Re: how to judge creative ideas (was: barometer parable)

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

Rick Tarara wrote:
> Hey let's put John in charge of research funding.  We can shut down Fermi
> Lab all observatories including the Hubble, and most University labs.

First of all, a couple of disclaimers.
 1) It's not my money; it's the taxpayers' money.  So I don't
    get to decide arbitrarily what to do with it.  If the
    taxpayers were to delegate the decision to me, I would
    still have a fiduciary responsibility to act on their behalf.
 2) I don't know enough about Fermilab to make a decision at
    this time.  I would need more information.

But let's suppose for sake of argument that XYZ lab was spending
in excess of a quarter billion dollars per year, every year, and
was unable to tell a plausible story about how this investment
was going to pay off.  Suppose they were seeking answers when
less than 1% of the population knew or cared what the question
was.  I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the taxpayers got
fed up with that after a while.

If I were in charge, I would suggest that XYZ lab come up with
a better story and/or redirect their talents toward something
that people cared about.

=========

I disagree with Rick's implication that "most" University
research labs carry out research with no prospect of applications.
The NSF has been pressuring people for the last 15 years to
find applications for their work, and "most" labs have taken
the hint.  This includes the accelerator folks;  they have been
applying synchrotron radiation to materials-science problems.

>   After that, we're pretty much
> SOL unless someone can divine both 'new' science and its practical
> application all at once!

Nobody is suggesting that the discovery and its application
must happen "all at once".   That isn't what I said, it isn't
an implied consequence of what I said, and indeed it is
diametrically opposite to what I did say, namely:

> > Somebody has to create one isolated piece, and
> > then another, and then another. More
> > often than not, the pieces are created in no
> > particular order, and we have to collect quite
> > a few of them before we can start linking anything together.
> >
> > The research world would be crippled if researchers
> > were required to build every chain in order, link
> > by link. It is extremely common for pieces to be
> > invented in isolation, and linked up only later.


...
> Seems that most of the expensive projects have
> virtually NO short-term (or even a perceived long-term) 'practical' benefit
> other than to satisfy our quest to understand!

I still think there's something wrong, even perverse about that.

I think many of these expensive projects are largely political
show-off exercises.  A bower-bird says to his girlfriend "my
accelerator is fancier than the other guy's".  The moon-landing
project was a particularly clear example.  If you want to do
such things for political reasons, fine, I suppose it's better
than fighting a war -- but don't try to tell me it's sensible
science.