A bit of a more serious comment on that: knowledge is never useless. Many, maybe most, researchers agree with that. It’s why we do what we do. Publishers and sources of funding (be they third party or governmental), however, disagree. So we have to sell them on the importance of our research this way.
Going on a tangent here: While I fully agree with the above, there is an amount of knowledge after which fact checking becomes bothersome, and some people just skip fact checking overall. One could argue that, while knowledge is never useless, unchecked knowledge might become bothersome or dangerous.
See flatearthers, scientology, etc. for extreme examples.
Comprehensive…
Real-world applications…
Promising…
Sometime I feel that research is just a bunch of guys trying to sell useless stuff (myself included).
A bit of a more serious comment on that: knowledge is never useless. Many, maybe most, researchers agree with that. It’s why we do what we do. Publishers and sources of funding (be they third party or governmental), however, disagree. So we have to sell them on the importance of our research this way.
Going on a tangent here: While I fully agree with the above, there is an amount of knowledge after which fact checking becomes bothersome, and some people just skip fact checking overall. One could argue that, while knowledge is never useless, unchecked knowledge might become bothersome or dangerous.
See flatearthers, scientology, etc. for extreme examples.
Depends. What’s your field?
Condensed matter - basic research. No actual real world applications, independently of what the abstracts/introductions may claim.
This one comment of 4 words triggers me so hard that it momentarily stumped me
How about this one: ‘Useless doesn’t mean valueless’
Thoughts?