[davidgay]

> I would in fact argue that the trend, in "applied" fields, of justifying the importance of a piece of work by pointing out that a lot of people are doing similar work is in fact self-fulfilling.

There is one filter on this, though: you have to get funding for the work, which is a different process than getting a paper accepted. There is of course some overlap, as "people are working on this so it must be important" can be useful in arguing for funding, but funders at least potentially have other criteria in play too.

[fluoridation]

You would argue for the importance of research verbally, or in some kind of proposal document, though. There's no need to include part of that document in the final publication.