THE ART OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION 



provide a good demonstration of the healthy democracy of 

 science and the absence of any authoritarianism, for the most 

 senior members are as Uable to be criticised as is anyone else. 

 Every opportunity should be taken to attend occasional special 

 lectures given by eminent scientists as these can often be a rich 

 source of inspiration. For instance, F. M. Burnet^^ said in 1944 

 that he had attended a lecture in 1920 by Professor Orme 

 Masson, a man with a real feeUng for science, who showed with 

 superb clarity both the coming progress in atomic physics and 

 the intrinsic deUght to be found in a new understanding of 

 things. Burnet said that although he had forgotten most of the 

 substance of that lecture, he would never forget the stimulus it 

 conveyed. 



Setting about the Problem 



In starting research obviously one has first to decide what prob- 

 lem to investigate. While this is a matter on which consultation 

 with an experienced research worker is necessary, if the research 

 student is mainly responsible for choosing his own problem 

 he is more likely to make a success of it. It will be something 

 in which he is interested, he will feel that it is all his own and 

 he will give more thought to it because the responsibility of 

 making a success of it rests on himself It is wise for him to 

 choose a subject within the field which is being cultivated by 

 the senior scientists in his laboratory. He will then be able to 

 benefit from their guidance and interest and his work will increase 

 his understanding of what they are doing. Nevertheless, if a 

 scientist is obliged to work on a given problem, as may be the 

 case in applied research, very often an aspect of real interest 

 can be found if he gives enough thought to it. It might even 

 be said that most problems are what the worker makes them. 

 The great American bacteriologist Theobald Smith said that 

 he always took up the problem that lay before him, chiefly 

 because of the easy access of material, without which research 

 is crippled. ^^ The student with any real talent for research 

 usually has no difficulty in finding a suitable problem. If he 

 has not in the course of his studies noticed gaps in knowledge, 

 or inconsistencies, or has not developed some ideas of his own, 



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