I was arguing with a friend of mine, who (among other things loves michael moore) claims that the greatest percentage of new contributions to the world do not come from the US. But I countered, claiming that was absolutely untrue. We lead the world in medical technique breakthroughs, new drug creations, technological inventions… and not to mention, the cultural stimulation hollywood and everyone else gets to broadcast throughout the world from here in the good ol’ USA.
I was able to dig up the amount of nobel prize winners for all the catergories in the past 10 years, in which America leads all other soveriegn states. I am not claiming that we have the complete monopoly, just an undeniable majority for a lot of these, where do I dig up some more stats?
I have no cite for this but, The ratio of breakthroughs to funding is higher outside the US than in. I have heard that despite significantly reduced funding in European research centres they still dish out respectable number of breakthroughs.
On a side note, I have a list of important inventions somewhere. Britain comes out just about on top with number of important (things that completely change our lives) inventions.
Sure about technological inventions? How about consumer electronics? It also occurs to me if you are looking at Nobel Prize winners per nation, you will need to adjust that stats for the populations of the country. The US has 294 million people. Sweden just has about 9 million people, which means the US has over 30 times as many people. Thus, if the US has 20 times as many Nobel prize winners, per capita Sweden is beating the US.
He could mean two things by this:
- He means that there is another country that produced more new contributions to the world.
Or - He means that all the countries in the world put together have produced more new contributions.
So are we up against the world here? Or are we competing against each country individually?
Oh, and “America, Fuck Yeah!”
Here’s a page listing countries in order of Nobel prize winners per capita. Iceland is far ahead, with one prize in a quarter of a million population, but the fact that both Sweden and Switzerland as well as the UK are ahead of the US can’t be sen as a statistical fluke.
I agree with Lobsang though that it would be interresting to see how it rates compared to research funding.
(By the way, there are other interresting comparisons on the site I linked to. Have a look!)
Just curious. Why did you pick out only those countries? From your link, these countries:
- Iceland 3.56 per 1 million people
- Sweden 3.37 per 1 million people
- Switzerland 3.00 per 1 million people
- Denmark 2.41 per 1 million people
- Norway 1.75 per 1 million people
- United Kingdom 1.66 per 1 million people
- Austria 1.34 per 1 million people
- Ireland 1.27 per 1 million people
- Germany 0.93 per 1 million people
all have a higher rate than:
- United States 0.92 per 1 million people
Purely personal reasons. I come from Sweden and I live in Switzerland - and I deal with lots of Brits.
It could also be argued that Switzerland and Sweden have a rather small population, and that therefore it could be a statistical fluctuation. Clearly that’s not the case for the UK.
Ah. I see, thanks.
http://www.undp.org/hdr2003/indicator/indic_107_2_1.html
Sweden leads R&D spending wth 3.8% of GDP, the US is 5th with 2.7%.
Here is a list of scientists & engineers per million people
http://www.undp.org/hdr2003/indicator/indic_108_2_1.html
Iceland leads
http://www.geneva.ch/qualityOfLife2_bis.htm
here are some charts on scientific papers per capita and patents per capita.
Nobel Prize awards are a terribly misleading indicator of what the OP is asking. Look at the list: Japan is ranked number 25 on the Nobel Prizes per capita. Does anyone in their right mind actually believe that Japan is a poor source of innovation?
The number of patents filed per year might be a slightly better indicator, but: 1 - I imagine it’d be hard to track down the source of patents in each country (ie, Sony might patent something in the US, even if it was invented in Japan) and 2 - the number of patents in each country would probably depend as much on the ins and outs of that country’s patent law as it would on the innovation of its citizens.
In true SDMB fashion, I think your best bet is to demand that your Michael Moore-loving friend (what does that have to do with anything?) produce a cite.
And freedom costs a buck-oh-five.
Ravenman writes:
> In true SDMB fashion, I think your best bet is to demand that your Michael
> Moore-loving friend (what does that have to do with anything?) produce a cite.
The problem here is that both bigbabysweets2000 and his/her friend have made claims. They would both be obligated to produce cites to back up their respective claims. The first thing they would have to do is to define their claims more specifically. In what area are they claiming that the U.S. or the rest of the world has produced more new contributions? How do you measure these contributions? Are you saying that the U.S. has made more contributions than all other countries combined or more than any one other country? Are you making a claim about the pure number of contributions or about the number of contributions per capita?
I think the claims of both bigbabysweets2000 and friend are simply untestable because they’re too vague.
We probably lead the world in outsourcing. Meaning, we engineer and/or manufacture more goods offshore, then ship them back to the US, than any other country. Not a quality to be proud of, that’s for sure.
This is GQ and not GD, and I might not be in the right mind, but thinking about I can’t think of anything I use invented in Japan. Perhaps existing technologies that were refined, but refinement is not innovation, is it? Does anybody have a cite on actual innovative marketshare of Japan vs. the US?