Which countries are going to overtake some of the western ones with science in future? China? India? Mexico? Nigeria? Iran? Turkey?

Iran has done phenomeally well, they're top of the list for growth, and now, at least in the number of papers they produce (only a crude measurement, but still), are ahead of Israel and Portugal. So much for the alleged "backwardness" of the so called "mullah regime".
@Bob B: That's totally irrelevant - we're not interested in output per capita or anything like that, but TOTAL output, so who cares if Iran has a big or small population. By that logic, the US is nothing special for science, cos they're population is 300 million. They dont produce much PER PERSON either. And by the way, Iran's population is about the same size as Turkey's.


The point is that if you can produce more than Israel or Portugal, than you have a good degree of technological capability.