NATVKF. 



[March 4, 1920 



Letters to the Editor. 



[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for 

 opinions expressed by his correspondents. Neither 

 can he undertake to return, or to correspond with 

 the writers of, rejected manuscripts intended for 

 this or any other part of Nature. No notice is 

 taken of anonymous communications.'] 



Organisation of Scientific Work. 



The relations between scientific inquiry and con- 

 stituted authority, whether ecclesiastical or civil, have 

 seldom been cordial or wholesome. Science was once 

 a fearful dragon, to be destroyed or confined. With 

 the discovery that the beast had powers from which 

 profit could be made by cunning masters, it was found 

 more expedient to tempt him into harness. Our former 

 state was probably the better, or at least the safer, 

 and most of us will agree with Prof. Soddy that the 

 scheme devised by the Indian Industrial Commission 

 is simplv an offer of servitude undisguised. While 

 there is time, those with whom the decision rests 

 should be told very plainly that the adoption of such 

 rules of service as those quoted in the leading article 

 in Nature of February 19 must mean the alienation 

 of all sincere and genuine investigators. 



Research, like art, literature, and all the higher 

 products of human thought, grows only in an atmo- 

 sphere of freedom. The progress of knowledge follows 

 no prescribed lines, and by attempting such prescrip- 

 tion the ^ead of a Service would merely kill the 

 spontaneity and enterprise of his workers. No one 

 fit to be entrusted with research worthy the name 

 would undertake it knowing that his results mi£?ht be 

 burked or withheld from publication at the whim of 

 his superior in the Service. Such conditions may be 

 appropriate to certain forms of technical or industrial 

 invention, where the sole purpose is to get ahead of a 

 trade rival, but "we can scarcely imagine that the vast 

 and manifold undertakings promoted by the scientific 

 services of the Indian Government are to be conducted 

 in that snirit. W. Batepon. 



The Manor House, Merton, S.W.tq. 



I HOPE you will allow me to express through the 

 medium of Nature my concern at the proposal 

 referred to in the leading article in the issue of 

 February 19 to centralise in an Imperial Department 

 the various scientific services in India — a policy which 

 I believe to be likely to prove detrimental to good 

 work. I was a member of the Indian Forest Depart- 

 ment during the years 1871-99, so that my Indian ex- 

 perience is not very recent, but I have kept myself 

 informed of what was going on. Since I left India 

 research institutes have been established in different 

 provinces with officers attached to them required to 

 devote themselves to the study of scientific questions. 

 In my opinion, it is of the utmost importance that 

 these officers should have as free a hand as possible, 

 and be allowed to work in their own way on the 

 subjects which they know themselves most competent 

 to study. If they are called upon to work under a 

 centralised Department, and perhaps to turn from 

 branches of study which they thoroughly understand 

 to others in which they may have to begin bv reading 

 up, much of their time will be wasted and the results 

 poor. 



A centralised Department, to most people of Indian 

 experience, means many reports and returns and 

 constant correspondence, and I believe the result 

 of such an innovation will be that some hoi'rs at 

 the beginning of each dav will have to be spent on 

 what may be called "clerical duties." If a scientific 

 worker is to do his best, he must be able to spend 

 NO. 2627, VOL. 105] 



all his time on his researches, and not be obliged to 

 waste much of the day on clerical duties, only 

 beginni:\.; his real work when tired and unable to 

 do his best. 



Centralisation will also mean, in my opinion, the 

 spending of much money in keeping up clerical staffs, 

 which, a^g most Indian officers will admit, have a 

 wonderful tendency to increase. It will be much 

 better that the recommendations of the last paragraph 

 but one of your leading article should be followed 

 and the money spent in giving financial assistance to 

 the universities and research institutes instead. The 

 paragraph to which I refer puts the arguments for 

 the continuance of the present system and its better 

 development excellently in a few words, and I trust 

 it may have the effect on the administrative authori- 

 ties that I feel sure it must have had on the scientific 

 men who have read it. J. S. Gamble. 



Highfield, East Liss, Hants, February 25. 



I HAVE not yet had time to study the Report of the 

 Indian Industrial Commission, and may, therefore, be 

 ignorant of some of the arguments for centralisation, 

 but I am certainly in general agreement with the 

 views expressed in the leading article in Nature of 

 February 19, and by Prof. Soddy and Dr. Rendle in the 

 issue for February 26, regarding the dangers of that 

 method of research organisation. Investigations under 

 centralised bureaucratic control must almost always 

 be concerned solely with questions capable of receiving 

 easy and immediate replies, for the obvious reason 

 that directors and committees can rarely be persuaded 

 to authorise attacks upon difficult or distant objectives, 

 regarding which, perhaps, no replies at all may be 

 forthcoming. Now the most important discoveries 

 have generally been made precisely by such attacks, 

 and investigation is a lottery in which the greatest 

 prize often falls to him who takes the greatest risks. 

 Directors and committees do not like risks, and, con- 

 sequently, seldom make discoveries. I should like 

 to know, for instance, how any " Indian Scientific 

 Service " would have attacked the inalaria problem, 

 which I commenced to assault (in a very foolhardy 

 manner!) in 1890. I am sure it would have refused 

 to authorise my attempts, and even to publish my 

 first results. On the other hand, it would have 

 wasted, with ripe bureaucratic prudence, thousands of 

 pounds in looking for Plasmodia in marshes, or in 

 trying to correlate various species of mosquitoes with 

 local outbreaks of the disease, and I am sure it 

 would have achieved nothing at all up to the present 

 day. 



We forget that, like really valuable art and inven- 

 tion, scientific discovery is almost always due mainly 

 to the individual. One might as well try to organise 

 an Institute for the Writing of Poetry as institutions 

 for making great discoveries or inventions. Like art, 

 discovery is creative. It depends much more on the 

 brain than on the hand, even in work requiring the 

 most careful manipulative skill. Scientific services 

 will not be able to pick up " discoverers " on every 

 bush. .\11 they can do is to organise hand-work, for 

 which they may be useful. But if the Government 

 of India vvishes to obtain gre^t results for its expendi- 

 ture it must buy genius. Now genius may be defined 

 as the quality which achieves success, and the only 

 way to buy it is to reward success — as suggested by 

 the Committee on .'\wards in Nature of January 8. 

 What we all fear is that the Government of India 

 will be tempted to spend much larger sums of money 

 in buying, not genius, but its opposite. 



At the same time certain researches, even of a 

 pett}' kind, will require subsidies, and the Government 



