WRONG TENDENCY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 74, 9 January 1936, Page 3

WRONG TENDENCY.

RESEARCH IN DOMINION. NEGLECT OF THEORY CONDEMNED. (Special to the “Guardian.”) CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. “The main fault in the research work in New Zealand is that the Department of Agriculture, which is an accumulation of bureaucrats, goes its own way without regard to the fundamental work which .should ho concentrated in the University—the University is at present regarded merely as a teaching institution.” This criticism was made yesterday by Dr. O. H. Frankel, Plant Geneticist of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, who was interviewed on his return from a trip to England and the Continent. Dr. Frankel said that everywhere he had been —ho had visited about three dozen research institutions—he had found that the institutions which were successful fin, econonijic, or applied, research were all prominent in the fundamental work.“Our tendency to require* quick economic results in research work is bound to defeat its own ends,” said Dr. Frankel, “unless we give our scientists a chance to do fundamental work. In iny opinion, this can only be achieved if the University takes the lead in all research activities and makes lip its mind to ho a real spiiitiial centre of them—which, of course, is not the ease at present. “Wlieio an institution attempts to achievo economic results without regard to theory, it defeats its own ends. I should like to give reasons for that. The first is that without the theoretical basis, application is always insecure, and. that theoretical results gained in one part of the earth are not always applicable in another; the second, and really the more important, reason, is that the research worker is kept alive to developments in his science only by fundamental work. The man who lias not the urge to look for fundamental truth is as a rule no good in applied work.”