Plantation Rubber Research

Abstract

MESSRS. EATON, GRANTHAM, AND DAY have published (Department of Agriculture, Federated Malay States: Kuala Lumpur) an account of important researches carried out in Kuala Lumpur, Malaya, during the last three and a half years in connection with the preparation and vulcanisation of plantation rubber. The Bulletin runs into 398 pages, and gives one of the most detailed accounts of rubber research in Malaya yet published. The authors point out that they, as Government officials, are working under difficulties in so far that, whereas they give full publicity to their methods and results, they are precluded from gaining knowledge of the methods adopted or apparatus used by other technologists in Malaya and London who are carrying on similar experimental work with rubber. It 'is clear that the policy of secrecy adopted by companies and associations which privately employ chemists and mycologists in _the East is open to very grave objection. The policy of secrecy is not only against the true scientific spirit, but must also, in the long run, seriously reduce the value of research even to those who privately employ their own technologists. All scientific work should be open to criticism based upon knowledge of the method and apparatus employed. The present unsatisfactory arrangement may work well enough for privately employed technologists who have the advantage of studying detailed accounts of methods employed by Government officials; the reverse, however, is obviously not the case.