Looking at the current state of world development and trends over the past few decades can give another perspective on the seeming confusions in the report from the InterAcademy Council, Inventing a Better Future: A Strategy for Building World Capacities in Science and Technology. (See previous post)

Stronger S&T capacity in the developing nations is not a luxury but an absolute necessity if these nations are to participate as full partners in the world’s fast-forming, knowledge-based economy.

There seems to be an assumption throughout the report that developing nations are not currently improving and that things must change, something must be done that is not already being done. As noted in the previous post the rate of publication of scientific papers in the developing world has risen dramatically according to the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). Global hunger, poverty and inequality are also dropping. This article in The Economist, the most recent of many, discusses these trends.

The dour tone of the InterAcademy Council may be due to their location in northern Europe where depression is a birth right, more a matter of style than substance, but it may also be due to the false assumptions of the ruling classes, especially in Europe, about the consequences of globalization and capitalism. They are biased against world development while recognizing, at least intellectually, that it is desirable.

That bias is often expressed in the reports of global institutions such as the World Bank and the U.N. Other noted economists report quite different figures. The article from The Economist asks why?

...the question remains, why are the differences so big? Several factors are at work. The World Bank attempts to measure “consumption poverty”, as opposed to “income poverty”. To the extent that poor people manage to save, their consumption will be less than their income, and so there will be more poor people on the Bank's definition. Also, the Bank expresses its poverty ratios as proportions of population in the developing countries; Mr Sala-i-Martin, for instance, uses global population; the effect is to make Mr Sala-i-Martin's estimates, other things equal, smaller than the Bank's. Country samples also vary from study to study. And on top of all this comes the effect of basing estimates on national accounts rather than on household surveys.

Why would saving not be included? When people are able to save, to have more than they need to consume immediately, they can improve their circumstances even further. Why would poverty measures be expressed as a ratio restricted to developing countries rather than the whole world? When we hear the figures we certainly assume that they refer to the whole world.

It is jokingly said that by the time governments can focus on a problem it is too late, the problem is already being solved, and there are new problems emerging that they fail to see in part because they are focused on the past. It may be that the larger the scope of the institution the slower the focus. Development and globalization are more advanced than the InterAcademy Council seems to realize and the trends are more positive. Things are getting better as a consequence of the actions being taken now.

There is unevenness; India and China are doing much better and since they are so large they drag world statistics along with them. Other areas, such as sub-Saharan Africa, are not doing so well. It is useful to attempt to determine why, what differs? China and India are making great progress economically and in S&T. No one is worried that India or China will fail "to participate as full partners in the world’s fast-forming, knowledge-based economy." There is more worry that they will dominate in these areas though this is more political posturing by political demagogues than sensible analysis.

The difference between developing countries that are improving and those that are not appears to be poor governance, specifically too much governance. Countries that have opened more and now participate in the global economy become wealthier and more technologically sophisticated. Countries that remain closed do not. The recommendations of the InterAcademy Council that governments spend a greater percentage of GDP on R&D just seems silly when looked at from an economic perspective. A large percentage of a small number is still a small number. What these countries need is development to raise R&D expenditures. Government should focus on what it is doing wrong, the things that prevent countries from participating in the global economy. Then R&D spending will rise even though the percentages remain the same. More importantly, the people of those nations will be better able to apply the discoveries when their basic needs of food and shelter are met.

If developing countries adopted the perspective noted in the previous post - science is applied technology and governance is applied industry - they would be doing better. Allowing their industries to develop rather than hampering them with cack handed inhibitions and bleeding them for government boondoggles, and allowing technology to permeate their countries as it surely will when open to the world, would result in local scientific advance on pertinent issues and improved governance.

It seems fair to assume that all interested parties wish the developing world well, at least intellectually, but not all interested parties seem to have a useful grasp of how to go about the business of development. They might find insight in the work of developing world economists such as Hernando de Soto that advise governments to focus on establishing basic property laws that enable their citizens to function more effectively. Those clever primates will then develop the country and start churning out scientific articles just for phun.