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The Silent Scientist: When Software Research Fails to Reach Its Audience

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Re: The Silent Scientist: When Software Research Fails to Reach Its Audience

#3
post #2

Science Research doesn't happen for its own sake. Every effort needs to be a part of the pipeline of demand and supply. Otherwise it's just a tune that you sing in the shower.

This is only partly true. MRI technology came out of people hunting for aliens in space. The path science and discovery take are rarely as linear as the funders would like them to be.

Re: The Silent Scientist: When Software Research Fails to Reach Its Audience

#4
post #3
post #2

Science Research doesn't happen for its own sake. Every effort needs to be a part of the pipeline of demand and supply. Otherwise it's just a tune that you sing in the shower.

This is only partly true. MRI technology came out of people hunting for aliens in space. The path science and discovery take are rarely as linear as the funders would like them to be.

Indeed, not to mention the fundamental science you do now may be a product later and sometimes 50 years later.

Transistor was 1947 but a lot of the basic science was from 1890's - 1920's.

Still transistors right - what did they ever do for us? (apologies to the monty python team)

Re: The Silent Scientist: When Software Research Fails to Reach Its Audience

#5
post #3
post #2

Science Research doesn't happen for its own sake. Every effort needs to be a part of the pipeline of demand and supply. Otherwise it's just a tune that you sing in the shower.

This is only partly true. MRI technology came out of people hunting for aliens in space. The path science and discovery take are rarely as linear as the funders would like them to be.

There are always edge cases. But the bulk follows the gravity flow. Even poetry, these days, should find a buyer.

Re: The Silent Scientist: When Software Research Fails to Reach Its Audience

#6
post #5
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only partly true. MRI technology came out of people hunting for aliens in space. The path science and discovery take are rarely as linear as the funders would like them to be.

There are always edge cases. But the bulk follows the gravity flow. Even poetry, these days, should find a buyer.

Sometimes edge cases is all there is.

Re: The Silent Scientist: When Software Research Fails to Reach Its Audience

#7
post #2

Science Research doesn't happen for its own sake. Every effort needs to be a part of the pipeline of demand and supply. Otherwise it's just a tune that you sing in the shower.

The Fourier transform existed for the sake of existing for ~200 years before it turned out to be useful for building the entirety of our communications infrastructure on top of.

Re: The Silent Scientist: When Software Research Fails to Reach Its Audience

#8
post #2

Science Research doesn't happen for its own sake. Every effort needs to be a part of the pipeline of demand and supply. Otherwise it's just a tune that you sing in the shower.

You are describing applied research. But fundamental research seeks to expand knowledge itself, and unsurprisingly delivers a lot of unplanned value.

Re: The Silent Scientist: When Software Research Fails to Reach Its Audience

#9
post #5
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only partly true. MRI technology came out of people hunting for aliens in space. The path science and discovery take are rarely as linear as the funders would like them to be.

There are always edge cases. But the bulk follows the gravity flow. Even poetry, these days, should find a buyer.

If you've ever wondered why progress in fundamental physics seems to have slowed down; look no further!

Re: The Silent Scientist: When Software Research Fails to Reach Its Audience

#10
There is an enormous gulf between research in general and the people who should be reading it from a professional point of view. Science communication is really broken and what makes the trade press or press generally is largely about whether a papers authors manage to write a good press release and effectively writes an article themselves.

We need more New Scientist type magazine like things that do decent round ups of scientific findings for various fields that do a good job of shuffling through the thousands of papers a month and finding the highest impact papers. The pipeline from research to use in professions can drastically be improved. At the moment you end up having a hosepipe of abstracts and its a lot of time to review that daily.

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