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Scientific Research That Could Have Been Avoided

Posted by Zonk on Fri May 27, 2005 07:33 PM
from the water-is-wet-fire-is-hot dept.
It's funny. Laugh. Science
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."
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Scientific Research That Could Have Been Avoided 50 Comments More /

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  • Not really a bad thing.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Prophetic_Truth (822032) on Friday May 27 2005, @07:35PM (#12661152)
    It gives someone the oppurtunity to look at the scientist and state: "THANK YOU CAPTAIN OBVIOUS!"

  • Simple (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rm999 (775449) on Friday May 27 2005, @07:36PM (#12661157)
    They do the research, and if they find nothing interesting to say, they say something that isn't interesting. That is how they get more money to do more research.

    • Re:Simple (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jadavis (473492) on Friday May 27 2005, @11:08PM (#12662203)
      Also, many of these things have to do with degree. Like the vision study: we all know that as you move away it's harder to see the small detail. But how much detail is lost? In a criminal trial, the eyewitness testimony could fall into three categories:
      (1) Positive ID: you saw the whites of their eyes, and they were wearing their driver's license as a badge.
      (2) Corroberating evidence: Someone matching that description was seen running away.
      (3) Ruling out suspects: a small woman was seen running away, but the suspect is a big man.

      And a study like that could help the jury categorize how to view the evidence.

      • Re:Simple (Score:5, Insightful)

        by nasor (690345) on Saturday May 28 2005, @09:31AM (#12663841)
        " Also, many of these things have to do with degree."

        Exactly. When I was in college I was paid to participate in a study on how sleep deprivation affects people's ability to analyze information, follow instructions, and work in groups. A big group of us stayed awake for 48 hours. We periodically had to take short written tests, perform fairly complex tasks by following someone else's directions, and work in groups to try to solve problems. We were later told that the study was funded by the military, who wanted information on how people's performance degraded at various tasks as they stayed awake longer and longer.

        The people funding the study wanted to get an idea about how long an enlisted infantryman could go without sleep and still be effective relative to an officer, helicopter mechanic, paramedic, etc. Now, obviously if you summed the results of this study up as "Sleep deprivation decreases your capacity to solve problems, follow instructions, and work in groups" it would sound pointlessly obvious.
      • I must say I'm happier about this than I'd be if scientists only published the sensational stuff. This means we're less likely to get some self-styled lifestyle guru coming along in a couple of years to tell us that the key to job satisfaction is spur-of-the-moment job selection.

        Well, we can only hope...

  • This just in... (Score:5, Funny)

    by alphapartic1e (260735) on Friday May 27 2005, @07:36PM (#12661160)


    Scientific research shows that scientific research could have been avoided.

    Ugh, now my head hurts. I have to go lie down.

  • A subtle distinction... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FlyByPC (841016) on Friday May 27 2005, @07:37PM (#12661162) Homepage
    Sometimes, science advances by asking questions about things that, on the surface, seem "obvious." For instance, at one time, everyone "knew" that:

    * The Earth was flat;

    * Objects slowly came to a stop unless a force was exerted on them;

    * Matter and energy were always conserved;

    * Time was a universal constant;

    ...etc. Perhaps the problem is, too much attention is paid when these questions come back with the expected answer, rather than the fact that these questions are being asked.

    Question everything, but sometimes the answer is "yes, that's correct."

    • Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MoralHazard (447833) on Friday May 27 2005, @07:41PM (#12661186)
      I was thinking along similar lines while I read the article. The point of doing research is to confirm OR deny a hypothesis. This article seems to assume that scientists should be able to know in advance what's true and what's false... Guess what, WSJ, THAT'S THE POINT OF THE EXPERIMENTS.

      And like the parent poster says, you can't just go around saying "Why research that? It's obvious?" We get proved wrong on "obvious" shit all the time.

      • Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by WebHostingGuy (825421) on Friday May 27 2005, @08:04PM (#12661346) Homepage Journal
        The distinction is that people tend to be miffed at these studies when they are funded with tax dollars.

