Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Decline of Scientific Research in America

Sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery is an engine of eco­nom­ic and mil­i­tary pow­er, and Amer­i­ca has long prid­ed itself on its lead­er­ship in research. But as astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson points out in this video, there are some dark clouds on the hori­zon.

When you look at the trend­line, Tyson says, sci­en­tif­ic research in Amer­i­ca is clear­ly in a state of decline com­pared to oth­er regions, like Asia and West­ern Europe. “As every­one else under­stands the val­ue of inno­v­a­tive invest­ments in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy in ways that we do not,” says Tyson, “we slow­ly fade.”

The maps Tyson uses are from Worldmapper.org. The one that he says rep­re­sents change from “2000 to 2010” actu­al­ly depicts growth in sci­en­tif­ic research from 1990 to 2001. Dan­ny Dor­ling, pro­fes­sor of  Human Geog­ra­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sheffield and part of the team that cre­at­ed Worldmap­per, con­firmed Tyson’s error but said, “I think Neil’s got it rough­ly right. He should just have said ‘this is the trend to 2001 and it is not just like­ly it has con­tin­ued, but it has prob­a­bly accel­er­at­ed.’ ”

Tyson’s com­ments are from a talk he gave in May at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton enti­tled, “Adven­tures of an Astro­physi­cist.” For a clos­er look at the maps he uses, see below.

The col­or-cod­ed world map above can be used for ref­er­ence when study­ing the maps below.

The map above rep­re­sents ter­ri­to­ry sizes in pro­por­tion to the num­ber of papers pub­lished in 2001 that were writ­ten by sci­en­tists liv­ing there. The num­ber of sci­en­tif­ic papers pub­lished by researchers liv­ing in Amer­i­ca was more than three times greater than the num­ber pub­lished in the sec­ond-high­est-pub­lish­ing coun­try, Japan. For more infor­ma­tion, includ­ing per capi­ta data, see Worldmap­per’s PDF poster.

The map above rep­re­sents the growth in sci­en­tif­ic research between 1990 and 2001. Ter­ri­to­ry sizes are pro­por­tion­al to the increase in sci­en­tif­ic papers by authors work­ing in those coun­tries in 2001 com­pared to 1990. If there was no increase dur­ing that peri­od, the coun­try has no area on the map.

Despite the fact that the Unit­ed States had the most pub­lished research in 2001 and a net increase in research betwen 1990 and 2001, its size is small­er on the map because of a sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater growth rate by coun­tries like Japan, the Repub­lic of Korea, Sin­ga­pore, Chi­na and Ger­many. Although the data behind the maps are now a decade old, Dor­ling sug­gests that a cur­rent map might look sim­i­lar. “If I had to guess,” he said, “it would look worse for the USA giv­en the mas­sive cuts in fund­ing in Cal­i­for­nia to some of the major state Uni­ver­si­ties there.”

You can find more on this map, includ­ing a print­able PDF poster with per capi­ta data by coun­try, along with infor­ma­tion on the sources and method­ol­o­gy behind its cre­ation, by vis­it­ing Worldmap­per.

Maps © Copy­right SASI Group (Uni­ver­si­ty of Sheffield) and Mark New­man (Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan)


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