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Science Leadership Advantage

SQ solves

Status quo solves science leadership – even China isn’t a credible threat – our card addresses your warrants


Acemoglu and Robinson 12 (Daron and James A., MIT economist and Professor of Government at Harvard respectively, “World's next technology leader will be US, not China – if America can shape up”, Christian Science Monitor, 4/19/12, http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Global-Viewpoint/2012/0419/World-s-next-technology-leader-will-be-US-not-China-if-America-can-shape-up)

The odds favor the US not only because it is technologically more advanced and innovative than China at the moment, with an income per capita more than six times that of China. They do so also because innovation ultimately depends on a country’s institutions. Inclusive political institutions distribute political power equally in society and constrain how that power can be exercised. They tend to underpin inclusive economic institutions, which encourage innovation and investment and provide a level playing field so that the talents of a broad cross-section of society can be best deployed. Despite all of the challenges that they are facing, US institutions are broadly inclusive, and thus more conducive to innovation. Despite all of the resources that China is pouring into science and technology at the moment, its political institutions are extractive, and as such, unless overhauled and revolutionized soon, they will be an impediment to innovation. China may continue to grow in the near term, but this is growth under extractive institutions – mostly relying on politically connected businesses and technological transfer and catch-up. The next stage of economic growth – generating genuine innovation – will be much more difficult unless China's political institutions change to create an environment that rewards the challenging of established interests, technologies, firms, and authority. We have a historical precedent for this type of growth and how it runs out of steam: the Soviet Union. After the Bolsheviks took over the highly inefficient agricultural economy from the Tsarist regime and started to use the power of the state to move people and resources into industry, the Soviet Union grew at then-unparalleled rates, achieving an average annual growth rate of over 6 percent between 1928 and 1960. Though there was much enthusiasm about Soviet growth – as there is now about China’s growth machine – it couldn’t and didn’t last. By the 1970s, the Soviets had produced almost all the growth that could be derived from moving people from agriculture into industry, and despite various incentives and bonuses, and even harsh punishments for failure, they could not generate innovation. The Soviet economy stagnated and then totally collapsed. China has more potential than the Soviet Union. Its growth has not come simply by government fiat, but also because it has reformed its economic institutions, providing incentives to farmers and some firms (though having government connections still helps enormously, and challenging powerful firms can land you in jail or worse). China also had more technological catching up to do than the Soviet Union. But this potential will come to an end as well unless China radically transforms its institutions. This requires not only obvious steps such as introducing an independent judiciary, independent media, and more secure property rights for businesses, but truly inclusive political institutions. This necessitates a fundamental political opening so that political power is more equally distributed and can underpin economic institutions. This, in turn, will create a level playing field and encourage and fully reward all sorts of innovation – especially the disruptive kind.

n/u – already declined

Non-unique – China has already overtaken the US, and modern science requires partnership not leadership – funding can’t solve


Penn State 11 (Penn State. "US will no longer dominate science and research, expert predicts." ScienceDaily, 2/20/11, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110218132310.htm)

A shift in the global research landscape will reposition the United States as a major partner, but not the dominant leader, in science and technology research in the coming decade, according to a Penn State researcher. However, the U.S. could benefit from this research shift if it adopts a policy of knowledge sharing with the growing global community of researchers. "What is emerging is a global science system in which the U.S. will be one player among many," said Caroline Wagner, associate professor of international affairs, who presented her findings Feb. 18 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. The entrance of more nations into global science has changed the research landscape. From 1996 to 2008, the share of papers published by U.S. researchers dropped 20 percent. Wagner attributes much of this output shift not to a drop in U.S. research efforts, but to the exponentially increasing research conducted in developing countries, such as China and India. China has already surpassed the U.S. in the output of research papers in the fields of natural science and engineering. Based on current trends, China will publish more papers in all fields by 2015. Although China still lags in quality, according to Wagner, that gap is closing, too. As enrollments in Chinese universities swell, there will also be more researchers in China than there are in the U.S., she noted. Typical recommendations to spur U.S. research, such as spending more money on research, may not restore American preeminence in science and technology. "Some consider America's loss in the 'numbers game' in research to be a scary scenario, but the answer may not be in spending more money," said Wagner. "The system may be operating at full capacity -and the law of diminishing returns exists in science, just as it does in other sectors." Instead of this low return-on-investment strategy, Wagner recommended that the U.S. rely on a more efficient knowledge-sharing strategy by tapping experts from other countries who have developed more knowledge and better skills than U.S. researchers in certain fields. Other nations would, in turn, have access to U.S. scientists to conduct research in fields where they are most proficient.

