APPLIED SCIENCE AND INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH 223 



Thus, under the project system, the work of a scientific man 

 costs approximately 40 per cent more than if there were no 

 external control of the work done. In addition, it must be 

 remembered that no allowance is made for the time of the 

 company executives not in the laboratory who assist in the 

 supervision of the laboratory work. 



For the project system to be worth while, therefore, from a 

 purely commercial point of view, it must be assumed that 

 approximately 40 per cent of the work of the scientific men 

 in a laboratory operating without the system will be mis- 

 directed and could be eliminated by the use of the project 

 system. It is doubtful that this is the case, and it is probable 

 that the project system materially increases the cost of operat- 

 ing a research laboratory and does not produce an equivalent 

 efficiency in results. 



In the unplanned laboratories, many mistakes are made. 

 These are evils of commission. Probably the project system 

 avoids them to some extent, but under the project system 

 there are more likely to be errors of omission. The errors 

 of commission are visible to the management; the errors of 

 omission are invisible because unknown. If a piece of work 

 that costs $100,000 ends in failure, it is obvious, and it ap- 

 pears reasonable to everybody that the man responsible should 

 be broug^ht to account for it and told not to make the same 

 mistake another time. There is no real danger of his doing 

 so, of course; next time he will make a different mistake. On 

 the other hand, an error of omission, in which the possibility 

 of a most valuable development is not recognized, is unknown 

 even to the director himself, since he will be satisfied, in the 

 characteristic human fashion, that his judgment was probably 

 right. There is only one case where an error of omission can 

 be evaluated. It is where it has been decided to make a 

 change in the plans— not to do a thing or to stop doing some- 

 thing; then, for no reason directly connected with the de- 

 cision, it is not put into effect and the work is carried on. 

 For instance, a suggestion for a particular piece of research 

 is considered by the scientific men concerned and by the 



