[jcourt1]

Somewhat hoist by his own petard there - it’s not at all obvious that ornithology has no use to birds… Not sure if underneath what he said he meant “philosophy of science is not at all useful to science” (which is doubtful) or the more restricted “pick a working scientist, they probably have little to gain by devoting time to philosophy of science” (maybe reasonable, if a little dogmatic to insist that is true in all cases).

If we took the comparison seriously though, it might actually turn out to be a reasonably insightful metaphor - eg. ornithologists don’t have the same primary concerns as the individual birds they study, a bird is not going to understand or get any profit from studying ornithology (and yet that it can still be a good bird) etc.