Research institution

“ To be more definite, an institution of research in biology or in astronomy could justify its existence, in a democratic country like ours, only by making considerable additions to knowledge and then by showing in language comprehensible to the generally hut non-technically educated members of the community, something of the meaning of this knowledge for human beings in both the physical and the spiritual aspects of their natures. ”

“ No institution in the world can boast such a record of original research and important discoveries as that of the Royal Institution for the last one hundred years. Public lectures by eminent investigators are given in the lecture room. ”

“ Leading research institutions, research and development divisions in companies, and universities have comprehensive lab notebook policies, which research laboratories should implement. In the absence of an institutional policy, your research group should have a policy to explain to all team members the process for daily record-keeping and maintaining laboratory records. ”

“ The fundamental object in founding State laboratories should be to keep a staff of the most competent men wholly engaged in original research in pure science, and a secondary object might be to train assistants to become investigators. ”

“ The establishment of research institutes by governmental authority and private munificence marked the beginning of a new epoch in medical science by organizing research and giving it an assured status. ”

“ That we make it a part of our work to obtain for these investigators the means of research and the material aid which are necessitated by the rapid and ever-accelerating advances of knowledge for which we are indebted to them; to secure the endowment of new schools of science, the more complete organization of older schools, and liberal provision of apparatus and material for every investigator. ”

“ The Council are of opinion that this Society would be omitting a principal means of the advancement of Science—the end for which all such associations exist—if it neglected the question of the Endowment of Research. To maintain a successful investigator in his labours, even though no results of immediate or obvious utility can be shown to spring out of them, is of interest to the community at large. ”

“ The proprietors now enjoy much greater advantages than they originally had from the libraries, collections, lectures, and laboratory, and from that in which all Englishmen, and particularly the proprietors of the Royal Institution, must glory, that in our laboratory those discoveries have been made, and are now making, which excite the surprise and admiration of the scientific in every part of the civilised world. ”

“ Research Foundations.—All modern universities carry on through instructors and advanced students many departments of scientific research. The lines of research extend through a wide range of subjects—Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Anatomy, Physiology, Medicine, Geology, Agriculture, History, Sociology, and other departments of learning. These investigations have led to the discovery of new knowledge and the extension of learning to mankind. Outside of colleges and universities there have been established many foundations of research and many industrial laboratories. ”

“ Admitting that an organized association of investigators is of the first necessity to secure the best results in the scientific work of the future, we meet the question of the conditions and auspices under which they are to be brought together. The first thought to strike us at this point may well be that we have, in our great universities, organizations which include most of the leading men now engaged in scientific research, whose personnel and facilities we should utilize. ”

“ The appeal of the National Research Council to the American universities and colleges in behalf of scientific research will not be like a voice in the wilderness. There never was so much enthusiasm for scientific research in the American colleges and universities as there is to-day. ”

“ But why should we labour to prove the advantage of practical science to the University? Let us rather speak of the help which the University may give to science, when men well trained in mathematics and enjoying the advantages of a well-appointed Laboratory, shall unite their efforts to carry out some experimental research which no solitary worker could attempt. ”

“ The existence within the Universities of offices in which the faculties of scientific men might be developed to their fullest extent, would induce those engaged in the work of scientific instruction in those institutions to devote more time to research, in order that they might improve their scientific talents, and in their turn become fitted to occupy such posts.
It has been suggested that discoverers should teach as well as investigate ”

“ It is reasonable to suppose that Universities should be fountains of new theoretical scientific knowledge, as well as be the disseminators of it, and that they (especially the old ones with their rich endowments) would be certain to promote scientific research, as being especially a part of their functions ”

“ One will require popular enthusiasm and business organisation. To the service of the other must be brought the patient spirit of scientific and philosophic analysis and inquiry. These two bodies—the popular propagandist association and the scientific research-making Institute—must, therefore, be created; and, for a reason to be explained when we consider the work of the Institute, they should be independent of each other. ”

“ At these meetings any new facts that have arisen in the progress of science will be stated, any important hints for experiments pursued, and in the progress of investigation those subjects will be most particularly attended to which promise to increase the perfection of arts and manufactures.
‘That the diffusion and improvement of science may not be limited to those persons only who can personally attend the Institution, it is proposed to publish Journals at least quarterly. ”

“ If this plan could be carried out in our old Universities it would produce most valuable results, because the governing, wealthy, and influential classes of this nation are chiefly educated at those institutions, and they would then acquire habits of more accurate scientific thought, and some knowledge of the nature and importance of scientific research, and of the essential dependence of national welfare upon it. ”

“ The influence of these institutes upon research in the university medical schools will be watched with much interest. Unless the latter take a more definite position and furnish opportunity whereby investigations of a more serious and exhaustive scope may be undertaken, the research institutes will absorb the best men and the highest class of work and leave research as heretofore a by-product of the schools, often desultory, discontinuous and trivial. ”