        They feel their money could be better spent elsewhere (and at times it could). Now, while I do not claim to know where the money for these studies came from I do know that a lot of money which could be better spent does get funneled into "questionable" funding (how about painting some rocks to look like other rocks because after new construction on a highway some rocks did not look weathered...) because the politicians funnel it to their district.
        • These people get paid to teach and do research. If you don't like your tax dollars being spent on that, then I guess your option is to cut funding for universities and let the students pay higher tuition. Oh, that's already happening. Nevermind.

          • Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:4, Informative)

            by AVIDJockey (816640) on Friday May 27 2005, @10:04PM (#12661963)
            I think a lot of people would be surprised at how little tuition figures into covering the operating budget of a university.
            Take the large public research university that I work for with a total annual operating budget of approximately $2.6 billion.

            • $1.2 billion comes from the university associated hospitals and medical facilities.
            • $1 billion comes from government sponsored research grants
            • ~$200 million from other sources, including the state
            • ~$200 million from tuition (i.e. ~7%)

            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.

      • counterpoint cabal (Score:4, Interesting)

        by globaljustin (574257) <jeffersonhuxleyNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday May 27 2005, @08:11PM (#12661407)
        You, parent, and the whole /. counterpoint cabal need to relax. You don't have to provide b.s. counterpoints to every popular thread just for the sake of being a contrarian...

        You and parent are also wrong.

        And like the parent poster says, you can't just go around saying "Why research that? It's obvious?" We get proved wrong on "obvious" shit all the time.

        There IS a such thing as stupid research. For example, from TFA:

        In what its sponsors called a "landmark study," scientists found that when your fingers are numb and turning that lovely robin's-egg blue, you make more typing effors. Er, errors. "When employees get chilly," the scientists concluded, "they are not working to their full potential."

        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.

        There are some things that do not need to be tested with methodology to be agreed as true. You don't need a study to find out that shooting yourself in the head will hurt you.

        Wait, maybe you should test out that hypothesis...

        • Re:counterpoint cabal (Score:5, Insightful)

          by mollymoo (202721) on Friday May 27 2005, @09:46PM (#12661906) Journal
          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.

          The WSJ kindly didn't give us a reference, so we don't know what was actualy in that paper. However, having read a few papers in my time I bet you my left arm that it didn't consist of "we made this guy's fingers really cold and his typing sucked". I bet it says precisely how poor the typing was. Do you know exactly how badly cold affects typing? Just how cold is "chilly"? Is it 280K or 290K? How is the error rate correlated with temperature? How is it correlated with age and sex?

          If it's so futile to perform the experiment, if the answers are so obvious, you won't mind telling us the temperature at which a healthy 30-year old male experiences a 10% temperature-induced error rate.

          I'm sure you wouldn't mind using your guess when deciding when you should shut down air-traffic control if the heating malfunctions, but I'd rather the people making decisions like that have some hard data to work from.

            • Re:counterpoint cabal (Score:4, Insightful)

              by billdar (595311) * < y a p> on Friday May 27 2005, @10:17PM (#12662018) Homepage
              well, the first link returned from a google search "temperature typing errors" gives a link to a Cornel University study [cornell.edu]

              From the article: "When the office temperature in a month-long study increased from 68 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit, typing errors fell by 44 percent and typing output jumped 150 percent...raising the temperature to a more comfortable thermal zone saves employers about $2 per worker, per hour"

              If I employed only 5 typists, thats $400/wk. More than enough to pay the increased heating and start saving for my end of year bonus for being clever and commissioning the study.

      • Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by NanoGator (522640) on Friday May 27 2005, @09:27PM (#12661813) Homepage Journal
        "And like the parent poster says, you can't just go around saying "Why research that? It's obvious?" We get proved wrong on "obvious" shit all the time."

        Part of the problem is that some people assume they know stuff when they really don't. They believe, but they don't actually know. For example, somebody was saying the other day that he knew all along that Iraq didn't have WMDs. Um, no, he didn't. He hadn't ever even been to Iraq. Heh.

