9 

 to do with its quality and relevance as it was fed back to contemporary 

 practice. Finally, the form provided the regenerative and self-renewal 

 capacity that was a condition of its survival. With these characteristics 

 of the research-producing organizations in mind, we turn to a consideration 

 of the difficulties experienced by those who have sought to replicate 

 them in the underdeveloped setting, 



III 



Important resources have been diverted to the establishment of 

 scientific activity at a number of underdeveloped locations, but it must 

 still be reported that the underdeveloped nations themselves and external 

 agencies seeking to be serviceable to them remain conflicted as to the wis- 

 dom of such resource deployment. We know that the processes that Solow 

 has identified are compounding themselves in the second half century and 

 that no amount of labor-saving or technique-importation can offset the inabil- 

 ity to innovate technologically. Yet we reassure ourselves that the under- 

 developed nations' access to cheap labor and our discarded and often obsolete 

 machinery somehow gives them temporary respite from the shifts that are 

 shaking the world. The fact is that the resource-poor underdeveloped nations 

 ignore these shifts at their peril. Gunnar Myrdal concluded an important 

 study of economic growth restriction some years ago with the stricture that 

 only the highest priority to the training of scientists and the conduct of 

 scientific research in all fields could give the underdeveloped countries any 

 real chance of success in economic development. 



Granted their resource shortage it may no longer be a question of 

 how much science the developing nations can afford, but how much sacrifice 

 they are willing to make in order to get all that they can lay their hands on. 