alt cause

Alt cause to STEM failure – ocean enthusiasm can’t overcome Common Core failure


Stotsky 13 (Sandra, Professor of Education Reform in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, “Common Core fails to prepare students for STEM”, The Denver Post, 12/17/13, http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_24743742/common-core-fails-prepare-students-stem)

When states adopted Common Core's math standards, they were told (among other things) that they would make all high school students "collegeand career-ready" and strengthen the critical pipeline for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). However, with the exception of a few standards in trigonometry, the math standards end after Algebra II, as James Milgram, professor of mathematics emeritus at Stanford University observed in "Lowering the Bar: How Common Core Math Fails to Prepare High School Students for STEM," a report that Milgram and I co-authored for the Pioneer Institute. Who was responsible for telling the truth to the Colorado Board of Education when it adopted these standards in 2010? Who should be telling Gov. John Hickenlooper, business executives, and college presidents today that Common Core includes no standards for pre-calculus and that high school graduates taught only to Common Core's mathematics standards won't be prepared to pursue a four-year degree in STEM? Superintendents, local school committees, and most parents don't seem to know that under Common Core, their students won't be able to pursue a STEM career. In fact, they think that Common Core's math standards are rigorous. U.S. government data show that only one out of every 50 prospective STEM majors who begin their undergraduate math coursework at the pre-calculus level or lower will earn bachelor's degrees in a STEM area. Moreover, students whose last high school mathematics course was Algebra II or lower have less than a 40 percent chance of earning any kind of four-year college degree. It's not as if the lead mathematics standards writers themselves didn't tell the public how low Common Core's high school mathematics standards were. In 2010, Jason Zimba, a lead writer, said the standards are "not only not for STEM, they are also not for selective colleges." In January 2010, William McCallum, another lead mathematics standards writer, said, "The overall standards would not be too high, certainly not in comparison [to] other nations, including East Asia, where math education excels." There are other consequences to having a college readiness test in math with low expectations. The U.S. Department of Education's competitive grant program, Race to the Top, requires states to place students who have been admitted by their public colleges and universities into credit-bearing (non-remedial) mathematics (and English) courses if they have passed a Common Core-based "college readiness" test. Selective public colleges, engineering schools, and universities in every state will likely have to lower the level of their introductory math courses to avoid unacceptably high failure rates. Milgram and I were members of Common Core's Validation Committee, which was charged with reviewing each successive draft of the standards. We both refused to sign off on the academic quality of the national standards, but made public our explanation and criticism of the final version of Common Core's standards. It is still astonishing that Colorado's state board of education adopted Common Core's standards without asking the engineering, science and math faculty at its own higher education institutions (and the math teachers in our own high schools) to do an analysis of Common Core's definition of college readiness and make public their recommendations. After all, who could be better judges of what students need for a STEM major? We clearly need to revise Common Core's mathematics standards as soon as possible so that all American schools are able to offer the coursework beginning in grades 5 or 6, enabling mathematically able students to aim for a STEM major in college. Unless, of course, Colorado's towns and cities aren't interested in American-born and educated engineers, doctors or scientists.

