Seth, a retired university professor who, during his employment at an elite school, spent a lot of time doing research with the goal of improving people’s lives, writes:
Professors, especially at elite schools, dislike doing research with obvious value. It strikes them as menial. “Practical” and “applied” are terms of disparagement, whereas “pure” research (research without obvious value) is good.
Given that Seth isn’t that way himself, I assume he’d say that this claim applies to “many” professors or “most” professors but surely not all?
What I’ve noticed, though, is more the opposite, that even people who do extremely theoretical work like to feel that it is applied, practical, and useful. I think that, among other things, Seth is confusing what people want to do with what they actually can do. For example, he criticizes biologists for researching stem cells and prions rather than prevention of disease. But preventing diseases is difficult! That’s why the scientists are doing research, because they don’t know how to cure diseases.
Why do I bother arguing with this. I guess because I’m impressed at the effort Seth has put into doing research that might end up directly changing people’s lives. I agree that most professors don’t do this, even those of us in departments such as psychology or political science that might seem to have a lot of practical relevance. But I think he’s making an old, old mistake by assuming that, just because people are not doing a certain thing, it’s because they don’t want to do it. Similar to his earlier claim that people write badly on purpose. Research, like writing, is hard. Especially given that so many of the low-hanging research fruit have been plucked. If you want to knock academic research for being useless, fine, but it seems to be (mistakenly) adding insult to injury to say that we’re all being useless on purpose!
If you accept that professors want to be useful and don’t always succeed, that’s much more interesting (and, I think, true) than stating that they’re being useless on purpose.
Most commercial transactions over the Internet are secured using the https protocol. Secure connections are established using techniques such as RSA, diffie-hellman key exchange, elliptic curve diffie hellman, etc. All of these methods depend on mathematics that probably appeared abstract and of no commercial value at the time it was developed.
As Faraday said to the queen, "Of what use is a baby?"
The people I know concentrate their efforts in the areas that interest them and that they are good at, "useful" or not. I've never heard anyone express the opinion that "practical" and "applied" are terms of disparagement.
In his book, A Mathematician's Apology, G.H. Hardy wrote,
"I have never done anything ‘useful’. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world."
Of course that's false because he did a lot of very useful mathematics, for example, Hardy Weinberg Equations. Nevertheless Hardy does provide us with a good example of the academic who does disdain the practical, and is proud of it. He also shows us that it can be hard not to be useful because new knowledge has a way becoming useful anyway. Still I can't thinking that a discovery of the Higgs Boson will turn out to be something practical and worth the tremendous cost of the hardware.
here's the link to Seth's comment for those wondering: http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2010/02/11/writte…
Bill: then you've never met an academic in the Humanitiesmost qualitative researchers.
I have heard people use the term applied disparagingly, but not frequently, and usually it is more of a comment on the wisdom of trying to compete with industry based research. Most people would see any area of research as applicable, but the time frame in which applications may arise and the specificity of the research outcomes to any particular problem are variable. I would agree most people work in areas in which they can contribute most effectively based in part on their background and interests.
Zarkov:
Exactly. It was only because mathematics is so evidently useful that Hardy went on about how useless his work was. People who really are useless don't go around proudly proclaiming how useless they are; instead they talk about their relevance.
Prof. Gelman, my view is probably closer to yours than to Prof. Roberts', but surely you don't believe the incentives facing academic researchers are perfect.
I'd be interested in hearing about any problems you see and, of course, potential solutions.
anonagrad, I of course know many academics in the humanities but mostly socially. I was referring the astronomers/mathematicians/physicists/biologists and similar types with whom I have had closer relationships.
I've seen a lot of research (and done some myself) that seemed not to have practical application but ended up having them anyway.
what about those who are motivated to do relevant research but who would resent any expectation that they do it? I am not against being relevant; I admire those who are, and try to be myself. But I understand my life in the academy to consist in a very special kind of freedom precisely because it really truly is the case that my own curiosity — not anyone else’s needs — determines what I get to apply my mind to. I recognize this is amazingly indulgent. Indeed, it is exactly the gratitude that I experience for this astonishing privilege that *does* motivate me to try to do devote a fair portion of my intellectual energy to being useful — to figuring things out that might help my society, certainly, but much more often to trying to help others learn. Still, I would put up a fight if I sensed that norms, practices, terms & conditions of the academic mkt and so forth were being reconfigured in a way that put the opportunity (not just for me but for others in the future) to life this version of the good life in jeopardy.
I am sometimes accused by theoreticians of being "merely applied" and by those who I would like to get to use my research as being "too theoretical".
I guess it's possible to displease everyone.
(fixed spelling)
Something is wrong with a system of academic research that hasn't figured out how to plug a damn hole in the ground.
Some corrections: 1. I'm still a professor at an elite school (Tsinghua). 2. I didn't spend a lot of my time at Berkeley "with the goal of improving people's lives". Far from it. I spent a small amount of time trying to improve my own life. And the usual amount of time on mainstream research with rats.
About your points: I wrote about the difficulty of combining academic concerns and helping people here:
http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2010/05/29/the-fo…
I agree that some professors want to be useful but can't. Sure. But the big picture is that academia is called the ivory tower for a reason (how useless most of the work is). And to say that the main explanation of that is that professors really care about being useful but don't just because it's hard ignores a lot of facts. Let me give a few:
1. Sleep researchers could easily self-experiment, which would be far more useful than their usual research. They don't.
2. Law professors could teach how to be a lawyer. That would be far more useful than the stuff they actually teach.
3. Same for education professors.
4. Engineering professors, I've heard, want theories and formula, not actual working devices. It is well within their power to construct working devices.
And so on. The idea that it is hard to useful doesn't easily explain these cases.
Efrique – my guess is your are applying statistics thoughtfully in some area.
Now, about 20 or so years ago, 2 math profs at U of T were making some good extra cash doing election night forecasting for a Canadian television network – and passed that on to a stats prof (post-doc of John Tukey) – as they were worried about being seen doing practical stuff
K?
Seth: You think that self-experimentation by sleep researchers "which would be far more useful than their usual research." That's your opinion, which I doubt many of these sleep researchers would share!
Yes, sleep researchers would probably disagree with me. Here's why I believe they're wrong and I'm right about this. Self-experimentation has many advantages over their usual research:
1. Much cheaper. Conventional sleep research can cost $1000/night for each subject. Self-experimentation is free.
2. Much wider range of treatments can be studied. Ordinary research is so expensive you have to get a paper out of every experiment. With self-experimentation you don't — so you can test more off-beat ideas and ideas less likely to work.
3. Much wider range of sleep problems can be studied. Now only severe problems can be studied because the cost is so high. Less severe sleep problems are more common, of course. Self-experimentation allowed me to study why I woke up too early — too mild a problem for conventional research. Early awakening is common. Many non-sleep-researchers — those who suffer from early awakening — would love for sleep researchers to study this.
4. Longer experiments. You can do self-experimentation for years, with many advantages provided by extensive use of a subject as its own control. Conventional sleep experiments have to be short due to the expense.
That sleep researchers fail to grasp these obvious points but, as you say, are likely to claim (without having tried self-experimentation) that self-experimentation would surely be less useful than what they do now says a lot about them — none of it flattering.