogorov. Many came to the US when they could.

      I don't think China is comparable, because Soviet work was usually quite good, and Chinese work seems to be low quality, but improving rapidly.

  • We've been moaning for decades that simply counting scientific papers is a shit way to judge the quality of your scientific output. And citation counting is even worse - that's just a measure of groupthink in many cases.

  • Total output is irrelevant, because in my experience the Chinese papers in my field have mainly been twiddles on other people's research. Citation counts are more important, but if the citations are by their Chinese buddies, not clear that that means anything, either.

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