6 ms·

In a few decades, when most of the new inventions will start coming from China, this attitude is going to be very difficult to maintain.

by fooker 10y ago

sbmassey 10y ago
When.
maxander 10y ago
It is quite possible that most of the new inventions will be coming from China, and also most of China's scientific production will be rubbish. China has been great with scaling up its scientific community, but the problem of establishing an academic culture of scientific honesty is harder.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  I'm a bit confused by this comment. Are you implying that "an academic culture of scientific honesty" is something the non-Chinese world has but China doesn't? I'll concede it's probably a matter of degree.
  - wastedhours 10y ago
    Especially on the front of medical trials, a recent Chinese government probe found 80% of data used was falsified [0] [0] http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/clinical-fakes-09272016141438.html http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/clinical-fakes-0927201...
    - Gigablah 10y ago
      Sounds like a better track record than Theranos to me.
      - kobeya 10y ago
        You are demonstrating awareness of the point being made: if scientific fraud was as rampant here as it is in China, Theranos wouldn't even be remarkable and still unknown. But it is in fact rare enough to cause scandal. If you want to keep that attitude and make non-contributory quips, go back to Reddit. It is not appreciated here.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
        Most of Big Pharma's medicines don't actually work. As in, they don't work to cure the underlying condition. They work to treat the symptoms, and thereby require you to take the medicine fairly indefinitely if you want to by symptom free, side effects notwithstanding. Thereby extracting economic value from the generally unwell and ageing population and concentrating it in the hands of Big Pharma. In that way I see most of medicine as being fraudulent. Also, you're probably being down-voted for your last sentence, as it is, as you say not appreciated here.
        philipkglass 10y ago
        If Big Pharma developed treatments-rather-than-cures as a deliberate strategy to milk recurring revenue, biotech startups could ignore those recurring treatments and take over the market with easier-or-equally-difficult-to-find one shot cures that doctors, patients, and insurance companies would all prefer. But it turns out that Biology is Hard and the indefinite treatments are still used because neither incumbents nor startups have been able to find drugs that are once-and-for-all cures for diabetes, heart disease, Parkinson's, etc. It's the same reason we don't have Mr. Fusion powering our cars instead of liquid hydrocarbons: not because the sinister oil cartels are suppressing technology, but because developing that sort of breakthrough is extremely hard.
        fooker 10y ago
  - ryuker16 10y ago
    It's pretty questionable actually...it will hopefully improve. It's a bit like their economic reporting...too good to be tru ed.
  - maxander 10y ago
    Certainly, it's an issue throughout the West as well, to a degree. For that matter, my guess would be that the culture of honesty is improving in China while it worsens in, say, the U.S..
- fma 10y ago
  Quite a few Chinese with PhDs earned it from abroad (US, Europe). With the lack of resources in the US for students obtaining professorship, many of them are going back to China with lucrative offers. They will bring back whatever they learned in the US - and if they saw scientific integrity in the labs here, then they will transform it in China. In parallel, like how China has been cracking down on political corruption because it doesn't benefit the people, I imagine/hope they do the same for academic dishonesty.
tn13 10y ago
True. We need to see China creating something that is not a copy first.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
  That's what they said about Japan in the 50s.
  - brownbat 10y ago
    And the US in the early 1800s. Schuyler Towne has an amazing discussion of this, how Europeans routinely were laughing at American inventions... until they suddenly very much weren't. It's in this talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqjacHSTd48&list=UUBDpLXSbLHkPVocZgMuBTMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqjacHSTd48&list=UUBDpLXSbLH... I'd link directly to the relevant five minutes but it's hard to justify doing that sort of harm, depriving you of the other great 45 minutes there. (Ok, let's say it's 34ish to 41ish. Still, that entire thing is probably better than the other way you were going to spend some 50 minute block today.)
  - kriro 10y ago
    It's also the origin of "Made in Germany" which initially was supposed to warn British consumers against the simple copies from Germany...alas it has turned into more of a seal of quality later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_Germany
- Noseshine 10y ago
  You should google the history of the phrase "Made in Germany" (I'm German by the way) Quote (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_Germany): > The label was originally introduced in Britain by the Merchandise Marks Act 1887,[1] to mark foreign produce more obviously, as foreign manufactures had been falsely marking inferior goods with the marks of renowned British manufacturing companies and importing them into the United Kingdom. Most of these were found to be originating from Germany, whose government had introduced a protectionist policy to legally prohibit the import of goods in order to build up domestic industry (Merchandise Marks Act - Oxford University Press).[2]
ryanhuff 10y ago
The track record of research results will define China's reputation.
- fooker 10y ago
  I would say producing and designing interesting things that work at half the price of the rest of the world might have a better correlation with China's reputation.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
speleding 10y ago
Perhaps, but catching up is easier than surpassing. We've seen the same with Japan where trajectories were set to overtake the West two decades ago (on science, economy, etc), but when they reached parity the progress slowed down considerably.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  The difference is that China has made epic investments in education and training, while the US, the UK, and some other Western countries have worked hard to make education and training more expensive and less accessible. There's also been a hollowing out of independent inquiry in Western academia, and its replacement by a for-profit-only paper production sweatshop, with universities becoming corporations that have no respect for their employees and only care about short term profitability. I think we're probably somewhere close to parity now. Both systems are broken in their different ways, but the bottom line for investors is that the Chinese system has a lot more potential to grow than the system in the US. Trump is likely to make things worse rather than better. I suspect he literally doesn't understand what scientific and technological research is, never mind appreciate why it needs to be supported.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    Interestingly, the only western power actually still doing something is Germany, which just started a program to invest another 200 billion EUR into education over the next few years. We might see a return of Germany surpassing the US in science output again.
    - lorenzhs 10y ago
      That number sounds a bit large to me (2500€ per capita is a lot!). Do you have some more information? Can't find any mention of such a programme. https://www.bmbf.de/de/der-haushalt-des-bundesministeriums-fuer-bildung-und-forschung-202.html https://www.bmbf.de/de/der-haushalt-des-bundesministeriums-f...
      - 10y ago

