Sunday, March 19, 2006

Is it funny?

Since my request for voting has been ignored.. and the locust got more mention than any others, I'll call it the ignoblest of them all...

Going over to the purpose of this post (as a continuation of the previous one)...

So many of u were ROTFL [I found out wat it is and had to show off.] ahem...ahem. I meant Rolling on the Floor Laughing..But, like the caption for the Ig Nobel award goes, after laughing, THINK!

What a waste of resources it is to pursue such research efforts?? After all they wont use their inheritance to fund their research! They are funded by the governtment from OUR TAX MONEY!!!! Many of us have been in grad schools in US and are familiar with the research in various labs... Of the 50 odd labs [atleast] how many of these are relevant to the "real "world? Imagine the resources being poured to satisfy the "curiosity"of some weird scientist - Lab space, Infrastructure, millions of dollars in grants, tuition and stipend for students and a lot more $$$$. Apart from wasting useful funds, they also increase the cost of our daily supplies...For example, millions of doolars are set aside per year for Research in Biology... but that includes a lot of purposeless research. So when some of the labs, do get "real"information the government or the University gets a royalty for all that they "spent"on research... so when a pharmaceutical company buys the idea it is made more expensive for them ....net result expensive drugs [more to follow on pharma companies and their ethics]....So, it is the people who look at researchers and scientific research with so much awe, who get the raw deal...

Dont mistake me here, I am not against research - I am a researcher myself..... But there is a fine line between useful and useless research... Though we cant discern those that lie close to the line.. there are some very clear outliers which should not be funded just because they pique the curioisty of some individual person...Such pursuits can be funded from personal money!

So, after laughing... THINK!

4 comments:

Kapil said...

mayb u shud get the lg Noble for posting on such freakish things ;)

btw chk out the new look of my blog..i hope it is legible this time ..i m waitin for ur response on the cmmnt thread :)

Anonymous said...

hey wundergal...so aren't u with me to trying for the Ig Nobel?
i am sure we can do it...tho it seems like kapil is out there already competing!!!!

Swapnil said...

I think the money spent was worth the laughs.
Honestly!

Kapil said...

hey chk my latest post ;)