Yes, I don't think I ever implied that that the flow is unilateral, but I feel like this is indicative of the broader point.
The sensitivity to US exceptionalism has made it hard to say something seemingly trivial like "the US is a huge, rich, politically powerful economy and contributes a huge fraction of global medical research" without having to caveat against "You know, other people contribute as well."
No reasonable person (certainly not me, reasonable or otherwise ;-) suggests that the flow is unilateral.
If anything I feel like there's a reverse statistical bias here. If we assume the UK is equally productive in research per capita as the US, you'd expect about a 6x research contribution from the US relative to the UK just based on population (never mind that the GDP per capita in the US is about 50% higher, as is the number of "top universities" per silly metrics like http://www.usnews.com/education/worlds-best-universities-ran...). Assuming no intrinsic difference in ability between the US and the UK citizens, it would be extremely surprising for the UK's contribution to be comparable to that of the US just based on population, university density, and economic output. This is not a judgement of UK researchers; it is merely a statement about the aggregation of people that is the US vs the aggregation that is the UK.
Anyway, I will reiterate that I recognize important contributions from all over the world. That doesn't directly bear on relative contributions and the net flow of research benefits.
(edit: clarified second-to-last paragraph with final sentence)
(edit 2: having looked up the relative GDP per capita on google, my 50% was an overestimate... 25% seems about right).
The sensitivity to US exceptionalism has made it hard to say something seemingly trivial like "the US is a huge, rich, politically powerful economy and contributes a huge fraction of global medical research" without having to caveat against "You know, other people contribute as well."
No reasonable person (certainly not me, reasonable or otherwise ;-) suggests that the flow is unilateral.
If anything I feel like there's a reverse statistical bias here. If we assume the UK is equally productive in research per capita as the US, you'd expect about a 6x research contribution from the US relative to the UK just based on population (never mind that the GDP per capita in the US is about 50% higher, as is the number of "top universities" per silly metrics like http://www.usnews.com/education/worlds-best-universities-ran...). Assuming no intrinsic difference in ability between the US and the UK citizens, it would be extremely surprising for the UK's contribution to be comparable to that of the US just based on population, university density, and economic output. This is not a judgement of UK researchers; it is merely a statement about the aggregation of people that is the US vs the aggregation that is the UK.
Anyway, I will reiterate that I recognize important contributions from all over the world. That doesn't directly bear on relative contributions and the net flow of research benefits.
(edit: clarified second-to-last paragraph with final sentence)
(edit 2: having looked up the relative GDP per capita on google, my 50% was an overestimate... 25% seems about right).