S*R
发帖数: 1057 | 1 最新一期（2013-03-14）的Nature杂志，在其“World View”专栏发表了一篇题为“
The unlikely wisdom of Chairman Mao”的文章。首先觉得题目挺好玩。作者建议科
学界尤其是西方科学界要学习毛泽东的自我批评思想。
节选一下作者的一些观点和信息：
1. 科学界要学习毛主席的自我批评。
2. 中国、日本、新加坡等国的科学家和政府部门会反省和剖析自己国家创新能力缺乏
的问题，而这种自我批评在西方科学界（欧洲、美国）非常罕见。
（我们国家真的意识到并正在努力解决科技界的问题吗？）
3. 美国文化并非反对自我批评，但负债累累、政治无能的美国现在却严重缺乏自我批
评。1998至2003年，NIH的经费翻番，但带来了哪些经济或健康收益？
4. （看看作者这个有意思的比较）2000年，中国R&D投入250亿美元，产出全球3%的科
技文献；美国则投入3000亿美元，产出全球27%的科技论文。十三年之后，中国经济增
长了200%，而美国为20%。
（中国经济发展跟论文产出与研发投入的比例有关系吗？）
5. 英国科学家很会在知名期刊上发表论文，但是其令人印象深刻的科学基础并没能带
来强有力的经济表现。因为英国经济缺乏生产力，其出口停滞不前，并且2008年以来，
货币贬值30%。可以理解，英国科技界领导人宁愿关注他们的强项而非劣势。
6. 作者觉得，欧洲和美国应该好好学学怎么花钱。
---------------------------
Colin Macilwain, 2013. The unlikely wisdom of Chairman Mao. Nature, 495: 143.
Former Chinese leader Mao Zedong is remembered in the West as a monster. But
he had at least one good idea — and it's one that those who speak for
science should pick up on, and fast.
At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS) in Boston, Massachusetts, last month, Rongping Mu of the
Chinese Academy of Sciences ran through a searing litany of how China still
lacks innovative capacity. As he did so, I thought of Chairman Mao, and his
doctrine of self-criticism.
Instead of bragging about his country's growing scientific spending and
prowess, Mu dwelt on its innovative weaknesses. He presented figures from
the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development suggesting that
China lags behind countries such as Russia and Turkey in its overall
readiness to innovate.
What really caught my attention was that the guy from Japan stood up and did
the same thing. Terutaka Kuwahara of the National Institute of Science and
Technology Policy in Tokyo stressed deficiencies and weaknesses in the
Japanese system. Ten years ago, you'd have been lucky to get this kind of
self-criticism from a policy wonk speaking privately in Tokyo, never mind
publicly in Boston.
Some time ago, the government of Singapore published a report that assessed
the success and impact of various scientific initiatives in that country in
pretty brutal terms. It found, for example, that the life sciences weren't
creating jobs in the way that engineering was. A major revamp of the
initiatives followed promptly.
One problem that Western science and technology faces is that this kind of
analysis and action happens rarely in Europe, and never in the United States
. It isn't that American culture is averse to self-criticism. In 1991, John
Akers, then chairman of IBM, delivered a scathing talk, leaked to the press.
I can still recall some of his words: “Too many people here hanging around
the water-cooler…”. Akers was later fired, but his harsh assessment
helped prepare IBM to rebuild itself and to dodge the Internet iceberg that
sank most of its old-time computing rivals.
And in 1995, a grizzled Motorola engineer called Bob Galvin was invited by
the young, and possibly naive, Clinton administration to examine the
performance of the US national laboratories run by the Department of Energy,
NASA and the Department of Defense. His committee produced a scathing
assessment. Galvin wanted Congress to pre-approve a commission that would
assess, and close, some of these places. Since then, the report has gathered
a lot of dust, and perhaps as much as US$100 billion has been poured down
the drain to keep these labs open.
Nowadays, such critiques are notable for their absence. The argument,
advanced at the AAAS meeting, that a heavily indebted and politically
dysfunctional United States can shortly resume its twentieth-century growth
pattern, if only it keeps investing in research and development (R&D),
strains credulity.
In a session devoted to the connections between basic research funding and
economic growth, no one produced a single paper or reference to support this
argument. So I fished out some data of my own: in the year 2000, China
spent about 25 billion on R&D and produced 3% of the global scientific
literature. The United States spent around300 billion on R&D and produced 27
% of the papers. Thirteen years later, the Chinese economy has expanded by
200%; the American one by 20%. Clearly the two economies are not directly
comparable, but curiosity-driven research on an industrial scale is a
relatively recent invention, and I would suggest that it may be a sign —
rather than the cause — of a successful economy.
I'm still waiting to see a PhD thesis — never mind a National Academies
report — on the economic or health outcomes of the doubling of funding for
the US National Institutes of Health from 1998 to 2003.
Over a pizza in Boston, I asked an old pal, who knows US science policy as
well as any man alive, when he thought this troubling mist of complacency
would lift. He offered the opinion that the pending money crunch and the
economic challenge from China may soon prompt a change of tack.
As a Brit who spent 12 years in Washington DC, I'm not so sure. British
scientists do well at getting papers published in high-profile journals, but
this apparently impressive science base does not drive strong economic
performance. Lately, Germany has enjoyed an export boom, whereas British
exports have stagnated, despite a drastic 30% currency devaluation since
2008, because there is little productive capacity left in its economy. The
leaders of British science, understandably, prefer to concentrate on its
strengths rather than its weaknesses, and this is the trap into which the
United States is also falling.
America needs to take a leaf from East Asia's book and take a cold, hard
look at how it spends its money — including the vast federal R&D budget. As
for Chairman Mao, he'd have cheered a report from the Xinhua news agency on
6 February. The story, “Frugality fuels science breakthrough”, lauded a
team of neutrino scientists for, among other things, finding cheap
accommodation. I've never seen a story along these lines in Europe or the
United States. And that, I'm afraid, suggests that decadence has set in. | h****1
发帖数: 1242 | 2 洋人都不会在公开场合自我批评的，那是不自信的表现。
【在 S*R 的大作中提到】
: 最新一期（2013-03-14）的Nature杂志，在其“World View”专栏发表了一篇题为“
: The unlikely wisdom of Chairman Mao”的文章。首先觉得题目挺好玩。作者建议科
: 学界尤其是西方科学界要学习毛泽东的自我批评思想。
: 节选一下作者的一些观点和信息：
: 1. 科学界要学习毛主席的自我批评。
: 2. 中国、日本、新加坡等国的科学家和政府部门会反省和剖析自己国家创新能力缺乏
: 的问题，而这种自我批评在西方科学界（欧洲、美国）非常罕见。
: （我们国家真的意识到并正在努力解决科技界的问题吗？）
: 3. 美国文化并非反对自我批评，但负债累累、政治无能的美国现在却严重缺乏自我批
: 评。1998至2003年，NIH的经费翻番，但带来了哪些经济或健康收益？
| s*******k
发帖数: 1161 | 3 是这样。
【在 h****1 的大作中提到】
: 洋人都不会在公开场合自我批评的，那是不自信的表现。
| l*****7
发帖数: 8463 | 4 Generals Douglas MacArthur 在公开场合非常自信!!!!!!
【在 h****1 的大作中提到】
: 洋人都不会在公开场合自我批评的，那是不自信的表现。
| L**W
发帖数: 2277 | 5 中国人喜欢批评中国（人）是不假，出门上下一看就知道了， |
|
