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Archive containing HTML versions since August 1997 is at http://itri2.org/ITRInews/

I'm getting ahead of myself, so I'll call this issue the second August one instead of September.  I like compiling this information, so it's the job I work on first.  I might as well distribute it while it's news.  R. D. Shelton, Editor:  rds@itri2.org
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In This Issue of ITRInews
Gallup: Americans Like Being Number One in S&T and Want to Keep it That Way
U.S. Presidential Candidates' Positions on S&T
Words Fail Me: The US Trade Deficit Headed to a Half Trillion Dollars in 2000
U.S. Leads Global New Economy Index
U.S. (Un) Awareness of International Literature

Featured Organizations in International S&T:
None
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Americans Like Being Number One in S&T and Want to Keep it That Way  A new Gallup poll of 1003 American adults on their support of S&T revealed that almost all Americans (93 %) say it is important for the U.S. to maintain its current global leadership position in science and technology, with about two-thirds (65 %) calling it "very important." Respondents believe S&T has been important in establishing U.S. influence in the world (93 %) and contributing to the country's economic success in the 20th century (93 %), with roughly two-thirds calling it "very important" to both achievements. The survey was commissioned by NSF and Bayer Corporation.  http://www.bayerus.com/msms/news/pr/survey00.html

One small methodological flaw is that premise: "current global leadership position in science and technology."  This is certainly the conventional wisdom, but objective indicators show that the U.S. position is increasingly being challenged by the EU and Japan (see http://justice.loyola.edu/~rds/myth.pdf ).  Some leading indicators, like the Third International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) are a disaster, with American high school seniors trailing the pack.  American technical paper output published in elite journals is tanking, while that of the EU, Japan, and the Asian Tigers is surging ahead -- the EU passed the US lead in publications in a majority of S&T fields in the mid-1990s and is now expanding its lead to additional fields. The EU is now producing more PhDs in S&T than the U.S. etc.  [ITRI makes an art out of pointing with alarm at our international competitors.]

U.S. Presidential Candidates' Positions on S&T  Another interesting finding from the Gallup survey is that 72 % of their respondents say that they are more likely to vote for a presidential candidate who places a high priority on strengthening S&T, with 14 % saying "much more likely."  In this light, you might want to compare the Bush and Gore positions on S&T and draw your own conclusions: http://www.georgewbush.com/issues.asp?FormMode=FullText&ID=1   http://www.algore2000.com/agenda/issue_technolo.html
 

Words Fail Me: US Trade Deficit Heads Toward a Half Trillion Dollars in 2000 Previously I have likened the U.S. trade deficit to skyrockets and explosions, but I give up and will just cite the numbers.  The trade deficit in goods from January through May of 2000 was $164.160 billion, compared to $110.257 billion for the same period last year.  If this 48.9% increase is applied to the record $329 billion deficit for 1999 (Census basis), the 2000 gap is likely to be $489 billion. (On a Balance of Payments basis, the deficit was $347 billion in 1999; that's the figure I gave in March.) The graph starts in 1975, the last year when the U.S. enjoyed a merchandise trade surplus. The figure for 2000 is annualized from the results for Jan-May.  http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/www/press.html  This Chicken Little is warning that this is a problem.  When the US economy sours, the hoard of dollars abroad may lurch in directions that worsen the downturn.  I wonder how much of that cache is "invested" in dot.coms in the U.S. stock market, and will flee abroad when the bubble bursts?  If nothing else, the merchandise trade deficit indicates lost opportunities for U.S. workers to make products from our investments in R&D -- in high-paying manufacturing jobs, instead of flipping burgers in service industries.  Certainly that's why our friends abroad are pushing manufacturing for export.  I say America sows, others reap. Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute agrees that deficits are a problem in Congressional testimony at http://www.epinet.org/webfeatures/viewpoints/tradetestimony.html  Daniel Griswold of the Cato Institute argues that deficits don't matter at http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/pas/tpa-002.html

 

The two countries with the largest trade surpluses with the U.S. are Japan and the People's Republic of China.  The perfect exponential increase of the PRC figure makes one wonder if it is the eigenfunction of some natural phenomenon, or more likely, a goal for a centrally planned economy.  Certainly it was Deng Xiaoping's 1978 decision to emulate the Japanese export-driven economy that led to those Chinese factories that make the goods filling Wallmart shelves.  Will the PRC next put on the brakes to avoid becoming America's greatest trade problem?

 
 
 
 

 

U.S. Leads Global New Economy Index In 1998, a project was undertaken by the Progressive Policy Institute to define the "New Economy,"  which has emerged in the U.S. in the last 15 years.  This is a more dispersed economy, shaped by information technologies and new communications networks like the Internet. This project resulted in the definition of a set of indicators that define the New Economy Index.  http://www.neweconomyindex.org  In July, 1999, PPI calculated the New Economy Index for the 50 U.S. states.  More recently the Global New Economy Index has been calculated for 47 nations at left.  The U.S. leads this index, because of the recent vitality of its economy from strength in its financial markets and in the IT and telecommunications sector. During the past five years, this sector has grown 8-9% as Internet usage and e-commerce have expanded. The US far exceeds other countries in Internet investment, computer usage and computer power.  Finland ranks second. Like the US, Finnish companies have made a strong investment in the Internet and telecommunications. Economic reforms have contributed as well. Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK and France come next in the index. http://www.metricnet.com/specials/GNEImain.html   [Thanks to Y.T. Chien for passing on this URL.]

