"For anyone who has experienced and participated closely in this history, the remarkable inquiry which Benoît Godin has conducted has a certain fascination: in summary, it is a part, if not of my own history, at least, of my career, both professionally and intellectually, that is evoked here. In fact, I have not only lived intimately through the attention paid to the birth and growth of research and development statistics by the OECD member countries, but also, the Science and Technology Policy Division, for which I was responsible within the Directorate of Scientific Affairs, was itself a major consumer, even demander, of these statistics for all of our work-studies, examinations by country, policy evaluations or reports intended for the ministers responsible for these issues."