More Rising Stars



The rise of China to scientific superpower status has been well documented. See here for a report by Jonathon Adams, Christopher King and Nan Ma.


This can be confirmed by a simple search of the Scopus database which reveals 38,360 scientific publications from China in 1999 compared to 250,452 in 2009. For the United States the corresponding figures were 311,879 and 367,641.


The UK, France and Germany recorded modest increases over the decade while research output in Russia actually fell.

A certain amount of caution is in order. These figures refer to the quantity of research, not to its quality and China does have a large, although stable, population. Still, the West has cause to be concerned.


Some other countries have improved quite considerably over the decade. Korea, India, Australia and Hong Kong have doubled or nearly doubled and Thailand has more than tripled its research output.


It is especially noticeable that Malaysia is catching with Singapore. The former had 1,235 publications in 1999 and the latter 4,538 . In 2009 the figures were 7,834 and 10,993.


However, the prize f0r rapid growth goes to Iran which had 1,351 publications in 1999 and 19,088 in 2009. Compare this with Israel: 11,918 and 16,335.


If research in Iran goes on advancing at this rate and if other countries in the region also develop their scientific capabilities and if the ultra -orthodox extend their assault on reason and science into Israeli schools and universities, it looks as though Hamas and Hezbollah are going to the least of Israel's problems.