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To Be a Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ by Donald Braben, Oxford University Press, pp 166,
£9.99 pbk

In To Be A Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ, Donald Braben describes the enterprise of science,
taking as his main example the Venture Research Project, the blue-sky research
funded by BP in the more expansive days of the 1980s. Braben has seen his
fair share of the business of science, moving from particle physics to science
administration in the Cabinet Office, the Science Research Council and the
Bank of England, before landing in BP’s Venture Research Unit.

The project’s purpose was to find and support creative mavericks, regardless
of field, country or status, who had fallen foul of the peer review (or
preview) system. The message was spread informally, and the sel-ection was
not by written proposal, but by discussions with practising scientists at
the research unit, asking, for example, ‘Where are the departures from orthodoxy?’
Unsuccessful applicants were invited to res-pond with something more revolutionary.

The research programmes were also dev-eloped by personal interaction
with a small group of men at BP. The intention was to foster the diversity
that is now ‘systematically suppressed on the spurious grounds of energy
and efficiency’, by funding scientists who would challenge conventional
wisdom, in the hope of unpredictable insights and new and exciting industrial
opportunities. The project ended prematurely in 1990 when BP fell on hard
times.

Braben sees his book as a thumbnail sketch, a cartoon rather than a
portrait, of scientific and technological enterprise. A breezy account of
the evolution of science over the past few centuries is followed by an account
of ‘how to be a scientist’, which begins with how to go about entering the
profession and winds up with making significant discoveries and winning
prizes. The endeavour of being a scientist is a global one: to help mankind
to survive population growth, disease, pollution and warming of the planet.
Diversity is a major theme for Braben, from the brain of a famous physicist
such as Murray Gell-Mann to the collective intelligence of ants.

I found it curious, therefore, that the globe according to Braben appears
less than diverse – it contains only one sex. Humankind is ‘mankind’, the
‘chronically under-nourished’ are our ‘fellow-men’ (even though poverty
and swelling birth rates are known to correlate with the under-education
of women). The scientist’s career is described as if it were that of either
sex, but the progress up the ladder is steady, without the intrusion of
domestic concerns. (Braben, for example, acknowledges his doubt that the
book would have been finished without his wife’s tireless labours, in typing,
correcting, cajoling and managing mountains of paper; clearly the youthful
zest and exuberance of his three children have not slowed him down.) The
27 Venture Research projects were led by men, with perhaps 4 women among
the 50 scientists. Many women find themselves dropping out of science, as
things are, so the survivors generally are a select group. Perhaps this
is because women are less good at selling themselves than men are, and less
tolerant of gee-whizzery.

Braben pays tribute to Jocelyn Bell Burnell’s discovery of pulsars.
The story concludes: ‘Careers are rarely established in such style or so
quickly.’ But this is to deny Burnell’s long haul to establish her career,
and her own description elsewhere of how difficult it is to get good jobs
for both partners in a marriage. A celebrated woman scientist is missing
– Rosalind Franklin – in the mention of ‘Wilkins . . . whose pioneering
X-ray images of DNA also made a vital contribution’ to Francis Crick and
James Watson’s unravelling of the structure of DNA.

The case made by Braben for blue-sky research is an admirable one, if
we may assume that worth is readily distinguishable from rodomontade. This
country must live by its wits, yet scientists and engineers are pushed into
mission-oriented work, their salaries and status have slipped, and career
structures are under threat. Big science competes with small, basic with
applied, traditional with new. Limiting research fun-ding to priority fields
leads to duplication of effort, as well as increasing competition and demands
for expensive hardware.

Academic researchers seldom convince committees to allow them to follow
radically new lines of inquiry, while industry shrinks from basic exploratory
research because the outcome is unpredictable. One interesting suggestion
Braben makes is that a consortium of companies with concerns that span the
industrial spectrum could be created which encircle, ‘like a ring of covered
wagons’ groups of researchers exploring new areas. The companies in return
would have privileged access to patents, and share the royalties. Much venture
research is cheap, he says, because modest equipment can yield an interesting
crop in a new and untilled field. Also, the scientists are not competing
with others and, in any case, ‘the number . . . with the courage, ability
and the inclination to embark on the pioneering crusades is very small’.

Braben’s enthusiasm for venture research makes To Be A Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ a good
read, whether or not one shares his degree of optimism. He predicts, for
example, that industrial opportunities will improve by 50 per cent this
year. Let us look forward with him to tangible success from the Venture
decade, and to the return of bluer skies.

Joan Mason is a former reader in chemistry at the Open University, Buckinghamshire.