SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY

Commentary: Is There Any Point to 'Frivolous' Academic Research?

from BBC News Magazine

If you sit monkeys at a computer, will they type the works of the Bard? No, they will partially destroy the machine, use it as a lavatory and mostly type the letter "s". It took university researchers one month and £2,000 of Arts Council England money to find this out.

Changes are now being proposed for how public money is awarded for university research. In future funding for researchers might be assessed in part on the impact their work has had in social, economic and cultural terms.

There are reports that these tighter stipulations will put an end to seemingly trivial research projects - which often make great headlines in the newspapers but seem to have little, if any, intellectual rigour. But is this fair? Are populist papers just a waste of time?