“ The Institute for Government Research is an association of citizens for co-operating with public officials in the scientific study of government with a view to promoting efficiency and economy in its operations and advancing the science of administration. ”

“ When university presidents learn that every professorship, clinical and otherwise, ought to be in some measure a research chair, and that research must be combined with teaching, the need for special departments of research will not be so urgent. ”

“ It is, to all appearance, impracticable and inadvisable to let these institutions of research take over any appreciable share of that work of scientific and scholarly instruction that is slipping out of the palsied hands of the universities, so as to include some consistent application to teaching within the scope of their everyday work. ”

“ But though research laboratories are the chief centers of scientific invention, and colleges, institutions and schools train the mind to scientific methods of attack, yet in mechanical, civil and electrical engineering the chief work of practical investigation has been carried on by individual engineers, or by firms, syndicates and companies. ”

“ A few which received the largest share determined to carry out the act in its whole scope by founding a single institution, in which industrial and scientific education should be united to general instruction and culture. ”

“ Science and scientific research and discoveries are the international agencies by which the riddles and miracles of the universe, in all their magnitude, are solved and explained. Institutions of learning, schools and universities are linked together by the uniformity of fundamental laws governing science and the dissemination of knowledge and discoveries. ”

“ A significant development as an aid for research and for rendering more effective public service has come in the establishment of bureaus of government research. The method of investigation and research which has been applied to the problems of government by private organizations has been found applicable to the handling of research material in the universities. ”

“ Much these same conditions continued throughout most of the eighteenth century, during which many remarkable advances in all lines of pure science were made. By the close of this century the universities had been sufficiently modernized that scientific workers began to find in them an atmosphere conducive to scientific teaching and research; during the nineteenth century they became the homes of scientific progress and instruction; to-day they are deeply interested in the promotion of scientific research. ”

“ The principles of investigation may be learned in the college, the fields where such work is to be done may be pointed out, the desire to do such work awakened, the college professor may himself be engaged in such work, but original research in any department is not the chief work of the college student, if, indeed, it can be said to be a part of his work at all. ”

“ For members of the research staff were expected and encouraged to follow their own scientific impulses in pursuing their researches and discoveries to the point of useful application, whether they involved invention or not, and even though they did not relate to the immediate problem in hand. ”

“ The very discoveries of science in such fields as public health and manufacturing processes have made it necessary to depend upon the expert, and if the ranks of experts are to be recruited broadly from the democratic masses as well as from those of larger means, the State Universities must furnish at least as liberal opportunities for research and training as the universities based on private endowments furnish. ”

“ A distinguished lawyer, chairman of the board of directors of a large industrial corporation, which maintains a splendid industrial research laboratory, said in my presence recently that he thought every successful and prosperous industrial organization should set aside a goodly portion of its profits from new developments, made possible by scientific research, and turn it over to the universities, to enable them to pay better salaries to their professors and instructors in science and to increase their research facilities. ”

“ The quality of the scientific teacher in the university is temporarily deteriorating, that of the industrial research scientist is steadily rising; on the whole, however, the country is a gainer. The university man in the industries will transplant there the scientific idealism of the university. The captains of our leading industries already admit, as will be pointed out below, that the cultivation of scientific idealism is the best policy for our American industries. ”

“ That there should be facilities for research, and that the investigator deserves a livelihood, nobody will deny. Indeed, these two points form an almost conclusive argument in favor of the endowment of laboratories. There is yet another consideration of very great force with which the public mind is less familiar. ”

“ They are not, indeed, necessarily awarded to science-workers at all; nor, when so held, have they invariably been found to encourage steady work in science. I am speaking, be it understood, of offices, professorial or otherwise, where the special duties are light, and where therefore it is to be understood that those appointed are expected to devote themselves to original scientific research. Where heavy duties are attached to offices of this kind, scientific research is necessarily checked. ”

“ I found everywhere the greatest care for developing scientific activity and for improving the facilities. New laboratories are in building, and in older laboratories very modern equipment may be found. The available room never gives that impression of insufficiency from which we suffer too often in France. The means are provided by private initiative expressed in gifts and foundations of various kinds. There exists also a National Council of Research established by private funds for stimulating and improving scientific work, and for assuring its connection with industry. ”

“ Institutions that make scientific appointments are presumably ready to devote themselves in some measure to work of a purely research character, the immediate practical realization of whose benefits is likely to be a matter of more than ordinary good fortune. ”

“ And yet, as it seems to me, the greatest value of this institution as an educational factor in science—as a biological lever of progress—does not depend so much upon the tangible revelations of fact that have come out of its laboratories as upon other of its influences. Scientific ideas, like all other forms of human thought, move more or less in shoals. ”

“ Within the past few years universities have begun to undertake seriously the development of professional training for business. The result has been that through organized research and through investigations by individual teachers and students, the universities are gathering up the threads of different tendencies toward scientific business and are themselves contributing important scientific results. ”