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Don't be a silly quant! | 68 comments (68 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: It's just a hook (4.00 / 3)

It's just a hook (none / 0)
to hang a coat of many colours on. As I said clearly 'if we are to believe....'

If somebody said: "The world is flat" would you say "if we are to believe" etc. ? :-)

If the hook is no good the coat's colours could get dirty on the floor.

Isn't it just part of the wider problem of specialisation in academia and business and pressure for results with little time to see the bigger picture ?

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.

by Ted Welch (tedwelch-at-mac-dot-com) on Mon Nov 26th, 2007 at 07:21:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: It's just a hook (4.00 / 3)
this is a sore point, with me.

In order to get funding the researcher has to (1) be able to point at past work in a specific field and (2) be able to state what the research is supposed to find out.

Think about that one for a second!

Admittedly funders look askance, and rightfully so, at a proposal that, when you down to it, says, "Please give me and my chums a million dollars so we can screw around for a couple of years."  But, in the US, the more likely it is that your research is not research the greater the chances of being funded as research.  

Except if your field, e.g., nuclear physics, opens the way for the US military to kill large numbers of people.  

There's lots of money for that.


She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Tue Nov 27th, 2007 at 08:23:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: It's just a hook (none / 1)

 But, in the US, the more likely it is that your research is not research the greater the chances of being funded as research.  
Except if your field, e.g., nuclear physics, opens the way for the US military to kill large numbers of people.

To be fair to the military ( shock, horror :-)) - some senior militay staff are  more reluctant to go to war than politicians who've managed to avoid it - like Bush. They also sometimes fund a surprising range of research - even Chomsky -). The Pentagon funded a study of the likely consequences of climate change and released it to the media - though they did pack-peddle when, predictably, given the source, it got a lot of publicity :

Indeed, widespread public alarm, particularly in Europe, was the predictable response to the Pentagon's October 2003 report, An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and its Implications for United States National Security, once it became available early this year.1 In an attempt to quiet these fears Defense Department officials and the authors of the report quickly came forward to say that the entire exercise was speculative and "intentionally extreme"; that the whole thing had been misconstrued and overblown in certain press accounts.

http://www.monthlyreview.org/0504editors.htm



Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
by Ted Welch (tedwelch-at-mac-dot-com) on Wed Nov 28th, 2007 at 04:46:30 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Don't be a silly quant! | 68 comments (68 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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