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Needs, Leads, and Indicators

What are science indicators supposed to indicate? The obvious analogue, of course, is provided by economic indicators-e.g., growth rate of the Gross National Product, cost of living, rate of inflation, or the percentage of unemployed. In this more familiar case, the numbers are supposed to indicate the state of an entity called the "health of the economy"-but there is a circularity here. The health of the economy is not only measured by these indicators; it is largely defined by them. Indeed, these "indicators" often assume an importance at least as great as that of the abstraction they are supposed to quantify. Over the years, for example, economists, businessmen, and readers of The Wall Street Journal have come to feel in their bones that a growth rate of 5% is good, an unemployment rate of 5% tolerable, and a double-digit inflation rate dangerous. Such indicators are regarded as "good" or "bad" in themselves and as things that may be treated directly, just as a physician treats painful symptoms when the underlying disorder that they signal lies beyond his reach. The analogy between economic and science indicators is obvious but misleading. True, a number of elements in the scientific enterprise can be measured. There are "inputs": trained people, laboratory space, equipment, and, of course, money. There are also "outputs": papers and books, brilliant generalizations, and Nobel prizes. If applied science is included, outputs also extend to material matters such as weapons systems, new drugs, and improvements in man/hour productivity. But how are these variables related to the health of science? Indeed, in the case of science, it is even less clear that an entity with meaning independent of its measuring sticks 5