BRACERS Record Detail for 57476
To access the original letter, email the Russell Archives.
Not a letter but the outline of a BBC script in BR's hand, titled "Should Scientists Be Public Servants?". These "points" were requested by 21 April 1945, at record 57470. Not being a letter, the transcription of the outline does not belong in the Transcription field:
BR, “SHOULD SCIENTISTS BE PUBLIC SERVANTS?”, [OUTLINE, 20 APR. 1945]
BRACERS 57476. MS(X). BBC Written Archives
Proofread by K. Blackwell
Should scientists be public servants?
I. Of course they should serve the public, but their judgment should decide what will serve the public.
II. Public servants take orders from the State, i.e. from eminent elderly gentlemen, who either know no science, or at most that of the last generation. “Folly, doctor-like, controlling skill” does not lead to the best research.
III. States are competitive and therefore more interested in differential advantages to themselves than in what benefits all mankind.
IV. All fundamentally original work is liable to shock established orthodoxies, and therefore to be frowned on by Authority.
V. The best men need the stimulus of self-direction if they are to do their best work.
VI. Knowledge is desirable on its own account, and not only because it may have technical uses. This is in danger of being forgotten, and the State is less likely to remember it than an able man of science is.
