Is the US ceding its position as a world leader in sciences?

The last stores of particles circling in the Tevatron this week are in fact a quiet concession: the US has for the moment to cede its dominance in particle physics.

But what does the Tevatron's closure mean for the state of big-ticket American science?
One might think, with the space shuttle programme coming to a close and fitful negotiations for the James Webb Space Telescope ongoing, that perhaps America is slowly pulling down the shutters on its dominance across a number of disciplines.....

"This is the first time that the US, in my half-century of experience, seems to be saying that we're lowering our sights," Mr Rush Holt, US House of Representatives told BBC News.

"It's not a particular project that fails to find the political support to keep going, but the whole enterprise.
"That's hard for me to accept, having grown up in a country that has always wanted to push the frontiers, always wanted to be the pace-setter, whether in physics or biology or packaging or you name it."

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BBC News - What does Tevatron closure mean for big US science?

The US was a world leader in the sciences?

At the rate the U.S. public is cannibalizing its academics and experts, this does not surprise me.

The US has been losing its lead at a rapid pace in the sciences for quite some time now. Places like Korea and even frickin Iran are making progress.

MKULTRABOY said:

The US has been losing its lead at a rapid pace in the sciences for quite some time now. Places like Korea and even frickin Iran are making progress.

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Ah a mention of my country.
Hell we even have solar-powered cellphones now, and WiFi is a universal human right around here

The US a world leader in sciences?

Funny.....

The US is a world leader in exploiting the work of others... that is true and has been for a century.

Proud South Korean said:

Ah a mention of my country.
Hell we even have solar-powered cellphones now, and WiFi is a universal human right around here

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Solar powered cell phones and wi fi? :rofl Your science is weak and puny!


Behold! American ingenuity at its finest!

Befuddled_Stoner said:

Solar powered cell phones and wi fi? :rofl Your science is weak and puny!

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Your user name fit you well. Just keep sipping the koolaid and toking on your weed as the US slips even further down in the sciences and this tanks the economy and way of life in the US. We have already gone from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy. What happens when the people no longer have the income to buy any unnecessary (and maybe even necessary) services? We are currently only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

US healthcare outcomes are now more in line with second world countries than first world countries. China and Korea graduate almost as many from college as the US (US-26%; China & Korea 23%) and their graduates are much more likely to have degrees in the sciences. Things like universal Wi-Fi are becoming commonplace in Europe and traditionally second world countries like South Korea.

Thanks in large part to GWB's arcane stance toward stem-cell research and genetics, most research in those fields moved out of the US and place like Singapore poured a lot of money into building top-notch facilities for this sort of research.

Frolicking Dinosaurs said:

Your user name fit you well. Just keep sipping the koolaid and toking on your weed as the US slips even further down in the sciences and this tanks the economy and way of life in the US. We have already gone from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy. What happens when the people no longer have the income to buy any unnecessary (and maybe even necessary) services? We are currently only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

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Disagree. The US has been a consumer based economy since WW2. Its growth and expansion was due to the US expanding its middle class and not like China where its growth is based on building everything we consume. The US has never built stuff people outside the US consumed.. for the most part.

And as I stated, the US are world leaders in exploitation of ideas from other countries and that is mostly due to its massive consumer based economy. The US "domination" in sciences only started after WW2 when it exploited the horrors of WW2 to seize technologies and scientists from Europe to use against the rising red menace.

Rockets = German science
Big pharma and chemicals = German science. There is a famous quote from the first German leader after WW2 that stated that the US went from being way behind Europe and especially Germany in chemicals to being 10 years ahead of everyone else because the US seized German patents after WW2.
Jet engines = UK and Germany
Computers = UK and Germany
Nuclear = German, Danish and other Europeans.

The list goes on... hell even the Internet as we know it today is an European thing not American, but it would never have become what it is today without the consumer based US economy.... the only reason we are chatting today is due to a Brit and a Fin (provided this server is Linux based)

But now days, those very advantages the US have had for the last 60 years after WW2 are going faster than many expected since countries who they "borrowed" the technology from and made popular, are now passing the US hand over fist and new countries are emerging. Germany is again on top on chemicals and the UK, Germany and Swiss are again back on top of the big pharma lists especially when it comes to R&D spending. ARM is another great example of European companies taking back the imitative from the US on the computer chip market and so on...

But the US will remain "on top" for some time to come, especially if they fix their economy simply because of their consumer based economy.

How do you quantify something like this?

Frolicking Dinosaurs said:

Your user name fit you well. Just keep sipping the koolaid and toking on your weed as the US slips even further down in the sciences and this tanks the economy and way of life in the US. We have already gone from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy. What happens when the people no longer have the income to buy any unnecessary (and maybe even necessary) services? We are currently only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

US healthcare outcomes are now more in line with second world countries than first world countries. China and Korea graduate almost as many from college as the US (US-26%; China & Korea 23%) and their graduates are much more likely to have degrees in the sciences. Things like universal Wi-Fi are becoming commonplace in Europe and traditionally second world countries like South Korea.

Thanks in large part to GWB's arcane stance toward stem-cell research and genetics, most research in those fields moved out of the US and place like Singapore poured a lot of money into building top-notch facilities for this sort of research.

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Uh...He was making a joke how US food is the best science of all. Don't you see the picture?