Another week, another "Ask a ScienceBlogger" question. This week, the topic is the putative "brain drain" caused by recent US policies:
Do you think there is a brain drain going on (i.e. foreign scientists not coming to work and study in the U.S. like they used to, because of new immigration rules and the general unpopularity of the U.S.) If so, what are its implications? Is there anything we can do about it?
This is really three questions, with a fourth sort of assumed on the way to the third. Answers below the fold.
The first question is "Is there a 'brain drain' going on?" That one, I can't really answer, as I'm not all that plugged in to the high-power research community these days. I've heard anecdotally that there are fewer foreign graduate students and post-docs coming in these days, but then again, DAMOP didn't seem to be lacking in presenters born outside the US. But my view of the state of physics in general isn't all that good these days, so I couldn't really say. I'm inclined to believe that there is a problem, just because people keep talking about it, but that's hardly scientific proof of a problem.
The second question is "What are the implications?" and, frankly, I suspect it's a net win for the species. Taking the broad view, science as a whole can really only be helped by having more countries build up their own science programs-- the more smart people there are working independently on a problem, the faster it's likely to get solved. If those students and post-docs stay in their home countries, science as an enterprise will be better off in the long term.
While it's a short-term loss for the US, I suspect that in the long term, it'll probably be a net positive for the US as well. If other countries-- particularly China and India-- start keeping their top scientific talent at home, that might well help them build themselves into the sort of competitors that can scare politicians into making a real effort to improve the state of science education in this country. Just as Sputnik was probably the best thing to happen to American science in the 20th century, an apparent shift in scientific leadership to Asia might be just the kick in the ass we need.
As for the final question, "Is there anything we can do about it?", it presumes that we ought to do something about it, and I'm not sure we should, at least not in terms of acting to stop the "brain drain" (which, as Razib and Janet have noted, is really just a reduction in the inflow of talent). After all, where is it written that the US has the right to import all the smartest people from the rest of the world?
Even if you feel that it's against the short-term interests of the United States to allow a drop in the number of bright foreign scientists coming here to work, the solution isn't necessarily to try to keep the foreign scientists here. If we want to maintain the premier scientific research establishment in the world, we shouldn't continue to leech off the brightest students from other nations-- instead, we should work to make sure that our home-grown scientists are the best in the world.
That means a lot of hard work, and long-term thinking, and making a serious push to improve the quality of science education, all the way down to the grade-school level. Again, the model here is probably the immediate aftermath of the Sputnik launch, when we poured resources into scientific projects out of fear of being left in the dust by the Soviets. That effort produced great strides in science education, along with huge and impressive gains in all areas of science and engineering.
Sadly, we've sort of been coasting since the glory days of the Apollo program, and things have deteriorated to the point where it's easier to be elected to high office by rejecting modern science than by supporting it.
Comments
# 1 | razib | June 6, 2006 1:46 PM
If other countries-- particularly China and India-- start keeping their top scientific talent at home
please note the data suggests that these nations don't have much of a problem, they produce so many scientists that they don't take a big hit. the problem is with smaller nations.
# 2 | Uncle Al | June 6, 2006 4:14 PM
Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. Department of Education, Head Start, "every child left behind..." No matter how low the bar is set, political bureaucracy will slither under it.Take any complex problem's components. Assign each one an orthogonal vector, -1 to 1 for the extremal options. You now have a unit hypersphere of solution space. As the number of dimensions increases beyond five,
1) Unit hypersphere volume asymptotes toward zero (as does its surface area beyond seven dimensions),
2) Most of the volume appears within 10% radius of the surface by 10 dimensions - the few solutions to any complex problem are drastic solutions, and
3) Compromise is the worst thing to do.
Problems must be locally handled. Any national-scale problem must either be very simple to fix or become a positive feedback disaster if centrally addressed.
The solution to national education is to get national government out of the loop. Let each city decide how it will educate its children; let each unversity decide whom to admit. Thereafter, no problem (other than unemployed social advocates).
# 3 | Greg Fuchs | June 6, 2006 6:12 PM
I like some of what you posted above, but I disagree that having Asia continue to develop into a scientfic powerhouse (which it is doing anyway) will somehow shock the US into puting more into science education as occured after Sputnick. This is because Sputnick was a sudden rather than gradual event. It shocked people. If US leadership in science declines, it will do so slowly. The preverbial frog will not jump out of the proverbial boiling water. Besides while many people say they want to have better science education, they are quite reluctant to pay more taxes (income or property) in order to fund it.
I also think that the process of getting education visas out to bright foreign born students who want to study in the US should be made easier. Many of those people decide they like it here and elect to immigrate to the US, which strengthens our scientific community. If they go back to pursue science in their home countries, that's also good for science worldwide.
# 4 | Moshe | June 6, 2006 11:21 PM
Excellent, finally a discussion of this issue I agree with...
# 5 | David Harmon | June 7, 2006 7:23 AM
On the general question, I'm generally with Chad and Greg. I also agree that while this surely is a problem, it's not a catastrophic one. America is sliding into decay, and that won't change until people start doing something intelligent about it.
Uncle Al: Wow, that's the first time I've seen someone pull a hypersphere out of their hat! ;-) Seriously, the biggest problem with your analogy is that the solution space isn't homogeneous, or even close. A lot of those central coordinates will represent outright waffling or "half a cow" responses. And it only takes three interdependent variables to invoke SDIC, aka chaos, so you'll likely have basins and fractal structures all over the place.
Out of curiosity, just what are the formula patterns for "surface" and "volume" of unit hyperspheres, as dimension increases?