        Anyway, the point is that 'obvious' isn't scientific. I can't help but think the dude who wrote this story was inspired by watching Myth Busters. Sometimes they 'bust' myths that seem pretty darn obvious. They had an episode not too long ago that was about whether or not a frozen chicken could do more damage to a plane than a thawed one. I remember thinking "duh" through the whole thing. It seemed pretty obvious to me that yes, of course, a frozen chicken will do more damage. Still, the experiments were surprising. They had a seriously difficult time proving it. In the end, they did, but not before falsely declaring TWICE that freezing the chicken had no change in effect. Since I had never experimented with this, what call do I have shouting 'duh!'? Heck, one of them thought it was 'duh!' that a frozen chicken wouldn't do any more damage than a thawed one.

        I'm a big fan of the "there's no such thing as a stupid question" philosophy. Given how much we base our lives on assumptions and 'conventional wisdom', I'm not very eager to shake my pitchfork at conducting an obvious or redundant experiment. Sometimes it's worth it just to refine the testing process. Going back to my Myth Busters example, that's exactly what happened. They cooked up a better test despite thinking they had come to a solid conclusion before.
        • For example, somebody was saying the other day that he knew all along that Iraq didn't have WMDs. Um, no, he didn't. He hadn't ever even been to Iraq. Heh.

          I was reading the Times back in the 90's, and it discussed Iraq's inflatable fake weapons, used to fool long-distance information gathering by being indistinguishable in a satellite picture from an actual missile, plane or tank.

          Sometimes it's worth it just to refine the testing process.

          Verily.
        • I totally agree; look at the example given in the blurb, for example. It doesn't seem *completely* self-evident to me that people who, say, obsessively weigh the pros and cons of a career will choose a more satisfying one than someone who goes after the first thing that comes into their minds. "First thought, best thought" and so forth.

          There's no such thing as "common sense", only "shared assumptions".

          • I've never been to Mars, but I know there are not any apple trees there.

            Well, no, you really don't. It seems very unlikely that there are any apple trees on Mars, given what we do know, but you don't know. You (and I) merely assume so based on the evidence so far. Normally, that's fine and I wouldn't complain about the term "know", but in the context of a discussion regarding whether it is a waste to test things we already "know", it's good to remind ourselves that what we think we know are really just as

    • Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Scrameustache (459504) on Friday May 27 2005, @07:55PM (#12661286) Homepage Journal
      * The Earth was flat;

      Odly enough, it had been scientifically demonstrated that the earth was round at a time when Alexandria was a place with a really cool library, and that got obscured by this religious sect that had a holy book that implied otherwise.

      Fortunatly, these days we don't suffer from crazy religious groups getting political power and subverting scien... well, ok, we DO, but at least we don't get burned alive as part of it no more... that's a kind of progress.

      • Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:5, Informative)

        by scheme (19778) on Friday May 27 2005, @08:09PM (#12661387)
        Odly enough, it had been scientifically demonstrated that the earth was round at a time when Alexandria was a place with a really cool library, and that got obscured by this religious sect that had a holy book that implied otherwise.

        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.

        • Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:5, Funny)

          by fubarific (776328) on Friday May 27 2005, @09:34PM (#12661843) Journal
          Columbus screwed up his calculations by using incorrect conversions for units of distance and thought that the trip was feasible.
          It's a shame that we didn't find some sort of wonderous new planet when NASA mixed up metric and imperial...

      • Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:5, Informative)

        by johansalk (818687) on Friday May 27 2005, @09:24PM (#12661794)
        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.
        • What I always thought was interesting about Eratosthenes' experiment was that he had to assume the sun's rays arrived parallel for his calculation to be valid. Do you know what earlier work might have been done to establish the sun as sufficiently distant that he could make this assumption? It's not something I'd expect him to pull out of thin air, but I can't recall hearing where he might have gotten it from.

        • 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% . . . Eratosthenes measured it to be 40,000 km (24,855 miles), and the current accepted figure is 40,032 km (24,875 miles).

          Close. Eratosthenes lived from 276-194 BC, [1911encyclopedia.org] which is 2000 years before the invention of the kilometer, so he definitely didn't measure it to be 40,000 km. Instead he used a unit called the stadion, whose length is no longer known precisely.

      • The Relativity of Wrong (Score:4, Interesting)

        by mangu (126918) on Friday May 27 2005, @09:43PM (#12661887)
        it had been scientifically demonstrated that the earth was round at a time when Alexandria was a place with a really cool library


        Isaac Asimov once wrote an excellent essay on scientific progress named "The Relativity of Wrong". He wrote on the ever evolving precision on the shape of the Earth.


