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Comment by jopsen | Hacker News Reader

> Nobel-prize data suggest the productivity of American science has fallen

Nope, it could also be that suddenly the rest of the world is starting to catch up. There is a fixed number of Nobel-prizes, it's not a measure of productivity -- unless you figure research is fixed sum game.

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One has to consider history though. European top researchers crossed the Atlantic due to the war and later because it was more stable than Iron-curtained Europe, but now that a lot of factors have settled there’s probably less brain-drain into the US from around the world.

The social problems mounting up in the US affect all this too. Granted, not noble laureates, but anecdotally I know a couple of Europeans in the sciences who decided to move back to their home country because they found life in the US stressful

This is exactly what’s happening. I despise these headlines that are couched with a mildly anti-American sentiment. You could easily re-write it to convey the fact that many parts of the world are experiencing great prosperity and development and thus scientific achievement. But no, let’s write as America is circling the drain.

Edit: looks like the title was updated

Well, a lot about America itself experiencing great prosperity and development was based on other parts of the world circling the drain (and thus sending immigrants there by the tons).

Take out a lot of the motives for European scientists to go to the US in the mid/late 19th and early-mid 20th century for example, and how many scientific achievements would be left there?

There really is a long-term productivity problem in the USA though. Edward Luce wrote a good book on the subject a couple of years back, "Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent". He's a journalist at the FT. That and his "The Retreat of Western Liberalism" are very well researched and readable.

The book speaks to exactly these trends of decreasing productivity, loss of manufacturing and a decline in educational attainment of the US population as a whole.

The book is not anti-American but a warning by someone who is concerned about the decline of America and the social and geo-political implications that implies.

meh my prior on british nationals writing about american decline is not very high...even if he did work for larry summers

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