I found some emails in my outbox that I guess didn’t generate any responses, but I still think they are interesting so will post them here…
Just so you know it is not _all_ doom and gloom…
Researcher creates little flying carpet made of conductive plastic
http://www.slashgear.com/researcher-creates-little-flying-carpet-made-of-conductive-plastic-03184824/
Not sure it has any economic utility, but in my mind, pure research should never focus on utility at all, but on knowledge for the sake of knowledge. If we know we don’t know something, we are still left with the opportunity to rectify our ignorance. However, if we fail to know that we don’t know something then we don’t even know we are ignorant and thus there is no chance to rectify that ignorance. I would (have) argue that contrary to much popular belief, scientific granting is actually quite conservative and I am quite sure that plenty of discoveries are not being made because the grant reviewers fail to see any benefit in the research, even if successful. Clearly we can’t just hand out money willy nilly and we need to have a way to ensure that the research proposed actually takes place (and as an aside, we should do more to encourage the publication of negative results so future researchers know which blind alleys NOT to investigate), but pure research should not have as an acceptance criteria any sort of economic benefit or utility.
