452 



NATURE 



[June io, 1920 



Letters to the Editor. 



\Jhe Editor does not hold himself responsible for 

 opinions expressed by his correspondents. Neither 

 can be 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.} 



The Organisation of Scientific Work in India. 



As Nature waited for more than a year to criticise 

 the Indian Industrial Commission's Report which 

 was published in October, 1918, it will probably 

 tolerate this additional delay ot a few weeks (due to 

 my absence in India) in attempting, on behalf of my 

 colleagues, to demonstrate that the impressions con- 

 veyed by tbe leading article in the issue of February 19, 

 and by the letters which followed in three later issues, 

 bear little resemblance to the Commission's proposals 

 for "the organisation of scientific work in India." 



VVe are well aware out here that the writer of the 

 article borrowed many of his expressions, and that 

 the correspondents who furnished the subsequent 

 applause obtained their impressions of the Industrial 

 Commission's scheme from a memorandum which 

 was privately composed and circulated among a few 

 scientific men in England after the departure of the 

 only two members of the Commission who were at 

 home last year on leave. If 1 had seen the private 

 memorandum only, I, too, should have added my 

 vote to the others in condemning a scheme apparently 

 designed to tamper with the form of liberty that is 

 essential to scientific research; and I doubt if I 

 should have shown the canny wisdom of a distin- 

 guished chemist who, in reply to the author of the 

 memorandum, cautiously commented on "proposals 

 said to have been set forth in the report of the Indian 

 Industrial Commission." That most of your distin- 

 guished correspondents had not read the Commis- 

 sion's report itself is obvious enough from their 

 letters, though only one of them frankly says so. 

 One writer, for example, states that " under the cen- 

 tralisation scheme the work of an investigator would 

 depend on the previous sanction of the head of the 

 Service, who would probably not be of any scientific 

 eminence, or might even be without scientific qualifica- 

 tion." The one obvious and plainly stated object of 

 the Commission's scheme is to release isolated 

 scientific research workers from control by non- 

 scientific officials, and it is so designed that even the 

 scientific officer suggested for the head of each Ser- 

 vice cannot do more than criticise and advise without 

 interfering. 



According to the privately circulated memorandum, 

 " two policies are at present in the field : (a) absolute 

 centralisation with the formation of distinct, water- 

 tight, graded departments of science (botany, zoologv, 

 chemistry, etc.) "being controlled by a separate depart- 

 mental head." This is intended to represent the 

 policy of the Industrial Commission, and the literal 

 agreement between the statement in the leading 

 article of February 19 and three-quarters of this 

 quotation is as important to notice as the additions 

 made by the writer of the article. Both, like vour 

 correspondents, have confused the wholly distinct 

 terms "services" and "departments," which are 

 clearly distin£?uished in the Commission's report; but 

 the writer of the article has also gratuitously added 

 a statement which neither the Industrial Commission 

 nor any other responsible body here has ever sug- 

 gested, namely, the placing of "botanists, zoologists, 

 and so on," under the proposed Imperial Depart- 

 ment of Industries. 



Your correspondents, out of the fullness of their 

 NO. 2641, VOL. 105] 



successful experience, reproduce many well-worn 

 platitudes on the freedom necessary for research, but 

 they overlook the fact that many young scientific 

 officers are employed for such accessory routine duties 

 as analj'ses and identifications, which may be dull, but 

 are essential to the operations of agriculture, forestry,, 

 and mineral development. They forget, too, that 

 most of the so-called research work of many others is- 

 purely descriptive, which is equally essential in a 

 country stocked with raw materials of unknown 

 nature. Unless their work comes to the notice of a 

 senior authority of their own caste, young scientific 

 officers so employed in departments or institutions 

 controlled by non-scientific officials would rarely get 

 a chance of showing their worth or of justifying their 

 desire for research opportunities; unless 'thev are 

 mernbers of some " service,',|,.3nd thus come "auto- 

 matically to the notice of their scientific chief, they 

 must either remain low-paid "hewers of wood" or 

 refuse to renew their agreements and quit. 



Then among those who already enjoy opportunities 

 for research there are some who need the support of 

 an independent senior authority in their desire to 

 obtain the necessary freedom and funds from the 

 local authorities in control; and it matters little 

 whether the " constituted authority " be a committee, 

 a board, a hidebound official, or our most senior of 

 scientific councils, which Prof. Soddy regards as the 

 obsolete product of inbreeding, for all have learnt the 

 danger of taking unchecked the average man's 

 estimate of his own worth. There are some, too, 

 among our isolated scientific workers who have not 

 sufficient confidence in themselves to close their 

 inquiries for publication ; they need the crystallising 

 influence of a senior worker who has the right to ask 

 them how they are getting on with that piece of 

 research which was in progress last year; there are 

 others who, distracted by the abundance of their ideas 

 and the wealth of available raw material, pass from 

 one inquiry to another without finishing any; there 

 are some who, in their isolation, unwittingly w^aste 

 time in pursuing lines already more completely 

 developed but not yet published elsewhere. Then 

 there are isolated workers who, for want of a pace- 

 maker, grow weary in well-doing; and, finally, there 

 is the inevitable residue who, through unco'ntrolled 

 freedom, become charlatans. But although all these 

 well-known species of scientific men are represented 

 in India, I doubt if we have any here who have vet 

 attained such experience and dexterity in the use" of 

 "scientific method" as to justifv their criticising a 

 report that they have never seen". 



Your leading article of February 19, after referring 

 to the research work done in existing institutions of 

 various sorts, asserts that "the present system has 

 proved successful in practice." It" would not be fair, 

 nor would you find space, to describe the painfullv 

 numerous exceptions ; " but if the situation must be 

 summed up in onlv a few words, the following two 

 statements are sufficient : (i) During its tours the 

 Industrial Commission received complaints nearly 

 everywhere of the disabilities that handicap scientific 

 workers under the present " system " ; and (2) the most 

 conspicuous success is also the most centralised in- 

 stitution of all, namely, the Genloc^ical Survey, which 

 is a Department as well as a Service. 



We cannot hope to provide for other scientific 

 workers the amenities now secured by the geologist ; 

 he inherits the results of the forethought of a dis- 

 tinguished scientific worker who had also a genius for 

 administration — Dr. Thomas Oldham. But it was 

 the hope of the Industrial Commission to devise a 

 scheme which (taking into account established vested 

 interests, the tendency towards orovincial autonomv. 



