Maech 23, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



281 



another because of their advertising value, 

 or promoted in their institutions to ward off 

 such calls; but usually the only consider- 

 able and tangible reward open to an inves- 

 tigator is transfer to an executive position 

 which makes further investigation impos- 

 sible. 



The situation is illumined by answers to 

 my questions. Of those who report that 

 they are doing research work, 109 give the 

 percentage of their working time that they 

 are able to devote to it. Sixteen are able 

 to give more than half their time to re- 

 search, 50 from quarter to half, 43 less than 

 quarter, 106 of our members are doing no 

 psychological research. A man must be re- 

 garded as an amateur in work to which he 

 does not devote more than half his time. 

 If we add to the sixteen professionally en- 

 gaged in psychological research, an equal 

 contribution from those who did not reply 

 to the questionnaire or to this particular 

 question, the number would be about 

 doubled, but they are not in fact nearly so 

 many, and some of those who reported are 

 doing work primarily physiological or psy- 

 chiatric in nature. "We have all told fewer 

 than 25 men who are able to devote more 

 than half their time to psychological re- 

 search, men who may be regarded as pro- 

 fessionally engaged in investigation. 



It is further a misfortune or crime of the 

 first magnitude that there is but little corre- 

 lation between the performance of the men 

 and the time they are now able to devote 

 to research. Of the four men who state that 

 they are able to devote all their time to 

 such work, one is a young man temporarily 

 out of a job, one holds a research fellow- 

 ship, one a subordinate position in an indus- 

 trial laboratory, one has an institutional 

 position. If we divide the members into 

 three classes of merit, the first 30, the 

 second 70 and the balance of 207, in ac- 

 cordance with the selection by ten leading 



psychologists which I have previously de- 

 scribed, and which has recently been made 

 for the third time, we get this arrangement 

 for those who answered the question : 



The largest group, one ominously large, is 

 not unnaturally those who do little or no 

 research work and who are undistinguished. 

 But apart from this group it appears that 

 those with greater ability for research are 

 not able to devote considerably more time 

 to it than others. 



The conditions adverse to research are 

 not peculiar to psychology nor even to sci- 

 ence. They hold in all cases where services 

 are for the benefit of society as a whole 

 rather than for individuals or groups. 

 Men can not undertake research as a pro- 

 fession and be paid in accordance with the 

 value of the work they accomplish. Aristo- 

 cratic institutions have devised schemes for 

 the reward of research, but these can not be 

 transported overseas to a democracy. We 

 do not want a leisure class in order to se- 

 cure certain desirable by-products. A title, 

 presentation at court, or an invitation to 

 dine with a lord, can scarcely have an 

 equivalent here. Membership in a national 

 academy of sciences, a gold medal or an 

 honorary university degree is a feeble 

 stimulus, belonging to other days and other 

 ways than ours. The payment of scien- 

 tific men, as of soldiers, in the fiat money 

 of honor and glory, like the inexpensive 

 oifering of happiness in heaven to com- 

 pensate for meekness and miseiy on earth, 

 is not a method of modern democracy. 



There are four ways by which research 

 work in psychology and other sciences can 



