Science and Public Policy: The Open World 89 



tions which have the dual characteristics of effective stability 

 and predictive value. 



Secrecy cannot but distort this kind of or- 

 Science, Pseudo- derly growth. So, too, does the confusion 



Science and Value about science which is only too often con- 

 Judgments jured up in the lay-mind during these 



days of rapid scientific development. 

 With so much science in the air, areas of interest or discussion 

 become treated as scientific whether or not they are subject to 

 the real discipline of scientific method. We live in an age of 

 more and more science, and also alas, more pseudo-science. 

 This, as I suggested earlier on, is one of the unfortunate facts 

 of our time. It, too, certainly does not help provide the best 

 conditions for scientific progress. The public is led to believe 

 that anything is science if it has numbers in it, or demands 

 slide rules, or is carried out by people with a Ph.D. 



There is a border-zone of interest where the issues with 

 which we deal start incorporating value-judgments, such as 

 the concept of effectiveness, leading on to cost-effectiveness. 

 This is a kind of gray zone between genuine science and pseu- 

 do-science. Within it I would also include some kinds of 

 operational analysis and systems analysis with which the de- 

 fense scientist has become fairly familiar. In my own view, 

 some kinds of systems-analysis begin to verge on the scientific. 

 Others do not and never will, even though their object is to 

 make precise and to translate into numerical language the 

 issues on which major decisions need to be taken. They cannot 

 become truly scientific because when one course of action is 

 chosen and others rejected as a result of a piece of systems 

 analysis, the situation becomes totally transformed. The imple- 

 mentation of the choice makes it impossible to return to the 

 subject to test the situation afresh — which it is always possible 

 to do in a true science. 



This is a major difference. Science, as I said, is more than 

 just numbers, and more than slide rules. It is more than just 

 objective or dispassionate analysis. When scientific enquiry 