        It went something like: There was a time when people thought the Earth was flat. In those times the error in measuring the true curvature of the Earth was "x". Then people thought that the Earth was spherical. The error in measuring the true curvature of the Earth was "y". Then people realized that the Earth was an oblate spheroid. The error in measuring the true curvature of the Earth was "z". After launching satellites in space and measuring the perturbations in their orbit caused by the Earth's shape, scientists have been refining the model for tha shape of the Earth more and more.


        But the error in measuring the true curvature of the Earth has been ever decreasing, from flat to sphere to oblate spheroid to tri-axial ellipsoid to arbitrary shape. The difference from an oblate spheroid to the true shape of the Earth is several orders of magnitude smaller than the difference from a sphere to an oblate spheroid.


        That's where science makes a difference. Sicence is cumulative. The knowledge that you learn through sicence may be improved, but not disproved.

    • Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by SacredNaCl (545593) on Friday May 27 2005, @08:11PM (#12661403) Journal
      On the other hand, in medicine I've seen some pretty obvious trials. For instance, the recent "Combining morphine + ibuprofen is more effective than the same level of morphine and no ibuprofen in relieving pain" and by the same author (I guess he figured it was a gold mine) "Combining two opioids is more effective than one opioid at the same dose as the first opioid alone". Who would have thought! But worse, it was a meta-analysis. Which means some other reasearches already did the same study and he just pirated their data.

      Most of the pain research isn't very good to begin with, but this type of stuff only sucks up the limited grant money that could be used for meaningful work.

      I would love to see pain research that focused on what could be done to prevent acute pain from becomming chronic. Every once in awhile in the surgical setting you see a good study, like one that found you could reduce allodynia, hyperalgesia, and RSD/CRPS by 90%+ by pretreating patients with an NMDA antagonist, long acting opioid, COX2 inhibitor, and after surgery maintaining the LA-opioid, a decent breakthrough medicine, and some tylenol for 2 weeks. A 90% reduction in those complications and better outcomes is big news. I wish someone would apply the same basic principle to when patients first present with pain. Maybe we could stop 90% of them after modifying doctors standand practices from going on to develop chronic pain, but no one is doing the research, so we will never know.

      Instead we get treated to the 127th confirmatory study that NSAIDS are effective on mild to moderate arthritis pain.

      • Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Daetrin (576516) on Friday May 27 2005, @08:51PM (#12661618)
        Do you have any idea complicated drug interactions are? I don't, but i've gotten a vague idea from talking to a friend who's going to pharmaceutical school. Assuming that since one drug has effect A and another drug has effect B that using both of them at once will give the equivalent of numerically adding both the effects is a good way to get people killed.

        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.

      • Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:5, Informative)

        by PhracturedBlue (224393) on Friday May 27 2005, @09:26PM (#12661809)
        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.

  • Flying leap? (Score:5, Funny)

    by tinrobot (314936) on Friday May 27 2005, @07:38PM (#12661166)
    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

    Unless you want a job as a professional skydiver, that is...

  • Job Satisfaction (Score:4, Funny)

    by Seumas (6865) on Friday May 27 2005, @07:41PM (#12661191)
    Thankfully, in this market, the employee should not have a problem finding job satisfaction. There is no reason you can't take a few months or years off to find that perfect job. And considering how there are so many unfilled high-paying, enjoyable jobs in this industry, any employer will be thrilled to have your interest.

    Most fortunate of all, the employee has all the power as they do not have any necessary expenses and there is always an employer willing to pay more than the current offer. Employers care about your satisfaction, too. The last thing they would ever want to do is upset your job satisfaction by outsourcing your entire team, division or city to an offsore center for cheaper wages and expenses.

    Yes, my friends, glory in the simplicity of overwhelming demand for technical expetise and the underwhelming presence of employables.

  • Bigger Fish (Score:3, Informative)

    by PingXao (153057) on Friday May 27 2005, @07:42PM (#12661193)
    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.
    • It never will work.

