to raise the general cost-effectiveness consciousness 

 of the R&D sector. For basic S&T problems of nation- 

 al priority, the prescribed indicators of economic 

 effectiveness include specific capital investments, 

 labor costs, expenditures on materials, electric pow- 

 er per unit of increase in production capacity, and 

 general expenditures in terms of cost. For each prob- 

 lem there is also compiled a technical level chart 

 which compares the projected new technology with the 

 best domestic and foreign technology, indicates the 

 branches of the economy in which the new technology 

 is to be applied, and gives rough projections of the 

 demand and export potential for the new or improved 

 technology. 75 The economic orientation of the cri- 

 teria and their similarity to the indicators of de- 

 velopment described earlier are apparent. 



Nonetheless, the requirement to include calcula- 

 tions of economic return in R&D planning is not uni- 

 versally observed and enforced. Basic science ap- 

 pears generally to be excluded from this policy and 

 from the subject matter of the "economics of re- 

 search," a special field of study that has emerged 

 in the USSR since the mid-1960s. As one of its lead- 

 ing experts observes, 



It is not possible to reduce the labor embodied 

 in Mendeleyev's discovery of the periodic table 

 to the cost of the cards on which the atomic 

 weights of chemical elements are entered and to 

 the cost of the sheets of paper on which Mende- 

 leyev recorded his idea of the periodic law. 76 



More broadly, too, cost /effectiveness estimates tend 

 to be neglected or are elaborated pro forma simply to 

 justify decisions already made. The crux of the mat- 

 ter is that no uniform set of procedures has been es- 

 tablished for defining and calculating economic re- 

 turn applicable to individual branches and enterpris- 

 es. In general, L. Gliazer notes, "Almost all eco- 

 nomic calculations that are presently made in science 

 have a low degree of reliability. Here broad use is 

 made of various kinds of analytical techniques that 

 impart the appearance of objectivity to all manner of 



121 



