Encouragement of Research in Industry

Abstract

SIR LAWRENCE BRAGG says in NATURE of July 18, p. 75: “Lip service is paid to research because it is respectable and fashionable to do so, but responsible industrialists in private express their disappointment”. That inventive talent is lacking seems doubtful. Even under conditions of complete detachment a continual flow of ideas cannot be maintained indefinitely; but when questions of plant, personnel, materials and time limit exist to cramp the style, a considerable proportion of the industrial scientist's fund of originality has to be transferred from the purely progressive to the task of adaptation to rapidly changing conditions. Provided the right men have been selected on the production side all is well; but if the research and development men are confronted with too much opposition to change, they will quickly become discouraged. It is, after all their job to make improvements.