Science in the seventiesߝthe policy issues

The generosity that characterized research grants in the 1950s and 1960s is apparently at an end. Not only have the purse strings on scientific monies been tightened, but the economic climate and the general nature of scientific spending have eroded the value of the monies received. The scientific community is therefore faced with the problem of how best to allocate the funds that it does get. And although this community can´t make policy regarding these allocations, it can help shape it. No effort is made in this discourse to state the specific steps to be taken¿only to suggest the alternatives that are open and to stimulate the reader into accepting what is, inevitably, one of the important tasks to be faced in the 1970s.