SACRIFICE of research career for one in research administration is common among scientists in the United States today.' It is paradoxical that so many men desert highly respected, even idealized, way of life, for which their professional training and experience have prepared them, to enter an occupation whose very professionalism is suspect. The research administrator stands in an area of ambiguity and transition in the meaning of work: though he enjoys considerable prestige in society and salary and power advantages over researchers within bureaucratic organizations, the actual conduct of research has been at the core of the image of the good scientist.2 If a man's work is as good clue as any to the course of his life, and to his social being and identity, 3 basic elements in the scientific career and the bureaucratic system may be illumined by understanding the changing of roles by the scientist. Is the scientist who becomes an administrator misled by ambition and then corrupted by power, or is he enabled to realize fuller potentiality and make unique contribution? To answer this, two subsidiary questions must first be examined: Why do men leave research to become administrators? Does the researcher-turned-public administrator remain always the scientist, or are his attitudes toward politics, science, and administration those of the administrator? Where other sources are not indicated, the analysis presented below relies heavily upon series of interviews with Washington area federal research administrators. Two dozen or so each in the National Institutes of Health, the Agricultural Research Service, and the Navy, plus some research scientists in these agencies and some Budget Bureau and Civil Service Commission officials, were interviewed. The administrators, most of whom had been trained as scientists, were representative of variety of ranks and functions, though purposely bunched toward the top. Interviewees, none of whom objected to the taking of full notes with the guarantee of anonymity, spoke in response to statement of the purpose of the research and specific questions appropriate to the person, agency, and level. The writer did not feel that it was impossible to discriminate qualities of openness and perspicacity in those interviewed. Conversational interviewing was no doubt facilitated by the cathartic value to many persons in talking about themselves to detached observer, the ability of men within formal organization to learn good deal about close colleagues, the
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Mar 29, 2023
Rachel E Davis + 5
Open Access