In a few decades, when most of the new inventions will start coming from China, this attitude is going to be very difficult to maintain.

by fooker 10y ago

In a few decades, when most of the new inventions will start coming from China, this attitude is going to be very difficult to maintain.

sbmassey 10y ago

When.

maxander 10y ago

It is quite possible that most of the new inventions will be coming from China, and also most of China's scientific production will be rubbish. China has been great with scaling up its scientific community, but the problem of establishing an academic culture of scientific honesty is harder.

TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
I'm a bit confused by this comment. Are you implying that "an academic culture of scientific honesty" is something the non-Chinese world has but China doesn't? I'll concede it's probably a matter of degree.
- wastedhours 10y ago
  Especially on the front of medical trials, a recent Chinese government probe found 80% of data used was falsified [0] [0] http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/clinical-fakes-09272016141438.html http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/clinical-fakes-0927201...
  - Gigablah 10y ago
    Sounds like a better track record than Theranos to me.
    - kobeya 10y ago
      You are demonstrating awareness of the point being made: if scientific fraud was as rampant here as it is in China, Theranos wouldn't even be remarkable and still unknown. But it is in fact rare enough to cause scandal. If you want to keep that attitude and make non-contributory quips, go back to Reddit. It is not appreciated here.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
        Most of Big Pharma's medicines don't actually work. As in, they don't work to cure the underlying condition. They work to treat the symptoms, and thereby require you to take the medicine fairly indefinitely if you want to by symptom free, side effects notwithstanding. Thereby extracting economic value from the generally unwell and ageing population and concentrating it in the hands of Big Pharma. In that way I see most of medicine as being fraudulent. Also, you're probably being down-voted for your last sentence, as it is, as you say not appreciated here.
        philipkglass 10y ago
        If Big Pharma developed treatments-rather-than-cures as a deliberate strategy to milk recurring revenue, biotech startups could ignore those recurring treatments and take over the market with easier-or-equally-difficult-to-find one shot cures that doctors, patients, and insurance companies would all prefer. But it turns out that Biology is Hard and the indefinite treatments are still used because neither incumbents nor startups have been able to find drugs that are once-and-for-all cures for diabetes, heart disease, Parkinson's, etc. It's the same reason we don't have Mr. Fusion powering our cars instead of liquid hydrocarbons: not because the sinister oil cartels are suppressing technology, but because developing that sort of breakthrough is extremely hard.
        fooker 10y ago
- ryuker16 10y ago
  It's pretty questionable actually...it will hopefully improve. It's a bit like their economic reporting...too good to be tru ed.
- maxander 10y ago
  Certainly, it's an issue throughout the West as well, to a degree. For that matter, my guess would be that the culture of honesty is improving in China while it worsens in, say, the U.S..
fma 10y ago
Quite a few Chinese with PhDs earned it from abroad (US, Europe). With the lack of resources in the US for students obtaining professorship, many of them are going back to China with lucrative offers. They will bring back whatever they learned in the US - and if they saw scientific integrity in the labs here, then they will transform it in China. In parallel, like how China has been cracking down on political corruption because it doesn't benefit the people, I imagine/hope they do the same for academic dishonesty.

