Book Reviews H A L F A C E N T U R Y O F M E D I C A L R E S E A R C H

Half a Century of Medical Research, Volume One: Origins and Policy of the Medical Research Council (UK), by A. Landsborough Thomson (Lon- don: H.M. Stat ionery Office, 1974), xiv + 308 pp., s

TItIS is-the first of two volumes dealing with the Medical Research Council. Wri t ten by Sir Landsborough Thomson, who recently retired as second secretary after nearly 40 years of distinguished service at the Council 's head- quarters, it deals authoritat ively with the origins, early history and policy of the MRC, f rom the inaugurat ion of the Medical Research Committee in 1913 until today. The second volume, which will be eagerly awaited, promises to cover the Council 's many-sided programme of research during a similar period. By what is no doubt merely a happy coincidence the pres- ent publication follows shortly on the heels of Politics, Science and Dread Disease by Stephen Strickland, 1 in which the author furnishes a lively account of the history and politics of medical research in the United States. The two works repay comparat ive study.

In brief, organised support of medical research from public funds in Great Britain began long before it did in the United States and, despite its com- paratively niggardly scale, its results have been impressive. However, the fact remains, for example, that the Nat ional Institutes of Health in the United States has a budget of more than $1,000,000,000 a yea r - - abou t half of all that is spent on biomedical research in the United States--while in 1972 the British Medical Research Council 's budget was $60,000,000. Such figures are of course wildly disproportionate to size of population, gross national product, or total expendi,ture on medical services, and they indicate a significant and inescapable difference in the philosophy of national priori- ties. Apologists for the British system are reluctant to admit its inadequacy and stress the number of Nobel prize-winners the system has nurtured on its scant resources. This is certainly an impressive record, but of course it springs in part from the emphasis of the Council over the years on support for " b a s i c " ra ther than clinical research. The biochemistry of neuro- muscular transmission has so far had scant effect o,n public health, and any effect it has had has resulted more from clinical guesswork than laboratory studies. However, until quite recent ly- -and quite nonsensically--studies directed towards unravelling the workings o.f the normal nervous system have been regarded as in some way a more wo,rthy field of intellectual exer- cise than such mundane subjects as the development of effective vaccines or the study of drug susceptibilities and idiosyncrasies.

The public subvention of medical research in Britain began in the field of public health 140 years ago, and a general Board of Health for England and Wales which led the whole world in the compila, tion of medical statistics was abolished after 10 y e a r s o f existence in 1858 when its functions were transferred to the Privy Council; from 1858 to 1871 studies of infectioni nutrition, industrial medicine and hospital hygiene were carried out by a succession of extremely distinguished medical scientists. Much of the success of this phase of research into the public health arose from the fact that the medical depar tment of the Privy Council was able to operate entirely independently of" political considerations. Most of the investigators of this era

1 See my review ifi Minerva, XI, 4 (October 19"~3), pp. 642--647.

122 Book Rev&ws

were part- t ime research workers engaged either in clinical practice, mili tary service, or academic work in the basic medical sciences.

The true predecessor of the Medical Research Committee, which was later to become the Medical Research Council, was a Royal Commission appointed in 1901 to study the relationship between human and animal tuberculosis, and this study occupied the aXtentions of a specially appointed scientific staff for almost a decade. In 1911, Lloyd George introduced the National Insurance Act which was nat only the basis for the present Nat ional Health Service but which, almost certainly on the personal initiative of Lloyd George, made modest provision for the incorporation of medical research as part of the activities of the proposed department. A t this stage the contem- porary plague of tuberculosis dominated the field of medical research, but from the beginning there were many medical workers and bureaucrats who recognlsed that .the disease could not be studied in isolation, and in 1913 a Medical Research Committee of extraordinary distinction was appointed, predominantly medical in constitution but with a handful of interested lay- men. Its chairman was a judge basically trained in mathematics and science and a man of outstanding distinction. The combination of a permanent scientific staff and the support of work in outside institutions was central, and an office was established in Westminster in 1914 under the direction of Sir Walter Morley Fletcher, a distinguished Cambridge physiologist. Unhap- pily the Firs t World War began within weeks of the establishment of the committee, and its activities throughout the war were fragmented until its abolition in 1920.

