At 11:13 am 25-02-05 -0500, you wrote: <snip>
>Overall, the "return on investment" for research is so >astronomically high every effort to calculate it or to imagine how we might >reward scientists for their efforts becomes absurd. <snip> Funny you should say that. When I was a young scientific officer at RRL my section drilled some research cores from one of the Motorways which were then being constructed. In the process we discovered a show-stopper fault which, had it gone uncorrected, would have led to premature failure of the whole length of the motorway and the enormous cost of repair and consequent dislocation. I calculated that the amount we saved the country by this simple discovery and the recognition of its implications exceeded the total salary cost of my team for the whole of our careers. This was a great consolation when in subsequent years I might spend X months working on an idea and get precisely nowhere. 8-) Frank Grimer