 
 

U.S. (Un) Awareness of International Literature  Here's a similar bar graph where the U.S. is at the bottom, instead of the top.  It shows the percent of foreign citations in a country's S&T papers, which is a measure of the international awareness of its scientists.   The data actually includes 71 countries; the graph just contains a sample.  Not only is the U.S. dead last among the 71, but the value of its indicator, 33.5%, is about half that of the next lowest -- Japan with 64.8%.  The percent of foreign citations in a country’s scientific papers is rough measure of how aware its scientists are of work outside their country. However, this measurement is confounded by the large number of papers published in the U.S. and the relatively high overall citations to those papers.  Irish scientists don’t have so many Irish papers to cite, so they refer to those from larger countries.  Nevertheless, in 1997 Americans cited domestic papers 66.5% of the time--about twice their share (35.3%) of the world’s literature.  This data comes from from the new Science and Engineering Indicators 2000, which goes to some pains to make the case that this is not as bad as it looks.  Papers from other nations cite U.S. papers an average of 43% compared to its 33.5% share, and papers from most nations cite their own literature in excess of their share. However, the perception by Americans scientists of U.S. leadership of S&T is brought into question by the extraordinarily low citation of foreign work by Americans.  This strong propensity of Americans to cite mostly American papers also raises the "relative impact" of those papers, enhancing the appearance of American quality, perhaps in excess of some more objective measure.  http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/seind00/start.htm  Our personal experience from interactions with 50 ITRI teams of American experts and hundreds of their foreign hosts confirms that many foreign scientists are much more aware of international research than Americans are.

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FEATURED ORGANIZATIONS THIS MONTH

None.  The editor of this section is resting from compiling the clearinghouses in the last two issues.
 

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Copyright © 2000 ITRI, Inc. ITRI, Inc. or its sponsors do not accept responsibility for the accuracy of information. Comments to rds@itri2.org please.

HTML versions are at: http://itri2.org/ITRInews/
 

DATE	FEATURE ARTICLE	URL
Aug 98	Left Hand/Right Hand: NSF and NAS Both Assess US Math Research	http://itri.loyola.edu/NEWS/ITRInews1.htm
Sep 98	The Y1.998K Problem: Y2K Arrives 0.002K Early. Markets Crash, PMs Fired, Orioles 31 Games Behind	http://itri.loyola.edu/NEWS/ITRInews2.htm
Oct 98	Is S&T to Blame for the Asian Financial Crisis?	http://itri.loyola.edu/NEWS/ITRInews3.htm
Nov 98	NRC to State:  Ignoring S&T is Ignorant	http://itri.loyola.edu/NEWS/ITRInews4.htm
Dec 98/Jan 99	The Bottom Line: US Trade Deficit Skyrockets	http://itri.loyola.edu/NEWS/ITRInews5.htm
Feb 99	Who's the Bear, and Who's the Bull? Japan Doubles R&D; The US Cuts It	http://justice.loyola.edu/~rds/ITRInews6.html
Mar 99	Who's On First? (US, But Not for Long)	http://justice.loyola.edu/~rds/ITRInews7.html
Apr 99	GPRA Metastasizes Abroad	http://justice.loyola.edu/~rds/ITRInews8.html
May/Jun 99	Teraflops Computers Meet Gates' Law	http://justice.loyola.edu/~rds/ITRInews9.html
July 99	More Good News / Bad News from the Academy	http://justice.loyola.edu/~rds/ITRInews10.html
Aug 99	Rep. George Brown Adjourns	http://justice.loyola.edu/~rds/ITRInews11.html
Sep 99	200GB Disk: 40 Films on One CD	http://justice.loyola.edu/~rds/ITRInews12.html
Oct 99	Is International S&T Assessment Needed?	http://justice.loyola.edu/~rds/ITRInews13.html
Nov 99	Output in Papers: We're Number One?	http://justice.loyola.edu/~rds/ITRInews14.html
Dec 99 / Jan 00	New Technology Czar(ina)	http://justice.loyola.edu/~rds/ITRInews15.html
Feb 00	S&T: Ready for Prime Time?	http://justice.loyola.edu/~rds/ITRInews16.html
Mar 00	Bottom Line II: Trade Deficit Skyrocket Explodes	http://justice.loyola.edu/~rds/ITRInews17.html
Apr 00	Who's Getting U.S. Patents?	http://justice.loyola.edu/~rds/ITRInews18.html
May 00	Think That Government is Investing More in Research? Think Again.	http://justice.loyola.edu/~rds/ITRInews19.html
Jun 00	American Leadership of S&T: Reality or Myth?	http://justice.loyola.edu/~rds/ITRInews20.html
Jul 00	Science and Engineering Indicators 2000 Released by NSF	http://justice.loyola.edu/~rds/ITRInews21.html
Aug 00	Pale Green Manufacturing: US is 3rd out of 3	http://justice.loyola.edu/~rds/ITRInews22.html
Aug 00 (Extra Edition)	Americans Like Being No. 1 and Want to Keep It That Way	http://itri2.org/ITRInews/ITRInews23.html