The end of the war brought an opportunity for reconstruction, and it was felt wise to detach the Medical Research Committee from the Depart- ment of National Insurance. A t the suggestion of Viscount I-Ialdane, another distinguished lawyer as well as a philosopher and politician, the Medical Research Council was established directly under the auspices of the Privy Council, the lineal successor of the earlier committee. Predominantly medi- cal and scientific in constitution, but with token representation from the House of Lords and the House of Commons, it was to be an expert body with complete freedom to promote at its discretion research for the improve- ment of human health.

In its independence of departmental direction and interests, the Medical Research Council followed what came to be known as the Haldane principle, which was strongly supported by most scientists but which did not meet with unanimous agreement, chiefly because it was felt that the machinery for integrat ion--especial ly between the central research institute soon to be established by the Council and the government departments directly respon- sible for health mat te r s - -was not sufficiently close. I t was of course this criticism, and a widespread conviction that the Medical Research Council favoured work in biomedical rather than clinical science, which led in 1971 to the report by Lord Rothschild which gave the Depar tment of Health a much more effective voice in the direction of clinical research.

The work of the Medical Research Council has really fallen into two main par t s - - i t s maintenance of central research establishments such as the Nat ional Insti tute for Medical Research at Mill Hill and various out-stations in different parts of the Commonwealth; and its support of departments and individuals in universities and hospitals. I t has never been easy to strike a balance in this connection since its autonomous projects are large and expen- sive while the teaching and other demands of university work mean that potentially excellent research workers are able to spend only a limited amount of t ime on this kind of activity, o n e a t tempt which has been made

Half a Century of Medical Research 123

to bridge this gap has been the establishment of research groups in universi- ties and medical schools with the explicit suggestion that if they prove to be successful their support and maintenance should be taken over by the parent institution after a period of years of research council support. On paper this appeared an excellent scheme. Unfortunately its introduction coincided with a period of intense financial stringency in the universities in which prospec- tive income could in no sense be predicted, and the scheme has fallen virtu- ally into abeyance in favour of the more modest arrangement whereby a programme is financed by the appropriate research council for a fixed num- ber of years. As in the United States also, the argument continues about the relative value of pure and applied research, with the frequent argument that even the most esoteric investigation pursued in the course of sheer disinterested curiosity may produce an unexpected " spin-off" of practical application. This is of course undoubtedly true, but the reviewer cannot share Sir Landsborough Thomson's view that practical applicalion is easier than initial discovery. A t the present time, medicine is suffering from delay in the application of existing knowledge to a much greater degree than it is suffering from a lack of new knowledge to be deployed.

Amongst interesting points discussed by the author are the refusal of the Medical Research Council to offer prizes for scientific discovery-- i t obviously favours the Nobel system of awards for work already achieved-- its function in organising the publication of results, and the way in which its officers furnish liaison between various groups of workers, especially those in the English-speaking world who may otherwise be unaware of work similar to, their own being simultaneously undertaken.

In 1913 the Nat ional Inst i tute for Medical Research, the Council 's main central laboratory installation, was established in Hampstead and its replace- ment a t Mill Hill was begun in 1937 but retarded on this occasion by the Second World War and by its aftermath, which delayed the opening of the new Inst i tute until 1949. I t has housed many of the most distinguished laboratory workers in the British Commonwealth during its short life, and the basic work carried out in its laboratories has led to the development of such drugs as effective remedies in hypertension, the useful drug ergometrine, and effective research into. the viruses of distemper, influenza and transmis- sible tumours. The model for the Nat ional Inst i tute for Medical Research in London was the Rockefel ler Insti tute in New York, but the Insti tute differed from the Rockefel ler Insti tute in that the lat ter from the first had its own hospital and subsequently became a university in its own right, while Mill Hill has to some extent remained an organisation apart. But of course, like the Nat ional Institutes of Health, the Medical Research Council is operated to a very considerable extent through grants to outside institutions and individuals and the award of travel fellowships and training grants.

