Abstract
The Interdepartmental Scientific Panel, of which Sir Edward Appleton is chairman, is charged with rather wider responsibilities than those suggested by the Barlow Committee on Scientific Staff which recommended its establishment. The terms of reference of the Panel include keeping under review the well-being and efficiency of the Government Scientific Service and making proposals for any changes in the organisation or conditions of service which will promote those ends. Reading between the lines of the third report from the Select Committee on Estimates for the Session 1946–47, it may be surmised that there is still plenty of scope for the Panel, despite the considerable ground it has covered since it first met on March 22, 1946. A Treasury proposal for a common pool of special posts of research workers of exceptional ability above the level of principal scientific officer, and numbering about two per cent of the latter class, led to the appointment of a sub-committee under the chairmanship of Dr. C. P. Snow to consider departmental nominations, and recommendations were made and accepted (Nature, 159, 464; 1947). In regard to general conditions of service, the Panel has drawn a broad distinction between attendances at meetings of learned societies and similar bodies which might be plainly regarded as proper and indeed necessary to the efficient, conduct of official scientific work, and others which are desirable rather than essential to maintaining a background. While for the first of these categories duly authorized attendance should be regarded as official duty, it is recommended that attendances in the second category should be encouraged by permitting a reasonable number of attendances in official time but without payment of expenses from official funds.
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Conditions in the Government Scientific Service. Nature 160, 392 (1947). https://doi.org/10.1038/160392a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/160392a0