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Scientific Research That Could Have Been Avoided
indian_rediff writes "An article from Friday's Wall Street Journal (reprinted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) details how some of the research being done by scientists ends up simply stating the obvious. Their observations make for some interesting and hilarious reading." From the article: "Want job satisfaction? A 'careful choice of career is the key,' researchers concluded in a paper this spring in the Journal of Economic Psychology. Choosing a career based on a well-lubricated encounter at a bar, it turns out, may not be the most promising route to career satisfaction. People who choose their jobs carefully are more likely to be satisfied with them than those who take a flying leap into the great unknown."
Ha ha. Funny stuff. What a waste.
Let's not forget the billions and billions poured into bogus Star Wars missile defense technology R&D over the last 20 years. It doesn't work. It never did work. It never will work. Ande even if it DID work it's easily defeated. Not to mention that it could never be tested in any realistic scenario. Most of this absolutely wasted money was spent as part of classified budgets so nobody really knows exactly how much of a boondoggle it really is. When all you hear about are the much publicized tests - virtually all of which end in failure - you know there's a lot more that never sees the light of day.
Well, experts knew this as well in medieval Europe. The reason why Columbus had a hard time getting an expedition is because advisors to the Spanish court correctly estimated the distance from Spain to India and said that the distance was too large to feasibly make the journey using a western route.
Columbus screwed up his calculations by using incorrect conversions for units of distance and thought that the trip was feasible. If he hadn't run into the Americas, his expedition would have ended with his crew dying of starvation and/or dehydration in the middle of the ocean.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
Even if the combination is safe there's no guarantee that the result will be the "obvious" one. Perhaps the drugs combine in some way to cancel each other out. Perhaps they use the same receptors and interfere with each other. Or perhaps some interaction multiples the total effect (but not strongly enough to back into killing the patient territory again.)
You can argue about the relative merrit of these kinds of studies vs other more original kinds of research, but i don't think you can reasonably argue that it's useless.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Eratosthenes (284-192 B.C.) , the librarian of Alexandria, was able to determine the circumference of the Earth to an accuracy of 0.1-0.5%. Around 250 B.C., Eratosthenes knew that on a particular day, the sun cast no shadow in a well in the modern-day village of Assouan. At the same time, on the same day, it cast a minor shadow in Alexandria - the distance between the two was known to high accuracy, and Alexandria and Assouan are almost at the same longitude. Thus, by dividing 360 by that shadow angle and multiplying by the distance, the polar circumference was measured. Eratosthenes measured it to be 40,000 km (24,855 miles), and the current accepted figure is 40,032 km (24,875 miles).
The whole article is a troll by WSJ; they're in cahoots with the crazy religious "right" and like to bash scientists, because this administration has angered the scientific community, so the GOP is in attack mode now on science and everything related; I saw a similar article the other day.
This is a poor example to quote. For instance did you know that Aspirin, Neoprxin Sodium (Aleve), and Ibuprofin (advil) all work using the same mechanism? The result is that mixing them does not have an additive effect (mostly whichever one hits the blood-stream first will take effect); however, acetaminophen (tylenol) works using a different mechnism, and can be combined with any of the above for a (somewhat) additive effect. In addition, drugs like Aleve have a self-limiting property. Taking more than ~500mg will have no effect (so you will likely notice a difference between 1 and 2 220mg tablets, but taking a 3rd won't relieve any more pain). I am not in the pharmaceutical industry, so don't take the above as gospel, but some time on Google should provide similar information.
Can you tell me one logical reason why anyone might think that people with stiff, cold fingers would not make more typing errors than people with normal fingers? That's the point of the whole thing: only an idiot would need to test that hypothesis. That's like testing to decide if people who read non-fiction often like non-fiction.
I can imagine that there are certain situations where the working environment should be kept (or simply is by nature) very cold. It might be interesting (or vital) for those in said situation to know what their expected error rates or potentials are.
Take the large public research university that I work for with a total annual operating budget of approximately $2.6 billion.
So you can imagine the theoretical impact of a 10% decrease in grant money. That gap ain't going to be filled by the state.
Well, not all research is truly useful, but the problem here is that the author of the article provides no context. He does not even discuss what the studies were investigating. Surely, it could have been something random and pointless, but I'm rather betting that it was taken out of context (exactly how valuable the research is, is another matter entirely, and depends on whose perspective you answer that question from).
The "conclusion" seems to be a paraphrased one-liner which was likely taken out of context, and the quotation, "when employees get chilly, they are not working at their full potential," is most likely there for continuity in the paper (i.e. a stylistic element).
So, I won't defend that particular study done, as I have no grounds to, but I will give it the benefit of a doubt, because you certainly cannot conclude much from what the article's author wrote. Had he provided a full research paper, and then attacked that, he would have had some substance to go on. As he does it, he has nothing.
On another note, it isn't unheard of for gibberish research papers to get published: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/paper.html
Captain Obvious would obviously wear a fluorescent hazard-orange obvious-suit, and instead of a cape, he would tow a highway billboard with the words "I'M CAPTAIN OBVIOUS" in flashing neon letters.
His only weakness is he would turn up to work as a mild-mannered reporter wearing the exact same thing.
Internet to the rescue -- he calculated the distance to the Sun at 804 million stadia based on data from eclipses. Depending on what the value of a stadium is (apparently, we don't know for sure what units he was using), that's pretty accurate.
Also, he was measuring the polar circumference of the Earth, not the equatorial circumference. The mean polar circumference is 40,008 km.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....