Scientific research has become a race against time. Researchers must publish as much as possible in certain journals because their salary depends on it. They must also propose research projects that would receive official funding, on which will depend their ability to hire scholarship assistants and finance doctoral students, plus the possibility of making trips and paying registration fees for conferences where they will present the status of their research.
However, some researchers lack the imagination to design and propose new research projects. What happens then? They may pose problems whose solution everyone knows and design a research plan to demonstrate it by means of statistics or in some other way that sounds scientific. If the design is astute enough, the official entities that award projects will be convinced to finance the project. On the other hand, by doing this, researchers are playing it safe, because they know the results of their research before doing it.
Let us look at a few recent examples of
platitudinous assertions proved by a research project:
- Cats’
behaviour is different when they play and when they fight. This news appeared
in February 2023. When I had a cat, more than half a century ago, I never
had any problem to know if it was playing or if it was angry.
- Physical
activity decreases after primary education. January 2023. Did anyone
doubt that children are more physically active than teenagers, and teenagers
are more active than adults? A Spanish proverb expresses it: growing flesh never stops.
- Very
young children are easier to trick than older children. January 2023. Did
anyone doubt this?
- People
living in stressed environments are often stressed. January 2023. Was
it necessary to prove this? Without this study, perhaps we wouldn’t have noticed.
- For
young children, their mother's voice is very special. Not so for teenagers.
April 2022. This article points out that Stanford University
neuroscientist Daniel Abrams, who has two teenage children, considered this
news ridiculous.
- Dogs
adapt to humans better than wolves. What a surprise! This news is from
July 2021.
- Cats
well fed by their owners hunt fewer birds. Another surprise. This news
is from February 2021.
- Aggression
and fearfulness in dogs are linked to their breed. This news is from
October 2019. It looks like a platitude. However, another
more recent news dated April 2022 seems to contradict it. Their conclusion
is that every dog is different, whatever its breed. What should
we think? So this “problem” has given rise to two research projects,
rather than one.
- Cats
recognize their own names. This news is from April 2019. Everyone who
has ever owned a cat knows that cats recognize their own name.
Was it necessary to carry out these
investigations, probably spending public money, to discover something that
everyone knows?
And apart from platitudes, some investigations
let us discover things that nobody cares about. For instance, this one:
- Cats
may, or may not, feel comfortable with their owners. From a study
carried out with 70 kittens, it was deduced that 64% were affectionate,
30% ambivalent, and the rest avoidant.
Does anyone know what can be the practical
application of this result?
I wonder: Is there such a scarcity of proper scientific news, that serious magazines like Science News must resort to platitudinous and uninteresting news?
Thematic Thread about Science in General: Previous Next
Manuel Alfonseca
No comments:
Post a Comment