Re: USA is not that great in science really...
* Small countries that win one or two Nobel Prizes completely skew the figures
Why should that matter? Are you saying that there is a threshold of bigness that makes small countries ineligible to be counted? Could we not say that countries are arbitrary boundaries set by and for purely political reasons often without regard for the people living there and while politics may help or hinder science it can't really stop it from happening. IIRC there were quite a few powerful political people way back when who were rather upset to find this rock isn't the center of the universe. The funny thing about globalization is that it does a rather nice job of leveling the playing field and makes geography less important.
It's fairly pointless to compare swaths of dirt based on who is chosen for a particular prize regardless of the prize or the swath of dirt. To mangle an Onion article headline: You will suffer humiliation when the scientists from my area win more mobile prizes than the scientists from your area.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
