scientific and professional personnel 

 are to be classified separately from 

 other Government employees, and if 

 they are to receive salaries approxi- 

 mating those of their colleagues in 

 universities and in industry, care 

 must be taken that this security of 

 tenure does not become a shelter for 

 incompetence and mediocrity. 



Many of the more able and ener- 

 getic scientists in Government service 

 are offered higher salaries elsewhere. 

 Inevitably, a number of these offers 

 are accepted, with the result that the 

 less qualified employees tend to con- 

 stitute a larger proportion of those 

 who remain. Unless a research bu- 

 reau can replace such losses with 

 new employees of equal ability, it is 

 forced to operate with only the resi- 

 due of its scientific staff after continu- 

 ous raids. An additional handicap is 

 the difficulty, under Civil Service 

 regulations, of demoting or dismissing 

 incompetent, mediocre, or poorly ad- 

 justed individuals. 



f-ligher standards for entrance into 

 scientific positions, longer and more 

 closely supervised periods of proba- 

 tion, examinations for promotions in 

 the lowest grades, with the alterna- 

 tive of separation from the service, 

 and higher salaries for the abler scien- 

 tists are some of the methods by 

 which the quality of scientific work 

 of the Government can be improved. 



3. Coordination of 

 Governmental Research 



The extensive development of the 

 sciences in recent vears, and the in- 

 creasing complexity of governmental 

 research, make it more difficult each 

 year to coordinate the scientific work 

 conducted by the Government and 

 to integrate governmental research 

 with that of universities, endowed in- 

 stitutions, and industrial organiza- 



tions. Parallel investigations of cer- 

 tain important research problems are 

 to be encouraged rather than avoided, 

 and duplication should not neces- 

 sarily be the bugbear in science that 

 it is in other types of governmental 

 acti\ity. Ne\'ertheless, it becomes in- 

 creasingly important that the research 

 personnel of \'arious governmental 

 bureaus keep in close touch with one 

 another and with current technical 

 developments and public needs. 



a. CoordinaUon of Research Within 

 the Government 



A specific need is for an inter- 

 bureau committee or council of rep- 

 resentatives of the principal scien- 

 tific bureaus. Such a committee might 

 be set up under the Bureau of the 

 Budget, or other appropriate auspices, 

 to advise on interrelationships of re- 

 search programs of the different agen- 

 cies, and to compare the effectiveness 

 of different procedures for adminis- 

 tering governmental research. Recom- 

 mendations from such a committee 

 on policies of budget procedure or 

 of classification of scientific personnel 

 should carry more weight than the 

 recommendation of a single bureau. 



The practice of utilizing scientific 

 employees of one bureau as con- 

 sultants for other bureaus is difficult 

 under existing regulations. But if this 

 practice were generally adopted, it 

 would further coordination of re- 

 search programs by disseminating 

 more widely a knowledge of the re- 

 lated problems under investigation by 

 \'arious agencies and of the different 

 methods by which these problems 

 are being attacked. 



b. Coordination of Governmental Re- 

 search with Outside Organizations 



There is a widespread impression 

 that a research project, once started 



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