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Lesson 15 |
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Secrecy in industry |
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Why is secrecy particularly important in the chemical industries? |
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Two factors weigh heavily against the effectiveness of scientific research in industry. |
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One is the general atmosphere of secrecy in which it is carried out, |
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the other the lack of freedom of the individual research worker. |
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In so far as any inquiry is a secret one, |
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it naturally limits all those engaged in carrying it out from effective contact with their fellow scientists either in other countries or in universities, |
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or even, often enough, in other departments of the same firm. |
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The degree of secrecy naturally varies considerably. |
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Some of the bigger firms are engaged in researches which are of such general and fundamental nature |
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that it is a positive advantage to them not to keep them secret. |
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Yet a great many processes depending on such research are sought for with complete secrecy until the stage at which patents can be taken out. |
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Even more processes are never patented at all but kept as secret processes. |
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This applies particularly to chemical industries, |
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where chance discoveries play a much larger part than they do in physical and mechanical industries. |
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Sometimes the secrecy goes to such an extent that the whole nature of the research cannot be mentioned. |
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Many firms, for instance have great difficulty in obtaining technical or scientific books from libraries |
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because they are unwilling to have their names entered as having taken out such and such a book, |
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for fear the agents of other firms should be able to trace the kind of research they are likely to be undertaking. |
