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It's funny. Laugh. Science

Scientific Research That Could Have Been Avoided 413

Posted by Zonk from the water-is-wet-fire-is-hot dept.
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 More

Scientific Research That Could Have Been Avoided

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

    by Prophetic_Truth ( 822032 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @08:35PM (#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 @08:36PM (#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.
    • The pressure is on scientists and researchers to "get published". The more often their papers are published, the more prestige they have, the better jobs, and yes, more money thrown at them.

      I would guess that all the more exciting topics have been thoroughly covered before. Either that, or companies have paid for these studies to further their cause.

      Another thought is that maybe they didn't find a more exciting answer other than the obvious one, so they just went ahead and published the non-earth-shatte

      • Re:Simple (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Lifewish ( 724999 )
        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...

    • Re:Simple (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jadavis ( 473492 ) on Saturday May 28, 2005 @12:08AM (#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 @10:31AM (#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.

  • This just in... (Score:5, Funny)

    by alphapartic1e ( 260735 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @08:36PM (#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 @08:37PM (#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 @08:41PM (#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 @09:04PM (#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 @11:04PM (#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 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @09:11PM (#12661407) Journal
        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...
        • 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

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

          by mollymoo ( 202721 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @10:46PM (#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:2, Informative)

          by szlab ( 886056 )

          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 con

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

        by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @10:27PM (#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".

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

      by Scrameustache ( 459504 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @08:55PM (#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 @09:09PM (#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, Informative)

        by johansalk ( 818687 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @10:24PM (#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.

        • Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:3, Informative)

          by p3d0 ( 42270 )

          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.

      • 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.

        Um, where in the Bible does it say that the earth is flat? Or are you just blaming this on religion because it's an easy target?

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

        by mangu ( 126918 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @10:43PM (#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 @09:11PM (#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 @09:51PM (#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 @10:26PM (#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.
      • It seems to me that saying 5mg of morphine alone has less effect then 5mg combined of morphine and ibuprofen is not stating the obvious.
      • By the way, meta-analysis is a way to actually reduce costs of research by taking already available data (collected at considerable cost) and teasing a bit more information out of it. Also drug interactions can be complex, and you can't just assume that two different drugs combined together will have a predictable effect, therefore they have to be tested.

        For exampe on the opioid study, that two different drugs (I imagine the specific types were specified) together have an additive effect on pain is actuall

    • One of the clear conclusions of 20th century physics and psychology is that commonsense is very limited when dealing with the physical world. Just because something seems obvious that doesn't mean it is true.

      A glaring example of this was a series of experiments done with freshman physics students to test their physical intuition. One of the questions involved something like the following: a bomber (plane) is coming over a target at such and such a speed show on the diagram where it should release the bomb

  • Flying leap? (Score:5, Funny)

    by tinrobot ( 314936 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @08:38PM (#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...
    • Unless you want a job as a professional skydiver, that is..

      I know that was modded funny but.....

      Just about finished school and not certain what career to take and after a quick google [google.ca] it looks interesting.
    • 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...

      Well, I think it's still worth it to carefully consider getting a parachute first, but if you just want to jump out of the plane, I'm willing to admit I'm overly cautious ;-)
  • /. readers don't RTFAs. I know I just skimmed over it but most don't bother even with that.
    -- /. often posts dupes.
    --
    noone really cares
    --
    life is short
    --
    all of the above are depressing research topics but they are funny because they are true.
    --
    I should stop.

  • This one was at PhysOrg [physorg.com] yesterday:

    "According to Phillip Laplante, associate professor of software engineering at Penn State Great Valley, the answer as to why spam is omnipresent is two-fold: it's easy to create and distribute, and it's economically advantageous for those who send it."

    • Yeesh. Post that one next to the article I read last week in the local business periodical that took half its column-inches to conclude that the reason most businesses go bankrupt is that their expenditures exceed their income. I was astounded. I was particularly intrigued with the use of the word "most". This means that there are a few businesses out there who somehow manage to go bankrupt while taking in more than they spend. That's quite a trick.