Alt cause to STEM decline – bureaucratic environment, losing students overseas


Kluger 13 (Jeffrey, TIME Science editor at large, “What U.S. Needs to Be the Leader in STEM Again”, TIME, 9/20/13, http://nation.time.com/2013/09/20/what-u-s-needs-to-be-the-leader-in-stem-again/)

But the U.S. is in no position to boast these days. Consider these numbers from this morning’s TIME Education Summit panel on Basic and Applied Research. Last year’s entire operating budget for the National Science Foundation was $7.4 billion—or only $400 million more than Americans spent on potato chips in the same period. Last year too, 20% of undergrads in China were studying in the STEM fields. In Europe it was 11%. In the U.S. it was 4.4%. “In 2008, I was working on a paper about a newly discovered superconducting material,” said Robert Birgeneau, chancellor emeritus and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, “Wen I looked at my citations I realized that 80% of the papers I mentioned were from universities in China.” There are a lot of reasons the U.S. is falling behind in the fundamental disciplines in which it once led. Money, of course, is a big part of it. “I was the head of the National Institutes of Health in the 1990s,” said Harold Varmus, currently the director of the National Cancer Institute. “Our funding doubled from 1998 to 2003. Now we’re facing nothing but stagnation and sequestration.” Then too there’s the ferociously competitive, stultifyingly bureaucratic research culture. “We have built an unsustainable environment in which large numbers of faculty members train large numbers of students, hyper-populating their fields,” says Varmus. “I can fund perhaps 10% of the studies that apply for NCI grants.” The problem is not that too many people are studying in the STEM fields. It’s that there simply isn’t enough basic infrastructure—including money—to let them go on to do the research they are training to do. In the biomedical field, said Robert Dijkgraaf, director of the Institute for Advanced Study, the average age at which a researcher receives a first grant is 42. “It’s difficult and sometimes painful to be a member of the scientific community in the U.S.,” says Varmus. “Other countries offer a more comfortable environment.” The paradoxical result, he says, is that we do a better job of attracting students from overseas to come here and study than we do of holding onto our own students. And once undergrads from China or Europe get their still highly coveted degree from an American university, they take their newly acquired skills back home.

decline inev

US science leadership decline inevitable – population growth – and no impact to decline


Lempert 08 (Richard O., Eric Stein Distinguished University Professor of Law and Sociology Emeritus at Michigan Law “English and Immigrants Are the Immediate Needs”, Science Progress, 3/3/08, http://scienceprogress.org/2008/03/maintaining-us-scientific-leadership/)

Countries much larger than the United States, most notably India and China, are experiencing economic growth that outstrips ours, and as they grow in wealth they are rapidly improving their educational systems and basic science infrastructures. Moreover, as globalization leads companies born in the United States to move research and production capacity abroad, market demand for trained scientists and engineers is increasing elsewhere while it is being dampened here. Even if the United States retains a per capita education and investment advantage over India and China, population differences alone mean that the number of trained scientists and engineers in these countries will soon dwarf the number in America, with differences in the quantity and quality of science innovation likely to follow. Added to the Asian challenge is a Europe that can no longer be seen as a set of discrete countries when it comes to science. Rather, cross-border research teams are being encouraged, and European Union-wide funding mechanisms are being established. In short, several decades from now we may find that we are not the world’s number one country when it comes to science, however measured, but perhaps no. 4 behind China, India, and the EU. We may also find that being in fourth place is not altogether bad. When children in China are vaccinated against polio, they are not worse off because the vaccine was invented in the United States. When an Indian inventor draws on two decades of U.S. government-funded research to achieve a technological breakthrough, her accomplishment will not be lessened because it would not have happened had research in the United States not paved the way. As the world no. 1 in science, U.S. science investments have had substantial spillover effects, improving the quality of life in other countries and enabling scientific, technological, and medical accomplishments that have benefited people abroad. As other countries improve their science, the progress of American science and the lives of our people will increasingly benefit from educational and infrastructure investments made elsewhere and from research supported by currencies other than the dollar.

sci dip fails

Science diplomacy can’t resolve political conflicts – there’s no impact


Dickson 09 (David, “The limits of science diplomacy”, SciDev, 4/6/09, http://www.scidev.net/global/capacity-building/editorials/the-limits-of-science-diplomacy.html)