      So it's your contention that one projectile colliding with another projectile on a consistent basis is impossible? All the current missile defense programs have shown us is that it's harder than initially anticipated, but to think it's theoretically impossible shows a complete failure to grasp classical mechanics. There's absolutely nothing going on with two missiles that makes colliding them impossible. Criticize the right wing propagandists all you want, just realize the left spews b

  • Only stupid on the surface. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pavon (30274) on Friday May 27 2005, @07:45PM (#12661214)
    Seeing as how they didn't link to or even cite any of these studies, I think I'll reserve judgment. Half the time the problem with "stupid science" is really stupid journalism. You'll have this perfectly good biology research that looks at how a specific enzyme facilitates a particular aspect of the metabolic system that wasn't completely understood before, and is a good step in the direction of understanding how our bodies work. And how does the news report on it? - "eating fat makes you gain weight". Well no duh. It wasn't that that was interesting, it is the details of how it causes you to gain weight that were meaningfull.

    Furthermore, "common sense" can be used to explain all sorts of conflicting ideas. If the study had come out the other way, everyone would be saying that it's obvious that people are happier if they jump in and try out all sorts of things before settling on what you really want to do - "life is a journey", "you need time to find yourself". Psychology is the study of scientifically testing what common sense ideas about ourselves actually are true, to what extent, and in what situations. Of course some psychologists are better than others, but just because you could have guessed the answer doesn't mean it's not worth finding out for sure.

    There is also a problem with papers written for the sole purpose of getting published, and I don't like that. I wish that more universities would wise up to the fact that knowledge is becoming more and more in-depth and specialized, and therefore it will take longer till someone is far enough along in thier specialty that they can begin doing research that is new and meaningfull. If you force people to write thesis earlier, 90% of them will be rediscovering somthing that has already been discovered.

    But I stand by my statement that stupid jounalism is more of the problem than stupid research, and that knowing something is better than thinking it.

    • Re:Only stupid on the surface. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by theguyfromsaturn (802938) on Friday May 27 2005, @08:19PM (#12661454)
      "common sense" can be used to explain all sorts of conflicting ideas.

      I couldn't agree more. A prof of mine told us a story about the dangers of "common sense" once. As a structural engineer, he had been contracted to design a cover for a terrasse for a cafe somewhere. The owner wanted open space, and so he designed it as a cantilever, only supported on the building side, with no column at the other end. In such a configuration the beams of the cantilever will be in tension on the top part, and compression in the bottom part. Concrete doesn't do very well in tension so you put more reinforcement in the top part. Case closed.

      The contractor who was doing the job, had no experience with cantilevers. He managed to convince the owner that it would be safer with columns at the other end. And the owner agreed. Who could argue that a roof would be stronger with columns at both ends of the span? It's common sense, right?

      What they failed to take into account, is that now the stress patterns were the opposite of the design stresses, with tension on the bottom of the beam, and compression at the top since the beam was now supported at both ends. They never consulted with the engineer who had made the original design, so of course after construction the beams shortly started cracking in the underside and the roof slowly sagged. It was forturnate that some steel reinforcement had been included for the compression part, or it might have failed without warning and there might have been victims.

      The point of the story was that "common sense" was very often based on our limited experience. Unless you know what mechanisms make "common sense" true, you might be dead wrong. It never hurts to be sure; to have proof.

      And of course, as ou pointed out, the details of the study, the mechanism of what is happening is often what the research is all about, but also what the journalists like to skip.

    • ...Anyone who can hold a job for life that'll pay enough to at least be comfortable, for doing nothing more than writing research papers, is either highly intelligent or extremely crafty. Either way, it doesn't seem very fair to condemn people for using the system the very way it was designed to be used.

      Researchers get funding by the number of papers they write and by the number of times they get cited, not by whether they do anything new. For this reason, scientists who do things that are new are rarely

  • Reminded of a Quote (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Comatose51 (687974) on Friday May 27 2005, @07:54PM (#12661278) Homepage
    When I took cogntive science, my professor liked to stress this qote:

    "Ordinary people marvel at extraordinary things. Extraordinary people marvel at ordinary things." -Confucius

    Why in cog. sci? Let's think about seeing the color black for a minute. Pretty ordinary. If I told you that I did my Ph.D. on our ability to see the color black, what would you think? "For this you got a Ph.D.?" If I stopped there, you could probably write a short, shallow article about how scientists wasted time and money doing research on things that's mundane. But let's think about it for a minute. How do we see? Light entering our eyes. What color is a projector screen? White. So how is it that we are able to see black on a movie screen during a movie? If we see because of lights entering our eyes, where is the black coming from? The projector shines light, the white screen reflects it back, the portions that we see as black has no light, how do we end up seeing black on a white screen? Maybe not everything we see comes from the outside world. In fact, black is something our brain creates, which then really makes you wonder about shadows. Don't believe me? Check this out.