  • Job Satisfaction (Score:4, Funny)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @08:41PM (#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 @08:42PM (#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.
    • Just because something doesn't work out in the end doesn't mean that it was pointless to try. I'm sure there were a few nifty bits here and there that came out of the research for missle defense that were useful in other areas.

    • Re:Bigger Fish (Score:2, Funny)

      by flood6 ( 852877 )
      "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"

      ...said Comrade PingXao.

    • Re:Bigger Fish (Score:3, Interesting)

      by fafalone ( 633739 )
      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 @08:45PM (#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 @09:19PM (#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.

      • Exactly!

        It was "common sense" that the sun went around the earth, it was "common sense" that a heavier object would fall faster than a lighter object (all things being equal), and that an object that was moving would do so only as a result of a continuing force, and on and on.
        • It was "common sense" that the sun went around the earth, it was "common sense" that a heavier object would fall faster than a lighter object (all things being equal), and that an object that was moving would do so only as a result of a continuing force, and on and on.

          Of course, two of things are, in their own way, true.

          In air or water, heavier objects do fall faster. People's experience just didn't cover vacuumes, nor did it accuratly account for the effect that weight and wind resistance had on the spe
    • Some time ago some people managed to show that birds in appropriate conditions (e.g., skinner box type things) could following training on a set of paintings by two painters distinguish between novel paintings as to which of the two painters had painted them. This was roundly mocked in the press as a waste of money, ludicrous idea, waste of money etc. What good is a bird that recognise Monet?

      Of course the aim of the work was actually to measure the mechanisms of learning, generalisation and action in respo
    • ...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 @08:54PM (#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.

    • I guess we can call astronomy look at specks of light through glass and mirrors. Sounds pretty boring too.

      Astronomy is looking up!

    • Re:Reminded of a Quote (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Comatose51 ( 687974 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @09:36PM (#12661545) Homepage
      When I posted check this out, I meant to link: http://web.mit.edu/persci/people/adelson/checkersh adow_illusion.html [mit.edu]
    • You're right white totally sucks. EVERYONE DESTROY ALL WHITE! BLACK IS SO IN!!! Let's make white ILLEGAL!

      (/err this has so absolutely nothing to do with race and the very fact I have this statement is a sign of my utter disappointment with the human race and an indication that I would not mind its destruction.)
    • But as someone that has done photography and digital video in an amature setting, I'm not seeing anything here that we didn't already know. The brain and eye calibrate themselves to lighting conditions? Duh. That's the major problem with photography. Your brain will adjust for abnormalities in a situation, a camera has much greater trouble doing that.

      One of the simplest tricks I like to do is with monitor white points. You change it from whatever it is and it looks wrong, either too red or too blue. Wait a
      • The amazing thing is that "we percieve darker areas as black" isn't true. We don't percieve black. There's no black in the visual spectrum. The dark areas in our vision is more than just the product of our perception. Check out the link I posted in the my reply to my original post (forgot to post link in my original post). Darkness in our vision is not nearly as simple or obvious as people think. Instruments and meters cannot duplicate our vision exactly. What we actually "see", as in the picture in
    • " 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.?"

      Hehe. I'm one of those people. I'm a digital artist. I make pretty colored pixels for a living. As such, I've been exposed to a LOT of information about visual perception, including 'seeing black'. If you caught me at a different point in my life, there's a real chance I would have said "duh" and I would have told you (what I thought was...) the answer.

      But you know what? That
  • If I'd never made the big leaps into the unknown, I wouldn't have moved between two cities within Australia, winding up having a blast in the bigger one I moved to. Then I wouldn't have taken the opportunity to relocate to the USA, having an incredible time in the process. Then I may not have come back to Australia and certainly wouldn't have gone to Argentina, having yet another great time and learning so much about life, etc.

    Finally, I'm taking leaps into the Unknown by concentrating more on working with

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

    by eh2o ( 471262 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @08:57PM (#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.
    • ...its irresponsible to ommit the "obvious" recommendations. Simple as that. Where does a paper on the risks of power tool use stand on not saying one should be careful in their handling? The problem is some journalist idiot turns round and says, heh, they did this research into power tool usage and didn't even bother to mention you should be careful with them, how irresponsible. Given that the author of the article shows no understanding of what science is about and for, frankly one can't trust people like
  • You have to do science to be a scientist. The gathering and publishing of facts and observations is not science and those that do it are not scientists. Even a statistical analysis of a bunch of facts isn't science either as it can be done with little thought or consideration.

