Back in medical school, we had the honour of having the first-hand experience of listening to a learned man of stature croak cockamamie. The deputy director of Health then officiated some function. The gist of the speech that left an everlasting impression on me was his stand on allocations of funds for research.
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| From the podcast: Bigger than Bacon, Radiolab. |
He lamented the idea of students complaining about the lack of grants for research. He insisted that of one is genuinely interested in doing research, he can even do it under the coconut tree! I am sure many findings can be cooked up under the tree - with the help of coconut oil, coconut milk and coconut toddy!
Somehow, this thought came to me when I was listening to a podcast recently.
Apparently, the first thing they teach you in underwater surveillance studies is to identify a crackling sound which is not the noise of a advancing naval fleet but a particular type of shrimps. These single clawed crustaceans were correspondingly snapper shrimps. They actually mask the passage of a submarine or ocean liner in the World War! Nice to know but the scientists were not satisfied with just knowing that. What did they do? Using ultra fast speed photography and acoustic measurements with various state of the art equipment, they discovered that the snapping sounds were not due to physical contact of the claws in the some kind of territorial ritual but actually caused by the popping of a bubble. The scientists managed to show that sudden movement of the claw created a vacuum and release a vacuole of air bubble that pops giving the characteristic rustic crackling sound!
What does it matter? How is it useful for humankind? Believe it or not, this knowledge has helped passage of certain medicines through the blood brain barrier.
This was the same scenario before the smartphones came to the scene. Many of the technologies used in smartphones were invented by people who did not know the use of their invention. They just discovered it and patented it, waiting for someone like Steve Jobs to come along and assimilate it into his product.
So, who said research is a waste of resources? It paves the path others in the future to have a blueprint upon which they can improve and hopefully use it in a meaningful for the benefit of the human race as a whole.
What does it matter? How is it useful for humankind? Believe it or not, this knowledge has helped passage of certain medicines through the blood brain barrier.
This was the same scenario before the smartphones came to the scene. Many of the technologies used in smartphones were invented by people who did not know the use of their invention. They just discovered it and patented it, waiting for someone like Steve Jobs to come along and assimilate it into his product.
So, who said research is a waste of resources? It paves the path others in the future to have a blueprint upon which they can improve and hopefully use it in a meaningful for the benefit of the human race as a whole.
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