SCIENTIFIC POLICY IN THE NETHERLANDS

SCIENTIFIC POLICY IN THE NETHERLANDSAuthor(s): JOSEPH BEN-DAVIDSource: Minerva, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Autumn 1967), pp. 118-121Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41821844 .

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118 CORRESPONDENCE

graduates able to think creatively are necessary not only for the self -perpetua- tion of the university system but to develop and initiate other institutions. Universities are not just sausage machines turning out ranks of degree holders. They must produce, or rather develop, persons who are imaginative - intellectuals in the best sense of the word - who are essential if these countries are to be truly independent and able to manage their own affairs in a fruitful manner.

Yours faithfully,

Makerere University College, University of East Africa, Kampala, Uganda.

MALCOLM CRAWFORD

SCIENTIFIC POLICY IN THE NETHERLANDS

23 August, 1967.

Sir, - Although Professor Julius's very interesting article 1 stresses that Dutch science organisation and policy have been shaped by the history and other peculiar characteristics of the Netherlands, an outside reader who is unacquainted with the intimate details (where national characteristics un- doubtedly leave their mark) is much more struck by the basic similarities between Dutch science organisation and policy and those of other countries of Western Europe. As practically everywhere in Western Europe, research policy in the Netherlands is laid down by publicly appointed committees representing academic science, industry and government which deal separately with pure and applied research according to certain groupings by major fields. Nuclear energy is an exception, since there the same committee is in charge of both pure and applied research. These committees are served by central administrative bodies and the research is performed to a large extent in specialised research institutions. Thus, for instance, the various British and German industrial research associations, the final responsibility for which is vested in certain government departments, are paralleled by the Dutch applied research organisation (TNO); while the British research councils, as well as the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Max Plank Gesellschaft, which deal with pure research, are paralleled by the Dutch pure research organisation (ZWO).

The interesting points about these Western European arrangements are that the central policy making and administrative bodies have little or no

1 Julius, H. W., 44 Scientific Policy in the Netherlands Minerva , V, 4 (Summer, 1967), pp. 507-519.



SCIENTIFIC POLICY IN THE NETHERLANDS 119

direct influence on two of the major performers of research, namely the institutions of higher education and those industrial firms which have research laboratories of their own. The central bodies do play an important role in finamcing university research, but they do not advise the universities on their research policies and one wonders whether they influence the universities even indirectly with respect to their fields and problems of research.

There are, of course, apparently good reasons for all this. Why should anyone want to interfere with large private research laboratories or universities which have proved their capacity to do high level work without external direction?

The reason for the quite different relationship of the central policy-making and administrative bodies to the applied research associations in Western Europe is that most of the industries in these countries were incapable of taking advantage of the possibilities of applied research, or unwilling to be enterprising and take risks in this field. Governmentally initiated and subsidised efforts were therefore a substitute for what might otherwise have been done by private industry.

This policy, which is common throughout Europe, appears to be quite reasonable at first glance but it looks less reasonable on closer inspection. First of all, it often involves discrimination in favour of the unenterprising industries at the cost of the enterprising ones. The former receive subsidised research services, while the latter have to compete for scientific manpower with governmentally subsidised or conducted institutions and at times they even have to support the latter by their taxes. This may be all the more of a hardship, because the firms which maintain their own research laboratories have to show a profit (or at least to break even) and are compelled, therefore, to expect useful results from their employees, while the publicly supported research associations may happily leave their employees alone without asking them for proof in terms of profitable results.

This leads to my second reason for doubt about the efficiency of governmentally maintained research organisations in applied science. Since they are non-profit-making establishments, it is difficult to motivate their workers to concentrate their efforts on economically profitable projects.

The end result of all this is likely to be an increasingly greater difficulty for private firms to maintain their own laboratories and a diminishing con- tribution by the entire applied research sector to the national economy.

Professor Julius stresses the difficulties of the governmentally controlled institutions competing with the salaries offered by private firms. Without, however, relating the cost of applied research in government as well as in industrial research institutions to some measure of profitability, it is impossible to determine what the salaries of research workers in the two sectors should be.

Similar doubts arise about European policies in the field of pure research. Here too the centrally supported research institutes came into being to supplement inadequate efforts - in this case the inadequate efforts of the universities.