tn13 10y ago

True. We need to see China creating something that is not a copy first.

GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
That's what they said about Japan in the 50s.
- brownbat 10y ago
  And the US in the early 1800s. Schuyler Towne has an amazing discussion of this, how Europeans routinely were laughing at American inventions... until they suddenly very much weren't. It's in this talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqjacHSTd48&list=UUBDpLXSbLHkPVocZgMuBTMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqjacHSTd48&list=UUBDpLXSbLH... I'd link directly to the relevant five minutes but it's hard to justify doing that sort of harm, depriving you of the other great 45 minutes there. (Ok, let's say it's 34ish to 41ish. Still, that entire thing is probably better than the other way you were going to spend some 50 minute block today.)
- kriro 10y ago
  It's also the origin of "Made in Germany" which initially was supposed to warn British consumers against the simple copies from Germany...alas it has turned into more of a seal of quality later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_Germany
Noseshine 10y ago
You should google the history of the phrase "Made in Germany" (I'm German by the way) Quote (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_Germany): > The label was originally introduced in Britain by the Merchandise Marks Act 1887,[1] to mark foreign produce more obviously, as foreign manufactures had been falsely marking inferior goods with the marks of renowned British manufacturing companies and importing them into the United Kingdom. Most of these were found to be originating from Germany, whose government had introduced a protectionist policy to legally prohibit the import of goods in order to build up domestic industry (Merchandise Marks Act - Oxford University Press).[2]

ryanhuff 10y ago

The track record of research results will define China's reputation.

fooker 10y ago
I would say producing and designing interesting things that work at half the price of the rest of the world might have a better correlation with China's reputation.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

speleding 10y ago

Perhaps, but catching up is easier than surpassing. We've seen the same with Japan where trajectories were set to overtake the West two decades ago (on science, economy, etc), but when they reached parity the progress slowed down considerably.

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
The difference is that China has made epic investments in education and training, while the US, the UK, and some other Western countries have worked hard to make education and training more expensive and less accessible. There's also been a hollowing out of independent inquiry in Western academia, and its replacement by a for-profit-only paper production sweatshop, with universities becoming corporations that have no respect for their employees and only care about short term profitability. I think we're probably somewhere close to parity now. Both systems are broken in their different ways, but the bottom line for investors is that the Chinese system has a lot more potential to grow than the system in the US. Trump is likely to make things worse rather than better. I suspect he literally doesn't understand what scientific and technological research is, never mind appreciate why it needs to be supported.
- kuschku 10y ago
  Interestingly, the only western power actually still doing something is Germany, which just started a program to invest another 200 billion EUR into education over the next few years. We might see a return of Germany surpassing the US in science output again.
  - lorenzhs 10y ago
    That number sounds a bit large to me (2500€ per capita is a lot!). Do you have some more information? Can't find any mention of such a programme. https://www.bmbf.de/de/der-haushalt-des-bundesministeriums-fuer-bildung-und-forschung-202.html https://www.bmbf.de/de/der-haushalt-des-bundesministeriums-f...
    - 10y ago