A View of R. & D.: A Parable

A VIEW OF R. ScD.: A PARABLE De WITT STETTEN, JR.* The very junior accountant was proud of the novel solution he had proposed. He had been assembling material for presentation of the preliminary budget at the forthcoming meeting of the Board of Directors. Among the many matters which had to be taken into account were the following: Item: Cost ofrepainting corridors on the second floor, as part ofthe regular triennial redecorating schedule. Item: Payment to artbt for one portrait (hand-painted) ofthe retiring Chairman ofthe Board. Item: Cost ofpainting walb ofmen's rooms, which seemed to be indicated annually. Item: Purchase ofan avant-garde abstract painting which had been selected by the new 2nd Vice President to decorate hb office. Item: Cost ofrepainting (badly needed) the wooden barn by the railroad siding which served as a warehouse. The very young accountant observed that in each of these items the same rawmaterials—pigment, oil, turpentine, and brushes—were used. The techniques employed also bore certain superficial similarities. In each case, furthermore, the manperforming the work could appropriately be dubbed a "painter." The young accountant also knew that members ofthe Board were easily confused by a too highly itemized budget presentation. Therefore , with irrefutable logic—although clearly with no sense at all—he lumped all these items together and made a single entry in the debits column , "Art and Painting," soon alluded to familiarly as A. & P. My first intimate exposure to the concept of R. & D. (Research and Development) came during a recent meeting at M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology). Here were assembled an impressive array ofGenerals and Admirals ofour Armed Forces, Captains ofIndustry, and a scat- * Rutgers Medical School, New Brunswick, NewJersey. 524 DeWitt Stetten, Jr. · A View ofR. & D.: A Parable Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Summer 1963 tering ofacademic, university-employed scientists. Among the topics on the agenda was the initially puzzling alphabet soup, "What fraction ofthe G.N.P. should appropriately be spent on R. & D.?" My own background in basic laboratory research had not equipped me particularly to grasp all the implications of Gross National Product. Whereas one or another aspect ofresearch has for many years been myjob, the concept ofR. & D. as a budgetary item was unfamiliar to me, and the more I heard it discussed , the less comfortably it sat with me. It may be noted that R. & D. is introduced as an item in a budget. As such it is perhaps neither more nor less proper than any one of several other common budget items such as overhead, depreciation, good will, or even "art and painting" as developed in our allegory. The tools ofresearch and development are fairly homogeneous, the work is conducted in rooms called laboratories, and the workers all may belong to one or another category of"scientist," i.e., chemist, physicist, engineer, etc. Serious problems arise only when the concept of R. & D. is extended to other than budgetary matters. Research and development cover a very wide spectrum of activities. A very wide spectrum of individuals is engaged in these activities, differing, in the extremes, almost as much as the great artist differs from the house painter. Any attempt to generalize about recruitment, incentives, rewards, and contributions ofall wielders ofpaint brushes will reduce to absurdity. There are those of us who find comparable generalizations about wielders oftest tubes equally absurd. Endless arguments, often semantic in nature, have revolved about the differences between pure and applied science. All that has been said and written about these extremes of scientific inquiry has not perhaps been adequately heard and read. Any further discussion ofthe contrasts in substance between basic research and developmental engineering is necessarily largely a repetition ofthe words ofothers and probably not contributory. It will be appreciated chiefly by those who already agree and will be disregarded by those who might benefit from its study. It is not with the substance ofscience as much as with the people who practice it that we are at the moment concerned. The history of science resembles the history ofpainting in that it is studded with the names of men and women of outstanding genius. The responsibility for the big steps forward rests with these relatively few contributors. Both in science and in painting there...