The Press SATURDAY, MAY 29, 1937. Research Policy

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22105, 29 May 1937, Page 14

The Press SATURDAY, MAY 29, 1937. Research Policy

In a statement printed this morning Mr T. H. McCombs, M.P., who represents the Minister for Industries and Commerce on the Scientific and Industrial Research Council, replies to the statements addressed by Mr A. Leslie, formerly veterinarian at Canterbury Agricultural College, to the executive of the North Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union. Mr Leslie complained, inter alia, that scientific research in New Zealand is handicapped because spheres of activity are ill-defined, because there are “ too many little organisations,” because there are not enough expert researchers, because the work is therefore too often in the hands of inexperienced men, because certain •kinds of work are not being done, and because the necessary distinction between “ research “ and service ” is not observed. This sufficiently long list of charges could be lengthened from the report of Mr Leslie’s address; and it would not be necessary for him to prove every one to the hilt in order to make out a good case. To prove any two or three, or to prove even one, would be to put the Minister under the obligation of thinking hard and working hard to right serious wrongs. But at the moment we are not concerned to defend Mr Leslie, who is well qualified to defend himself and carry the attack further, as he does, indeed, in an amplifying statement in “ The Press ” to-day. It is necessary to say a little, however, because Mr McCombs last week made some comments on a leading article on animal diseases —comments which we printed without comment. It is tiresome to set right a critic who mistakes what he reads and who fails to distinguish between views reported and views expressed editorially. But he says to-day that he asked us to quote “one person who was in a position to know the “true facts” and had, within the last 18 months, found a lack of co-operation in the Dominion’s research work. Mr McCombs’s choice of a period is interesting; it is exactly 18 months since Dr. G. H. Cunningham, then director of the plant protection section of the Plant Research Station, published his reasons for resigning. He had sought in vain to have the work of the station reorganised and the duties of officers defined, and so on. But Mr McCombs may shut out Dr. Cunningham, if he chooses. If he implies that no similar, expert opinion has been voiced since, he must have forgotten that Mr H. F. Holden, research chemist of the Walter and Eliza Hall Research Institute, Melbourne, after attending the Science Congress at Auckland, in January, plainly criticised the extent of decentralisation in research in New Zealand and said that better work could undoubtedly be done and improved facilities be made available if some of the separate laboratories in each centre could be merged in one institution. Here he repeated Sir Arnold Theiler’s advice) which is so far from being fulfilled that the departmentalising and sectionalising of research are now carried further than when Theiler reported. Mr Holden opposed also the general concentration of research work under the administration of the State, instead of the universities; and here he will be supported by the overwhelming majority of scientific workers. Still to keep within Mr McCombs’s desired period of 18 months, the report of the Minister for Agriculture, presented to Parliament last year, is difficult tp read as an assurance of complete and successful co-operation in the conduct of agricultural research and the use of its results. We have said as much as this merely because Mr McCombs so heavily insists on his foolish “ challenge.” But we may say one thing more. His whole contention is that research in New Zealand must now be “ co-ordinated ” because a series of committees of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research regularly sit about a table and “ plan the work ” and “ allot “ it to the institution best equipped," from which tegular reports upon it are submitted. But this does not prov.e co-ordination; it only proves a system and a routine, the evils inherent in which and covered by which are not overcome by regularising them. The very reverse is a more probable result. The system cannot supply the right man in the right place; it is more likely to maintain the wrong man, once he is there, and to block'the way of better. It cannot supply the essential direct contact among workers in the same or connected fields by reading reports from them. Under the system described fundamental research is likely to decline and piecemeal specialisation to become the dominant practice. It will be a poor substitute for co-ordination proper if the results of such a system may be called “ splendid ” so long as something is done about pelts and something else for the Maui Pomare’s machinery.