SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. 
and receive the agenda+papers and minutes of the Council. They also 
furnish the natural channel of informal communication between the Depart- 
ment of Research and the Departments they represent. This device has had. 
the happiest results. Thus the Home office invited the Department to investi- 
gate the question of mine-rescue apparatus. The first report of the 
Committee established by the “Advisory Council has proved on publication 
to be so valuable in directions hitherto unexpected, that the Commander- 
in-Chief in “France asked that the Committee might be placed in_ touch 
with General Head-Quarters. The Local Government Board invited the Depart- 
ment to undertake a series of researches into building materials in connexion 
with the housing policy of the Government, and this led to similar requests from 
the Commissioners of Woods and Forests as regards home-grown timber, from 
the War Office, and from the Board of Agriculture. So that from small beginnings 
a large body of researches into problems of building has been undertaken. ‘These 
are but two examples out of many cases in which other Government Departments 
have welcomed the services which a Department of Research can render. 
III.—ReESEARCH BoArps. 
*~ When a large group of researches has to be undertaken in the national 
interest, and an elaborate organization for research has to he set up, the Advisory 
Council has recommended the Minister to give the Research Committee a more 
independent status, and to place it in closer relation to himself. This is the 
third type of organ for national research, and is called a Research Board. The 
work done by Boards is not only wide in scope and.complex in organization, but 
it is always work which, for one or more reasons, is not susceptible of organiza- 
tion by an autonomous body like a research association. It is also work which 
must, because of this, be paid for altogether, or almost altogether, by the tax: 
payer. The first Board of this kind to be established was the Fuel Research 
Board. Fuel and economy in its use affect the poorest worker in the land as 
intimately as the largest consumer. Fuel is the basis of all our industries, and 
of our supremacy at sea. No association of manufacturers could be expected to 
attack so wide a range of problems in all its parts. The cheapest and fairest 
way of distributing the burden was to place it on the shoulders of the taxpayer. 
In a word, this was a typical piece of national research. The same arguments 
apply to the preservation of food as to the conservation of coal, and at a later 
date, Lord Curzon established the Food Investigation Board to deal with this 
vastly important group of problems. 
The Advisory Council has been considering the question of fuel at the earliest 
of its deliberations, and the report of Lord Haldane’s Coal Conservation Committee 
made definite recommendations which led directly to the establishment of the 
Board. In the case of food, the impetus came first from the Ministry of Food 
and the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, both of which Departments were 
deeply concerned in the feeding of the people. Similarly, it was the Secretary 
of State for Home Affairs and the Medical Research Committee which, severally 
and within a single week, invited the Advisory Council to take up the question 
of industrial fatigue. This led to the establishment*of the Industrial Fatigue 
Research Board which, apart from the importance of its special field of work, 
is interesting, because it was appointed jointly by the Research Department and 
the Medical Research Committee. 
The responsibility and initiative intrusted to a Research Board are very 
great. When the Minister has appointed a Research Board on the recommenda- 
tion of the Advisory Council, the Board is invited to prepare a scheme of work 
and a Budget of expenditure. These are submitted to the Minister, together 
with any remarks upon them the Advisory Council may wish to make. The 
Council does not amend the scheme or estimates of a Board, for Research Boards 
are responsible directly to the Minister, and their chairmen have immediate 
access to him. The less important Research Committees are appointed: by the 
Council itself, and are subject to its control, both in their schemes of work and 
their proposed expenditure. The recommendations which.go to the Minister 
are recommendations of the Council, not of the’ Committees. But both Research 
Boards and Committees, when once their proposals are approved, have full 
power to expend the appropriations made to them, subject only to the ruleg 
imposed upon all public expenditure by Parliament. 
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