On evaluating scientific research: The contribution of the psychology of science

Abstract This paper critically discusses the nature various schemes for evaluating scientific research. Through the use of Jungian personality theory, it attempts to explicate the psychological forces and assumptions underlying the vast majority of evaluation schemes. The paper argues that most schemes are greatly restricted in their choice of an underlying psychological basis. It is argued that science administration, evaluation, and technological forecasting all require a greater ability to appreciate, and even more important to integrate, the psychological functions described in this paper. “It has been lately fashionable in some quarters to think that physical science iormally progresses by moving on the whole fairly calmly in one direction, and that such progresses is interrupted only at certain periods of great upheaval in science. “But this can be true only in a limited sense. Not far below the surface, there have coexisted in science, in almost every period since Thales and Pythagoras, sets of two or antithetical systems or attitudes, for example, one reductionistic and the other holistic … “Science has always been propelled and buffeted by such contrary or anithetical forces. Like vessels with draught deep enough to catch more than merely surface current, , scientist of genius are those who are doomed, or privileged, to experience these deeper current in their complexity. It is precisely their special sensitivity to contraries that has made it possible for them to do so, and it is an inner necessity that has made them demand nothing less for themselves [5, pp. 375–376].”