1011

be made as soon as possible under regulations. An

advisory committee, including both lay and scientificmembers, should consider all new lines of animal experi-ment and for five years the committee should give specialattention to all work designed to induce stress. The

inspectorate now numbering 8 should be raised to 21 andshould include both veterinary and medical members.No-one will object to the proposed increase in payand special training, but it is worth remembering thatthe first chief inspector was the most distinguishedanatomist of his day. If the inspector is to be more thana policeman, he must have knowledge of experimentalmedicine which cannot be learned in a cram course.

Retired professors nowadays seem very unwilling to limittheir activities to their gardens or the golf links, and theywould have real value as poachers turned gamekeeper. Tofulfil these responsibilities, the inspector must have theconfidence not only of the public but of the licenceholders.

The committee’s suggestions have already been criti-cised by those who oppose animal experiments in toto.They will be almost as unpopular with some licenceholders, and we hope that there will be no reversion to thefeeble argument that vivisection is no concern of the

ignorant general public. One obvious effect of these pro-posals, if they become law, will be to raise the cost ofexperiments with animals, and this may help to eradicateprocedures which are justified only by tradition. Webelieve that the committee has performed an arduous anddifficult task in striking a reasonable balance between thedemands of the experts and the public conscience. Thatno-one will be entirely satisfied is to be expected.

RESEARCH INTO INFORMATION

THE report of the Advisory Council on Scientific Policyfor 1963-64 contained a recommendation for the establish-ment of a new organisation for scientific information. Lastmonth the Secretary of State for Education and Scienceannounced the setting up of the Office of Scientific andTechnical Information. The Secretary of State will beadvised by a committee under the chairmanship of SirJames Cook, F.R.S., vice-chancellor of Exeter University.Estimates for the current year provide for expenditureof El 80)000 for external grants, contracts, and a smallscientific staff (13 at present). The office-not itself aninformation service-will act as a " ginger group "stimulating research into new forms of information storageand retrieval and improving all means of scientificcommunication.

The office takes over all support for research and

development on information research previously adminis-tered by the D.S.I.R. and is also responsible for theNational Lending Library for Science and Technology.At present it is not clear how the work of the new officewill differ from that carried out previously within theD.S.I.R.-or, indeed, whether any difference is intended.Be this as it may, any organisation that is designed topromote new ways of handling the current information"

explosion " is to be welcomed.There seem to be two main approaches to the problem

of how to handle the mass of published scientific datawhich, in medicine alone, runs to 2 million pages of printeach year. The number of published papers can be

reduced and a register of titles kept for those who wish torequest copies of articles; this " micromethod " was pro-posed by BernaP and has lately been mooted by Fox.2Alternatively, the number of papers can continue to

expand and can be handled by all the equipment of anautomated age. Just such a method is the subject of anexperiment in medical information service which is one ofthe earliest projects of the Office for Scientific and Techni-cal Information.

The experiment makes use of the MEDLARS systemdeveloped by the U.S. National Lending Library ofMedicine for its monthly publication Index Medicus.

Briefly, the system records basic information on magnetictape in a form suitable for sorting by computer. The

computer then controls the monthly " print-out " of theIndex Medicus and retrieves references on subjects pro-vided by the searcher. The U.S. National Library ofMedicine encourages the setting up of MEDLARS retrievalunits elsewhere and has kindly agreed to supply copies ofits magnetic tapes for the experiment. A contract of upto E26,000 has been placed with the University of New-castle upon Tyne, which will lend the computer and

operate the searching service during the experimentalperiod; the National Lending Library will provide theliterature to back up the retrieval service. The experiment,which should start early in 1966, will last three years, afterwhich its efficiency and usefulness will be assessed bothhere and in the U.S.A., It may then be thought suitablefor use in other branches of science.

Although there is no longer any such thing as a trulyindependent science, medicine is probably the least inde-pendent of all; it draws on almost every branch of thenatural and social sciences. As a result, if the experimentis a success, the Office of Scientific and Technical Infor-mation will have to consider very carefully the differencesbetween the requirements of a retrieval system in medicineand those of other sciences to which the method may beextended.

1. Bernal, J. D. Social Function of Science. London, 1939.2. Fox, T. F. Crisis in Communication. London, 1965. See Lancet, March

27, 1965, p. 693.

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