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From: robert@blake.acs.washington.edu (Gedankenleere)
Newsgroups: sci.research,talk.politics.misc,sci.bio
Subject: Re: replicating experiments (was animal research)
Message-ID: <1254@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Date: 17 Mar 89 22:01:05 GMT
References: <726@orbit.UUCP> <3254@ttrdc.UUCP> <3437@silver.bacs.indiana.edu> <37128@bbn.COM>
Reply-To: robert@blake.acs.washington.edu (Gedankenleere)
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Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
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Sounds good, but how do you get people to go for it if there's no glory
or reputation in it? Great if your an established big name somebody who
can get funding or positions on just your reputation, but most researchers,
young scientits-in-training are not in this position.

And you know, the search for funding and reputations is just a great a force,
if not more, in scientific research as is the search for knowledge or thrill
of discovery. Even purely theoretical research is not immune to this.

And so, this is why EXACT repetition of experimental results are consigned to
students and post docs for the most part (as excerices). [And if they should
find something worthwhile or even earth-shattering in the process, the head
scientist(s) or profs may just take full credit for it.]

Look, scientits are human like the rest of us, and they do not behave the
way of the caricatures that the people in the humanities or mass media often
portray them as behaving.

How many scientists in the universities, research centers, etc. look or act
like those buffoon Nerds, so much of the public, and our school children 
know them as??