Basic research is severely restricted by the 

 application of management techniques that have 

 been used on highly specific project activities. 



The need for detailed advanced planning of 

 research was seen by Naugle as reducing the 

 freedom of inquiry of the researcher and forcing 

 him into more conservative paths. In addition, 

 others stated that it absorbs a considerable 

 fraction of the time and energy of researchers 

 and thus detracts from the effort that can be 

 devoted to the research itself. At the in- 

 stitutional level, such planning generally en- 

 tails the subdividing and compartmentalization 

 of budget categories. This in turn was said to 

 increase administrative overhead, and reduce 

 the laboratory's ability to organize its resources 

 so as to respond to opportunities which may 

 appear between budget cycles. In addition, 

 excessive external direction was often felt to 

 reduce the coherence of a laboratory's 

 program — the special strength it derives from 

 operating a set of inter-related activities. This 

 allegedly transforms the laboratory into an 

 instrumentality of higher administrative levels 

 (a "job shop") rather than an entity with an 

 organizational logic of its own. 



Part of the tendency toward stronger cen- 

 tralized control of research, in the minds of 

 some respondents, is a growth in the 

 bureaucratization of Government R&D. Red 

 tape and unnecessary administration were 

 particularly mentioned by the respondents. 

 Witness, for example, the words of Harold M. 

 Agnew, Director of Los Alamos Scientific 

 Laboratory: 



The ever increasing bureaucracy composed of 

 managers who require more and more detail, 

 justification, and guaranteed schedules, will in 

 the not too distant future completely eradicate 

 our Nation's world position in research and 

 technology. Bureaucratic regulations and re- 

 quirements for conformity will stifle basic 

 research. Bureaucracy will eradicate creative 

 endeavor and innovation in the long run. 

 Bureaucracy eventually loses sight of what the 

 real original objective was and becomes only 

 concerned in its own management and control 



functions. Unless this trend toward centralization 

 is somehow reversed I predict the U.S. will rapidly 

 lose its lead in science and technology. 



Independent Research Institutes 



Among independent research institutes this 

 concern about increasing bureaucratic controls 

 was also expressed. For example, from the 

 American Institutes for Research in the 

 BehavioralSciences, President Paul A. Schwarz 

 wrote: 



Problem #2 is the growing red tape associated 

 with the preparation of proposals and the 

 management of research. We have no quarrel 

 with the objectives of tight financial safeguards, 

 and certainly not with the growing concern for 

 individual privacy, for legitimate rights to infor- 

 mation, for other social goals. But each of these 

 entirely worthwhile objectives loses much in the 

 instrumentation. Again, the needs of the 

 bureaucracy for stipulating, monitoring, and 

 quantifying seem to take precedence over the 

 initial objective, which gets all but lost in the 

 comfortable rigidity of the mechanics. We are 

 especially distressed by the growing introduction 

 of procedures that were motivated by notorious 

 excesses in commercial enterprises quite 

 different from ours, which are applied willy-nilly 

 to all, and have no effect whatever except higher 

 costs of administration. We suspect that a 

 complete overhaul of the proliferated re- 

 quirements and a greaterrelianceon peer control 

 mechanisms could markedly increase the 

 productivity of research, in devoting more of the 

 research dollar to science and less to incidental 

 administration. 



This recalls the statement from the industry 

 sector that the cost of compliance with 

 regulations comes out of the research budget, 

 and thereby diminishes the amount of genuine 

 research. In the independent research in- 

 stitutes, this issue ranked fifth. 



University 



In the universities, the aspect of overregula- 

 tion most often mentioned was the increased 

 demand by government bodies for accountabili- 

 ty. This was the fifth-ranking issue among 



66 



FREEDOM IN THE RESEARCH SYSTEM 



