Survey Says

Three Hundred Eighth Post: Survey Says

Watching the news, there are a bunch of absurd studies. (I heard about another absurd on today. I didn’t include what it was because it is highly debatable. Maybe you can guess what it is.) You see a study and ask yourself, “Why did they spend years studying something so obvious or could be answered using simple methods.” The study may not seem of any use. Just another statistic that was a waste of money. Or it was completely wrong.

The average person who has never conducted these surveys (myself included) doesn’t know how the study was conducted or what the results even mean. We hear something like drinking coffee will stain your teeth. A study conducted by Crest Toothpaste says that brushing your teeth with Crest removes 51% of the stain on the majority of people. This one makes sense: Brushing your teeth removes stains. But why is the effort concentrated on simple, common sense or insignificant data?

In my opinion (and little theory) is that the research is harder than it seems. We have people going together to find something. Somehow they each get assigned tasks and they put to much effort in things that really only of small importance. And not all studies produce ground breaking results.

Sort of like writing a research paper. You need answers. Researching and getting results is a tricky thing. So the student looks to other facts that relate to the paper that they did find. And thus, there is the useless data.

Once on his radio show Theoretical Physicist, Michio Kaku, was discussing why a particle accelerator only costing a mere hundreds of thousands wasn’t funded, yet millions of dollars were wasted on space projects that didn’t find anything. He gave an example of sending frogs into space to see how they mate.

You can put some absurd or unnecessary studies you heard on the message board... But until then... May the Creative Force be with You