Offline by Richard Horton

The present EiC of The Lancet produced an incredibly arrogant remark in his overview of university rankings:    

The intellectual footprint of the world, for good or ill, is still dominated by western nations. (Offline: Everything has gone mad. The Lancet, Volume 378, Issue 9800, Page 1366, 15 October 2011)

Yes, indeed, everything has gone mad, if such rankings has something to do with the value created by the universities around the world today and its contribution to the development of every nation.

I wonder, hadn't those noble guys, who signed The Treaty of Nanking, been the graduates of the top-ranked universities. Lord Palmerston was at the University of Edinburgh (1800–1803), where he learnt political economy. He later described his time at Edinburgh as producing "whatever useful knowledge and habits of mind I possess".