[tpoacher]

There's a bit of a problem in academia / academic papers, where the researchers feel compelled to comment on "impact", i.e., "why is this important / what are the implications". This is often required by the journal / reviewers as well. I confess I have been guilty of it as well (both as an author and as a reviewer).

Which is not bad in itself, but sometimes there's no obvious immediate impact. That's the beauty of science. You do it to learn about something, and somebody may be interested in that something further down the line. E.g. MRI research came from hypercolliders / space research. It's unlikely particle smashers wrote "this could be used to generate medical images" in their conclusions section. At most they probably wrote "this could be used to create black holes and kill everybody" instead. (/s)

Having to come up with a half-baked impact case as an afterthought in the conclusion, often manages to ruin the entire paper for me. It's the case for this article too. I was like, "wow, wow, wow, interesting", until I reached the "this could be used to ban thermal cameras" part, at which point I was "no, no, no, God no".