Recently, the Obama administration has given this field a new push, in its desire to pursue "soft diplomacy" in regions such as the Middle East. Scientific agreements have been at the forefront of the administration's activities in countries such as Iraq and Pakistan. But — as emerged from a meeting entitled New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy, held in London this week (1–2 June) — using science for diplomatic purposes is not as straightforward as it seems. Some scientific collaboration clearly demonstrates what countries can achieve by working together. For example, a new synchrotron under construction in Jordan is rapidly becoming a symbol of the potential for teamwork in the Middle East. But whether scientific cooperation can become a precursor for political collaboration is less evident. For example, despite hopes that the Middle East synchrotron would help bring peace to the region, several countries have been reluctant to support it until the Palestine problem is resolved. Indeed, one speaker at the London meeting (organised by the UK's Royal Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science) even suggested that the changes scientific innovations bring inevitably lead to turbulence and upheaval. In such a context, viewing science as a driver for peace may be wishful thinking. Conflicting ethos Perhaps the most contentious area discussed at the meeting was how science diplomacy can frame developed countries' efforts to help build scientific capacity in the developing world. There is little to quarrel with in collaborative efforts that are put forward with a genuine desire for partnership. Indeed, partnership — whether between individuals, institutions or countries — is the new buzzword in the "science for development" community. But true partnership requires transparent relations between partners who are prepared to meet as equals. And that goes against diplomats' implicit role: to promote and defend their own countries' interests. John Beddington, the British government's chief scientific adviser, may have been a bit harsh when he told the meeting that a diplomat is someone who is "sent abroad to lie for his country". But he touched a raw nerve. Worlds apart yet co-dependent The truth is that science and politics make an uneasy alliance. Both need the other. Politicians need science to achieve their goals, whether social, economic or — unfortunately — military; scientists need political support to fund their research. But they also occupy different universes. Politics is, at root, about exercising power by one means or another. Science is — or should be — about pursuing robust knowledge that can be put to useful purposes. A strategy for promoting science diplomacy that respects these differences deserves support. Particularly so if it focuses on ways to leverage political and financial backing for science's more humanitarian goals, such as tackling climate change or reducing world poverty. But a commitment to science diplomacy that ignores the differences — acting for example as if science can substitute politics (or perhaps more worryingly, vice versa), is dangerous. The Obama administration's commitment to "soft power" is already faltering. It faces challenges ranging from North Korea's nuclear weapons test to domestic opposition to limits on oil consumption. A taste of reality may be no bad thing.

Diplomacy is dead – modern political environment favors force even if it doesn’t work – no change coming


Cohen 13 (Roger, “Diplomacy Is Dead”, New York Times, 1/21/13, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/opinion/global/roger-cohen-diplomacy-is-dead.html)

