The Care and Feeding of Mad Scientists

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You could hardly have science fiction without scientists, mad or otherwise. A check of the current issues of eight science-fiction magazines shows that about a quarter of the stories deal with scientists, either puttering in their laboratories or plunging into trackless wastes on expeditions. As a result, we readers have acquired a certain mental picture of how laboratories and expeditions are run.

Well, are they run that way?

Yes and no. The pictures in the stories are sometimes accurate especially when a scientist writes the story and sometimes not. If they have any consistent fault it is one of omission. That is, there are certain practical problems and difficulties in managing scientists and their activities that are seldom touched upon in the stories, though any scientist or scientific administrator will weep on your neck for hours about them.

To begin with, who or what are scientists? People who practice science. To save type in a chase for definitions we might as well include engineers as "applied" scientists, though some of the "pure" scientists may object. The two classes are not very different as human types, except that you might say that pure scientists are like engineers only more so; or that engineers are more "average" than pure scientists.

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