An important facet of all research is the opportunity it affords to isolate and examine basic assumptions. In development studies, this activity is extremely important, for the relationship of the research worker to poor countries is often, like that of a medium to the spirit world, marked by infrequency of contact, scarcity of data, and ambiguity of response. In such circumstances, myths, in the crude sense, tend to flourish. As an article in the last issue identified three such myths, we felt it would be interesting to scan the area of development research more thoroughly, with the results to be found in the middle section. A particularly rich field of "crude" myth is that of manpower supply. For the first section of this issue, Oscar Gish and Richard Jolly have written two articles which cast a powerful demystifying light on this topic.