Effective diplomacy — the kind that produced Nixon’s breakthrough with China, an end to the Cold War on American terms, or the Dayton peace accord in Bosnia — requires patience, persistence, empathy, discretion, boldness and a willingness to talk to the enemy. This is an age of impatience, changeableness, palaver, small-mindedness and an unwillingness to talk to bad guys. Human rights are in fashion, a good thing of course, but the space for realist statesmanship of the kind that produced the Bosnian peace in 1995 has diminished. The late Richard Holbrooke’s realpolitik was not for the squeamish. There are other reasons for diplomacy’s demise. The United States has lost its dominant position without any other nation rising to take its place. The result is nobody’s world. It is a place where America acts as a cautious boss, alternately encouraging others to take the lead and worrying about loss of authority. Syria has been an unedifying lesson in the course of crisis when diplomacy is dead. Algeria shows how the dead pile up when talking is dismissed as a waste of time. Violence, of the kind diplomacy once resolved, has shifted. As William Luers, a former ambassador to Venezuela and the director of The Iran Project, said in an e-mail, it occurs “less between states and more dealing with terrorists.” One result is that “the military and the C.I.A. have been in the driver’s seat in dealing with governments throughout the Middle East and in state to state (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq) relations.” The role of professional diplomats is squeezed. Indeed the very word “diplomacy” has become unfashionable on Capitol Hill, where its wimpy associations — trade-offs, compromise, pliancy, concessions and the like — are shunned by representatives who these days prefer beating the post-9/11 drums of confrontation, toughness and inflexibility: All of which may sound good but often get you nowhere (or into long, intractable wars) at great cost. Stephen Heintz, president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, wrote in an e-mail that, “When domestic politics devolve into polarization and paralysis the impact on diplomatic possibility becomes inordinately constraining.” He cited Cuba and Iran as examples of this; I would add Israel-Palestine. These critical foreign policy issues are viewed less as diplomatic challenges than potential sources of domestic political capital. So when I asked myself what I hoped Barack Obama’s second term would inaugurate, my answer was a new era of diplomacy. It is not too late for the president to earn that Nobel Peace Prize. Of course diplomats do many worthy things around the world, and even in the first term there were a couple of significant shifts — in Burma where patient U.S. diplomacy has produced an opening, and in the yo-yoing new Egypt where U.S. engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood was important and long overdue (and raised the question of when America would do the same with the Brotherhood’s offshoot, Hamas.) But Obama has not had a big breakthrough. America’s diplomatic doldrums are approaching their 20th year.

Alt causes to lack of science diplomacy – administrative challenges, no evidence it works, secrecy problems


Campbell 10 (Cathleen, President and CEO, U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF), “Encouraging Science Diplomacy and Engagement”, Proceedings of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy Conference, 2/4/10, http://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/sites/uscpublicdiplomacy.org/files/useruploads/u22281/Science%20Diplomacy%20Proceedings.pdf)

In closing, Campbell offered a number of parallel challenges faced by those engaging in science diplomacy efforts. First, administrative aspects are enormously taxing. CRDF has spent a great deal of time on issues such as visas, export controls, and OFAC licenses. These are issues about which CRDF constantly pushes for change. Second, long-term commitment is the exact opposite of what interests policy makers and funders. Third, science diplomacy efforts will require a system to analyze their impact. A framework for systematic analysis does not yet exist, and we are thus far only able to rely on anecdotal evidence. Fourth, communication presents an interesting challenge, as can be demonstrated by the sensitivity of certain issues in difficult environments. In some cases, projects may need to stay under the radar in order to prevent their elimination or to protect individuals involved in the project. On the other hand, policy makers and funders may want to hear about the projects or publicize their success, creating a difficult dichotomy of interests. Finally, there is an ongoing need for more leadership in advocacy for science diplomacy. While CRDF continues to push Washington for more engagement, it has been an uphill struggle and few people have been able to grasp its importance. Campbell stated that CRDF has pushed for establishment of a global science fund, but in the reality of Washington politics it is simply not a priority at this time.


Science diplomacy fails – partisanship dooms it to look disjointed, prevents solvency


Rojansky 10 (Matthew, , Executive Director, Partnership for a Secure America (PSA), “Building a Science Diplomacy Constituency”, Proceedings of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy Conference, 2/4/10, http://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/sites/uscpublicdiplomacy.org/files/useruploads/u22281/Science%20Diplomacy%20Proceedings.pdf)

Yet the process of actually pushing through any legislation, let alone that related to science diplomacy, is extraordinarily difficult. Rojansky explained that most bills in Congress die quickly. Many are eliminated after massive public discourse, while others get rushed through without any real debate because they are merely compromises over completely unrelated issues. The hearing process in committee, during which important questions should be asked and key ideas developed, often doesn’t matter at all. Rojansky argued that many committee hearings are mostly ceremony and tradition, during which the ranking member often vacates the room, leaving only one member of Congress present for the sake of continuing the procedure. Filibuster has also become a serious issue, often leading to drawn-out negotiations involving a few senators in order to gain the bare minimum necessary to reach cloture. The reality of this political process, Rojansky posited, is that very little is likely to happen with regard to implementing effective science diplomacy legislation




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