Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

The organization and financing of research 8oz
able innovations may be most effectively nurtured by user-interests concerned
with the research/service mix. Some of the most promising new ideas arise in
this area. They do not consume much in the way of special resources in their
early stages and may go on quietly as an adjunct of service until enough head-
way has been made for support to be sought in terms of one of the other two
mixes. This is the common way in clinical research.
9. Developments have been held back by the confusion which has persisted
concerning the relations of pure and applied research. These are different in the
social and the natural sciences. In the latter the required data can be ab-
stracted from their natural settings to a far greater extent than in the social
sciences. Moreover, their ‘permission’ does not have to be asked before they
can be used. Except in special areas the social scientist must gain access to his
material in its natural setting in ways which are acceptable to those concerned.
This means that engagement in problem-oriented research represents a major
strategy for advancing the knowledge base in the social sciences.
IO. The effective development of the social sciences towards the needs of the
future requires the establishment of genuinely programmatic research sustained
over long time periods on carefully selected themes by institutes with the stability,
scale and ‘requisite variety’ of resources to enable them to commit their mem-
bers to such objectives. For reasons alike of the state of the social sciences and
the needs of societies a good proportion of these programmes should be in
areas of generic field-determined problem-oriented research. At present there
is too great a dispersion of research effort in small and unstable organizations.
This has caused a random accumulation of projects rather than an evolving
cumulation of findings. Amongst other reasons this has been caused by the
persistence of a tradition of academic individualism among research workers.
Echoing this grant-giving bodies have tended to prefer the apparently reduced
risk of backing a large number of small projects to the apparently increased risk
of giving support to a limited number of large but strategically selected pro-
grammes. A main task of social science policy would be to put this situation
right and to create the ‘enabling conditions’ for strategic programmes to be
undertaken.
Problems of manpower
I I. Overall arrangements in a country’s total ‘social science system’ require to
be planned so that maximum free movement of scientific personnel becomes
possible between organizations centred on any of the three mixes. Scientific
personnel should also be able to circulate freely between organizations which
primarily form part of the academic world and user-organizations which em-
ploy social scientists but belong primarily to the operational world. Otherwise,
the requisite variety of career paths will not be available to permit a body of so-
cial scientists to come into existence large enough or flexible enough to meet
the rising demand. There wil be a dysfunctional separation between teaching
and research ; and a similar dysfunctional separation between the types of
research going on outside and inside universities. There wil also be severe
splitting between the academic world and the user-organizations which contain