Would free-trade disable the globalization of science?

[Genecks]

I keep reading about free trade. As I read more into it, I'm starting to get a bad vibe from all of it.

 

One of things I keep thinking about is how would science be effected?

 

Scientists exist all around the world. Many scientists work on similar things, but their funding sources differ.

But what if free-trade were to exist? Would this mean only one country gets to specialize in a particular kind of science?

Would that mean there would no longer be the ability for there to be an international effort to progress a particular field of science?

[CharonY]

What do you mean with free-trade in this context? Also, why would nation-based specialization be a consequence of it?

[bob000555]

No. As Fermat said, the explanation is too large for the margin.

see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Trade_Theory

[Dekan]

No. As Fermat said, the explanation is too large for the margin.

see: http://en.wikipedia....ew_Trade_Theory

I've looked at the "Trade Theory" link, but couldn't make any sense of it.

 

With regard to the OP, nearly all scientific advances come from Europe and North America. Japan has superb engineers, and some Chinese scientists living in the US make contributions to theoretical physics.

 

Otherwise Asia seems quite unproductive, scientifically. Nor does South America appear to be a hotbed of scientific progress. Australia has good scientists, because the Aussies are transplanted Europeans.

 

As for Africa..... well, perhaps "Live Aid" should be followed by "Science Aid". With equal success.

 

How can science ever be globalized?

[CharonY]

This is an incredibly inaccurate description of the science landscape.

Japan always was close to or better than leading European countries (as e.g. UK, Germany and France). China had little to offer when 10-15 years back but boy do they catch up. Not only in quantity but now also in quality. Some extrapolations even propose that they may overtake USA at some point, but right now I am still skeptical about it for a variety of reason. However, if they mange to overcome these and maybe create an even better structure than the one existing in many Western countries (instead of trying to emulate), all bets are off. Their hiring and expansion push and overall investment in science infrastructure over the last years is astounding, to say the least.

 

India is also pushing heavily, especially in the area of bioinformatics. Also, recently I noticed very interesting publications coming from Brazil.

 

For a more detailed analysis see My link.

 

This, however does not really address the OP, which I still do not get. Science as a whole is pretty globalized as it is. Grants are for instance not awarded based on national progress, but on the overall existing scientific corpus. If it is not new and interesting in China, it is not in the USA, either.

However, there may be frameworks that focus on different areas. NIH funds applied biomed science more likely than basic research, for instance. But these are usually very rough categories.

Finally, there of course programs that are aimed to strengthen specific areas of research in a given country, but the overall progress would still be benchmarked against the whole body of science.