Get Ready For China's Domination Of Science

Science goes east (Image: Guang Niu/Getty)

From The New Scientist:

SINCE its economic reform began in 1978, China has gone from being a poor developing country to the second-largest economy in the world. China has also emerged from isolation to become a political superpower. Its meteoric rise has been one of the most important global changes of recent years: the rise of China was the most-read news story of the decade, surpassing even 9/11 and the Iraq war.

Yet when it comes to science and technology, most people still think of China as being stuck in the past and only visualise a country with massive steelworks and vast smoking factories.

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Have We Discovered It All?

Funding for medical research is now estimated to be in the
region of $100 billion worldwide Photo: AFP

From The Telegraph:

Billions are spent on medical research, but we have entered an era of diminishing returns.

When Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, admitted last week that he was going to have to "re-prioritise" £60 million of the Government's medical research budget, diverting it to help pay for social care for the elderly and disabled, it seemed a blatant example of robbing Peter to pay Paul. It is self-evident, after all, that today's research will reap dividends in the future, whether through new treatments, or novel ways of thinking about and preventing disease.

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Can Science Reveal The Truth?

From First Science:

In St John's gospel, Jesus Christ tells Pilate that he has come into the world to bear witness to the truth. To which, Pilate famously responds: "What is truth?" - a question that, for me at least, makes Pontius Pilate leap off the page as one of the most human of Biblical characters.

Perhaps the single greatest strength of science is that doesn't have to face up to the meaning of truth: Science's very methodology allows it to sidestep the whole issue of truth. The scientific method is a way of translating our individual responses to the world into something that's collective.

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