Half a Century of Medical Research contains detailed accounts of the administrat ive growth and organisation of the physical facilities of the Coun- cil and its activities and a fascinating account of many of the individuals who have contributed so much to its development. I t is less colonrful than Stephen Strickland's similar historical account of the development of medical research of the United States, nor does it afford part icularly lively reading, but it is an essential source for any reader interested in the recer~t history of medical research or in the possible directions which it may take in the future.

University of Newcastle upon Tyne HENRY MILLER

124 Book Reviews

T H E E M E R G E N C E O F A L A W O F N A T U R E

The Discovery of the Conservation of Energy, by Yehuda Elkana ( L o n d o n : Hutchinson International , 1974), 213 pp., s

ENERGY is not merely the mainspring of life and of technical civilisation; i t is also the most important quantity in the physical sciences. By a funda- mental theorem of quantum mechanics, the total energy of an isolated system will be found to be constant, to within an uncertainty which decreases to practically infinitesimal values if the time of observation is sufficiently long. Moreover, as Einstein pointed out in 1905, where particles move with veloci- ties approaching the speed of light or are created or mutually annihilated, this total energy must include a contribution from any changes of mass of the system during the period of observation. Thus limited and generalised, the concept of "energy, its transformations and conservation ", is as central to modern physics as when it was definitely formulated during the decade 1845-55. Fo r nearly two centuries the dynamics of Gali leo and Newton had ruled the clockwork of the heavens with ari thmetical precision; but before mathematical physics could take over the sublunary sphere, a quanti- tative principle had to be found to unify the mysterious forces and "fluids " of heat, light, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, gravitation, and the dlan vital of biology. F rom that epoch there is continuity of style, method and philosophy which has not been disrupted by all the spectacular discover- ies in the sub-atomic or galactic realms.

I t is surprising, then, to note the meagreness of the historical l i terature on this fundamental t ransformation of scientific thought. Biographical studies of the individual participants in the " revolu t ion " abound, but apart from Max Planck 's prize essay of 1887, and a well-known article by Thomas Kuhn, 1 published in 1959, Dr. Elkana seems to be the first author to attempt to write a whole book which analyses it philosophically and sociologically as a significant event in intellectual history. Dr. Elkana has not tried to tell a highly polished story for the beginning student or the interested layman, but his scholarly reconstruction of the mental attitudes of past actors, and the strong and serious line which he takes through many confused and contra- dictory points of view give great weight to his opinions. F rom this book there is much to l ea rn - -by the historian o r sociologist of knowledge about the way in which science really progresses, and by the scientist himself about his own work and the tradition from which it stems. And if, as the author repeatedly emphasises, he has uncovered more unsuspected questions than he is able to answer, that also is an important lesson.

Dr. Elkana 's basic historical thesis is that the " conservation of energy," as a general law of nature, was not "discovered s imul taneously" by 1 2 - or more- - independent research workers in the 1840s, but emerged as a concept from a number of converging lines of study until it was explicitly formulated by Helmhol tz - - then aged 27- - in 1847 in a beautifully argued paper. This paper (despite some interesting ambiguities in the meaning of the German word Kra[t--" force " or " e n e r g y " ? ) was not only sufficient to convince the scientific world; Helmholtz himself was also the necessary instrument of the intellectual transformation, being a skilled mathematician with experience in physiological biophysics and steeped in the strong philo- sophical tradition of the German academic community. This combination

1 Kuhn, Thomas S., "Energy Conservation as a n Example of Simultaneous Dis- covery ", in Claghett, Marshall (ed.), Critical Problems in the History o] Science (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1959), pp. 321-356.

