21 

 The second is that he puts in the relatively continuing presence of a later- 

 career scientist with professional centrality and without the obsolescent 

 pre-occupations that make senior people less than adequate in most developing 

 nations circumstances. Thus he is in a position to achieve the "trade-off" 

 between the more and the less senior persons, in this instance of mixed 

 nationality, that gives the advanced nations science model its regenerative 

 capacity. The less senior professional is able to engage in theoretical 

 work, subject only to the test of eventual relevance, with the more senior 

 gaining him linkage with contemporary practice, providing the required support 

 and shelter, and serving a brokerage function in transmitting the new knowledge 

 so generated to its appropriate external publics. 



The strength of the bi-national institute - the fact that it emerges 

 naturally out of the professional enthusiasms of an authentic scientist during 

 service as a visiting professor - is also its important limitation. The idea 

 of an extended term abroad exerts a screening function according to the scien- 

 tific area from which candidates are drawn and, to some degree, on the calibre 

 of the people attracted. In some of these areas, extended foreign duty is 

 seen as enhancing one's professional development: in others, not. Thus the 

 corps of top-notch, mid-career professionals that have moved abroad has been 

 slanted to certain specialties and this effect has made itself felt in the 

 bi-national institutes which some of them have helped establish. Moreover, 

 the area of specialization that impelled visiting researchers to seek on-going 

 relationships in the underdeveloped nation may or may not have been the one 

 that the nation required in its development, particularly where the deficiency 

 was in the area of technological innovation. None of this negates the net 

 contribution of the foreign party to the bi-national arrangement. He provided 

 an important demonstration effect that proclaimed the validity of a variant 