    Explaining how these facts can, or can not, be integrated into our existing body of knowledge in a systematic, consistent and coherent fashion is science. It's about understanding and not just knowledge. That's the difference.

    The pro

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

    by baomike ( 143457 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @09:05PM (#12661356)
    "A few months in the lab can save you hours of research time in the library."

  • not ALL funny (Score:2, Insightful)

    by h4ter ( 717700 )
    FTA: In April, scientists reported in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research that college students tend to drink much more alcohol than they think.

    Is this really amusing and obvious? And, as opposed to the "choose your career wisely" conclusion, this has some pretty serious consequences. People engaging in potentially abusive behavior who are under-reporting it to themselves are much less likely to ever think there might be a problem brewing.

  • Dupe research (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Jumbo Jimbo ( 828571 )
    I work as a research computer scientist at a University in the UK. We have a saying regarding time spent on research where the info is already available to those who will look.

    "A few months in the lab can save you a few hours in the library."

  • I landed on a well lubricated bar... and couldn't be happier despite the limp.
  • ... 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."

    Those "scientists" are actually sociologists... basically people who go around and sum up the obvious. All they do is study correlations between human interactions and other events... the obvious .

    My sociology professor even admitted it, and he has a PhD in the damn field.
    • While that definition is true, the actual mechanics of the field is not. While yes, it's "simply" connecting correlations between human behavior and other events, that in itself is a non-trivial task.

      Very simple example. Say you're contracted by a government to help them develop a health system for their poor rural population. How do you arrange the system to minimize cost and maximize utilization? Sociology can tell you a lot about how peoples' behavior will affect the way they use available services. Whi
  • It's pretty easy to say something is obvious, after the fact. There have been plenty of "obvious" ideas, theories, hypotheses that have turned out to be just flat-out wrong. Pointing and laughing at studies that investigate questions someone considers obvious mostly just belies ignorance of how science works.

    It has seemed obvious that lowering the legal BAC limit would decrease alcohol related automobile accidents. Except that it doesn't. It seems obvious that protein synthesis is catalyzed by proteins,

  • Is reading Slashdot considered research?

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

    by Kainaw ( 676073 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @09:53PM (#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.
  • Is referring to what gets reported in the "Journal of Economic Psychology" as "science."

  • Publish or Perish... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by flajann ( 658201 )
    Indeed,the very pressure of "publish or perish" is also the problem. Quality goes down when issues other than the quality of the work and its publication comes into play.

    Then again, "90% of everything is crud." That being the case, it follows that 90% of research will be utter BS by definition.

    Or to put it more scientifically, research, along with many other things both in nature and man-made will follow the 1/f power scaling law. So it is rather ironic -- and gratifing -- to note that research itself

  • Stupid article. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @10:26PM (#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.
  • It tries to point out the useless junk studies, but fails to explain the phenomenon.

    Many respectable universities require (mandate) their profesors to submit (bi-)yearly research papers for collegiate journals. As a consequence, every discipline is littered with useless studies, surveys, theses, and research papers, which state the obvious and expend ink for no other reason but justification of private/public grants or retention of one's job.

    In this respect, two of the most abused fields are Philosophy an

  • 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.

    No, but it's a great way to have fun while getting paid for doing research! ("Just water for me tonight, I'm the designated-control.")

  • Much more valuable than the sound bite at the end of the day is the data just underneath the tawdry summary. "Typing with cold fingers makes you less productive," isn't something you'd scream "Eureka!" about, but finding out that saving $40,000 on your heating bill is causing approximately $740,000 in lost productivity is.

    The papers themselves contain a lot more of the assumptions and statistics - and those maintain their validity over time. Trace "sodium is bad for you" back to the studies, and you may

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

    by hung_himself ( 774451 ) on Saturday May 28, 2005 @01:59AM (#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...

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