The Research System in Transition

On a mountainside in sunny Tuscany, in October 1989, 96 people from 23 countries on five continents gathered to learn and teach about the problems of managing contemporary science. The diversity of economic and political systems represented in the group was matched by our occupations, which stretched from science policy practitioners, through research scientists and engineers, through academic observers of science and science policy. It was this diversity, along with the opportunities for infonnal discussion provided by long meals and remote location, that made the conference a special learning experience. Except at lecture time, it was impossible to distinguish the "students" at this event from the "teachers," and even the most senior members of the teaching staff went away with a sense that they had learned more from this group than from many a standard conference on science policy they had attended. The flavor of the conference experience cannot be captured adequately in a proceedings volume, and so we have not tried to create a historical record in this book. Instead, we have attempted to illustrate the core problems the panicipants at the conference shared, discussed, and debated, using both lectures delivered by the fonnal teaching staff and summaries of panel discussions, which extended to other panicipants and therefore increased the range of experiences reponed.