Singapore is doing well, but underlying this I would wonder if there is a skew towards countries with English as the official language.
This chart shows the top global research universities, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report. So there might be a bias. If you look at the Shanghai ranking, there are a few other non-Anglo universities but not that much more: ShanghaiRanking's Academic Ranking of World Universities Same in other rankings (THE and QS).
2 Likes
Top centres will attract better researchers and have more choice, but not finding any universities from continental europe in the first list was surprising.
In the end, however, it does not matter from the perspective of science.
1 Like
Continental Europe is underfunded. They’re still punching above their weight (or wealth) if you check the top 100 ARWU (Shanghai Ranking).
2 Likes
Nice to see UofT at #16
Maybe Canada can attract more talent now 
1 Like
Chinese university students are paying journals to publish their papers as a quicker way to get into grad school. Even more reason not to trust Chinese papers.
3 Likes
Besides the issue of research quality and retraction, there is also the issue that the study population could greatly affect the outcomes. In fact, this could explain some of the cases where a research finding in China, say, doesn’t replicate when tested in the U.S. (“heterogeneity”).
For example, people living in some countries supposedly have microbiomes containing more of the types of bacteria that readily convert ellagitannins and ellagic acid to Urolithin A, than do others. If one does a study showing how walnut consumption affects health, maybe when performed in one country with high amounts of those types of bacteria, one sees a strong positive signal; but then when done in another country, one doesn’t. And then it’s tempting to conclude that it must be because the people who ran that first study were committing fraud somewhere along the way.
This also extends to mouse studies for longevity. The differences in the microbiomes of the mice under study in different labs could explain the differences seen when certain supplements are tested.
One could turn this around and use the phenomenon to help find supplements or drugs whose efficacy is strongly impacted by the microbiome – look for studies with extreme heterogeneity, but where the labs performing them are reputable.
3 Likes