Here is AlpineKat with her newest video, Black Hole Rap:
Some people wonder why should we do ‘research for the point of research’: can the cost be justified?
In my never-humble-opinion, yes!
My hubby phrased it well: if you only do research on how to improve candles, you will develop the best candles ever….but you’ll never invent the light-bulb!
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 
January 21, 2010 at 19:09
Xanthippa:
I think it’s fairly clear that applied research can only take you so far before you run out of ideas. You can’t escape the need for continual input from basic research, and you never know ahead of time which basic research is going to hit pay dirt. When Einstein moved to Princeton, he was asked what he needed, and replied that he needed a desk, paper, pencils and a large waste basket into which he could throw all his mistakes.
In addition to the unfortunate truth that most of what you do in basic research will be wrong – and therefore vulnerable to criticism of the form, who authorized that waste of money? – theory and experiment can not long advance except together, and experimental apparatus is getting very expensive in some sciences. Therefore some kind of government involvement is practically inevitable.
But, “when you take the King’s shilling, you do the King’s bidding.” This opens the door to the politicization of science, of the type so blatantly exemplified by the Climate Nazis. Even if we can find a way to relieve the pressure on researchers to find what their funding agencies are looking for, there is a deeper question: how can we mitigate the enforced mediocrity caused by the pressure to find something – anything! – so the funding agencies can claim to be spending money prudently?
Sir Joseph J. Thomson (awarded the Nobel prize in 1906 for discovering the electron) outlines the problem very succinctly:
If you pay a man a salary for doing research, he and you will want to have something to point to at the end of the year to show that the money has not been wasted. In promising work of the highest class, however, results do not come in this regular fashion, in fact years may pass without any tangible result being obtained, and the position of the paid worker would be very embarrassing and he would naturally take to work on a lower, or at any rate a different plane where he could be sure of getting year by year tangible results which would justify his salary. The position is this: You want one kind of research, but, if you pay a man to do it, it will drive him to research of a different kind. The only thing to do is to pay him for doing something else and give him enough leisure to do research for the love of it.
— quoted by Robert J. S. Rayleigh in his 1943 biography, “The Life of Sir J. J. Thomson” [emphasis mine]
Indeed, this is very consistent with the fact that Einstein’s really ground-breaking work was done while he was a patent clerk in Bern and not during his time as a professional physicist. Einstein commented on this himself, saying
An academic career puts a young man into a kind of embarrassing position by requiring him to produce scientific publications in impressive quantity – a seduction into superficiality which only strong characters are able to withstand. Most practical occupations, however, are of such a nature that a man of normal ability is able to accomplish what is expected of him. His day-to-day existence does not depend on any special illuminations. If he has deeper scientific interests he may plunge into his favourite problems in addition to doing his required work. He need not be oppressed by the fear that his efforts may lead to no results.
I can’t find the reference for this quote offhand, but I’m pretty sure it’s bona fide. It certainly meshes with Einstein’s advice to young men who are serious about studying physics: they should go and be lighthouse keepers.
These pressures towards dogmatic conformity and intellectual mediocrity are the real problems presented by the whole question of basic research. If we solve these problems, the quality of the research will improve to the point where no one will wonder whether or not it is worth the cost.
If not, then the unscrupulous and incompetent will keep right on riding the hog to hell.