Re: Education

["E. Leonard Jossem" <Jossem@MPS.OHIO-STATE.EDU>]

 Charles Edward Kenneth Mees (1882-1960) was Director of Research at Kodak.
In 1935 he said:
"The best person to decide what research shall be done is the man who
is doing the research. The next best is the head of the department.
After that you leave the field of best persons and meet increasingly
worse groups.The first of these is the research director, who is
probably wrong more than half the time. Then comes a committee which
is wrong most of the time. Finally there is a committee of company
vice-presidents, which is wrong all the time."
From "A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations" Alan L. Mackay Editor
IOP Publishing Ltd. 1991

> Apropros of your experience at IBM, I dug this quote out of my files,
> by one C. E. K. Mees (unfortunately, in transition from an old IBM to
> a newer Mac some years back, all of the reference materials I had
> accumulated for these quotes were lost, so I have no idea who Mees
> was or when and where he said this, but I have a sneaky feeling it
> came from one of those fillers that appears occasionally at the end
> of an article in AJP):
>
> "The best persons to decide what research should be done are the ones
> doing the research. The next best is the head of the section. After
> that you leave the field of best persons and meet increasingly worse
> groups. The first of these is the research director, who is probably
> wrong more than half the time. Then comes a research committee, which
> is wrong most of the time. Finally there is the head committee, which
> is wrong all of the time."   --C. E. K. Mees
>
> Hugh
> --
>
> Hugh Haskell
> <mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>
>
> Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
> have to..
> ******************************************************