[shou4577]

I think the mentality that most of the research done is useless crap is a common mindset that can hurt the entire field of science if too many people believe it. There is already a feeling among the general populace that most research is useless, and that we should be investing more money elsewhere.

Research (as a whole) is a lot like mining. The human race can put in so many hours of work researching new areas, and the majority of it does not produce immediately fruitful work. Only a very small percentage of the work done results in "breakthrough" technologies that are the main reason money is invested into research anyway. But I don't understand why people think that if we put less time into it, we will cut out all of the garbage and only bring out the really good stuff. You have to wade through a lot of dirt to find a diamond, and cutting your crew down won't help that. It helps to look in the right places, but at the end of the day, you really don't know what will end up producing magnificent results.

[Maro]

I think that many researchers, given that they're very smart people, know the real value of their work. But even if they know it's not very good, they keep doing it, because, what else are they going to do? After all, it's a comfortable life.

In other words, not everybody is doing great research work, and they know it.

[equark]

This is exactly the same problem faced by people in every domain. It's hard to make a dent in the universe regardless of your mode of attack. Activists often become jaded for exactly the same reasons that academics do. It's hard to do something that is manifestly meaningful, yet occasionally it does happen.