this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2025
910 points (99.0% liked)
Political Humor
1540 readers
3 users here now
Welcome to Political Humor!
Rules:
- Be excellent to each other.
- No harassment.
- No sexism, racism or bigotry.
- All arguments should be made in good faith.
- No misinformation. Be prepared to back up your factual claims with evidence.
- All posts should relate to politics and be of a humorous nature.
- No bots, spam or self-promotion.
- If you want to run a bot, ask first.
- Site wide rules apply.
- Have fun.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Oh my sweet summer child.
Faraday never told the prime minister asking what use his electrical party tricks had with, "I don't know but someday you will tax it." But it's fairly un-intuitive that some weirdos arguing about Newton's gravity equations not working in very specific circumstances would lead to precision worldwide location / mapping / guidance technology (Special relativity / GPS). Or that the abstract work in what atoms are and how they work would lead to incredibly dense handheld digital storage devices (quantum mechanics / SSDs). Seeing what organs could be removed from a living dog lead to the development of insulin.
Limiting research to what will pay off in ~5-10 years is like only taking day-trips and wondering why you never discover new continents.
Sure but I’d argue an example of wasted research is someone investigating the harm of mercury caused by vaccinations. Again. After it’s long been settled. Overwhelmingly
So part of the problem is it’s easy to believe some research is ridiculous, especially if you don’t understand it or don’t have context. And especially when there are politicians or lobbyists who find it profitable to mischaracterize or cast doubt. I really think the only answer is to restore respect for science, trust in whatever committee vets the research proposals. While that can be the road to wasted research, it’s much better than the current method of manipulated public opinion
"replication crisis"
I agree that the utility of revisiting an already well-researched question is low, but I don't think it's entirely wasted. Replication and in particular failure to replicate existing results is when a team can learn good things, rarely a breakthrough, often just that their procedures need refinement.
Absolutely there are much higher priority work to which public funds should go.