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* * * Inconsistencies * * *
I don't understand how John can say...
You may be able to find some things that are
valuable now that were invented
a long time ago "as a lark". But there are not nearly as
many such things as most people suppose. Selecting the
data _a posteriori_ is highly unscientific. And secondly,
even if there were many such things, it wouldn't support the
notion that investing at random, without regard to payoff,
is a good investment strategy. (John Denker)
after he already said...
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. (John Denker)
It seems to me these are contradictory.
Also, John referenced a nice historical sketch of NMR at the Varian website.
John said "It was obvious in the 1940s that NMR had commercial impact."
Obvious to whom, and when? The Varian site says, "Both Bloch and Hansen
viewed their work as an advance in physics theory with little or no
immediate commercial value and thus it was the suggestion of Russell Varian
that a U.S. patent application be filed to cover this work." This says to
me that Bloch and Hansen had no "practical benefit" in mind, and they would
not have stated any such rationale in any funding proposals they might have
made. Russel Varian could not have seen the commercial value if Bloch and
Hansen hadn't done the work motivated by intellectual curiosity.
Also, at the Varian website, the sputter-ion vacuum pump is described and it
says "At the time of its development." Recalls Helmer, "there were a lot of
people at Varian that were not convinced of the practicality and
marketability of Vaclon pump technology." Further text at the website makes
it pretty clear that Varian almost abandoned development of this pump, yet
it turned into one of the big success stories for Varian.
Also, at the Varian site, with respect to NMR, it says, "As is often the
case with basic discoveries in science, the original intent of the work
turns out to have been far afield from the ultimate practical application."