Abstract
SIR EDWARD APPLETON‘S address to the Scottish Council (Development and Industry) at Glasgow on February 13 on "Science and the Progress of Industry" will increase the impatience with which the scientific and industrial world awaits the resumption of publication of the annual reports of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Indeed, it could well be held that here again, as in the recent speech at Letchworth of the Lord President of the Council (see Nature, February 7, p. 214), by using a speech to a sectional or limited audience, which even in normal times could only be imperfectly reported in the Press, as the occasion for important announcements of policy or disclosure of developments, the Government is show ing lack of courtesy to the scientific man and to the industrialist. Such statements should be put on permanent record in a proper fashion. Whatever may be the rights and wrongs of any policy—for example, the present dispute between the Government and the medical profession—it is to be hoped that the Government will learn that it is wiser to court than to flout the expert and professional experience upon the cooperation of which the smooth running of so many Departments of State depends. As Burke once remarked in another connexion, magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom, and little minds go ill with a great State department or with a great Empire.
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Scientific Research and Industry. Nature 161, 368–369 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/161368a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/161368a0