Posted on 01/16/2007 7:41:08 PM PST by kiriath_jearim
Research in Britain is in danger of being overtaken by the efforts of scientists from countries such as China, South Korea and India, many of whom were educated in UK universities, a report says.
Unless collaboration with these "innovation hotspots" is increased, Britain will be sidelined, according to The Atlas of Ideas, launched today at a conference attended by leading figures in science and politics.
Demos, a think tank, says in the report that Britain must "wake up" to developments in Asian innovation and promote global, collaborative app-roaches.
"UK higher education has survived on a diet of China, India and other countries supplying undergraduates for degree courses but we have not looked seriously at those countries as collaborators," said James Wilsdon, a co-author.
He said that British science could go the same way as the British car industry.
The report recommends the creation of a £100 million fund to take British capacity for international collaboration to a new level: a Darwin Scholarships programme to bring 200 Asian scientists a year to Britain; and the creation of public knowledge banks, along the lines of the Human Genome project, to provide an open and shared base for innovation.
Mr Wilsdon said: " We think Britain should promote itself as a cosmopolitan centre: open and willing to support the best ideas and the most innovative talent from across the world."
The Atlas of Ideas, supported by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, is the most comprehensive study yet of emerging innovation in those countries and is launched to coincide with the visit to India this week of Gordon Brown, the Chancellor.
Charles Leadbeater, a co-author, said that Britain could either became a marginal player "or we can take our lead from the City of London and become a global hub for cosmopolitan innovation".
Just about every major British company you can think of has been sold off to foreign concerns. Even their water department is owned by the Germans.
They have sold the seed corn.
The West has cut its own throat by educating these people.
"It is a mystery to me why... it is regarded as a sign of Japanese strength and American weakness that the Japanese find it more attractive to invest in the U.S. than Japan. Surely it is precisely the reverse - a sign of U.S. strength and Japanese weakness."
- Milton Friedman
Really?
The typical liberal argument. The West has cut it's throat by not educating it's own, and by not making them better than the others.
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