THE AMPLE MANURE PRINCIPLE

It is axiomatic that growing things need nourishment and research is no exception. Thus research can be widened, stimulated & even initiated by fertilizing enough ground by money & all it can bring. Just spread it around loosely and widely and thickly enough and things can’t fail to grow. Who knows, a cure for cancer, or a method for getting blood out of turnips may suddenly spring from some alley which enough fertilizer has been dumped. The idea is exciting, like a scavenger hunt. Directors with adequate funds use it widely, for, after all, research is a gamble.

The Research Worker appreciates fertilizer particularly if it is coming his way. But some would rather first develop the plants and distinguish the roses from the weeds and not only use the fertilizer on the roses, but get rough with the weeds. The latter have a nasty way of choking off the roses in their more exuberant growth. This implies that roses can be distinguished from weeds, a dangerous concept for the Directors. Suffice it to say that fertilizer piled on too thick has a way of ending up only as compost in which only bacteria flourish.

The wider recognition and appreciation of the principles of research administration tentatively outlined here, as well as the extension of additional principles through the efforts of others, will undoubtedly accelerate the dawn of a new age of scientific miracles. These miracles will be polite, tidy things, well controlled and managed, with proper credit lines neatly embroidered on their sweaters. As one of our great philosophers said “We don’t know where we are going or how we will get there, but we know one thing-when we get there, we’ll be there. And that’s something, even if it’s nothing.