Science does wonderful things and makes our lifes better in so many ways by advancing technology and medicine through rigorous research and an insatiable thirst for more knowledge. It's therefore a good thing we keep pouring money into scientific research, even if there's no immediate practical or economical advantage to the outcome of such research.
Image by Robert Couse-Baker source: Flickr
To illustrate this: the GPS on our mobiles, the wifi and the mobiles themselves could never have been made without all the knowledge we gained by just trying to figure out what matter, space and time are, how reality works. Scientific progress always precedes technological progress. As a result of this basic fact, I'm in favor of researching practically anything at all, even if just for satisfying some peculiar curiosity.
But sometimes I stumble upon some research that even I regard as a pure waste of time, effort and money. A while ago I saw a headline somewhere about scientists trying to find out how far or how high dog fleas can jump... The paper concluded that dog fleas can jump farther than fleas that infect other domesticated animals. Now, I can imagine, if I try really hard, that a fleas jumping prowess could be of interest to a singular twisted mind, but to dedicate tax payers money to the acquiring of such useless knowledge is a bit much. It turned out that the headline was a bit click-bait, as this conclusion was part of a larger paper on Veterinary Parasitology, and maybe there are useful ways to apply this knowledge in that particular field of science; I just don't know enough about it to make that judgement.
However, since then I've been keeping an eye out for weird and useless research, and research motivated by other reasons than the advancement of scientific knowledge. Really, we research some stupid things, like how long it takes to pee, or a study that concluded that bullies actually like picking on other people... Or what about a study with the title "Neural correlates of interspecies perspective taking in the post-mortem Atlantic Salmon: An argument for multiple comparisons correction." Here's the researcher's description of the test-subject:
Subject. One mature Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar) participated in the fMRI study. The salmon was approximately 18 inches long, weighed 3.8 lbs, and was not alive at the time of scanning.
And the experiment:
Task. The task administered to the salmon involved completing an open-ended mentalizing task. The salmon was shown a series of photographs depicting human individuals in social situations with a specified emotional valence. The salmon was asked to determine what emotion the individual in the photo must have been experiencing.
source: WhatCulture
The study actually wasn't to measure brain activity in dead fish, but to show how easy it is to get false positives in studies of this kind. They actually were able to measure some brain activity in the dead salmon, which only shows, according to the study, that external interference kan influence the results of fMRI readings.
Using a dead salmon to show unreliability in some measurement process... I can't help but feel confused and suspect the scientists involved were simultaneously researching the effect of psychedelics on their own minds.
I believe that the way scientists are incentivized to keep publishing research papers is in part causing a lot of these seemingly useless studies. There's no cost in being wrong, but not getting published can cost you your career. Watch this video for an explanation why a lot of the published research could be wrong or useless:
Is Most Published Research Wrong?
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