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elucidating ๐ค๐ผ
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this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2024
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Sometime I feel that research is just a bunch of guys trying to sell useless stuff (myself included).
A bit of a more serious comment on that: knowledge is never useless. Many, maybe most, researchers agree with that. It's why we do what we do. Publishers and sources of funding (be they third party or governmental), however, disagree. So we have to sell them on the importance of our research this way.
Going on a tangent here: While I fully agree with the above, there is an amount of knowledge after which fact checking becomes bothersome, and some people just skip fact checking overall. One could argue that, while knowledge is never useless, unchecked knowledge might become bothersome or dangerous.
See flatearthers, scientology, etc. for extreme examples.
Counter-point:
There are also many widely accepted beliefs in the scientific community that are based on misinterpreted data/results published by others, unconfirmed, and out-dated beliefs. I agree with you, but I also think we too quickly dismiss those who question the paradigm and many in translational/translated fields (like medicine) continue operating on out-dated beliefs because they don't want to or don't have the time to keep up with current research.
Case in point: the justification for 6-foot spacing at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. Particles do not magically drop off after a few feet, this was justified in medical textbooks based on a misinterpretation of a particle physicist's publication. Another example: many organic chemistry classes still teach that FTIR is a qualitative method only despite many examples of FTIR quantitation and the widespread adoption of this method throughout companies that produce instruments and analysis software.
We should encourage trying to disprove that which we think is true and unquestionable so that we can fix our past mistakes and better inform our future work.
Depends. What's your field?
This one comment of 4 words triggers me so hard that it momentarily stumped me
How about this one: 'Useless doesn't mean valueless'
Thoughts?
Condensed matter - basic research. No actual real world applications, independently of what the abstracts/introductions may claim.
Awesome! Two questions: 1. Could you pitch some of your material as having a possible future application of radically increasing packing efficiency for airline bound luggage? And, 2. What's your favorite kind of nuclear pasta?