310 ORGANIZED SCIENCE 



publication in professional journals (and thus all possibility of pro- 

 fessional rewards) to speculations that fail to lead to some demon- 

 strable success. The door is forever held open to anyone with confi- 

 dence in his inspiration, and in his capacity to make it "pay off." The 

 successes of a few such individuals will encourage other hardy souls 

 to similar efforts; the dismal failures of most speculative inspirations 

 will continue to discourage the vast majority. No bound is set to 

 progress founded on speculation, yet the losses incurred through 

 speculative extravagance are effectively minimized. 



Conserve scientific effort by outlawing "wasteful duplication," par- 

 ticularly of experimental inquiries? But how else detect the spurious 

 "established fact"? How many times was it observed ( and how many 

 times confidently asserted in textbooks ) that the rare gases are totally 

 inert— until, in 1962, xenon was found to form a variety of com- 

 pounds? Most duplicated experiments would no doubt be waste 

 effort, but there is little such waste. Few undertake such experiments 

 simply because, if the same results are again obtained, the work is 

 utterly unpublishable. Loss is thus limited, but the possibility of gain 

 is preserved. One man may find what is to him alone a convincing 

 reason to suppose that some earlier finding cannot be right, or that 

 there was something more to be seen than was looked for. He is com- 

 pletely free to repeat the earlier work and, though of course he may 

 still fail, he may also discover something not otherwise disco\^erable. 



Maximize the rate of scientific progress by constraining scientific 

 work to certain "promising lines"? But who could foresee the great 

 promise of the rather routine confirmatory study that yielded Hahn 

 and Strassman the result which opened the way to the discovery of 

 nuclear fission? And, even given the individual's free choice of prob- 

 lems, is there not already a striking concentration of endeavor as 

 delicately responsive to the potentialities for progress as it is com- 

 pletely spontaneous? From routine potboilers the scientist derives 

 neither satisfaction nor reputation. In quest of both, he naturally 

 endeavors to exploit what seem the most powerful new empirical 

 devices and theoretical concepts. The gold-rush behavior noted in 

 Chapter VI then automatically produces the desired concentration of 

 activity. Yet while most scientists rush off to seek their fortunes in 

 new lands, a percipient individual remains free to seek— and he some- 

 times strikes— oil in his own backyard. Change the metaphor: imagine 

 human inquisiti\'eness pent up behind barriers to progress. Local 



