ABSTRACT
The broad organizational structure of the agricultural sciences provides the context in which key decisions and choices are negotiated. The structure of research typically found within publicly funded US agricultural research systems today is highly complex. The Extension Service, and scientists in their extension roles, also serve as a source of research problems by transferring and translating lay research requests into the technical language of a particular research group. The interplay of scientific or paradigmatic criteria and social factors in problem choice is complicated, as judgments about appropriate research are also influenced by social processes internal to science. Among researchers studying science, a major debate has emerged regarding which of these criteria operate in the sciences. The importance of communication with clients in the choice of scientific research problem is reflected in three items ranked 7, 13, and 20. Most scientists put the fact that subjects are "hot topics" relatively low on their list of criteria for problem choice.
