Is your research really necessary

Summary Recent events have indicated a growing concern about the effectiveness of research for the construction industry. These are reviewed, and provocative comments are offered, to stimulate a critical appraisal of the value of the subjects chosen for study. It is suggested that concrete research has tended to follow a traditional pattern, continuing to examine factors well into unrewarding regions according to the law of diminishing returns and ignoring areas which could have a major effect on the over-all cost of construction. This situation is attributed largely to the varied way in which the results of different types of investigation are received by the industry. The research worker is exhorted to spend more time in applying his critical faculties to examine how best he can serve the industry and in using his unbiased judgement to incorporate his findings into the common experience of the practitioners he serves.