6 FREDM. UBER 



as saying, "There is only one proved method of assisting the advance- 

 ment of pure science — that of picking men of genius, backing them 

 heavily, and leaving them to direct themselves." 



It should be emphasized that we are discussing approaches to 

 important discoveries — without knowing in what direction they lie. 

 The danger inherent in an organized or controlled approach is 

 simply that of concentrating too much effort blindly in too few direc- 

 tions, thereby possibly missing altogether a really fundamental dis- 

 covery. A strategic break-through on the research frontier would 

 seem to become increasingly probable when many independent in- 

 vestigators are engaged in the search, each on his own initiative. 

 Furthermore, the morale and efficiency of research talent might be 

 lessened tragically by any large scale attempt at organized planning. 

 Now that research scientists have achieved a very considerable mea- 

 sure of success, it is to be expected that efficiency experts will hover 

 about their laboratories to tell them how to plan their experiments — 

 if not, indeed, to control their investigations completely. 



B. ANALYZE THE PROBLEM 



Scientists resort to experiment when ciuestions or problems arise 

 which cannot be disposed of satisfactorily in any other way. Problems 

 may be relatively trivial so that their experimental solution can be 

 found in a matter of hours and at small cost in terms of time and 

 money; or they may be exceedingly complex so that only a very ex- 

 tensive investigation requiring years of effort can conceivably result in 

 a satisfactory elucidation of the difficulty. A current example of the 

 latter type is the cancer problem. A broad problem such as this can 

 be approached from many angles. There may even be more than one 

 satisfactory solution. I believe that most experimental scientists 

 expect without doubt that a solution will be found eventually. In the 

 meantime numerous aspects of the problem present themselves and it 

 is clear than an unlimited number of experiments could be performed 

 to collect factual data. When ultimately an acceptable scientific 

 answer is found, much of this experimentation will be regarded in all 

 probability as having been quite useless. The bulk of the attempts 

 will not have served any critical function. But how can such mean- 

 ingless investigations be avoided? I believe that a careful analysis of 

 the problem would do much to eliminate a large percentage of these 

 fruitless experiments. 



What constitutes a careful analysis of the problem? So many 



