BASIC RESEARCH IN PRIVATE RESEARCH INSTITUTES 



to the lives of others (and, for that matter, to the lives of its own 

 individuals). Higher education is recognized in the United 

 States as in itself a "higher good." Scholarly achievement, the 

 recognition and delineation of new knowledge, is nearly every- 

 where in our country granted a position of respect and honor. 



The real foundation, then, for an examination of the ques- 

 tion as to how much of this kind of genuine basic research we 

 need does not lie in our predictions as to the needs of industry or 

 technology for more facts and for new areas of industrial activity 

 or profitable investment. Nor does it lie in the continuingly 

 imminent sterility of our efforts to resolve the differences be- 

 tween the value system of our society and those of other societies 

 by a sheer increase in our ability to destroy or to use force. 



The problem of the quantity of basic research needed in 

 our present society, academic research, as distinguished from 

 applied research or mission-directed research, thus rests on our 

 joint estimate of two things: (n) how high in our value system 

 do we place scholarly achievement, or the creative search for 

 new ideas and the formulation of new knowledge, and QO how 

 much of our national effort can we now afford to invest in these 

 fruits of our prosperity and our convictions? 



Each of us has his own rough answers to these two ques- 

 tions, but I have great confidence that most of our public 

 servants, including industrialists and newspaper columnists 

 along with our elected representatives at all levels, have over- 

 estimated our willingness to underwrite our fears and have 

 underestimated our willingness to underwrite our hopes. The 

 position of education, and especially of higher education, in the 

 value scale of the adult American, the working taxpayer, is still 

 well up toward the top of the list. 



Even though our present level of effort in academic re- 

 search in science is reasonably high — in part because graduate 

 students are young and idealistic and there are many of them 



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