The Emergence of a Law of Nature 125

of talents and experience was essential. Nowhere but in Germany could one have found, at that period, a man who, under the influence of Natur- philosophie and of Kant, would have demanded that a first aim of science be " to reduce all phenomena of nature to the unchangeable forces of at trac- tion a n d repulsion "; who was interested in the apparently non-mechanical forces of chemistry and biology; and who was sufficiently familiar with sophisticated analytical mechanics to extract the general equation for the conservation of energy f rom the elaborate mathematical formalisms of Laplace and Lagrange.

Without reference to a great mass of scientific and biographical material, i t is difficult to dispute this very reasonable interpretat ion of the historical �9 record. Helmholtz confirmed his scientific genius by many further outstand- ing contributions over a long career. The fact that the mathematical apparatus for the derivation of this very simple equation had been available for half a century-- indeed, that such a derivation could easily have occurred amongst the propositions and theorems of Newton, Leibniz or Huygens in the 1690s--does not detract from his achievement. What to hindsight seems trivial, and long overdue, must have required a peculiar strength of imagina- tion and independence o f mind.

But does this interpretat ion give sufficient weight to the contribution of Joule, whose very careful and exact measurements, from about 1840 onwards, showed a precise numerical equivalence between heat and mechanical work? This research was originally motivated quite explicitly by t h e economic demand for a more efficient prime mover than the steam engines of the day. James Wat t and his successors were already measuring and advertising the duty of their engines--horse-power output / lb , of coal per hour input. Joule's first question was whether an electromagnetic engine driven by a pr imary bat tery consuming zinc might not prove more profitable. Helmholtz cited Joule's observations as empirical support for his theoretical principle; it is difficult to believe that he was not strongly influenced in his search for such a principle by his knowledge of these striking facts concerning the quantita- tive equivalence of mechanical, chemical and electromagnetic forces in rela- tion to heat.

The paradoxical nature of heat was, indeed, the barr ier to progress. On the one hand, the qualitative notion, familiar to every serious natural philo- sopher, that heat was simply the sensible motion of the constituents of matter; on the other hand, the careful measurements of Black, dating from the mid-eighteenth century, which were so satisfactorily interpreted quantita- tively as the transfer from one body to another of a "subt le fluid ". The point is that the caloric model implied a conservation principle for heat alone; there was no point at which mechanical energy need break into the succes- sion of chemical and thermal transformations which were the main topics of the science of heat in the early 1800s. Rumford ' s experiment should have

w a r n e d the calorists of the inconsistency of t h e i r t heo ry - -bu t friction seemed a minor phenomenon which would eventually be explained: mean- while, it was wiser to stick to a good quantit~tive model with strong experimental backing than to embark on speculations concerning the sub- microscopic structure of ma t t e r . The steam engines of the period were too inefficient, thermally, to show up the discrepancies in a conservation prin- ciple for caloric/heat ; even Sadi Carnot was misled on this point in his brill iant Essai--which, pace Dr. Elkana, contains no algebra, not because

. i t was a " p o p u l a r " pamphlet but because it needs no algebra to make its p o i n t with mathematical precision.

Joule turned th e key in the lock. His experiments demonstrated that one

126 B o o k Rev i ews

could retain the immensely valuable phenomenology of the caloric model by asserting a conservation principle for heat and work combined. I f Helm- holtz had been able to predict the results of such experiments, then his superhuman stature would be assured; in the circumstances his own assess- ment when he published his 1847 paper that it was - - in Dr. Elkana 's words - - " only a few formulations and generalisations of well known f a c t s " may not be characteristically too modest in this respect.

This is not merely a question of doing justice in a long-dead issue of scholarly priority. Dr. Elkana couples his admirat ion for Helmholtz with praise for a "ph i l o soph ica l " cast of mind as the supreme scientific virtue. F rom this historical example, we are encouraged to draw conclusions con- cerning the ideal strategy for research. Thus, " . . . I do not think that those great scientists who were engaged in mathematical syntheses, or gave differ- ing mathematical models oft the basis of contradictory physical models, ever created new concepts of physical science " or " . . . it is possible patiently to examine how many great creative scientists . . . . did think and work in such level-beaded, uncommitted, critical terms [as Davy]. I think that we would find very few indeed." In other words, the true source of conceptual innovations is to be found in the metaphysical principles active in the mind of the research worker, whether as a lone individual or in resonance with contemporary views.

