Science and Public Policy: The Open World 77 



In the end the choice is largely determined by a combination 

 of chance, advocacy, and other intangibles. I would hardly 

 imagine that any scientist would be prepared to argue that the 

 present pattern of interests in basic science in different coun- 

 tries represents some rationally conceived and implemented 

 plan. Working scientists might be more inclined to attribute 

 the broad outlines of the pattern to the interaction of the 

 inertia of past decision, and the play of present fashion. 



When we come to some kinds of basic 

 Priorities in research which are mission-oriented and. 



Applied Research more particularly, to applied research and 

 and Development then development, we are in an area of 



choice where the alternatives are, as a 

 rule, both more expensive, and where judgment implies some 

 prophetic view of the usefulness of the tangible things which 

 may materialize from the work in the kind of world which 

 will exist, say, ten years hence. 



Most, if not all of us, have experienced the unknowns in 

 this kind of exercise, the doubts which balance conviction, and, 

 when it comes to development work, the underestimation of 

 difficulties. We know that the concept of utility is a relative 

 one because the future usually turns out differently from what 

 one imagined; and we also know that when it comes to utility, 

 some line of approach to the same general end, and of which 

 we might be unaware, may turn out to be far better than the 

 one we have pursued. "When it works", so the saying goes, "it's 

 obsolete." 



In deciding the allocation of the large sums of public 

 money which may be involved in all these more advanced 

 stages of the scientific process, the voices of other judges — of 

 politicians, administrators, and industrialists — must be heard. 

 But so, too, must that of the scientist, even if his views on 

 the subject of utility may not be specially relevant. For al- 

 though he may be as impotent as his non-scientific colleagues 

 in predicting the social consequences of scientific discovery, the 

 scientist knows better than they what the technical facts are, 



