Abstract
THE well-deserved tributes which have been paid to the achievements of British and other men of science in war-time almost inevitably tend to encourage in the public mind the belief that war stimulates scientific advance. That notion was exposed in "The Frustration of Science" (published by Allen and Unwin, 1935); but it is well to be reminded that, despite certain gains, on balance war tends to retard rather than to promote general advance. The advances occur in limited fields where the prosecution of the war effort is directly served, and although such advances may be turned to account in peace-time, the scientific effort expended is sometimes out of proportion to that which might have achieved the same result in peace-time. Moreover, fundamental research tends to be suspended entirely, or at best is pursued with inadequate means.
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Dissemination of Scientific Information. Nature 154, 649–652 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/154649a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/154649a0