Without at tempting to follow the author into the differences between the Newtonian, Cartesian and Leibnizian world-pictures, or trying to define the operative words " concep t " and " m e t a p h y s i c a l " in this context, one can see what he means. But is this view correct?

I t is easy to suggest courtter-examptes. Joule and Maxwell, those "unphi losophica l" Britons, gave us the key ideas of the kinetic theory of gases and statistical physics. Rutherford, the earthy New Zealander, pro- duced the nuclear atom. The name of Enrico Fermi, a conventionally conservative representative of the Italian official class, is linked with many important concepts of modern physics. On the other hand Minkowski, a pure mathematician, taught Einstein to conceive " s p a c e - t i m e " as a four- dimensional cont inuum--whi ls t de Broglie, over-zealous philosophically, has made little contribution to the progress of quantum mechanics since his initial bril l iant hypothesis on the wave nature of the electron.

The lesson of history, surely, is that new scientific concepts are put together from the most diverse materials, by the most unsystematic methods, in the most varied of human intellects engrossed in the most unlikely prob- lems. Since the world is of infinite complexity and what we can say about it is severely limited by the language we have in common, every concept is a metaphor. To one man a gas is like a liquid; to another it is like a swarm of bees. To Bohr, an atomic nucleus seemed analogous to a liquid drop; to Jenson and Mar ia Mayer it was more like a self-gravitating cluster of stars. Faraday filled space with elastic tubes of force; Dirac made the vacuum an ocean of electrons where the bubbles are positrons. Of what exotic meta- physical system are concepts such as these a priori constituents?

Each man of science has his own style. Nothing could be more revealing on this point than Faraday ' s speculations, in 1857, on the "conservat ion of force ". As Dr. Elkana 's account makes clear, these were on the wrong t rack and merely demons t ra ted the great man's misunderstanding of con- t emporary theoretical developments; They were taken seriously at the t ime because of Faraday ' s immense eminence-- jus t a s nowadays, Einstein's objections to quantum mechanic s are given much more weight than their argument deserves. But of course Faraday ' s scientific power lay in his ability

The Emergence of a L a w of Nature 127

to unearth by experiment what his philosophical intuition had scented; the wealth of concepts which he bequeathed to physics and chemistry are prac- tical tools shaped by use, not theoretical designs. To force him into com- petit ion with Helmholtz or Maxwell in the name of philosophy is to misun- derstand his peculiar genius.

Each scientific problem, also, has its characteristic stages of solution. As a first approximation we may think of a labyrinth, with doors to be opened in succession to reach the goal. As I have suggested above, Helmholtz could not open his door, with the keys of mathematics and metaphysics, until the great French mathematicians had opened up a whole suite of chambers where Newton's geometrical dynamics were translated into the algebra of scalar variables and Joule had cleared the passage to it by careful experi- mentation. In practice, of course, at each epoch in the search for a solution, many closed doors face each research worker; the " a r t of the so lub le" is to fit the fight type of key into a lock which will open to the most direct path to the solution. General philosophical considerations provide little guidance in such a choice.

These remarks are no criticism of the underlying theme of this book, but are meant as a warning against interpreting the call for a "phi losophica l" approach to science too literally. The story of the discovery of the conserva- tion of energy, especially the par t played by Helmholtz, carries an important message for the " theore t ic ian " in all branches of science. He must be very careful not to specialise too narrowly in the solution of the innumerable little puzzles which arise inside a part icular conceptual or mathematical framework and thus to forget the larger context of his research. If his taste is for abstract theory, then it is as much his duty to reconcile one formalism with another as to devote himself entirely .to the extension of a single theoretical point of view. And if he is more of a phenomenologist, he should not overlook the possibility that his metaphors, models or methods may be applicable to a much wider range of natural phenomena than they were originally intended to explain. Translated into these terms, Dr. Elkana 's lesson from the history of science is immensely instructive and worthy of full attention.