    So we've gone from something that seems really ordinary to a startling discovery. In fact, it's usually the deeper truth behind ordinary things that surprise us and make us go "wow" and inspires us. Stars from the ground are nothing more than specks of light. I guess we can call astronomy look at specks of light through glass and mirrors. Sounds pretty boring too.

  • this is not scientific research (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eh2o (471262) on Friday May 27 2005, @07:57PM (#12661300)
    rtfa;

    this is an editorial piece, nothing scientific about it. there are no references to the supposed studies they quote, there are not even second opinions from authors or other scientific researchers. pure speculation.

    and many those research problems cited are *not* obvious, but the author belittles the studies they quote to make the research questions sound more obvious than they really are.

    * on a finding that men over 55 are a high risk group for digit loss due to power tools... this requires good statistics to know, its *not* obvious.

    * that workers are less efficient in a cold environment... again, not obvious, and many workplaces (imho) keep the thermostat too low.

    * that asthma and smoking aggregate worse than either, again not obvious... many people falsely believe this is not true.

    * that doctor-patient communication is critical for reducing harmful effects of mixing drugs, also not obvious -- now we know that communication skills are an important part of medical training.

    granted, many of the studies conclude with obvious recommendations, e.g., "be careful with power tools", and the author makes great fun of these "obvious conclusions" when in fact, they are not the substantiative conclusion (i.e., factual finding) of the research, just a recommendation for how to interpret the finding.

  • Old saying about research (Score:3, Funny)

    by baomike (143457) on Friday May 27 2005, @08:05PM (#12661356)
    "A few months in the lab can save you hours of research time in the library."

  • Universities Share the Blame (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kainaw (676073) on Friday May 27 2005, @08:53PM (#12661627) Homepage Journal
    In undergrad classes, research is commonly assigned by the professors. In postgrad classes, students are often required to come up with a research topic of their own. To make matters worse, it has to be something new. So, consider a sociology student working towards a PhD. What area of sociology hasn't been researched over and over and over? How about job satisfaction!

    I am not attempting to claim that some areas of study are worse than others because they aren't always on the breaking edge of new research. I'm also not attempting to claim that postgrads shouldn't be pushed to perform new research. I am only stating that in some fields, students just don't have much to choose from. So, they end up doing what we would call worthless research. In reality, it isn't worthless. It is specifically designed to get them a degree so they can (hopefully) make a lot more money.

  • Stupid article. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by autopr0n (534291) on Friday May 27 2005, @09:26PM (#12661808) Homepage Journal
    Common sense isn't always right. It's good to have scientific research to backup what seems "Obvious". Some times, what's "obvious" isn't always true.

  • And this if from a *good* science writer ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hung_himself (774451) on Saturday May 28 2005, @12:59AM (#12662600)
    Many years at Newsweek, WSJ - won awards for being able to convey complex ideas in everyday language. And this person seems to have risen to the top of her field without a true understanding of what she is writing about. I don't mean the details where a few errors are understandable, but the actual underpinnings and ideas. This article is proof in point. Yes there are obvious questions and bad science but someone who understands science would pick examples that repeated previous studies, or were based on bad data, or badly interpreted data rather than experiments which confirms "common" sense.

    To be fair, maybe she does understand all of this but had a deadline to meet for the next issue. In any case, this is very poor science reporting even for a mainstream publication like the WSJ...
    • You have to laugh at the whole abstinence-based sex education thing, or else you are liable to cry. It would be like if in drivers ed they told people not to drive, because they might get into a car accident. That would be absurd. Just about everyone is going to drive anyway. Instead, the rational thing to do is to teach people to be safe drivers, wear seatbelts, etc. This is how sex education classes should operate as well.

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