Objective and Experiment in Long-Term Research

Abstract

In an unguarded moment at the Mary Flagler Cary Arboretum, I expressed the view that to create an hypothesis in order to justify an experimental approach to long-term research is unlikely to further the long-term objective. The proposition was based on personal experience, casual observation, and some acquaintance with the Rothamsted long-term or as they are better known “The Classical Experiments.” Lawes, a contemporary of Darwin, created the Rothamsted experiments. He was not given to explaining himself; nor was Gilbert who became his partner in operating these oldest and possibly best known of all long- term agricultural field “experiments.” Living and working alongside these experiments for almost 40 years, I had come to accept that their successful continuation was not a necessary product of their experimental aspect but something more dependent on Lawes and Gilbert’s personalities. Also, I was aware of the eventual loss of some of the original experiments through time, and the reduction of others by later activity on the field plots that was the product of different minds committed to their own immediate experiments, and were sometimes antithetical to the long-term view of ecology or agriculture.