University of Bristol JOHN ZIMAN

P O L I C Y I N R E S E A R C H A N D D E V E L O P M E N T :

A S W E D I S H C A S E S T U D Y

System 37 Viggen: Arms, Technology, and the Domestication of Glory, by Ingemar D/Srfer (Stockholm: Scandinavian UniversiW Books, 1973), pp. 258.

OVER the past 10 years there have been many studies of large-scale research and development programmes in the United States. Some of their authors have focused on the very considerable managerial and organisational prob- lems which these programmes have posed, others on how these programmes have related to the political process, and yet others on the waste, corruption, and concentration of power which the programmes entail. As is right and proper, they have tended t o examine failures and faults rather than virtues and successes. Even where the successes have been studied, flaws have been brought to the fore. F o r example, Professor Harvey Sapolsky recently demonstrated 1 that the successes of research and development on the missile

1 The Polaris System Development: Bureaucratic and Programmatic Success in Govern- ment (Cambridge, Mas. : Harvard University Press, 1972).

128 Book Rev&ws

system of the Polaris submarine owed nothing to a supposedly sophisticated technique for the management of research and development called PERT (Programme Evaluation Review Technique): the real purpose of PERT was s imply to impress the outside world.

Hardly any studies of similar quality have emerged up to now from coun- tries other than the United States. Dr. Ingemar D6rfer 's study of the development of t h e Swedish fighter aircraft Viggen is therefore all the m o r e welcome. I t is based on access to, governmental records and to the main participants in the project. The Swedish authorities are to b e congratulated for taking an open and liberal view of the study; one cannot easily imagine their counterparts in, say, Great Britain and France, doing the same. The result is a thoroughly scholarly and well written account of what happened.

According to Dr. D6rfer, Viggen is a technical, managerial and economic success. The various features of its performance turned out to be those which had originally been planned. The difference between estimated price of a unit in 1964 and actual price of a unit in 1971 was only 39 per cent. in real terms, and the author argues that most of this increase in price resulted from a smaller production series and a lower rate of production than had originally been intended. In the later stages of the programme, the possibility of cancelling Viggen and buying American Phantoms was considered, but rejected on grounds of cost-effectiveness: Given what we know about the TSR 2, the F-111, the C5A, the Concorde, and other governmentally financed aircraft projects, this is a good performance by any standards. Given that Sweden has a population of only eight million, and that the Viggen weighed as heavily in Sweden's programme of research and development as the Apollo, programme d i d in the United States, it becomes remarkable.

How did it happen that Sweden succeeded where the United States and Great Britain have often failed? Dr. D6rfer gives two sets of reasons. The first reason is that Sweden's mili tary strategy has been stable since the Second World War, being one of defence against conventional mili tary at tack and invasio~a from the East. Fighter, reconnaissance and strike aircraft have been central elements of such defence. Given Sweden's foreign policy of armed neutrality, it has always tried to design its own fighter airframes and to manufacture engines of foreign design under licence. Sweden's aircraft designers have therefore had a stable f ramework of defence and foreign policy within which to develop new aircraft. This can be compared with the British case, where t h e government 's extra- European mili tary commitments were evaporating rapidly but unpredictably throughout the 1950s and the 1960s and where, as Dr. Dbrfer points out, ideas and policies for the procurement of weapons were very volatile.

Second, the strategy of the Swedish a i rcraf t designers in research and development was to avoid taking la rge technological steps into the unknown, to use foreign technology when it was better, and never to place an order for production until a prototype had shown in the air that it could do what had been predicted on paper. In addition, given the long-term and rigid nature o f Swedish budgetary planning for the procurement of weapons, the main incentive in the development was to keep down casts, even if this meant taking a little more time. Dr. D6rfer compares this situation with the United States in the 1960s, when the desire to keep up with or to stay a h e a d of the Soviet Union in the sophistication of weapons and in their delivery dates, led to the doctrine of full commitment to the production and p rocurement of technically ambitious aircraft on the basis of designs on paper. The results were the the F-111 and the C5A.

