If you pay a man a salary for doing research, he and you will want to have something
to point to at the end of the year to show that the money has not been wasted.
In
promising work of the highest class, however, results do not come in this regular
fashion, in fact years may pass without any tangible result being obtained, and the
position of the paid worker would be very embarrassing and he would naturally take to
work on a lower, or at any rate a different plane where he could be sure of getting
year by year tangible results which would justify his salary.
The position is this:
You want one kind of research, but, if you pay a man to do it, it will drive him to
research of a different kind. The only thing to do is to pay him for doing something
else and give him enough leisure to do research for the love of it.
-- Attributed to J. J. Thompson by Lord Rayleigh, c. 1940
In promising work of the highest class, however, results do not come in this regular fashion, in fact years may pass without any tangible result being obtained, and the position of the paid worker would be very embarrassing and he would naturally take to work on a lower, or at any rate a different plane where he could be sure of getting year by year tangible results which would justify his salary.
The position is this: You want one kind of research, but, if you pay a man to do it, it will drive him to research of a different kind. The only thing to do is to pay him for doing something else and give him enough leisure to do research for the love of it.
-- Attributed to J. J. Thompson by Lord Rayleigh, c. 1940