120 CORRESPONDENCE

But again, instead of motivating the universities to adapt themselves to the requirements of present day research, a system was created which discriminated in favour of their inefficiency.

University staffs have the privilege of tenure, complete freedom to do what they want beyond rather minimal formal obligations, and high status which helps them in obtaining research funds. And the universities as institutions are not required to account in detail for their activities to anyone. Research institutes which are unconnected with universities, on the other hand, have few of these advantages and for this reason they do not find it easy to compete with the universities for the services of outstanding scientists (or, in the case of institutes within universities, with the regular academic personnel). It is no wonder that under these conditions the staffs of the Western European universities do not feel powerfully impelled to change anything in their traditional practices.

Professor Julius's account of the Dutch academic council charged with scientific development in the universities, which since 1960 has not accom- plished more " than a careful exploration of each other's way of thinking 2 has its parallels in all the other countries of Western Europe.

It seems, therefore, that serious doubts are justified concerning the whole method of establishing new institutions to supplement the efforts of industry and of universities which have until now proved to be inadequate. Perhaps it would be more efficient to encourage the industrial firms on the one hand and the universities on the other to be more enterprising in research. Steps in this direction have been taken in Britain. Although it is not an industrial firm, the National Research Development Corporation is expected to be financially self-supporting and the financing of British universities through the University Grants Committee encourages some long-term planning on a national scale and requires the universities to participate in it. Reliance on the granting of government research contracts to industrial firms, universities and other independent institutions, and on their initiative in soliciting funds from other sources for research deemed to be in the public interest, rather than setting up special public institutions for the purpose, is an even more wide- spread practice in the United States.

It is realised, of course, that there are no perfectly satisfactory ways to organise aind plan research effectively and that the actual working of the various national systems depends - as Professor Julius says - more on the wisdom of those who make science policy and administer science than on the formal aspects of the organisation of science. It is quite possible that Dutch science policy has succeeded in finding wise solutions for its problems. All I wish to do here is to draw attention to the importance of evaluating national science policies in terms of their success in the attainment of certain defined objectives; and to suggest that it might be worthwhile to reconsider from

2 Ibid., p. 513.



SCIENTIFIC POLICY IN THE NETHERLANDS 121

time to time the working and effects of whole national systems of science organisations, rather than using, day in and day out, a great deal of wisdom in overcoming the deficiencies inherent in uncoordinated sets of institutions founded as the need arose to deal with particular problems.

Yours faithfully,

The Eliezer Kaplan School of Economics and Social Sciences,

The Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

JOSEPH BEN-DAVID

THE GROWTH OF SCIENCE IN SOCIETY

6 July, 1967.

Sir, - I read Professor Polanyi's article in Minerva 1 with the absorbed interest of one who, having been bothered by a difficult question, encounters an illuminating and refreshing discussion of it. I refer to the problem of scientific value: what is meant by scientific value, as contrasted with scientific truth? Professor Polanyi's analysis of scientific value and, perhaps even more, his recognition of scientific value as an important philosophical question, dis- tinct from the question of scientific truth, is most welcome.

I could not help but compare Professor Polanyi's criteria of scientific value with the ones I proposed in my " Criteria for Scientific Choice ",2 and I believe I see a considerable similarity. Polanyi's exactitude is an internal criterion. His systematic importance seems to me closely related to my external criterion of scientific merit - the degree to which the scientific activity imposes a coherence upon the branches of science in which it is embedded. And his intrinsic interest of its subject matter is closely related to my external criteria of social or technical merit: for by intrinsic interest of subject matter Polanyi means interest as measured by criteria that lie completely outside science.

The other point in Professor Polanyi's paper that appeals to me is his realisation that the whole matter of allocations within science is of a piece with the many other allocations of society that are not governed by a well organised market - that is, where the value function is poorly defined. His analysis of how allocations in such non-market situations come about - by consensual activities of individuals representing the interests of overlapping neighbourhoods - is to my mind largely correct.

1 Polanyi, Michael, " The Growth of Science in Society Minerva , V, 4 (Summer, 1967), pp. 533-545. 2 Weinberg, Alvin M., " Criteria for Scientific Choice , Minerva , I, 2 (Winter, 1963), pp. 159-171.



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SCIENTIFIC POLICY IN THE NETHERLANDS