The Hindu : Opinion / Editorials : PROMOTING SCIENCE

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Friday, Jul 23, 2004

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PROMOTING SCIENCE

IN A REPORT titled "Inventing A Better Future," the InterAcademy Council, a grouping of the world's science academies, observes that "in a world moving rapidly toward the knowledge-based economies of the 21st century," capacity building in science and technology is necessary everywhere "but the need is greatest for the developing countries." The Council notes that the international community has given inadequate attention to this aspect as "the engine that drives knowledge-based development." A World Bank research paper titled "Strategic Approaches of Science and Technology in Development," which came out in 2003 offers a similar diagnosis, pointing out that science and technology have been "central in the progress made to date in the fight against poverty and in stimulating economic growth." Developing countries such as China, India and Brazil are fortunate in having governments that have consistently supported scientific training and a wide range of scientific and technological endeavours. The World Bank paper lists these three countries as "scientifically proficient developing countries" that can increasingly define their relations with the scientifically advanced countries on the basis of "equality or near equality."

Even so, there is a large gap separating these scientifically proficient developing countries from the developed ones. In a recent issue of Nature, Sir David King, the British Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, examined the scientific impact of 31 countries that accounted for more than 98 per cent of the world's most highly cited papers. The countries included in his analysis were those of the G-8 grouping of the world's most industrialised, 15 countries of the European Union as well as China and India. To measure the quality and quantity of their scientific output, he analysed both the number of papers published and the extent to which these papers were cited. Sir David found that the G-8 nations (other than Russia) were in a "premier league" accounting for the most citations and "pulling away from the rest of the world." He remarked that while China and India, ranked 19th and 22nd, had developed their science base "rapidly and effectively over the past few years," their national science outputs had "not yet had a chance to catch up" with their economic and scientific growth.

What is perhaps even more interesting is Sir David's chart that plots each nation's `wealth intensity' in terms of GDP per person (with GDP measured in terms of purchasing power parity) against its `citation intensity' (citations per unit GDP). This exercise finds `citation intensity' to be closely related to `wealth intensity', with India and China at the bottom of the league. By contrast, countries such as Switzerland, Sweden, Israel, Finland and Denmark have been able to punch above their weight, with `citation intensity' well beyond their `wealth intensity'. There is an important lesson here: countries such as India and China ought to aim for a better scientific bang for their buck. In India, an emerging question of vital importance is how to attract talented young people to scientific research when there are more lucrative opportunities for them abroad and, to a lesser extent, in industry at home. A critical weakness is the country's system of science education. Science teaching in schools is usually uninspiring. Even in college and university, students only rarely see high-quality research that might entice them to science. India's science destiny depends on this weakness being overcome as a matter of the highest national priority.

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