Science & Tech Quote by Martin Fleischmann

A polite shrug that lands like a dare: Fleischmann frames global science as a two-tier system, with Britain defecting into the American model and the rest of the world trailing behind. The line’s power is its offhand inevitability. “I think” softens the blow, but “I’m afraid” signals he’s not merely describing a trend; he’s diagnosing a loss of control, a grudging surrender to the rules of a bigger game.

The subtext is about what “American science” stands for: scale, speed, and a high-pressure ecosystem where grants, prestige journals, patents, and institutional branding shape what gets studied and how loudly it’s sold. Britain “becoming more like” that implies a shift away from smaller, slower, more clubby traditions of research culture - less deference to gentlemanly continuity, more emphasis on metrics, competition, and market-facing results. “Everybody else” isn’t just an insult; it’s a geopolitical map. Nations without comparable funding, infrastructure, or soft power become scientific consumers rather than agenda-setters.

Context matters because Fleischmann’s name is inseparable from the cold fusion episode, a case study in how media attention, institutional rivalry, and the hunger for breakthrough narratives can bend scientific process. Read through that lens, the remark feels like experience talking: when science turns into a superpower contest, the winners aren’t only those with better ideas, but those with the biggest megaphone and the deepest pockets. The sentence is short because the hierarchy he’s pointing to is, in his view, already decided.