| investigated,—which the administrator may find puzzling, subversive and humiliating. He is also very likely to insist on a more complex methodology than the administrator had in mind. Thirdly, the administrator may find his common sense certainties about his problem questioned, and doubt thrown on aims and policies to which his superiors have committed him, or which seem to him right beyond any doubt. Three more specific problems are often aired. First, university staff are often not in a position to devote the necessary time at short notice to an important piece of policy oriented research. We therefore find in Britain an increasing number of research units within universities supported by Ministries and devoted to full-time research in their interests. Secondly, academics set thoroughness and reliability above speed. They find the short term deadliness of government irksome, the more so if no action follows. Thirdly, Ministries normally place some restriction of the freedom of publication, sometimes for reasons that academics find unacceptable. I sum up these points about applied social science research under three main headings. First, all men and women in all societies necessarily operate on the assumption that their knowledge about other people and about social processes and institutions is reliable and accurate. We may all recognise that others' claims to certainty in their knowledge are mistaken, but we cannot, logically or psychologically extend this specticism to our own certainties. On the contrary we define those who question our certainties as at least mistaken or foolish; and very often we regard them as enemies, as heretics, as social cancers to be cut out of the body social. Governments and administrators throughout history have been given to such attitudes; while social scientists by their training are given both to questioning received truth, from whatever source, and to tolerating controversy. Secondly, structurally, in any organisation (including of course universities), people with authority and responsibility are inevitably involved both in disputes and conflicts,—what |
| one other called the endemic tribal warfare of organisations,—and also with public relations, in order to present themselves an efficient, disinterested and beneficient. Research by outsiders who are in theory committed ruthlessly to objective truth may therefore raise anxieties,— obviously to very different degrees in different cases. Thirdly, if economics is not a very reliable science, the rest of the social sciences are even less so. The problems of reliability and validity are partly technical and partly philosophical. Very often, research findings are open to question; or the researcher's own views are subtly presented - perhaps unconsciously,—as conclusions, ever recommendations, when strictly they do not follow from the data; or the research does not in fact deal with the range of factors which help the decision-maker. Equally, if the techniques and argument are too esoteric or technical, the administrator may accept the findings as kind of act of divination, attributing authority and competence to the expert which maybe quite undeserved. The experts themselves are of course also subject to organisational pressured If others define us as expert, and are ready to pay for and act on our advice, how many of us are capable of the ruthless honesty of telling ourselves and others that we do not know the answer? The accepted claims of experts normally outdistance the objective base in knowledge which would justify them; which is not to say that experts do not normally know more than those who consult them. CONCLUSIONS For the economic and political achievements of nations and for their world standing, knowledge is crucial. My main theme is that the development of a continuing tradition of lively and original research in universities is not merely desirable for practical and prestige reasons, but absolutely fundamental to the process of national development. So long as 90% of the world's research happens in a handful of rich industrialised countries, these countries will retain their world dominance. This problem seems to me closely related to another, equally large scale. The last twenty-five years have been dominated, |
| with one or two striking exceptions, by the notion that the poorer nations of the earth should and must follow the example of the rich nations of the earth as soon as possible. Both sides have assumed that in order to achieve this goal, the poor should import and the rich should export capital, knowledge and 'modern' social institutions. This way, we in the west looked to the rest of the world 'catching us up'; and in the 1950s and 1960s many people put all this in terms of the generosity of the West and the gratitude of the rest. The first attack on this view of the world situation came with the realisation that the gap between rich nations and poor nations is not diminishing. Growth is happening everywhere, very unevenly; while a few nations have vastly improved their relative positions,—oil is one major factor,— the basic international inequalities grow more acute. If we look simply at science and social science, the lead of the rich in knowledge and experience is still increasing fairly fast. It has recently been forcefully argued, moreover, that this persistence of economic and political inequality is not accidental, but is structurally built in to the economic relations of the donors and receivers of aid. All I want to say here is that the assumptions behind the 'development decade' have been seriously challenged. Recently, even more serious doubts have arisen.To put it simply and provocatively, the rich nations are failing to solve their own problems, and not even trying seriously to solve those of the rest of the world. I know I exaggerate; but there most certainly has been a major loss of confidence in science, technology, and in social policies and services; the highly industrialised countries are creating for themselves problems to which solutions are not in sight; and world-wide shortages of food and other essentials are to say the least reliably forecast. It is not, of course, altogether true that the rich nations do nothing about the poor nations' problems. They do do a certain amount. But in the field of research they do very little. It is hardly surprising that the vast bulk of research supported by governments and by large profit-making companies is directed to the immediate advantage of those |
| governments and those companies. We simply do not know what new ideas and techniques and social institutions could be devised in the less industrialised countries themselves, if the kind of effort which goes into research in the U.S.A. were devoted directly to these problems by people who understand them at first hand, who care passionately about their solution, who are not shaped in their thinking by American and European models. The import of foreign science and technology into any society has never been neutral and aseptic. The rest of the world has taken over, with science and technology, political, social, religious and moral ideas, and equally a vast array of social economic and political institutions. But it is simply not true that western ideas and western institutions are necessarily and intrinsically superior because they have been associated with a technologically powerful and materially richer culture; and that goes for Marxism and the ideologies of the Left as much as for parliamentary institutions and capitalist economies. So, even more than in science, it seems to me that third world universities must develop their own independent, critical and creative research in the social sciences. So important is the theme of this conference, and so complex are the issues that it raises, that four days is far too short a time to discuss them. I hope that we can plan to continue it on other occasions and in other places. It is absolutely appropriate that it should be discussed by university heads. Research institutions are like trees; they need planting carefully and tending for a long time before they bear fruit. Hence the administrators and politicians, necessarily concerned with the here and now, are less likely spontaneously to devote their energy and resources to these problems. It is the responsibility of the universities to take the initiative in pressing for a vast increase in research activity. Who should know better that knowledge is power? DISCUSSION In the discussion which followed Professor Stirling was asked by Professor Dogramaci (Turkey) what machinery he would suggest in order to control the increasing expenditure |