CHAPTER TEN 



STRATEGY 



" Work, Finish, Publish." — Michael Faraday. 



Planning and organising research 



MUCH controversy has taken place over planning in research. 

 The main disagreement is on the relative merits of pure 

 and applied research, on what proportion of the research in a 

 country should be planned and to what degree it should be 

 planned. The extreme advocates of planning consider that the 

 only research worth while is that which is undertaken in a 

 deliberate attempt to meet some need of society, and that pure 

 research is seldom more than an elegant and time-wasting 

 amusement. On the other hand the anti-planners (in England 

 there is a Society for Freedom in Science) maintain that the 

 research worker who is organised becomes only a routine 

 investigator because, with the loss of intellectual freedom, 

 originality cannot flourish. 



Discussions on planning research are often confused by failure 

 to make clear what is meant by planning. It is useful to dis- 

 tinguish three different levels of planning. The first is the 

 actual conduct of an investigation by the worker engaged in 

 the problem. This corresponds with tactics in warfare. It is 

 short term and seldom goes far beyond the next experiment. 

 The second level involves planning further ahead on broad lines 

 and corresponds with strategy in warfare. Planning at this level 

 is not confined to the man engaged in the problem but is also 

 often the concern of the research director and the technical 

 committee. Finally there is planning of policy. This type of 

 planning is mostly done by a committee which decides what 

 problems should be investigated and what projects or workers 

 should receive support. 



It has already been pointed out that many discoveries are 



121 



