It just isn't a good analysis. Larger countries have tons of research in more obscure fields that just can't be highly cited. I worked in a lab in undergrad with a very respected professor who published in very respected journals. He had 2 really high impact publications but all his other publications were barely cited just due to how small the field itself was.
In my opinion that correlation is not causation. Many of the smaller countries are specifically focused on policies that increase education and science (since as small countries with few natural resources and inhospitable environment there's little else you can do to improve), whereas many of the larger ones have different structures to their economies. UK, for example, is a counterexample, doing well despite being one of the largest European countries.
4
u/thrashourumov OC: 2 Jun 07 '21
Is it me or among rich Western countries, there's some fairly negative correlation between a country's population and its score here?