Global inequalities in science are bigger than those in the economy

Global inequalities in science are even bigger than those in the economy. Of course, to afford food is more important than to contribute to scientific discussion. Thus results of inequalities are less dramatic in case of scientific research, however, the case of Ebola might be worth to think over here. This pathogen was detected for the first time in 1976, quite a long time ago. Would the current therapy method for the disease that it causes be the same if it had been discovered in Alaska?

The lion’s share of all scientific articles published in established academic journals comes from a small number of countries, and some of these leading countries are really small and rich, when seen from a global perspective. According to World Bank Data, there were more than 21 thousand papers indexed by the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index in 2013 that were published by Swiss researchers. This means that Switzerland was able to produce 2,603 top level papers for each one million of its inhabitants. Denmark, second in this ranking, achieved the result of 2,223 papers per million people, so 15% worse. The visualization of number of papers per million inhabitants on the global map shows the indubitable hegemony of rich, northern countries in science.

A country’s scientific publishing output per million people correlates very strongly with Gross Domestic Product per capita (Spearman 0.84!). In short, you have to be rich to have a significant input to science. This might be nothing new for you, but what is quite surprising for me, is that global inequalities in science are bigger than those in the economy.

I have calculated the Gini coefficient for 4 of the “development indicators” provided by the World Bank. First is the market capitalization of listed domestic companies, so commercial value of companies registered in a country, which I expected to be the most unequal on a global scale. The second one is Gross Domestic Product, that is a well established indicator of welfare and is known to be extremely unevenly distributed globally. I have also chosen electric power consumption, which is also a good indicator of general consumption level. The fourth indicator is the number of articles indexed by Thosmon Rueters services (this data is provided by the World Bank as well). All indicators were divided by the number of country’s inhabitants and then the Gini index was calculated.

In the result, I realized that the contribution to the scientific core is even more unequally distributed among countries than GDP and values of companies. And this is the most unevenly distributed factor that I have analysed. Countries are more equal in respect of their share in the global wealth than in their impact on global scientific discussion.

A lot of work has been done to inform citizens of Europe and North America about the dramatic scale of global inequalities. However, these inequalities are so big, that average people from wealthy countries still do not fully understand what it means “to live below the absolute poverty line”. So please, now try to imagine that inequalities in science are even bigger than that. Of course, to afford food is more important than to contribute to scientific discussion. Thus, the results of inequalities are less dramatic in the case of scientific research, however, the case of Ebola might be worth thinking about here. This pathogen was detected for the first time in 1976, so quite a long time ago. Would the current therapy method for disease that it causes be the same if it had been discovered on Alaska? The Ebola virus is the extreme and rare case, a lot of science has less to do with life or death issues.

However, my comparison to the drastically uneven world of global economy may let you imagine how different the chances of researchers from the Global South are from their colleagues in the Northern Countries. And factors that support hegemony of the North are not only economical ones. There are significant cultural and social barriers that enhance the unequal status quo (have a look here).

Autor: Witold Kieńć  
Twitter: <@witoldkienc>
Fuente: <http://openscience.com/>