Research is important. Scientific research that is. And in order to get it right, that’s why we are supposed to be concentrating it at elite institutions (i.e. Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College and University College, London). Unfortunately that still doesn’t leave enough money to fund all “the big science” research we are supposed to be doing.
Sometimes, however, I wonder whether the problem isn’t so much a lack of funds as just money being wasted on stupid science.
This evening I was resuming one of my, now lapsed, habits of perusing through the foriegn media. As I worked my way through my News bookmarks I came to Pravda, former bastion of the Soviet politburo. They usually have an interesting ‘take’ on world affairs and gave a very different perspective of things like the Iraq war last year. What I was least expecting to see, however, was an article about the medicinal benefits of passionate kissing.
Bemused I sent the link to a friend who I was chatting with on MSN. They sent me back a link to a BBC article on how masturbation prevents cancer (basically because it flushes out your plumbing…). Now, of course, this is silly. Whilst it might increase your life expectancy, I wouldn’t want to be blind in old age…
But the point is this: is this really research? Is this worth the funding it gets from the taxpayer? Are these pointless studies an indirect cause of top-up fees?
Or have I just temporarily lost my sense of humour?
I was going to reply to this
I was going to reply to this fully, but I realised I really should get back to achieving very little by tinkering with things that have been tinkered with countless times before, only in a very subtly different way. I think (hope!) most research brings tiny incremental gains in knowledge and very slowly over time a picture is formed and refined as little bits of detail is added. Things like the articles you spotted get written about in more public places because they happen to make nice anecdotes but I think probably gradually increasing human understanding of how and why cancers develop (for example) is probably beneficial in the long run. We don’t yet know how this will help through inspiring ideas for new research, helping understanding results from other research leading eventually to a new treatment/preventative measure. Yes, it sounds like a long and tenuous path but I get the impression this the case for most research (look at how many papers seem so very similar to each other). Science is (fustratingly) not full of “Eureka” moments but a slow culmination of moments like this one.