Steve:

>I shouldn't have been quite so hasty
>or so sweeping in my condemnation of research, but I've been a bit
>sensitized by, for example, a story about an alleged academic roaming the
>mudflats of Willapa Bay with a generator and an open microwave oven,
>"researching" how to control Spartina!

I have to ask - is this story first-hand, and the alleged academic
truly an academic? Often, patently absurd stories turn out to be
patently absurd legends - consider some of the tall tales told by
the Wise-Use folks about the prosecution of innocents due to
absurd applications of the ESA.

On the other hand, one must also remember Cold Fusion. Here, we
had a Nobel Laureate in chemistry making a fool of himself.

One of my favorite rules-of-thumb was originally stated by science
fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, when he was asked about the
quality of writing in SF. In one of those great, offhand statments
which has endured the test of time, he casually stated Sturgeon's
Law: "Of course, 90% of science fiction is crap. Then again, 90%
of everything is crap!"

Including academic research (and, believe me - software engineering).

But, that portion which isn't crap has often changed the world...

>But if someone is interested in loss of shorebird feeding
>habitat they might expend a little energy reminding the U.S. Fish &
>Wildlife Service that Grays Harbor NWR will not be that in a dozen years
>or so, unless someone scrapes off some of the silted in habitat in
>Bowerman Basin.

This, though, is politics - not science, right? What is there to
research in this case? You stated the solution: scrape the damned
thing. Getting it to happen is a political, not scientific, exercise.

Which is isn't to suggest that academics shouldn't paticipate in
politics! However, when they do - they aren't practicing science,
but politics.

And, I can't ask that all researchers be political. Many bright
folks who are right-thinking and understand right from wrong are
not skilled at the kind of intervention required, or may not
have an emotional make-up compatible with doing that kind of work.

I see nothing contradictory in, say, an academic studying spartina
control and doing no research on the silting up of Gray's Harbor (which
I presume is well understood) while caring deeply about the fate of
the harbor.

- Don Baccus, Portland OR <donb at rational.com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, at http:://www.xxxpdx.com/~dhogaza