Policy in Research and Development: A Swedish Case Study .129

Nonetheless, the development of Viggen has had its sha re of problems. ,As with large technological projects in other countries, Viggen by the .:mid-I960s had to leave the comfortable atmosphere of c l o s e d politics and to be criticised publicly a s a n unnecessarily costly and risky investment. I t survived the attack, but the number of aircraft ordered was considerably reduced as a result of general pressure on the mili tary budget from the

Swedish Treasury: Once again, this is very similar to wha t happened in the United States, Grea t Britain, and France, where large technological

p ro jec t s came under fire from t h e ONce of Management and the Budget, the Treasury, and the Minist~re des Finances, respectively: Dr. D6rfer 's

a t t i t ude towards these changes is ambiguous. On the one hand, he con- cludes that public debate had little impact on the outcome of the Viggen project. On the other hand, he thinks that the changes have resulted in " an unbalanced air-force ". The changes which the public debates instigated thus qualified the success of the project.

There are other subjects in the book which merit further discussion, in particular, the extent to which the. "mi l i ta ry- indust r ia l complex" and Viggen are important and necessary parts of the Swedish economy and of Swedish technology. At the beginning of the book, Dr. D6rfer writes that defence is seen as a necessary evil drawing away resources from other, more productive uses. Yet later he argues that one factor making it diƒ for a social democratic government to cancel the project was the effect on employment. Does thN mean that the only way to move resources out of defence work is not to cancel projects, but not to start them? This question is left unanswered by the author.

Sometimes, Dr. D6rfer argues that the opportunity-cost of the Viggen programme was very small--1 per cent. of all Swedish scientists and engineers; yet other figures which he presents show that, throughout the 1960s, Viggen accounted for about 16 per cent. of all government expen- ditures on research and development and about 8 per cent. of the total national expenditure on research and development. He also seems to be arguing at times that the " spread-effects" of a large technological project like Viggen are necessary for an industrially advanced country 's general levels of technological sophistication and economic welfare. However, the evidence for this is not convincing. Since the Second World War, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, and- -un t i l recent ly- - the Federa l German Republic have done very well technologically and economically without them. In fact there is an inverse correlation in a number of countries between the degree of gwzernmental involvement in large technological projects and the various measures of economic performance such as rates of growth, changes in the share of world trade, and degrees of monetary re-evaluation. The mater ial presented in Dr. D6ffer 's book suggests that the reverse was in fact the case. The exposure of Swedish industry to competit ion on the world marke t has led to its high level of managerial and technological sophistication, and to an acute awareness that Sweden cannot do everything technologically. The result has been that Viggen and previous aircraft projects have been kept within financially and techno- logically manageable proportions.

Nonetheless, Dr. D6rfer demonstrates in a masterly manner how, not- withstanding the fashions about the requirements of scale of modern technology, a country of eight million inhabitants successfully developed and produced a sophisticated mili tary aircraft. He also points to the problems of the future. Viggen was expensive to develop, so that the pressure to sell it to foreign countries is all the greater. Will it always be possible to

130 Book Reviews

render this consistent with Sweden's foreign policy of peaceful neutrality? And what is going to be done with the gifted Swedish aircraft designers until a successor to Viggen is required? The present indications are that they might become involved in European cooperation in civilian aircraft development. In an ideal world, one would grant them leadership in design and be sure that there would be no o~erruns of cost. In the real world this will not happen, and we know from past history that cooperative ventures are perhaps the most expensive way to maintain capacity in the design of aircraft. It would probably be much cheaper to keep the design teams together through a Swedish government subsidy for the development and demonstration of experimental new designs. This is a policy which was once practised successfully and has now been forgotten in many countries--except perhaps in France and the USSR

University of Sussex KEITH PAVITT