A well-known Victorian engineer once stepped down from the carriage in which he was travelling to supervise the repair of a damaged wheel. When he climbed back up his fellow passengers all ignored him. By showing that he knew how things worked he'd shown that he was less than a gentleman. His status-sensitive travelling companions were suffering from a peculiarly English disease that 100 years later is still with us. Even in 1978, if you want ' to be accepted' in England you must be seen to be doing the right kind of work-work that's as far removed as possible from the means of production. All the evidence shows that not enough of our cleverest people are going into industry, the very place we need them. MICHAEL DEAN talks to a number of people who, quite independently, have been studying our strange and potentially fatal social disease.